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> Review :: Spb Phone Suite, Rating 4.5 out of 5
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post Mar 28 2008, 01:22 PM
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Review :: Spb Phone Suite
Rating 4.5 out of 5

Spb Phone Suite 1.2
By Spb Software House
MGN Rating -

Rating Legend

1 star: Find something else; save your money
2 star: Below average; not recommended
3 star: Average; performs as advertised but not inspiring
4 star: Good; worth the money
5 star: Great; best of its kind on the market

Review by Slacker
Review Date / April 15th, 2008

Note: Screen captures are created with Pocket Controller-Professional by Soti, Inc.

Spb Software House develops many Windows Mobile applications and Games to perform a myriad of tasks. Many of their applications work together to share information and present it in a format that helps you accomplish tasks more efficiently. I have been using several Spb applications over the last month and am impressed overall with their effectiveness and stability. Over the next few days I will be releasing reviews of several of those applications to help you get a feel for the products, company, and how the applications might help you to do more with your Windows Mobile Device.

This installment is four of four and will cover Spb Phone Suite. Phone Suite is a today screen plug-in, phone control application, call filter, messaging manager, and auto mechanic. Ok, maybe not an auto mechanic. The point is that it is a very small application but it offers a ton of features. Here is how Spb introduces Phone Suite:

QUOTE
Spb Phone Suite is a collection of all phone features you missed in Windows Mobile. These are features like profiles, call filtering, missed call notifications, reject and reply with SMS, etc.

Features
  • Profiles
  • Missed call notifications
  • Unread SMS notifications
  • Call filtering
  • Reject & reply with SMS
  • Photo speed dial
  • Photos in call log
  • Wireless manager
  • Automatic profile
  • Wireless settings in profiles
  • Customizable Today plug-in


The one sentence review for Spb Phone Suite is that Spb Phone Suite gives Windows Mobile Professional device the phone features Microsoft left off but should have included. Phone Suite offers a today plug-in that gives you, at a glance, information about missed calls, SMS/MMS messages, voicemail and email. Clicking on one of the indicators gives you a today screen popup with information. It does not open the item in the native application. What does that do for you? Well it is incredibly fast, saves system resources, and still gives you the ability to see that information. Very cool! Of course you can then open the item in the native application or you can even change the default behavior of Phone Suite to open the item in the native application by default.

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Spb Phone Suite offers profiles which are a real time saver. You can configure manual and automatic profiles to control basically everything on the phone. Within each profile you can set the status of the phone radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, speaker, vibrate, screen brightness, and more, and changing profiles can be done from the today screen by tapping the icon. Every change is made just by selecting a different profile. For example, right now I am on a plane flying from Washington DC to San Diego, California. I can't use the phone on the plane so I simply select the profile I have set up for flying and everything gets turned off. When I land, just select the NORMAL profile and I am ready to so in a flash. The only complaint I have about profiles is that while you can configure them, you are stuck with the profiles Spb provides. You can not change the icons of the profiles, add additional profiles, etc. You can only rename and reconfigure the ones provided. So the icons I have do not necessarily reflect what the profile does and that is annoying. Hopefully Spb will add the ability to change the icons on profiles in a future release.

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Automatic profiles are an interesting feature of Phone Suite. Then are triggered based on trigger events such as the meeting profile by your calendar schedule. This can save you from embarrassing phone rings while meeting with the boss!

Phone Suite offers contact photo dialing from the today screen as well. Instead of looking up a name in your long list of contacts, just add their photo to the today screen. Want to call John? Tap his picture. Folks, it doesn't get any easier than that. This is similar to the My Faves feature offered by T-Mobile on many of their phones, and for me it is a really nice feature to have.

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I have a guy I sort-of work for and he calls me.... a lot. When I leave work I want to leave it behind. But this person seems to think it is ok to call me any time to talk about work. I used to look at my phone caller ID and actually get upset when he called. Even if I chose not to answer I still had a mental attitude change because I knew he was calling me. Thanks to Spb Phone Suite I now don't even know he called. I have it set to ignore calls from all of his numbers after my normal work day ends. Now I have no idea he has called and honestly I don't care. Ignorance is bliss. Management of the call filter is through a black/white list that you configure or you can set the phone to ignore all calls. Finally you have the option to have the phone reply to a rejected call with an SMS message for times when you are in a meeting or otherwise don't want to be disturbed but do want your caller to know your status.

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Spb Phone Suite includes features that make your Windows Mobile Professional phone more usable. Microsoft should have included the features available in Spb Phone Suite but like many other features Microsoft decided to leave them out. Spb has filled that gap superbly with Phone Suite and I highly recommend it.


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Jim Cleek (Slacker)
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