Mobile phone handler apps - the definitive roundup

Having SMS message handling (for example, exporting to a text file) and writing capabilities on the Pocket PC is a very useful feature, with a lot of applications supporting it. Also, the need for contact transfer/synchronization between the mobile phone and the PDA is pretty common.

In this roundup, I scrutinize SMS and contact transfer/synchronization-capable applications for the Pocket PC.

SMS synchronization and export is one of the most common tasks a mobile phone user is faced with. It’s, after all, much easier to write an SMS message on the Pocket PC (even with a Software Input Panel (SIP) method) than on the numeric keypad of the phone.

(Mass) contact synchronization and/or transfer is also preferred. WM2003+ devices with the Widcomm BT stack also have (mass) contact transfer capabilities (“Send via Bluetooth” in Contacts), which make it possible to send all (or any number of) the contacts at once.

Calendar/notes synchronization would also be nice to have; unfortunately, none of the reviewed apps are capable of doing this.

Finally, some of the apps also have a built-in phone dialer, call divert and an Internet connection utility, in cases even with traffic counter.

In this article, I only scrutinize the phone synchronization features of these apps. I’ll, however, return to the question of Internet connectivity and Internet traffic counting utilities later, in a big review of everything related to the built-in Connection Manager of the Windows Mobile operating system.

SMS handling capabilities

As has already been pointed out, the tiring and boring process of writing an SMS on the mobile phone can greatly be made easy by writing/editing/collecting SMS messages on the PDA, which has at least an on-screen keyboard (if not a real one) and, compared to a phone, almost infinite storage capabilities (think of the very limited SMS memory of some mobile phone models).

Phonebook transfer/synchronization

As both mobile phones and PDA’s are capable of keeping contacts in their own memory, it’d be advantageous to have some means of synchronization between them. If, for example, you add/modify a record to/in your PDA’s contact list, the change could be automatically synchronized with the phone and vice versa.

As can be seen, the manual phonebook transfer capabilities of almost all applications are pretty questionable because of flattened extended phonebook records, lack of Unicode support, crashes, buggy or plain slow up/download. Furthermore, none of the reviewed apps are really capable of automatic synchronization of the Contacts system database with the SIM/built-in phone memory. This is a very annoying omission with all of these apps. This means you may still want to stick to a desktop computer to synchronize contact changes between your phone and your Outlook Contacts database using a program like, say, Nokia PC Suite[/url] for Nokia; furthermore, [url="http://resolution.extendedsystems.com/esi/products/mobile+data+management+products/pc-based+synchronization/default.htm"]XTNDConnect PC for Ericsson and some palmOne/Palm and PPC PE/MS Smartphone devices. The other side is, as you may have already guessed, is synchronizing your desktop Outlook and your PDA via the well-known ActiveSync or other synching applications like IntelliSync.

Also, as not even manual contact transfer work with current Pocket PC-based applications (or, if it does, mostly heavily ridden with bugs or at least plain slow), you may want to check whether your phone is able to (mass) receive contacts sent from the built-in Windows Mobile Contacts application (“Send via Bluetooth”). Phones like, for example, the Sony-Ericsson t610 are able to do so; however, you’ll need to explicitly let it store every single contact in the phone. The other direction, again with the t610 (other models will differ a lot!), will work beautifully with Phonebook/Advanced/Send All. Then, you don’t even need to individually let your Pocket PC store the received contacts – they will be received and stored in your PDA without further human interaction.

Before we go further, I need to speak of the two genres of PPC-based mobile phone handler/supporter applications:

Always-connected vs. not always connected applications

There’re two major types of Pocket PC-based phone handler apps: always-connected ones and apps that only connect to the phone during, say, SMS or phonebook transfer/synchronization.

There’re advantages and disadvantages of both categories. Always-connected apps like mPhone, Running Voice GSM (RVGSM), SmartGSM etc. are able to signal incoming calls/SMS messages on the PDA, with highly customizable, say, dial tones/WAV’s (which may not be possible with some phones). An example of this with RVGSM (see the status message at the bottom center!):

RVGSM goes even further: it even has sophisticated call diverting capabilities. Also, they have dialer screens with buttons much larger than those of most mobile phones.

