Pro’s / What’s New:

1. There is a simple but effective voice recorder that saves in “amr” format, this is nice because the file sizes are minimized and virtually all phones support this.
2. They have incorporated GPS support, now you can optionally attach your coordinates in outgoing messages and a link to google maps will be presented to the recipient.
3. Delivery notifications are built in.
4. You can now change notification sounds.
5. You can hold your finger down on an incoming image and save it directly to the camera role, which is convenient.. you may also save incoming sounds as ring tones or as a notification sound.
6. New start up screen and background image is pretty slick.

Cons:

1. The GPS coordinates in my test seemed to be considerably inaccurate, more so than google maps when I ask it to pinpoint my location, this requires some further testing.
2. SwirlyMMS still does not properly render MMS messages, the items are still only broken into parts apparently, there’s no rendering of Wap encoded messages, or at least if there is it’s not been working for me.. essentially an MMS should be able to include multiple images on one page, with sound.
3. Still no ability to create custom folders and manage your messages within SwirlyMMS
4. Still no “Auto Download” functionality within SwirlyMMS (an often requested feature).
5. If you have a lot of picture messages, the load time is still quite slow, I haven’t verified but I believe the messages are still stored in flat files rather than a database for quick loading.
6. The image viewer is still the same as previous versions, there is no ability to use the normal gestures to zoom on an image.
7. As I mentioned in #5 in my pros, the start up image and background image is slick, but the UI has pretty much not changed.
8. The ability to record video directly would also be nice, but it’s not present in 2.0

My Overall Opinion:

The new SwirlyMMS comes in at $12 for new users, or $6.00 for upgraders .. if you do the math, that means that upgraders are paying $8.00 + $6.00 for a total of $14.00, this means that existing customers have to pay more overall than new customers, this is something that makes no sense to me.

While the addition of the voice recorder is nice, the other features are rather minimal, the GPS implementation is basic and the other features something you’d have expected should be there anyway.

Bottom line:

If you’re an existing user, unless you need voice recorder then I find it difficult to suggest upgrading at this time, the additional cost to upgraders to me does not make the upgrade justifiable (yet).. It’s a decision you have to make on your own.

If you’re a new user, then SwirlyMMS 2.0 will seem like a nearly complete solution for you even though the price tag of $12.00 is more than most apps that exist in the iPhone world right now.. Keep in mind however that SwirlyMMS 2.0 also does more than any other iPhone app is capable at the moment. If you’re a 3G user and a currently SwirlyMMS 1.3 customer, I would say it’s safe to wait until Apple’s offering in OS 2.0

One last thing I’m not knocking Swirly at all, I’ve known the guys since the first version came out, I’ve donated twice, offered my help as a beta tester and have been very active in the support forums, I plan to continue my support .. SwirlyMMS still holds the top spot in my list of favorite apps.

Read on for pictures..

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From the official release notes:

- Completely new Compose view with address-auto-lookup feature ala email/sms app
- Localization in the following languages: Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian
- Various GUI element enhancements
- New UserAgent SoftBank_X02NK added on request from Japan
- Hold on image to save it directly to the camera roll
- Double-click image to fit the whole screen
- New standard camera and photo picker control
- The built-in MMS viewer now supports html and pdf content types
- A trash button added to the message view making it possible to remove an MMS from within the MMS message viewer, in addition to the already existing swipe mechanism
- Credits section added
- A couple of new schemes added to the the decoder
- A couple of bug fixes in the core libs and a decoder crash corrected

Read on for some screenshots and my thoughts ..

There’s the info screen, notice that “Credits” link there, go ahead and tap it.. what do you see?

That’s right, I made the credits :)

Still can’t create folders, and generally it looks the same … the Archive folder was me manually making it via console

One of my favorite features is the auto complete from your contacts!

The new image picker is pretty dang nifty too ..  it’s actually using the proper apple api for all this, so it’s smoother and cleaner .. trust me.

There’s an interesting new settings wizard button, but this didn’t do anything for me initially when I tapped it, but after going back in and tapping it then waiting for a bit .. a screen came up where it identified I was on tmobile and provided me with settings for the phone that it would automatically put in .. nifty!

The one thing that is missing so far that I could find, is no ability to change the received MMS sound, if that exists .. I’ve not found it yet ..

I know I know, start deleting messages Lonnie! well tough, my reason, or anyone’s reason for keeping messages in the app are not the focus of this discussion! So I’m going to give you a quick and dirty lesson on how to create folders and move messages around in SwirlyMMS!

Unfortunately this functionality isn’t built into SwirlyBBS, so we’ll have to get our hands dirty a little bit.  If you have SwirlyMMS installed, you’re already running a jailbroken iPhone, so that first step is already finished! nice huh?

The next thing you’ll want to do is get yourself an iPhone file management app for your computer, I prefer DiskAid for the PC, which you can download from http://www.digidna.net .. and yes they do make a Mac version as well!

Next, plug in your iPhone and launch DiskAid!

In the lower left hand corner of DiskAid, you’ll see a drop down menu that is set to “DiskAid Folder”, click on that puppy and change it to “Root Folder” .. You’re going to get a stern warning from DiskAid, but just click ok and be on your merry way.

Browse to var->root->library->MMSApp->Folders  and you will see the same list of folders you see in SwirlyMMS!

At the top of the app, click the button that says “Create Folder” and make one that you’d like in SwirlyMMS, I created one called Archive on my phone.

The next thing I did was right click on my Inbox and choose “Copy to folder”, you can also just go in and and choose individual messages if you like, whatever floats your boat.  But you’ll be copying these to a folder on your computer.

Once you have the files copied, you can delete the files from your Inbox because now you’ll be going into the new folder you created, and you’ll be uploading them back to the phone ..

DONE!

Launch SwirlyMMS and you’ll notice your new folder appears, and it’s fully functional .. the only difference is that the new folder won’t have an icon in front of it.

Let’s hope the Swirly guys add this functionality in future releases.

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