Since a long time, I have been looking for a PIM that would be efficient enough to store all my tasks and appointments but would be simple enough so that anyone can easily use it. My dream came true with SBSH Calendar Touch. This superbly designed application follows the latest trend: making everything finger-friendly so that you don’t have to take the stylus out ever while using it. Thus, appropriately using the suffix “Touch”
INSTALLATION AND REGISTRATION
Calendar Touch can be installed through your PC with the ‘exe’ or you can directly download the cab to your Windows Mobile device. This application takes up around 2.5 Mb of storage. It comes with a fully functional 12 day trial.
Right after installation, you are asked if you would like to assign the Calender Touch to one of the Today’s soft keys
Usage
The SBSH Calender Touch has taken it’s inspiration from it’s Smartphone(WM standard) counterpart, SBSH Papyrus(reviewed here). The SBSH Calender Touch provides six useful views, which are all big enough to be selected by fingers.
*all screenshots used in this review are VGA. Just click on the screenshots to see the actual resolution screenshot
1. DAILY
This mode displays your appointments and tasks for a single day. Tap on the checkbox next to any of the task to mark it as completed. To view the details of any task or appointment just tap on it.
2. WEEKLY
This mode displays your tasks and appointments for the current week. The tasks and appointments in red represent a busy status and the ones in blue represent normal. Just tap on the thin strip on the extreme left of the screen, and you can change the week that you would like to view.
3. MONTHLY
This view displays a calendar for the current month which shows your upcoming events for the current month. Tap on the day you want to view and you can see the details of events for that particular day at the bottom. There is a timeline next to every day on the calendar. The days with tasks or appointments have a blue bar in the timeline adjacent to them, representing how your day is allocated.
4. LIST
This mode displays the whole list of your tasks and appointments for a specified period, which you can modify from the settings. Appointments in red represent busy status while those in blue mean they are of normal status.
5. TASKS
This view displays all your tasks. Scroll down to any task to view it at the bottom of the screen. Or you can tap on it to open it and view its details.
6. SEARCH
This, I personally found, is one of the most useful features of Calendar Touch. Just type in the word you want to be searched and press enter. You will find a list of tasks and appointments containing the word. From the settings, you can choose if you want to search for tasks or appointments or both. In the screenshot below, I searched for the word ‘corner’.
CREATING ENTRIES
From the options in daily, weekly and monthly view and the list view, you can create both a new task or a new appointment. From the options in tasks view, you can create a new task. When you tap on a new task or appointment, a blank form appears which you need to fill up to create the new entry. In the screenshot below, I chose to create a new appointment :
Clicking “…” would let you do some extended text entry. You can choose a full screen editor, where you can enter text in full screen. Choosing 2nd option will give you a list of predefined words, which are helpful for quick data entry. You can also associate a contact.
In the new entry, you can choose the start and end time and date, mark it as regular or busy, whether it occurs once or is of recurring nature, the number of attendees and who are they. The entry of date and time is made very finger friendly. The two screenshots given below explains it better.
Gestures!
The SBSH Calender Touch supports gestures too. Unlike many other windows mobile applications, they actually work and are USEFUL.
Swiping your finger horizontally and without releasing your finger from the screen will bring up an animated date-picker, which SBSH refers to as Touch-Date-Spinner. Very sleek indeed!
Swiping the finger horizontally in left/right direction will move you prev/next day. Also, swiping it upwards will move you to today’s date and swiping it downwards will pop up a Touch-Date-Picker control
SETTINGS
The settings of Calendar Touch is quite impressive as the application can be customized to a large extent.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the settings for every category is properly categorized. So, you can change the settings of every item or view individually.
FILTERS
This is one of the features of Calendar Touch which I feel would be used by most frequently by most of its users. You can create your own filters, and apply them.
To create your own filter, just tap on ‘manage filters’ and you will be taken to a screen like :
You can also assign icons to the categories. SBSH has bundled high quality icons with it.
CONCLUSION
A very useful and simple application which is must have for people who like to keep themselves organized and want a simple application which would help them achieve that.
PROS AND CONS
PROS
- Very simple application which is easy to use.
- An option to create your own filters.
- A great calendar view.
- All the appointments and tasks can be viewed on a single screen in the list view.
- Highly customizable.
- Great support via SBSH forums
CONS
- There is no stop button in the “search” window. You have to wait for the search to get over
The SBSH Calender Touch is priced at $24.95 and can be purchased from their official website.
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