They, however, do not allow for (please see this thread on this problem) using the PDA as a handsfree device because of the limitations of the built-in BT stack on current (even high-end, VGA, BT version 1.2) devices. They have no MMS, VoIP and other, advanced capabilities either. Therefore, I’d say their usability is more than questionable if you also take into account the sometimes vast CPU / memory usage of these apps, even when run in the background.

Therefore, if you don’t need to be notified of incoming calls/messages, or, you don’t need a built-in dialer, you may want to opt for the other type of phone handler apps: ones that aren’t always connected. They put, in general, far less burden on the PDA, CPU/memory usage-wise and, therefore, also work much faster.

Now, you’ll understand the two main categories in this roundup. That said, let's get to the apps themselves! I’ll explain other pecularities with phone handler applications later.

Please note that this roundup is neither a tutorial nor a plain one-program test (an article which only describes one application, without directly comparing its features, its memory consumption, price etc. to the alternatives). It even lacks of “traditional” program screenshots – I only use few of them, compared to traditional one-app articles. It’s a “plain” roundup to show you the advantages/disadvantages of each application in a tabular manner, with the goal of also showing you what phone handler apps are capable of in general.

Always-connected apps

Running Voice GSM (RVGSM) 3.2.

Its phonebook handler is the fastest, but it certainly lacks a lot of functions. For example, it supports no mass contact upload to the phone. It isn’t able to transfer extended phone records either.

Its SMS manager is pretty hidden (it’s under “Box Manager”). (Incidentally, their $13.50 SMS Manager 2.0.1 offers the same as the built-in SMS support in Running Voice GSM 3.2. If you only want an SMS handler, it may be a good choice because it requires far less CPU/memory than RVGSM.)

It is really a CPU- and a memory hog. Most of its main memory files, however, can be “hacked” to a memory card (please see some posts in this thread on it). Therefore, as it doesn’t particularly excel in any area, except for the built-in, excellent traffic counter application and the call diverting functionality, I don’t recommend this application for SMS/phonebook transfer purposes. If you need call diverting, an always-connected app or want a really good data traffic counter (even better than that of Spb), you may want to give it a test ride. (Unfortunately, it has no trial version, though.)

(Incidentally, the data traffic counter can be “hacked out” of the application and can be used even without using RVGSM, or, even after a (selective) uninstall; upon demand, I can explain how this can be done.)

Some screenshots (to get a picture of what you can set in the app):

RVGSM – SMS setting screen

RVGSM – SMS group setup screen

RVGSM – SMS folder setup screen

It excels at, for example, call divert-related settings (no other app has capabilities like this):

SmartGSM 2.3.4

It’s a very cute application with by far the prettiest user interface (it has no native VGA support, unfortunately, and, on VGA devices, it’s double-pixeled). It’s a connected application, but consumes far less memory/CPU than, say, the above-introduced RVGSM. Along with c2i and the IA app (more on them later), it’s the only app that is able to synchronize the Outbox SMS box. It also supports profiles, which is only supported by very few other apps, to separate the SMS messages/phonebooks of separate phones (or, as with the other apps, to create any number of separate phonebooks, or, with the exception of mPhone, SMS databases).

A screenshot of the connection setup screen – as can be seen, both the DUN and serial (with even a shortcut, BTS1: (not present in other phone handler apps), so that you don’t need to search for the correct serial BT COM port) BT connection is supported

It has an excellent conflict resolution engine. In the following screen, it asks for what should be done with an SMS that has been deleted from the application:

It has other excellent features also, particularly extended contact record field mapping-wise:

Extended field mapping in Smart GSM

The General field mapping choices

(Please note that, once you’ve set up a connection with a phone, you can’t return to this screen as it’s only presented at the first setup and the app always remembers already-connected phones, no matter how eagerly you try to reconnect it. In these cases, I’m afraid only removing Profiles.dat in the home directory will help, after you back up the Phonebook*.dat and SMS*.dat files if you want to save and later reload their contents).

