Truecaller on Android updated with significant new capabilities

Telephone search engine and caller ID service provider Truecaller is rolling out new features to further augment the user experience. These new features include Group Voice Calling, Smart SMS and Inbox Cleaner.

All of them are based on user feedback and are designed to cater to the evolving needs of our consumers, said Truecaller in a statement.

With Group Voice Calls, consumers can make cross-border voice calls with up to eight people simultaneously. Smart SMS offers a host of new features designed to make day-to-day communication a lot more convenient. Finally, Inbox Cleaner lets consumers free up space on their phone by removing unused messages.

Rishit Jhunjhunwala, MD India, Truecaller, said, “We continue to remain focused on the evolving needs of our users and meet those needs with innovative solutions. These features get us closer to our mission: to make communication safer and more efficient for everyone. Truecaller has evolved into a powerful communication hub and for the people who wish to use the app to its fullest, these features will greatly add value.”

“With Group voice calling, Smart SMS and Inbox cleaner, I am hopeful that consumers will be able to operate more effectively given the benefits of staying connected, using messaging service smartly to stay on top of important information and lastly inbox cleaner to save the mobile phone from running out of space,” added Jhunjhunwala.

Group Voice Calling

Truecaller Voice Calls have always been free. This enhancement allows users to add up to eight participants to a call while retaining the high voice clarity that Truecaller Voice is known for. Truecaller will also help identify spam users in the group if they were added without the user’s knowledge.

A user will be able to add a new participant to a voice call without adding them to their phonebook. Typically, a user needs to go through the process of saving a contact to add them to a group but with Truecaller, one can skip this tedious process. In an ongoing call, the app will reflect each participant’s city and this will be visible to all people in the call. When initiating a call, Truecaller will also indicate when another user is busy in another call or offline. Importantly, all group voice calls are secured with symmetric encryption. Your calls are between your participants only.

Additionally, the feature offers a smooth dial back option from call logs making it easy to manage the group (including adding or removing participants) when dialling them back.

Smart SMS

Roughly 80% of SMSes one receives daily are from businesses, so SMS apps need to become smarter with filtering out spam and in categorising useful information.

Truecaller uses the same powerful algorithms used to identify spam callers in SMS as well. The SMS intelligence is built into the app itself and it can work offline – nothing leaves your device, including all OTPs, bank SMSes and financial information. Smart SMS is a powerful evolution to the SMS engine that has become even better at filtering out spam, categorizing useful information, reminding you of payments and in general making your SMS inbox a more organised place.

This feature is currently available only to users in India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. It will soon be available in the US, Sweden, Malaysia, Indonesia and Egypt.

Inbox Cleaner

Modern smartphones have a lot of storage, so we rarely end up deleting SMSes. Inbox Cleaner helps you clear out all those old, unwanted messages in just a few seconds. No longer will our consumers need to spend time individually selecting SMSes to delete, said Truecaller. A quick tap on Inbox Cleaner from the menu will show you how many old OTPs and spam SMSes you have accumulated and another tap on the ‘clean up’ button will quickly and effectively remove old SMSes without affecting your important data.

On the first run, a typical user can expect to delete hundreds or thousands of messages, potentially freeing up significant storage space as well as providing a faster, cleaner inbox.

This feature is designed to run in the background, allowing users to continue working on other tasks within Truecaller or any other app on the device while Inbox Cleaner works its magic.