bContacts is an application that is supposed to help users organize business contacts and personal contacts by sorting them into groups and subgroups. Unfortunately, what sounds like a good idea in theory, falls flat.

bContacts allows users to organize contacts into groups using details such as business name, departments or other custom fields. The app has a search function so you can easily tap in a name or business and get the details you need.

This contact management app is not very intuitive, but luckily bContacts has a pretty easy to use help menu. Just like the iPhone’s built-it system, bContacts features one-touch dialing and emailing from the contact listing and if you click on the address you will also be transported to a Google Maps page.

bContacts syncs with MobileMe and will automatically update the next time you connect your phone to your computer and make updates in a program such as Outlook. bContacts allows you to drag and drop contacts between companies and subgroups which may be useful if you take the time to organize your contacts in this manner.

This application seems like it would be a practical utility application. But it comes up short in some areas. First, it doesn’t seem to be very stable. Of the ten times we tried to add contacts to a company or move between groups, repeatedly bContacs froze and turned off.

From the start screen you can only view contacts by business (unless you’ve entered the contact without the company name). Also, the search function doesn’t work as expected. You can’t search by typing in a detail like “contact name.” For instance, if your contacts are organized by business you can’t type in “Bob Jones” and expect Bob’s listing to appear.

You can add a picture for each contact but this feature is pretty useless for business contacts.

bContacts does get two points for syncing with MobileMe and Outlook but falls short of earning any other points. It doesn’t offer users a whole lot that the iPhone can’t do already. Most users aren’t going to spend the whopping $3.99 for an application that doesn’t even allow you to blue tooth or SMS contact information.

The app store is full of business contact applications that know how to provide users with the most bang for their buck. This just isn’t one of them.

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category: Misc Reference, Reference