Its “New contact” dialog is also far more powerful than those of other phone manager apps:

A Preferences screen, with most settings:

Its Phone Info screen is also very informative (very few other apps display so much information on the connected phone):

Its biggest problem, phonebook-wise, is the lack of any kind of Contacts system database export. SMS-wise, it can’t export SMS messages to textual files either.

I recommend this application for people that want something extra (for example, logo/ringtone editor) for their mobile phone and/or prefer apps that are visually stunning and/or want Outbox SMS synchronization.

mPhone 2.6.3

This all-in-one app has long been (even in the PsPC and H/PC Pro times) one of the most important mobile phone handler apps. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated in the last two years; their customer support service didn’t even answer my mail sent to them some 19-20 months ago. It supports extended phone records, Unicode, and some pecularities like (limited) Contacts database and phone synchronization.

The app, if it works with your configuration (it won’t work with, for example, the Nokia 6230, not even through the infrared connection!), it may prove useful. Give it a test ride!

Not always-connected apps

connect2internet PRO 3.1 (c2i)

Has serious speed problems and other bugs (see the summarizing table). It has very bad price/value ratio, I’d say. Its little (and certainly cheaper) brother, connect2phone, has exactly the same problems as this one.

It has, for example, no support for Unicode in incoming SMS’s (they come over as complete garbage), which is a real showstopper for me:

while other apps like Running Voice had no problems at rendering messages like this:

It also has problems with long incoming SMS’s (all the other apps were able to read this test SMS properly; as you can see, there is some binary data denoting a long SMS at the beginning of the message; after that, the full text is still readable):

First chunk

Second chunk

Third chunk

There are not much to set/configure either:

But, at least, it supports SMS addressee groups:

and has a skinable dialer (not very spectacular on a VGA device tho):

Its Today plug-in with the double-pixeled icons isn’t particularly pretty on a VGA device either:

(Make sure you install the app into main memory so that the Today plug-in is visible! If you give its installer another target medium, not a single byte will be installed there; still, the Today plug-in will be invisible (another bug). Probably most of the c2i files can still be “hacked” into alternative storage. It’s another question whether it’s really worth the trouble.)

Finally, its main page, with the additional panel (which has the listbox of the presented records) has very bad design too, which becomes very annoying on VGA devices:

By just leaving out the additional panel with the scrollbars, the application would be much less convoluted/easier to use. Designers of c2i should enroll to Design 101, I think :)

Its only real strength is its built-in connection manager (which also contains the APN’s of major GSM/GPRS operators), which, IMHO, isn’t worth the premium price ($51.45) if you learn how the built-in Connection Manager in Windows Mobile works and must be configured.

pocket PhoneTools 4 Pro

It’s a bit weaker than its bigger brother, PhoneTools eXPert, which even has Voice/ Video over IP capabilities. However, it may be worth giving a try if you also want to have built-in faxing capabilities (other apps in the test don’t have any fax support).

The app hasn’t been updated for about 2 years and is pretty mediocre in other (non-faxing) respects. Unfortunately, its SMS module seems to be broken – it just can’t read SMS messages from either the (natively supported) t68i or the t610 (stalls in the “Reading” screen, or, on WM2003SE, it just displays “Modem disconnected”). Upon sending them, it just stalls too. (Tested with both the t68i and t610 and on both the iPAQ 2210 and the PL720). You may have more luck with your configuration, however. Unfortunately, as it has no trial version, you can’t directly test compatibility before buying.

SimpleSMS 4.0

This app is a lightweight, but very nice SMS handler app. Except for downloading the Sent/Outbox memory, it’s a very nice program without major glitches or problems. One of the very few apps that also offer SMS export capabilities (its output is really clean and readable).

Its brother, Simple Phone Book 2.0, is a simple phonebook transfer utility with no PDA-phone autosynchronization capabilities. If your phone doesn’t support built-in mass contact transfer capabilities and you can’t synchronize your PDA and phone through your desktop computer either, you may want to give it a try.

