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Essential Android Software


Guest Webreaper

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Can anyone suggest an app (maybe more than one will be needed, but preferably not) to achieve the following?

I want a flexible method to configure custom notifications for sms/mms, email & calls; also if possible, calendar events. It must cover the first three & at the very least, let me specify a unique tone as a function of the source of the data (ie caller, txter, email sender etc); preferably it should allow volume & tone/vibrate to be controlled also. If possible, the rules should further be able to be a function of the event time. Also, it would be cool if rules can be set for whole contact groups rather than just individual contacts. Hmm, reminder notification for any missed events should also be configurable.

If this doesn't currently exist, do you think there'd be much call for such an app? I plan on getting into android app development. I have plenty of experience of programming in C but only a passing grasp of Java & OO in general. My familiarity with Android so far only extends back as far as February this year, when I got my shiny new Hero. Does the above project sound like it might be doable by someone with such a background or is it maybe too ambitious?

Initially I don't care too much about the UI - a simple text file of hierarchical rules would do (or maybe I'd use sqlite) - so the bulk of the initial work would be on monitoring notification related events & replacing them. A UI can be tagged on later to manage the rule set/s.

A simple use case would be to ensure emails from mailing lists, say, are ignored at night & result in a brief low priority tone during the day, while critical emails always result in a prominent tone followed by repeating reminder until acknowledged. Ideally it should integrate support for any possible source of incoming data which could usefully give rise to some form of notification.

So, how much of this is already covered by existing apps? Sorry if this post seems a bit lacking in direction. It kinda just soaked up my thoughts as they oozed out.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Silvake

BuzzOff - a small app which can turn your phone to silent/vibrate and restore ringer back after a while, or when you move for a certain distance (change location).

You'll find it useful if (like me) you put your phone to silent-mode when entering a meeting and forget to restore it's ringer when the meeting is over, thus missing many calls/sms.

For example, if you don't want to be disturbed for a while (e.g. a quick afternoon nap), or if you don't want to disturb somebody else (e.g. when entering a theater or cinema hall), you'll find this app very nice.

One of the shortcuts I never removed from my Home Screen since the beginning of using an android device :P

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Guest Webreaper
BuzzOff - a small app which can turn your phone to silent/vibrate and restore ringer back after a while, or when you move for a certain distance (change location).

Setting Profiles does that too, but much more comprehensively.

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Guest Silvake

@Webreaper

I remember I installed once the "Profiles" app from the Market, but I couldn't find a feature to automatically trigger a profile based on a specific condition: location change or time interval.

Maybe the developers changed that in a more recent version, but I doubt it.

On the other hand, "Location" is a good software that does what you said (and is more comprehensive, too); maybe you made a confusion.

Anyway, I prefer BuzzOff because it's simple and does exactly what it says, with no config. hassle and no other complications.

@all

Other "must have" software: Turn-by-turn navigation.

I think there are a lot of discussions about this subject.

imo, there's no good free app you can use as a car-navigator.

The paid apps I use are iGo (good maps, but sluggish on my Hero, especially with an eclair-based rom) and CoPilot Live (faster, but inferior maps imho).

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Guest Webreaper
I remember I installed once the "Profiles" app from the Market, but I couldn't find a feature to automatically trigger a profile based on a specific condition: location change or time interval. Maybe the developers changed that in a more recent version, but I doubt it.

On the other hand, "Location" is a good software that does what you said (and is more comprehensive, too); maybe you made a confusion.

Anyway, I prefer BuzzOff because it's simple and does exactly what it says, with no config. hassle and no other complications.

Silvake, are you sure you're looking at the right application? It's called 'Setting Profiles', not 'Profiles' (there are apps of both names in the market). The one you want is this one: http://www.cyrket.com/p/android/com.probeez.profiles/

It certainly does location, time, hardware-state, and other condition-based profile activation, as well as other types of rules and behaviour. There's a lite version which is free (but limited to one rule), so you could test to see if it achieves what you need.

I presume when you say "Location" you're referring to "Locale"? If so, it does essentially the same thing as Setting Profiles, but having tried both I don't find Locale works anywhere near as well (not to mention the fact that it costs three times as much). Locale has many underlying problems, not least the fact that in order for it to work, the developer believes that it has to have a constant on-going notification in the Android notification bar, which I find very irritating and obtrusive.

