Have you ever wanted to replace your phone screen with something fun without losing practicality? DialByPhoto, from Gx5, is what you’re looking for.

DialByPhoto (DBP) totally replaces your Treo’s phone application, using photos that are easy to see instead of favorites. Setup is simple, as DBP will pull the photo attached to the contact in your address book, unless you choose a different picture. There’s no resizing or cropping necessary.

There is no limit to the number of photo speed dial “buttons” you can create. DBP also includes (under Cool Stuff) an entire icon set in case you don’t have a photo to use. Some of the icons are shown below along with a typical setup screen.

In the setup screen you can see how I’ve dealt with voicemail. Since you can dial your own number to access voicemail, I chose myself from my contacts db, and then assigned one of the fun icons from DBP’s “Cool Stuff.”

There are many options to customize DBP, and the drop down menus make it a simple and pain-free experience. I started by adding a background – the same one I use with Initiate and Agendus so I can have a theme. Adding contacts is as easy as picking the name from inside your Contacts. DBP defaults to the picture you have attached in your Contacts, but you can choose any picture from your media, whether in your Treo’s RAM, or on your sd card. As you can see from the first screen shot at the top of this article, I have chosen to lay out my photos in the center of my screen, 3×3.. However, you have several other layout choices using a single row of three photos, and the option to show appointments, just like the built-in dial screen.

Many times I find that the people on my speed dials are also the people I’m most likely to sms. DBP has a neat little feature called “Speed Smsing” that allows you to send a text message to anyone pictured, simply by pressing the “m” key when the desired recipient’s photo is highlighted. No need to exit your dial screen to the Messaging app.

If you’ve followed this thread in the Treo 680 Discussion Forum, you have realized that Palm somehow managed to leave out call duration within details in the call log. The good news is that DBP gives you the option of using the default call log, or its own call log that shows you the call duration along with all the other information you want. Notice that DBP also offers its own dialpad and contact screen.

Depending on the background you’ve chosen, you may want to change the font color. For now, the only choices are black and white, but it’s nice to have this option.

Another feature included in DBP is Reject by SMS. While you can do this on the Treo 700p and 680 from the native phone app, it merely takes you to the messaging application. Tapping Ignore on the 700p and 680 will bring up DBP’s sms screen, where all you have to do is choose from your pre-defined text messages, and hit send.

As you can see here, the options in DBP are easy to understand, simple to navigate, quite comprehensive.

All in all, DBP is a fun application that brings a lot of versatility to your dialing experience. My native phone screen has been permanently retired!

DBP is currently in its final stage of beta testing, but you can still download it and try for yourself. If you hurry, you can purchase it at a 30% discount ($9.95) while it’s still in beta. New cool features are being added constantly, and release is imminent, so don’t delay!

Related Links

Download DialByPhoto

Discuss Software in the Treo Discussion Forum

Purchase an SD card to store your photos

Filed under: Software reviews