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Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

martinruenz.de

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Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#211

Post by Phrodo_00 »

tomc1985 wrote: post #194
NeutronBoy wrote: post #193

> This leaves me in an unpleasant spot as I, where I can, avoid using google services and now need to find an alternative dialling application. Isn’t this sweet? I am searching for a dialling application for my smartphone. A DIALLING application You bought a Google phone and don't want to use Google services, but complain that the dialler can be provided by a third party? Isn't that a good thing?

Why is dialing a phone a "Google Service"?

The AOSP dialer is not a Google Service, it comes with android.

Google phones have use a different launcher (Which might be a modified version of the AOSP launcher, haven't used AOSP in a while) that provides unknown number names, access to the voicemail-to-text feature of Project Fi (and probably Google Voice), and probably a couple more things.

BTW, from the little I know, seeing google contacts in the dialer doesn't mean that it's talking to google. Google services adds the contacts to the phone's centralized contact management and the dialer gets them from there.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#212

Post by mverwijs »

tomc1985 wrote: post #203
notatoad wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it be? Having google search directly in the dialer app is incredibly convenient - instead of searching for a phone number and then typing the number into your phone, you search for a business and call them directly.

Because you're dialing a phone. Nowhere does that require Google's involvement. The search feature should not be any more than an optional point of integration. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Unfortunatly, that is not the case.

Running cyanogenmod here, stock dialer.

Open up the dialer. Go to settings. Oh, look: "phone number lookup". I wonder what that could be. Hmmm.

Click. What is that? "Forward lookup - Show nearby places when searching in the dialer". Ticked on by default.

"People lookup"? On by default.

Reverse lookup? On by default.

Default lookup provider? Google.

By default, it looms like the standard dialer app in android sends every call made or received to Google.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#213

Post by tomc1985 »

mverwijs wrote: post #212
tomc1985 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're dialing a phone. Nowhere does that require Google's involvement. The search feature should not be any more than an optional point of integration. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Unfortunatly, that is not the case. Running cyanogenmod here, stock dialer. Open up the dialer. Go to settings. Oh, look: "phone number lookup". I wonder what that could be. Hmmm. Click. What is that? "Forward lookup - Show nearby places when searching in the dialer". Ticked on by default. "People lookup"? On by default. Reverse lookup? On by default. Default lookup provider? Google. By default, it looms like the sta…

All of the above is Google value-add. None of that is necessary.

Also, none of those options appear on my phone in the dialer settings (Android 6, Motorola phone), so either they've been moved or we're looking at different software. (Per another comment, likely I'm using the AOSP dialer, which thankfully lacks those "features")

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#214

Post by muppetman »

__jal wrote: post #86
muppetman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live? I'm the same, 0 spam calls ever, but I live in NZ.

Looking over my call log, I have five incoming from humans I wanted to hear from over the last seven days. I have 27 from random numbers/places that I know from experience are scams. This is a US number. If you find your life lacking opportunities to get in to obscenity shouting matches with random con artists, it is great! Otherwise, not so much.

Wow, that's terrible. No wonder Google Dialer has a spam filter - I never understood the point of it but now I do.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#215

Post by chickenbane »

tomc1985 wrote: post #207
notatoad wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require it, but Google makes it better. If you're just looking to make your life easier and not paranoid, there's no downside to having google in your dialer. and no, i'm pretty sure there's nothing "sacred" about your phone.

This is exactly the problem with technology. Asshole companies have to productify everything . It's not about being paranoid, it's about operational simplicity. Dialing a phone is dialing a phone; not everyone wants Google to think for them The act of punching in a number should not require any outside services or assistance or requirements. If there are value-added components to add then they can manifest as modular…

> This is exactly the problem with technology.

This is YOUR problem with the technology. Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do. They like that the dialer provides fancy stuff like visual voicemail, automatic transcription, phone-number-to-business-name mapping, etc.

Most people don't care about trying to avoid Google Services, in fact most people don't use smart phones as phones. In a way, luddites that hate techologists have it nice. You can use an old flip phone that is just a phone and that thing will last forever! It's use assholes who need to keep charging them every day.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#216

Post by muppetman »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #91
muppetman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google Dialer only works on Stock Android. Which is a shame.

Only from the Play Store. The APK can be installed on any device with the same architecture as it's built for. I have it on my LG G4.

