VCR - Voice Calling Revolution

How often do you ask «Can you talk now?» at the very beginning of your phone conversation? We believe that is the case for most of us. But even more often we must think more or less hard before making a call: “What if she is busy right now and will not be glad to talk with me?”

VCR is designed to solve both of the above and allows people to estimate availability of their counterparts for a voice conversation before calling them. Even more, VCR as a good personal assistant, the agent that helps you to choose a perfect time for a voice chat – the time when both parties are most available.

Features:

- Control your status automatically. Your availability for talking changes automatically based on your activity and location. VCR uses geofencing to detect your places.

- Draw attention. Instantly notify someone you want to talk to with a ring and a flash light.

- Send a text before making a call to avoid disturbing them with a question “Can you talk now?”

- Your rules. Be more or less available for different people depending on what you do and where you are.

- Automatically reject calls for some contacts when you are busy and send a text message

- See other’s current condition details like their activity, background noise, ring volume, vibration setting, screen state and more.

VCR uses smart algorithms taking people’s location, current activity (walking, still, in vehicle etc.) and position of the phone on the table (screen down or screen up) and calculates their resulting availability status to each other.

Of course your status may depend on “who is calling”. You can set rules, controlling your availability status for different groups of contacts for given locations and activities.

With VCR app you can easily indicate to a friend or colleague you want to speak to, your intention for a voice chat by placing a new conversation with a short message.

When the other party does not notice the request, you have an option to instantly draw their attention by ringing a sound and flashing a light on their side.

Eventually, when both sides become ready to talk, VCR connects them via traditional phone call.

App Permissions Explained:

Identity - VCR needs an account to integrate statuses into the phone’s contacts. We also access Me contact profile to get your phone and avatar and to show it in the app. It’s not transferred to other contacts.

Contacts - VCR shares availability status between contacts so we need to access contacts list. We never share it with third parties.

Location - we allow to set up rules to automatically control availability status depending on location. For example you can create locations like Home and Work and use them to create rules. VCR uses geofencing

SMS (send and receive) - we only read VCR confirmation SMS to put the code into the form, we don’t access other messages. VCR can send SMS if you choose to reject incoming calls when you are busy. This feature is disabled by default.

Phone - this is to track finished conversations and mark them finished in the APP. VCR can initiate phone calls but user action is always required.

Camera - we need this to enable flash light notifications. We don’t use camera.

Microphone - we use the microphone to analyse background noise and indicate the level

Device ID & call information - VCR sets your status to busy if you are on a call.