This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: All 22 Wallet Apps, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Like eWallet, SplashID ($10) has been the other mainstream app in the PDA secure wallet space, having appeared in Palm and Windows Mobile versions for several years. SplashData actually provides an entire suite of applications for handling other types of information such as shopping lists and financial accounts as well.
Like eWallet, SplashID is designed to be a complete solution between the mobile device and the desktop, rather than simply an iPhone-based extension of a popular desktop application. In fact, SplashID has always been focused more on the mobile device side, with the desktop app merely being a companion to manage and backup your data.
When you first run SplashID on the iPhone, it takes you through a fairly well-laid out quick start guide to go over the basic features and get you started, after which you’ll be prompted to enter a password and a password hint, and your iPhone SplashID database will be created.
SplashID supports a basic category structure to organize your items, and categories may be added, deleted or renamed. Items are organized within each category by item type.
Entries for All Categories and All Types are available to browse through your entire SplashID database without any filtering.
The “Types” themselves merely define templates for different types of wallet items such as bank accounts, credit cards, frequent flyer memberships, web logins, and so forth. You can customize the existing templates themselves from the “Tools” menu and add new templates. However, each record is fully customizable with 10 fields that can be configured on a per-record basis regardless of the item type/template that was used to create that item.
SplashID does not use a concept of field types, such as numeric, text, and the like. All fields are treated as general text, although a “Masking” option is available for each field on a field-by-field and record-by-record basis. Further, rather than defining fields for information such as dates, URLs, and phone numbers, SplashID looks at the field content or field name to decide if any special handling should be enabled or that field.
For example, give a field a name containing the word “Date” and a calendar button will appear beside the text entry field to allow you to use the date picker to enter a date. Likewise, fields containing the word “Phone” provide a link to dial the phone number directly, and fields that contain data that looks like a web site address (such as possessing a “www” prefix) provide a link to open the URL in the Safari browser.
SplashID also provides the ability to tag your entries from a pre-defined selection of icons, which can be applied to your templates, or customized on a per-item basis.
The app also supports a non-user-configurable intruder lockout feature. After five invalid access attempts, the SplashID database is locked for approximately 30 minutes. If you have actually forgotten your password, you can also choose to delete all of your data and start over.
In terms of desktop synchronization, SplashID is the only app we’ve reviewed that currently provides both PC and Mac desktop versions. Existing SplashID users coming from another platform will need to download the iPhone-specific desktop application, which can run alongside your existing installation of SplashID and import any existing SplashID data once you’ve set up the synchronization with your iPhone.
Setting up and performing a sync basically involves going to the “Tools” menu in SplashID on your iPhone and selecting the “Sync” option; SplashID will go out in search of an existing SplashID for iPhone app on your wireless network and initiate a sync process.
