payalba MyCallLog Review

One of the missing features in the Treo 680 smartphone is a decent call log. You can use the standard one to verify when certain calls where made, received, or missed but there is no way to see the duration nor to have some basic overview reports. Some people need to know, for example, how many calls they made with a certain person during a month, and how long to declare this as billable time for the project they are working on.

There are various third party tools available filling this gap either on the device or the desktop side (some covering both) but there is also a freeware alternative provided by payalba.

MyCallLog was created primarily for the Treo 680, but should work on any Palm OS 5 Treo, according to the installation requirements.

Many Different Views

MyCallLog has eight views. Each of these has, in most cases, the ability to filter categories of calls (in, out, missed) or has the ability to apply additional filtering like duration, date, time, local or roaming.

You can also specify in each of the views the start and end time of the period to be analyzed.

Normal View

First there is the normal call log; this is a simple list of all calls made (in, out, missed). From this view all details can be seen by selecting a call. It is also possible to select a contact and start composing a message or start dialing.

The next two views provide user specific overviews for duration and frequency. You can see how long or how many times you have called all of your listed contacts or with one contact in particular.

Monthly View with Frequency

Following this are two views providing similar information but on a monthly basis. You can see how long and how many times you used your phone during a certain month.

The General view provides a one screen overview of duration and frequency of calls split over two tables. The columns define the split between total, local, and roaming calls, while the rows represent total, incoming, missed, and outgoing calls.

General View

Details/User or Details/Month give you a similar view as General but here you can filter for one specific Contact or month.

Some Drawbacks

MyCallLog requires some processing to calculate all the totals, and this is done every time the application is launched. So even when no new calls were processed, every launch of MyCallLog will result in this calculation being done.

This can be a bit annoying, especially when the call log database becomes bigger and bigger. My current database with4 months of calls contains 1,181 events in total and takes a bit more then 10 seconds to be processed.

MyCallLog has a surprisingly small number of configuration options. You can specify the foreground and background color for each even or odd row to increase visibility, and that is it. Nothing more.

As far as I could see there are only a few minor bugs in this program. Apart from an initial crash I had at first installation, I did not encounter a single problem later on with stability.

Some screens still show some French left-overs from the translation (mainly accented characters), but I classify that under minor cosmetic topic.

One point which is to be taken into account is the lack of ability to trim down the call log database. It simply grows and grows as you use your device as a phone. After some months this slowly gets noticeable when doing a HotSync.

Fortunately the standard call log database is being used, which on one hand makes it very strange the internal level of detail is not displayed by the standard Call Log feature that comes with the smartphone (esp. duration). On the other hand, it means the purge feature provided by your Treo can be used to compensate for the lack of this feature within MyCallLog.

But this is limited, to say the least. The only options are older then 1 week/1 month/2 months, all except last 10, or all. It would be nice if a wider range of options was included in MyCallLog as well as an option to define a cut-off date.

Disclaimer: Do not show the results of MyCallLog to your partner when you know she/he might be sensitive to knowing she/he is not the one being called the most. Failure to do so may result in unpleasant consequences. Do not come back telling me you weren't warned.

Conclusion

Overall I give this application a 4.5 out of 5 stars, with the only drawback for me being the reprocessing of data every time the app is launched.

MyCallLog can be downloaded (ZIP) for free from the payalba web site.