QuickAdvice: Organize Your Contacts with Tacts
Tacts ($2.99) by TernTek MayArt is a new app designed to help you organize your address book contacts in an easy-to-use, friendly interface.
Tacts is similar to the other contacts manager apps out there - you can add Favorite contacts, create Smart Groups and regular Groups to organize your contacts, and edit contact details all from within the app. Calls can be made from within the app as well as texts and emails. Addresses can also be added to Favorites, which will pull up Maps.app when selected (don't worry about getting back to Tacts, the fast-app switching should take care of that if you're on a 3GS or iPhone 4).
The main unique thing that Tacts has that I haven't really seen in others is a Top Contacts list, which can be accessed from the Favorites menu via an arrow for a pull up menu. Once you start using the app more to make calls, Tacts will keep track of who you are likely to call based on your call history as well as location (do I need to brace myself for comments for privacy concern now?). This feature can be extremely useful if you have a ton of contacts that you never use or just don't need as often as your 'Top Contacts'.
When you view a contact in the app, their photo will be shown (or a little default icon from Tacts for those that don't have a photo), along with all their contact info, and a highlighted star next to their name if they are a Favorite. The info can also be edited from within the app.
You can create new groups for your contacts or create a 'Smart Group' with rules that will automatically filter out contacts and do the work for you. There's already a set of pre-made Smart Groups for Company, State, City, No Phone, No Email, and No Address. You should be able to send out group emails and stuff like that once you get groups set up, but there's one little thing...
I did have one bit of a problem with the Groups and Smart Groups creation though - I was unable to edit the name of the group. I couldn't get rid of the 'New Group' or 'New Smart Group' text, which rendered creating a new group kind of pointless right now. I hope that the developers will address this huge glitch in their next update, because what's the point if I can't edit the group name? Hope the developer sees and takes note of this problem! But anyway...
The main thing that sets Tacts apart is the interface. It's a unique neon colors-on-black background thing that reminds me of glow sticks or something to that degree. It's definitely unique, but I guess it's a matter of personal preference as to whether you'll like it or not. The app as a whole is designed to be user-friendly, which I think it did very well.
Other than that one glaring problem of not being able to create groups or smart groups, I like the design of this app pretty well. It's smooth and user-friendly, which are pretty big for iPhone app design. I also like that it will keep track for 'Top Contacts', which I don't see too often. The fact that you can also add other contact details to the Favorites section (like SMS, email, addresses, etc) is a big plus.
If you need something to replace the lackluster default Contacts.app on your iPhone, then give Tacts a look. The interface is really nice and smooth, although you may think differently with their unique choice of theming with neon colors and the pitch black background.
Though at this point I'd say to wait until an update to fix the group creation problem, which brings my score of it down a bit. Once that's fixed though, I'd be all for it!
UPDATE: Thanks to a user comment from Phil, the little glitch I spoke about can be easily fixed by just entering the name of your group. This wasn't really clear from my testing of the app, since I thought you had to get rid of the text before to add in a new name.
Thanks Phil!
