Friday, February 13, 2009

PocketCM Contact Manager (free) WinMobile App

Yesterday I stumbled across, downloaded and installed a contact manager from PocketCM. I can honestly say I'm impressed. I didn't have high expectations, especially after what I've seen of other contact management apps (like iContacts), but this thing is really great.

I'm a designer, so the first thing that really grabbed my attention was the animation transition between screens. The transitions are thoughtful, and not so gimmicky that I feel their power consumed to functionality ratio is off balance. The current version as of this post is 0.29. From what I see comparing it to previous versions, I'm not a fan of the new default skin (text-only buttons instead of more finger friendly graphics, the dial pad is too small, etc...), so I immediately updated to a user created skin called Dark Diamond II v_0.3 (make sure to get the Omnia appropriate size). The combo is infinitely superior to Samsung's phone program and contact manager.

The PocketCM contact manager provides you with finger-friendly iPhone-style up and down scrolling, but you also get an alphabetized content bar (instead of a hard-to-use scroll bar) on the left and right (visibile as an alphabet along the edge in the default theme, invisible in some other themes... but still completely functional). Slide your finger along the left or right edge of your screen and you quickly scroll through the letters of the alphabet; just stop on the letter of the name you're looking for. This system is fantastic for finding a contact quickly and easily even if you have hundreds of contacts. Not only that, but the dial pad that shows on the page features opacity, so you can see the full screen of contacts even when you have your dial pad open.

I love that this contact manager incorporates a dial pad. I'm not going to completely ditch iDial just yet (sometimes I like having a huge dial pad that takes up the whole screen... big giant buttons are so much easier to use), but I'll definitely never use the phone's old dial pad (or contact manager) again. Maybe I'll even work up a theme that features a full screen dial pad... or maybe somebody else will, so I don't have to.

I've already used Green Button to map my phone's "call" button (the button you use to send a call) directly to PocketCM. I've also ticked the "set as default" box within the PocketCM settings, so PocketCM is my default contact program.

In addition to a great look and feel, PocketCM incorporates your SMS conversations (threaded) and all call history. You can open a contact and with a click you can quickly see all SMS history and/or call history with that person. Fantastic.

There are also features like "favorites" and "filtering." You can compile a list of favorite contacts for quick dialing, or you can filter your contacts by Company, City, Category, etc... Again: fantastic.

I highly recommend you check this application out. PocketCM touts itself as a "more finger friendly" app, and I couldn't agree more... and that's just the tip of the iceberg as to why this application is a superior contact manager and dialer.

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The developer has a couple of other apps like a calendar and a photo viewer that utilizes an interface like the iPhone's cover flow music browser. I'm not sure I'm ready to give those a shot yet, but something that I will definitely be trying out in the very near future is the keyboard app.

PocketCM Keyboard features a customizable keyboard (yes, you can change what letters, symbols, etc... are available on each screen), but more importantly it features the iPhone-like "letter magnification" that I so love. You can also skin the keyboard and set it as the default keyboard for your phone.

So more on PocketCM Keyboard soon!

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