Overview
Peeps creates a nifty “new look” contact book. Rather than finding people by their names, (BORING!!!) you find them by their photos. Touch a photo and their contact info comes up, just like it would in the regular contact book. Yeah! I know, right? Awesome! You might be thinking, “I guess that’s pretty neat.” But wait, it gets better. If you turn your phone to landscape mode you can view your contacts as if they were album artwork in iTunes. Yeah! I know, right! Awesome! You can flip through them and select the contact that you’re in the mood to listen to! Just tap on a photo and you'll have the option to call, text or email. Pretty spiffy!
Features
Peeps is fully integrated with the iPhone’s standard contact book. When you make changes in one, they appear in the other. For instance, if you add a contact in Peeps, (or make a new group for your contacts), it will appear in your normal contact book. Pretty sweet. No updating or syncing required on your part. It’s all automatic. And I like not having to do things. Not because I’m lazy, but because… ah Hell, I’m too lazy to think up a better excuse.
You can create contact groups very easily. I did this because only about nine of my friends actually have photos assigned to them at the moment. So I put all of them in a group called Photo’d Friends. That way I can look at all the pretty pictures without seeing all the blank files staring back at me. Because… there’s a lot of blank ones. And that pretty much renders the app useless.
Breakdown
The Good:
I like the fact that Peeps has spiced up the otherwise bland contact book. That’s not to say that I ever had any problems with the pre-installed contact book. It was what it was. Nope, no problems here. But it is nice to have a different look- if that’s your thing.
Since I’ve never really been to big on assigning my contacts photos, I’m hoping that this app will encourage me to get on top of that. (Kind of like how I felt compelled to spend hours finding album artwork for my iTunes, even though I NEVER view my iTunes in that style. It must be some OCC thing or something.) I kind of feel like raiding my friend’s MySpace and Facebook pages to get photos of them. That would be so fulfilling, and I can’t explain why.
The Bad:
Okay, I have all of my apps on my iPhone in an order that makes sense to me. Games are split up by subcategory and utilities and productivity apps are grouped together. Because of this, Peeps is not on my homepage- or even my second page. So, it’s not exactly available without a little searching. On the other hand, my contact book is right there in my dock. Always accessible. Sure, I could add Peeps to my dock, but then I’d have to eliminate something- and that’s not happening. My complaint here is that I don’t know how often I’ll be reaching for Peeps.
(Mmm… Peeps… I can’t wait for Easter…)
Other than that, I don’t really see anything bad about the app. Okay, the landscape view game me a little trouble- either the pictures would flip too quickly, skipping over the one I wanted to get to, or they would only flip one at a time when I was trying to skip farther ahead. It didn’t always happen, but it did happen.
Verdict
I have a feeling that if you’re into assigning photos to your contacts, then you will probably enjoy this app a lot. It gives your contact book a sort of Facebook makeover. Hmm, I guess what I’m trying to say is that the kids will love it. (As will some adults). Bottom line: If you don’t have any photos for your contacts, or if you really don’t care about that sort of thing, then save your money.
