We have the excellent iContact, but is anyone developing a better SMS app?

ManuTouch · #1 (**permalink**) 09-18-2008, 02:40 AM

I know that PocketCM is out there, and I really like it, but it seems to have some issues with the WinMO 6.1 Keyboard. Sometimes PocketCM just exits when I try to type a message, sometimes it's a challenge just to get a keyboard up to type a message. The keyboard either disappears, or it gets stuck, and it takes all kinds of monkeying around to get things back to normal. Other times the keyboard, when used in PocketCM will make the lower taskbar disappear so that I can't reach the softkeys anymore. It's just too buggy on my Sprint Touch for me to want to use it on a daily basis.

Smiley SMS is pretty cool, but it's god awful slow every time you try to read your text messages, and it really doesn't look much different from the default text message application.

So I was looking around and found SMS Chat by Vito Technologies. It looked and felt like a very solid program (Ver. 1.16), but I find it tad overpriced for what it does. While messing with it, I also stumbled across Vito Fun Contacts. I uninstalled iContact and installed Fun Contacts, just to see if it and SMS Chat would interface with each other, and they did, came in very handy. The price for Fun Contacts is absurdly high.... come on guys... 20 bucks? The free iContact does more than Fun Contacts, like display Caller ID pics in the list, not just in a persons detail page, it allows to sort by categories (not just by first name, last name, and company in Fun Contacts), when looking through the call History, clicking on a call actually shows more detail about the call in iContact, not so in Fun Contacts where clicking on a listed call right away calls that person (this can get messy when you scroll through the list looking for a specific call, it's too easy to accidentally call the wrong person).

Anyhow....my point is....the guys that came up with iContacts obviously know what they are doing, and iContact is very similar in look and feel as the pricey Fun Contacts, but has MORE features....so....is anyone out there up to the challenge to make a program like SMS Chat that integrates well with iContacts?

I may sound like a cheap bastard, but who wants to pay 35 dollars just to pretty up what is already there? The worst part is that if you pay for those programs now, you only get a free update for one year....what if a major update comes out a few weeks or months past that one year period? Then you get to pay again?

Yeah ok....lol, I admit, I am cheap. I just want 35 dollars worth of software for nothing, and with more features and lots of skins!

Thanks for reading...

kri kri · #2 (**permalink**) 09-18-2008, 12:26 PM

I would like to know this as well.

msswitch · #3 (**permalink**) 09-19-2008, 11:46 AM

I have both SMS Chat and Fun Contact and I liked them initially, enough to purchase them but now I find that they crash way too often. Usually when I'm in the middle of sending a text or looking up a contact the program exits! I had enough of them and uninstalled. I'm just using the built in contacts and threaded SMS programs on Windows 6.1 until I find something more reliable.

ManuTouch · #4 (**permalink**) 09-19-2008, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by msswitch

I have both SMS Chat and Fun Contact and I liked them initially, enough to purchase them but now I find that they crash way too often. Usually when I'm in the middle of sending a text or looking up a contact the program exits! I had enough of them and uninstalled. I'm just using the built in contacts and threaded SMS programs on Windows 6.1 until I find something more reliable.

Really? They crashed....wow, now I am even happier I uninstalled them before buying them. Did you use the latest versions? Did you have a lot of custimized stuff going on with your phone, and what version of WM were you running?

msswitch · #5 (**permalink**) 09-22-2008, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ManuTouch

Really? They crashed....wow, now I am even happier I uninstalled them before buying them. Did you use the latest versions? Did you have a lot of custimized stuff going on with your phone, and what version of WM were you running?

I used the latest versions, even tried upgrades when they became available. I don't have any customizations and I'm running the latest 6.1 Sprint upgrade. I also didn't like that SMS Chat has to open - its annoying to wait for the "intro" before sending an SMS. I want it to work seamless and I don't want to sit and wait for the program to load before firing off a text message. I think it'll be a much better program after they work out these kinks.

ManuTouch · #6 (**permalink**) 09-22-2008, 12:47 PM

Well, if you leave both of them running in the background, then there won't be any wait time when each one starts up. Not sure how big the memory foot print for leaving both of them open is though, seeing that you have a Mogul, Memory usage is even more important to you than it is to me.

BTW....that Solid Gold thing creeps me out....lol