Vito improves SMS-Chat

When iPhone unleashed its finger-friendly, animated, touch-screen technology it was an instant hit with all the nose miners out there. Vito Technology has certainly stepped up to the plate to make a similar experience possible for Windows Mobile users, which I appreciate. One of Vito’s contributions in its innovative, finger-friendly software series is SMS-Chat, which not only offers animated screens but threads chats in chronological order, a most welcome feature.

I have been tracking the evolution of SMS-Chat since its introductory version 1.0 and have offered numerous suggestions for improvements along the way in previous reviews. I am gratified to see that subsequent versions have incorporated many of the suggestions. I applaud Vito for being so responsive to user input.

In the latest iteration, Vito offers an all-important new feature—emoticons. With the written word, it is difficult enough to communicate exact meaning without body language, and when you compound it by adding abbreviations; you can easily be misunderstood and get yourself into serious trouble. Accordingly, emoticons are an important consideration for conveying meaning to terse passages. They have become a significant linguistic component to texting communication.

Of course you could always go through the bother of typing in all the characters to produce a smiley, but that can be laborious on a phone keypad. From the beginning, Palm Treos have had this graphic feature available, which I have long appreciated. The only problem is that unless the receiver also has a Treo they will only see the typed version instead of the graphic version of the smiley.

Not only are Vito emoticons graphically visible to all receivers regardless of device and SMS client, they are also animated. For instance, a winking smiley actually winks. The animated icons appear in messages sent to all the Windows Mobile phones I tested. Unfortunately it doesn’t work on iPhones, but that doesn’t surprise me. But, it doesn’t seem to work on other non-Windows phones either.

At first, I was disappointed. I expected there to be a lexicon of ready-made emoticons from which to select. Instead, you must create your own by typing them into the templates page just as you would type in a passage such as, “Call me later.” However, the instant you type it and enter it, it magically transforms from text to a fully animated object. Very cool. But, I still hope that in future versions there could be a table of emoticons to choose from in addition to being able to create custom ones in the templates page.

Whoa! Bad news. Serious glitch. I just discovered that you cannot insert an emoticon just anywhere in a message. It is actually inserting a template, and it erases everything else in the message box that you have already typed. This is a humungous glitch. The work-around is that you insert the emoticon before typing and then add text around it on both sides. If you insert it in the middle or end of your typed message, it will eradicate the whole message. You must plan ahead. What a bother.

OK, Vito, I know you are having a big holiday in Russia today and for the rest of the week. But, when you get back next week, I hope you will address this nasty glitch and fix it. Happy Russia Day. I also know that it is Konstantin’s birthday today. So, Happy Birthday, Konstantin. You have your work cut out for you when you get back.

Another serious short-coming of earlier versions was that there were no active hyperlinks for opening URLs, sending email, or making phone calls. Happily, this sorely lacking feature has been included in the latest release and will automatically perform the desired functions. Again, I applaud Vito for listening and adding this improvement.

In an earlier review I lamented that it was not possible to change the skin or component colors and type styles. I grow weary of the dreary black/grey color scheme. While not exactly the solution I had in mind, it is now possible to change from a black background to a white one. Vito needs to pay some attention to appearances here. They kind of laughed at me for suggesting the type style thing, but we’ll see.

There are a few features still lacking in SMS-Chat, but the major one that I hope gets addressed next is the ability to edit, copy, and paste already sent items. Once a message is sent it is dead set in concrete. You can’t edit it or copy it, which would be highly useful if you want to send it again to someone else or alter it. I hope you will fix this fault in the next version, Vito. Actually, there is a work-around for this problem. If you tap on Resend in the menu, the message becomes active again, and you can edit and copy it. But, why have to go through all the trouble?

SMS-Chat has another nice feature that allows you to send multiple messages simultaneously saving lots of time. Unfortunately, if you wish to send out a message to the same group regularly, you must reconstruct the list from scratch each time. There should be a way of creating group distribution lists and saving them. I hope this too will become a future enhancement.

One other little problem is that it takes an inordinately long time for the program to load if it is not already running in the background. Maybe if I didn’t install it on the memory card it would be faster. I recommend that you leave it running in the background for faster access.

Nevertheless, SMS-Chat is a great SMS client and Vito continues to make it even better. I certainly encourage you to try it out for all of its functionality. Go to www.iwindowsmobile.com to download a trial version. You can purchase it for $14.95.