The New Lookup Feature On The Phone App On Pixels Will Give You More Info On Strange Numbers
I think we’ve all been in spots where we suddenly get an incoming call from a number that we don’t have saved on our phones, nor can we recognize. In these cases, you might struggle to find out who the person is, with no luck, but the new feature coming to Pixel devices might make this a lot easier for you.
This feature was first spotted in the beta version of the Pixel Phone app and found out by the folks at PiunikaWeb. When you open your Phone app and tap on an unknown number in the Recents section of the application, you’ll notice a button called Lookup. Once you press this, your Pixel will take the number and provide you with options for installed apps capable of running a web search. Once you select one, it will return any results that it found to you.
This is a helpful feature when someone with a large online presence might have called you. However, the notable downside to this method is that it might not be very useful if the person’s number is not listed anywhere publicly available on the internet.
A Convenient Feature, But Truecaller Might Still Be More Effective
I’m not a Pixel user, and I likely won’t be for some time, so I know I won’t be getting the Lookup feature sent my way anytime soon, if at all. However, I don’t feel too bad about that because Truecaller is probably the most popular app that does what Lookup tries to do, though very differently.
The Lookup feature searches online for anywhere the unknown number might be listed online. Of course, that means you’ll have no luck identifying someone without a phone number written anywhere on the internet. That’s where Truecaller sort of beats this. Truecaller is like a phonebook, and when you sign up for the app, you let Truecaller store all the numbers on your phone and the names they are saved with — crowdsourcing the world’s biggest phonebook.
It may not always give you info, though, as people can opt out of having their numbers stored on Truecaller. It may also not be beneficial sometimes, as you can search for a number and be met with a nickname from what somebody somewhere stored the number with. But if you have a Google Pixel and don’t want to download another app, Lookup will do the basic job right.
