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Introduction:

Hot off the heels of the release of CalendarTouch 2.0 (reviewed here), SBSH has released the next  iteration of the software, CalendarTouch 2.1.  This is typical of SBSH.  They tend to be very aggressive in their release and development cycles.  Personally, it is something I really appreciate and respect.  SBSH is one of my favorite developers in the mobile software industry.

The review linked above provides a good overview of what Calendar Touch has to offer.  My intention here is not to repeat a full review of the software, but rather, to comment on some of the changes made to the software and my overall impression of it and the path the SBSH seems to be headed down with this program.

Features:

It is clear that with Calendar Touch 2.1, SBSH is firmly on the "finger friendly" bandwagon.  It’s a tactic I can certainly appreciate.  With the success of the iPhone and other Windows Mobile apps like SPB’s Mobile Shell, it is clear that many people prefer interacting with their devices via a finger friendly interface.

To my knowledge, SBSH’s Calendar Touch is the first dedicated calendar/task manager application to make a "groud up" effort to become finger friendly.  They have further refined their approach by removing the softkeys at the bottom of their user interface and replacing them with their custom interface (shown right).  Fans of the old softkeys will be happy to learn that the leftmost and rightmost icons correspond to the function of the old softkeys, so, functionality hasn’t been removed.  The 3 new icons in the middle offer some new functionality.

The left arrow and right arrow icon move you through one date increment.  In month view, they move you a month, in week view, they move you a week, etc.  The middle icon brings up the date picker (shown left).  The date picker is a really handy tool that is well implemented.  It even looks nice.  Note that the center button on this screen takes you to today’s date, meaning you are never more than two taps away from today.  Very nice.

Going further into the interface, you will find that SBSH has added a number of new "touchable" parts to the software.  For instance, the settings menu now comes up as a nice looking touchable list like this:

Task sort brings up another slick menu:

And you can easily group things with the grouping menu:

Other finger friendly features are present too, such as kinetic list scrolling.  Calendar Touch also incorporates a number of gestures to scroll through your calendar quickly.  All these new features did increase the memory footprint a bit.  Calendar Touch 2.0 ran at 237k of memory on my WM6.1 Tilt.  Calendar Touch 2.1 bumped up to 250k.

Things I liked:

All in all, my favorite thing about Calendar Touch is where the program is obviously headed.  It is clear that SBSH has staked their claim to touchable calendaring/task management software and they are off and running.  The interface enhancements are all welcome changes and well implemented.  I especially like SBSH’s effort towards an aesthetically pleasing interface.  It’s nice to work with something that offers all the features you need that looks nice at the same time.

Things I didn’t like:

There are a few things that struck me as odd or annoying.  Working with category filters is still a bit flaky.  They don’t always apply themselves properly when switching from one filter to another.  For some reason, if you create a new item (task or appointment) while a filter is on, the new item will default to having ALL of the categories displayed in the current filter.  So, for instance, I have a "work" filter that shows all appointments relating to categories "Project X", "Project Y" and "Project Z".  Any new items would be created with all 3 of those categories already applied and I would have to go in and de-select the ones I didn’t want.  I don’t know if that behavior is by design or a bug, but, I found it really annoying.

Also, there is a bit of redundancy in the interface.  For instance, on the week view (shown right), swiping your thumb across the screen moves you one week in either direction, depending on direction of swipe.  That is the exact same functionality added by the two arrow buttons in the new touch bar at the bottom.  Both work well…  but both aren’t needed.  My vote would be to do away with the arrows in the touch bar and use the screen space for something else…  I’ll leave it to the SBSH guys to decide what.

Overall Thoughts:

Calendar Touch is my default calendar app, so, I suppose that means I like it.  I’m very interested to see where SBSH will go in the future with this application.  They have hinted that they intend to go deeper and deeper into the interface such that the whole thing becomes finger friendly.  What I hope that means is that the current "create item" screen gets the "touchable" makeover next.  As you can see, once you get that deep into the interface, things are still pretty small and more stylus oriented. 

Oddly though, buried underneath this page there are a few places where SBSH has already added touchable interfaces.  For instance, the ‘browse’ button on the time portions of the screen bring up this slick time selector interface.  It works quite well.  I’d love to see this sort of treatment applied to the create/edit item screens.  Until then, the concept behind the software will feel incomplete.  The good news, of course, is that SBSH isn’t exactly known for resting on their laurels.  I have no doubt that their programmers are already planning this sort of development.  I’m anxious to see how it turns out.  At the price point of $25, they are getting close to competing with the Agenda Fusions and PocketInformant’s of the world.  Both of those application have very loyal fanbases, so, it will be interesting to see if the touch-centric design of Calendar Touch can lure a few of them away.  If SBSH decides to start offering a bundle of Calendar Touch with Contact Breeze (closely matching the functionality of the full featured PIM replacements), then a shot will have been fired across the bow of both PocketInformant and Agenda Fusion that SBSH fully intends to enter that space.

And competition is always a good thing!!

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