Comments on: App Review: Aerize Email Alerts

By: Kelly Carter

Kelly Carter — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:28:44 +0000

Andrew,
I’m not sure if there is a connection, but I’m seeing occurrences of alerts that are difficult to clear. It’s almost like something is consuming the phone’s attention (e.g., CPU is temporarily overloaded or “locked”) for a short while, so nothing I do will clear the alert. Then, it suddenly lets me clear it. I’m wondering if in your case, depending on timing, you sometimes inadvertently clear the alert before you even know it’s there, making you think you didn’t get the alert. I’m trying to make the case (probably weakly) that Aerize Alerts might have difficulty with how it responds to the keyboard–sometimes ignoring keys, sometimes overreacting(?) to keys. I’m probably off-target on this, but it’s still kinda fun to speculate.

I’m still liking Aerize Alerts except that one of my registered email accounts has been discovered by spammers, so I was getting hammered by undesired alerts. I set up some email filters on my BIS that have eliminated them for now.
Kelly

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:47:33 +0000

Actually, I have another follow-up. The behavior seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes, when I unlock the phone after receiving an e-mail/SMS I will see the Aerize Alert, sometimes I won’t. It seems to be the case that it takes a while after the message has been received for the Aerize Alert to be prepared. So, if the phone is locked and in standby and my phone notifies me of a new message, if I take the phone out and unlock the phone right then, I won’t see an alert.

If I wait a while to check the message, I will be shown the Aerize Alert. Now, here’s the wrinkle: I have Content Protection enabled on my phone. So, when I see the alert it shows the sender but not the associated photo. The subject and body are both: “.”

So, the application does provided limited additional functionality: Upon unlocking the phone (if I have waited a sufficient period of time; I haven’t tested to see how long) I will see an alert. If content protection is enabled, however, I’ll only see the name of the sender.

Note: This behavior is the same in v1.0.2 and v1.1.0 of Aerize Alerts.

Andrew

By: Kelly Carter

Kelly Carter — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 02:43:46 +0000

Andrew,
Good catch of these aspects (bugs?) of Aerize Alert. I’ll revise my article above to reflect what you discovered. Thanks!
Kelly

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:38:20 +0000

I discovered a problem with the usefulness of this program. I’m not sure if it can be solved given RIM’s security architecture, but if it can it should be addressed:

I have my phone set to lock on idle after 20 min. So, most of the time my phone is locked. If I receive an SMS or e-mail while my phone is locked, when I unlock the phone I don’t see the Aerize Alert. So, while this application is cool and useful, it’s actually only useful during those brief period when my phone happens to be unlocked during the day.

Also, the application brings my phone out of Standby. This is annoying because I keep my phone in my pocket. So, I get an SMS/e-mail, Aerize brings my phone out of standby, random things might happen since my phone is subject to key presses.

Andrew