This might sound redundant, but it takes us to a very important feature of Cobook: The app does not integrate with any online service and instead keeps your contacts stored locally. To start, the app allows you to choose from among only your iPhone contacts or from all of them, including the ones you create on the app itself. This is exactly what Cobook achieves, with a simple interface and different ways to access your contacts. Many apps out there are usually judged by the number of options and features they have, yet in the case of contacts apps, the simpler and more functional they are, the better. Let’s take a look at what makes it a great choice for anyone looking to replace the native iPhone Contacts app. Of course, every user has their own needs and tastes, but of all the free contacts apps that’s I’ve tried, Cobook has proved to be the best one so far. Because of that, there has been a flood of contact applications that have showed up on the App Store, but due to the vast amount of these available, it is not easy to choose the best one. One of the most glaring examples of this is Apple’s Contacts app, which besides some basic changes in its looks, has basically remained unaltered through the entire existence of Apple’s smartphone since it debuted in the market on 2007. There are exceptions to this of course, likeĪnd Safari, which have changed and improved to some degree, but overall, most of the core Apple set of native apps have remained the same. Dancis says a paid, premium service is arriving later next year, but he can’t provide any additional details at this time, only hinting that it will have “some very interesting features, especially for business.”īy launching on mobile, the company competes with other iOS address book replacement apps, including the newly arrived Addappt, as well as Plaxo, Brewster and Xobni’s Smartr, among others.One of my greatest gripes with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, is how little Apple’s set of native apps have evolved over time. The iOS app includes a dialer, too, so it can serve as an all-in-one replacement the default iOS application, if you so choose.Ĭobook, a bootstrapped startup from Latvia, has seen 300,000 downloads of its Mac app to date. While not as showy as something like CardFlick, for example, it has the benefit of being a bit faster (At least in my experience – CardFlick tended to lag for me in the past.) Users can also set up personal and work contact cards for themselves, which allows them an easy way to email their info to others. Meanwhile, the left-side navigation lets you filter your address book by All Contacts, iPhone Contacts, Facebook friends, etc., as well as by any pre-defined groups already present in your address book. At the bottom of an individual’s contact info are buttons that let you quickly switch between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or iPhone contact sections, as well as an option that lets you email the card to others. It even pulls in Facebook profile information like family members and interests. (Contacts are not stored on Cobook’s servers, we should note.) The app then begins syncing data between cloud and device, building a richer database of your contacts.Įach contact card is fleshed out with iPhone address book info, as well as profile pictures from social networks, status updates, latest tweets, links, and more. There’s a very quick setup process which only involves you authorizing your social accounts and allowing Cobook access to your iPhone’s contacts. “You can’t mess up your contact data by accidentally configuring it wrong.” As co-founder and CEO Kaspars Dancis explains, “we are making Cobook more approachable to mainstream audience – it has simpler config and UI,” he says. The iOS application is more straightforward, which is by design. Failing to do so could result in unintended duplicates, which can be a something of a mess. For example, you have to disable Google Contacts sync in your OS X Address Book (Contacts) before enabling it in Cobook’s desktop version. The mobile version also does away with some of the complexity of the previous app, which currently requires users to change various settings on their Mac before enabling select features. Like its desktop counterpart, the new app creates a unified address book by syncing your iPhone contacts with data from social networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Cobook, which has long offered a contact management app alternative to Mac OS X’s default address book, is today finally available on mobile with the debut of its iOS application.
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