Today’s mobile user is a complex person, who typically tries to balance his social life with his work life despite the hectic implications of both and the inherent difficulty in finding the time to do everything. As such, mobiles have blossomed from clunky old handsets to sleek, multifunctional new “smart” phones that can do virtually anything you desire. Mobiles now run on powerful hardware platforms that can crunch more complex programs than ever before, allowing for multitasking, work and entertainment on a whole new level and to a whole new extent that mobile users have never really enjoyed prior to this age of mobiles.
One new mobile advancement that has been making the rounds – and making quite a bit of cash for its producers and promoters – is the mobile app. Essentially a mini-program that allows users to extract the greatest possible functionality out of their complex mobile CPUs, the mobile app gives the mobile user the ability to add features and range to their existing mobile phone – whether it’s online access to storefronts and communities, email support for phones that don’t come with it by default, news and RSS feeds from various blogs and websites, or access to full track downloads and video viewing. There are even apps that help you create your own ringtones and mobile themes.
One very interesting app even allows you to streamline the management of various types of mobile content on your BlackBerry phone. With it you can fine-tune the volume, vibration and LED colors for various phone alerts, set ringtones for caller groups, assign email and message tones per group, set an ignore function to lock out callers or caller groups, assign custom settings for the flashing LED colors by alert type and contact, differentiate the tones that play for email, PIN message and SMS tones from friends, and even put your BlackBerry on silent mode for the evening or over weekends.
Produced by ElectricPocket, who also developed the FlipSide, FindMe and BugMe! apps, the Ringo app is a diverse package that manages to add to BlackBerry’s profiles manager, tweaking it to produce “smart tones for smart phones” and letting users assign any AAC, WMA, WAV or MP3 file as a notifier or a ringtone set for individuals or groups with much more ease than through the BlackBerry’s default system. ElectricPocket continues to knock things out of the park as they have made a pretty good app for the BlackBerry [Ringo is also available for the HTC, Motorola Q, Treo and others].
If anything, the main quibble against Ringo would be the tedious installation and setup process, as it’s one of few apps that will require you to reboot before completing installation. Also, be sure and turn Profile off when you run Ringo for the first time, as the alerts from both may end up playing simultaneously. These considerations aside, Ringo brings it with an easy and fun color-coded [green for tones, blue for contacts ands violet for groups] interface. It’s similar to the BlackBerry Profiles option set but much easier to manage, starting with Ringtone, Messages and Email as default options followed by Vibrate and Volume. Access to the contact list is done with a simple trackball click, and from there you can assign tones to calls, emails and messages from them [or even set them to Ignore]. The Do Not Disturb function, though, is one of the most interesting things to be added – you can set a silent mode for a specific range of time as opposed to permanently having your phone be shushed.
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