When I first read about Picture Dial, I was reluctant to try it out. I simply didn’t see how useful it could possibly be. I can now say that I’m glad I gave it a shot and hope you will, too.

Picture Dial gives you a ribbon-like bar of photos and applications at the bottom of the phone application’s dial screen where your favorites panel normally resides. With the latest version, the interface is very attractive–clearly an enhancement to the phone application. (Onlookers are always very interested when they see pictures at the bottom of the screen. It has been the subject of several conversations of late.)

The main application loads onto your launcher the normal way and setup from there. Setup is a breeze, and there is an information menus in case any options elude you. To create a new contact, simply select new, and use the lookup feature to scroll through your existing contacts. After selecting a contact, you will see all coinciding numbers for that person and have the option of selecting which ones you would like to use. Numbers can be edited from within the Picture Dial application.

Next comes the fun part: selecting a picture. After tapping the picture button, you will be shown a file menu of your pictures on your memory card or, if you have the photo you want to use on your internal RAM, you can choose from there as well. Once you select a photo you will return to the main item screen and see the new photo you just selected.

Now here comes the ingenious part that Danny Wong of Toysoft added: When you tap the picture button once again you are given the choice to edit the photo. Doing this allows you to resize photos and crop headshots so as to have a better view of your contacts. Now hows that for cool! I personally think this feature makes the application.

Existing applications can also be chosen to add to the scrolling photo ribbon on your dial screen. By putting applications there, the ribbon becomes a true substitute for the regular favorites screen. One drawback is that it’s a bit more difficult using PictureDial to access your CallLog. You have to tap the green phone dial key and select call log. I guess it’s just one of those systematic things that requires adjustment over time.

Picture Dial has seven different preferences that can be customized to match your personal needs. You can select to confirm your number before dialing, animate your picture ribbon (this will allow you to scroll up and down as well as back and forth), intelligent find (you type a partial phone number and Picture Dial will look up the closest ID), background image ( this will draw the picture ID’s in the background), removal of black borders (this will remove the small lines of black border from the top and bottom of your pictures), and highlight picture ( this feature will use a red box around your pictures when selected and if not your pictures will blink).

While using Picture Dial over the past several days, I have been generally very happy with its performance. The only hindrance is, after making or receiving phone calls, sometimes the picture ribbon won’t reappear. When this happens you must leave the dial screen and come back to refresh the application. The developer is aware of this and trying to find a solution. Other than that, the application performs beautifully for me. It does exactly what the author says it’s going to do, precisely the way he says it’s going to do it. It takes a short while to get used to ribbon, and is very worth it!

I find PictureDial a better solution than scrolling through contacts. I recommend giving it a try.

Pros:

1. Picture based dialing from within your dial screen.
2. 5-way navigation support.
3. Ability to crop and resize photos.
4. Ability to add applications as well.

Cons:

1. Problem with refresh feature after ending a call. (EDIT: Since publication, the author released an update addressing this issue.)

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Filed under: Software reviews