Shawn has a great write up of a neat dialing app for the iPhone called Dialvetica — a long time staple of my homescreen. I agree with just about everything Shawn says, except for the list annoying him with its constantly fluid nature. I find this to be a killer feature and here’s why: the people you tend to call a lot changes week in and week out.
Shawn has set Dialvetica to default to texting, I set it to default to calling. So when I have a week where I am talking to the same people over and over again (say a plumber to troubleshoot a problem that will, hopefully, be gone next week) the list is accurate and helpful, the next week won’t be the same though and thus the list will readjust. The resorting is always saving me time. This is why the system works well for calling, and lacks for texting — with text messages I assume you aren’t constantly texting new people over and over, as we tend to text people that we *know*, versus people we don’t *know*.
The one thing Dialvetica needs to figure out is how to show missed calls and voicemails (even if it just pops open the default app, but shows badge indicators). If it did that I could finally rid my homescreen of the default phone app.