WHAT'S HOT

Seriously, would you rather try to pick and view a contact from this...

...or this?

SETUP

PROGRAM FEATURES

sygic .mobile Contacts main screen

    When you start sygic .mobile Contacts, you get a screen like that shown above.  In the middle, you'll see the preview "Business Card" if you have that pane open (more on that later) and the list of contacts underneath.  If you tap anywhere within the list and move your finger (Remember this is a finger-friendly interface.) up or down the list will scroll.  If you tap on the scroll bar to the right of the list, it will move to that relative position in the contacts list.

    It may be hard for you to get a sense of how the scrolling works.  Fortunately, sygic has an animated picture that shows it pretty well.  Here it is:

sygic .mobile Contacts scrolling

    You'll also see a small upward arrow button between the list and the Business Card.  Tapping in that area will minimize the Business Card as shown below:

sygic .mobile Contacts main screen (with Business Card minimized)

    Now the blue arrow is at the top of the window and pointing down.  Tapping on it again will show the Business card again.  The contents of the "Business Card" are user configurable.  If you tap on "Settings" in the menu bar, you'll be able to move fields up and down in a scrolling list to choose which will appear on the card.

    To the right of the contacts list is a series of buttons.  From top to bottom, the "Open Details" button opens the selected contact record to display the complete information as shown below:

sygic .mobile Contacts details screen

    While in the details screen you can tap "Edit" on the menu bar to modify the contact.  This calls up the same edit screens you're used to seeing when you edit contacts with the built-in program.  When sygic .mobile Contacts calls up one of the built-in programs, it's the only part of the process that isn't finger friendly.  It's too bad sygic didn't write the built-in PIM software.  The "Tools" menu on the details screen allows you to Delete the current contact or "Beam" the current contact using your Pocket PC's IR port.  This uses the same "Beam" screen you're used to seeing if you use that feature with the built-in Contacts program.

    The second button down on the main screen is labeled "Jump."  Jump calls up the alphabet chooser shown below:

sygic .mobile Contacts main screen with Jump alphabet shown

    Tapping on a letter in the Jump area will immediately move the contacts list to the first contact beginning with that letter.  Jump requires two taps to get to any letter of the alphabet.  Compare that to the built-in Contacts alphabet tabs which require one, two, or three taps, depending on the letter.

    The next button down the right side is the "E-mail" button.  Tapping E-mail will open the built-in Inbox program with the currently selected contact's e-mail address inserted into the "To:" field.

    Next, we come to the "Delete" button.  As the name implies, it will delete the current contact.

    The final button on the right side calls up a "context menu" shown below.  This is the same context menu that you'll get if you tap-and-hold on a contact in the contact list.

sygic .mobile Contacts contact context menu

    The context menu gives you quick access to the following functions:  "Edit details" calls up the contact editing window in the same way as "Open Details", "Edit" would do.  "Add reminder" allows you to set a quick reminder with the current contact as the subject.  Tapping "Add reminder" calls up the pop-up menu shown below:

Reminder pop-up menu

    The Reminder pop-up allows you to quickly set a 1 hour, 30 minute, or 15 minute reminder.  If you click on "Details..." the reminder is created and the appointment summary screen from the built-in Calendar program as shown below:

Built-in Calendar Appointment summary screen as called up by sygic .mobile Contacts reminder function

    From this Calendar Appointment summary screen you can edit the appointment for a different time or add other details.

    The next button down in the Contact Context menu is the "Move to group" button.  We'll talk more about groups in a minute.  Suffice to say that this button lets you "move" your contact into the VIP, Family, Friends, or Work group or set it to belong to no particular group.  The final two buttons in the Contact Context menu let you "Send e-mail," just like the "E-mail" button on the main screen, and Delete the contact.

    Going down the left side of sygic .mobile Contacts' main screen are another series of buttons.  The top item really isn't a button at all, but a display area.  It displays the picture that's associated with the currently selected contact or "No Image" when none is associated.  Tapping the "Picture" button below it, will call up the Picture chooser.  sygic .mobile Contacts comes with a whole set of cartoon-like pictures that were provided by Digital Vision.  A small subset of them is shown below:

Travel Guide -- City sightseeing information

    The included pictures are pretty amusing.  I do wish there were a way of adding your own pictures to the program, though.  There may well be a way, but there isn't any documentation for doing it.

    The other four buttons down the left side of the main screen are for selecting contact "Groups."  sygic .mobile Contacts is configured for four groups called "VIP," "Family," "Friends," and "Work," though only three groups show on the display at one time.  The top button is to revert back to show All contacts.  The second button down shows only the "VIP" contacts.  The third shows "Family" contacts.  The forth initially shows "Friends" contacts, but, if you tap and hold on it, you'll get the choice to display either a "Friends" button or a "Work" button.

    This grouping concept is a pretty good idea.  The only problem I have with it is that the groups are hard-wired into the program.  There isn't a way to change them.  I'd rather see the program work with the Categories that the built-in Contacts (and all the other Pocket Outlook programs) use, still allowing you to set quick buttons for three of them on the main screen.

    There is a feature sygic .mobile Contacts that isn't immediately obvious.  That's a built-in search function.  If you simply start typing a few letters, the program will call up a filtered list of all the contacts with that string of letters anywhere in the contact's information.

sygic .mobile Contacts search function

    When I say "anywhere in the contact's information," I do mean anywhere.  For instance, two of the three contacts shown above have "bo" somewhere in their name.  The third contact has "bo" in her husband's name.  You'll likely get a few contacts you didn't expect with such a wide net, but a few ringers is better than not getting what you're looking for.
    I do have one issue with the search function:  I couldn't figure out any way to get rid of the window with the "Filter" information in it other than typing backspace to clear it.  Unfortunately, that also clears the search.  So, either the top entry or preview Business card is obscured by the Filter window or you can see the top, but not your search results.  That's not very good.

HELP SUPPORT

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

BUGS AND WISHES

PURCHASING

PROS

• Entire user interface can be finger operated
• Integrates with built in Contacts
• User configurable preview "Business Card"

CONS

• Cannot modify or add contact groups
• Cannot modify or add contact pictures
• Incompletely compatible with WM2003SE

OVERALL IMPRESSION

All screenshots in this review are taken using SOTI's Pocket Controller Pro