For example, from a contact you can see a list of calls in the log that were made to or from just that contact. From the calls log you can go directly to a contact to quickly find other information about them.

In another example, If a contact lists the full name of a spouse or child that is also the name of a contact in your database, you can move directly from one to the other with just a few keystrokes.

The tabbed approach makes it easy to select a contact and then move through the various tabs to obtain detailed information from the database. The tabs related directly to a contact are organized in order of importance, beginning with a list of phone numbers and email addresses. This is followed by postal addresses, text notes, sundry (which contains such details as spouse, parents, birthday, anniversary, job title, and company name), Picture ID, and Groups. To return to the primary tab (listing the names of your contacts) you can press the Back softkey at any time.

ContactsEx instead uses a search mechanism based on the T9 concept. T9 is a predictive text input scheme that allows words to be typed by just pressing a key once, regardless of how many individual letters are represented on that key. We could spell the name Steve by pressing 78383. ContactsEx works in the same way, allowing fast typing of virtually any name in your contacts list by pressing just one key per letter. As the various keys are pressed, the list of names is reduced to only those matching the current T9 keys.

For users of QWERTY devices, the search works in much the same way, but you just press a series of letters or symbols to spell out the contact they are searching for. Although this lacks the leap forward in convenience offered to users of non-QWERTY devices, it still provides the list-reduction feature noted above.

If you need a more powerful search, ContactsEx also allows you to perform substring searches through every single field in the contacts database. If you remembered that the contact you were looking for lived on Oak Street for example, you could perform a search for "Oak" and see a list of contacts containing that word. You might also remember that you included a text note saying "Sells Cars" and you could search for that. In addition to text searches, you can also search based on partial phone numbers. For example, you might remember the phone number you are looking for ends with 7132.

All search engines in ContactsEx treat accented characters as though they were non-accented, allowing easy searches without needing to know what accents are used. For example, the word café can be found by just searching for cafe.

The sort order information is stored in a specially-formatted invisible text note in the contact. This ensures that the information survives transfers to and from a synchronization program. ContactsEx knows not to display these specially-formatted fields in the notes tab, and so the only time you ever see them is when looking at the contact using the native contacts manager.

For example, on plans without included long distance the per-minute rate is usually much higher than what you pay through a 3rd party service. On my service for example I am charged 30 cents per minute for long distance, but a 3rd party long distance service called YAK Cell charges me just 3.5 cents per minute and there is also a lower-quality service that offers free calls to many different cities across Canada. To use either of these service I just call a local access number, and then dial the person I wish to reach when I hear an artificial dial tone.

The above sounds simple enough, but the native S60 operating system doesn't provide a way to automate this process. ContactsEx does. You simply setup the calling card number in advance, and then you can dial through it automatically by just pressing and holding the TALK button instead of quickly pressing and releasing it as you usually do. As a bonus, the call log knows what these types of calls look like and it displays them as a call to the destination phone number and not to the calling card service (which the native call log would do).

But just because something is difficult, doesn't meant it shouldn't be done. ContactsEx tackles the massive problem of worldwide number formatting by providing a database base that defines formats based on the country code and the number of digits in the number. The database is fully customizable, giving the user the opportunity to format phone number exactly the way they want them.

Over time I will try to pre-load this database with as many formats as I can find, but for the time being I personally know very few.

Crops aren't just simple cut-outs of the image as seen on the screen, but rather cut-outs from the original high-resolution image that are then resized using high-quality bi-cubic resampling. You can crop a crop as many times over as is required to find just the right portion of the picture you want, but the quality stays high because each crop is always resampled from the original full-resolution image.

Once you've chosen the picture you can use a swath of editing tools to position the name and phone number (or the name and label) information on the screen. You can also set anchor points, change the font size,  select the color of the text for each item, provide backgrounds, and set custom name text (meaning the text that appears on the Picture ID doesn't have to be the same as the contacts formal name).

Default images and formats can be setup for all contacts that don't have their own custom photograph, and you can define a separate image and format for incoming calls that aren't in your phonebook. For unknown callers, ContactsEx gets their name from the Name ID information sent by your cell phone provide (if you subscribe to this service).

Because of these 4 major weaknesses, the information provided by the native airtime counter is all but completely useless to you. What you'd really like is a counter that self-resets at the beginning of your billing period, knows the difference between free and billable calls, rounds up to the nearest minute if applicable, and can display your usage broken up into weekday, evenings, and weekend minutes. ContactsEx can do all that once you provide it with details about your billing cycle and when evenings and weekends begin and end on your plan. Now you can know in advance how much of your bucket of minutes you've consumed before you get charged for overage.

ContactsEx solves that problem, and it goes on to provide you with separate WiFi usage stats along with the packet data usage stats (with the native S60 data usage log does not). In addition, you can tell the program how much data you get each month and the data usage log will tell you what percentage of that bucket of data you've used up.

