It’s good to know that Intelliborn are still around and doing really cool things on the iPhone. I’ve seen some criticism of Intelliscreen in the user reviews about how the app isn’t updated, but if they’ve simply been busy on Elert development, then I suppose I don’t really mind 🙂 I’m currently using Elert in combination with Notifier (which shows icons in the status bar) to create my own super mail notification system.
Whenever I receive an e-mail, a small alert pops up on the bottom-right corner of the screen showing a preview of the message, and from there I can close it, activate a bigger preview, or wait for it to fade away altogether. It’s no less intrusive than the default alerts from things like text messages, it’s just different — and I like it quite a lot.
Different Approach
One thing I liked about Elert right off the bat was that it was transparent and didn’t block all of my taps. Default iPhone alerts tend to stand like barrel-chested bouncers in front of you, blocking access to any of your other phone functionality until you acknowledge whatever freaking notification they’ve handed you. Elert, on the other hand, will stay only as long as you want it to, because you can dismiss it with a tap or set the duration of the pop-up (5-100 seconds).
One major advantage of the app is that it’s tied directly to your Mail app. I didn’t test Elert with multiple inboxes since I have everything forwarded to one account, but every time my Mail app received a new email, Elert alerts would show up right there alnogside it. I found this to work better than official App Store solutions that rely on push notifications.
How do I work this thing?
Elert could definitely use is a little more documentation., though. There isn’t a “help” button anywhere, and although it is a pretty simple widget, there were a lot of minor details I had to learn about through trial and error. As a result, answers to questions like “will the pop-up change its default position if I move it?” and “how the heck do I pull up the cool preview window?” were a mystery for a little while.
Unobtrusive…most of the time
As long as you’re not doing anything intensive (like playing Real Racing) then Elert should work perfectly for you. However, if you do use your iPhone as a gaming machine and are playing something that’s not relaxing and turn-based (say, Real Racing?), then Elert can get just a little annoying – especially if it pops up over a button or a section of the screen that you might really need. It’s for this reason that I keep the duration relatively brief, so I can always just use my extreme gaming endurance skills to out-last the damn pop-up.
A few more tweaks would be nice
Elert has been pretty stable over this last week of testing, and I’ve only experienced a handful of Mail crashes and a few sluggish responses when I try dismiss the pop-up in my week or so of testing It also only costs $0.99 for all of the unique functionality that it brings. So even though Intelliborn could probably call it a day after fixing the bugs and intermittent slowdowns, I’ll throw out a few more suggestions anyway…just because I’m Canadian and I want to help 😉
Some people, especially those with smartphones, treat e-mails just like text messages. This means that some e-mails consist of one line and could easily be marked as read when previewed. There is a “mark as read” button when you activate the larger pop-up, but it would be great to have this happen automatically. If I dismiss the pop-up, that means I want to read it later, but if I took the time to use the large preview there’s a good chance I’ve read the whole thing.
Intelliborn also has another app on the jailbreak market, Tlert, which deals with text messages. What Tlert currently has over Elert is full landscape support, and it would make Elert look a lot more professional if it could somehow manage to identify the orientation of the app I was in and rotate to match. That’s all just cosmetics, though — one improvement that would go a long way towards making Elert feel more natural would be the muting of alerts while within the Mail app. I think it’s a little unnecessary to see an Elert when you’re already browsing your inbox, and definitely unnecessary when you’ve already read and responded to the email you’re being alerted to.
Compatibility
This is a pretty new concept to me in iPhone app reviews, but it’s one I used to have to consider as a Windows Mobile user: compatibility. Will Elert play nicely with the other apps you have installed? Well, in my case, yes. I’ve got mQuickDo, Winterboard, Bosspaper, Tlert/iRealQuickSMS, SBSettings, and Universal Search installed and I’m still enjoying that rock solid 3GS stability. This may not say much on its own, but I figure it’s a decent idea to include a brief apps list as a reference for other jailbreak users searching for stable app combos.
Conclusion
Even in its present state, I think Elert is already worth a purchase. Its $0.99 price level makes it fart-app-easy to buy, and it offers a mail alert solution that I haven’t seen in any other iPhone program. Don’t let the pre-1.0 version number fool you — Elert works right now, and it’s one of the coolest jailbreak apps out there to date.
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Elert 0.96.1 is available on Cydia and Rock Your Phone for $0.99.
Rock Your Phone provided a promo code to Just Another iPhone Blog for the review of Elert. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: Email, intelliborn, notification
