Smartphones have, for the most part, taken our ability to communicate and improved it dramatically. There are more ways to reach out to the rest of the world than ever before, and whether you're into text only, face to face video, or good old fashioned audio calls you can reach out with relatively little effort. There's one small piece of voice communication that has taken a backseat in this new generation of communication, due largely to carrier efforts to monetize the technology and users deciding they could live without it. Caller ID as a service has changed quite a bit from the days of the little LCD display next to your home phone, and the folks at Cyanogen have decided to work with one of the more impressive companies keeping this service alive today to implement an integrated solution in their next dialer app. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines

It's more than a little strange to get excited about a dialer app, but free integrated Caller ID that doesn't suck is kind of a big deal. The folks at Truecaller have made a name for themselves by being a powerful, community-driven Caller ID service with a ton of features that play well with most Android phones. On top of the traditional Caller ID service, which usually works well to tell you the name of the person or business behind a particular number, Truecaller lets users flag numbers as known spammers. When enough users have flagged the same number, that information shows up alongside the ID info so you know not to bother answering. Truecaller does a reasonable job working with notifications and incoming call pop-ups with their helpful data to inform the user, but a truly integrated dialer experience would be ideal, and that's what Cyanogen OS users will soon be able to enjoy. This new Cyanogen/Truecaller dialer takes all of the best Lollipop features — including contact cards, heads-up notifications, and Material Design — and wraps in native spam reporting and call blocking alongside community-driven reporting. Users will be able to access Truecaller data across the entire dialer, including call history and individual contact cards that can be edited or flagged at any point in the app. It's a fresh coat of paint and a ton of new features, coming together to create a dialer that works better than the experience most carriers are now charging extra for.