A common problem with both apps is the
1, lack of any kind of Unicode support
2, they don’t like contact names with commas (,) in them, unlike all the other apps

SMS Options

General Options

IA Phone Manager 1.30

(Note the lack of a link. This app has already been removed from most sites, including Handango, Tucows and pocketGear; even some of its reviews have been removed; for example, the one at PDAGold. You may still have luck at finding it on some magazine or archive CD’s.)

It’s certainly a pity IAStyle no longer directly sell their software – they were, in cases, top-notch (ignoring some bugs). Their other high-quality application, IA Album, was also at least as good as the leading image viewer/editor apps of its time, if not better (it had histogram and a lot of other goodies like EXIF info).

Their app also offers a lot (assuming it works with your configuration and doesn’t crash (that often)). Outbox synchronization, position-based phone contact sort, an excellent profile mode (much better and more powerful than that of SmartGSM), are some of the many advantages it offers (would offer, that is) over the competition. This is why I’ve included it in the test. Hope you’ll be able to find the trial version somewhere – on, say, an old CD.

SMS reading

Sync capabilities

SMS Settings

Unfortunately, with the two mobile phones I’ve tested, it only worked with t68i without frequently crashing. With the t610, no synchronization could be finished. I haven’t tested all the different phone options (tried to access the t610 using the t68i configuration as, the app’s phone database being severely outdated, it doesn’t natively support the t610) – it may have helped. (mPhone can access the t610 using the t68i configuration flawlessly, though.)

VITO QuickContact PRO 1.2

It’s a small SMS writer app with really reduced capabilities. However, it may be worth a try.

Note that their homepage only has the non-pro, 1.1 version. Their old link that used to have version 1.2 no longer exists; neither does this version on their homepage, only the older and more expensive one; this is why I’ve linked the PocketGear source.

It can send directly to the SIM storage – that is, the addressee doesn’t need to explicitly save it to the SIM in order to avoid loss of all in-phone SMS messages if you, for example, swap batteries (which is lethal for in-memory SMS’ on for example Sony-Ericsson models).

Bottom line:

Which one to choose if you want a decent SMS- and Phone Book handler application? Unfortunately, this is a very complicated question to answer.

First, I’d stay away from connect2internet PRO 3.1. It’s waaaaaaaaay too overpriced, very slow, occupies main RAM, has a sick-designed GUI and has absolutely no Unicode support. It has very few things that make it better than the rest (Outbox/Sent synchronization being the most important of them).

I wouldn’t get Running Voice GSM 3.2 either. It’s a memory and processor hog and costs quite much (not as much as c2i, though). If you don’t need its always-connected capabilities (call diverting etc) or indeed excellent data traffic counter (the latter can be hacked out from the application), get something else.

pocket PhoneTools 4 Pro? Well, only if you need fax capabilities, even if it works with your particular phone, SMS-wise (it stalled with the two S-E models I’ve tested with). The four apps (which will follow soon) I really recommend are much better at SMS-, and, to a certain degree, phonebook-related operations.

SmartGSM? Apart from the biggest problem (its unability to export to Contacts) and other problems like the lack of SMS export, this is a decent, and, what is more, modestly priced app. Highly recommended!

mPhone? If it works with your PDA + phone configuration, you may also want to give this a try. Highly recommended!

SimpleSMS? If you don’t need any fluff and, in most cases, CPU-hog, always-connected functionality, just a small, but very powerful SMS editor/sender with great SMS export capabilities, this app is for you. Its inability to get the contents of the phone Sent Items/Outbox and the inability to write Unicode messages may be a showstopper for many, though. I can’t really recommend its brother, Simple Phone Book, if your mobile phone has something like “Send All Contacts” because Simple Phone Book doesn’t really offer anything serious, compared to them. But, at least it works, which is good news if you take input ccount that very few apps were actually able to mass-upload contacts to phone. Highly recommended!

IA Phone Manager? Once again, it’s a pity IA has left the business as an indeendent, non-OEM company. This application – assuming it doesn’t crash and supports your phone – is far superior to most of the apps in a lot of respects.

