Suggest a dialer that does this..?

[Soundy]

I sync contacts to my Jellytime'd HTC Desire HD, from both personal and work Gmail accounts. The vast majority of my work contacts are for retail customers, suppliers, subcontractors, or product support lines, where the manager or contact name may change from time to time, and thus looking up a site by contact name may be futile, and having a certain contact name pop up on an incoming call can be misleading.

Also, all the dialers I've tried so far, when you start typing on the dialing pad, will only do a match to the contact name fields, not company names (something my old WinMo phones and even my Palm Treo handled readily).

I'd love to find a dialer that would do two things: a) match on both company AND contact name fields when typing on the dialpad; b) provide some method of selecting whether an incoming call should show contact name or company name.

For the second thing, it might make sense if it would display the company name if the call comes in from a "Work" number, or the contact name if it comes from a "Mobile" or "Home" number (since those tend to stay with a person when they leave a company). Perhaps it could also key on a label that could be set, like "Work" or "Personal", to determine which to display.

Any suggestions? Anyone? Bueller?

 

[dvhttn]

Have a look at DW Contacts - that at least will search on company. Can't check the 2nd point as my son's playing Temple Run 2 on it at the moment ....

Dave

 

[Soundy]

Thanks Dave.

It occurred to me that GO Dialer does search-on-company as well, and I've tried a couple others that do. I used to use DW when my phone was still on its stock ROM, but I got rid of it because it was such a resource pig. Maybe I'll try it again now that I'm on a much lighter JB build.

I guess the main thing is the ability to display the contact name or company based on which number the call comes from. Case in point: yesterday I got a call that showed it was from "Bob at Company" - I almost answered "Hi Bob!" but didn't... good thing, because it wasn't him, it was someone else calling from the company number. Does it make sense that an incoming call from the work number would show the company name, and from a mobile number would show the person's name?

 

[dvhttn]

.. It occurred to me that GO Dialer does search-on-company as well, and I've tried a couple others that do. I used to use DW when my phone was still on its stock ROM, but I got rid of it because it was such a resource pig. Maybe I'll try it again now that I'm on a much lighter JB build. ...

I'm using it an an HTC Desire HD running JB and it is a little slow at times. I think that's more to do with "unoptimised" code more than anything else though, from comments on their forum.

... I guess the main thing is the ability to display the contact name or company based on which number the call comes from. Case in point: yesterday I got a call that showed it was from "Bob at Company" - I almost answered "Hi Bob!" but didn't... good thing, because it wasn't him, it was someone else calling from the company number. Does it make sense that an incoming call from the work number would show the company name, and from a mobile number would show the person's name?

I get that as well BUT, you can't really blame the dialler/contacts app for that. Up to a point anyway. At the end of the day all that the phone knows is that it's receiving a call from a number "12345". It searches it's contacts database and there are several matches for that number. It's Android that dictates which contact it chooses to display. I "think" it's the first in the list (alphabetically).

The same thing happens when you dial out to that company. You dial 'Fred' at the company number - your call log will show you called 'Bob'. Again, I believe it's Android doing this as the dialler makes a call to Android to choose the contact details for that number. Again 'Bob' comes before 'Fred'. Annoying and in this case I can't see why the dialler/contacts app can't figure this out as you were in the contact details for 'Fred' when you pressed the company number so why can't it just pass that contact to the call log ...?

But for incoming calls, no real way around it.

Dave

 

[Soundy]

I'm using it an an HTC Desire HD running JB and it is a little slow at times. I think that's more to do with "unoptimised" code more than anything else though, from comments on their forum.

Yeah, I'm finding it's not so smooth either... same reason I ditched GO Launcher: really like it, but it just started suffering from feature bloat, and so many of them were just cosmetics that don't really offer a benefit beyond "Gee-Whiz" factor.

I get that as well BUT, you can't really blame the dialler/contacts app for that. Up to a point anyway. At the end of the day all that the phone knows is that it's receiving a call from a number "12345". It searches it's contacts database and there are several matches for that number. It's Android that dictates which contact it chooses to display. I "think" it's the first in the list (alphabetically).

Right, but if you list a given contact, it DOES know which is a work number, mobile number, home number, work fax, etc. That's what I'm thinking such a determination would be based on. In the example above, "Bob" is the ONLY person from that company whose contact is in my phone, so it's not a matter of which person it selects.

It would be more like, if "Bob" calls from his cell, the dialer displays the caller ID name as "Bob"... if the incoming call is from the company's line, it displays "Bob's Company".

If I have two contacts at the same company, the same thing would work - call comes in from "Fred's" cell number, it displays "Fred"... call comes from "Fred's" work line, it displays "Bob's Company". Otherwise, what you say applies - Bob is in there first, so a call from the work line shows up as "Bob" whether it's Bob or Fred calling.

All necessary information is there in the contact info, it's just a matter of someone programming a dialer to use it

 

[dvhttn]

... All necessary information is there in the contact info, it's just a matter of someone programming a dialer to use it

It's OK, I think we're actually agreeing. My missive was just a reminder of "why" things could be happening like they do, but I guess it came across as more of an excuse for the app developer being lazy!

Dave

 

[Soundy]

Like I said, I know why things pop up they way they do, this is just wondering if any can base it on different criteria. I don't think it's so much a matter of developers being lazy as of just, nobody thought of it... or maybe somebody did, and I just haven't found it yet, which is why I'm asking if anyone knows different