In a nutshell…

Effortlessly shut out unwanted calls and texts without alerting the caller.

What’s it good for?

Keeping distractions off your phone when you’re otherwise engaged.

Judgement time…

We all get calls we don’t want to take from time to time, but rejecting them manually can risk causing offence – the unwelcome caller might well guess what you’re up to. But never fear: Easy Reject is the app to bring an end to these potential social contretemps – set it running on your Nok and it automatically blocks calls from unknown numbers and/or any numbers you specify, putting the caller straight through to voicemail and giving them the impression that your mobile is engaged or otherwise unavailable.

That’s the idea, at least. I set it up on my N95, added my home phone number to the blocked list then used it to dial the mobile. I heard one ring then the usual voicemail message. A friend of mine had the same response when he (having been stuck on the block list too) belled up my Nok. That single telltale ring isn’t really ideal, is it? It really needs to go direct to voicemail, so the person on the other end doesn’t actually think you’re seeing their name on your phone screen then blocking them. Jeez…

The fact that Easy Reject does the blocking automatically is handy, of course, and it apparently blocks unsolicited SMS messages too, which is nice (although I didn’t receive any text spam while testing, so I can’t attest to its effectiveness). All blocked calls and messages go into a log, so if your weekly catch-up call from Gran gets kyboshed, you’ll at least be able to spot it and phone her back. But all in all I’m just not convinced it’s worth the best part of a tenner when it doesn’t really deliver on its promises of fuss-free, undetectable blocking. Maybe the next version will fare better.