Best smart phone?: Page 22 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Best smart phone?

Rex

Am I the only one on here who is interested in phone automation and thus uses Tasker? I probably wouldn't make this post if I didn't recently realize there are profiles that are easily downloaded. Otherwise, it is quite a complicated app which takes a lot of effort to understand.

Basically, it is an app which can make your smartphone a lot smarter. Simplifying a bit, you have 'profiles' which act as triggers for 'tasks'. For instance, the profile that your wifi is turned on can trigger specific tasks such as loading apps, adjusting volumes, change security settings etc, etc.

I'll give some examples of how Tasker helps me, and see if someone gets interested!

'Home' profile -This is really neat. It is triggered by being close to my home wifi. So, when my home wifi is accessible my phone automatically turns wifi on and connects to it, while also turning mobile data off. Being on my home wifi in turn triggers turning my keyguard off. I appreciate the keyguard as a security setting, but I certainly don't need it active when I am at home. I hate having to punch in a pin code or do a swipe every time I want to use my phone, and I want none of that when at home. When I am out of reach from my home wifi, my phone automatically switches wifi off, turns mobile data on, and activates my keyguard again.

'Sound' profiles - These profiles are triggered at specific times. During the day I want my ringer volume quite high, and the same for notification volume and media volume. This profile automatically triggers in the morning. However, in the evening I generally don't need these volumes to be as high, so at a specific time it lowers them somewhat. Then, at night I want all of those volumes turned off along with my wifi and mobile data. I have also created a button on one of my screens so I can toggle between these modes whenever I want to.

'Car' mode - This is my fave mode along with the 'Home' mode. Basically, when I turn on the power in my car and my car's bluetooth wants to connect to my phone, shit happens. Wifi is off and mobile data is on, it loads my music app of choice and starts to play wherever I was when I last used it. Also, the keyguard is turned off. Why do I need that on in my car? Then, another couple of profiles become active; if I get a text message in the car, my phone reads the message and who it is from, and then automatically sends a reply that I am in the car and will get back when I am at my destination. Lastly, if someone in my contacts calls me, the phone answers the call automatically. This all happens without me having to take my phone out of my pocket. If I choose to use the car dock, then in addition the phone loads my navigation app. Phone of course goes back to normal when I get out of the car.

These are just examples. You can do lots, and lots more of course. 🙂

Timbob

tldr.

Daz

Rex, including your post above and setting up these profiles, how.much time would you estimate this app has saved you?

Irishgunner

That's very cool.

Rex

Don't see it as 'time saved'. I happen to enjoy things like these, and this particular app spares me from things I find annoying. Basically, when there is a feature on my phone I am not happy with, I try to solve it. This app is by far my best tool.
Things like automatically syncing ringer to mute with calendar entries, automatic reply to missed calls, power saving profiles and so forth.

Burnwinter

The holy grail is a system that starts to do things like this without your intervention, adaptively, and can integrate with more devices around home and the workplace. Assume that's why Google is buying into home automation and robotics technologies at the moment.

Rex

Yup, that should be the target; I reckon it is at least a couple of years away. There are already some very good home automation devices out there which can interact with your Android phone. I am interested. 🙂

QuincyAbeyie

Also, things like turning wifi off when you're not home doesn't just save time, it saves a lot of battery time. Having wifi on when there's no network to connect with really eats away because your phone keeps searching for networks.

Daz

Better get our bloody hover boards first though!

Daz

I've been offered an upgrade on my phone plan to a Sony Xperia Z1. I've read a couple of reviews but was wondering if any of you misfits and tech heads have any experience with it.

kamikaze

home automation seems silly to me. it's also yet another thing that can break or malfunction - makes the entire system less reliable, whilst adding very little value or convenience. same thing with cars.

though the philips LED light changing thing looks cool.

invisibleman18

Agree with that Kami. Reminds me of that episode of Some Mothers Do Ave Em where trying to flush the toilet ended up leading to ruining the entire house. 😆

Burnwinter

Depends how it's implemented Kami, but once it gets going it will probably suck for a couple of decades before it becomes yet another thing we can't imagine how we lived without.

Turning heating and cooling arrangements on and off at set times or in response to starting your commute home makes a lot of sense.

Rex

Agree with that, Burnsy. Turning lights and appliances on and off through voice commands just seems a bit silly; the heating and cooling is the main issue for me too.

Burnwinter

Air conditioning represents a serious delta in energy consumption in Perth, anything that makes it a bit more efficient would be great.

We sometimes get electricity brownouts when it hits 40C on a work day because the load on the grid jumps so much. Smart grid technology is going to do a lot of good when it finally gets implemented.

Claudius

Been using my Samsung Galaxy Mini for a month. Much better than Blackberry, but my iPhone is in no danger of being replaced here.
Likes: screen size is usable is about 2mm shorter than my iphone 5S. the navigation buttons outside the screen area are another nice feature relative to Apple.
Dislikes: keyboards are poor at predictive text, both the native keyboard and Swype. in fact, Swype is shit. plain and simple. it's counterproductive. not intuitive. i can't look at the phone and immediately hypothesise where one might find power management, for example. have a button on the right that keeps turning my ringer on. the volume button also doubles up as a mute button. so it's easy for the phone to turn the ringer on in your pocket. so you're sitting in a meeting and it starts ringing or beeping. extremely annoying.

overall, 6/10.

FantasticMrFox

If you have an android phone, you HAVE to get SwiftKey. Best keyboard app on any platform.

Claudius

what's special about it?

Burnwinter

Think Google Keyboard is the better out of all the swipe keyboards I've tried (Swype, GK and SwiftKey). They all have their own minor issues.

Captain

Claudius wrote:
Been using my Samsung Galaxy Mini for a month. Much better than Blackberry, but my iPhone is in no danger of being replaced here.
Likes: screen size is usable is about 2mm shorter than my iphone 5S. the navigation buttons outside the screen area are another nice feature relative to Apple.
Dislikes: keyboards are poor at predictive text, both the native keyboard and Swype. in fact, Swype is shit. plain and simple. it's counterproductive. not intuitive. i can't look at the phone and immediately hypothesise where one might find power management, for example. have a button on the right that keeps turning my ringer on. the volume button also doubles up as a mute button. so it's easy for the phone to turn the ringer on in your pocket. so you're sitting in a meeting and it starts ringing or beeping. extremely annoying.

overall, 6/10.

Have to keep in mind that your iphone is a top of the range device, designed around it's software. Galaxy mini is an entry level phone for pay as you go users on a budget.

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