Gary Fung’s Smart Dial is yet another take on the many different ways you can dial telephone numbers stored on your iPhone.

Smart Dial is as streamlined as they come. Instead of scrolling through your contacts list to find the name of the person you wish to call, launch Smart Dial and start spelling out his or her name using the number keypad. ABC is 2, DEF is 3 and so on.

The keypad is generously sized so it’s easy to tap out names and numbers. In addition to the standard keypad buttons, there’s a scroll down button to go through your list of contacts and a backspace button.

On the menu that runs across the bottom of the screen are icons for Keypad, Dialed, Contacts and Settings.

“Dialed” links to a log of previously made calls. “Contacts” links to the familiar Contacts list. “Settings” links to a screen where you can adjust the way the app searches for names, enter your default number, allow SMS in details and turn the keypad sound on and off.

Smart Dial works as designed and I didn’t encounter any problems. I think it would be useful to be able to scroll up, as well as down, using the keypad. There’s no speed dialing with this app, which I think is a serious omission. I believe the developer plans to address that in the next update.

To celebrate Smart Dial’s being featured on the front page of the App Store, Fung lowered the price of the app by 66 percent — from $1.50 to $0.99 — for 24 hours. That promo will likely be over by the time you see this review.

Even at $0.99, Smart Dialer has a lot of competition. Many apps have fancier features such as voice dialing and are free. Because of that, I’m not sure this one is worth paying for. There’s not much wrong with it. It’s just not better than anything else out there.

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category: Business, Worthwhile Apps