The summarizing table can be found here . Sorry, couldn’t include the table directly because the local forum engine doesn’t allow for HTML table inclusion.

What/how did I test?

Memory: if not otherwise explained, the standard format of these records are <memory consumption on an external card/in the File Store>/ <compulsory storage memory consumption in RAM>. ~0 means ‘almost 0’, meaning that there’re no system DLL’s, config files etc. in the RAM, only .unload, help and other, removable/relocatable files. I’ve also noted there the relocation possibilities with apps that install DLL’s and other (non-trivial – that is, no HTML help files or .unload files, which can all be deleted/relocated) kinds of files in \Windows.

Resident in memory?

Some of the apps also have a module (c2i even has a Today plug-in) that is loaded at starting the Pocket PC. In here, I listed to whether the app has such resident code (which is, in general, a minus, because of the additional RAM/CPU usage) and, if yes, where it is started from (so that you can remove it if you would like to start it yourself instead/completely disable its resident module).

Generic group, BT: serial directly supported? and BT: BTC1: directly supported?

If you plan to access your phone via Bluetooth, you’ll have two choices. If the application supports plain BT serial connections, then, you’ll be able to access your phone after a simple pairing in the external Bluetooth Manager – nothing else will be needed. Then, however (unless you, in WM2003, hack the Registry not to do so, or, in WM2003SE, don’t just check in the “Always use this device” checkbox. To do the former, just add a DWORD named BtBrowserEnabled with the value 0 to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Widcomm\BtConfig\AutoConnect\0008, where you will need to go to another, accordingly named subkey instead of 0008 if the BT serial port isn’t COM8: but, say, COM6: ), you will always be presented the BT device chooser screen. This has the following advantages:

- you can always choose another phone to communicate with. This is especially good if you have more than one phone to synchronize with
- as has already been pointed out, simply pairing the PDA with the phone will suffice to be able to access its address book, dialer, calls list or SMS sending/receiving capabilties.

It has the following disadvantage, though: if you only have one phone to communicate with, the device chooser screens (which introduce at least three additional taps and a some waiting) will really slow down your work.

Therefore, you may want to decide between using the serial port (meaning the ability to always choose a phone to communicate with) or, the “BTC1:” dial-up connection (also called as Bluetooth modem), which, on the expense of creating a(n even bogus) dial-up networking (DUN) connection in the Bluetooth Manager, only uses the active DUN “modem”.

Please note that if you don’t have an active GPRS (CDMA 2000, HSCSD etc.) subscription, you can still discover the DUN service of your phone and set up a DUN icon of your phone in BT manager. Just enter any number in the Dial number field. Preferably, it should be a pseudo-number like *99# so that no real dialing will take place.

Also note that, much as only one BTC1: “modem” can be default at a time (phone manager apps that are configured to use BTC1: will use this phone by default), you can always switch to another one by simply going to the Bluetooth Manager, tap-and-holding the DUN icon assigned to the phone and choosing Connect from the context menu.

Please note that most apps support both connection forms. You need to decide for the right one for you. If you often need to access different mobile phones via BT, you may want to configure your phone handler app to use the serial port so that you are presented the ‘Choose device’ screen each time a BT connection is initiated. If, however, you only have one device or switch to using other phones very rarely (say, once a week), using BTC1: may be a better choice.

Note that the BT serial port is either COM8: (for example, the WM2003 iPAQ 2210) or COM6: (for example, the WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720) on most devices with integrated BT. If you, however, use an external CF/SD BT card, these ports are generally COM11: or COM12:. Note that choosing the wrong port won’t result in any damage to your hardware – it’s just that the device chooser screen won’t be displayed and, therefore, you’ll need to move on to trying another COM port.

Note that only three apps don’t support both of these connection modes: RVGSM, pocket Phonetools and the IAStyle app. RVGSM can be registry hacked (please read this thread on choosing the right registry editor; in this case, any of them will do). Just enter the port name (say, COM8: - don’t forget the trailing colon!) to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Pocket Presence\ComSwitch\Port. (BTW, this hack has also been discovered by me, as with all the other relocation etc. hacks referred to in this article.)

