Review: E-mobile Today
Review: E-mobile Today
Rating: 
5/10
Link: www.pocketmedialive.com
Cost: $19.95
Working with all kinds of smartphones daily, there is one feature of Windows Mobile devices I love, that is the today screen. You can get a look at your day ahead, or check weather, read news bits, etc. Blackberry devices with its Today themes and icons that can change on the home screen is helping it to get similar experience. Today, I am reviewing another application that aims the similar goal – E-mobile Today.
For more just hit the JUMP…
The application is around 500K download and installs quickly. However starting it up takes 5–10 seconds. The initial screen looks very nice, you get the date/time, missed calls, appointments, tasks and emails with the main app. To unlock News, Weather and Stocks you’ll have to pay $5.95, $5.95 and $6.95 respectively. So for a full product, you cough up $19.95 (current sale price, normally it was $24.95) plus 18.85, comes to a total of $38.80, which is more expensive than their competiton (Pocket Day Pro retails at $34.95). You can pick which items you’d like to see on Today screen easily through settings:
The clock has digital and analog options, however, even though my device is set to use 24hr notation, it ignores that and there is no option to change it either:
Most of the sections are collapsible. When you uncollapse, you get more information.
One big gripe about the email section, it not only reads my whole inbox structure, but also displays unread emails from my subfolders that don’t even sync with the unit. And there is no option to limit it. Also I have noticed ever since I installed the product, filing or opening messages takes a lot longer time than it used to and battery usage seems to be taking a toll as well.
Weather details look sharp, however, its options are limited. You can easily enter your location if you have worked with any software using Accuweather before. If not, there is not much documentation or any lookups during data entry, so you can go with your gut feeling and the application will go into error while trying to get weather data. The data entry screen is suited I guess for US users, as it asks for city name or zip code, but entering City,Country worked well for me. Again, the options are limited with weather, for example you cannot select Metric, it always uses Imperial.
Options related to News is also very limited, you can only pick one of the 4 pre-made categories and it will download it for you. It is not a customizable RSS feed or anything alike.
Other than the options you have seen above, you can change background picture, filter tasks (again very limited), enter list of stocks to watch (I am guessing here it is only tied to US markets) and finally specify your network settings (I don’t know what to enter there, maybe APN info?, there is no option to use BES or BIS)
Overall, the product looks nice, but there is not much underneath the surface. It lacks customization options a lot. Hopefully the next version will provide these functionality, improve email portion and battery life. With everything said and given the high price point, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Pros:
- Your agenda at your finger tips
- Nice interface
Cons:
- High price
- Low performance, affects battery life
- Not very customizable
- No documentation
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May 24th, 2008 09:34
[...] you could get somewhat similar functionality with E-mobile Today from PocketMedia Live. The guys at Berryreview have reviewed it and arent too impressed with [...]
May 27th, 2008 11:58
Ok, were do you see that you can unlock the other three for only $6 a pop, like you said, some documents might be nice in this case.
Thanks.
May 27th, 2008 12:18
The pricing is readily available on Handango, http://www.handango.com/SoftwareCatalog.jsp?siteId=1&osId=946&jid=596AFEA68D882F31E461FD365XE324C9&platformId=5&N=4294917542+4294922588
June 4th, 2008 05:57
[...] If you are after something a little different (from the BlackBerry theme base) and don’t mind the WM (Windows Mobile) type Today screen try. Link: e-Mobile Software products I did not really like it myself (as I really dislike WM) but it might have the options you are looking for. It did not score too well in the reviews but find this type of application very subjective. Review Link: Review: E-mobile Today | BerryReview [...]