PhoneView (formerly MegaPhone, formerly Phone Drive) is the simplest way we’ve tested so far to access all the files, notes, music, videos, photos, contacts, call logs and sms messages. In short, it’s a cool drag-n-drop tool to access all the data on your iPhone or iPod touch.

The iPhone has a lot of neat apps for working and playing on-the-go. And, it has a pretty good system built-in for syncing contacts, calendars, photos, apps and music. While this is enough for most users, the built-in system doesn’t have everything.

PhoneView is the next step for users that are ready to delve deeper into the syncing process of their iPhone or iPod touch. In addition — and this is the feature many iPhone owners are clamoring for — PhoneView lets users shuffle documents by using their iPhone as a storage device.

Once installed, getting started with PhoneView is easy. Launch the app to get a Finder window. On the left of the window is a list of all the areas of iPhone you now have access to.

Disk: for using iPhone as a storage device.

Contacts: browse or search the info for your contacts — name, email, phone number. You can’t edit individual contact files, but you can export them as vcards for use in another program.

Notes: edit notes you’ve already written, delete notes, write new ones or create notes from a variety of sources such as plain-text, RTF, Word, PDF or HTML files. When creating notes you not only have your choice of fonts, but can also use bold, italic, and adjust text size. Sweet!

Call Log: browse your call history, archive or export your call log.

SMS: the same browsing, archive and export capabilities as found in the Call Log with the additional ability to print selected SMS messages. I can think of lots of reasons to love this feature.

iTunes (Music, TV Shows, Video, Audiobooks, Podcasts): access items from your iTunes library to copy to your desktop machine or play directly from PhoneView.

Photos: copy iPhone photos or iPhoto albums from your device to another computer.

PhoneView has a heady list of features for an application that is so surprisingly simple to use. There are some downsides though. PhoneView is Mac-only software. Also, you must have PhoneView installed on each Mac that you want to use with your iPhone or iPod touch. So you’ll need to install it at home, at work, and even on your laptop.

PhoneView is available from the Ecamm Web site, where you can also download a free demo of PhoneView.

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category: Gear & Accessories