RVGSM can’t use the serial BT connections without registry hacking

Incidentally, some words on how these device chooser dialog screens should be used. On the first screen, just tap the icon of the phone you want to access:

While, on the second that comes up after this, tap either ports (both will work) and press OK:

Contacts tap-and-hold integration?: does the application put shortcuts in the Windows Mobile Contacts application context menu? The majority of the reviewed applications do. You may also want to see the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PimApps\PimExtensions\Contacts\AddIns] registry key for Contacts add-ins so that you can easily remove the ones (if, say, you install several phone manager apps and the context menu becomes far too cluttered) you don’t need (just remove the unneeded subkeys. For example, if you, albeit install, don’t need RVGSM’s SMS sender, just remove the “Running Voice GSM SMS” subkey).

Separate user profiles?: this is a very nice capability to have. If you plan to handle more than one mobile phone with the same program, on the same PDA, you may want to prefer applications that support the separation of phones and/or profiles.

SmartGSM does this by default. It doesn’t even let the user use the same contacts/SMS etc. databases with more than one mobile phone, which may result in problems in some cases. For example, because of this restriction, you won’t be able to mass-transfer contacts between two mobile phones, which is certainly a letdown in many cases. All the other apps that allow for defining separate databases are certainly more flexible in this respect. Of them, IAStyle’s app deserves special attention because of its excellent “project” management. An example screenshot of the latter:

(A quick hack for SmartGSM: if you run into problems like the above, you can do some quick, filesystem-level hacks. You can freely copy the phonebook/SMS data files from one set-up phone to another if you keep in mind that the first phone that you set up with SmartGSM will have .dat files with 1 in them, the second 2 and so on. You can freely copy/overwrite these files with each other, properly renaming Phonebook_2.dat to Phonebook_2.dat, when you want to, say, copy the address book of the second phone to the first.)

Can the databases (phonebook/SMS/Call list) be password-protected/encrypted?: this speaks for itself. Unfortunately, only mPhone offers password encryption, and only for its phone databases. Actually, all the apps use readable data files. This, on one hand, is very useful (you can, to a certain extent – no dates, no senders in the majority of cases - read your SMS messages even if your app doesn’t actively support SMS export); on the other hand, however, it may hamper security. This means you may end up using external tools to encrypt the data files.

Native VGA compliance?: unformtunately, none of the apps natively support VGA. With some (PhoneTools, mPhone, IA Phone Manager) of them, however, at least contact/SMS lists make use of the VGA screen.

QVGA landscape compliance?: which of the applications can be used in QVGA landscape (or, devices that only have a 240*240 screen like the iPAQ hw6515)? Fortunately only some (heavily bitmap-based apps like RVGSM) become completely useless (meaning no vertical scrollbar) in landscape. The other (heavily) bitmap-based app, SmartGSM, proved to be highly usable in landscape orientation.

SMS group: everything related to SMS messages

SMS deletion settable?: you may (not) want to delete your messages after reading. Some apps allow for configurable deletion. (Be warned: mPhone, unlike all the other apps, delete SMS messages by default.)

Able to sync the phone Sent/Outbox too?: to be able to synchronize the phone Sent Messages (or, with another, usual name, Outbox) is really a big plus. Then, you will be able to read/browse/export the messages on your PDA you’ve written on and sent from your mobile phone (and, in some cases, vice versa; I haven’t tested the latter case). Unfortunately, only (the otherwise very weak) c2i, SmartGSM and the IAStyle app support this in practice.

Can use the system-level Contacts for writing?: can you look up/insert the addressee number(s) using the Contacts database? It’s possible with all apps.

Unicode decoding/rendering in incoming messages?: if you get a Unicode message, can the app decode it? All the apps can do this, except for c2i. c2i presents complete garbage upon receiving Unicode messages.

Incidentally, what’s Unicode? Let’s have a look at the following two sets of special characters, all of them accessible via the built-in virtual keyboard, without using any third-party extended on-screen keyboard:

In the first row, you can see characters that are not Unicode; while in the second, all the characters require to be sent in a Unicode message. (Note that all non-displayed ‘special’ other characters also need to be sent as Unicode.)

