Gadgets

Thrutu For Android Lets You Do More Than Talk When You’re On The Phone

If you can use Thrutu on your Android phone, it’s pretty neat. When you’re on a phone call, the app gives you a sliding drawer on top of your dialer to give you easy access to send pictures, contact info, location, etc. to the person you’re talking to. It’s quick and painless—just think about how many times you’ve tried to track down a phone number or explained directions on the phone, none of those situations would be as easy as just directly sending what you need.

The problem with Thrutu though? Well, you can’t always use it. For one, both callers have to have Thrutu installed on their phone to send stuff back and forth. Tough to expect your non-nerd friends being on the ball with their app downloads. And secondly, for CDMA Android phones like those on Sprint and Verizon, you won’t be able to use Thrutu because CDMA doesn’t play well with simultaneous voice and data (it works on 4G Sprint and Wi-Fi, though).

But still. I really love the idea of Thrutu, and hope Google takes notice of it and swoops it up. Phone calls can’t be just phone calls anymore. [Android Market]

Discuss

(3 Comments)
  • [–]

    olearymo

    Friday, March 4, 2011 at 5:13 PM

    I still can’t believe anyone uses CDMA

    Reply
  • [–]

    Colin Bell

    Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 8:12 AM

    Not available to Australia

    Reply
  • [–]

    Chris Wooldridge

    Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 8:33 AM

    In 2004 Bullant in Australia (now xumii) built an app that did this and more for the Vodafone UK Innovation team.
    At trial, it allowed contact sharing, location sharing, camera sharing, image sharing and sharing of a multi-player game. We extended to concept to sharing, well, just about anything else you could think of (ringtones, apps etc).
    You could even hang-up the call and continue using the sharing app – seamless. Even worked on 2G (after call hangup). It was, in essence, IM in-call.
    It was, of course, Symbian based and was trialled in England and Spain in 2005 on the shiny new UMTS network and Nokia 6630.
    And it was (IMHO) awesome. We did some more work and ended up submitting a patent application on a similar theme (PCT 12/187,378).
    We were funded and created uiActive ‘Share the Mobile Future’ to commercialise this app. uiActive then became xumii and I left. Although I am the primary author of the patent, I have no idea if xumii continued with the application.
    Good luck to Thrutu – brilliant app. Deserves to be a core Android app with the back end run by Google.

    Reply

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