The iPhone lists your contacts alphabetically, but did you know you can change whether it sorts by first or last name? To change the way the iPhone sorts your contacts, just follow these steps:
1. Tap Settings:
2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars:
Groups 2 ($4.99, iTunes link) is an app from Guided Ways Technologies that lets you to create, edit, and delete groups of iPhone contacts, something you can’t do with the iPhone’s default Contacts app. You can then use these groups in useful ways such as sending emails or SMS text messages to those groups, or organizing your contacts by upcoming birthdays. Want to email your entire family about your upcoming vacation with a single tap? Groups is an app for that.
I found Groups 2 a pleasure to use. The app has a beautiful, intuitive interface that Apple should take note of for their own Contacts app. Perhaps the best example of the app’s slick design comes when adding a contact to a group. You hold down your finger on a contact for a heartbeat or two to make a Rolodex card icon appear. You then drag and drop the card into any group to add it. It’s a quick and simple way to organize your contacts.
The groups you create with the app are added to the iPhone’s default Contacts/Phone apps, which in turn means they’ll sync and backup to iTunes, Address Book (for Macs), and Outlook (for PCs). You can color-code each group’s label to make them stand out from each other and add a colorful look to the app.
Groups also comes with a smart dialer (the developer calls the technology Callway). The smart dialer searches through you contacts as you punch in the digits (or the corresponding letters, depending on what your goal is). Once you narrow down the list to find your desired contact, you tap the contact to dial.
Groups also has a feature called smart groups that works a lot like iTunes’ smart playlists. With smart groups, you can automatically create groups using parameters like area codes or whether or not the contact has an email associated with it. For example, you can create a smart group that will tell you what contacts have birthdays coming up in the next 30 days. Every time you open that list, it repopulates with the nearest birthday showing first. Pretty cool.
There aren’t many downsides to the app other than it’s a bit of overkill for the purpose of creating groups of contacts. But on the other hand, the app is so well designed, it could replace the iPhone’s default Phone app for making everyday calls. It offers everything the iPhone’s Contacts app does, including the ability to create new iPhone contacts.
Groups 2’s ($4.99, iTunes link) quick, slick, and powerful interface makes it an excellent solution for creating groups of contacts on your iPhone and could even serve as a replacement for the iPhone’s default Contacts/Phone apps. The most obvious use of Groups is as a solution for mass emails, but it’s also a good way to organize and clean up your contacts using features like smart groups. Overall, we found the robustness of the app’s feature set to be impressive, and we highly recommend the app.
It can be tedious to set a photo for every contact on your iPhone. MyPhone+ for Facebook ($2.99, iTunes link) can make the process quick and easy for you. The app allows you to sync your iPhone contacts with their corresponding Facebook profile pictures, work info, addresses, and birthdays without overriding the existing profile pictures you have in your iPhone.
The application was easy to set up, and it was great to sync all of my iPhone contacts with their photos on Facebook. I was impressed of how well this application was able to sync together both my iPhone and Facebook contact lists even though I don’t have each person’s full name entered into my iPhone. If the application was unsure of a possible match, you are directed to select the contact that matches, or you can disregard that contact.
Additionally, the application allows you to make outgoing calls, and you have the option to import Facebook friends not already on your iPhone into your contact list. You can also set your favorite contacts within the application and view them in list form.
One big drawback is that the app does not allow you to sync email address or phone numbers from the contacts transferred from Facebook to your phone, you have to do that manually. This is not the fault of the application, as Facebook does not share phone numbers and email address with third-party applications. Rightfully so.
Also, if you want to keep the images and other information up-to-date, you will need to manually re-sync.
Overall, MyPhone+ for FaceBook is a solid application. If you are eager to fill in the information on your iPhone contact list that Facebook can supply, it is as great asset.
MyPhone+ for Facebook is a $2.99 download from the iTunes App Store.
Google has introduced Google Sync, a free service that syncs your Google Gmail contacts and calendar with your iPhone’s contacts and calendar. It’s a two-way sync, so any changes you make on your iPhone will sync with your Google account (Gmail contacts and calendar), and likewise, changes made on the computer will sync onto your iPhone. And it’s all done immediately and wirelessly through “the cloud.”
