PhoneMagic is from Penticon Technologies and requires just under 200K of memory on your Palm OS device. After installing it via HotSync, you’ll see the Phone Magic icon in your application launcher of choice. Tap on it and you’ll see a screen that looks very similar to the built in Address application, with a few extra controls at the bottom of the screen. All of your contacts and phone numbers are there, along with the standard category picker at the top right hand corner. At the bottom is where all of the action is–those new buttons are where the power of PhoneMagic can be found.
The largest one, at the bottom left corner, is the shortcut to my favorite part of the application. Tap on the “abc” button and you’ll be taken to a screen with several large buttons on it, each with several letters of the alphabet. Tap on one or more of those buttons either with a stylus or your finger (they’re large enough to manipulate easily) and your list will instantly be narrowed down to the contact you’re looking for. Tap on the “pqrs” button and all of your contact that have one of those letters in the first, last, or company name field will pop up. Tap on another button to narrow the list, such as “ghi”, and the list is narrowed again. I have well over 700 contact in my database, and I found that I could locate ANY name with two or three taps. It even works for first/last name combinations. Tap on the “def” and “jkl” keys to find “Dean Jones” AND/OR “Elaine Smith.” It’s a very powerful system, and one I’ve come to depend on.
Once you see the name you’re interested in, tap on it to see the details for that contact. If there is only ONE name that works with the letters you’ve already entered, the details screen for that name will pop up immediately. I like the fact that the information on that screen is shown in a nice big font that’s easy to see– perfect for smartphone users. At the bottom of the details screen you’ll see several boxes– OK, Edit, New, an alarm icon, and Dial. Most of those are self-explanatory, but the alarm icon does deserve a bit more mention. PhoneMagic allows you to set alarms to remind yourself to call a contact. This is much quicker than actually going into the standard Datebook, selecting the time, and writing in a reminder. When you tap that alarm icon in PhoneMagic, the next screen shows you two pop up boxes, one that allows you to set the date (it defaults to the current day) and the time for the alarm. You can quickly enter a bit of reminder text, if you like, and then tap OK.
When the time comes the alarm will sound and you will remember the call you were supposed to make. Even better, when the alarm actually comes up, ALL of the phone numbers for that contact are right there, along with the option to snooze the alarm if you can’t make the call right then, as well as the ability to set another alarm for a future date and time. You can also see a list of all of the contacts you have set reminders for, as well as the date and time of each reminder, by tapping on the menu bar and choosing View Reminders on the “Record” menu. Nothing slips through the cracks, and you keep the promises that you make to yourself and others quickly and easily.
One other thing you may have noticed from the screenshots– the small checkbox at the top of the contact details listing that asks if you want to put a particular contact in the Recent List. This is a handy feature for those people you might want to call on a regular basis. Since it’s so easy to add and remove contact from the list, there are a variety of uses for it. It would be great for numbers that are important for a limited amount of time, such as the pediatrician when your kids are sick, or for a couple of coworkers who are helping you with a big project at work. Contacts added to the recent list are shown in red at the top of the contact list so that you can see and find them quickly.
The color for recent contacts, as well as all of the other colors that Phone Magic uses, are completely user-controllable. Simply choose Color Settings from the “Options” menu in order to control the screen background color, as well as the list text, and recent text colors. You can also choose not to use color at all if you uncheck the box at the top left corner of the screen. Font options are also available on that same “Options” menu, as well as the ability to set some of PhoneMagic’s preferences. This is the place where you can set your reminder settings (choose the alarm sound, how often it plays, the default length of snooze, etc.) as well as how you want to launch Phone Magic. You can use the Address button on your device, and you can also access the application by using the command bar (Palm OS 3.5 and higher) or the Phone Lookup feature.
Some of the other nifty features you’ll find in PhoneMagic is the ability to quickly duplicate an address (great for entering more than one contact in a company), the ability to beam an entire category or your business card, and a cool “tone dial” feature for dialing contacts which means you don’t even have to push those buttons anymore! Another nice touch is the ability to add virtual links to other applications such as the Datebook, other PIM apps like Agendus and DateBk5, Memo Pad, etc. When you’re adding a new appointment in the Datebook, planning a project in the Memo Pad, etc. you can use the command stroke to call up PhoneMagic, quickly select a contact, and then insert the contact name into that application. When you need more information, simply tap on the contact’s name so that the cursor is within the entry, and then use the command stroke to pop up Phone Magic again in order to see the details for that contact or dial. Tap OK on that screen to be taken right back to the application you were in originally. That little detail is very important to me because I have always been frustrated by applications that let you “link” or jump back and forth but never take you back where you were to begin with.
All in all I found PhoneMagic to be very powerful, easy to use, and practically indispensable– even if you already have another PIM application such as DateBk5 or Agendus. The smart lookup feature is simply the fastest possible way to find a contact, and I really like how the application works with the other software on my device. It’s reasonably priced at $19.95, and a full 30 day trial is available. You can try it out for yourself at the Phone Magic web site.
PocketGoddess Rating for PhoneMagic: 
