You need it now more than ever – Widget Dial Review

12/13/16 update: The latest version (for iOS 10) is giving me a "failed to load" error message about 2 to 3 times a week, requiring a forced restart of my iPhone. I'm knocking off one star until this gets fixed. Now that Apple has dropped Contact Favorites and Contact Recents with the release of iOS 9, Widget Dial is the best available alternative for restoring that functionality. That it also gives you a widget-based dial pad is a bonus. I especially like that you can configure WD so that tapping a favorite allows you to choose whether to make a call, send a message or email, or start a Facetime session, while a long press will take you straight to a default action of your choice. The reason that I give it 4 stars, not 5, is that WD doesn't simply build the favorites list based on your favorite contacts (as designated in Contacts) -- rather, you have to import them one at a time. One other minor improvement would be to include the standard letters letters on the dial pad (as the stock dial pad does) so that it would be easy to dial alphanumeric numbers (e.g., 800-GET-HELP). Do be aware that, as of v1.1.0, there is a minor bug that affects importing contacts into the favorites list. If you try to import a linked contact (a contact record that consists of two or more source records, such as contacts from different Gmail accounts), WD currently barfs and kicks you back into the launcher. The solution is to go into Contacts, unlink the contact, then import into WD the one that has the info you want. I've reported this bug to the dev, so hopefully it will be fixed soon.
Review by bethel95 on Widget Dial.