Battery Pack Pro is touted as “The only utility you will ever need” and comes with host of features to enhance your Pocket PC. The version I am reviewing is the newest version (Version 3) which contains a number of new features, including Search Bar, Calendar Bar, Power Start and Program Bar.
I have never used Battery Pack Pro before, but I did wonder how it was when I saw it on PPC programme sites, so I jumped at the chance to give it a review.
Features
Battery Bar
Displays Battery, Memory, Storage Card, Network connection, Time, World Time & backlight data on the today screen. Tap on each section for detailed info. Speaks to you when your battery, memory or storage cards are low. Battery Bar shows battery remaining in hours & minutes, tailored to how you use your Pocket PC.
I really like this little plug-in. It displays all the information you need and only takes up a very small space on your today screen, which is perfect if you like to cram a lot of things on there. My only complaint with the memory status is that it shows you the total memory available (combining storage and program memory), which can be a little misleading sometimes. I am used to SPB Pocket Plus, which displays available program memory only. There were a few times when I glanced the memory status on the Today Screen and thought I had plenty of memory, but when I went into the “Running Programs” screen, I discovered that the program memory was actually very low, and what was displayed on the Today Screen was mostly storage memory. I guess it all depends on what you prefer, and what you are used to.
The voice warning for low battery works well. You can also set it to tell you when your battery is fully recharged. A calm female voice announces “battery is low” or “battery is fully charged”. My only complaint with the voice warning is that it isn’t very loud. You would hear it fine in a quiet room if you had your device sitting on a table. But in your pocket, or in a noisy environment, it would be too soft to hear. So far I haven’t received a low memory warning, usually because I try to keep my memory pretty clear.
Program Bar
The program bar allows you to set up icons for frequently used programs, allowing you to open them with a single tap. You can arrange them in a series of tabs. You can also include icons for word and excel documents and notes, and any settings you wish to access regularly.
I really liked the way the Program Bar was designed. Like the Battery Bar, it is very small, and you can set it up to take up a single line on your today screen. You have the option of having tabs across the top of the plug-in (similar to SPB Pocket Plus) or navigation arrows to move between each tab. If you like big buttons you can touch with your finger, you can make the icons large.
My only complaint with the Program Bar was the way you had to go about configuring it. Each icon has to be added individually, rather then selecting multiple items from a list (like SPB Pocket Plus). This means that the initial set up can be quite time consuming, especially if you want something different to the default setup.
You can also add other features to the Program Bar such as owner information, calendar (discussed below) and tasks. If you include owner information, it will include a box that says “If found, tap here”. If you tap it, the phone will call the phone number listed in your owner information. For people who are paranoid about losing their phone, this could be a reassuring feature.
If you have Pocket Breeze installed, you can add it to the Program Bar to save on screen real estate. I did encounter a small problem with this function: occasionally when I opened the Pocket Breeze tab, I would get jumbled coloured dots and lines all over the plug-in, making it difficult to read. I’m not sure what caused this.
The tasks tab simply displays the number of active tasks you have, and tapping it will open your tasks list. As I prefer to use Pocket Breeze and Pocket Informant to manage my tasks, this feature was a little limited for me.
Search Bar
The search bar allows you to do a Google search on the internet (obviously, you will need an internet connection for this to work). You can also enter a web page address and Internet Explorer will display that web page. If you are in the US, you can also search for personal and business phone numbers (it takes you to a US White Pages website) and get driving instructions. There is a pop up keyboard that appears below the search box on the Today screen for entering search terms.
This feature is really great, especially if you search for information on the internet a lot on your Pocket PC. It is a pity that some of the features are limited to use in the US. The internet search tool works very well, as the search is done through Google. The search results are displayed in Internet Explorer, and the Google page is configured to fit on a pda screen.
Calendar Bar
View the next 50 appointments, or switch the view to display the calendar for this or other months. This would be useful if you don’t need something more elaborate like Pocket Breeze. I found it had limited use as I like to view more then one appointment at a time, and Pocket Breeze suits my needs better. It would be great if you want to save today screen space, however.
Power Start
According to the Battery Pack Pro website this feature works by tapping & holding the start button to show a list of icons you can customize yourself. The icons are big, so you can launch programs without having to reach for your stylus. On my device, I got this feature if I tapped the little Windows flag next the start button. The icons that appeared were the same ones that were added to the “Apps” tab on my Program Bar. I personally felt that this feature was a duplication of something I already had on my Today screen. However, if you want big icons you can touch with your finger, but don’t want them taking up permanent space on your today screen, this feature would be very handy to have.
Power Time
This is a world time program that allows you to see the local time of different cities. If you tap and hold anywhere on the world map, a little dialogue box will pop up telling you the name of the city and the local time.
You can also have details of up to four cities (with a red, blue, orange and green box), which displays time, latitude and longitude, country code, currency, airports and a weather forecast. If you have Journal Bar installed, it will display a weather forecast for the next 5 days (I don’t so I was unable to check this feature).
