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We touched on this earlier when Android 4.4 was first announced. But it’s time to dive deeper into this feature. As many of you all know, Android 4.4 – KitKat features a brand new dialer and now a Smarter Caller ID. Why is it smarter? Well for one thing, when you get a call from a business that Google knows, it will let you know on the incoming call screen as seen in the image above.
Your phone will now attempt to identify unknown callers, that are not part of your contacts, by searching through local business listings on Google Maps. Then if there’s a match, you will get the business image and name displayed before you answer the phone. It’ll be really cool, but it looks as if it doesn’t work with businesses that aren’t local. So say some business in Texas calls me in Michigan, it probably won’t be able to show me the name of the business on my Nexus 5, unfortunately.
As always with newer features it could use some work. I’d definitely like to see it working with all businesses and not just local businesses. But I’m sure that will be coming in a future update, possibly Android 4.4.1? Who knows. It’s a really cool feature, especially since it also shows a picture of the business, which I’m guessing they also grab from street view from within Google Maps.
This isn’t the end of KitKat coverage here at Android Headlines, we’ve got plenty more coming. Today is a huge day and it’s full of tons of Android goodness, finally. We’re breaking down each feature in KitKat to tell you more about it, since we all want KitKat on our new devices right? What do you think about Smarter Caller ID in KitKat? Is it something you’d like to see get improved in future versions of Android? Let us know in the comments below.