You are in a theater, you realize you come often here... every time you are here you forget to silence your phone. The last time it rang, in the most suspenseful moment of the play. What an embarrassment! You take out the phone, open oobProfile, hit silent. You put it back in your pocket. Problem solved...

No, I'm joking. I just thought why have difficult interfaces to choose where to make your profile silent when you obviously go frequently to the places you like to have your phone silenced (or loud).

So the idea behind oobProfile is to just open the app, select a profile, and every time you go to that place again, that profile will be activated.

The application costs 3 eur, and you can download it at the ovi store.
The sources will be available after I clean them up on github





http://store.ovi.com/content/255651

http://store.ovi.mobi/content/255651

For N900 users it's on it's way to extras-devel. Requires mobility 1.2.
I will try to see if it can be accepted on ovi for those that feel like contributing.

Nice ! Is it battery friendly? i.e. can locate phone through GSM cells?

i though it free.. but itsn't

Looks very useful, but;

a) How much time it takes to get a lock on your position? If it loses position/if you're in-doors, what happens? Does it silently revert back to General profile?

b) ofc, Is it battery friendly? If I set it to every 60 minutes (24 times a day) how would it affect battery life?

Thanks

Hi all,

thanks for the interest

There is an option to use wifi/cell towers only (accuracy may vary significantly from area to area) instead of gps so that is less battery consuming. On the other hand the difference I noticed by having it continuously on gps, was about 10-20% drop in "standby" time. Every day, i had about 15% left on my battery before going to bed, with oobProfile updating every 5 minutes, it was around critical.

The time to get a semi-accurate position good enough to change profile is astonishingly good. It works indoors (maybe even better than outdoors). There is not so good accuracy indoors, but it gives you a reading right away (suppose it uses wifi access point names)

I didn't use any custom positioning code, it's all qtmobility, of which I don't really know the inner workings but it seems to work very nicely, without draining the battery too much.

The timer is also provided by Qt's location api, and it's not an exact timer (for example if you have maps open in the background and position is updated regularly, oobProfile does get updated readings regularly too) it is a system that just provides location at least once in x minutes and not exactly at that time.

While I was testing it, it rarely lost position indoors. To be frank I did not cater for that possibility, but I think it doesn't change back to default because qt provides with the last position when asked.

If you set it at 60 minutes I don't think you are going to have a problem with battery, but isn't it a bit scarce? Meaning, if you go to class you 'll have a loud phone for the first 1-59 minutes depending on when the timer will fire.

"If you set it at 60 minutes I don't think you are going to have a problem with battery, but isn't it a bit scarce? Meaning, if you go to class you 'll have a loud phone for the first 1-59 minutes depending on when the timer will fire."

That's right, but If you make it possible to make that red circle bigger(=cover more area) than it won't be a problem, since our campus is at least half an hour away from the city, I can just select a huge area, by the time I arrive at class It'll be silent. Ofc this may stand as an issue on some use-cases, but better than nothing.

The radius is already customizable. You'll see the change on the map once the position gets updated. By the way when you have the application open the position gets updated constantly to refresh the map and add the correct coordinates to the database.

Also, the map is not displayed if there is no internet connection when you open the application. I hate applications that require internet for trivial features so if you absolutely need to see the map, open the app while connected.

Too bad it's is a paid app. Proximus can do much more and it's free.

I understand that. But I believe that the unique interface and simplicity to use give it an advantage over other applications. No offence for the other applications, proximus, profileMatic etc. They are nice pieces of software, which I studied before developing oobProfile. I just thought I have something different to offer.

You will be able of course to download the sources and compile for yourself, if you don't want to pay for it. I am just kindly asking that you don't redistribute the binary.

what about making the application cabable of recognise wifi-network , and changing the profile after that.