Recently I reviewed PhoneWeaver 2.1 from SBSH for Windows Mobile based devices and I was blown away by how powerful and the application was. It had a significant impact on my daily usage of the device. By creating different profiles in PhoneWeaver I was able to forget all about setting the volume or turning on and off Bluetooth for my drives to and from work.
Today, SBSH has released PhoneWeaver for Android based devices. That’s great news for everyone that’s picked up a Nexus One, EVO, Legend, Galaxy S, or some other Android device. Now Android users can enjoy the power of PhoneWeaver too.
I’ve been using the final beta versions of PhoneWeaver for Android over the last couple weeks. The application is pretty much the same as the Windows Mobile version. The interface is between Windows Mobile and Android is a little different, but the overall concepts and functionality are pretty much the same. The android version doesn’t have as many settings to tinker around with, but it’s just the first release. I’m sure it will expand nicely over time.
Once you install PhoneWeaver you’ll notice a new icon in the notification tray on your device. If you pull down the notification window you’ll see PhoneWeaver along with the name of the current profile. Simply tap on this to open PhoneWeaver and manually select your profile or edit/create a new profile.
A profile has a 3 main sections associated with it – Trigger, Sounds, and Comm. 4 sections if you count the Other tab that contains some general functionality. The Trigger tab is pretty much what you expect – how or what should trigger the profile to be active. A trigger can be Time, Location, Agenda, Connections or Manual. If you select location as the trigger, you can specify the co-ordinates and how close to those co-ordinates you need to be in order for the profile to become active. Connections allows you to trigger based on the device being docked or plugged in to charge. Time allows you to specify the date and time when the profile should kick in.
Once you have determined your trigger, you need to take a look at Sounds. This section will allow you to control the phone’s ringer, ringtone, volume, notification type and volume, and the multimedia volume.
After you’ve got the trigger defined and the sounds outlined, your next stop is the Comm tab. Here is where you will define what networks will be enabled or disabled by the trigger. You can toggle WiFi, GPS, Phone, Auto-Answer, Auto-Speaker, Data, MMS, and Bluetooth. For each of these, you can choose between On, Off, and No Change. This allows you to leave certain settings untouched and just toggle the ones you care about. I leave MMS, GPS, Auto-Answer, and Auto-Speaker set to No Change. These aren’t settings that I’m worried about changing on a regular basis.
The last part of the profile is the Other tab. This is where you can do some of the more advanced things like setting the screen brightness, timeout, what the profile icon should be, and if you want PhoneWeaver to launch an application for you or not.
When you think about all the things you can set, run, or configure based on a your location or the time of day, it’s simply amazing. I’ve created the same profiles that I used on the Windows Mobile version – Work Drive (used for both the morning and afternoon drive), Working Day, Weekend, and Night (for when the kids are in bed). Now PhoneWeaver takes care of changing the volume, WiFi, and Bluetooth without me having to worry about it.
I know what you’re asking – What’s the downside of PhoneWeaver? What is it missing or what doesn’t it do that it should? There’s only 2 things that I think SBSH should change, and they’re really very small.
First – During a recent trip I found PhoneWeaver would automatically change my profile out of Flight Mode and into Day, Night, or whatever the current time of day was. Technically the application was doing it’s job – the trigger worked and the profile changed. However, I didn’t really want that to happen this time. I needed some way to lock the phone to a given profile allowing for travel without causing a scene when your phone rings at 20,000 feet.
PhoneWeaver already handles this situation, the only problem is I didn’t know about how to lock a profile and it’s not really intuitive either. To lock PhoneWeaver to a given profile, just tap and hold the profile for a couple seconds. PhoneWeaver will then prompt you to lock on that profile and no trigger will change that. Now that you know about the tap and hold, I’m certain you will not have the same problem I did flying across the US.
Second – When trying to set the volume in a profile, there’s no indication of what percentage you have set the slider to. You have to set the value and then tap OK to see what value you have set the volume at. This makes it difficult to get all the volumes set to the same value. I spent a fair amount of time trying to set everything to 30%. However, once it’s set you don’t have to worry about it again, but setting the value is a pain. The guys at SBSH have already told me that this is on their list of things to change in the next version. 
To celebrate PhoneWeaver’s launch on Android, SBSH has provided us with some licenses to giveaway to lucky readers. Stay tuned for more details on how you can win a copy of SBSH PhoneWeaver! (HINT: you will need to have PhoneWeaver installed on your device in order to be eligible. So don’t wait for us to announce the details, go and install it now.)
UPDATE: Sorry about any confusion on this, but due to limitations with the Android market, SBSH is unable to supply us with promotional codes at this time. Hopefully this will change in the near future and we’ll revisit this giveaway at that time!
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