FS Caller

Reviewed on 16th November 2004 by: Alex

Précis:

I don't have to tell you what your phone normally looks like when you call someone or someone calls you - basically, the display is rather bland, though functional. This is true even if you define thumbnails; because the displayed picture is tiiinnnnyy. Full Screen Caller by SymbianWare changes this, by allowing you to define a full-screen image to be displayed. Look at our full review below to see how this actually works, and to decide if you want this functionality. We have, and we like it!

Howto:

	The first step, if course, is to have a contact.
	Next, it might be a good idea to have a picture of your friend.
	Install FScaller, then open "Pictures."
	FSCaller usefully implements full address book searching, just like the usual Nokia Address book. Simply select your friend, then...
	Pick a picture for her. If you have an older picture (or have transferred a picture from another source) you can select picture; otherwise, selecting "From Camera" will allow you to take a quick snapshot.
	The changes are reflected by a small icon on the left of the name: Only contacts who have pictures added will have that icon.
	There are quite a few options to go through under settings; a full list exists on the SymbianWare page.
	For now, I'm basically interested in switching "show phone number' off, so you can't see it. :D
	This is what happens when someone calls! Much prettier, and you can tell more easily who is calling. Note that you will obviously need to have caller ID for this to work.

Review:

As noted above, we like the product. It is undeniably true that the end result is a more usable phone, especially if you have difficulty reading the default font. This is especially true because you can actually even change the font used in the display (i.e. the font of "iPod 3G" above); under settings / picture / font name (right at the bottom). There seem to be a variety of fonts automagically installed, some of which are bigger. It must also be noted that there is an alternative mode, "Caller Info" where up to 5 fields of a users infomation is displayed: you can select which fields these are, but they must be consistent across users. This may be useful to you, (see example below) but note that this will mean that the picture is not displayed, and hence it is not really pretty, even though the font changing ability remains.

However, we do have a couple of issues. First, the quality of the picture being displayed is not very good. We think that this is mainly due to the compression applied to the image when resizing it, and in any case the picture quality should be improved. Second, we would appreciate the ability to display at least a couple more fields in the black area below the picture; this is a feature which would meld the "Caller Info" mode with the basic "Picture" mode. However, the fact remains that FSCaller adds useful functionality. The question of whether that functionality is worthwhile - is up to you.

Score: 85%

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