Historicall is a new Android app that converts a phone's built-in call records into a detailed report, offering an alternative to itemised billing services offered by phone networks.
Calls are grouped and aggregated by contact, making it possible to track the time spent on calls to a particular person. The report can be viewed on the phone or e-mailed. The service is geared towards those who need to track the amount of time spent on calls to certain individuals for billing purposes.
"Network-provided itemised billing provides a raw call-by-call history of your phone usage. It has no knowledge of the person behind the number, and it also does not summarise calls by contact," explains Ilan Chait, creator of Historicall. "People who need this information would need to manually sift through the network reports, matching numbers to people, and adding up the total time. Historicall churns out a report in a matter of seconds."
Historicall also provides benefits above the phone's own call log, he adds. "The phone's call log by itself also does not aggregate call time; again, one would have to try and do this manually."
A 'lite', ad-supported version of the app is available, although it is limited to reporting the last seven days' of call history, whereas the paid, ad-free version can report on all calls in the phone's history. "Network-provided itemised billing costs in the region of R17.50 per month - Historicall is a once-off purchase for around R18," notes Chait.
The app launched on 28 April, and downloads have been slow off the mark, says Chait, attributing this to visibility. "So the main focus now is marketing it and getting it out there. Despite its simplistic, old-school interface, most people who have seen it have thought it would be very useful."
Short-term plans for the app include adding features and enhancements based on feedback from existing users, such as the ability to add a short note to a call as a reminder of what was discussed, as well as the ability to attribute calls from private/unknown numbers to a particular contact, Chait says.
"Long-term, I'd like to target more platforms," he concludes. "Historicall is currently only available for Android - there are still plenty of iPhones and BlackBerrys out there that could benefit from an app like this."
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