Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Dialer apps and contacts apps are a bit of a niche market. In most cases, the dialer and contacts are more than good enough most of the time. However, there are times when it becomes necessary. Maybe your OEM dialer app has bugs or you want something different. We thought about creating a separate list for contact apps. But generally speaking, one involves the other anyway, so it was easier to make one list. Here are the best dialer apps and contacts apps for Android.
Best dialer and contacts apps for Android
ACR phone
Price: Free / $2.99 per month / $11.99 per year
ACR Phone is a dialer app from the developer of ACR Call Recorder. They developed this app because dialers can record phone calls more easily than non-dialer apps. As a dialer app, it’s a pretty simple app. It has the usual things like contacts, contact search with numeric keypad, themes and customization options. However, it also has some of the best call recording functionality of any app on the list, making it truly functional.
The UI is a little less flashy than others on this list, but whether that’s good or bad is a matter of preference. Additionally, you need the APH Helper app installed by the same developer to record calls. You can get it from Samsung Galaxy Store, HUAWEI App Gallery and as a third-party download here. You need the APH Helper plugin to record calls; otherwise, the app works great.
Drupes
Price: Free / up to $19.49
Drupe is one of the most popular mobile dialing apps. It features a modern, beautiful interface, call recorder, smart dialer, call blocker and methods to deal with duplicate contacts. It can even send GIFs to people when you call them, but both people need to have Drupe installed for it to work. The app covers all the basics and works much better than the stock app. It has the occasional bug, but nothing serious. It is mostly free to download. Some features require in-app purchases. This app also had a security issue earlier in 2018. It has now been resolved, but we still recommend that you be careful.
Nextcloud is a self-hosted cloud service that can set up and host your cloud server. One of the many benefits of this is keeping your data off the servers of big companies. One of the other things you can do is sync your contacts, calendar, and other things. You will need the DAVx app (Google Play), and some tweaks are involved. However, you can sync your calendar and contacts quite easily. You can’t manage it like most of the other contacts apps on this list, but it works pretty well for syncing contacts somewhere other than Google for people who don’t want to do that.
Google Phone and Contacts
Price: Free
Google has pretty good solutions for both. Phone and Contacts are separate apps in the Play Store. The first is Google’s basic dialer app. Gives you spam alerts and caller ID; you can even search nearby places in the app to get the phone number of that location. Meanwhile, Contacts (Google Play link) is a basic but effective contacts app. You can save your contacts, back them up to your Google account, and restore them later on other devices. Android has this function built in, but using the app on the front is nice. Some features include merging duplicate contacts, separating business and personal numbers and more. You can get contacts from the link above or phone from the button below.
Simple Contacts Pro
Price: $0.89
Simple Contacts is, well, a simple contacts app. It doesn’t require any external permissions and has no fancy tricks up its sleeve. It’s just a simple app to manage your contacts. You can also manage email contacts and events. There is also a number dialer. That’s about all this app does and that’s fine. Sometimes you want to get rid of the extra frills and have a simple place to manage your contact list. This app does that admirably. It’s also open source and has no ads. There is a free version. However, it is no longer in active development in favor of a premium version. Therefore, if you want the actively developed version, it costs $0.89. We think that’s reasonable.
Truecaller is one of the most popular and powerful applications for contacting and dialing numbers. It even works as an SMS app. Includes a list of features for the dialer, contacts, and SMS sections of the app. This includes an SMS spam filter, call blocking, dual SIM support and more. It also boasts the best caller ID. The interface uses basic material design. We won’t complain about it! The only real downside is the price. This is the only subscription dialer or contacts app. Basic features are unnecessary, but the price is high for our taste.