Spam calls and cold sales calls are way less of a problem than they used to be a decade ago. That’s partially due to legislation, and partly due to the fact that more people have cell phones today: mobile phones are way easier to ignore calls on than landline phones. All that being said, there are times when you get a constant stream of calls from an unfamiliar number. If you want to know whether these calls are from telemarketers or actual friends, a little app called Number Guru offers a fast reverse lookup service.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Number Guru is an app that lets you type in a phone number and learn who it belongs to. The whole process takes mere seconds.

Pros

• Learn who is behind the calls you’ve been getting
• Phone numbers are assigned a “spam score,” making it easy to tell at a glance whether a number is sketchy or not
• Support built right in
• History tab keeps a record of your previous searches: great for establishing call patterns
• According to their App Store page, this app covers 100% of telemarketers, debt collectors, or 800# numbers…as well as “about 100%” of landlines and 50% of cell phones

Cons

• Annoying banner ads
• Lookup info isn’t always as detailed as users might like
• Verizon Wireless numbers are not included, which seems odd
• Doesn’t seem to support numbers outside USA

Discussion

To test out Number Guru, I decided to feed it the numbers I knew already. For fun, I plugged in my own iPhone number. While my name (or the name on my bill) did not come up, the app did pinpoint my phone number to a nearby city (though not the city my phone was registered in.) It attributed my number to Cingular…but Cingular hasn’t been their operating name is years, which I found a bit odd.

Next, I entered the phone number for a local doctor’s office. The Number Guru got the doctor’s office name correct, though the city was off. Next, I plugged in the number of a known spammer, which I found on an online database of telemarketers and phone spammers. Nothing came up at all, which might mean that the number is no longer in service.

For fun, I tried entering the number of a restaurant in the UK into the service. I got no results, but I wasn’t expecting that the app would do international numbers.

Boasting a solid design, an impressive database (albeit with a few holes here and there), and great support, Number Guru is a frontrunner in its category.

Conclusion and download link

Number Guru is a fast and free way to do a reverse lookup. While the results aren’t always what you might need, the “spam score” and the history functionality make this app a helpful tool to have in your app arsenal. With this app in hand, you’ll know who is calling you, any time.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.1.6

Supported OS: Requires iOS 4.3 or later

Download size: 4.6 MB

Number Guru on Apple App Store