SBSH Phoneweaver 1.2

SBSH Phoneweaver 1.2

Introduction

Profile management for Windows Mobile phone edition devices has grown to be one of the niche application markets for a converged device. I myself couldn't live without some kind of profile management these days as my memory is just not good enough to remind me to turn the phone notification sounds down in the evenings...

So, the question is, how does the SBSH offering far against the other major offerings in this space such as Spb Phonesuite, PocketMax PhoneAlarm & PocketZenPhone... There's only one way to find out, read on!!!!

Supplier SBSH Product SBSH Phoneweaver 1.2 Cost $14.95 (12 day full-feature trial available) Supported OS WM5 PPC or later Supplier Web Site SBSH.net Product Web SiteSBSH Phoneweaver

4WinMobile would like to thank Avishay Naamat at SBSH for providing a copy of Phoneweaver for review purposes.

Feature Highlights

Create up to 100 Profiles

Multiple profile trigggers - Time, Agenda, Manual & Power

Sounds & Notification control

Radio & Communications control - Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Phone, Push-Email, Data Connection

Timeout control - Backlight, Power Other control - Screen brightness, Screen rotation, Programme launcher

Phoneweaver is a complete profile management system for your Windows Mobile Professional device. Giving you complete control over your environment to suit your taste or situation.

Installation

Installation of Phoneweaver is pretty standard Windows Mobile fare, you can choose from either a desktop installer for the PC, or a .cab file for direct installation on the device itself. I personally favour the .cab file route, as I can then keep the cab files of my most important applications on the storage card in my device, safe in the knowledge that should I find myself needing to do an emergency re-build whilst on the road, I have everything to hand. Another interesting facet of the Phoneweaver application is that it only takes up approximately 279k of space in the program files directory, that is an incredibly small footprint for something so functional! And whilst speaking of emergency re-builds, Phoneweaver has been designed with this in mind, but more on the export functionality later in the review!

Configuration

It is in the configuration that a profile management application displays its true power. Different programs offer different levels of control over many aspects of your mobile device's functionality, including some features that take the application past just profile management into a whole new space. Phoneweaver offers 4 main areas of configuration, giving full control over General program options, Profile, Today Plug-In & Pop-Up menu settings.

The first set of options are the General settings controlling the look and feel of Phoneweaver application on your device. Language: A pretty self-explanatory option this one, allowing you to set the home language to one of your choice PIN(Optional): If you have a pin-code protecting the phone functionality of your device, you can enter it here and Phoneweaver can automatically enter the pin-code should you wish to set it to power on the radio Backlight levels: An unusual option here, and one that I needed to use the Phoneweaver manual to get an explanation of. Each device has its own OEM defined number of backlight levels, and this setting allows you to tailor Phoneweaver with that number so that the correct number of increments appear in the 'other' option screen within the application Minimum BL Level: Allows you to set the minimum backlight level that can be used within Phoneweaver Skin: There is also a checkbox and a file selector giving the ability to skin the application, allowing you to tailor it to your taste! You can find extra skins here SBSH Mobile Software Forums -> PhoneWeaver resources

Checking the 'Activate tray bar shortcut' & configuring the Popup Menu allows you to enable Phoneweaver to display an icon in the System Tray on your today screen. You can select which communications function buttons you would like to appear as menu options in the tray control. The main ability that this option delivers is to enable you to save that precious screen real-estate by removing the Phoneweaver today plug-in from your Today screen. Once configured you can easily access all of the Phoneweaver functionality simply by tapping on the icon displayed in the Today screen status area.

Next we come to the main event in Phoneweaver configuration, the place where all the real action happens. The Phoneweaver application allows you to create up to 100, yes 100 different profiles to give you an incredible level of control over your Windows Mobile device, truly giving you the ability to get down to a totally intricate level!! The main profile screen is where you start from, it is the nerve centre and lists all your profiles in one place along with the controls for creating and editing said profiles to your requirements. Edit - As the name suggests, the edit button allows you to change configuration of your currently selected profile. Copy New - The Copy new buton allows you to take an existing profile and copy it, creating a new profile. This function is great for using an existing profile as a base to create a new one, saving plenty of time in the process! Delete - This button needs no explanation, it helps you keep your profile list tidy! Up & Down - These buttons allow you to move the selected profile up and down within the list, this controls the order that the profiles are displayed in should you click on the profile name on the today screen. Disable - Effectively allows you to turn off a profile. Setting a profiles state to disabled prevents it from being used.

On editing your profile, the first screen you are presented with is the 'profile' tab. From this tab you can select one of 4 trigger types. Time - Selecting time presents you with 4 sets of weekday check-boxes each with its own time selector enabling you to set your selected profile to activate at varying times on different days. Agenda - Selecting agenda gives you the ability to activate your chosen profile dependent on the status of items in your calendar at the time of the event. You can select from busy, tentative, out of office or free statuses. But that's not all, you can also select only those agenda entries that have attendees and even filter down by category and sensitivity as well... AS/Power - Selecting this option allows you to activate a profile based on whether your device is connected to Power or Activesync and even Power & Activesync. This option is mega-useful if you have an active-mount in the car, making the switch to a car-based profile seamless & automatic. Manual - The last option to mention is manual. As it says on the tin, the profile is not switched unless you select it yourself. That's not all though, SBSH have added something for you here as well, you can set a timeout value on a manual profile that will automatically revert it to Phoneweavers automatic state should you forget, which in my case is very handy indeed.

