Over the last few years we have gotten so much more reliant on our smartphones, to the extent that they nearly run our lives. However there are some tasks that we’d rather not even remember, yet they need to get done. They range from the repetitive like turning your phone to silent mode when you get into a meeting or switching from wifi back to 4G/3G when you leave the office to backing up your photos so that if someone unexpectedly relieves you of your device your memories aren’t lost.
Here are a few apps that can make your life simpler and allow you to focus on more important things whether its keeping on top of the stream of work email even though you are on leave or trolling some tweeps or chatting up those guys in your Whatsapp groups.
Teach your phone context
Trigger (Android) is a handy app that can minimize time spent poking around your phone’s settings menu. For instance, when you get to work and your phone automatically connects to your office’s Wi-Fi network, you can set it to lower or mute notification tones so you don’t interrupt meetings with your “kidandali” ringtone. Or once you get in the car and automatically connect to your car’s Bluetooth system, you can have your phone open your favorite music app with your favourite evening playlist.
Other triggers include location, NFC, time, charging, calendar events and headset.
The app in paid mode gives you the freedom to set up nearly endless combinations and triggers to automate all your repetitive events.
Safeguard your memories
There are plenty of photo services on the market, but Shoebox (Android, iOS, Mac, Windows) is worth a look, thanks to its simple synchronization features and generous storage limits. Install the app on your phone, and it’ll automatically back up all of your photos in high resolution (10-plus megapixels). Install the app on your computer, and you’ll be able to access your photos without any cumbersome transfers. The free version gets you unlimited photos and 15 minutes’ worth of videos, while the paid edition lets you upload photos at their original resolutions and houses up to 10 hours of videos.
We also recommend you try dropbox as an alternative, and it also has versions for Android, iOS, Mac and Windows.
Sanitize your social profiles
No need to comb through and delete your embarrassing weekend posts every Monday morning; Xpire (Android, iOS) lets you set your social updates to self-destruct at various times. The iOS version is far more fully featured, hooking into your Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts (the Android version just handles Twitter for now), but both versions facilitate quick deletion of past posts, offer easy expiration settings for new ones, and analyze your updates to return a “Social Score” that highlights potentially risky content.