If you’re unsatisfied with the fact that Facebook is not a part of your phone call-making experience, you’re in luck. It appears that the company is working on a new app that inserts the Facebook experience into your actual phone function.
It looks like Facebook is working on an Android dialer and caller ID app – but one that uses information from Facebook to give you a better clue as to who’s calling you.
Android Police snagged a screenshot of the app, which appears to be in internal testing (FB only). Somehow, the app install got pushed (leaked, intentionally leaked, whatever you want to say) to a small number of Facebook users. It’s simply called “Phone” and offers this description:
Phone is a new app the shows you info about who’s calling and automatically blocks calls from commonly blocked numbers.
If there’s one thing Facebook has a lot of it’s phone numbers. And all it has to do is tie those numbers to other data about its users and present that in a tight little package. At that point, anyone receiving a call from a strange number would be able to see a lot of pertinent info on the caller.
Facebook confirmed that the app is real, but gave the usual “we are always testing things and have nothing to announce at this time” response. We’ll see if this app ever really sees the light of day.
Screenshots show Facebook is working on a call screening app called Phone http://t.co/nEa62PfZOf pic.twitter.com/PtjKtuBQFE
— MobileSyrup (@MobileSyrup) March 23, 2015
And yes, I’m aware this sounds like “Facebook Phone.” Facebook is not building another phone, however. That experiment wasn’t too successful.