Facebook is working on a Truecaller rival, called simply as “Phone”

Facebook is reportedly set to launch a dialer on its Android app called “Phone.” The feature is set to be a caller id of sorts that not only shows info on the person calling, but automatically blocks blacklisted numbers as well.

Facebook describes Phone as a “new app that shows you info about who’s calling and automatically blocks calls from commonly blocked numbers.” Interestingly, the update is titled “Try Phone [FB-ONLY].” In other words, this feature was meant to be tested internally by Facebook’s employees, but the update seems to have shown up on a handful of Facebook Android users.

This is probably why tapping the install button shows a “no page found” error message. Not a lot is known about the feature, but it seems to be similar to what Truecaller offers. The app is a social phone directory of sorts, which not only gives you information on who is calling you, but also blocks numbers that have been termed as spam by users. Truecaller has over 100 million users, and claims to hold contact information of almost 1.5 billion people.

With over 1.39 billion users on Facebook, it is hardly surprising that the social giant wants to leverage the information it has. Many of these users have saved their phone numbers on their Facebook profiles, so a dialer would presumably use this information to tell you who is calling, even if you don’t have the number saved on your phone.

Since it is being internally tested for now, it is too early to say if Facebook Phone or whatever the feature is called would see the light of the day.

IMPORT:-BGRindia