Xobni Brings BlackBerry Email to the 21st Century
By: Hillel Fuld
When I first got my BlackBerry, which I expected to be the ultimate email machine, there were some things that left me wanting more. There was the whole lack of two way syncing with Gmail, which meant that everything I deleted from my inbox on my computer would require a second deletion from my BlackBerry. The other thing that left me scratching my head was the way the BlackBerry did not save contact information of people with whom you are communicating.
Maybe it’s because I was so used to Gmail, but the first time I opened the Compose screen and tried to send an email to someone I emailed in the past, and the BlackBerry could not auto complete the name, I was disappointed and confused. How hard can it be to save people’s emails automatically on the phone and then offer options as I start typing the contact’s email in the To field? Apparently, it is too hard for RIM to enable this feature.
Comes along Xobni, which you will notice is Inbox spelled backwards, and completes my BlackBerry experience. Xobni comes in a few different versions. There is Xobni One, which is ideal for Outlook users because it syncs your device with your Outlook and stores the data in the cloud. I am personally using the standalone BlackBerry app because I stopped using Outlook around a decade ago.
In terms of Xobni’s features, the list is not very long, and chances are you will not be using Xobni every day, but trust me when I tell you that when you do need this app, you will be very happy it is there. Xobni not only remembers email addresses of people you talk to, it also “magically” extracts phone numbers from your emails. So, if you are talking to someone via email and their signature contains a phone number, Xobni will find it and add it to the Xobni phone book.
Xobni also creates an entire profile for your contacts with their profile picture, their Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles displayed in the Xobni phonebook. You can access the app on your BlackBerry in two ways. There is the standard way of opening an app from the Downloads folder, in which case you are presented with the long list of names Xobni collected. Here is the catch. Xobni displays the contacts in order of how often you talk to them. So if there is someone you email regularly, they will appear on the top of the list. Very useful feature.
Moving along, Xobni can also be accessed from within the Compose screen. When composing a message, a simple scroll up will launch the Xobni address book enabling you to quickly find and add a contact to the email you are writing. This, however, does not work as well as it could. When composing a message, you want to add that contact as fast as possible and get the message out. So you scroll up, open Xobni, search for the contact, select the contact, then press Back to Message. At least two of those steps could have been eliminated if not more. Why not just allow me to select the contact and the app knows to automatically return to the message?
All in all, Xobni is a utility you want on your BlackBerry, especially for those times when you get stuck without someone’s contact information, and from my experience, that always happens when you need it most. The app is pretty basic and designed well preventing any sort of confusion sometimes caused by complicated and feature-packed mobile apps.
Here’s the thing though, everything Xobni does should already be included in the BlackBerry OS. I can only imagine that with the new BlackBerry OS 6, Xobni is going to have to enhance its offering if they expect people to download it for $10. This is not a criticism of Xobni, they did a great job complimenting the BlackBerry OS, it is more a call to RIM to get their act together.
In conclusion, Xobni has saved me on many occasions and I would definitely recommend it for the heavy email user who likes things to be in order and easily accessible.