Ahh, good point, I forgot about sideloading.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#217

Post by vacri »

wayn3 wrote: post #89
chc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what makes people think that an AI needs to be able to code to improve itself. I don't see infant brains "programming" themselves to get better. That's largely because you haven't looked. Infants are constantly developing and pruning pathways and connections in their brain, which effectively changes both the hardware and the software.

They don't do that consciously (with an agenda). Infants are just being infants. If an AI just needs to keep doing AI things to "reprogram" itself, then theres no barrier for it to do that.

Infants also don't survive by themselves. Leave an infant alone and it will die.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#218

Post by derefr »

tomc1985 wrote: post #207
notatoad wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require it, but Google makes it better. If you're just looking to make your life easier and not paranoid, there's no downside to having google in your dialer. and no, i'm pretty sure there's nothing "sacred" about your phone.

This is exactly the problem with technology. Asshole companies have to productify everything . It's not about being paranoid, it's about operational simplicity. Dialing a phone is dialing a phone; not everyone wants Google to think for them The act of punching in a number should not require any outside services or assistance or requirements. If there are value-added components to add then they can manifest as modular…

We're not just talking about dialing a phone; we're talking about a Phone app. Which is—besides being a dialer—also a call history list, and a notification UI that appears when you receive a call to let you decide whether to accept it or not. Both of those use-cases benefit far more from looking up numbers than dialing does.

As it is, if I'm sitting at my desk with my iPhone and get a call from a number I don't recognize, I literally take a second to Google the numbers on my laptop before accepting the call on my phone. I wish iOS (or any VoIP app for iOS; I use Bria) had this integration, optional or not.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#219

Post by tomc1985 »

chickenbane wrote: post #215
tomc1985 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the problem with technology. Asshole companies have to productify everything . It's not about being paranoid, it's about operational simplicity. Dialing a phone is dialing a phone; not everyone wants Google to think for them The act of punching in a number should not require any outside services or assistance or requirements. If there are value-added components to add then they can manifest as modular…

> This is exactly the problem with technology. This is YOUR problem with the technology. Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do. They like that the dialer provides fancy stuff like visual voicemail, automatic transcription, phone-number-to-business-name mapping, etc. Most people don't care about trying to avoid Google Services, in fact mo…

> Normal muggles care for none of this conversation.

If only because the same companies are training users to require all these extras, by effectively (and mostly inadvertently) erasing past knowledge. I'm sure Google would love it if their engineers could remove dialing entirely, what number could you possibly want to call that's not listed in Google somewhere?

A lot of those same muggles were/are fine before these services came along and many likely want it to stay the same.

> They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do.

Ha! You're funny.

Look at one process I'm sure most of us are familiar with: getting a cute girl's (or guy's) phone number. With flip phones this was simple- pull up the dialer, punch in the number, hit save instead of dial, done (or just dial and save later). No waiting, no fuss. Now with my smartphone that same process is:

* key in my passcode / fingerprint / whatever

* wait for UI to animate, notifications to process, and for the OS to catch up (cause powersave is now off). 3-10 seconds on average of awkwardly staring at the screen and apologizing for the phone's slowness

* hit phone icon, wait another second for my touch to register than another 5-20 seconds for phone app to start

* enter number, hit Add To Contacts, meanwhile all inputs are lagging about a half second behind my actions. Wait for contact screen to appear (another 3-10 seconds)

* enter her name, maybe snap a photo (about the only real value-add in this process), hit Save, again waiting half a second or so for UI lag after each touch

If going out with a flip phone didn't make one such a large target socially you can be sure more would be rockin' it.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#220

Post by derefr »

tomc1985 wrote: post #219
chickenbane wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is exactly the problem with technology. This is YOUR problem with the technology. Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do. They like that the dialer provides fancy stuff like visual voicemail, automatic transcription, phone-number-to-business-name mapping, etc. Most people don't care about trying to avoid Google Services, in fact mo…

> Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. If only because the same companies are training users to require all these extras, by effectively (and mostly inadvertently) erasing past knowledge. I'm sure Google would love it if their engineers could remove dialing entirely, what number could you possibly want to call that's not listed in Google somewhere? A lot of those same muggles were/are fine before these…

A lot of these people were fine before smartphones themselves came along. A lot of people were fine before phones. A lot of people were fine before agriculture or stone tools. Does that mean much?
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