Phone Alarm Vs. SPB Phone Suite

[Ciege]

These two programs appear very similar to each other. Searching the forums shows that most people are using Phone Alarm. I haven't been able to find a direct comparison and reccomendation between the two so I was hoping to start a thread on discussing them.
I did search but didn't find exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks...

[luv2chill]

Phonealarm has more features (dare I say too many) but is unstable for many people including myself. I have used various versions over the years (I even purchased the program early on) but will no longer use it because I found it too buggy to be useful. I can't speak to later versions but regardless, I'm done with it.

SPB Phone Suite has some nifty features (picture speed dial, for one) that phonealarm doesn't have. It's also lacking some features (a lot of profile flexibility, lack of skin support) that phonealarm does have. But it has been rock solid stable for me. The repeating alarms and profiles work like a charm--to me that's all I need so I prefer Phone Suite.

You might also look into SBSH Phoneweaver. It has some feature overlap with both of these apps and SBSH makes quality software as well.

I'm sure you'll get some other opinions too

Edit: I might add that it appears more people use phonealarm because it has been around far longer than the other two apps, which came out within a week or two of each other (and about a month ago). Given time I would expect to see those products mature and take a lot of the profile software market.

[Ciege]

Do you use any of the other SPB apps? I use Pocket+ and Diary and wonder how the integration with Phone Suite is.

Does Phone Suite include quick access to disabling or enabling items such a Bluetooth? That is one of my primary wants. I would like a button that in 1 click will turn on or off bluetooth or direct push or even disable EVDO when I want to.

Thanks for the reply!

[friguy3]

Have to agree...phonealarm for me just had too much and never worked exactly how i wanted it. phoneweaver for me is perfect, simple and does everything perfectly. I then use diary for photo dialing, like how it pops up the list of phone, text, address. sadly, like most things, when in doubt, try it out...youll find what you like sooner or later...just might take later like it did for me

[Pibe38]

I use PhoneAlarm 1.58, didn't update to 1.60 because didn't feel I needed the new features.

Spb Phone Suite is not skinnable and has a large memory footprint.

SBSH Phoneweaver does not have on screen notification alerts, so even though I support SBSH 100%, I do not use the profiles enough.

BTW, moved this to the Software forum...

[Catman51]

I'm on PhoneAlarm 160.2 and quite happy with it.

[jeffH70]

Originally Posted by Ciege

Do you use any of the other SPB apps? I use Pocket+ and Diary and wonder how the integration with Phone Suite is.

Does Phone Suite include quick access to disabling or enabling items such a Bluetooth? That is one of my primary wants. I would like a button that in 1 click will turn on or off bluetooth or direct push or even disable EVDO when I want to.

Thanks for the reply!

It integrates into the SPB pocket Plus as a tab and you can hide the photo dial into an icon to further save the space (occupy as one row of large icon (total 7, which 3 is fixed for phone operation, profile and photo dialing). It has bluetooth/wifi on/off switches as part of the phone operation icon but lack of EVDO on/off like the phone alarm. I wrote a simple script for SKSchema to do it via icon in SPB pocket plus.

Jeff

[Malatesta]

I have used all of them, including alarmPal.

- PhoneAlarm

Works very well for me, even 1.60--zero issues.

It has a lot of amazing features like auto-blank screen on phone calls which saves battery life, auto launching of apps on profiles, great profiles, fun skins and very powerful.

- SPB PhoneSuite

Very nice app. Like mentioned, profiles are limited. I love the icons--very simple and easy to read. Light on resources. I have some issues on the Treo with ring and vibrate profiles and find it doesn't nail down the system sounds as well--probably just a Treo limitation.

- SBSH PhoneWeaver

Also nice layout. Profiles work very well. I love the enable/disable Push email button, which I need since syncing/using Push during PDANet sessions make the connection unstable

- alarmPal

Great for just repeat notifications--very tiny.

- rlToday

Has nice ability for making message counters.

I use a combo of rlToday and PhoneWeaver mostly b/c I don't need repeat notifications, just profiles, enable/disable push email and nice big counters.

You have to decide what you need:

- Profiles?
- Connection Manager?
- Repeat notifications?
- Message counters?

Then work from there. I honestly I have no problem recommending any of the above programs and encourage people to try them all out.

PhoneAlarm is more intrusive on the installation, since it really takes over system functions, the others are more superficial.

[budney]

I like phoneAlarm personally, and never had any major problems with it untill I got my 6800. But I found that going back to version 1.58 corrected all the problems I was having.

I use phoneAlarm because that was the only program I could find that provides radio on/off timers. If Spb phone suite had that, I probably would've given it a shot. I'm on 1.6 with phoneAlarm and the only issue I encounter is the SMS counter doesn't always update once I read a text. I don't know if it's because of PA or if it's the Palm threaded app I added.