EasyWriter Pro for iPhone

Built to make writing e-mails faster and simpler on your mobile device, EasyWriter Pro brings capabilities like spell-check, auto-text, and snippets to the iPhone’s e-mailing composition tools. True, June’s iOS 4 update added spell-checking capabilities (among other features) to the iPhone’s arsenal of tools. But if you’ve got an older phone or iPod touch that can’t run iOS 4—or you’ve decided not to upgrade your iPhone 3G to the new OS—then EasyWriter Pro provides a way to add those spell-checking features. And Saxorama.net’s app offers other capabilities for a low cost, making this app a worthwhile download.

First and foremost, EasyWriter Pro’s interface is incredibly clean and simple. The entire app is a single window, divided into three panels—the toolbar, the text-input box, and the keyboard. The toolbar is where you can maneuver between spell-checking, snippets, selecting from your favorite e-mail recipients, and composing modes; you can also use the toolbar to discard your message or send it out to your iPhone’s built-in Mail app.

EasyWriter Pro’s spell-check comes packaged with learn and ignore buttons, and acts exactly like spell-check on a desktop word-processor, but with a mobile interface. I was impressed with the snippets panel, which comes with an auto-text, or text expansion, feature for the built-in and custom snippets that are stored in the app. However, snippets must be created within the app. It would be nice to see support for TextExpander integration.

There is a free version of EasyWriter, but it doesn’t do the Pro app justice. Instead of coming integrated with the spell-check, snippet, auto-text, and e-mail favorites features, EasyWriter Lite simply has a “Get EasyWriter Pro” button. The only real similarities between the two apps are the clean-slate interface, and send-to-mail button. To get a real grip on EasyWriter Pro’s capabilities, you should buy the $1 version.

EasyWriter Pro is a beautiful app that is incredibly well-designed; it doesn’t try to do too much and it does just enough with perfection, making it an ideal iPhone utility. Unfortunately, it comes with some hindrances, like an out-of-the way reply workflow, though that’s a limitation Apple imposes on third-party developers. At just $1, EasyWriter is a steal, even in the iOS 4 era. It makes for a great contribution to the iPhone’s messaging capabilities.

[ John Fuller is a freelance designer and writer from Texas.]