Direct dial/message shortcuts ambiguously displayed on Galaxy S3

Question

The direct dial/message shortcut icons on the Samsung Galaxy S3 are ambiguous - eg: it is hard to tell which is text and which is a dial if you have the same person (one for each). Additionally, on this model, the shortcut is overlayed with "mobile" or "home" or whatever that persons phone you've selected.

Is there any way to easily change this?

I'm using GO Launcher, which I can change the icons directly but then I'd have to go and find the person's image, overlay it with a text/phone icon, etc., which seems like a lot of work.

The stock ROM on my Motorola Atrix used to have a pretty sweet widget that looked something like this:

-----------------------------------
            |           |          |
Contact IMG | Phone IMG | Text IMG |
            |           |          |
------------------------------------

Where the phone and text buttons of the image would direct dial\text the contact. Maybe there is something like this out there that I've missed?

This is what it looks like ("phone" and "text" were originally the contacts name):

Answer 1

Try the Contact Widget. True one touch. Uses contact picture, and allows you to select which number to direct dial or message(text). Also allows you to customize the label, i.e., "text", "call", or the contact's name (if you forget what they look like)(ish). Works in Go Launcher for my Samsung Galaxy S3, just like direct dial/message widget in TouchWiz home.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.livroandroid.widget.contatos&hl=en

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

Sounds like the widget you're missing from your Atrix was part of the Motorola skin laid over Android on that device. My Galaxy Nexus (4.1) has the same kinds of contact widgets that you're seeing on your SGSIII, and I agree with you that having the Direct Call and Direct Dial contact widgets next to each other is less than ideal.

Have you tried a dedicated contact widget? Something like the GO Contact Widget might meet your needs. You might even be able to accomplish what you want using a Tasker widget, although that might be a little overkill.

Alternatively, instead of choosing the Direct Call or Direct Dial widget, why not use a plain Contact widget? This places a nice picture of the contact on your screen which, when pressed, presents the contact overlay from which you can call, message, or otherwise contact your contact. This overlay, to me, is much better than two separate widgets (though it puts you one extra tap away from the action).

Mine looks like this. Contact widget:

Expanded contact card/overlay:

Answer 3

There was no free option to fix this that I could find. There is a lot of junk on the play store, and it was kinda hard to find, but seems looking for "speed dial" in the play store was the key words I needed. I found and tried several apps, none of which were very good.

I finally settled on this app: Speed Dial Widget Contact+. It's the closest I've found to what I'm asking above.