Tag: android apps

One of the first things I do when I get a new Android is unlock (boot loader) and root it. There are many reasons for why I do it, but the best one is, Greenify.

Especially, if your device is low on RAM and battery goes down quickly, Greenify can help.

Greenify ‘auto-hibernates’ apps which are running in background, making your phone/tablet faster and long laster. Think of it like an alternative to the aggressive task killer apps which destroy your battery.

The latest version of Greenify, i.e. 2.0 – no longer needs root privileges, so it should work on non-rooted devices too. But, users have to manually open Greenify app and Force Quit apps, which is really pointless.

If you’re rooted, Greenify will use root privileges and auto-hibernate apps. If you launch a hibernated app, it will get out of hibernation and you can use it normally.

Just make sure you don’t hibernate Messaging/Alarm apps, because you’ll stop getting push notifications, as background services are killed. There’s a donate version of app which allows push notifications for hibernated apps.

Have your heard about Greenify before? Drop in your comments.

Link: Greenify

Contextual mobile apps have been on rise for quite a sometime now. Google Now has been one of the best things about Android (though it is on iOS now) and then you have Aviate Launcher created by former Google employees.

Cover is a fresh new take on Android lock screen. It replaces it with something more intelligent and contextual.

Cover lets you peek into apps directly from the lock screen. It shows three sets of icons, that keep on changing based on your app usage.

The basic idea here is that, you can just wake your device, slide from the app icon – which you want to open and get the stuff done. So you don’t have to unlock your device, search for the app, launch it.

Cover asks for your Home and Work address when you set it up. It needs this, as it shows different set of apps, if it detects that you’re at Work. It also uses motion detection to know if you’re travelling.

Other handy features include jumping between apps by sliding from top right corner (which you can customise).

Peeking at apps from lock screen works well, i.e. no lag what so ever.

The app is only available on US Play Store, but apparently, you can download the APK and install it – from the link below.

Link: Cover APK

Smart Responder is an app that disconnects an incoming phone call and sends a text message to the caller if the phone user is busy, for example driving a car or is in a meeting.

By default, 5 instances come packed with the app. They are : Driving, Meeting, Theatre, Prayer, School. When you’re at the temple, you may choose the Prayer mode to disconnect the calls and an auto-response ‘At Prayer’ will be sent. Similarly, you can choose the other instances. But at one time, you may choose only one particular instance.

Also, you can create your own instances. You should give a Title and a Message to create instances of your own. You can also long press the pre-loaded 5 instances to change the Title / Message.

Deleting the default 5 instances is not possible which is unfortunate as not everyone is blogs or is still young enough to be in school or college but the app allows deleting instances created by yourself.

Once you’re done with all your jobs, you may disable the enabled instances and you can close the app.

Link: Smart Responder

We love customising our Android phones, don’t we all? Launchers play a huge role in this and the Play store is filled with hundreds, or may be thousands of them. There’s just too much choice for the users in this aspect.

Themer too is a launcher, but different. Read on.

Customizing an Android phone is obviously a multiple step process. You have to gather a lot of stuff, like a good wallpaper, a well designed icon pack, widgets and apply all this to your launcher. Everyone will agree that this is a tedious process. Themer tries to fix this.

The app is developed by the people at MyColorScreen – a great community of Android geeks showing off their customised Android homescreens.

At its core, Themer lets you browse through themes and download/apply them with a single tap. Each theme can have its own set of icons, widgets, background and all.

I wish themes from MyColorScreen were available. If they can make this happen, it’ll be a huge break through, as the mods on MyColorScreen are simply stunning (go have a look!).

In my testing (using a Galaxy Nexus), I found Themer to be a bit slow, but it really depends on how bulky the theme is.

Personally, I still continue to use Nova launcher, but I’ll switch surely if the themes get better.

Themer is not yet released for public, but you can hit the link below to sign up for its beta (you get mailed an access code after few days).

Link: Themer