Timerrific for Android: A Great Way to Forget Your Phone’s Settings

Let’s face it, the Locale app for Android was awesome.  Being a product of MIT graduates, Locale is a simple and easy way to manage your Android phone’s settings through profiles triggered via either a GPS location or a specific time frame.  And let me tell you, it was slick.

When I was close to my apartment, my ringtone would change from a polite jingle to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult.  At school, my phone would automatically set itself to vibrate between the hours of 8 AM and 3 PM.  I could even use specific contacts to trigger brightness settings, vibrate mode, and my Wifi module.  I loved that app… that is, until they asked me for ten dollars to keep using it.

Since then I have been tempted to drain my bank account to acquire Locale, but fortunately something else in the Market caught my eye.

Timeriffic

Welcome into the arena the free app called Timeriffic (which you can find via search in the Android Market or by scanning the code on the right with the Barcode Scanner app).  It’s a neat little program that allows you to use profiles based on timed situations to change phone settings (sound vaguely familiar?)

From the menu, profiles can be created based on personal situations that occur during the days of the week.  Once configured, blocks of time can be added inside these profiles by pressing and holding them and selecting “Insert New Action.”  These “Timed Actions” are the meat of the program, forcing settings to change based on what the day and time is.

Using Timeriffic

Here’s a simple example: let’s assume you are at work five days a week.  After creating the profile “Stupid Job,” you can then add a starting timed action for Monday through Friday at 8:00 AM  to set your phone to “Vibrate” or “Mute.”  Then, once the grueling day is done at 5:00 PM, you can create another timed action for the week to reverse the settings back to full volume.

In the main interface, the Timeriffic system shows a green dot to tell what Timed Action is currently in session and a blue dot to tell which Timed Action will soon be triggered.  Besides changing ring volume and vibrate, Timed Actions can also turn on and off features like Wifi, Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, and even the brightness of your phone.  Sadly, changing the default ringtone is not an option at this time.

Conclusion

So is Timerrific the answer to my prayers?  Well, yes and no.  I admit that settings like brightness, ringtone, and Wifi are way cooler to automatically turn on when you enter a GPS mapped location, but when it comes to my personal Android settings, I believe the cliché “Time is money” is better than “Location, location, location.”

Image credit: p_kirn