Today Facebook has launched an app Hello, designed to replace the default dialler on your Android phone.
As you’d expect, it’s closely tied to your Facebook account with
caller ID data pulled in even if you don’t have the caller’s number in
your phone’s contacts list. It allows you to make calls and send
messages via Messenger instead of your cellular connection.
Yes, after the failure of its Home launcher, Hello is Facebook’s
latest attempt at a ‘Facebook Phone’ on Android. To help encourage you
to switch over to the app, it’s got a feature that is genuinely
interesting and useful even if you aren’t a hardcore Facebook user – the
ability to automatically block calls from numbers that have been
blocked by a lot of other people. That sounds perfect for getting rid of
those spam ‘insurance’ and ‘Windows support’ calls. However, The Verge reports that these calls are simply sent to voicemail rather than properly blocked.
Whether that will be enough to draw you and your phone further into Facebook’s orbit is up to you.
