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.
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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.