Review: Ringo Mobile
March 29, 2006
Ringtones have become a staple feature in almost every cell phone on the market. Electric Pocket's latest release of Ringo Mobile aims to help users organize their ringtones and set customized alerts based on the caller. Even though the 700w already allows users to set custom ringtones for the user, Ringo Mobile offers several enhancements which many users will find useful.
User Interface
The first improvement Ringo Mobile offers over the standard ringtone manager is the large interface which lets users take advantage of the touch screen and make changes using a single hand.
Choosing the ‘Pick’ button brings up an easy to use dialog box which is easily navigated using the 5-way navigation button – making it quick and easy to choose your ringtone.
The ‘Friends’ tab makes it easy to tell Ringo Mobile which contacts you want to add customized notifications for. Simply selecting ‘New’ and scrolling through your phone book lets you easily add users to the list –
again, the layout seems to have been specifically created to make it easy to navigate with one hand.
The last tab titled ‘Groups’ lets users quickly assign specific ringtones for all users within a specific group. Users who consistently use the category feature of their contact list will find this a very convenient feature.
Features and Options
Perhaps the most notable feature of Ringo Mobile is the ability to assign specific ringtones for text (SMS) messages.
This means you can finally have a unique notification for each contact in your address book! Ringo Mobile also allows
you to assign unique SMS tones for user groups – a feature sorely missing from WM5 on the 700w.
Issues and Notes
One infrequent issue we encountered was that there were a few calls that came through which were apparently not noticed by Ringo Mobile, and ended up ringing with the default Treo ringtone. We will note that it only happened on two out of dozens of phone calls.
The SMS ringtones seemed to work flawlessly throughout the entire testing process.
Note: Electric Pocket is offering a free download of several ringtones at their site.
Overview
The 700w does a decent job of offering users customization options for ringtones.
Ringo Mobile expands on these options and excels in two areas the 700w is lacking – custom group and SMS ringtones.
The program overall was very stable – we didn’t experience any crashes during our several day testing process.
Electric Pocket offers a free 7 day trial of Ringo Mobile, so you can make sure the program is stable on your phone before you buy it.
Ringo Mobile is available as a free trial and retails for $19.95.
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