The iPhone does a particularity bad job of offering users a way to silence their phone at key times or to do so manually when so needed. Two modes are given: silent or not. I won't go into details on what is exactly silenced when in silent mode but it falls short. For one, the vibrate function can be rather loud when you are trying to sleep with your phone next to you. It can also provide too great a degree of silencing, eg. Perhaps you get a lot of messages during the day but so you need your phone silent while at work but you want to be alerted when that one, all important, call comes. In that instance the ring should not be silenced but the message client should. Sadly, Apple does not see this as a valid use case, users don’t NEED these options. You're right Apple, they don't, but they do WANT them.
Hence the reason for my purchase of Auto Silent from the Cydia Store (so available on Rock) An aggregator for applications which Apple sees fit to neglect or outright deny.
Auto silent allows for the creation of time specific profiles which can be programmed function by function to be silent or not, this even includes disabling the vibrate (JOY!) Needless to say, I love it. My phone has been waking me up at night far too often even since I enabled facebook, msn and email on it! That said, it believe that it still falls short of providing the level of control and intuitivity that Apple is renowned for.
The profiles that Auto Silent allows you to create are limited to time as the only determining agent when enabling them. Why not adapt to the user? We aren't home bodies, we aren't mindless drones, we are subject to change and erratic behaviour. My phone shouldn't be telling me when it's time for lights out, I'll tell it!
With that in mind, here is an email I wrote to the programmer of Auto Silent with some suggested features to include in future builds.
These features do not have to be limited to the iPhone; ideally I would like to see them inform all phone designs.
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First, the concept is that the night mode/sleep time, ie. 10pm to 7am is good for getting a good night’s sleep but if you DO happen to have your phone on you or are out and about then you'll want your phone to be making sounds as normal. Why not have an option which can be enabled on any profile which will have the phone intermittently pole the accelerometers to see if it is moving? That should give a good indication as to if it is in use or not and if it should be silent or not.
Here is another one, maybe even better. Have an option which can be enable in the profile setup, just as with the accelerometer mode, to have the phone intermittently sample the ambient audio level and adjust the volume of the ringer or alerts accordingly. This could include simply lowering the volume in a quiet room or increasing it in a loud one. It could also silent the phone entirely when the ambient volume is below a pre defined level.
Last one. Why not have another mode in the profile setup which, again, can be turned on in a profile to profile basis but this time it would rely on the phone's location. A user could define a point on google maps and then a radius around that point in which the phone would change its profile to a pre defined setting. Eg. Pointing to your work and specifying silent between 8am to 5pm or school between 9am and 3pm, or home between 10pm and 7am. The Longitude app in Rock already does the pre defined location poling. Maybe you can tap into that as a requirement for this option? Just pole the user's google latitude location.
These options can be introduced as DLC for the Auto Silent app. Let users buy them each for $1 to $2. You'll make a killing! I know I would buy each and every one!
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So, what are your thoughts on this? Too much or still too little? How can a phone be more responsive to its user in a helpful way? Are we getting there or are we just spinning our wheels?
Hudson
-- Post From My iPhone
