Review: Papyrus 2.0 For Smartphones
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
In a world of Windows Mobile, most of the focus lately has been on all of the new Windows Mobile Professional devices and the software that is dressing up the dated OS. It is nice to see that our friends over that SBSH Mobile Software are still keeping the Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) users in mind with their latest release of Papyrus 2.0 for Smarphones. I have been using Papyrus 2.0 for the past few weeks on my Samsung Blackjack 2. I consider myself a power user when it comes to my PIM (Personal Information Management) software. I have been a user of Agenda One and Pocket Informant on both Windows Mobile platforms, so I have certain expectations when it comes to this category of software. I want a PIM to make it easy for me to input, edit, and delete appointments or tasks, while also giving me enough features to customize my schedule to the way I live it. Can Papyrus 2.0 keep up with my hectic schedule without making me stutter as I learn a new piece of software? Keep reading to find out.
Installation
There are two ways that you can install Papyrus 2.0. Like most developers, SBSH provides both a desktop installer and a .cab installer so that you can load the software directly on your device without using a computer at all. I prefer the latter approach because I rarely attach my phone to a computer. The install size for Papyrus 2.0 is 1663 KB, which is less than both Agenda One and Pocket Informant. This makes it a relatively small footprint, so it should be easy to install this into your Smartphone’s memory.
During the installation, you are given an option to choose your language and also if you want Papyrus to be your default PIM and take over your PIM shortcuts.
One thing you might notice in the dialog above is that it will take over your Calendar and Tasks shortcuts. It makes no mention of Contacts because Papyrus 2.0 does not include a Contacts application. This is one feature that I was surprised to be missing since the Contacts are part of the PIM package of Windows Mobile Standard, but I also find that the Contacts application that is built into Windows Mobile Standard to be good enough for my needs. This is one area that I still believe that Windows Mobile Standard is better than Windows Mobile Professional as far as the out-of-box experience goes, especially on devices with a QWERTY keyboard.
The Views
The layout in Papyrus 2.0 is a complete redesign, and I really think it looks fantastic. You can click on your left soft-key from any of the views and it will take you to the View selector. It includes logical icons that help see what you are selecting on even the smallest screen.
Daily View
The Daily view gives you the details of your day including appointments and active tasks. You can choose to show or hide completed tasks in the settings, which is an option I always choose. When you are viewing the current day, it will cross out the text of an appointment that have already passed. Overdue tasks are highlighted in red by default, while the current active tasks are blue. You are also given the option to customize the colors in the Settings.
In each of the views, you are able to select the “Go To…” option from the Menu. Again, Papyrus 2.0 uses large and logical icons to represent each view. I really appreciate this because it makes it easy to use on the small display on my Blackjack 2.
If you hit the action button, it then takes you to the Papyrus 2.0 date selection screen. This screen uses that Pop-Out feature to display the date you want to select.
List View
The List view gives you a summary of your week. It shows the start time and first line of an appointment. It also color codes the timeline on the left according to your category settings. It will show all-day appointments at the top of the day, followed by the daily appointments, and tasks last. You can see on the right of each entry, it shows category icon, an alarm indicator icon and a recurrence icon. There are options with the List view that will allow you to customize this view which include showing more than just a single line of text, show the location, show or hide empty days, enable the Pop-Out effect, and more.
Weekly View
The Weekly view shows one of the really impressive new features in Papyrus 2.0, called the Pop-Out features. As you can see, this zooms in on the selected day so that it shows more than what is in the original rectangle. This feature can be enabled and disabled in the settings for each view. I am a huge fan of this feature because it clearly allows you to see what day is selected. I have used PIMs before that have just used one of the many colors in their color palette to show the day that is selected and sometimes have a hard time knowing what I am looking for. I would imagine that this would also help the color-blind Smartphone users out there as well. The Weekly view shows the top 5 items for weekdays and 3 items for weekends when the day is selected with the Pop-Out feature.
One feature that I would really like to see here, is the ability to scroll down the day when you have it selected. The feature is available in the Month view, so I would imagine it would be possible to implement on this view as well. Yes, I know that you can just select the day and it will take you to the daily view, but it if you can do it in the Monthly view, why not be able to do it in the Weekly view?
Monthly View
The Monthly view shows you each month with a timeline on each that that is color coded based on your category colors. It uses the Pop-Out feature to easily show you which day is selected. One of the other features about this view that I love is the fact that you can use your keyboard keys to move around. Using the 0 key, will scroll the day view on the right of the view down, and 8 will scroll it back up. I hope that this feature can be implemented in the Weekly view in a future release. I believe the fact that you can move around using hotkeys makes this the most usable view.
Task View
The Task view does what you would expect it to do, displays your tasks. The Menu for the Tasks view lets you sort the tasks by due date, start date, priority, subject, etc. There is also a Menu option for Views, which is like a sub-view for Tasks. You can narrow the view down to overdue, active, or completed tasks along with tasks based on the due date.
When you click on the task, you will get a detailed view of the task. From here, you can edit the task, or close it and go back to the previous view. One thing that I really think is missing here is the ability to mark the task complete. I see the check box and the fact that it is active, but I often want to see all of the details of a task to make sure I have completed everything that I have put in the notes before I mark it complete. On a Windows Mobile Professional device, I would be able to click on the check-box in this view, so adding an option to mark it complete for the non-touch screen devices should be added as well.
