Popular caller ID app Truecaller It has long left iPhone users at a disadvantage by not presenting caller information in real time — a feature its Android users have long enjoyed. Today, The changes come as the company rolls out an update that will bring real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers.
Since it was introduced by Apple, the company was able to implement the feature. Direct caller ID search In iOS 18, Third-party caller ID apps are allowed to securely call their server to get information about the caller. Apparently, It was also the first release from the Swedish company since then. Co-founders Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam have stepped down from day-to-day operations. November 2024.
Today, Truecaller has more than 2.6 million paying subscribers, of which about 750,000 are on iOS alone. However, 40% of Truecaller's revenue comes from iOS subscriptions. The company gets 5X the conversation rate to its premium tier on iOS compared to Android, as well as 80% more revenue from iPhone subscribers.
Considering the importance of the iPhone as Truecaller's core, the company continued to develop its iOS app.
Truecaller in 2022 Restarted. Thanks to Apple, the iOS app allows the app to store larger numbers locally to focus on better spam detection.
“It improves call identification overall. But it is still not enough, as countries like India have large calling operations. All of these are not available in an offline database,” Truecaller product director Nakul Kabra said in an interview with TechCrunch.
India presents other challenges for the company, including the arrival of a service. Calling Name Presentation (commonly called CNAP).Designed to prevent spam. The service being rolled out by local telcos may eventually emerge as a rival to Truecaller.
Truecaller updated its iOS app in 2023 with a live caller ID experience, but with a required step. vice versa It wasn't real-time with Siri either.
Until iOS 18 comes out, I have to rely on Truecaller. In iOS, a limited dictionary of phone numbers is stored on the device.
To use the new feature, Truecaller built a new server architecture and created a separate encrypted database for iOS alongside its existing larger database for Android users. Apple's phone app makes encrypted requests to this database and receives encrypted responses that are encrypted only on the client (iPhone) to display caller ID in real time. This process is called “homomorphic encryption”; This is because computations use the encrypted data instead of first decrypting it, and decrypting it on the client if the caller information matches the data stored on the server.
Kabra told TechCrunch that Truecaller has created a way to synchronize the two databases so that data stays in sync between the two databases.
“Right now, there may be a slight delay as these requests are queued up, and the encryption we do is time-consuming and very expensive… but shouldn't take more than a few hours.” .
TechCrunch tested Live Caller ID last week under Truecaller's beta program and noted that it provides real-time caller information, although it sometimes misses most features.
Truecaller's premium tier on iOS is $9.99 per month; Individual or $74.99/year. The company offers its family plan on iOS for $14.99/month/year or $99.99/year and the top Gold subscription for $249/year.
Users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature via iPhone Settings > Apps > Phone > Call Blocking & Identification.
In iOS 18, Truecaller updated its interface by displaying the caller's name in bold on their number. Truecaller is now rolling out support for displaying images on caller ID for its iOS users.