For a long time, the Contacts app in iOS and OS X has been an Apple mainstay. However, Apple made a key change to the way the Contacts app works in iOS 6, and that means some customers may be looking for a new Contacts app. Savi Contacts from MobileLife Studio is a praiseworthy substitute.
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The change to Contacts in iOS 6 Contacts went like this. Touching a group no longer opens the group and displays the list of members. Instead, touching the group simply marks it as a candidate to be displayed. Worse, changing groups isn’t so simple as touching a new group. First, one has to uncheck the old group to avoid having its contents merged. Because the whole idea of groups is segregation, not integration, the new Contacts UI may confuse and annoy some users.
Just in time, MobileLife Studio has released Savi Contacts. This app is beautifully engineered to serve the iOS 6 customer in the classic, expected way while adding many thoughtful enhancements. And best of all, touching a group opens a group for display, as it should. But there’s much more that makes this free app simply delightful.
Touching the > does the right thing
Of course any contacts manager has to have the basics, such as a Find function, so I want to focus on the special features of Savi Contacts that make it notable.
- Designate phone or email as a default
- Email to an entire Group
- Customize thumbnail size in Favorites
- In Favorites, filter by group
- Touching a photo enlarges the image
- The Group listing shows how many members in that group
- Built-in phone dialer
- Launch a FaceTime session.
- Send SMS and iMessages
The nice thing about Savi Contacts is that it draws upon the same data used by the iOS Contacts app and uses the same APIs. That means that when an item is updated in the iCloud by another device, it shows up synced in Savi Contacts. I tried that myself, deleting a duplicate entry on my iMac’s Contacts App (Mountain Lion). A few minutes later, the duplicate was gone in iOS Contacts and also in Savi Contacts via iCloud.
Pinch/zoom to change size of thumbnails. List view available.
The net result is that you can use this app with safety and confidence, and if you want to go back and forth between Savi Contacts and Apple’s it’s easy to do. Or if you, some day abandon this app, all your contacts are safe and sound, usable with perhaps something improved from Apple. The developer also assured me that the user’s contact data never leaves the iDevice by their doing.
This app is sized for the iPhone and isn’t Universal. Even so, is magnifies at 2x beautifully on my iPad and is very, very usable there.
Documentation
The first time you launch the app, you’re walked through a series of tutorial splash screens that explain the operation. If you’re still in doubt, there’s a nice tutorial video. This video is also a great introduction if you think you might want to try the app out.