VITO FunContact 3.0 - Finger Friendly Contacts manager for windows mobile | Best Windows Mobile Games / Windows Phone Apps Review

Dec 30, 2009 Posted by Bishnoo in Communication | 2 comments

VITO FunContact 3.0 – Finger Friendly Contacts manager

Developer : VITO Technology

More Apps from this Developer : Click Here

iWindowsMobile Communication Suite Goodie Bag : Take a seat folks, ‘cuz this is in fact a review series of many products not one. A Mobile Shell UI, a contact manager, an SMS application, an SIP and throw in a weather manager for good measure – WHEW quite the mouthful.

FunContact 3.0 – Finger Friendly Contacts manager

This app comes bundled with the communication suite or can be used as a standalone. It is a contact manager plus dialer plus calls manager rolled into one. It integrates quite well with the suite and displays the missed calls notifications screen when launched from the winterface module. But is it worth the price when there are free apps which offer some similar features like PocketCM and iContact + Avatar from Supware ? Go through the review to find out.

Calls List

FunContact : Call List

With the previous version of this product the calls list screen was a little glitchy but we noticed that those issues have been sorted in the latest one. Vito technology has taken skinning to the contact manager as well with 3 basic skins bundled with the software. The screens look very clear and uncluttered with this module. The calls are listed in the order of occurrence with the incoming, missed and outgoing calls demarcated with proper and legible symbols. One can filter the calls by incoming, outgoing or ignored as required. The calls are grouped by the number with the last call being shown on screen.

Contacts Manager

FunContact

The contacts manager is quite impressive in its functionality and provides a good user experience. The contacts can be scrolled through in two modes. Scrolling on the edges of the screen – both left AND right allows one to scroll through the letters and select the one most suited to us. The other mode is the normal mode with the flick of a finger on the screen to get the list moving ( kinetic scrolling ). The button on the top left of the screen allows one to choose the category of contacts that one wants to see and the right top button is for adding new contacts. We couldn’t quite understand the need for the ‘Arrow’ mark because that brings up the dialer screen to get to the contact. That is another way to quickly select the contact by name or number as required. The shortlist is done based on the letters/ numbers entered on a mini T9 Keypad. This is a great feature of the app.

FunContact

Contact Details
Under each of the individual contacts, we can choose to star the contact so that it displays in the starred shortlist. The other functions are the ability to call or message the contact. This has been handled well in this app as they don’t clutter the screen with a list of ‘Call Home’, ‘Message Home’, ‘Call Mobile’, ‘Message Mobile’ etc. the number appears on a single line and the left end or right end can be used for calling or messaging on that number respectively. We find this a very elegant use of screen real estate. The user can also view the contact in the native WM mode by clicking on the windows icon in the center. Numbers for new contacts can be added in a wide variety of fields. The App also has its own interface for editing the contacts so you don’t have to go into the ugly WM interface.

Dialer
In addition to this functionality this version also comes with it’s own dialer screen which contains all the normal dialer functions and is also skinned to suit the FunContact screen.

We believe this is a good app for folks who want to see something different from the usual humdrum WM contacts screen and offers a welcome change. It adds finger friendliness to the contacts app. As far as additional functionality goes we don’t see this being a great value-add as most of the functionality is just like a wrapper over the WM functions. When the phone dialer is enabled, it takes a while to load when you get a call. The native WM dialer loads and then we see the FunContacts dialer. This seems a little weird. We even faced an issue with this dialer when the phone was locked with the Winterface lock screen. When we get calls, the native dialer displays for a second and then the FunContact dialer is supposed to display. But then the FunContact dialer never displays on the lockscreen and there is no way to take the call (yes – even the hard answer and reject keys don’t work). This is more than a little frustrating. This could be an isolated incident but we suggest you give the demo a try before buying the app.

Pros

Finger friendly UI with letter scrolling on both ends of the list
Simple operations
Good use of screen real estate while showing contact actions
Uncluttered view
Skinning options for both contact management and dialer
Loads faster than the previous version

Cons

Slow while loading ( when you have lot of contacts ) as compared to native WM. Be sure to minimize the app if you use it frequently as loading takes lots of time
The dialer screen is a problem when you have it enabled and the phone is locked. We were unable to take the call as the dialer doesn’t get displayed even after the phone is unlocked. It doesn’t load by default while making a call and the WM dialer shows first after which this one is displayed.
Unable to see a list of calls made to a single number – It just dials the number without allowing me to see the calls list

Possible Improvements

Faster Loading
Allow picking of photos from any of the networking sites
Improve on the dialer functionality
We would love to have the option to bring up menus by clicking and holding a contact/ call detail. Always having to go to the menu is a little bit of a drag especially since this functionality is already available on WM.

Tested On : HTC Hermes

ScreenShots: