TrueCaller shows you who the caller is before you answer. It shows you who is texting you when you receive a message. It updates your contact list. And it does its job so well I didn’t even know it was working at first. The app is built for Symbian S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition Nokia devices. I tested it on my Nokia N97.

The concept behind TrueCaller is simple. The app automatically starts up whenever you turn on your Nokia, and it runs in the background. It checks all incoming phone calls and text messages for the phone number of the sender. If it finds the phone number in your contacts list you never notice the app do it’s thing. At first I didn’t because I made the mistake of testing it by calling my Nokia from my partner’s Nokia, which of course is entered in my contacts list.

It’s only when it can’t locate the number in your contacts list that it springs into action. It makes a quick data connection over WiFi or 3G to the TrueCaller servers, looks up the phone number, and tells you who is truly calling.

TrueCaller allows you to specify your home country to speed up the search for local phone numbers. It supports a long list of countries (listed in the compatibility list at the bottom of this post.) Note that the list currently does not include US mobile numbers. Also, because of privacy laws, TrueCaller is currently NOT available in the UK.

If all TrueCaller delivered was enhanced caller ID it would be worth the $6.99 (USD) it currently costs in Ovi Store. But the developers added a few twists that make the app even slicker.

First, there’s Reverse Lookup. Manually enter any phone number and TrueCaller tries to identify it. For example, I entered the phone number for my office’s data line and got this screen that properly identified my full name and mailing addressm including detailed postal code.

I liked the Search Contacts feature, which you can think of as reverse lookup on steroids. Select this and TrueCaller steps through your contacts, one at a time, and adds to your contact list information it finds that you don’t already have entered:

Search contacts to fill in information you may not already have recorded.

TrueCaller found new information about three of my contacts. Deb is an editor I worked with for many years, but over the years I lost track of her. TrueCaller located her new phone number for me. Jonas is a software marketer I worked with briefly years ago and for whom I had only a Swedish phone number. Now I have his full mailing address in Stockholm.

There is a lot more to TrueCaller, but rather than me try to describe it in words, why don’t you watch this short video?