Phonelist — the creation of an ideal Contacts App for Mobile

Since my very first cell phone which was a Nokia 5110, I’ve always been fascinated by the default Contacts App which comes with every mobile device. To me the Contacts App is easily one of the most important utility apps in a mobile device and yet I feel like it has remained relatively unchanged.

My fascination with the Contacts App did not stop with my fist Nokia, it went on to include that of my Nokia E61i, Blackberry Torch, Blackberry Q10 and now my current iPhone 6.

During this period of the evolution in mobile technology, one thing still boggled my mind. Why is it that these default Contacts Apps do not display information or do things that I feel are very obvious when using a Contacts App. Even when they do, the execution is poor. I thought to myself, I sure can’t be the only one who processes information in a different manner. I did not have the answers, but I knew I could do one thing…create my own App that solves my problems, put it out there and see what sort of feedback I get.

This is what inspired my new App called Phonelist and the solutions to the problems I had with using the default Contacts App.

Problem #1: Why can’t I sort my Contacts by Recently Added?

This issue has been my biggest pet peeve since Day 1. The thing is most of my life, I’ve been quite a social person and big on networking. I’m also in an industry where I meet people on a daily basis. We exchange information and I have them in my Contacts App, but many months may go by without communication. But the one time I want to reach out to that contact, I absolutely forget what name/info I saved them under.

You see, the way my brain works, I always have a point of reference to when I met someone and can always remember that, even if I forget their name. The problem is there is no way to view contacts in chronological order on a phone (i.e. by date recently added), it’s always alphabetical order. Besides, most of the time I go to Contacts, I use the search function anyway, so the alphabetical order is actually less useful to me.

So the first solution to my problem is to sort my contacts in chronological order.

Problem #2: Why don’t I have the option to take a photo of someone while adding them to my Contacts?

Adding a photo after the fact is cool, I use that a lot. But when you have so many contacts, you only end up doing it to a select few. Enabling social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc…to pull all your contacts info and picture is also cool, but for me personally, I have all that stuff disabled.

You see, I like to keep my Contacts as they should be, which is personal. I don’t like any of these social media apps tapping into it and doing all sorts of weird things cluttering my Contacts. Besides, the data that gets pulled from these sources is usually not the way I want to save info of my contacts and not everyone has a social media account anyway.

So for now, I decided to add the ability to take a photo at the time of creating a new contact.

Problem #3: I’m entering a Phone Number, where is my Numerical Keypad?

I know this no longer an issue for current iPhones, but this used to bug the hell out of me especially when I had my Q10. It’s such a tiny detail, but it was a detail I noticed every time I entered a new Contact.

Problem solved, when I’m entering a phone number, show me a phone pad, when I’m entering an email, show me an email pad.

Problem #4: Every time I add a Contact to my phone, I always text them my contact information, can’t this be a little automated?

This, I do pretty much all the time and I see other people do this all the time as well. Sometimes I’ll do the missed call thing, but I almost always follow it with a text message showing my name and phone number. Why in the world do I have to type this every single time??

The crazy part is I see so many other people do this all the time as well. I like to people watch and it’s amazing the sorts of things we do over and over again and not asking the simple question, why do I have to do this every single time?

Problem solved, DUH! Make the app have your contact info and then provide you with an option to initiate an SMS to send your contact info to the newly added contact. I called this “Auto-Text”.

Problem #5: Let me decide how I enter my Contact Names, is this too much to ask?

Most Contact Apps offer First Name, Middle Name and Last Name fields to enter. Well great. To me, I just see clutter. For one, I just want to enter the name in one field and the app should place the names in the appropriate fields. But more importantly, I want just one field to enter the name so that it all gets saved as the First Name field.

You see, early on I needed a solution to my madness and devised a way to add Contacts into my phone because I had so many. It goes like this: who / where / how me met. This way when a person calls me, I can tell who is calling right away when call display pops up. So for example, let’s say I met Annie Mac in New York at a trade show. I would save her as “Annie Mac NY Trade Show”. But I wanted all this saved as a single field of data, so that when Annie Mac calls, I know which Annie Mac is calling. When you have over 1500 contacts, you would be surprised how many of the same names you have overlapping.

The flaw here I noticed with the iPhone is that if the names were put into separate fields, when a user calls it will only show the first name. So if I have 5 Mikes in my Contacts, I have no idea which one is calling. This may have changed or maybe there is a setting I never noticed, but I needed my own solution quick.

Problem solved! — Save Full Name as First Name. I like having options

Problem #6: Sometimes I want to use Apple Mail, sometimes I want to use GMail, give me options….yes…no?

Speaking of options, I use multiple email clients for different things with different email accounts. I’m sure, I can’t be the only one, am I?

You see, the default Contacts App on the iPhone allows you to email a Contact via Mail. In my case, I also use GMail. In fact, I use GMail way more than I do Apple Mail. So if I wanted to initiate an email from my Contacts using GMail, this is not an option.

Alas! Another one of my problems solved once again on my own since the big boys have more important things to deal with than my GMail option.

There is so much more I want to do with this and take it to a place of what I’ve always envisioned for a Contacts App. This is just the initial release. I would love to hear from others as to your thoughts, feedback and maybe even things I can do better to make this a great Contacts App. Basically it would be nice to know if I’m the only one who does some of these things I’ve implemented, or there are others just like myself.

I know there are a few apps out there (like Humin) trying to accomplish some of the issues tackling Contacts, but I still feel the implementation and execution is poor. At least not the way I would go about it. The key things I’m trying to keep in mind as I continue the journey with this App is: Speed, Simplicity and Privacy.

The best part about this journey so far is that I’ve been able to implement all these features by leveraging the default iOS Addressbook, without the need for maintaining a separate Contacts database. What a lot of these other apps do is maintain their own databases and then constantly sync information with various data sources like default Contacts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. I believe this is partially what makes the usability of these apps clunky at times. I’ve been able to avoid this for now and keep it fairly streamlined. I hope to hear from fellow readers.

Disclaimer: Please note a lot of the advanced features highlighted in this story are for the Pro version of Phonelist and more so the v1.1 iteration which is currently not in the App Store. At the time of this writing, v1.0 is what is available, but the v1.1 is coming soon.

Phonelist and Phonelist Pro are now available in the iOS App Store. You can watch this video to see Phonelist in action.