This little program is really cool, especially if you have friends overseas or travel a lot. You can also set up an icon in the Battery Bar to display the time and weather conditions in the red box on your today screen. There was a small flaw in the today plug-in in that sometimes the time took a little while to refresh, so that when you turn on your device, the time will be wrong. I had a rather amusing conversation with my husband the other day when he said “What time is it”. I turned on my Mini and replied “It’s ten-to-two. Oh no, wait, it’s 2 o’clock!”. He was a bit confused! Similarly, the weather information will occasionally be incorrect (eg the weather info said Canberra was foggy, and I could see by looking out the window that it was bright sunshine!). This is understandable if the device has not been docked in a while (and therefore the information had not been updated), but in the example given above, my Mini had been plugged into my computer and syncing all day.
Power Task
This feature turns provides a close button that closes programs rather then simply minimising them (which is the default in Windows Mobile). You can also choose to automatically close programs after a set interval. If you tap on the far top right hand corner of the today screen you will get a drop down menu that displays all open programs and gives you the option of closing all or some of them.
I had some real problems with this feature. Frankly, SPB Pocket Plus does the same thing much better. Originally, I set it up to close all programs when tapping “X”. However, I found that when I was reading an email, and tapped “ok” to close the email, it would close the entire messaging program. This was especially frustrating if I was trying to read multiple emails! Considering I use my device to read email more then anything else, I changed that option. I have also found that sometimes when I am composing a message (email or sms), often it would close halfway through, and I would have to go into “Drafts” to retrieve it and keep writing. I have never encountered this problem before, and it definitely appears to be a problem caused by Power Task.
My other complaint with Power Task is that if you select the option to close all tasks, it will briefly open each program and then close it, which can be a bit time consuming if you have a lot of programs open.
Power Bars
Displays the battery, memory, storage card life, time, date and time until next appointment on the title bar - see your Pocket PCs vital statistics all the time. This is pretty useful and only takes up a very tiny spot on the top bar of your screen.
Power Clean
Removes unwanted files, so that you can clean up your memory. You can set it to clean your files every hour, or you can do it manually. Another useful feature, especially if memory is scarce, and seems to work well.
Power Buttons
Allows you to launch two programs on every hardware button on your device. You can set it to launch one program when you tap the button, and a different one when you tap and hold the button.
I really like this feature, especially because the Mini only has four hardware buttons, so I can get a lot more use out of them. On a device with a lot of hardware buttons, like the JasJam the options would be enormous! The buttons are very easy to configure, as Battery Pack Pro simply expands the button options already present in “Setting”.
Power Alert
Adjust Calendar, Task & Alarm sounds to repeat, change volume & more. Keep reminders quiet during meetings; have unique sounds so you know what the alert is.
This feature was one I didn’t use at all while I had Battery Pack Pro installed on my Mini– mainly because I rarely use Calendar and Task reminders or Alarms. I do like the idea of setting different sounds for each, though. However, while writing this review, I set up one Calendar and Task reminder and an alarm to play, and none of them played the sound set in Power Alert. They all played the default tone set in “Sounds and Notifications”. If I disabled the sound in “Sounds and Notifications”, I got no sound at all. I’m not certain what happened here, but this feature did not work at all for me.
In order to make reminders quite during meetings, you have to manually go in and change the volume settings. This is cumbersome and is made redundant because I have PhoneAlarm, which automatically sets all sounds to “Silent” if I have an appointment in my calendar.
Power Store
Provides even more detailed battery, memory and storage card information. Keep a track on your battery, memory & network usage with graphs which show your usage over the past 24 hour period.
The graphs are interesting, but I found I had little use for this feature. It would be good for a power user who liked to keep a close eye on their usage patterns.
Power Adjust
Allows you to change the fonts that are used in places such as the Start menu and the program titles under the icons in the Programs and Settings windows. The only other font available is Courier New which is a horrible font and very difficult to read on a Pocket PC screen. You can also set windows to animate when they open and close, which was interesting the first time I set it up, but became very annoying very quickly! This feature may be cool if you like that sort of thing, but it wasn’t that interesting to me.
Power Light
Turns your screen bright white so that you can use your device as a source of light. You can also set it to flash between red and black, supposedly for emergencies. I’m sure someone could find a use for this, but I couldn’t! But you never know when it might come in handy.
Conclusion
There were some features of this program that I really liked, and some that I didn’t. Unfortunately, some didn’t really work for me at all. I think the programmer needs to have another look at this program, because not all of it works as claimed. However, Battery Pack Pro is very configurable, which means that any features you don’t like can be switched off. I recommend giving this program serious consideration, but make sure you download a trial version and use it for the full trial period before buying, just in case you find that it’s not the program for you.
Pros
· A large host of features available in one program
· Today plugins take up very little screen space, and have a wide variety of options for configuring your today screen.
· The Power Buttons feature is very useful
· The Power Time program is also very useful
· The Search Bar is a great idea.
Cons
· The Power Task feature did not work as well as the same feature in SPB Pocket Plus
· The Program Bar plug-in was fiddly to configure
· The Power Alert feature did not work as advertised
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I give Battery Pack Pro a 7.5 out of 10 |
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* All images used in this review were taken from www.batterypackpro.com