Oh, man. If Microsoft thinks Facebook Home is bitin’ their style, they’re just going to love this.
Fliple is a new, free contacts manager app for iOS. It’s largely inspired (cough) by Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS.
It’s got the same white-on-black sans serif font. It’s got the little one-tap tiles that show a contact’s photo, only to slide away every once in a while to reveal their name. It’s got the same little circular icons. Every screen and icon even smoothly flips into place in a strikingly Windows Phone-esque way.
But don’t worry! While it leans heavily on Windows Phone’s graphical styling and borrows a concept or five, it’s not a one-to-one rip off of Windows Phone’s People Hub (the WP equivalent of the standard contacts app). If it were… I probably wouldn’t be writing about it. I’ve always kind of disliked the People Hub. And yet…
Maybe it’s because Fliple ditches Windows Phone’s whole sideway-sliding-UI thing that makes me feel like I’m always missing something juuuust off screen. Maybe it’s because, unlike the People Hub, Fliple doesn’t try to take on a bunch of social networking duties that are best left to dedicated apps.
Whatever the case, I’m liking Fliple. Enough so, actually, that I’ve found myself using it instead of iOS’ built-in contacts/phone app. I can’t say how long it’ll stay there, but it’s earned itself a test run for at least the next few days.
While it’s a contacts app and thus much of its functionality can be assumed (It has contacts! And… and profile pictures!), Fliple has a couple of features that I particularly like. Contacts can be organized into Groups, with each group getting its own icon that leads to a list of just those contacts. Each group’s screen has a compose button which, when tapped, allows you to blast a text or email out to the members of that group in one fell swoop. When you’re looking at your entire list of contacts, you can jump to a contact either through the standard alphabetical quick-scroll trick that iOS first made popular, or by narrowing down the options by punching in the letters on a slide-out T9 keypad.
Check out the two minute demo video below. You’ll know within about 15 seconds whether or not Fliple is for you:
You can find Fliple in the iOS App Store right here.
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