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Phone is the greatest innovaion of all time.
Pixabay Image - (CCO Licenced)
To me, telecommunication devices are one of the greatest technological innovations of all time. Obviously, that is a question of debate as there are so many jaw-dropping inceptions brought about by Science and Technology to aid human lives. However, when we look at the priceless advantages of a phone, I believe you will all agree with me.
Before the inception of phones, establishing communication with the people living in far away distances was a tough task. To pass information to someone living in the next city, you would need to travel by whatever means of transportation accessible to you. This is something we can do over a few seconds phone call today. I cannot even imagine the number of lives that have been lost due to the unavailability of a fast means of communication in the ancient days.
As little as a mobile phone looks today, there is no limit to the benefits we have leveraged on through it. It just depends on how you want to look at it.
The primary function of a mobile phone is phone calls. All other functions are secondary. Through this primary function, we get to do a lot of things that separate our generation from the previous ones. We can send distress signals to get help during the time of need; we can call our family members that have left our vicinity and get to know how they are doing in real time; we can do more things than I can mention in a post. As technology continues to evolve, our wants and needs increase. Now we are no more satisfied with the traditional phone dialer that comes with our mobile devices. More than we requested, Koler mobile app satisfies our needs when this concerning this.
The Challenge
I am a privacy-minded person. Personally, I like doing my things privately as this gives me total freedom in taking control of my day-to-day activities. I, however, found myself in the midst of friends that usually take each other’s phones to do a thing or the other. Watching videos; playing games; browsing the internet - my friends just can't do without touching my phone. Although being with them is always fun as we get to play and read together, it is my belief that our individual phones are meant to be personal. They even get to pick some calls on my behalf when I leave the phone with them, attending to some other life calls. Yet there is nothing I could do to stop them. Let me just say we are too close to even fight them over stuff like that. I got nothing to hide from them on my phone aside my contacts, call history and all that. I could easily install app locker but most of them disturb my device with malvertisement. Then, someone told me about Koler call app and I found this to be totally incredible.
About Koler
Koler is an Android call app just like the phone dialer app through which you get to access the primary function of a mobile phone. It gives you an environment to make calls and access your phone contacts. It, however, has something that I really need, alongside other intuitive features that separate it from the traditional phone dialer app.
Koler is very light, straightforward and simple to use. It has beautiful themes inside which attractive colors seamlessly blend with the interface. It works just like the traditional phone dialer and does not require an internet connection for its functionalities.
Getting started with Koler
Koler is only available for Android devices and can be downloaded at a click via Google Play.
- Launch after the installation as make it your default call app as required and that is all. It is understandable even for a kid.
My experience using this app
Firstly, I commend the efforts put to work by the developers’ team. I am already a fan of this app due to its intuitive interface, themes and other functionalities. Trust me; you need to check it out. It is very straightforward with no unnecessary features. That is exactly what I like to see in all apps. As well, it has an added security feature that is not usually found on traditional phone dialers to give users total privacy.
When I place a call, Loker automatically starts the call timer. As well, I can import new contacts from an excel sheet. I even get to automate call answer and end functionalities by setting a timer. All these are not accessible on my phone’s traditional dialer app.
Having said all that, I strongly believe that the team needs to do more work on this app to get it to its maximum potentials. When I click on a contact, I expect it to bring the contact profile so that I can do other things with it rather than a direct call. If it is going to be my default call app, it needs to give me the ability to do everything I do on the traditional phone dialer app in line with the added features.
In my part of the world, over 70% of the mobile phone users make use of devices that support more than a single SIM card. We do not have an excellent phone network in particular yet, so having multiple SIM cards gives us the ability to switch between them in making calls especially when the network is bad. Hence, I believe that the developers need to bring an option for us to select the SIM with which we want to place the call before dialing. The app, by default makes use of the first SIM and does not have a functionality to allow us to choose which one to go make the call with before dialing.
What is more, the swipe buttons that are usually situated at the bottom of my phone screen disappear as soon as I launch this app. However, one can still access their functionalities. Maybe that is cool, to me, it isn't.
So I will point out the things that I like about this app (features/pros) and where I need the developers to work on (cons). It is my wish to see this app being backed to get to its maximum potential. I hope the team behind this awesome project get my message and work on my complaints.
Things that I like about Loker (Features and Cons)
Intuitive and simple interface
Do I need to show you some of these themes on Loker? Honestly, they are so cool. That is not all. The entire app is very simple and straightforward. This ensures that it does not consume much phone memory and uses less processor space. I fell in love with it at first launch. Already, Loker is my default phone dialer.
How about the added security feature - Biometrics
This is a standout feature. As I have said earlier, I am a privacy-minded individual. Apart from that, this feature is something everyone would love to access on a phone dialer. By activating the Biometrics which is found under the app settings, you can leave your phone to your friends without the fear of them checking through your contacts, call history or answering your calls when you are not there. You can then choose to include their thumbprints in your phone security if you so wish.
Direct access to contacts on spreadsheets
I am not the best phone user, so maybe this feature comes with some other phones directly. I, however, have never seen it anywhere else. These days, I and my friends are into digital marketing and one of the tools we use is Whatsapp status field. To use this to the maximum, we have thousands of contacts on our individual phones. These contacts view our status updates on Whatsapp and we build an economy around this. Here is how Koler comes in play. Instead of having thousands of contacts directly saved on the phone, we can have them on an Excel sheet which saves phone memory space and provides better contacts management. Like I have said, Loker is an app with mouthwatering potentials.
Automate call answer and end with timer
This is another unique feature that as far as I can tell, cannot be found on phone dialers. With Loker, you can set a timer to automatically answer or end the incoming calls at a particular time interval. With this, I do not need to be running towards my phone whenever a call comes in especially as I usually connect my phone to the sound system to play musical songs. The timer answers and ends all calls when the set time is met. The disadvantage of this is that it does not understand when you are trying to avoid a particular call. Remember to deactivate this option when you do not need it.
Where I need the team to work more on (cons)
According to some reputable scientists, we cannot have a perfect system. There is always a room for improvements on a device regardless of the amount of efforts put into its development. That is why Science and Technology continue to evolve. The followings are the demerits of Loker and I strongly request for the team behind this project to work on them:
Inability to save new contacts
Maybe this is coming with the next version of this app already. I still need to mention it here just in case. Presently, I cannot create new contacts with Loker. It is the same for other users. The only way one can save a new contact dialer is through the excel sheet. This is one of the major features of a dialer application and I expect the team to include this feature as soon as possible.
Bad notifications and landscape support
When you click on the homepage swipe to minimize the app during an ongoing call, there is no notification to show you that the call is still ongoing. You cannot tell if the call has been ended easily. As well, when a call comes in while you are using the phone in landscape, it sometimes ends the call by bringing some errors.
Contacts name do not show when placing a call
I have noticed that every time I am making a call, the contact name does not show. Instead, I only see the contact phone number scattered unarranged with some characters on the screen. I need the team to also look at this and make corrections regarding it in the next release.
Development activities
Loker is an Open Source app. This means anyone with the skills can contribute to this project through their Github repository. There have been various releases as the team behind it strives to add new features to this app. This is to ensure that the app serves the purposes expected by the users with added functionalities. Find all the previously released versions here.
Conclusion and rating
On a general note, Koler is an amazing application with great functionalities. The team is putting in some efforts to see this app adopted by the mass. I just need to see more features of a phone dialer on it as it seems the developers are more concerned on the interface. Hopefully, I see more improvements in the next release. Right now I will rate this app 3.5 out of 5 stars.