Anyone use the "Locale" app?

[Gagemeister894]

I tried Locale back when it was free....and i had it set to change wallpapers, ringtones, how it rang, and the way the screen behaved (brighter, dimmer, etc...) on about 4 different locations. Only problem i saw with it was it always took like 20 minutes once i got in range of the location for it to change...then when i left the location i would have to manually change the settings back to the way there were once i left the area. I haven't tried the paid app, but don't know if they have fixed all the problems i saw with it

[kodiak799]

Well worth the money, IMO. I'm getting pretty good battery life with the screen always on at home or work. I did this by having a "standby" mode that turns off WiFi - ideally it would also dim the screen to even below the min. setting, but the problem currently is the phone has to "sleep" to refresh the actual brightness. I'd even be willing to let it go into sleep if an app could quickly wake it with no unlock feature when picked up.

Generally, it switches pretty quickly on my settings. If I pick it up, it goes to my current locale setting (I have probably 8 different ones) in probably 5-10 seconds, which really isn't noticeable as it takes about that long to launch a browser anyway so WiFi is fired back-up when I'm ready to use it.

Locale is a great app that I think has a lot of untapped potential yet. I also have the shortcut add-on and that has a lot of promise when I get around to mastering Any Cut.

Basically, these are roughly my locale situations:
1) family emergency that will ring my phone loudly no matter what setting (see #2 below)
2) sleep settings for the week and weekend. At a certain time, all notifications are silenced and screen times out in about 1 minute.
3) emergency power save. Should I forget to charge my phone before going to bed, airplane mode gets enable around 10% battery remaining and pretty much everything is shutdown to ensure my alarm has enough juice to go off in the morning.
4) standby mode mentioned above (doesn't add much value at this point, but the plan is to wake the phone unlocked on an incoming message or by picking it up)
5) home settings to tweak notifications and sounds to ideal, WiFi on when not in standby, bluetooth...
6) work settings to set all notifications to vibrate, tweak time out settings and lock features. That was really the driving force behind my purchase because I don't want to have to remember to change these settings at the office.
7) default settings enable GPS to get my location pretty much anywhere else, notifications max volume and vibrate, enable time out and lock features, higher screen brightness (since more likely to use outdoors)

A cool setting I haven't tried yet but should work (theoretically) is to enable bluetooth when I receive an incoming call. Kind of the overriding theme here is to maximize battery while the phone is always awake during the day and I can check email or do whatever with basically one click.

[kodiak799]

Couple of other cool locale plug ins that are unfortunately buggy and got uninstalled:
1) SSID plug in - great for triggering locations with wifi access. Works, but too many force closes. Have not tried the WiFi conditions plug in.
2) Variables plug in - allows you to create conditions from conditions and have additional options beside either/or. Tough to use and kind of buggy, but loads of potential.
3) Wake on lan - don't have any use for this, but if you have bluetooth on your computer it can start powering it up when your Droid comes into range. Time is money!

[kodiak799]

Locale doesn't appear to eat battery (once you have all your situations set up and aren't tweaking any more)....Battery use says @2%, might be a little higher in sleep state.

I almost always have GPS turned off and it doesn't seem to have any problem locating me. Between the 3G and when WiFi is enabled, really no need to have GPS on unless you are physically traveling and maybe using navigation.

$10 plus a few more bucks for some of the quality add-ons definitely makes checking out alternatives mentioned worthwhile - too late for me when I discovered them (have not trialed, no reason to). I will warn you that 24 hours is not going to give you any real hope of evaluating this program. It's fairly easy to use after you get the hang of it but there is a definite learning curve.

[ci2019]

I've been searching the market alot lately, and have come to one conclusion. Yes apps do cost... but most of the time it is well worth it to actually get the pay app.Some are not, but thats what the 24 hr trial is for. Take RadioTime for example, its a radio app for 2.99 on the market, yes you can use Droid Live, Cherryrplayer and iheartradio for this... but for the 2.99 I can listen to stations all over the planet... you get what you pay for, free is not going to be as good as paid, and the 10 I think would be worth it.

hmmm....while I agree some programs are worth the money they are, I don't agree because you pay for it makes it better. I have no issue paying developers for their time if their IP is useful for me.

If I write an app that prints "hello world" on your screen and don't charge for it, does my app suck by your definition because you wrote an app that prints "hello world" on my screen and charged $1.99 for it?

In the end, things are only worth what people are willing to pay for it.

I guess I was not clear enough, I meant that alot of the time you get a better app when you spend money on it, more features, more support, things like that. By no means did I mean that just because it costs money makes it better by any means. There are plenty of apps on the market that cost, but are in my eyes completely worthless, or at the most not worth the amount of money. There are other apps that do the same thing as locale for free, but I'd gamble that local is capable of more, and comes with better support. I may be wrong though and my word is not law by any means. I do apologize that my original post up there was not clear enough for you to understand what I meant.

EDIT: Took the time to re read my post, I bolded some stuff for you, because now I see that I was clear enough for you to understand, seems you just felt argumentative or little and wanted to feel better about something, or maybe you didn't catch those two sentences, the first two sentences about my feelings about paid apps... the ones that start after the word conclusion... they are bold, and some of the words I even made bigger for you, and changed the color incase you have trouble seeing bold black words... and I underlined them too for you just wanting to make sure I was being clear enough... if there is more I can do to help you understand, please do let me know, I'd be glad to help

Wasn't trying to be argumentative at all. Don't get me wrong, you started out well, but then you said this at the end: "you get what you pay for, free is not going to be as good as paid, and the 10 I think would be worth it".

[Gillyanne]

I was interested in it but didn't want the GPS running all the time and draining my battery.

Instead I got an app called "timeriffic" which allows you to configure the same settings based on time rather than location. For example, every morning M-F at 7:30am my phone is set to vibrate for work and at 4:30pm its set to turn the ringer back on when I'm home.

You can change the ringer, ringer volume, notification volume, vibration, wifi, bluetooth, airplane mode, and brightness. Not quite as automated as using location, but if you have a consistent schedule everything then it works great.

came here today basically to find exactly this (also didn't need/want the GPS function or pay). I put a shortcut to the silent app on my homescreen, but just like my old phone, that doesn't mean I'll remember to use it. so Thank you