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14 June 2011
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Before I get going with this review, I need to say that you have to have a jailbroken iPhone to use it. You won't find this on the app store, so don't go looking for it. If you've got iOS 4.2.1, you can check out our article on jailbreaking here. If you have 4.3 or higher, you'll need to do a google search or wait till we write a how-to (shouldn't be too long)
Anyway, now that that's over, I'll get on to what you really want to read. iRealSMS, from developers SpiritOfLogic, is sold as a full featured replacement for the default Messages app we've all got on our iPhones. But what exactly does it add?
The first thing you'll notice when you open the app is that you're contacts pictures now show up next to you're messages, making it easier to see who sent you what. Not that it was hard to see beforehand, but it's a nice little add-on. It might give you some more incentive to get pictures of all of your contacts as well.
When you're typing your message, you'll notice two things: First off, the little camera icon to the left of the typing window now has a smiley face on it. Click the camera, and you'll be greeted with a whole lot of smiley faces, also known as "Emoji". A nice feature, but since most phones don't support those, people are just going to see the plain text version of said smiley face, and most people only recognise the usual :) and co.
The other thing you'll notice is the landscape feature. Why Apple hasn't included landscape typing for text messages I don't know, but iRealSMS adds it. This is definitely a worthwhile addition, and you'll find your typing speed will increase dramatically after you get used to the different layout.
But what else does it do? If I said it could read your new text messages to you, would you believe me? Well, believe it or not, that's what it does. You get a new text, and your iPhone (which just happens to be female) will ask you if you'd like to have your text read to you. Just say yes and she'll read the whole message, and then ask you if you want it read again. While the reading in general is perfect, the voice recognition can use some work. Often you'll find yourself saying yes only to have your phone completely ignore you. I'm not sure whether this is a fault of the developer or a fault of the pathetic quality of voice recognition we have to put up with on the iPhone, but either way it gets annoying.
iRealSMS can also tell you who is texting you. By that I mean it will literally tell you who text, by reading the contacts name. Perfect if you don't mind people hearing who you got a text from, not so good if you're more private. Like all the features given in iRealSMS though, you can turn it on or off in Settings.
It also features a "Quick Reply" box, so when you receive a new text you can reply to it within the current application, without having to open iRealSMS itself. This comes in handy an awful lot, and also features landscape orientation, for faster typing.
But you don't get all these features without a few problems, and it definitely comes with its fair share of them. The first thing I noticed was the vibrate on my phone was no longer working in Silent mode. That fixed itself after a while, so not sure what the problem was, but it was definitely caused by the app. Something else I found was the message tone and the voice-that-reads were conflicting, silencing each other. I thought removing the message tone would fix that, and it did, for a while, but the problem came back.
So is it really worth the extra features when you have to put up with the host of problems that come with it? Well, that's completely up to you. But for me, it's now my default messaging app, and I wouldn't use anything else. The problems can be resolved with a little bit of thinking and a lot of Googling, but that may not be everybodies cup of tea. So it just depends on what you're after: If you want something simple that requires no maintenance, then stick with the default Messages. But if you want extra features and don't mind spending a bit of time and effort to get them working perfectly, then this is just what you need.
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