phoneAlarm - Windows Mobile Utility

Gadgeteer Hands On Review by Kent Lanum

November 20, 2006

Although I have had a Microsoft PocketPC since my Phillips Nino days in 1998, I am new to the PocketPC Phone Edition - Windows Mobile 5 world. I purchased an imate JasJar (aka the HTC Universal) this past summer on eBay. I got it mostly for the PocketPC side of things and thought I'd toy with the Phone side when I had the time but that didn't last long...say two days!

I wondered just what kind of new software was out there for the PocketPC Phone Edition so I started "Googling", scouring all the PDA software sites and reading the "Best of List" from our friends at PocketPC Magazine. That's when I came upon their software category for "Phone and Fax". One caught my eye and it was called phoneAlarm from pocketMax Software but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it exactly did. As usual, I see there's a trial version available from the developer so I bravely loaded it that very minute.

Being new to the PDA/Phone combination, I was not sure why phoneAlarm was so highly recommended in all those user software reviews you read over at Handango.com or PocketGear.com, that is until I discovered the profiles portion of the program and that's when it clicked! While the today screen plug-in was a nice way to show me calls that I missed, emails in my inbox or the convenient battery/phone signal strength meters, it was the profiles that truly made this program extremely useful. Here's the way it looks on your Today Screen...

The Today Screen plug-in at the bottom of the screen shows the active profile (Night), Bluetooth On/Off Indicator (Off), Messages, Voicemails, SMS, Email, Battery, Cell Carrier Signal and Options Access.

This is the default VGA skin for the plug-in as well as the view of all the profiles that you can select by tapping the profile button. Each profile can be programmed and we'll go through all those options a little further down!

Now at the touch of a profile button (see second panel above), phoneAlarm can change all kinds of system settings into a pre-set device profile of your choosing. Not only can you change profiles manually but you can also change those profiles automatically based on the system clock on your device or where you are currently located.

Here is what sold me...I now had a way for my JasJar to set itself to "Night" mode so that all sound was mute, phone ring would go to vibrate, backlight was at it's next to lowest setting and would shut it off after 30 seconds. No longer was a stray task alarm on my JasJar going off in the middle of the night or some SMS alerts that I have set up with some financial service sites interrupting my sleep!

That got me to thinking...this is a VERY useful feature that is needed on all Phone Editions and Smartphones as well as a limited version for all PocketPCs in general. Why didn't Microsoft ever think of this in the first place! Then again, I've said that about the built-in file explorer and task management system to name just a few. Instead of beating that dead horse, let's dive right in and take a closer look at pocketMax's phoneAlarm.

phoneAlarm Features

There are two versions of phoneAlarm: a "Full" version and a "Lite" version. The feature list below for both versions comes directly from the pocketMax Software web site:

Features found in both Full and Lite versions:

• Provides repeating alarms on new SMS, Email, missed calls & voice messages
• 7 Custom Phone profiles with manual / time-based automatic switching.
• Alarm notification on weak battery and phone signal (WM 5.0 only)
• Customize sound, volume and options for each alarm type in each profile
• Mute device and phone volume
• Skinnable user interface (How to create skins)
• Bluetooth and Flight mode control via profiles (also for Widcomm/Broadcomm stack)
• Auto-profile change on <'ActiveSync'> (Work) and <'Power - no ActiveSync'> (Car), also based on time or Appointment category
• 1-hand skin navigation and quick-dialer for last 10 numbers (only for WM 5.0 & WM 2003 SE)
• Icons provide direct access to Inbox, missed call history etc.
• Task-switcher pop-up to close running applications
• Option to cycle radio (off/on) to change user on dual SIM
• English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Russian and Chinese user interface
• Supports VGA display
• Optimized for fast performance and maximum platform support
• Simple installation

Additional features ONLY in Full version:

• Billing calculation - keep track of your phone costs
• Detailed GPRS volume tracking
• Location-based information (change profile dependent on current location!)
• Call and SMS forwarding support in each profile WLAN control via profiles
• Skin rotator element to display actual information

More phoneAlarm Options:

As I alluded to earlier, the power of phoneAlarm is in the profiles and the options that you can program for each profile is where the fun really begins!

This is the "Display" screen where you can select the skins as well as the alarms you want to receive. There are lots of alarm options!

Advanced Settings - Page 1 and 2

Here's where you program the settings for each Profile. Lots of options...trust me!

And more... That's quite a bit of customization that you can put into a specific "Profile".

Each profile can be set to be automatically activated based on time/day. Here I've got it set so all week it goes quiet at night (Night) and awaken in the morning (Home) with a daytime weekdays setting (Work).

You can also customize the name of the profile so based on your need for profiles, I could see lots of variations on their uses and your own PDA/Phone usage.

Nice feature here - you can import and export your settings. I've used there several times when resetting. I haven't really used the Data Connections Setting yet as I don't have the GPRS service turned on but there are some advanced setting functionality here.

If you want to track your carrier cost, input the cost structure from your carrier contract here and... More cost input required!

I could keep going on and on about the options one can choose with phoneAlarm but I think you get my point. There is so much more to this program than what I have touched on here so I would encourage you to review the User Guide posted on pocketMax's web site or just install the trial version to see it for yourself.

I should also mention before closing out this review that there multiple Today Screen skins available for the phoneAlarm plug-in and are downloadable from pocketMax. There come in a variety of colors, sizes and displayed functions (meters, alerts, etc.) including some that work well with higher resolution VGA screens. pocketMax has even provided a skin editing tool if you are so inclined. I tried it and it does work but the editing tool takes a little patience and lots of trial-and-error testing. Whether you create your own skins or download the works of others, this is a wonderful feature.

Installation

phoneAlarm installation .exe file (364KB) is relatively straight-forward with an .exe setup file containing the CAB installation file and setup.ini file that installs under the MS ActiveSync directory on your PC by default. They also have downloadable CAB files with the "Full" version running at 864KB and the "Lite" version at 752KB for those that prefer that means of installation. While phoneAlarm can be installed on internal or external memory, it is highly recommended that you install it on the internal memory. I had some issues with the program installed on the card and seemed much more stable on internal memory.

This program installs to two locations on your PDA, one under it's own directory (264KB) and under the Windows directory (269KB). I didn't see any huge chunks of memory being eaten up by phoneAlarm while in operation. So other than installing phoneAlarm on your internal memory, it seemed to have little impact on the processes, CPU or services of my PDA.

Conclusions

I have to say that if you own a PocketPC-Phone Edition device, phoneAlarm is a "must-have" program and one of the first to be loaded on any device. It really adds to the overall functionality of any PDA/Phone combination and probably something Microsoft should consider adding as a default feature for future version of the OS. While there are two versions but I recommend getting the Full version ($24.95) over the Lite version ($18.95) as it adds two more features that I think are useful: 1) Profiles that change based on your location and 2) the Call/SMS forwarding function. Lastly, I really like the skinnable feature of the plug-in because I see more and more of the phoneAlarm community adding new and exciting features to the Today Screen plug-in on a regular basis. If this were a movie, I'd give it a big TWO THUMBS UP!

Full Version is $24.95 and Lite Version is $18.95