Facebook’s latest attempt to ‘own your phone’: Its own Android dialler app

Facebook has today launched Hello, an app 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.

Unfortunately, Hello is currently showing as incomptible with all the Android devices we’ve got available here (including staples like the Nexus 5) but we’ll give it a road test as soon as we can. If you’ve got it running, please leave a comment and give us your verdict.

➤ Facebook Hello [Android]