Google Contacts & Google Phone Apps Released
As a Nexus 6 user, I have enjoyed using Google Contacts for managing my contacts and Google Phone as my dialer since Day 1. These are, after all, the default apps that come on Nexus phones as well as several others. Now everyone can uses these apps if they chose as the company has rolled them out as standalone apps in the Google Play Store. I would say that this has been a long time coming.
Google began rolling out standalone versions of many of their apps at the beginning of this year and that has continued throughout 2015. It is all part of an effort by the company to provide a “Google experience” through their apps and not simply mark them for Nexus use only. Indeed I wrote on this very subject back in July and I firmly believed then as I do now that this is part of the larger strategy that will bring additional success with Android to Google. Key to that is the fact that they can roll out updates like these today without requiring a new build of Android – or carrier involvement in that process. You can read why Google apps are so important to the future of Android at this link.
Google Contacts is a solid contacts manager
The updated version of Google Contacts is 1.3.07 for those keeping score and while the big news is the standalone distribution of the app, there are also some nice tweaks and improvements in the
Google Contacts for Android
release too. The editing of contacts is now a bit more streamlined and you won’t have to do as many taps to add information or edit existing information. It’s not a big change mind you but it is a change that long time users of the app will appreciate. There are also a fair number of bug fixes and other improvements in performance to the app.
Fundamentally Google Contacts is much like any other contacts manager so those of you who are new to the app, don’t expect a lot of bells and whistles. It gives you what you need and it is a solid performing app like many of the other Google apps. Perhaps more importantly though, you will get to experience what Google really had in mind when they came out with these and Android.
Google Contacts is free in the Google Play Store.