DataHub Review

on May 4, 2011, by WP7Lab Team

Ever wondered how easier would your life be if everything was neatly organized and managed to such a degree that you would never forget to pick up the groceries and never be late for a meeting? Well, with the steady growth of new apps in the Microsoft Marketplace, lots of new task management apps seem to emerge for the sole purpose of giving you a hand in the matter.

Sadly enough, most of them are a bit single minded and you only have a short list of parameters (read: options) that you can chooses from. Shopping list managers, calendars, organizers and so on are limited by their own inability to adapt and to accept new and more personalized data.

Cronos Labs has launched DataHub a while back (version 1.3 being reviewed right now) and thus far, we can honestly say that it’s by far one of the most versatile task management apps that we’ve come across.

Visuals

In terms of visuals, the only word that comes to mind is “organized” (perhaps too organized). Everything you need has been carefully structured in dropdown lists and all default DataSets can be deleted, customized and even new once can be successfully added.

If black and white (more like grey) were back in fashion again, then DataHub would have all the right attributes of a must-have app on all WP7 devices. Until then, you’ll have to do with some simple roll-up menus that hide various settings and options.

The only thing that packs a little more color is the tile on the main screen (if you’ve pinned it there) and it definitely stands out from other apps that you might have. Red, green and blue (same colors as the WP7 themes) have a nice visual impact and leave a fairly long-lasting imprint in your mind.

Performance

As far as we’re able to tell, there are no crashes and no nagging bugs that might affect the overall performance of the app and it also responds timely to any inquiries and filters that you might be using. It’s a fact that DataHub has been skillfully implemented and that you won’t find any shortcomings in terms of performance and response times.

Two key features that struck us as great are the ability to sync your data with multiple users and the merging of all the changes done by anyone that shares your data (all of this via Dropbox). Imagine that you’re in a supermarket and instead of calling you; your wife simply updates the groceries list. You’ll instantly have the updated version and you’ll spare yourself the trouble of having to explain what happened to the “other piece of paper” on which you wrote down the second set of groceries (awesome, right?).

Jokes aside, DataHub boots up and resumes in about two seconds and everything else is displayed almost instantaneously. If this isn’t great performance, we don’t know what is.

Pros and Cons

While on one hand you could argue that benefiting from a wide range of options and having the ability to customize mostly everything about the overall functionality and purpose of the app, might seem like a great idea, the fact is that it can be a tad difficult to get used to all the options and menus.

If you’re not used to how task management apps work, you’ll have your hands full for a while until you wrap your head on what you have to do and how.

On the upside, once you’ve mastered and explored all the features, forms and settings you can honestly say that you’ve created your own personal app that suits your everyday needs. From at-the-office tasks to more domestic duties, you can now keep track of everything that goes on in your live (or that should go on in your life).

Conclusion

In all fairness, DataHub is the type of app that can be of use to those that have a busy schedule and that are not afraid to experiment with a new Windows Phone 7 app. The high degree of user customization that it supports allows it to target a wide range of users that ultimately need the same thing: a better management of their activities.

Free of charge, you can now download and install it on any handheld device so that you can try it out for yourself.