We first reviewed VITO’s FunContact in early November of 2007. Back then, the software was just launched and VITO had a really promising product. Unlike many other contact manager that was in the market, VITO decided to focus on user experience instead of features and thus created an application that was focused around that. Gone were the small icons and words and in it’s place, you had big and beautiful icons with text that was comfortable to view. Kinetic scrolling replaced stylus scrolling and it looked like VITO had a winner in the contact management area. But some issues held users from making the switch.

First Glance

Now at v2.0, VITO has come back with a much-improved FunContact. It still focuses on user experience and it’s added some really new features which we will show you later. There are not much bells and whistles when you read the description of the application, but then again, do you really need such extensive features for a contact management application? For those interested, you try out the software for free for 14 days. Licenses cost just $19.95 a piece (the same as v1.0). Considering that VITO gives you 1 year of free upgrades, I guess this means that those who bought v1.0 (or won it in our prize giveaway) can upgrade to v2.0 for free.

But the all important question is, ‘How does v2.0 compare to v1.0?’ Did they fix the problems that we brought up in the first review? Or was it carried over to this version?

No More Generic Contact

V1.0 had this problem (in my opinion) that when you had to edit or add a contact, you had to use the generic Windows Mobile application. I was hoping that VITO could keep the procedure within FunContact and they did with v2.0. Now you no longer have to content with the plain and boring interface when adding or editing your contacts. Do it all within FunContact.

Call History Is Now More Functional

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It used to be that the v1.0 only showed your received, dialed and missed calls. I lamented that while this was useful, they should add an option to send a text message from that screen in situations where a text message was more feasible than a phone call. Not only is that now possible, you can also add that new number to your contact or edit the contact who just contacted you. All you have to do is tap on the call icon (be it missed, dialed or received) and a new set of options will come up. These options will depend on your contact list. If it’s a contact you already have, it lets you edit the contact. If it’s one you don’t have, it’ll give you the option of adding it. The call history screen is now more functional than ever and it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Find Your Contacts Easily

It used to be that when you were looking for a contact, you either finger-scrolled to the contact you used the letter ladder on the side to get to the first letter of the contact and then (finger-scroll if you have to) select your desired contact. While these 2 methods are still in use (and I must add that in certain situations, these methods are great to use), VITO has added a new feature that will please many users.

Instead of scrolling, you just type T9 type the name of contact a phone pad that slides. To get ‘John’, you type ‘5646′ and immediately you will see all contacts with that key combination. This is really useful if you have hundreds of contacts and don’t like scrolling to find them. It’s really fast (almost instant) such that you do not even notice a lag between tapping a number and the search results coming up.

And if you do want to make a call instead of searching for a contact, just type in the number and tap on the green call button. This will connect your call as per normal. These may just be small features but I believe that such small features are what goes a long way to making a great product.

Faster Startup?

Many users of this software that I talked to claim of a faster startup but I am not sure. While it’s not painfully slow, I feel that it could be faster. It’s really hard to say if startup time has decreased over the previous version because several factors can play a role in this area. If VITO is not able to further reduce this, one alternative they could undertake is to add an auto-start option in the settings page. By having it auto-start (and preferably minimized) at every soft-reset, users will be able to call up FunContact much faster. What do you think?

VITO’s FunContact has really come a long way from v1.0 and it’s now even better than before. However, these are just some of the problems I encountered which I hope can be fixed or improved upon.

No Cut/Copy/Paste

When you have to edit your contacts (or looking at your call history for that matter), there is no cut/copy/paste option. This means that if you want to copy a number from one field to another, you have to either memorize it or write it down somewhere before you enter it. This can be really troublesome and I wish there was an easier way.

No Add To Current Contact

When I received a call from a friend who had just changed his number, I could not find an easy way to add the number to an existing contact. The only option I had was to add a new contact (because the number was not in my contacts). It would be great if FunContact had an extra option to add a number to an existing contact. If this is not the case, then perhaps a cut/copy/paste function should do the trick.

Can I Auto-Start It?

I covered this earlier in a suggestion for combating slower start up time but I felt it would be better to bring it up again here. Considering that you are using a Pocket PC, it makes sense because the phone function is one of the most used functions on your device right?

Cancel Button

When you incorrectly edit a contact, make sure it’s not when you are using FunContact. That’s because there is no cancel button to undo your mistakes. So if you accidentally removed a digit from a number, I hope you know that that digit is so that you can replace it. Such inconvenience is caused by a lack of ‘cancel’ button. This button can really save a lot of time and worry because you can just tap cancel if you do decide to not apply the edits you recently made.

Summary

What I Like About It

• Much improved over v1.0
• Built-in contact editor
• More functional call history
• Added phone pad for quick calls
• T9 search support for contacts

What Can Be Improved

• Adding a cut/copy/paste functions
• Provide an option for startup
• Option to add a number to current contact
• Have a ‘cancel’ button

Conclusion

I honestly did not think VITO was going to release a new major release of FunContact so soon (it was just 3 months since the last major release anyway). But minor or major does not really matter as long as it improves on the application. And that is just what this new version brings. A much more intuitive and useful application that you will enjoy using the first time around and continue to enjoy in times to come. It has a nice balance of features and user-friendliness that will cater nicely to a wide range of audience. If you have not already done so, you can download a trial of it here. You can also purchase a license here for just $19.95 and this will give you 1 year of free upgrades.

How do you find FunContact?

Tags: commercial software