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> Review :: Finger Friendly Friends 1.0.1, Rating 4 out of 5
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post Dec 22 2007, 04:11 PM
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Finger Friendly Friends 1.0.1
By JottoSoft
MGN Rating -

Rating Legend

1 star: Find something else; save your money
2 star: Below average; not recommended
3 star: Average; performs as advertised but not inspiring
4 star: Good; worth the money
5 star: Great; best of its kind on the market

Review by Slacker
Review Date / December 27th, 2007

Note: Screen captures are created with Pocket Controller-Professional by Soti, Inc.

Telephone numbers are a pain to remember. Just take a look at me for example: I have a home phone, cell phone, work phone, pager, and blackberry (for work). For one person I have five phone numbers. Imagine if you were trying to keep just 20 names, each with 5 numbers. That is 100 phone numbers you would have to remember, right? Windows Mobile answers this problem with its built-in contact manager. While it works, the contact manager is certainly a very sterile application and is impossible to use without a stylus. Since the release of the iPhone developers are concentrating more on making applications that can operate without a stylus, and Jotto has released a replacement contact manager that is finger friendly. But is Finger Friendly Friends good enough to earn a place on my TyTN II?

Finger Friendly Friends has been around for a while as a BETA application over at XDA-Developers. I have had the opportunity to use the application through its development and now that it is released as a finished product I wanted to show you what it can do and let you in on the limitations.

QUOTE
WHAT IS FINGER-FRIENDLY FRIENDS?
FFF is a finger-friendly contact manager designed for Windows Mobile cellphones. It's designed to let the user find contacts quicky without having to use the stylus and make a call, write an SMS, or other tasks.

FEATURES
  • Blazingly fast contact lookup
  • Features the new ground-breaking DRMWY-Touch (Doesn't Really Matter Where You Touch) keyboard. There is no need to press specific buttons on the keyboard to search for the contacts. Just touch the screen, and FFF automaticly matches all contacts in the touch zone under your finger!
  • Send your position to your contacts using the device's GPS. The position is sent as a user-friendly Google Maps link in either SMS or e-mail (requires a built-in GPS).
  • Fast startup, low memory footprint


The key thing in this quote from the JottoSoft website is "without having to use the stylus". This application does not need the stylus to do any of the functions it offers. The biggest reason is the new input keyboard that JottoSoft calls DRMWY-Touch: Ddoesn't Really Matter Where You Touch. The concept is simple; so simple in fact that I am completely at a loss as to why Microsoft didn't come up with this many Windows Mobile versions ago. This little keyboard is the heart of FFF and is light years ahead of any other keyboard replacement out there. Unfortunately the keyboard in Finger Friendly Friends is not a true SIP (Soft Input Panel) and therefore can not be used for applications other than FFF.

When you open FFF it will read from your existing contact database and show all of the contacts you have, completely unfiltered. As you begin to type letters, the list is filtered based on the possible letter combinations from the keystrokes you make. Lets look at that keyboard first to give you an idea of how it works.

Attached Image


When you put a finger on the keyboard a box shows up. The trick here is that if you want to type a "d" you do not have to exactly hit the letter "d". As long as the letter "d" is even partially in the box around your finger when you release the keyboard then "d" is one of the letters FFF will filter by. So lets say you want to search for your friend "Dawn". Your keystrokes might look like this:

Attached ImageAttached Image

Attached ImageAttached Image

Attached Image


Notice how I never actually clicked exactly on any of the letters in the list? Because those letters were always within the box, FFF assumed they were to be part of the search. So even going down a bumpy road in the car you can find your contacts in the list. Pretty neat huh? I love it! You really need to use the keyboard to get a good handle on exactly how smoothly it operates.

Attached Image


Once you filter down your list just use your finger or thumb to click on a name and you get options specific to that contact. If the contact only has a cell number then you only get an option to call the cell. If they have a cell, home and work then you will have buttons for all three. Additionally there may be buttons to send an email, SMS or if you have a GPS you can send your GPS location with a Google Maps link to show one of your contacts your current location. This is a screen capture of my contact information so you can see what a full contact screen looks like.

Attached Image


If you want to tell someone where you are the option to send your GPS location is handy. When you select this option you will notice the top box indicates it is trying to determine your location. Depending on your GPS this may take a minute or so. Once it knows where you are the message changes to tell you so and you can send the message to your contact. Cool!

Attached ImageAttached Image


Finger Friendly Friends is very well thought out. The community at XDA-Developers has helped Jotto with ideas and testing that has led to a very solid version 1 offering. However, it is missing what I believe is a very important component. You can not add/edit/delete contacts from FFF. In order to do that you must use the built-in contacts application. So FFF can not possibly replace the contacts application completetly. Hopefully JottoSoft will add this capability in the next version. Also one thing that really bugs me is the layout of the buttons once you open a contact. The buttons can completely be in different locations for different users depending on what contact information they have. For example, if they have a cell number it will most likely show up in the upper left position. But if they don't have a cell then that position can be their work or home number, email, etc. The buttons are not locked to a location based on their content. In order to be able to use this application without looking the cell phone button needs to always be in the same place. Same for the work, home, email, sms, and GPS options. If a contact doesn't have a cell number just leave that position empty. Do not fill it with another button. It makes the action selection confusing.

In case you haven't been able to tell, I completely love this application. It is the primary contact manager on my device. But because of the two issues I listed above I have given Finger Friendly Friends a 4.0. It is better than the contact manager on the features it has, but it falls short of the contact manager capabilities. Once it can do the same tasks as the built-in contact manager it will be, without question, a 5.0 rating. Take that as a hint JottoSoft rolleyes.gif

UPDATE: JottoSoft has indicated that FFF is not meant to be a contacts replacement and so it does not include the full add/edit/delete feature. It is meant to be a quick way to look up phone numbers with your fingers. However Jotto did indicate that if there was enough demand for a full contacts replacement he would look at going that direction. Also, Jotto is looking into a way to provide some stability in the action buttons once you open a contact, so that it is easier to make sure you are dialing the right number.

You really should check out Finger Friendly Friends. JottoSoft offers a 15 day trial period or you can buy it for $14.99. A small price to pay for the features.

Also, as a side note JottoSoft has planned to produce a full SIP based on the FFF keyboard. As soon as we have more information on this new SIP we will get it out to you, and review it once the developer releases it.


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Jim Cleek (Slacker)
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krelvinaz
post Dec 29 2007, 05:18 AM
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Very nice app...


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