Android: Google’s released the stock phone and contacts apps to the Play Store, breaking them away from Android, which means we’ll start to see more regular updates with sweet new features.
To get things started, Google’s added a couple new niceties to the stock phone app. You can now block callers from the dialer, and when you call a business that Google recognises, you can now see relevant information like where it is and when it will open. More importantly, now that these apps are separate from the core Android operating system, updates can happen more quickly.
Phone [Google Play Store via Android Police]
Contacts [Google Play Store]
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2 responses to “Google Released Phone And Contacts Apps To The Play Store”
Apparently they keep pulling the app off of the store and putting it back, currently not on there.
If this is true, hopefully it means both apps will soon receive features they desperately need.
Android has been on this tack for a while now. Back in the GB/JB days there were quite a few system apps (Calendar, Browser, News, Email, Search, etc) baked in.
One by one they’re all being superseded by standalone apps from the Store or modules run by Play Services. The intent seems to be to remove all apps from AOSP and leave it as a barebones OS only.
This is probably to get round some of the issues of version fragmentation.