There’s some initial pain to setting it up, as it will delete all your iPhone contacts. To keep your iPhone contacts and calendar, you’ll have to transfer them to the Gmail services first. Apple offers a Mac-only tool called the Address Book to CSV Exporter that lets you export your Address Book contacts to Gmail. If anyone knows a solution for Windows iPhone users for contacts and calendar, please post in the comments.
Also, affected will be custom fields in the iPhone contacts as well as any ringtones you’ve applied to specific contacts. They will have to be reapplied to the contacts.
Instructions from Google on setting up Google Sync for iPhone
*Update 12-17-2009* The lite version of this app is no longer available. We recommend checking out our review of Groups, a similar app.
One of the deficiencies of the current iPhone software is the inability to create or edit groups of contacts. It’s also time consuming to send an email to a large group of people using the iPhone. ABContacts Lite (free, iTunes link) solves these problems. The app allows you to create groups and add or remove contacts from existing groups on the iPhone. All changes sync with the iPhone’s default Contacts app as well as Address Book on Macs.
Double tapping a group also allows for mass emailing. The app will ask if you want to enter all the addresses in the To: field or BCC: field (blind emails). It will then launch the iPhone’s Mail app with all the addresses inserted into the corresponding field.
ABContacts Lite is a free download in the iTunes App Store.
There is also a full version, ABContacts ($4.99, iTunes link), that offers more features including smart groups, which can be used to set conditions to automatically add contacts into certain groups. You can set rules for characteristics like company, city, or birthday. Check out the videos below for a closer (and longer winded) look at the full version.
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You can add prefixes (Dr, Mr, Mrs, Ms), suffixes (Jr, III), middle names, and other information to any iPhone contact. To do this, there’s a special option called Add Field. The option can be hard to find though. Here are instructions on how to find it and how to add prefixes, etc, to contacts:
1. Open the Contacts or Phone app:
*Update 11/15/2009* There are now several apps that let you create and edit groups on the iPhone. Some examples are Groups (iTunes link), YoContacts (iTunes link), and iGroupMail (iTunes link)
To create a group of contacts for your iPhone, you must use the program Address Book that ships with every Mac. To create a group, open the progam, Click File, and select New Group:
A group is made up of multiple contacts, and only those contacts appear on screen when you select the group. For example, you could label all your family contacts under a group called “Family.” A group like this could come in handy if you wanted to make calls to all your family members in an emergency or to make an announcement.
Groups created in the Mac program Address Book
For now, groups cannot be created using just the iPhone, nor can you remove a contact from a group. The only thing you can do with groups using the iPhone is create a new contact inside a group. For instance, if you navigate to the group “Work,” and create a new contact by tapping the “+” icon, that contact will be added to “Work.” Hopefully, the option to create and edit groups using the iPhone will appear in the future.
Helpful Link:
Discussion of groups at Apple.com.
This is a good tip for anyone with a cell phone, with a few special bonuses for iPhone users. Google offers a free alternative to cell provider’s regular 411 directory services, which often cost money to use. 1-800-GOOG-411 is an automated directory service that uses voice recognition to handle your queries and a robotic text-to-speech reader (which is sometimes hard to understand, but it’s free, so who’s complaining?) to deliver your data. Like other 411 services, Goog-411 gives you the phone number and address and offers to connect you.
What you may not know is that Goog 411 can send a text message that features a phone number, address, and a Google Maps link. To get the text message, simply say “details” and “text message” when prompted. A text message appears almost instantaneously (at least it does for me).
A tap on the phone number dials the number. A tap on the Google Maps link opens the address location in the Google Maps app. An arrow also appears next to the text message. Tap the arrow, and you can create a new contact with the information or add it to an existing one.
Of course, you could also use the Google Maps feature to search for the information as well, but sometimes Goog-411 is quicker if you only know a nearby intersection and don’t want to type out the long names, or if the EDGE network is acting up. In fact, I find that using Goog-411 is much faster than using the keyboard/Internet combination to search and utilize information.
In cardinal numbers, the 1-800-GOOG-411 number is:
1-800-466-4411
Check out the YouTube video below for an introduction to the service by the Google guys.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN0q8SvlQAk
For more Art of the iPhone tips and tricks, click here.
