I’ve shared my favorite Blackberry apps with friends before, but lately I’ve found a few that enhance some core functionality of the Blackberry. Here’s a few apps that will give you better experiences for voicemail and sms messaging.
Better Voice Mail: YouMail
I hate checking my voicemail. I delay, then I never know who left a message or when. Even when I listen I don’t know what number they called from, who they are (unless they say),
or what time the message was left. Enter YouMail.
While their website boasts more, I only care for the visual voicemail offered by this app. You’ll see voicemails in a list showing the date, time, name (or caller id information if you don’t have them as a contact), and length of message. Then listen to your messages from this screen. You can save or delete old messages.
YouMail works by forwarding your unanswered calls to a different phone number where they’ve set up a voicemail service. This means you’ll need to record a new greeting or you’ll be using their default.
Better SMS: crunchSMS
Blackberry treats SMS the same way it treats email. Messages show up in the list, you can open, reply, delete, etc. crunchSMS instead treats SMS messages like chat messages, so they show up in a chat-style format so you can always see the string of messages between you and the other person.
Like YouMail, this is a 3rd party application taking over some core phone functionality, so there’s a few simple steps to set the blackberry firewall to block sms messages so you don’t receive them both in crunchSMS and in the native blackberry email format.
