1. Introduction

There is 3 main actors on that market that you can easily find on the web. FlexiSpy, MobiStealth and SpyEra.

While most of them are providing similar functionalities, there are some real differences at lower level that makes your live easier or not, makes your monitoring a success or a pain.

I’ll not speak about SpyEra as I simply do not have enough experience with their products. In fact the only thing I can really mention is the fact that they were very reactive on my emails, very gentle and helpful… but at the end, the price of their products just stop me to give them a try. $600 per year for their Gold Internet subscription… not bringing additional value compare to others… this is even a joke.
Let’s now go for a comparison between FlexiSpy Pro-X vs MobiStealth Pro on iPhone 4 – iOS 4.3.3.
Maybe some of you would say that it is not fair as I should compare FlexiSpy Pro-X with MobiStealth Pro-X. Well, the fact is that MobiStealth Pro-X is not available for iPhone 4. Therefore, what I’m comparing here is the Top/Best solutions from both suppliers for that model.

2. General Features

MobiStealth

On paper, MobiStealth looks pretty attractive as it provides additional unique features like

- Picture logging,
- Recordings of Surroudings and
- Video logging.

The ability to listen to surroundings at any time is interesting as you might not be able to always listen when you should.
In pratice, this functionality is finally to my opinion not so helpful.

Effectively if the intent is good, the implementation does not provide the flexibility I would have expected. All what you can do is to setup the SMS message that will initiate and stoop the recording, and the duration of that recording… 5, 15 or 30 mins…

I would have prefered the ability to record on Schedule… let’s say between 5:00pm till 5:45pm as I know that during that time, something could happen.

But to be fair, this functionality has the merit to exist.

Logging of Pictures and Video is working well, you can effectively see the photos or videos taken by the monitored iPhone. Personally I do not see that functionality as a must (all depend on your needs), but more as a plus. I’m more interested in Listening to Calls or Surroundings, and read SMS and get GPS locations.

FlexiSpy

The big strengh from FlexiSpy Pro-X compare to MobiStealth Pro, is the ability to listen to live calls.

While this is not available from MobiStealth (only Surroundings), FlexiSpy have anyway some limitations on that functionality. Effectively, Live call listening is assuming that your Telecom Provider works in a certain way that will not put the original caller on hold while you try to plug yourself in the middle of the discussion.

Unfortunately this happened to me. When X is calling Y (the targeted phone), if I try to connect and listen to the call, X will automatically put put on hold on Y phone. Which is pretty annoying as you’ll be immediatly uncovered. Now, let’s be clear, this is not due to FlexiSpy, but as said to the way your Telecom provider is handling Conferences. An advice here: Try it first…

Even SpyEra which provides the ability for $600 confirmed that this is not due to the application. So even their application would react like FlexiSpy.

Common Functionalities:

All other functionalities are common to both suppliers, but trust me… they do not behave the same.

While remote control on MobiStealth can setup the phone from the Web interface (avoiding to access the phone every time to change the SMS messages) this has been absolutely not relialable at all for me. First it takes at least 30 to 45 mins to get the phone updated, and second, the targeted phone never reacted to the defined SMS messages. So I’m not even sure they were sent/accepted by the target, even if the web interrface said so.

On the other side, FlexiSpy gives you the ability to setup all SMS messages during the installation. To be frank I was very impressed with all possible parameters. This is pretty sweet, and very easy to setup.

For the rest, both provide

* SMS logging: Great on FlexiSpy, useless and unreadable on MobiStealth as my targeted phone user use French… MobiStealth does not handle none english characters. This make that functionality very painful to use as all charracters are replaced by unreadable ones. FlexiSpy handle very well foreign languages! Another annoying and painful behavior of MobiStealth is that the timezone is the one from their location, not yours or the one form the targeted phone. So you need to make mental calculations when you want to verify at what time a specific message was sent… time consuming. Here again, FlexiSpy handle this very well has you can choose the timezone at the installation time.

* Email logging: I didn’t tested it on FlexiSpy, but I can tell it did not work for me with MobiStealth. No email mentionned while I knew there were some… as I was sending them myself to the target. Plus same timezone issue as above.

* Surrounding Listening: As said I was not able to use Live Call spy from FlexiSpy due to Network Telecom constraints but I did try the Surroundings listening. This worked like a charm on FlexiSpy… everytime I was calling, I was connected and was able to ear very well the surroundings. Concerning MobiStealth, I’ve been a bit (totally) disappointed. It simply never worked. The targeted phone never picked up my calls as they were never recognized as spying calls but as regular ones… very embarassing when you have suddenly to find an explanation on why you are calling the person that you did not expect to get direct on the phone. I’ve tried everything, all what the support suggested me, I did re-install the OS, the jailbreak several times, I did uninstall and re-install several times the Cydia Source and associated package…. without any success. It didn’t want to work for me.

* Contact Details: language limitation on MobiStealth made it again very difficult to read. plus the recognition of the numbers to be automatically filled on the SMS tab (replacing the phone number by the name found in the Contact List), was not 100% working all the time. I’m not sure what was the logic on finding the matches but I didn’t feel it very relialable.

