For some time now, I have been lamenting the lack of any significant development for Windows Mobile. It seemed like many of my favorite developers were hard at work focusing on other platforms. Doing anything and everything except improving Windows Mobile. All of a sudden, in the last few months, that logjam seems to have been lifted. Spb and SBSH have both been releasing updates for many of their older Windows Mobile programs, and each has more major updates coming. I have also had conversations with several other developers about some very exciting plans for Windows Mobile coming soon.

But what about something that is here now? It is all well and good to say big things are coming. But someone has to have something out now. That someone is one of my favorite developers, Resco. Resco’s programs are typically among the first I install on any new Windows Mobile device. Now, they have released their latest offering: Resco Contact Manager. Will this one prove to be another worthy addition to Resco’s “must have” lineup of Windows Mobile apps? Let’s take a closer look.

Main Screen: As you might expect, the main screen consists of a complete list of your contacts.  To make things easier, you can sort the list by categories or companies.  What I really liked here was that this is not just a list, but a real graphical representation.  Very finger friendly. 

Of course, if you do not like this list, then Resco also offers you the face view, which displays your contacts in a picture grid.  Now, as you can see, I do not have enough photos assigned to my contacts, so I stuck with list view.

Regardless of which view you select, navigating through your contacts is fantastically finger friendly.  On the right is a letter bar, just scroll through the letter bar by sliding your finger to the appropriate letter (you can set the letter bar to auto hide when not in use).  From there, just flick the screen to scroll to the contact you need.  Not only did this work great, but it is also consistent with the controls in other Resco programs, such as Resco Explorer.

Additionally, you can just start typing on this screen.  No need to tap a text entry box or search box.  Just start tapping the keys and Resco Contact Manager will automatically start filtering for the letters you type.  This is really pretty cool.

Individual Entries: Now that you know how to find your entry, let’s take a look at what happens when you select it.  Check this out.  Honestly, I think this is the nicest contact card I have ever used.  From this main screen, you can call any number assigned to the contact, send an email, or send a text message.  This is perfect.  I was extremely impressed that you can send an email from here.  Far too many contact managers forget this function.

But let’s be honest, your contacts contain much more information.  Let’s say you need an address while driving.  Well, look at the buttons underneath the main screen.  Tap card to view an extremely nicely organized contact card.  Rather than the usual cramming all of the information onto a single card, and requiring you to scroll through to the information you want, Resco places the information on several different pages:

• Phone gives you the basics.  Phone numbers, email, ringtone, and birthday
• Home will display the home address and phone number
• Business shows work address and phone number
• Web shows email addresses, websites, and IM
• Notes provides any additional information

Really, I thought this was fantastic.  This organization may have required a few extra screen taps, but it makes it so easy to zero in on the exact information you need. 

You can even set the picture from here.  One pretty cool thing Resco Contact Manager can do is connect with Facebook.  The program allows to assign any contact from your friend’s Facebook page to their contact form.  Now that is pretty cool. 

You can also tap and hold on any address assigned to one of your contacts to look up the address on Google maps.  While I love this feature, it did not work at all.  Let me clarify that by saying Resco Contact Manager did exactly what it was supposed to do.  It grabbed the address and sent the info to Google Maps.  From there, though, Google Maps completely failed.  It did not find any results for any of my contacts.  The problem here was that it went to Google Maps online (maps.google.com) which is not nearly as robust, thorough, or accurate as using the downloadable Google Maps application with your GPS.  It would have been better if this option had been able to tie into your GPS instead of simply searching for the address on Google online.

Favorites:I have mentioned the favorites screen a few times, here.  maybe it is time we back up and take a look at it.  The favorites screen is where you can park the contacts whom you need to call or email/SMS most regularly.  This way, you do not have to scroll through your whole contact list in order to call your wife or best friend.  Just hop over to your Favorites list.

I did find it to be a bit cumbersome to add contacts to your Favorites list.  What I expected was to be able to do this from the tap and hold menu on the main screen.  No luck there.  So, I checked under the contacts button.  Now we are getting somewhere.  From this menu, you can select add/remove favorites.  But then you have to scroll back through the whole list in order to find the contacts you wish to add to your favorites.  Not exactly easy to accomplish.  The easiest way to add a contact to your favorites is by opening a contact card.  You can use the menu to add the contact to your to favorites.  Like I said, none of these options are very attractive or user friendly.  It would have been much easier to include add to favorites as an option when you tap and hold a contact on the main screen.

