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Google's Phone app is getting chat heads like Facebook Messenger
An update rolling out to Google phones, including Pixel and Android One devices, will give the Phone app a new but familiar feature. Android Police has discovered in an APK teardown that the app is getting circular floating chat heads, which are pretty much identical to Facebook Messenger's. They'll appear when you leave the call screen -- you can drag them anywhere on your display, and they'll stay visible on top of other apps. You'll also see a menu when you tap on the icon, with options to go back to call, to mute, to put it on speakerphone or to end it. Unfortunately, it's unclear if it'll eventually make its way to all Android devices.
Phone app in iOS 6 gets additional answering options, adds Do Not Disturb
As of today, anyone with an iPhone who gets a call on it (weird, I know, but it happens) has two options: Answer, or Decline. Part of the WWDC iOS announcements today for iOS 6 include a revamped Phone app that offers more ways to "answer" a call. Plus, if you are completely indisposed, you can set a Do Not Disturb sign on your iPhone. With iOS 6 you not only get the two previous options, but also "Reply With Message" and "Remind Me Later". If you tap "Reply With Message" you get a number of options to add to a "Can't talk right now..." message you can send to the other person. You can even reply with a quick message you compose yourself if you have time. Remind me later will use Reminders to tell you things like "Remind me when I leave" and as you take off you get nudged to call them back. Do Not Disturb will mute notifications and won't light up the screen. It will allow calls from a whitelist, and if someone calls you more than once the call can go through. I look forward to this feature mostly because it's a much nicer way to decline a call rather than leave someone hanging if you let the call go to voice mail.
Dell Streak 7 phone app discovered, so far is much ado about nothing (video)
Remember when we all laughed about making calls on the 5-inch Streak? Those were the days. Now it looks as if some clever tweakers have discovered a hidden phone app in Dell's 7-inch model... but beyond the shell of a presentation, there's not much to it. According to Streak Smart, rotation is enabled, there's a dedicated voicemail button, and calls will not seem to connect (which is, in this particular instance, seemingly unrelated to the carrier). See the frustration for yourself in the video after the break; not to worry, fans of holding giant slates up to the ear when talking to loved ones, someone somewhere will assuredly get this working at some point.
PhonePoint Pen application is a hand-talkers' dream come true
Know someone who talks with their hands so expressively that you have to step back or risk catching a wayward exclamation point in the face? The video after the break will make their day. Students at Duke University have come up with a way to use phone accelerometers to capture gestures with surprising precision, allowing them to pipe those motions through a character recognition algorithm and, hey presto, turn flapping hands into letters and numbers. The prototype app is called PhonePoint Pen, and while right now the process looks painfully slow, with large, precise motions required, with a few months or years of refinements you might just be able to jot down a quick text to a friend while running between terminals, all without putting down the double latte that just cost you $8 at the airport food court. The future, dear readers, it's closer than you think.[Via Yahoo! News]
