Having a look at my monthly wireless phone bill, I see that I don't really use much of my voice plan. I mostly use my BlackBerry smartphone for email, pin and SMS messages, but my voice plan is a fantastic deal that I don't want to give up. Perhaps, in the back of my head, I have a tiny voice telling me to watch my usage. I then tell it that we don't have anything to worry about, so relax. Then a co-worker walks by, and I overhear something about having me committed for talking to myself. Before they think any further about taking me away, I should find a way to reassure that little voice by keeping track of my usage.
To answer the call, PhoneLog was released a short while back. This little application offers the power to keep record of your completed calls, missed calls and your SMS history. With these records you are now free to clear your call history, clear your messages and stop waiting for your wireless bill to check your usage. Uh-oh, some men in white coats are coming, let have a quick look before it's too late.
About PhoneLog
PhoneLog v 1.3.1 was created by Ryan Rife of Infinityball. The application will occupy 15.4 kb of space and requires you to be running OS 4.3 or higher.
Applications like this almost always find a way into my heart; mainly because they're inexpensive, versatile, and need little or no setup before it gets to work. The basic visual design of PhoneLog gives the illusion that it is a native BlackBerry application. Don't let its looks fool, it packs some logging punch. As previously mentioned, PhoneLog currently tracks the following;
Completed Calls (incoming and outgoing)
Missed Calls
Incoming SMS
Outgoing SMS
Log entries showing up in your calendar
entry details
The application will keep record of these events in your calendar, while running in the background. In the calendar, a call record will show the contact's number, and the date/time/duration of the call. You have the ability to see only a contact's number or, if you have a contact in your address book, view the contacts name in the log entry. Due to the set up of the calendar, you will only see duration in hours and minutes. In the Notes section of the entry, you will see the number listed, as well as the duration- this time you will see seconds included in the value. Now obviously with SMS messages, there is no duration to record. The problem I had was that PhoneLog wasn't always keeping track of the messages that I sent/received.
options/main menu
In the options you can actually choose to be notified, after a completed or missed call, and decide whether or not you can to add a call to the log. From a business perspective, you can choose to keep track of your business calls and discard your personal ones. You can also choose to log completed calls only, missed calls only, or both. With SMS (if it worked), keep track of incoming, outgoing or both. You can even set your busy status. Another way to separate the business from the personal is the ability to choose which days of the week you want to enable PhoneLog. That way, after a wild weekend, you won't have to go back and delete personal calls. Now Monday comes, no personal calls in sight, you can sync to MS Outlook (and such), and create a report for your boss. If on a BES and you don't want your logs made available for viewing, make sure you switch the Mark Private status to enabled.
Conclusion
I like PhoneLog, and see its potential, but I was really hoping that I would be able to log my SMS messages. This app is an excellent way to keep track of your minutes used. Perhaps for future builds, I would like to see an option to view monthly talk time totals. PhoneLog is available at the CrackBerry App Store for $1.99 but until the June 30th, you can nab it for 99 cents! There is a free trial available, but during this trial you can only log completed or missed calls. For more information, or to pick up PhoneLog, click here.
Pros
- low cost method for logging calls
- little setup required
Cons
- SMS messages couldn't be tracked
Downloads
