defacer gino: Recall for iPhone review

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Recall for iPhone review

There are always new movies, music, books, TV shows, and apps coming out and friends giving recommendations about the old and new. It can be hard to keep track of what blockbuster hits you wanted to see, which Indie band your friend was telling you about, and that classic book you've been meaning to pick up for ages. With Recall for iPhone, you'll never forget again! Recall lets you quickly add music, movies, tv shows, apps and books to your list and provides you with all the info you need, allowing you to get in and out of the app within seconds. If you want to be reminded on a release date, Recall will do that for you, or if you want to be reminded to download that book on the night before you travel, Recall will do that too. Unfortunately, it's U.S.-only at the moment, so you'll need a U.S. iTunes account to use it.

The interface of Recall is nice and basic and easy to use. The default tabs are Music, Movies, Apps, and Books, but you can swap out with TV Shows, Other, or All if you wish by tapping Edit from the More tab. From the sidebar, you can choose what content appears on the tab: My Items, New Releases, or Top Charts.

To add an item, simply tap the plus sign and type in the name of the movie, artist, song, app, book, author, or tv show. When you make your selection, you'll be given the Rotten Tomatoes rating, a description, and the cast, if available. Tapping on the Rotten Tomatoes rating will take you to the website or Rotten Tomatoes app if you have it installed.

If the item you searched for is currently available in iTunes, the App Store, or the iBookstore, you can head directly to appropriate store to purchase it or you can add it to you list and set up a reminder to purchase it later. If it's coming out sometime in the future, you can have Recall remind you when the release date has arrived.

Although Recall is integrated with Apple's stores for purchasing, the database is not. Recall is using their own database for release dates, and since DVD and iTunes release dates are not always the same, this can be rather annoying and you'll need to set up custom reminder dates if you want to be reminded on an iTunes release date. Hopefully the developers tie in better iTunes integration in the future.

The good

Quickly search for Music, Movies, Books, Apps or TV Shows
Schedule reminder notifications
Browse new releases and top charts
Archive items you like for later reference
Share items via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook
Add non-media related recommendations

The bad

Release dates are not integrated with iTunes
U.S. only

The bottom line

Recall is a very beautiful and efficient way to keep track of and be reminded of movies, music, books, TV shows, and apps that you don't want to forget about. Adding items is super fast so that it's not a hassle to quickly use Recall in an situation. With Recall, you'll never forget another media recommendation again.

To see Recall in action, check out the promo video below.