Even since Alexander Graham Bell received a call about an exciting timeshare opportunity two hours after inventing the telephone, people have been waiting for a call-screening application like Best Blacklist.
The Best Blacklist app sits in the background and checks the caller ID of incoming numbers, hopefully eliminating the spammers while giving friends and family a super-highway to your ears.Best Blacklist is a small app that installs easily in seconds.
To start with, the home screen offers just two simple options, Blacklist and Accept Only list, toggling on and off with the nav-pad centre key. For each list, you can add ‘correspondents’: contacts or group from your address book, specific phone numbers or unknown numbers.
In the Blacklist, these numbers will automatically be diverted to a busy tone (or voicemail if you have it set up), without the phone ringing. In the Accept Only list (basically a white list), these are the only numbers that will be allowed through; all other calls with get the engaged tone or voicemail.
Blacklist numbers can also be rejected by a text message (“Sleeping. Call later.”), and you can set up as many different black and white lists as you like, activating one or more at the same time. In case of conflict, the list higher up the screen will prevail (it’s easy to move them around).
There’s also a basic scheduler to let you screen out late-night calls, and a comprehensive call log so you can see which calls the app has diverted – it also gives you the option to call or text them back.
The application works well, with rejected calls very briefly flashing up on the display before being rejected – but without triggering the ringtone or vibration alerts. However, it can be tricky to see exactly which lists are active at any one time, as well as what kind of lists they are.
Despite this, Best Blacklist will be a boon to anyone who’s annoyed by marketing calls or who only wants to be disturbed by calls from key people. Just make sure your mum’s on the white list or there will be hell to pay.
Details
Size: 190KB
Price: $10 (£6.80), 15-day trial
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