[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] thesecondsfade:
Alright I see a ton of discussion here about 2.0beta but I'm just going to put my thoughts on here:

I'm very impressed with the program. It functions rather flawlessly. Do you know how it does with battery consumption?

I'm just going to start writing as I test. I have diarhea of the mouth (or keyboard I guess) so it may be long winded. And remember, I know it probably comes across by my "tone" that things NEED to be this way but I'm just making suggestions as I see it. I'm not sure if any are necessary, easy or difficult to implement, or otherwise but I'm just gonna write as I go.

Here goes:

1. After installation, there is no Start Menu icon.

2. It's using the Windows Notification for

sent

messages in addition to received. It should only do notifications on incoming (unless you want to put a Setting in there with a "confirm delivery" type thing). Maybe you should have a setting for whether the user wants to use notifications at all too. Just a thought.

3. One of the Inbox messages shows the phone number that I received the SMS from, not the name of the contact. It's listed at Google Voice with the name of the person, but not in EasySMS. It shows all my other contact's names correctly though. Google uses 714XXXXXXX format... in my phone, all contacts have a 1 in front of the number (ie: 1714XXXXXXX). Not sure if that makes a difference but it's that way for all my contacts so I'm not sure why one contact would not display the name but the others would. Also I'm not sure if you're using the contact name from Google or from the phone... that probably makes a difference.

4. It's not clear when or whether the background service is running and how to get it started. Maybe you could have it automatically start the EasySMSMsgCheck.exe when you start the program. Also, if you turn it from off to on in settings, it should start the service and ask if you want to auto-start with Windows. If yes, put a lnk in the Startup folder. Then when you turn the setting from on to off, it should stop the service and delete the link from the Startup folder.

5. When it's checking for new messages (both while the main program runs and with the background checker), it shows the Windows 'waiting' icon. Is there any way to make it more transparent to the user (at the very least when checking with the background program)?

6. I know this has been a nightmare for you, but is it possible to wake the device without turning on the display? Obviously easier said than done but it would make it seem more seamless and transparent to the user.

7. I think it should have the option to exit on minimize like how iContact has that option.

8. Once a message is sent, it should go back to the inbox by default (or it should at least have the option to). That's just generally how Outlook works so if you use the inbox to reply or send a message, it'd put you right back in the Inbox to look at other messages, with the conversation you just sent the message in right at the top, etc.

9. Does it re-download the SMS history each time it displays the inbox or does it just take a while to display it all? Maybe you could have a setting to only download new messages instead. I'm sure Google differentiates read and unread in their XML.

10. Could it identify unread messages in the inbox? IE: Reverse Text or a * next to it or something. It should then tell Google that the message is read once it's read (but it could wait until the next check interval to do it).

11. Could it tally the number of unread messages in the registry? I know I mentioned this before, but for people who use programs that read the Windows location for number of unread SMS like iPhoneToday, it can actually display the number of unread messages on the SMS icon and you can associate the icon to open any program (in this case, I would be opening up EasySMS). It'd be awesome to use that functionality as well and since I don't use SMS with my carrier, Windows won't be messign with it. The Setting could be something like, "Use Windows default SMS registry count for unread msgs?" Maybe for a future update but I'm just throwing ideas out there.

12. Can you have an option to vibrate or play a sound upon notification instead of just the notification message? Maybe you could have a setting like the Windows Notifications to "Show Message", "Vibrate", "Play Sound", and you could turn on and off any of them. You could actually even use the Windows default SMS settings for what type of notification events it should do. Then your program would just have to look at what to do and handle actually doing the notification events.

13. After sending a message, it should reload the inbox so that the sent message shows before the next auto-check.