KPH tech blog

Call Quality, and the default Dialler app, isn’t as important as maybe the camera or the media viewing experience, in a smartphone as these days, I often use my phone as a mini, handheld computer rather than as a phone.

Looking ahead, however, it could still hamper the overall experience of using the phone if the call quality is rather tinny, or if the dialler app is uninspiring to use or lacking of features.

Call Quality

I have hardly ever used the calling feature of my Desire Eye, and so have never really been able to fully know how good or bad it is. But when I have used it, the speaker seems tinny and I have found myself reaching for the volume keys to turn it down (or up, if I’m in a busy place and can’t hear).

It’s an area of phones that I’m looking into, as a phone that can’t efficiently make phone calls isn’t very useful as a ‘phone.’ Also, as I shall be making calls to get quotes from people for my articles, I may be making use of many of the call recording apps – so a phone that can efficiently multitask mid-call would be a useful feature.

Dialler App

Apart from call quality, one thing that is amiss with my Desire Eye is the default dialler app. It’s fairly plain, with a drab layout that doesn’t inspire you to ring anyone. It’s also not the best looking dialler app I’ve seen or interacted with – probably the one on an iPhone is the best default phone app I’ve seen.

I have since switched to the much more feature-rich TrueCaller, which benefits from having a following that constantly updates a search engine-like database of phone numbers. This allows me to see if the call is genuine (from friends or family) or if it’s a marketing call or a scammer.

The dialler app on my Desire Eye is split into 5 sections, or ‘tabs,’ including Call History, Phone, Favourites, People, and Groups. Call History is particularly useful, and allows you to view missed calls, calls made, as well as allowing you to call people back.

The Phone tab is the default tab, and is presented as soon as you open the app. As I’ve already said, it’s fairly drab and square, and not particularly inspiring to use. I’d prefer a modern take on a retro phone, with circular numbers like on the iPhone.

The Phone tab has a useful toggle button in the bottom-left. Pressing it switches from a number board to a Qwerty keyboard, and is useful when you know who you want to call but can’t remember their phone numbers. The only disadvantage I can see here is that it’s long-winded, and if you’ve already synced your accounts and contacts list to your phone, it would be easier to use both the People and the Favourites tabs to contact people.

The Favourites tab works similar to speed-dialling, a feature that I believe should be more front-and-centre on smartphones, and which I used to use a lot back in the days before I owned a smartphone.

The People section is useful as it is an integrated form of the Contacts/People app. This means it retains all the features of the Contacts app, allowing you to view my contacts from all of my synced accounts.

The only feature I haven’t used a lot is Groups, which splits your contacts into various groups. It’s not something I’ve ever felt I needed to use, nor needed. However, it is nice to see that I can disable the Groups tab from a drop-down settings menu if I don’t want to use it.

SMS Texting

It may not be directly linked to phone calls, but texting is also an important feature that can hamper the experience of a ‘phone.’ It seems the drab style of the phone app is common across the entire phone, as the Messages app also suffers from an uninspired, messy look.

About a week after getting my HTC Desire Eye, I switched to Google’s Messenger app, and recently to Allo, but I more regularly use TrueMessenger for texting.

TrueMessenger hails from the same team that brought us TrueCaller, and benefits not only from the TrueCaller database but also in that it splits texts into two folders: Inbox, and Spam.

The Spam feature works much the same as on an email server, and is particularly useful in distinguishing between genuine messages from my Contacts, and spam or scam texts.

The reason for the switch from Google’s Messenger and Allo, which both sport a bubbly design that’s clean and easy to use, is that I received a text which looked suspicious. Upon further reading, it looks like it may have been related to the Stagefright virus.

Both Messenger and Allo classed it as okay to open, but TrueMessenger not only put it in its Spam folder, but warned me against opening the message. It’s that reassuring sense of security that I liked, at a time when I hadn’t heard of Stagefright, nor knew of its dangers.