Edited by Webreaper
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Guest Silvake

OK, I stand corrected: the name of the app is "Locale", indeed, and I also found it too fancy/difficult to configure for frequent usage, so that's why I looked for a simpler solution.

As for the "Setting Profiles", I didn't had the chance to test it so far (didn't knew it ever existed), so I'll have a look at this also; thanks for the tip.

Anyway, IMHO GSM cell coverage should be the best method for an app to trigger a profile on my phone (i.e. not the GPS position or some WiFi access-point in range).

"Y5- Battery Saver" has this, but it only triggers WiFi on/off. If 'Setting Profiles' has this option too, I will definitely give it a try.

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Guest peterx666

My experience has been very mixed....

Seem Good

Newspapers

TV Guide

Unit Convertor

Touch Timer

Tube Download

Places directory

Norwegian weather forcasating good for uk

Astro file manager

OI file manager

Advanced Task Manager

Not so good

All the language translation ones - they cant pronounce a language except english

all the voice to text Apps ...........none work and just create gobble do gook

(cant train them to voice)

All the shopping bar code type readers iffy reading and then they cant find anything!!

This has been my experience

Pete

:P

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Guest Webreaper

Just found a neat little util called CallTrack, which adds a calendar entry for every call (incoming/outgoing/missed) with the number and duration. Very useful.

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Guest Webreaper

Looks good, although only the paid version auto-saves to the calendar, whereas CallTracker does the same and is free.

I'm not so fussed about recording when I receive SMSes, as I use SMS Backup so have all my SMSes with time, date, sender and content recorded/backed up in Gmail anyway. :P

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Guest moveandfire

Ocado recently released a public beta to the Android (1.6+) version of their iPhone app "Ocado on the Go" here:

http://www.ocado.com/webshop/androidBeta.do

For those who are not familiar, Ocado are a UK based internet only supermarket. The app allows the user to place orders for groceries on their Android phone, picking from their full catalogue, previously bought items or Ocado's recommendations. The main thing missing seems to be barcode scanning of items you have packets of and want to order again, but it's still early days. Using it for a couple of days now and seems to be OK.

Edited by moveandfire
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Guest stevenz

Stuff I like:

Handcent SMS (mainly for the quick-text pop-up thing)

3G Watchdog (essential to stop your provider taking all your $$$!)

AppBrain Market Sync (queue up market apps from a web-browser, discover new stuff) - AppAware does similar stuff.

Doggcatcher (really good podcast app)

eBuddy (Pretty good multi-IM chat client, Meebo is completely useless)

ES (eStrong) File Explorer (As it says, toss-up between this and Astro)

GPS Status (Nice to know what's going on)

Juice Defender (automatic toggle of APN etc. to save battery power, seems to work ok)

Opera Mini 5 (Noticably snappier than the default browser although some pages look funny)

Robo Defense (dangerously addictive game)

SoundHound (aka Midomi - seems to work better than Shazam to identify music)

WiFi Analyzer (super useful for setting up your WiFi connections with minimum interference)

XBMC Remote (control XBMC on your PC/Xbox/Mac etc, works really well - not in the market, on xbmc.org)

Honorable mentions:

Seesmic twitter app - Better than HTC Peep, but I figured there's not much point duplicating functionality, so I just stick with Peep.

Dolphin Browser - Better than stock browser, multitouch etc.

SeePU (status-bar CPU/RAM/network usage)

Tricorder (Not very useful but it looks cool)

Bubble - Surprisingly effective spirit level once it's calibrated with a real spirit level.

Edited by stevenz
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Guest badgerarc
Just found a neat little util called CallTrack, which adds a calendar entry for every call (incoming/outgoing/missed) with the number and duration. Very useful.

anyone got an .apk for this? Seems I can't get it from the market on my desire yet ;)

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Guest irishandrew
There used to be an application called UK National Rail Train Departure or somesuch which was really good but it's no longer visible in the Android App Marketplace thing. I was wondering if there was anything else that people used?

Also, which Sat Nav software was good? I'm thinking of going for Co-Pilot but would only use it on-foot (and offline/no data download). Cheers. ;)

@Spook Tooth The National Rail app is still available from here: http://www.nationalrail.ktbm.com/

I'd keep a backup of it on your SD card lest it dissappear altogether!

As for Sat-Nav, I like Co-Pilot, think it's better than TomTom is/was on WM (haven't tried an iPhone version so cannot comment really). I also like Google's navigation in Maps - if you're on a 2.1 device this can be had by installing "Nav Launcher" from the market. Downside is requiring a connection for use - not great if you're travelling distance through dodgy reception areas or internationally to deal with excessive data roaming charges!

