Due Review

Sometimes simplicity is the key to a good and invaluable app. Due taps into that. It's perhaps a little expensive for what it offers but then again, what price can you put on being organised?

The layout of Due is certainly simple. Upon opening, you're presented with a Reminders section, Timers and a Logbook. The Reminders section allows you to set up reminders, rather predictably. There's some depth here though. Besides a handy snooze button, you can set each reminder to repeat either on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. Simplicity appears once more too with the option to extend the time or skip to tomorrow simply by tapping the relevant choice.

Then there's the Timers panel which comes with some predefined examples such as 'Coffee steeping', 'Power nap' and 'Pick up laundry'. These also benefit from a fancy switch to flick things off and on rather than just a regular button. You can add your own of course for all manners of things. I found it particularly useful when waiting for food to finish cooking in the oven so I didn't have to rely on hearing the cooker's timer on the other side of the house. You can either let it remind you a la an SMS message or Push notification or you can set it to make an noise as is customary for an alarm. The Logbook function is there to remind you of any alarms that have been used in the past which can be handy for reference.

It's the amount of settings that makes Due stand out from the crowd. There are numerous different sound effects that you can use for Reminders as well as the primary and secondary Timers. As well as that there's a selection of quick access timings that allow you to quickly set when you're awake or when lunch time is. Then when returning to the Reminders section, you can add them even faster than usual. That's the other big plus point with Due, it is extremely quick throughout - presumably due to doing away with anything like fancy graphics or gimmicky menus. Everything that's here is useful.

My only reservation with Due is its pricing but it is a pretty comprehensive package none the less. A lot of it is down to the little things like the speed, easy interface and the ability to backup your information. The kind of things you might not neccessarily think of until you see something implement it all well. The mileage depends on how much you need to be organised of course but there's always a lot in life that needs to be remembered from going out for your daily run to waiting for your dinner to cook. If you thrive upon organising everything down to the right second, this will be vital.