App Review: iRealSMS (Jailbreak Only!)
By —THIS IS A JAILBROKEN APPLICATION ONLY—
We have all had our share of issues with the iPhone SMS application. No landscape keyboard, no way to respond to a message when it pops up in the center of our screen. And the most frustrating thing for me is the fact that if we are in the middle of one application and get a text, we have to close that entire application and open SMS to respond, and then re-open the previous application and most likely lose where we were before. A lot of people have been asking why Apple doesn’t issue an update for this, and maybe they are working on it. But until they get around to making the built-in SMS app work the way it should, we can use iRealSMS which acts the way our SMS application should work!
iRealSMS doesn’t have some fancy border around it, no artwork when it loads up, not even any sort of advertisements running around all over the place bragging about who made it. iRealSMS looks almost exactly like the default SMS app. On the default screen there are a series of four tabs at the bottom. SMS, which will show a hierarchy type layout of all messages in and out. Conversations, which shows your list of conversations the same way the built-in app does. Search, which will allow you to search your texts for a certain word or sender. And finally settings, which will let you tweak a few things such as having iRealSMS as the default app, and even allowing it to run in the background to make opening the application even faster. Conversations look the same as usual, the only difference is there is a timestamp for every single message, which I like personally. And of course there is the landscape ability which makes typing out a long message a lot faster and more accurate.
iRealSMS is probably one of the best applications I have ever seen on the iPhone, and it will seem the same to you if you do a lot of texting. All you have to do is simply install the application and it will take over as your default SMS application. What does that do exactly? Well, the next time you get a text message, when that message pops up in the center of the screen, you will have the option to reply to it, while it’s in the center of the screen, without closing the application you are in. The ability to pause my current app and respond to a text message quickly without having to go to my SMS application was more than enough to sell me on this app. I can’t even count the times I have been in the middle of reading a feed, or playing a game, or looking up something pertinent on Safari when I get a text that I have to respond to, and been forced to close and open multiple applications just to do it. QuickReply is only the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to iRealSMS however. Timestamps for every message is a nice thing for me, it always annoyed me that it grouped messages into the same time based on how close they were together. Also the landscape keyboard is an amazing plus for typing out longer messages. This application also comes with the ability to forward messages, something that isn’t possible with our default application, and it even has a character counter for those messages that are two characters over the size limit for one message, and you end up with a text back saying “why did you say ys?” or whatever randomness might have been left over in the second message.
I tried pretty hard to find some reasons to nitpick this application. This is the part of the review where I tell you all about what could be better, and how this is horrible and all of that. Well unfortunately, (or fortunately?) I was unable to find anything terribly wrong with this app. My only complaint, and this hardly even counts, is that if you don’t run iRealSMS in the background it takes a few seconds longer to open than the default SMS application. So if you are opening it to send a message you will have to wait a tad bit longer than normal to send it, BUT you save more time than that having the ability to quickreply as a message appears. Other than that the price tag is a bit steep but definitely worth it if you do a lot of texting.
QUICK TAKE
Value: Extremely High
Would I Buy Again: Time and time again, Yes
Learning Curve: None-Very Easy
Who is it For: Anyone who wants an easier SMS application
My Likes: QuickReply, Landscape Keyboard, TimeStamps, Everything.
My Dislikes: $20 Pricetag
Final Statement: iRealSMS is a great application. It will easily replace the default one if you jailbreak and buy it. Landscape keyboard and quickreply, among the other bonuses, easily make this application a must have for anyone who sends a lot of text messages.
Rating: 5 Stars