Equally, haven't tried Co-Pilot on foot - only for driving. On foot I tend to stick with regular old google maps. HAve been tempted to try http://www.mapdroyd.com/ though for offline maps. There are suggestions that Google is looking into providing an offline capability for their navigation - presumable pre-route on a connection, tell it to go offline and it will download the necessary imaging, although I'm just speculating! :-)

Cheers,

Andrew

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Guest badgerarc
anyone got an .apk for this? Seems I can't get it from the market on my desire yet ;)

Ah it's cool. I emailed the developer and they sent me the .apk ;) Nice app!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest masterpfa
Personally I love the free Titanium Backup app, because it can backup and restore all other apps and their data...

But it's unfair, as I am also its developer :huh:

Titanium Backup has been the best app I've downloaded well worth the donated version.

Has helped me out no end with flashing ROM after ROM :P

Edited by masterpfa
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Guest Chad Petree
Where's my Android - Make your phone respond to a secret SMS by coming out of silent and making lots of noise. Great for when you lose the phone down the back of the sofa!

its where's my droid =)

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  • 2 months later...

Loved these ones :

voipbustercaller : making phonecalls to anywhere of my friends abroad for ZIP (free ;-), already had an account for years and used it on my desktop, now I can use it through my "beloved" droid :(

slideit : keyboard who makes typing so quick, wanted to buy it but didn't work through the market - waiting for a solution from the developper now, I really want it back

swiftkey (beta) : using this one now because of slideit being out of order, and works also great, in another way, but easy and can type more fast than with a normal keyboard.

sms popup : this works really well for me because I always need my glasses to read something and the little icon in the statusbar is to little to see for me, so with this app. it's easy to see the popup on the screen

Trying out some of the mentionned apps. here, really love some...

grtz biep

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest Albert Poon

This is my list (alpha order):

Free Apps:

Barcode Scanner

Compass

Contacts GroupU - to assign specific ringtones to contact groups

Currency Converter - quite handy

doubleTwist - simple yet good looking media player

FTPServer - I prefer a server than a client on the phone

Mobile BusInfo (Hong Kong only)

MSN Talk

Quick Boot

Quick System Info PRO

ROM Manager

SDrescan - refresh the media database after files uploaded to the phone

Titanium Backup (Donate) - *****

Paid Games:

Asphalt

CrusadeOfDestiny

Crystallight

Let's Golf!

Tower Raiders GOLD

Edited by Albert Poon
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Guest Webreaper

Must add a quick shout out for Tasker, since nobody else seems to have mentioned it.

Oh... my... god.. this app is AWESOME.

It's like Setting Profiles on steroids for geeks. Basically a complete scripting and automation engine for Android. How did I not find this before?

I can't recommend it enough. I've got rid of several apps that can be replaced by Tasker scripts. It's worth the £4 alone just to be able to automate enabling GPS when I launch Google Maps and CoPilot. :huh:

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  • 1 month later...
Guest o2se3tak

Hi! Can anyone please suggest off-line calendar and contacts softwares? I do not want to sync my calender entries and contacts with google as happens by default. Running 2.1. Thanks!

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Guest StarModaco
Hi! Can anyone please suggest off-line calendar and contacts softwares? I do not want to sync my calender entries and contacts with google as happens by default. Running 2.1. Thanks!

Probably you can try a freeware called "Android Manager WiFi"? http://global.mobileaction.com/product/product_AM.jsp

Somebody introduced it here.

http://android.modaco.com/content/software...p/#entry1410824

I have a look of it and I think it's pretty cool to sync data with PC at once(outlook contacts/calendar, photo/video, music/playlist) and does the app installation/ backup/ management. Pretty handy for those who has a lot of apps to management and update all the time.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest jonesian

Is there an address book application (ie like a proper old fashioned address book with name, street, town, postcode and phone number) that can be easily edited on PC and then put on a telephone (San Francisco)?

This is confusing the hell out of me - I've looked everywhere but no joy.

All previous handsets I've had have had have had ones it's easy to sync on computer.

It'll take weeks to type everyone's address into the handset itself?

I've looked at google contacts but that seems to be for email, and I don't want email on my phone.

Is it possible to put itunes on my handset, or is there something better?

Thanks!

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