Spb Phone Suite v1.3 versus SBSH PhoneWeaver v1.3.2

There are many profile tools. This article will look at the following: Spb Phone Suite 1.3 and SBSH PhoneWeaver 1.3.2 and come out with a winner. Read on for the helpful article!

Spb Phone Suite

    First let me cover a profiling tool that I have been using for the past year – Spb Software’s Phone Suite 1.3.  This is a suite of phone tools which contains solid profiling features.  This product is a today screen plug-in that enables switching between several useful profiles out of the box.

    Normal, Silent, Loud are typical profiles that pretty easy to translate their effects on the phone’s volume settings. Meeting profile is one that is triggered whenever your calendar has an active meeting. This type of profile is particularly useful to turn off your phone going into a meeting and back on again leaving a meeting.  Pairing with headsets can trigger the Headset profile and same with Handsfree Car speakerphones.  Below are some of the settings that any of these existing or custom profiles can control:

• Auto Answer
• System Sounds, Vibrate, or Silent
• System Sounds Speaker Volume
• Phone Sounds ring/vibrate
• Phone Ring Volume
• Notifications for any/all messages: Unchanged, Off, Play sound, Vibrate, or Vibrate and play.
• Bluetooth on/off/unchanged
• WiFi on/off/unchanged
• Backlight settings
• Call Filtering modes to divert unwanted calls
• Picture: Change the icon of your profile

    Which profile is in effect is governed by a basic set of configurable rules. Base rules (time, appointment, hardware events) are basically joined (and/or logic) together and Profile priorities resolve conflicts when rules match to two different profiles. This is a very flexible approach to narrowing in on a precise situation that you want to trigger a profile into effect. For example: between 10pm and 6am (Time Rule) AND plugged in (Hardware Rule) activate the Bedtime profile which would turn off the backlight, lower all volumes, and turn off BT+WiFi.

PROS:

• Very reliable
• Clean interface through settings and operations.
• Easy to use (intuitive)
• Good user documentation
• Effective coverage of majority of typical profile usage (80/20 rule)

CONS:   

• Only interface is a Today plug-in, therefore it cannot be used in other shells like TouchFlo 3D (no link to exe is available).  However, it is integrated with other Spb products like Mobile Shell and PocketPlus
• Cannot launch a program when activating a profile

SBSH PhoneWeaver

    SBSH PhoneWeaver is a product that was designed for the primary purpose of profiling which is a bit different from Spb Phone Suite.  All of the previously described profiling features are all there and then some. Like Phone Suite, PhoneWeaver has some basic profiles out of the box. Day, Night, Mute & Car profiles.

The interface to setup the tool is a bit cluttered and not so intuitive. However, the content is very rich. Several tabs of settings exist for each profile.

Triggers: Manual, Time based, Agenda, ActiveSync and/or external power and Headset connected/disconnected.

Sounds: can be selected from vibrate, normal with sliders for main, ringer and calls. The alarm can be configured for a variety of notifications.

Comm: All communications can be set on/off/no change.

Backlight: Backlight settings can be set using a slider with many timeout options.

Other: Adds a powerful feature to execute a program with definable parameters.

    PhoneWeaver determines which profile is active in a different way than the rules approach of Spb Phone Suite. The triggers are all contained with the profiles themselves. While this approach may be sufficient to satisfy most profiling scenarios, I found it less intuitive to accomplish some profiling needs.  For example, there is no stop time in a time activated profile, so some other event would have to trigger another profile that can override the time activated profile. I prefer the triggers being separate from the profiles of only to make end user administration easier to comprehend.
Unlike Spb Phone Suite, SBSH PhoneWeaver has more than just a Today plug-in for an interface. It has a popup that is touch friendly enabled from the tray or task bar as shown below.

PROS

• Very feature rich profiling tool reliable
• Reliable operations
• Multiple user interface options
• Effective coverage of majority of typical profile usage (80/20 rule).

CONS

• Interface not very clean, specifically controls on profile settings
• Less intuitive approach to triggering profiles
• User documentation is merely enumeration of features

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