Some things to add to the brainstorm:

1. Something I've noticed on various phones is that some of them keep a log of only the _last_ time I phoned or was phoned by a particular contact, and some of them log every call separately.

When looking back over the log to remember when I was on the phone with people, especially when I'm billing them for it :-) it is *really useful* to have every call logged separately, instead of just keeping the last one for each contact.

That might not be so useful for seeing who called recently, but it's essential for tracking time spent on calls to people.

2. The ability to go from a contact page to the call log for *just that contact* would be great too. Same for contact groups, which would go to the call log for just members of that group.

Showing the last call time on the contact's page would be a nice optional bonus.

3. Interleaving calls with texts in a single log is good sometimes, and annoying other times.

I might be generalising too much here, but I can easily imagine using the following, for loved ones and work clients: "design your own live report" where you put together settings of what to show (from all the events the phone knows about - calls, texts, IMs, emails, voice mails) and which contacts to show it for, and that's easily accessible as an applet on the desktop and/or from a list of reports. It should not affect logging, it should filter the available logs, so you can create these custom displays when needed with existing data.