You may think that complaining about having too many people in your address book is acting a little, how can we say this, spoiled?! However, with the iPhone’s capacity to hold massive amounts of contact details, the potential for duplicate names, email addresses, or phone numbers can create a really annoying problem. This is where Contacts Duster Pro steps in.
Positing itself as the first ever mobile app to present an iPhone’s contacts in graph form, this handy app allows you to view, merge and purge multiple entries by presenting you with a full report of your contacts and where the problem areas may be. So, let’s say that I know a few John Smiths (who doesn’t?!); Contacts Duster will separate all of the John Smiths, along with all of my other contacts and show me that they are separate contacts. However, if I have one particular John Smith saved under my ‘Family’, ‘Work, ‘School’ and ‘Clients’ databases, Contacts Duster will offer to get rid of the ‘Zombies’, i.e. purge any unwanted contacts, freeing your phone up so that when you want to go for a pint with John, you know exactly which one to call.
The way that an iPhone can collect so many ‘Zombies’ is by importing contacts from social media sites such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, syncing with other iDevices or by joining devices under the iCloud; it’s very easy for your iPhone to just start spitting out repeat contacts. Anyone who uses any of these methods for storing their contacts will know exactly what I’m talking about and will see this app as a mini saviour of their precious free time.
My favourite feature of the app is the ‘graph format’; you can actually see what percentage of your contacts are ‘Clean’, ‘Duplicates’ or ‘Zombies’ and then, with a simple flick of your thumb, you can ‘Auto Dust’ thousands of contacts, separating the useful wheat from the useless chaff.
Summary
Whilst this app may not be as exciting as a gaming app, it is a lot more useful to anyone who wants to keep their address book in order; for the sake of a couple of bucks, you can save an infinite amount of time trawling through your address book and checking contacts for duplicates…totally worth it, in my opinion.
Pros
- The app is very easy to use and particularly intuitive when it comes to the act of ‘Dusting’.
- The reduced clutter will appeal to anybody who has even the slightest OCD about arranging their iPhone’s address book.
- The in-app backup/restore function gives a safety net to those who are worried about losing a special number.
Room For Improvement
More of a warning really, but if you have a jailbroken iDevice, you should ensure that you’ve backed up your contacts using iTunes/iCloud before you start dusting.
