Love your Android phone, but not its built-in address book? Smartr Contacts by Xobni turns your phone into the ultimate social organizer.
A problem I typically run into is finding the people I communicate most frequently with from my long list of contacts. Alphabetical order doesn’t cut it. Thankfully, Smartr Contacts offers a clever solution (hence the name): it ranks your contacts by importance. How does it determine which of your friends, family and colleagues are more important than others?
Basically, the more information you provide it, the smarter the app gets. The more you use it and interact with your contacts, the better it will rank your contacts. When you first sign up for the app, however, it has a pretty good idea of who your most used contacts are. My "Top 10" were people I had most recently interacted with, whether I had texted them, e-mailed or attending an event on Google Calendar with them.
The contact entries are quite detailed with four informational tabs: Details, Social, History and Common. It shows a picture of that person (either their Facebook photo or Google Account photo) at the top and indicates whether they’re part of the Top 10 or not. The Details tab shows phone numbers as well as e-mail addresses they use with their various accounts. Social shows their social networking activity and history shows your call, text and e-mail history. You also get a neat little graph at the top of the tab showing the frequency of contact. You can see the friends you have in common with them on the History tab.
I really don’t like having to create a new account when I download an app--especially when it is an e-mail app. I already have to give it my e-mail log in information, why do I need to create a separate account? If you’re planning on using other Xobni products, it makes sense to make a Xobni account, but if you only want the Smartr Contacts app, it should be optional.
Anyways, once you get past that step, set up is pretty straight-forward. In addition to Gmail, you can add your Google apps, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to the mix. If you want to link your Yahoo Mail or Hotmail accounts, however, you’re out of luck. It also doesn’t have Google Voice integration.
I’ve read a couple of reports about the app crashing in the Android Market reviews, but I experienced smooth performance. While it is a little creepy how much Smartr knows about your contacts and your relationships with them, it is also immensely helpful. It is definitely one of the better mobile address book apps I’ve used.
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