ContactsEx raises Groups out of obscurity and makes them easy to use. This begins with the Groups tab, which immediately shows you which groups the current contact belongs to. Adding or removing that contact from groups is as simple as scrolling through the group names pressing the OK (select) button. You can bulk-assign contacts to a specific group by activating a function where you just scroll through your contacts (with the aid of the handy T9-search functionality) and then add or remove users by pressing the OK button.

The S60 operating system allows emails and text messages to be sent to all members of a Group, but like almost everything else concerning Groups, they make it a pest to use. For example, when sending a text message to each member of a group you will be prompted to select the phone number for each contact that has more than one number (which for many of us is ALL of them). When sending an email to each member of a group you'll have to individually select which of multiple email addresses you want, and for each group member with no assigned email addresses you'll have to suffer through an individual warning message. After going through 10 or 15 such warning messages, the process can become extremely tedious.

ContactsEx deals with these problem very gracefully. First off, it doesn't bother to warn you that a contact in the group doesn't have an email address or phone number, since knowing that each and every time you attempt to send a message is pointless and annoying. Each contact has a default phone number and a default email address, which is used for sending messages to a group. If the default number for a contact isn't identified as a cell phone however, the program will unobtrusively search for the first phone number that is a cell phone, thus ensuring that the number used in a SMS can actually receive it.

ContactsEx provides auto-answer functionality, which is setup on the a profile-by-profile basis. That means you can select which profiles the auto-answer functionality works for, and you can independently set the delay-before-answer time for each applicable profile.

In addition to the above, the native contacts manager allows the label of each field to be edited, but it doesn't make this easy, nor does it allow you to us T9 input (as noted previously). For that reason, many people chose to leave most labels alone in their default state, which only makes searching for information all that more difficult.

ContactsEx includes the label as part of each input dialog, which always brings together the various fields that make up a single contact element (such as an address or phone number). This collecting together of fields, including the label, promotes the judicious use of accurate labeling throughout all contacts.

For example, you know your friend's office number is 416-555-3899, but to connect directly to their extension you must tone-dial 5712 so that the automatic front-end at the office can redirect your call. Subsequently you quickly learn that you can enter your friend's office number in the phonebook as:

4165553899p5712

The "p" symbol tells the phone to pause for a couple of seconds after the call has been answered, and then send 5712 as touchtones.

This is all very convenient, but the above mess doesn't look much like a phone number. ContactsEx handles this by displaying only the phone number part of the digits for normal presentation. When the phone number is edited however, the touchtone part is gathered in a separate editbox from the phone number.

For example, the Phone Numbers & Emails tab can display information in a 1-line-per-item format, or a 2-lines-per-item format. The 1-line format shows the greatest number of items on the screen at one time, but at the expense of showing all pertinent information. The 2-line format uses up more space per items, but also shows the related phone number or email address.

The same 1-line or 2-line format can be applied to the Call Log tab. In 1-line mode just the name (or number, if the call was to or from a number not in the phonebook) is displayed next to the type icon. In 2-line mode the date, time, and duration of the calls is also displayed.

You also get a choice of 4 different contact presentation modes in the call log. You can display just raw phone numbers, you can display the contact name (if applicable), you can display the name and the label of the phone number used (I.E. "Home", "Cell", "Office" etc), or you can display the name and label with an icon denoting the type of number.

You get a plethora of display formats with the call log, beginning with the choice of 1-line-per-entry or 2-lines-per-entry. In either case, you can choose between 4 different presentation modes: contact name only (if available); phone number only; contact name and the label of the phone number in question; or contact name and an icon representing the phone number type.

The log can also be scrolled quickly by holding down the shift key (which on non-QWERTY phones is the key that has an icon of a pencil on it, or the # key for phones without a pencil key). When the shift key is held down, the scroll jumps by one full day so you can quickly locate any day of the previous 30 days.

The call log is also integrated with the contacts, allowing you go directly from any call log entry to the contact it presents.

The backup function of ContactsEx creates a folder on your removable memory card, or if your phone doesn't have one it uses the built-in mass storage memory, or if you don't have either of those it used the publicly-accessible Data folder on Drive C (the phone memory). This folder containers numerous files and two subfolders containing the Picture ID images. Once a backup is created you can use PC Suite to copy the folder's contents onto your PC for safe keeping.

Each time a backup is performed a new folder is created with a name synthesized from the current date and time, thus making it easy to find a backup from a specific time if you allow multiple backups to collect in your phone.

When you restore your contacts database using ContactsEx you are ASSURED that every single piece of data used by ContactsEx is put back. All sort-orders are retained, all field labels are restored, all Picture IDs are recovered, and you have the choice of how much of the configuration is recovered. You can recover as much of the configuration as is needed by the contacts, or you can restore ALL of your configuration settings.