As a rule of thumb, not all characters of the Western alphabet (that is, the ISO 8859-1 standard) are part of the non-Unicode set, so, beware, if your particular language contains characters like those in French and not-existing in other languages. This means only speakers of languages like all Scandinavian and Germanic languages + Spanish can safely write messages on their mobile phones without switching to Unicode, which would result in half the transferrable message size for the same price.

Also note that widely-used characters like {, } and \ are Unicode.

Unicode out? Does it automatically switch to Unicode, or do you need to manually switch?

1: Can you write Unicode SMS messages? In c2i and SimpleSMS, no, unlike in all the other applications.

2: the IA app is unique in the respect (too) that it automatically switches to Unicode mode as soon as you enter a Unicode-only character. All the other (Unicode-capable) apps must be explicitly switched to Unicode mode.

SMS export into text file?: no explanation needed. I’ve also elaborated on the data file formats used by the apps to see whether it’s easy to see the messages inside them if the given app doesn’t explicitly support direct SMS export.

Flash / blink support?: Flash/blink messages are special messages (they “flash” on the screen and then, disappear etc). Some of the apps allow for sending them.

Signature?: can you attach a pre-defined signature to your messages?

More than one addressee?: can you send your message to more than one target mobile phones at the same time? All major apps support this (the VITO app doesn’t).

Groups with mass-adding capabilities (not just contact groups/categories)?: are you able to define mobile phone number groups to be able to send your messages to without many taps?

Generic (both up/down) contacts-related capabilities group: the first group related to contact transfer/synchronization.

Automatic synchronization of the app's inner contact list with the phone? : while none of the apps has the ability to directly synchronize the system-level Contacts database with the phone, some offer the possibility of doing so with their inner databases (which is, unfortunately, independent of the system Contacts database). This test provides a list of them.

Automatic synchronization of WinCE Contacts DB (not the app's inner contact list!) changes/new records only (not just plain manual upload) to the phone (through the inner list)? and Automatic synchronization of phone changes/new records only (not just plain manual download) to the WinCE Contacts DB (through the inner list)? are both about synchronizing the system Contacts database with the phone. As can clearly be seen, only mPhone offers partial (it only synchronizes changed but not new/deleted records) support for this kind of automatic synchronization.

Because there is no automatic synchronization of WinCE Contacts DB, I’ve also scrutinized whether these apps offer tools for manual synchronization, to avoid full transfers (which, with the majority of the tools, is impossible / results in crash / if it works, then, it’s slow) all the time. The reason for this is very simple: none of the apps can sort the built-in Contacts records in the order of the addition (so that you can know at once, without hunting for them one-by-one, which of them have been added lately, after the last contacts transfer, and transfer only them). This could, however, be programmatically possible because, much as they are stored sorted in the database, the Contacts WinCE system database records do have an inner flag that contain their serial number, which is strictly increased by one after the next record adding. (You may also want to read this thread on the subject of the inner format of the Contacts database.) These tests are the two tests of the Easyness of manual synchronization of new records subgroup.

The first ( Does it show phone entries sorted/unsorted (so that the latest, not-yet-transferred ones can be found?), or, at least, the position in phone mem/SIM?), means download. Fortunately, four of the tested apps (c2i, p. PhoneTools, Simple Phone Book and IA Phone Manager) allow for this. An example of the IAStyle app:

All apps, however, failed the second test (Does it show the Contacts DB (or its in-app copy) entries sorted/unsorted? (See the serial number ULONG with the ID 65534 in the "Contacts Database" system DB!)), which concerns the upload direction.

If it flattens extended records, is it in standard format? Extended contact entries are both used in mobile phones and PDA’s. They make it possible to assign more than one values to a contact name (for example, work, home, mobile and fax numbers). An example of an extended record in the PDA Contacts database:

“Flattening” refers to making these records apart and displaying their components as individual records, by either adding standard suffixes like /H (which stands for Home), /M (Mobile), /W (Work) etc. to them or listing them as belonging to some groups.

