Having your contact list be the central social hub for your Android phone is what Phonebook 2.0 is all about. You will be able to see things like social network updates, birthdays, how many times you call contacts and even recent activity with people in your contact list. Phonebook 2.0 is a replacement for your contacts application. Your contacts and other information will automatically be imported into Phonebook 2.0. You will be able to initiate an email, SMS, see contact call history, contact groups, social network updates, birthdays and a lot more.
Social Stuff
Most applications come with some sort of connection to your social network accounts. Phonebook 2.0 is not exception. You can sign into several of the most popular social sites with more site options on the way. Right now you can see Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, Myspace and LinkedIn. You may already have a mobile application with access to these sites. However, this application’s uniqueness is – only the feeds from your phone contacts show up. Not all of your Facebook friends. You may follow 20,000 on Twitter, but talk to 3 people in your everyday life. These 3 feeds will be displayed.
Activity
While your phone will track your incoming, outgoing and misses calls. Your phone won’t display messaging, email and social media updates all in the same window. The activity window reminds me of the Messages folder on a Blackberry. If you are looking at the activity list, you will see a list of everyone you have communicated with. The social feeds don’t erase when you clear the activity log.
Birthdays
Some applications populate your calendar with birth dates for your contacts. Phonebook 2.0 gives you a tab dedicated to birthdays. You will see all of your contacts with birthdays coming up in order of closest birthday first.
Individual contacts
While you are viewing each individual contact, you have several options of information to view. You can see the contact information like you would be able to in the factory installed Android contact application. When you choose a contact from you list, you will see a screen with options to contact that person. I think it is laid out much nicer than the pre-installed contacts application. You will also now have access to is any recent activity you have had with them and their most recent social media update.
Conclusion
I have been using Phonebook 2.0 for about 2 weeks now. I am really liking the all-in-one approach they took. Many applications that are add-ons to the factory applications aren’t always worth the space they take up. It took a little bit of retraining myself to use this as a replacement for the Android contact application. Once I got in the habit, I saw how useful it was. I was not checking Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to see what my close friends are up to. What applications do you use to manage your contacts?
