Photo Contacts Pro v5 Review
I have tested almost all the software out there to make my Windows Mobile Phone function closer to a phone. We all know that Windows Mobile Phones are great to have but they are more of a PDA than a phone. I have known several people who grab a Windows Mobile Phone for fancy and later regret because they only wanted it as a phone but it would definitely fall short of it.
I have used Pocket PCs for a decade now and I preferred to use it only for PDA functionality. But in late 2007 I decided to try out a Windows Mobile phone and bought the HTC Kaiser (TyTN II). The first thing I realized is that the phone functionality of the Windows mobile is still in it's infancy. Especially I have got addicted to the timed profiles, customized rings & fast dialling (dialling a contact with just one press of a button) in Nokia and the ease of accessing the contacts and answering calls. But now I had to deal with the complete absence of profiles and the tiny buttons for contacts and answering calls. I started trying all the applications in the market and finally settled on Photo Contacts Pro.
With Photo Contacts Pro now my Windows Mobile performs better than a Nokia phone for the following reasons.
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1. Automatic Profiles
I thought timed profiles were great but now I can also have event based profiles too. In short I can define profiles based on the subject or the category of my appointments. Also I can set up profiles based on days and specific times of the day. I have a profile when I am on vacation and when I am at work and for the weekend. When I am at office my phone automatically goes to vibration mode. When I have a scheduled meeting with a busy status at office my phone goes to the silent mode. When I am on the way home it vibrates as well as rings on low volume (so that I do not annoy my fellow commuters). When I reach home the phone goes to ring with high volume mode, so that I do not miss a call. But on weekends it is always on loud volume but when I am at the Church meetings it goes to silent mode. And all this is done without my intervention. The possibilities are endless and would be only limited by your need and imagination. On top of the profiles being automatic you could temporarily set a different profile for a given amount of time and after that time has elapsed it goes back to the automatic profile it should be in.
2. Full Screen answering mode.
When the phone rings, I am able to have a customized ringing screen where I can see the photo of the person who is calling (in the size I want) and also able to have designated areas on the screen to tap to answer, reject or silence the call. Now I do not have to look at my phone screen to answer/reject/silence/speaker phone answer an incoming call since the answer, reject, silence and speaker phone answer areas are large enough and separated enough that I can blindly press the correct region. This is a great help when I have to answer a call while driving. I can without taking my eyes off the road press the speaker phone answer area and can start talking.
3. Contacts:
Windows Mobile contact management is below basic. But now I can customize that too. I have it set to display photos of contacts with their names. Now there are two options that is configurable. One option is to open the details page of the contact. This is a tabbed page displaying all the information of that contact in a read only mode (except for the notes). This read only mode is very important because in the native Windows Mobile Contacts I have often deleted important information accidentally because it is a editable mode always and not user friendly and you end up editing or deleting stuff quite accidentally. The other option is the dialing view where I can choose a number to dial or SMS. Also I can use preconfigured SMSes to be sent with a click of a button. The entire navigation I can perform using one hand & without using my stylus.
Also you can have your favourite contacts on your home page so that you can do one touch dialing or SMSing.
4. Ring & SMS tones.
I can customize my ring tones and SMS tones and assign different tones to different contacts or groups. Also the groups are my outlook groups so I hardly have to do any more configurations.
5. One touch Profile Changes
If I want to override the set up profiles I can do it with one touch and enable temporary profiles.
6. Other Features.
Also there are heaps of other phone features like call blocking (calls from a number can be permanently blocked so that they hear an engaged tone) and automatic SMS answering. FOr example if I were in a meeting I can have my profile to keep my phone silent and automatically answer all/some incoming calls through an SMS stating something like "I am in a meeting and will call you back soon". Also it has an add-in to crop the photos of your contacts.
If you want to make your Windows Mobile perform like a phone then this application is a must. I know there are plenty of similar applications out there but you would end up buying more than one application to do all that Photo Contacts Pro does. Also remember if you end up buying many applications integration between them would be next to impossible. I need to add a word regarding their customer service too. They respond very quickly and are always helpful and in my opinion among the best.
The application is created by PocketX Software Inc. (http://www.pocketx.net/products/pcpro_selector.html) and could be purchased at Handango or PocketGear.
