Photo Phonebook is a new iPhone app that offers to pull your Facebook friends ‘ photos into the iPhone ‘s Contacts app. I remember seeing a Windows Mobile app for this ages ago (can ‘t recall the name) and it ‘s a pretty useful idea, especially if you have a lot of Facebook friends that you talk to by phone “ as this is an easy way to get a photo associated with their contact, so it shows up when they ‘re calling you.
Or it should be anyway. My results with this app have been less than stellar. I was not feeling love for this app from the beginning really “ as it forced me to join the Photo Phonebook directory before I could do anything at all, with Facebook or otherwise. For me, that ‘s a big turn-off “ I ‘m already a Facebook user “ I would much prefer if this app just piggy-backed on those credentials and created a separate program for its own photo-sharing / social / whatever network “ which I honestly have no interest in. Nothing against their new network “ it may well be superb, it ‘s just that I don ‘t feel I need any more iPhone photo-sharing networks right now.
It also wanted a phone number as well as an email address in order to sign up. I ‘m not fond of that either. I installed the app purely for the Facebook contact pics hookup “ not to join new networks, or share my phone number for I cannot think what valid purpose (SMS messages from Photo Phonebook = no thanks).
I eventually supplied a fake phone number and was allowed to try out the Facebook photos import. And it pulled in pics for only around 10% of my friends. I am not a big Facebook user, and only have 80-odd friends, so I doubt this can be any sort of issue with ‘too many ‘ to import in one go or anything similar.
It also got several photos wrong, even within the small batch it did manage to pull down. It had my own profile pic attached to a female friend from here in Austin = fail.
The app offers to ‘request photos ‘ from all those friends it did not import successfully. I said no to this as I have checked and virtually 100% of my FB friends have a profile photo already there right where it is supposed to be “ so I don ‘t fancy spamming them with a spurious rerquest.
As you have probably guessed, this one is not a keeper for me.
Your mileage may vary of course (hopefully for the better) “ and you can find Photo Phonebook in the App Store now, and it ‘s free.
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