[General Topics] Menneisyys:
A lot of Windows Mobile users have been asking for answering machines for years. While it has long been available on competing mobile smartphone platforms (for example, Smart Answer for the S60), for Windows Mobile, so far (see THIS), there wasn’t a generic one - that is, one that wasn’t shipped along with a specific Pocket PC model only. (For example, the GIGABYTE gSmart i128 has such an answering machine.)

Of course, there have been many attempts at extracting the above-mentioned gSmart answering machine or the one in the O2 XDA Flame (I’m not entirely sure about the latter – see THIS) – without any success. Also, standalone answering machine development attempts (see for example THIS) have all failed.

Now, this seems to be changing: the first “real” answering machine has been released for WM Pocket PC’s. It still doesn’t seem to have a real homepage – for example, Google has found no occurrences of it anywhere. It’s only via a blog comment that I got known of it. The About screen (x51v screenshot HERE) only lists an email address of the author; that is, you’ll need to use e-mail to get more info.

Two screenshots of the incoming, recorded calls:

(HTC Universal)

(HTC Wizard)

Getting, installing

Get it HERE, unRAR it with, say, WinRAR, transfer the contents of it to your Pocket PC and run iSecretary.exe. You can safely minimize it / suspend the phone: whenever an incoming call arrives, the answering machine activates, plays the, by default, Ukrainian language default message (you can easily change it in the Answer List tab, even in the non-registered version) and starts recording the caller’s voice. If it can, that is – the same restrictions apply as with traditional call recorders like PMRecorder. (See my past articles, linked from the Audio Recording Bible on them.) Furthermore, on some models (at least, the Universal) it can’t record anything incoming and, unfortunately, it can’t switch on the speakerphone mode either to make the caller’s voice more intelligible, unlike with VITO’s excellent AudioNotes reviewed & compared to the alternatives HERE.

Trial restrictions

Currently, as it doesn’t even have a homepage, I don’t know how it can be registered.

With the trial version, you can only use 2…10 second recordings (2 seconds on the Wizard, 8…10 on the Universal). You can only set the recording duration in the registered version. You can’t circumvent this by directly editing iSecretary.cfg in the main directory (changing 2 to other values) of the application.

Pocket PC compliance

I’ve tested it (as of the current v1.0 version) on the HTC Universal and HTC Wizard, both running WM6. Note that none of them support call recording. (Again, VERY few Pocket PC’s do so.)

(Incidentally, it also runs on the Dell Axim x51v, showing it doesn’t need for example Compact Framework 2 support. Of course, as the x51v is a non-phone device, there isn’t much point in installing the answering machine on it.)

With the Universal, it played back the pre-recorded message at full volume to the client because it used the (loud) external (non-phone) speakers. With the Wizard, it only used the phone buzzer to play back the message to the caller; therefore, even at maximum buzzer volume, the message was pretty hard to hear for the caller.

Recording-wise, it didn’t record anything with the Universal (running Midget’s AKU 0.2.0 WM6 ROM) - not even noise picked up by the mike. An example recording is HERE; if you take a look at its contents (with, say, a hex view-capable file viewer like Lister in Total Commander (after pressing Ctrl-O / 3), you’ll see only the byte 80 is recorded (with 7F / 81 sometimes inserted). That is, the app has major problems accessing the mike (let alone the incoming voice channel) on the Universal.

With the Wizard (running mfrazzz’s XDA Mobile 6 Release 3), only the external, ambient noise picked up by the mike. As the phone didn’t switch to speakerphone mode, the caller’s sound was very weak – again, even with the phone volume turned up to max and in an otherwise absolutely quiet environment.

MS Smartphone compliance

Unfortunately, it’s fully incompatible with the MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) platform. This is VERY bad news because more HTC-manufactured, non-high-end Smartphones are capable of directly recording the incoming voice call than Pocket PC’s. (Of HTC’s current Pocket PC line, only the “brick” and already slightly outdated (it uses the PXA-270, as opposed to the Marvel PXA-3x0 series) HTC Athena / X7500 / Advantage is capable of call recording.)

HERE is the error message I got on my WM5 AKU3 HTC Oxygen / s310 and HERE on my WM6 HTC Vox / s710.

Verdict

I hope at least a basic homepage will be created and, more importantly, MS Smartphone compliance added so that I can test it with the HTC s310 / Oxygen, which does allow for call recording. I’d really like to know how iSecretary fares on the s310.