* GPS Tracking: The good point on MobiStealth on that feature is that compare to FlexiSpy, it does show all the historical GPS points on the same map. Therefore you can easily see the path used by the monitored phone… points being numbered and display on that map, while in FlexiSpy I only found the way to see current location. No having said that, I was finally not trusting Mobistealth provided locations. I’ve been very surprised to see that 2 points could have the exact same GPS Lattitude and Longitude… but being displayed at different locations on the map!!! How strange is that?

* Call History: Not much to say here on both side, apart the same issue for MobiStealth linked to language management and way of matching names in the Contact Details.

* Both provide SIM change notification and unlimited device changes… which is pretty useful.

3. Reliability

Here starts the huge difference.

My experience with FlexiSpy has been so smooth, so easier that it provides a feeling of plug & play. I never had any issue and it always worked as expected… very smart.

Concerning MobiStealth, unfortunately it has been a real nightmare. Maybe I’ve not been lucky, maybe my targeted phone has a specificity… the fact is Surroudings Listening never worked, the installation of the Source in Cydia often generate errors (even if Support didn’t find anything wrong on their side) and the Application it self was not always installed correctly, or at all generating some “Posix Scokets not connected”, certainly due to Source installation issues.

Plus all limitations/constraints above, and the fact that the supposed code **1234 that should hide the Cydia icon… never did.

Well, again maybe my configuration was specific, but then why FlexiSpy was working like a charm? I never had to think with FlexiSpy… just install it in few minutes and work perfectly forever.

4. Documentation

Pretty limited on Mobistealth. sure, it is normally enough to get it installed, but for such application I’m sure you personally have a lot of question in mind that you’d like to get answered.

Do you know how I found answer to my questions on MobiStealth way of working? By reading FlexiSpy wonderful documentation. yes, that’s true. As in theory they are providing same functionalities and similar technical way of functioning, FlexiSpy web site has been for me an essential source of information.

Again, nothing bad from MobiStealth, but you just get the srtrict minimum.

5. Ease of Use/User Friendliness

Web sites are similar, but here I would give more points to FlexiSpy due to it multi-lingual support. But it could be a lot better on GPS tracking as mentionned above, where MobiStealth was better in the presentation… not in the information/reliability.

6. Configurability

MobiStealth would have been the best one on this if it was relialable. effectively, the fact to be able to configure the targeted phone from the Web interface was nice. But FlexiSpy gets a lot more options and finally the fact to not be able to check the parameters on the targeted phone, does not help to track communication issues between the device and the engine behind the web interface.

7. Discreet Function

Both solutions were discreet as they are not slowing down the phone or disturbing its usage. But my opinion might not be completely relevant about MobiStealth as I was not even sure it was working/active correctly. I knew it was somehow functioning as I was getting Phone logs, SMS, and other GPS info, but it was not at all listening SMS codes to allow me any spy Surroundings calls.

On FlexiSpy the Cydia icon has been hidden immediately without any issue… to make your phone like a normal one (not jailbroken). Never succeeded with MobiStealth… Final proposal from support has been to install a 3rd party tool to do it.

8. Support

I’ve to say that with all the problem I got with MobiStealth, I’ve therefore much more tested the Support from MobiStealth than from FlexiSpy. But both were very reactive, and pro-active. Both were very gentle and always tried their best to help.

Now, let’s think about it. This application requires to be installed on the targeted phone. So, it might be difficult and you might have limited opportunities or time to access it… This is why having only email support like MobiStealth can be quite painful. Waiting hours before getting an answer can make you loose the timeframe opportunity to configure targeted phone.

This is why I would give a + to flexiSpy for their Live Support button!

MobiStealth just recently change their support way by providing a dedicated link, wher eyou can see a Live Button too, but to be frank, I never saw it “ONLINE” at any moment of my day, while for FlexiSpy I almost never saw an “OFFLINE” message

I found the new support site from MobiStealth very confusing, and as well very unrelialable. I was often not able to access it… the web page generating error. They ask me to clean my browser cache, but to be honest, I’ve tried from several computers, and even discovered on the web some other people complaining about the same thing. On the other side, I never had that problem with FlexiSpy.

This kind of software are so sensitive and it can be so tricky that it is essential to get the best support possible. FlexiSpy is without any doubt for me the best out here.

Don’t misunderstand me, I really appreciated all the effort from MobiStealth, these guys were very nice and ready to do their best… but their software just didn’t make it for me.

9. Conclusion

Easy for me to say that I would recommand FlexiSpy over any other suppliers. yes, I agree, FlexiSpy Pro-X is more expensive than MobiStealth Pro (twice in fact), but at the end you get what you pay.

MobiStealth is a pretty young actor in this industry. They grew very fact and became a majoe actor in no time. But their technology is for that reason too young, unstable and unrelialable (in my case at least). If you really want this to be a no trouble Application, don’t even think at all, FlexiSpy is there since a while now, and you feel it. It like feeling a drive with a Ferrari or a Ford Fiesta. The second one is not bad, but not at the level of experience, flexibility and quality the first one.

Hope this help.

Know more about FlexiSPY: Flexispy reviews

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Comments are closed.