Review: e-Mobile Alerts for BlackBerry

Pssst, hey you. Yeah you! How come you never answer my emails? Oh, I get it, you're screening everybody. You must be at work or school right? Well if you have read your emails, I was trying to tell you about an application I've been trying out. See, this application permits your BlackBerry notifications to be customized for each contact. Yeah, customized!

It's e-Mobile Alerts by e-Mobile Software Inc.

With e-Mobile Alerts, you can set up callers, senders and your notifications with their own distinct alert. These alerts can sport vibrations, different LED indicator colours and tones. This way you can easily separate work and play, even if your BlackBerry is on silent. So even if you're plugging away on your computer, trying to look busy in front of your boss, you can easily glance at your BlackBerry and see if you're missing something important. Yeah, important messages like mine, telling you that I just won concert tickets and inviting you along. Since you didn't bother responding, I assume you don't want to go...

As far as the concert goes, maybe the reason you didn't get my message, was indeed the fact you have been already using e-Mobile Alerts...

Now that I have your attention

According to e-Mobile's website, the Alerts application is available for the Pearl, Curve and 88xx series of BlackBerrys. Unfortunately I don't own a Bold, nor have I run across anyone who has tried using this application with a Bold. If anyone has tried e-Mobile Alerts with their Bold, please let me know what you've experienced.

I loved the design and layout of the main menu. The vibrant colours played rather nicely off of the smooth, circular, rotary phone inspired control panel. Have a look at the top image again, that's the control panel folks! It may seem dizzying at first, but you'll soon discover how simple it is to use this one click access to personalized alerts. Having a look at the bottom row you can see that e-Mobile Alerts can grant you alerts for PIN/SMS/Email messages, and phone calls. You can also take a look at e-Mobile's Alert History. The top row allows you to enter and exit Quiet Mode or turn off the personalized alerts altogether.

Similar to the native Berry profiles, e-Mobile Alerts can help you choose distinct ringtone and vibration combinations for each type of alert. The volume of each tone can be adjusted with the menu button and the tone can be heard as soon as the file name is highlighted. It's unfortunate that e-Mobile didn't take into account that most BlackBerry users and abusers have more than one email account, and each account has their own tone/alert. e-Mobile also sheds some light on your notifications, literally. The LED can flash different colour combinations of Yellow, Red, Green, Blue and Pink for each type of alert. Each type of alert has its own base colour too. The alert can flash their specific colour alone or with one of the other colours accompanying it. Here are the Alerts and their base colours:

PIN - Pink
SMS - Blue
Phone - Yellow
Email - Green

With all of these colours flashing, e-Mobile Alerts could potentially turn a busy Berry into a rave. If the colour combinations haven't confused you enough, you can also choose any combination of colour, buzzer (vibrate) and ringtone for your alerts. Does the madness stop there?!? Nnnnnnooooooo!

On top of that, each of the notification can permit specific alerts for five additional, individual contacts. Whew!! My head hurts. I was a little disappointed that you couldn't manage more than five contacts per notification. Perhaps this is in conjunction to the whole five friends marketing scheme used by various carriers. In the history section, you will be able to quickly look at you messages and missed calls. It's like combining your Messages and Call Logs into one. It's not as messy as it sounds, as the Notification type will be seen on the left hand side of each entry. As with the In Holster/ Out of Holster options, e-Mobile Alerts can be switched to quiet mode. In quiet mode, the tones are muted, but the LED colours and buzzers will keep you in the loop.

Never judge a book by its cover

This application may look pretty and promising, but there are some snags. The biggest one? I couldn't get the darn thing to work. After navigating though every nook and cranny of e-Mobile Alerts and its permissions, the native BB Profiles win every time. Next, the inability to select contacts directly from your address book, each entry has to be entered in manually. The other downfall, is the lack of access to your media card. I have no access to my custom ringtones. And here, they claim I can customize my alerts?! It's not looking good e-Mobile....

My Final Notification

Pretty colours and empty promises. E-Mobile Alerts simply fails to deliver what could be a notification winner. Before you launch an application, make sure it at least does what it's supposed to do (note that it's even version 1.5 people!). Use the forums to recruit beta testers if needed! The application comes at a hefty price of $21.95. I say hefty, because for me all it did was show what colour my LED indicator COULD be sporting. Once this application actually works, shoot me a message, or help me out in the comments. Though my LED will blink in the classic red colour, at least I know I will be notified as expected. More information on e-Mobile Alerts can be found here.

Pros

• Unique, vibrant control panel

Cons

• Does....not....work
• No access to media card
• Cannot access address book
• No multi-email account support