SBSH SafeWallet and PC Companion for iPhone review

SBSH is a settled software company for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60. Applications like PocketBreeze, PocketWeather, iLauncher and GoNews Touch are among the best sold software titles for the Windows Mobile platform.

SafeWallet is their first application for the iPhone. In this article I will give a complete review of the software team: SafeWallet 1.1 for the iPhone and SafeWallet PC Companion 1.2 on the PC. In this review I will try to find out if SafeWallet can be as successful as other SBSH titles are for Windows Mobile.

SafeWallet on the iPhone

When the application is started for the first time you have to make a new wallet. Give the wallet a name, enter a password for the wallet and confirm the password. After this is done the wallet is created and there are two default folders created: Business and Personal.

The Plus icon gives an option to add a new entry which can be a new Folder or a New Card. When creating a new card there are 24 templates to choose from. Among them are “Bank Account”, “Credit Card”, “ID Card” and “Serial Number”.

These templates are sufficient for the average user. But the users who need more card templates can create them by themselves using the PC Companion Software on which I’ll come back later in this review.

When creating a new card this card can be filled in. If needed there is an option to add one or more properties to every card. These properties can be a string, Numeric, Date, Time, Date and Time, Upper Case, Password, Web Address, Email, Phone Number or Note.

So imagine when adding a website – the default website template gives you the possibility to add the URL, Login, Password and Note. By adding a new property from the type “Web Address” it is possible to add for example the Admin URL, or you could add database connection settings in Notes.

When the Wallet is open and the iPhone is put into sleep mode the Wallet will automatically be locked in order to secure the data inside the wallet.

The SafeWallet interface is in my opinion very clean and clear. There are not too many buttons on the screen and the buttons which are displayed are always self-explained. I’ve used a test wallet with over 100 cards in different folders and luckily there were no speed issues. The only thing I really missed on the iPhone interface was an option to search cards within the Wallet.

SafeWallet on the PC

When starting the PC Companion interface the last opened Wallet will be re-opened after entering the password. The menu-bar has the same style as the Office 2007 interface. Below I will go through the most important functionalities of the PC Companion interface

The Home tab

The “Home” tab shows from left to right the buttons:

• Create a new wallet
• Create a new Folder
• Create a new Card
• Create a new Template (This option is grayed-out when Wallets is selected on the left screen)
• Edit a Card/Folder
• Cut a Card/Folder
• Copy a Card/Folder
• Paste a Card/Folder
• Delete a Card/Folder
• The possibility to change the view of the main screen
• Edit how the cards should be shown. (Small Icons, Large Icons, Details)
• Search for a Card
• Start the Password Generator
• Start the Sync Manager

Most buttons are self-explained but some buttons might need some more explanation.

Delete

The Delete button obviously deletes cards and folders. When deleting a card or folder you get a confirmation question if you really want to delete the selected Card or Folder. What I didn’t like is when you delete a folder it is not mentioned that all the cards within this folder are also deleted. This delete is (from what I could see) permanent and cannot be reversed.

Include Cards

When this button is deactivated the main sceen looks like this:

Notice there are 2 sections in the mainscreen.

• The left section of the screen shows all the Folders and Cards within this Wallet
• The right section shows the details of the selected card or folder.

When the “Include Cards” button is activated the screen changes to:

On this view the main screen shows 3 different sections.

• The left section shows all the folders within the wallet.
• The middle section shows all the cards within the selected folder on the left .
• The right section shows the card details of the selected card in the middle section.

Search

The PC version of SafeWallet luckily does include a Search function. Search can be done on every property in the cards, even in the password property. A folder will not be returned in the search-results.

The standard search is good for skipping from one card to another card. The advanced search gives a list of all the cards where the search-query is returned. One of the cards can then be double clicked and this card is opened in the main screen.
Personally I think the advanced search results give a far better overview than the standard search.

Password Generator

The included Password generator is a very handy tool to create new passwords. The password generator can be started from the “Home” tab, but also from every property in a card which is marked as a password for direct access.

The password generator has all the options I could imagine someone would like to have in a password generator. There are options to include upper case letter, lower case letters, numbers and special characters (You can even specify which special characters).

There is an option to select how long the generated password should be (2-32 characters) and you can even select a way how the password should be generated (this can be set to “Randomized” or “Advanced”).

When the button “Generate” is pushed the generator generates a password and gives an indication how strong the password is (this can be “Very Low”, “Low”, “Medium”, “High” or “Very High”). Obviously the longer and more complex the generated password, the strength gets higher.

The Tools tab

The “Tools” tab has 3 buttons: Settings, Import and Export

• The Settings button gives the possibility to edit the application Settings.
• The importing tool can import cards from various wallet applications like DataVault, eWallet, FlexWallet and others.
• Exporting can be done to an XML or a text file.

The Help tab

The Help Tab has 2 buttons:

• One button shows SafeWallet’s “About” where the version can be viewed and to who the product is registered.
• The Support button opens the SafeWallet Support website. So there needs to be an internet connection to view the produtcs’ support.

Templates

SafeWallet lets you create your own Templates if you think the standard templates are not sufficient. The self-created templates are named “Custom Templates”.

When a custom template is created a new card from this template can be created on exactly the same way as the standard templates.

What I liked very much on templates is that not only the cards based on this template, but also the custom templates are synchronized with the iPhone Wallets. So when you’ve created a custom template, you can create a card from this template directly on your iPhone.

Synchonizing Wallets

The Home tab contains one more button which needs some special attention: the Sync Manager button.

Of course you would like to synchronize your wallets from your iPhone and your PC. When you enter a card on your iPhone it should be available on your PC too. SBSH did a very gerat job by enabling synchronization over Wifi. First of all make sure both devices are connected to the same WiFi network, this is essential for the synchronization process.
Open SafeWallet on the iPhone, go to the tab “tools” and push “Sync Mode” You should see the following screen:

Now go to the Sync Manager on your PC and click the button Synchronize. At this moment the synchronization process should start.

The iPhone application will come up with a popup that the Syncing is completed; there is no confirmation on the PC.

Thoughts and Conclusions

I think SBSH proved that they are able to create applications for the iPhone which are at least as good as we know them from the Windows Mobile platform.

A point of improvement in the SafeWallet software is “cloud-synchronization”. Sadly there is no solution for synching your wallet with an FTP-server, File-server or anything similar. Competitive software solutions often are able to synchronize in the cloud.

In my opinion the PC Companion version of SBSH SafeWallet is a full grown application. All the functions are created very well and the application feels stable and mature.The only thing I can comment on the PC Companion software is a lack of a confirmation message when the synchronization is successful. The iPhone version is also very good, but misses a few features which I think should be available. The most important missing feature is a search. When having hundreds of cards it is not very easy to quickly find that specific card you need at that moment. I hope this is a feature that will be available in a later version.

Both the iPhone and the PC version are great applications, but when these two applications are used together you really have a killer solution. Having your wallet with you all the time on the iPhone, creating new card templates on the PC, creating passwords with the password generator: it all works fawlessly.

Pricing and availability

SafeWallet can be purchased from the iPhone App Store at a price of $5,99 and the PC Companion can be purchased from the SBSH Website for $5,95.
If you would like to try the PC Companion then I would suggest the Trial version which can be downloaded from the SBSH Website.