Review: DriveSafe.ly Pro For Blackberry

RIM has been giving away free apps to make up for the fact that their network kept Blackberry users offline for days. One of the apps in question is DriveSafe.ly Pro which speaks text and email messages aloud so you can concentrate on the road. A great idea on the surface as I sometimes find it really tempting to either take a quick glance at my Blackberry or worse message and drive. So I downloaded it and installed it. At first I was impressed, the app worked as advertised and had a very neat feature where it activated itself when I turned on my Bluetooth headset. However here’s what I found to be problematic with this application:

1. I noticed that my battery consumption skyrocketed.
2. It stopped working after three days. I did a search of the reviews on Blackberry App World and found that I wasn’t alone in terms of having this issue. #fail

This app fills a hole that needs to be filled when it comes to using your Blackberry while driving if you can’t afford not to be aware of what messages are sent to you. However it is clearly a half baked application. It needs some major fixes before I would consider using it again. It’s a good thing that it was free, because if I had to pay for it, I would be kind of upset.