Synchronizing/ accessing the phone memory and the SIM independently, without waiting for the other to complete? As accessing the phone / SIM memory can be very slow, it can be in cases advantageous to be able to force phone handler applications to read only one type of memory or the other. Unfortunately, the app that would benefit the most from this (c2i), lacks this feature.

Contacts download to PDA group: the second group related to contact transfer/synchronization; this time, I’ve examined the phone -> phone handler app -> Contacts database transfer.

t68 test: 328 phone and 226 SIM contact transfer into the app (not counted in the time for the possible exporting to the Contacts DB) : the time needed to transfer quite a few records from both sources. I’ve jotted down both phone and SIM access times.

As can clearly be seen, Simple Phone Book 2.0, Running Voice GSM 3.2 and pocket PhoneTools 4 Pro are the winners of this test. Other applications spend in cases an order of magnitude more time on reading contacts off the phone.

Export to contacts?

Unfortunately, not all applications support exporting contacts to the Contacts system database. The absolute loser in this category if SmartGSM.

"Select all" upon (possible) export to local Contacts database?: if you plan to export to the Contacts system database, is it possible to easily select all the records to avoid one-by-one exporting? All apps support this. The IA app can’t export more than one records in practice, though, due to a bug, in WM2003SE (haven’t tested this in older operating systems).

Time needed to store Contacts in PDA Contacts? How much time is needed to store the above-mentioned 328+226 records in the Contacts system database. Fortunately, all programs fared well in this respect.

Progress bar?: it’s advantageous to have some visual feedback of (in cases) very slow operations like reading phone/SIM memory. In this test, I’ve scrutinized the apps in this respect. Unfortunately, the otherwise quite slow c2i doesn’t use any kind of scrollbar, which can make its users think it crashed. Other apps have scrollbars or other kinds of visual feedback; except for RVGSM. The latter is very fast, though, so, you won’t really need this feature.

Extended contact record download to Contacts: is the app able to download extended contacts from the phone and transfer them to the Contacts system database with keeping the records together? Unfortunately, only mPhone and Simple Phone Book 2.0 are able of doing this. Please note that, of the two, it’s only mPhone that also displays compound records without flattening in-app. (Built-in (mass) contact transfer is able to do this on Sony-Ericsson phones.)

Unicode accent download from phone/SIM?: is the app able to download Unicode characters? (Built-in (mass) contact transfer is able to do this on Sony-Ericsson phones.) Generally programs fared well in this respect, except for c2i (no Unicode support at all), Simple Phone Book and, interestingly, SmartGSM, which has problems even with non-Unicode, Western letters like ö or ä when transferring from SIM cards (from phone memory, it supports even Unicode).

Contacts upload to phone group: transferring contacts from the the Contacts system database to the phone tests

t610 test with 510 (554) records test: this test was a stumbling block for many apps. First, RVGSM doesn’t have any mass upload capabilities. Second, c2i didn’t upload anything. Third, pocket Phonetools was only able to upload some 10 or 20 records a time. Fourth, mPhone crashed badly. The only two apps that uploaded contacts without problems were SmartGSM and Simple Phone Book (I haven’t tested the IAStyle app in this test.)

Import from contacts?: fortunately, all apps are able to import from the Contacts system database.

Unicode accent upload to phone/SIM?: as isn’t hard to predict, the non-Unicode-compliant Simple Phone Book and c2i failed this test. pocket PhoneTools 4 Pro wasn’t able to upload Unicode characters either.

Select all while importing from Contacts / upload?: upon importing from the system Contacts DB to the in-app phonebook database (where the latter exists at all – RVGSM and Simple Phone Book operate directly on system Contacts records and, therefore, don’t have their own in-app contact lists), is it possible to easily select all the exisiting records to import. Fortunately, all apps are able of this (SmartGSM isn’t very intuitive in this respect though).

Extended contact record import from Contacts and upload, keeping everything together?: can you upload extended contact records to the phone, without it getting torn apart (i.e, flattened)?