Search View
You can access the Search view in multiple ways. When you go to the View selector, there is an option for Search. There is also a Menu option in all of the views that takes you to the same Search view. I think that if SBSH ever chooses to add a Contacts view to Papyrus 2.0, they can easily ditch the Search view on the View selector since it is a bit redundant. I can understand why it is in both places since it is one of their main new features, but I could live with only going to the Menu to access this option.
Item Creation
Viewing the information is a huge part of a PIM, but creating new items quickly is just as important. With Papyrus 2.0, the dialogs to create new items were completely redesigned.
These dialog boxes were created to be able to navigate through easily without a touch screen. On the Subject, location, and Note fields, you can click your action button and it will take you to the “Extended Text Entry” screen. This screen will allow you to insert a “MyText” field. This is basically a pre-defined phrase. The list can be edited to add your most used phrases to speed up input.
Just because there is no Contact view, does not mean that Papyrus forgot about your contacts. You can also insert a contact’s name or name and phone number. I think for the location field, you should be able to add the contacts address, but it only allows you to add the name or name and phone number there as well.
The Full Screen Editor allows you to see the selected field line by line if you want to enter a large amount of information. This is very handy if you like to input a full address in the Location field or a lot of information in the Notes field.
When you navigate to the date or time fields, you can activate a detailed date or time selector using your action key. The date selector is the same one used in the “Go To…” option. The time selector allows you to easily select the time using your navigation buttons if you do not feel like typing the time in directly in the field. The one gripe I have about the time selector is that I cannot figure out if there is a way to go back after you move on from the hour, minutes, or AM-PM. I have a bad habit of selecting the correct time, but the wrong AM-PM selection. The only way I have found to correct this is to go back into the time selector and enter through each option again.
You can also easily choose if you want to create a regular timed event or an all day event. The reminder selection allows you to select no reminder, default reminder options, or a custom reminder. Choosing custom reminder inserts another field once you go back to the main creation screen. This screen lets you set the exact number of days, hours, and minutes before the appointment starts to remind you.
You have the option to set privacy options by selecting that an appointment is confidential. You then select how you want to book your time during the appointment; free, tentative, busy, or out of office. The recurrence field is next and like the reminders, it lets you select between no recurrence (Occurs Once), default recurrence options like “Every Monday” or “Day 22 of Every Month”, or you can select “Custom Recurring Pattern…”. If you select the custom recurrence option, you have a new field that allows you to set the custom recurrence shown above. This is by far my most used option because I have things that need to be done Monday through Friday only.
There is a custom screen to allow you to select categories to assign to your appointment. You can click on Options and it will allow you to set and remove color or icons from each category. If you type in a new category at the top, there is an option to add the new category. The colors and icons selected here will display in the various views for any item that is assigned to the category.
On the appointment creation, you can also select Attendee(s) for the appointment. Papyrus 2.0 supports email notifications if you have the contact’s email address included. This helps you so that you do not have to rely on your desktop to send out notifications if you have to make changes to an appointment.
The Task creation shares many of the same fields with the Appointment creation with the addition of a Priority field. This allows you to flag a task for low, normal, or high priority. Papyrus 2.0 does not include the Franklin-Covey priority system of letters and numbers. To be honest, I have never used that feature, so it is not something I miss.
Item Editing
Another feature that shows the developer’s dedication to a pleasant user experience is the redesigned Occurrence screen. If you choose to edit or delete a recurring appointment or task, you are greeted with a nicely designed screen that uses graphics along with text to help you select the option you want to edit/delete.
Settings
There are settings for each view as well as general application settings and color settings. I am not going into detail about every setting, but I wanted to mention something about the Settings that I really like. When you click on the settings option in the Menu, it automatically highlights the current view that you are in. As seen in the picture above, I selected the Settings option from the Menu while I was in the Weekly view. This is one of the small details that shows that the developers were thinking about the user experience when they created this new interface.
Summary
Things I Like:
- Attractive user interface
- Custom recurrence for tasks and appointments
- Pop-Up feature maximizes limited screen real estate
- Dialog boxes make it easy to tell what each option is no matter what your screen size may be
- Many enhancements allow quick item creation and editing
What Needs Improvement:
- Provide a way to mark a task complete from the task detail
- Add a way to scroll selected day in Week view (like in Month view)
- Insert address when adding a contact to the Location field
- Consider adding a Contacts view, especially if this application will be expanded to the Windows Mobile Professional market.
Conclusion:
It is evident that SBSH Mobile Software spent quality time on their newest version of Papyrus. They paid a lot of attention to the little details and thought about the end user experience.
Despite the lack of a Contacts view, Papyrus 2.0 will definately be my new replacement for the default PIM. The Contacts application for the Windows Mobile Standard platform is actually very useful when you have a QWERTY keyboard and can quickly look up information. I would still recommend that SBSH considers adding this feature in if they are going to compete with the Windows Mobile Professional market due to the fact that the default Contacts app with a touch screen leaves a lot to be desired.
Papyrus 2.0 is the perfect companion to my Blackjack 2 because it is easy to use, but also provides some power-user features like custom recurring tasks and custom icons and colors for categories. It provides me with a simple to view interface that has all of the power that I need in a Smartphone PIM.
If you would like to take Papyrus 2.0 for a spin on your Smartphone, check out the fully functional 12 day trial version. If you decide to make Papyrus 2.0 your PIM of choice, you can purchase a license for $24.95. If you were a user of Papyrus 1.x, you are eligible to upgrade for only $7.95.
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
No comments yet.