Review: iBerry BlackBerry Blacklist & Whitelist – Block Unwanted Callers

iBerry Black & Whitelist – iBerry Software Labs
[rating:8.5]8.5/10
Link: clickapps.com
OTA & Desktop Link: clickapps.com (Click on the try button by the title to generate email)
Cost: $9.35 – Limited Trial Available
Version: 1.27

iBerry Black & Whitelist is a application that allows you to blacklist and whitelist callers so that you can block unwanted calls. This is done by a simple whitelist or blacklist or an even more interesting feature where you can use address book rule to allow only callers in your address book. The software also allows you to block callers that call from a unknown or private number. The software was very effective in reducing the amount of unwanted callers that I was getting but it does require a bit of configuration to get it working. Some of the features are very intuitive and others could use some work to fine tune but all in all the software is pretty good. Check out the full review after the jump.

First Impressions: The install went without a hitch and was a very small download. The problem with this software is that the company who makes it, iBerry software labs, does not have a website yet nor do they have support options available online other than email. iBerry got something right when they set up the program to remember your settings when your upgrade so you don’t have to reprogram it every time you upgrade. What they got wrong was the fact that the program has no support or help file to help you get started.

How it works: I would advise that you read the following description because it shows you how the application actually blocks calls. The calls are not actually stopped from calling your phone but actually muted in the first few milliseconds of the call. This means that they can still leave you a voicemail if you have voicemail. From the iBerry description:

Whether the caller’s number is in address book formatted number or raw number, when you have an incoming call, the application uses smart hashing and matching algorithm to detect, analyze and make the decision whether to reject it or not,. The phone is disconnected in 50 milliseconds and the application disables the buzz sound before the Blackberry device starts to make that annoying sound*. The callers won’t even know that they are blacklisted or NOT whitelisted, they will hear the busy tone or forwarded to voice mail, depending on your phone setting. Some old Blackberry devices model you still here buzz sound, but very short and quieter than a normal call.

The Application: The application consists of a simple program window that takes a bit to get used to. Once you understand how it works then the program becomes much more useful. You can see the main screen above.

The menu options are pretty straight forward. The first option allows you to delete a number from your black or white list and the second allows you to collapse all numbers. The main option is the “Change Block Rule” option but we will discuss that in the next paragraph. The “Turn Off” option turns off all functionality of the program so things are back to normal. The “Blocked History” option allows you to see the call logs that have gone through the application and whether they went through or were blocked. The last two options are very nice since they allow you to block private and unknown numbers separately.

As we mentioned before the “Change Block Rule” menu option is the main feature of the program. With this you can switch between the three modes of the program.

• Blacklist – Blocks all contacts that are in the blacklist but lets everything else through
• Whitelist – Blocks all callers that are not specified in the whitelist (Good for only letting your wife or boss call)
• Address Book – Only allows callers that are in your address book to reach you

The only downside of all these is that if the caller ID is blocked or private then you need to play with the configuration a bit since your choices with private callers is block all or not.

The “Blocked History” menu option gives you a call log of all the numbers that came through with the date and time. I have two issues with this. First of all it only shows the number and not the name so it makes it difficult to identify. The second problem is that you cannot add or delete users from the black or white list from this screen which would make sense. Hopefully that will be fixed in a later revision.

Other than the inability to add blocks from the blocked history there is a nice way to add to the lists. You can add contacts or numbers to the black or white list from the phone application and from the address book. You can see screenshots of the context menu’s of both above.

When you click on the context menus you will be given the following prompt as you can see above. You will be asked to add the contact or number to the black or white list with both of the options checked by default for some odd reason.

Trial Limitations: The trial period is 15 days and you will be limited to 5 contacts in each list with unlimited contacts in Address book. You will be able to reject unwanted call 10 times and after that all calls come through. You will have to clear the blocked history manually to allow application to reject unwanted calls again.

The Good:

• Powerful call blocking options
• Ability to block unknown or private numbers
• Ability to add numbers from address book and phone application

The Bad:

• You cannot add contacts from the application or the blocked call history
• Some older BlackBerry’s will still buzz a bit before the call is blocked
• Interface is a bit confusing and has no help file

Conclusion: iBerry Blacklist & Whitelist for BlackBerry is a great tool for managing your phone calls and blocking unwanted calls. As I said before iBerry just needs to round out the rough edges on the program and they will have a Editors Choice Award for this software. The fact that there is no help file makes this a program that take a bit to figure out but in the end it does work quite well. The price is very good for such a piece of software and I highly recommend it for people who want to get rid of unwanted calls. It was worth it just to get rid of private callers =) In a new version I am hoping iBerry adds the ability to have profiles so that you can have different Blocklists for different occasions.