Review: Assistant for iPhone – Creating Events Just Got Easier Than Ever

In our smartphone culture, there is a growing need to find apps that help us be more productive in less time.  When Scott Forstall introduced Siri on the iPhone 4S, Apple began to morph the iPhone into a personal assistant of sorts, but what about those using the iPhone 4? Enter: Assistant by SensLab.

Overview

One of the great features of Siri is her ability to quickly add meetings and business calls to your calendar.  With Assistant for iPhone, those of us still rocking the older iPhone 4 can enjoy the process of creating quick meetings and call reminders in just simple tap (or two).

Assistant, available for $1.99 in the App Store, isn’t just another calendar app.  According to developer SensLab, Assistant is “for those who are active and successful, who know how to value every minute of their time, and who know how to appreciate convenience.”  If you rely on your phone to keep you on time for meetings and calls, that two dollar price tag may well be worth it.

At first launch, you’re greeted with a nice app “how-to” that walks you through the process of both linking Assistant to your contacts and using the app as a standalone.  The app itself is fairly simple, prompting two types of reminders: Call or Meeting.

Choosing either option pulls up your contact list, and once you select a contact you are able to set a time and date, a phone number, up to two alerts, and you get a space for notes. Tapping create saves the event to your iPhone’s calendar, and you are free to go back to checking your email or tweeting about how much time you saved. When it’s time to be alerted for your meeting or call, you receive a simple calendar reminder for your event, with a quick link to call the contact.  You can also enable geo-reminders, which will prompt your reminder when you arrive at or leave a location (similar to the stock Reminders app).

Another unique feature of Assistant is its ability to create “Assistant Links” within your iPhone contacts.  The process takes up to a minute to complete, but doing so makes adding those post-phone call follow-ups a breeze in the future.  Each contact will have a unique link that allows you to quickly add a meeting or call with them to your calendar without the need to manually open Assistant and track down their name in your list of contacts.

Verdict [rating:3]

This app is about a lack of clutter and ease of use.  The options are simple and self-explanatory, although they could have been made a little larger (there is more screen real estate dedicated to help & support than for the apps main functions).  The interaction between Assistant and the stock calendar app is nice, since other devices that share your calendar will receive the events, as well.

The incorporation of the contact list “Assistant Links” is where this app really stood out to me, since I frequently need to plan a follow-up or mark down a meeting that was planned on a phone call. Using the Assistant could really save you time in adding meetings and calls to their calendar.

Check out Assistant in the App Store ($1.99)

Note: This app requires an iPhone 4 or 4S and iOS 5+.

Pros

• Integration with stock calendar
• Quick links within contact list
• Simple to Use
• Geo-fence reminders

Cons

• Could use a visual boost
• Currently limited to linking only 1 contact to a meeting

This review was provided by Ian Fuchs.