Upvise Personal Android Mini-Review
This is a mini-review of Upvise Personal (the free version in Android Marketplace), version 2.8.0
Upvise Personal
Upvise has all sorts of versions, but the one I'm trying out here is Upvise Personal. The Upvise web site is:
Upvise - Mobile On-Demand software, sync, collaboration, CRM for Small Businesses
and you can see from there that it has all sorts of versions for various phones, plus a web (cloud) type area for synchronization. This is kind of handy, in that it lets you back up your phone data, and/or edit it on the web. Upvise has more functionality to some degree than a list manager, but it can handle:
* Contacts
* Notebooks
*
Shopping Lists
* Wikipedia
* Read RSS news
Now, Contacts, because of Google/Android/gMail, is kind of superfluous, so I'm mostly going to ignore it. Notebooks is probably mildly useful, and being able to sync with the cloud is helpful, but I'm not going to bother reviewing those here, there are various notebook applications. Similarly for Wikipedia and RSS, lots of Apps for that. Since I'm mostly in this thread focusing on Lists, using ListPro as the standard, I'll review the
Shopping Lists function. I should note, in terms of Lists, there is a Pro version of Upvise, that also includes:
* Task Lists
* Projects
* Sales
* Ideas
* Work Orders
* Expenses
* Forms
The Pro version, however, is $49/year/user, which seems a tad on the high side, at least if what you're looking for is a good list manager. It's a shame the
Task Lists is pro version only, but I suppose they have a business model, and getting people to sign up for the $49/year is how they make money. Nothing wrong with that, you'll have to decide though if that sort of investment makes sense. They have a 30 day free trial of the Pro version, to help you decide. But the Pro version features seem more to me oriented towards a business, not individuals.
There is a video of the
Shopping List function, not Android, but....
[video=youtube;wLYbBJy59Fk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLYbBJy59Fk]YouTube - Unyverse Shopping List[/video]
It's without sound, but it shows you the basics.
Once you've downloaded upvise personal, you should probably create a personal account. They're free. Then you end up at a screen that looks like:
(with credit to Androlib @
Upvise Personal v2.8.0 Application for Android | Lifestyle)
You pick, obviously enough, Shoppling Lists, and then you end up in a screen that is very similar to the video. You create a list, then add items to buy to it. Each item can have:
* Item name
* Quantity
* Unit (g(ram), kg, lb, oz, other...)
* Price
You can categorize the items, that's all pretty much custom, I liked that, not needed some of the time, but handy when you do.
And another key feature is that you can enter a description. When I shop for things, and I'm doing it on price, I definitely like a free text field that allows me to enter store+price. This, however, doesn't look entirely free text, I couldn't get new lines to take, so part but not all of the way to what it needs to be for this purpose.
The web (cloud) based interface, via a web-browser, is a nice-to-have, lets you bulk enter items, and so forth. There's a sync function that's in Upvise, keeps the two talking, I liked that. It is automatic, does add at times a second or two, but say versus Super Lists, you don't have to think, Did I upload or download yet? The web variant uses a filter model, rather than a hierarchy, but it's easy enough to get used to, works. The descriptions there seem to be multiple line, which is goodness. I did run into one anomaly on the web version of upvise, when I unchecked something, it disappeared from the filtered list (it still showed on the total list), that's kind of counter to what I'm used to, bit of negative logic, but the check is to buy something, you uncheck it when you've bought it. The web variant has import and export capability, .csv, which is another nice-to-have.
The Android App keeps track of the items to buy total counts, for each list and overall. Kind of a nice feature.
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Keeps track of totals
- Filter (one level) for tasks
- Automatically sorts
- Supports (Syncrhonizes) a web account, so you can share with PCs, backup, etc. (Big +)
- Has fields for Quantity (#, units), extended description field, categories, etc.
Cons:
- List Hierarchy effectively one level (although does have categories), but no folders of folders equivalent
- Sort is a little too automatic (would be nice to control more with a button, sometimes, on checklists, you don't want them sorted.
- No Priority (although you could use Category, High/Medium/Low)
- While does a decent job as a shopping list, no tailoring of fields for an item, what you get, is what you get
- Seems a bit buggy on the lists something is on, restoring the list, etc.
- No Task list in the base (free) offering
To summarize then, Upvise isn't bad, takes maybe a bit of getting used to (the negative logic on the checkboxes, for example), UI is OK, and the synchronization with the web is a definite plus (and works well), but functionally it lacks some features as versus the competition (priorities, etc.) and visually it's a bit behind things like LiveList, Noodles. There's definitely more functions in Upvise than I've covered here, and the Cloud implementation is very powerful, but as just a List Manager, it's a bit behind the competition, and here and there I hit bugs. Not a bad shopping list, if that's all you end up using it for, though, but definitely not competitive with ListPro. Worth consideration because of the Cloud implementation.