History: The next button is the History Tab.  This is basically a nicer version of your call history.  One of the things I like here is that it groups calls from the same contact together, which makes a much easier list to scroll through.  The list itself actually looks an awful lot like the list view on your main contacts page.  Very clean and finger friendly.  Just give a flick of the screen to scroll further down the list.  Oh and watch those icons on the right hand side.  Green arrows are incoming calls, blue arrows are outgoing calls, and red exclamation points are missed calls.

Tap and hold on any entry to call that person, send them an SMS, or view the entire call history with that individual.  Tap the history button again for the screen menu.  From here, you can ungroup the list, or view your call statistics.  I have to say that I really liked this screen, which shows the number of incoming, outgoing, and missed calls as well as how much time you spent on the phone.  It even gives last month’s stats in addition to the current month, so you can track and compare your usage.  This is especially useful if you have a limited number of minutes each month.

SMS: The SMS screen looks pretty similar to the history screen, only this one shows your SMS messages instead of your call history.  Like the History Screen, however, this one also features nice, large entries with fantastic finger friendly flicking.  Again, this screen will group your text messages by sender.  Tap the menus and you can group/ungroup your messages and even view your usage stats.

Menus: There are basically two kinds of menus within Resco Contacts.  Many of the options available to you are hidden beneath the entries on each screen.  Just tap and hold to open the menus and view your options.  This is great, because it puts a lot of options out of the way, but keeps them accessible.  On the other hand, it can make it a little tricky to learn your way around the program.  I found myself just tapping and holding everything I could see until I found all of the various options.  So, let’s take a look at the various tap and hold menus I found:

1. From the Main Screen or Favorites, tap and hold on any contact.  From here, you can choose to make a call, send a message (SMS, MMS, or email), Edit the entry, Set a photo, or Change the ringtone.  Like I said earlier, the only thing I did not like here was the lack of an option to simply add the selected contact to your favorites from this menu.

2. From an individual contact card, tap and hold on any text entry block to edit or copy the information in that block.  Additionally, in order to search Google Maps, just tap and hold on any address on a contact card.  This was a bit difficult to find.  It would have been nice if the option to search Google maps had been more accessible from the contact card screen.

3. From the history or SMS chat screens, tap and hold any entry to call or send an SMS.  From here, you can also view an expanded history of calls or chats with that specific contact.

In addition to the tap and hold menus,there are also general menus for each screen.  To access these, simply press the icon button for your present screen (in other words, tap it once to access the screen, tap it a second time to access the menu.)   From these menus, you can take a number of general actions, such as:

• Create a new contact
• Add/Delete from favorites
• Switch between Face View and Detail List View
• Filter
• Group or Ungroup History and Chats
• View History and Chat statistics.

You can also access the options screen.  This was a bit incongruous as it was the only part of the program which was not finger friendly.  It was a standard tabbed Windows Mobile 6.1 option screen.  Lots of customization and options hidden under here, but I was a little surprised that the finger friendly facade did not make its way into this screen.  Now that would have been nice.

To be honest, I could not think of any actions I wanted to take that could not be accomplished from these menus.  There were some options I might have rearranged and made a little easier to find, but everything I needed to do was available, which I really liked a lot.

Dialer Keypad: I have never been terribly impressed by the bare bones dialer that came with the Touch Pro (left).  It is significantly inferior to even the original HTC Touch.  Thankfully, once again, it is Resco to the rescue.

The dialer buttons feature a pretty cool textured look, and they are nice and large making it easy to dial, even with my fatty fingers.  

On the top of the screen you will see your contacts.  As you dial, the contacts are filtered to match the digits you are entering.  If you see the contact you are attempting to call, just press it to finish dialing.   If the number you dial is not in your contacts, then you will be given the option of saving it as a new contact, or copying it to the clipboard so you can paste it any contact in your address book.

Finally, there is a special hot key on the right hand side, which I thought was pretty cool.  This can be set to jump straight to your SMS, call your emergency contact, or call any friend in your contacts list.  This was great.  I keep it set to call my wife.  In an emergency, there is no need to hunt through my contacts looking for my “ICE”, just tap the red cross button and the call is automatically made.  Perfect. 

