Any application that makes it easier and faster to dial on a smartphone is generally a very popular one. There is no shortage of apps that offer solutions in this area for the iPhone – speed and photo dial apps, smart dial programs, and even a few voice dialing options.
This is *not* going to be a comprehensive roundup of all the dialing apps that are available for the iPhone. I was originally just going to look at a couple of these that launched recently, SuperDial and DialByPhoto (pictured above) – then I just happened to see a few others mentioned that sounded quite promising over the last few days and decided to add them in. So I ended up with: SuperDial, DialByPhoto, PictureDialer, and Smart Dial – and even gave Vlingo (for voice dial) a bit of a look as well.
What I found – happily – is that each of these is a pretty good option in its own way. I have a couple that are my favorites, but all of them are good potential solutions depending on what your needs and wants are for faster dialing. Hit the jump for some brief thoughts on each of them …
As I’ve said, none of these apps seemed a bad choice. The best choice is going to depend on your own needs and preferences for quick dialing, of course. But … I’m still going to run them down in my order of least to most preferred, working up to two favorites …
Vlingo:
Vlingo offers a voice dial option, alongside its voice search and other voice-driven features. I’ve tried a few other iPhone voice dialing programs, and vlingo puts them to shame in the accuracy of its voice recognition. For me, it has been very, very good at getting a wide variety of contact names right first time.
My reason for not rating vlingo higher is that it takes too many steps to get to where you’re actually calling someone. Once you’ve launched the app, you first have to switch from its Home tab to the ‘Phone’ tab (it won’t remember that’s the last one you used), then you need to tap a large button towards the bottom of its screen to start it listening. You don’t need to say ‘Call’ in front of a person’s name (cool) – just fire away with ‘Bob’ or whoever you’re calling. Once you’ve said your contact’s name, you need to tap again to let it know you’re done. Then you get a confirmation message to tap (or it’ll go ahead and call after 10 seconds if not cancelled).
That just feels like too many steps to me – especially as many folks will want to use a voice dialing app in their car. In a car, this would require too much looking at the screen for my liking.
If you’re not fussed about using it in the car, and don’t mind a few taps to get it calling, the superb voice recognition still makes this a viable option.
Smart Dial:
Smart Dial doesn’t do the ‘photo / speed dial’ thing that the other remaining apps below do. Instead it lets you do something that has been very popular on Palm and Windows Mobile devices – dial via the keypad using the letters of a contact’s name. So as you hit each key, it is offering you closer and closer matches for the person you’re after. It does not let you do this in the built-in Phone application – so you do need to launch Smart Dial itself to do your smart dialing.
As soon as it offers one option, you can use the little downward arrow button at the bottom of its screen to skip to the next contact that matches the keys you’ve entered so far. There’s a setting option to set whether it gives search priority to first name, last name, or organization name.
The app also lets you assign speed dial numbers to the digits 1-9 on the keypad. To invoke the speed dial (rather than have that key press counted towards the start of a search) you just press and hold the key, instead of just giving it a simple tap.
Smart Dial has a simple interface and worked well for me. Since I don’t have jillions of contacts, my preference is for the photo dial type apps though – so let’s move on to those …
SuperDial:
Super Dial is a typical photo speed dialing program, where you simply tap on a contact’s picture to dial them. It’s got a decent range of options, including:
- Choose how many contacts to display – anywhere from 1 to 30 can be shown.
- Set a theme and theme color. Pick a theme from the 8 included with the app – things like Basic, Brick Wall, Cork Board etc.
- Decide what display label to use with the contact photos – choose first name, last name, full name, or no label.
With Super Dial, once you’ve set it up (added your contacts to its dial screen and set your preferences) then you’re two taps away from calling people. One tap to launch the app, and one to tap the desired contact’s picture. It doesn’t hit you with a confirmation message (might be good to have that as an option) – you’re dialing straight away.
If you don’t have a picture associated with a contact, SuperDial assigns a simple question mark symbol where the photo would’ve gone. It doesn’t have any clipart / icons to use for these.
Again, this a good program – easy to setup and use, and works well.
*** As a quick side note, I haven’t looked at any of the apps that place an icon on your home screen for each person you want to call – my home screens are messy enough thanks. ***
PictureDialer:
Another photo speed dialer. PictureDialer is similar to SuperDial, but with a few more bells and whistles.
This app gives you quite a fun range of options for its appearance – you can set the picture frame style for your contact photos in its display, choose a background color, and decide whether to display its phone badge (for indicating whether a number is home, work, or mobile.
You can also set the tap speed (to Fast, Moderate, or Slow) and decide how many photos to display per row – from one (which gets you really large pics of each contact) to six, which makes them quite small.
There’s a tap speed setting because a different number of taps will have the app doing different things for you – one tap starts a call (again no confirmation required), two taps gives you a list of all numbers to dial, and three (rapid) taps offers options for email and SMS to that contact.
PictureDialer is my co-favorite out of all these. I like its display options a lot, especially the picture size ones that let me make it very easy to find a contact very quickly, and also like the ability to email and SMS via very few taps, from the same screen as used for calling.
DialByPhoto:
DialByPhoto is another photo speed dialer, with a slick and different interface. In this app, your contact photos are shown along the bottom of its screen in a Cover Flow sort of style, below a Control Wheel sort of component that occupies roughly the top half of its screen.
The control wheel has four icons that each carry out a separate action on any contact you drag to them. So dragging Bill’s contact pic to the phone icon immediately starts a call to Bill. Drag his pic to the email envelope icon and you’ll get switched to the Mail app with a new message open and Bill’s address placed in the To field for you. Drag to the SMS chat bubbles icon and you’ll get the SMS app already using Bill’s number for a new conversation. Finally, drag to the contact card icon and you’ll be taken to the Contacts app to edit Bill’s contact detail.
The app will let you know if, for instance, you drag to email Bill, and you have no email address entered for him.
I like the interface for DialByPhoto tons. Having all four of its action types available via just a drag / swipe action on a contact is very cool. I also found it easy to use this interface one-handed – flicking through contact pics easily and swiping them across to whichever action icon I needed.
Another nice little feature with this one is that it offers a set of cartoony pics to use for any of your contacts that don’t have a photo yet.
So DialByPhoto is my other co-favorite. I’ll eventually try to settle on just one speed dial app, but it’ll be a tough call between PictureDialer and DialByPhoto. They’re both very good apps and great to use.
All of these apps are available now in the App Store now and are priced as follows:
Vlingo: Free
Smart Dial: $0.99
SuperDial: Free
PictureDialer: Free
DialByPhoto: $1.99
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