Moving from left to right in an orderly fashion, we next come to the sounds tab. From here you can set a whole plethora of configuration options. The sounds drop down menu at the top of the tab gives you carte-blanche control, allowing you to set the sound disabled, vibrate, normal or no-change. Moving downwards to the volume settings, you can take full control of the devices main, ringer and in-call volume levels. Underneath the volume control allows the setting of the individual sound & type of ring for each event, namely ring, MMS, SMS, email, missed calls & reminders. You also get the option to set a flashing light reminder for a particular event. The options offer an extremely sufficient level of configurability to take complete control of your sound output!! SBSH Have also thoughtfully included a play button, allowing you to check out your tone before committing it to the profile, and with some of my tones, thankfully there is a stop button as well!!

Next up is the comms tab. Here you get to play master in taking control of the radio functionality of your device. In this tab you have the ability to specify whether Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or the Phone are switched on, switched off or left in the same state as that of the previous profile before the profile change. But that's not all, SBSH take the functionality one stage further by enabling you to switch both push-email & the cellular data connection on or off as well as setting which Internet Connection to use on a per profile basis. One very good example of the power of controlling the radio functionality in this way is to combine it with the 'power' trigger to create a profile to turn on the Bluetooth radio automatically, making it perfect if you use an active mount in your car along with a Bluetooth headset or handsfree car kit.

Moving on, next in the list is the backlight tab, which, as its name suggests, offers the ability to control not only the screen brightness and backlight timeout, but also the device power off timeouts as well. Not really too much else to say about this tab, but the functionality is especially useful in setting the backlight permanently on in profiles such as car, where you may want to use a satellite navigation program to guide you on your way. You can set different timeouts dependent on whether your device is running on batteries or connected to mains power. This gives total flexbility on a profile by profile basis.

Finally we get to arrive at the other options tab. Aptly named as it gives access to extra functionality that allows you to execute a selected application on a profile switch, but not only run a program, but you also have the ability to pass the application parameters at startup. As well as starting an application, you can also select to rotate the screen to either 90 or 270 degrees. Perfect if you want say you car profile to switch the screen to landscape for SatNav use automatically.

Today Screen

The Phoneweaver application scores highly in its use of your today screen real estate, giving you various options allowing you to control what information you see on your screen relating to profile functionality. The first screen shows Phoneweaver in Thumbs layout, which as the name suggests, allows you to operate the major functions of Phoneweaver with your fingers or thumbs! Next up is the stylus layout, which, once again, as the name implies gives you a smaller set of icons more suited to using your stylus to tap on Last but not least is custom layout. Selecting this option allows you to use either large or small icons as per the Thumbs & Stylus layouts, but it also gives you the ability to configure the order your buttons & indicators appear in, but we'll talk about that more in the next section!!

Once you have decided which layout your are most comfortable with, you can then select which options you would like to see displayed within that layout. Phoneweaver gives you full control over 8 separate buttons & indicators allowing you to customise your view. You can choose to include onscreen buttons to give you one-touch control over your radio & push email functionality or maybe your thing is a one glance status view of MMS/SMS, Email, Missed Calls or Voicemail, you can tinker to your hearts content... Selecting the custom layout offers extra flexibility, activating the Up & Down buttons plus the Large checkbox to give you complete control over the order that the buttons & indicators appear in within the today screen plug-in.

Backup & Restore

Last but not least, a feature set that I alluded to earlier but haven't expanded upon until now... We all place great emphasis on data security, especially when so many of us rely heavily on our devices in our daily lives. Phoneweaver has two specific options with this very fact in mind, the Import & Export functionality available from the initial options screen. Using these functions is simplicity itself, select Export from the menu and then simply select the destination of the export file. Import, exactly the same, select the function navigate to where the previous export file is located and Bob's your uncle. It really is that simple and makes reconfiguring the application after something like a hard-reset a breeze!! I can vouch directly for the export/import functionality myself, as I used it after a recent ROM upgrade and it worked faultlessly... Saving me from endless messing around with settings, and in my book, that's a good thing!

Licensing

When registering an application from SBSH you are granted with a per user licence. This means the same application can be installed on several devices as long as all devices are used by the same user. Additionally, when replacing your device with a new model you can carry your registration from your older device without having to register your applications once again.

This has to be one of the best licensing models I've seen in a long time. SBSH grant you total flexibility here, and if you are a serial PDA owner like myself, then this does offer exceptional value for money!

Pro's


Up to 100 individual profiles
Incredibly configurable
Fully customisable today screen plug-in
Import/Export functionality allowing you to recreate your profiles easily
Small application footprint at 279k

Con's


The plethora of configurable options can take time to setup

Conclusion

Well it has to be said that I am mightily impressed with Phoneweaver... It does exactly what it says on the tin, managing your profiles auomatically for you with perfect ease.

I've had it on my Windows Mobile Professional Device for quite a while now, and as far as I'm concerned, with 100 available profiles combined with an incredibly powerful option set giving the ultimate in flexibility, it's a keeper for me!

I only have one wish really, and that is that SBSH bring out a Windows Mobile Standard version of the application, that really would be the icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned.

I've been racking my brains going through the pro's & con's, trying to come up with a convincing list of con's, but everything has worked faultlessly during my time with Phoneweaver 1.2, I really cannot put my finger on anyting apart from the sheer number of options available can make your first setup a lengthy affair!!

Top marks to SBSH for a first rate product and at $14.95 it offers exceptional value for money!!!