Incoming Calls: So, that covers outgoing phone calls.  How about incoming calls?  Resco Contacts features an incoming call screen which will announce the identity of your caller.  It displays a picture of the caller (if you have one in your contacts) as well as the name and phone number.  Beneath that is a green button which can be slid to the left to answer, or to the right to decline.  You can also choose to decline by sending a text message (change the preset text message under the options screen.)  While I liked this screen, I found it to be a bit buggy.  I am not sure whether this was a problem with the program, or whether it was conflicting with the default Touch Pro answer screen.  After I selected to answer the call, it should have gone to the in-call option screen or the keypad.  Instead, it would either go to a blank screen or to the home screen of my phone.  In either case, that meant that while the call continued, I could not easily control it or enter any additional options.  Fortunately, Resco gives you the option of reverting back to the default screen, which suited me just fine

Today Screen Plug-In: I am always a bit leery of Today Screen Plug-ins.  Too often, the benefit they add does not outweigh the resources they require.  So, you end up with a cluttered mess of plug-ins fighting for your attention and resources.  The other thing I have to note is that TouchFlo3D does not allow you to add Today Screen Plug-ins, or easily access your Today Screen.  This is a shame, because while I am leery of most plug-ins, there are some which have become useful tools on my device.

Anyway, I went ahead and turned off TouchFlo3D so I could access the Today Screen and test this one out.  The plug-in which was included with Resco Contact Manager is a bit of a mixed bag.  On the one hand, it is enormous on your Today Screen.  It would be nice if you could contact and expand the plug-in so it could be stowed away when not in use.

On the other hand, it is a really useful plug-in, which gives you access to all of the communication tools on your device.  From here, you can toggle your bluetooth or wifi radios, as well as turn your phone off or completely enter airplane mode, disabling all of the radios, including your data connection.  From here, you can also check into your email; or jump into the program to check your SMS messages, call history, or favorites (this can be customized to jump to your main contacts screen or keypad instead.)  Switch the view (using the options screen) from simple to default view to view an additional line of information.  This gives you some general information, such as date and time, and also gives you access to your alarms.  The only thing missing here was the ability to add a contact to the plug-in, so you could make a call directly from your Today Screen, without entering the program at all.  Still, this plug-in, although requiring quite a bit of screen real estate, offered quite a few useful features, which are very nice to have immediately at your fingertips.  I only wish that I could make better use of it while TouchFlo3d (or Spb Mobile Shell for that matter) is active.

Conclusion: I have to admit that I had extremely high hoped for this program.  Resco is one of two companies which make programs that I absolutely, positively cannot live without.  I can honestly say that Windows Mobile would be significantly less useful and usable to me without programs like Resco Explorer.  So, whether it is fair or not, I tend to judge Resco’s offerings by a somewhat heightened standard than I might expect from other programs.  Fortunately, they have never let me down, and Contact Manager was certainly no exception.  While there was a few organizational points which I might have changed, none of these were significant.  It just required a little extra work learning my way around.  Overall, I was thrilled to find that Contact Manager more than lived up to my expectations.  The kinetic scrolling was smooth, and the letter bar worked flawlessly as expected.  In short, it gave you full access to all of the critical information you need in order to communicate with your contacts, whether that be via email, SMS chat, telephone, or even in person.  Now THAT is a Contact Manager!

What I Liked:

• Favorites screen
• Menus are very intuitive
• Very nice keypad
• Keypad Hotkey
• Set contact pictures from Facebook
• Fantastic interface
• History and SMS
• Map locations with Google Maps
• It just makes your phone easier to use…as a phone
• Honestly, there is just too much to list!

What Need Improvement:

• Google Maps used online maps instead of GPS
• Options screen
• Consistent crashes when receiving a call

Vital Stats:

     Name: Contact Manager

     Developer: Resco

     Version: 1.10

Trial: 7 days

Where To Buy: Resco

Price: $24.95

UPDATE: After I posted this review, Resco released version 1.11.  This update fixes the problem with the program crashing while receiving an incoming call.

Related posts:

1. Resco Contact Manager 2nd Edition is knocking at the door!
2. Resco Releases Send SMS Gadget for Windows 7 as Feature of Resco Contact Manager, 2nd Ed.
3. Review: Resco Contact Manager 2nd Edition
4. Quick Look: Resco Contact Manager Beta
5. Resco Contact Manager Updated to Version 2.05