Motorola Plans to Bring Smart Actions to Their New Phones

[dgstorm]

Motorola recently announced plans to bring Smart Actions to more of its phones. For those who aren't RAZR owners, "Smart Actions" is a software that debuted on Motorola's DROID RAZR. It allows users to manage settings based on predetermined criteria such as location, available connections, and timeframes. It also purports to improve battery performance, which is a welcome idea if it works. Presumably we will see this software on the upcoming RAZR MAXX as well as the DROID 4. If you have had the chance to try Smart Actions let us know what you think in our forums.

by Edognights

Source: Engadget

[pinoy_92]

Its pretty sweet. Saves me alot of battery, specially when my battery is going low.





And I forgot to say FIRST!?!?!?!?!

[cloud12077]

Wonder if that app can be ported to Gnex...

[soulpatch]

I love smart actions. Phone is set to vibrate automatically when i get to work. When I start up my car and the bluetooth connect it launches my rhapsody playlist for me. If battery gets low gps and wifi are turned off and the screen brightness is adjusted.

Honestly I am suprised it took so long to come up with these types of OS macros. I totally thought smart actions was more of a gimmick till I got the razr and gave them a shot. Now I am totally in love with the app

[2THEXTRM]

I have wanted this for my Bionic since it was announced. Maybe they won't forget about us this time

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[gadgetrants]

Excuse my late-week crankiness, but my knee-jerk reaction is "this is a big deal?" Let me break it down: I UNDERSTAND that this is a "new" system, and it is an important jump forward. HOWEVER, the technology and the concept itself are not evolutionary OR revolutionary. Any dev with a good sense of the phone's kernel (or access to the major component states) could easily do this -- indeed, I don't remember the name but since the D1 we've had location-aware apps that "turn off the ringer" or "turn on wifi" or basically all the same ideas in Smart Actions.

To take the Google "special sauce" and make it AT LEAST evolutionary, so-called "Smart Actions" need to follow your daily behavior for a couple weeks, and do things like:

- construct a model of your daily routine (first email check, number of calls per day, texts, etc.)
- monitor app resource use, and construct a model of when particular apps are used and resources consumed
- proactively move apps out of memory that are idle AND unlikely to be used
- anticipate (like search fill-in) app use, and modulate appropriate resources (e.g., wifi, GPS) as needed

Basically what I'm talking about is the same thing as a "Smart House" -- it learns regularities in your lifestyle and adjusts the environment in an optimal way. At the moment, "Smart Actions" is a baby-step up from "automatically turn off wifi between 10pm and 7am." Guess I'm not all that impressed.

-Matt

[jroc]

Smart actions is good to have already installed, but I need something a lil better, like tasker, locale, etc.

It's good right now as a one stop shop, condense multiple button press into one. It needs better location settings. And better calender settings.


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[dgstorm]

gadgetrants makes some good points. It isn't a big step forward, but I suppose it is surprising that one of the OEMs is finally putting some useful stuff on their phones that isn't completely useless bloatware. It would be awesome to see something developed that does everything that gadgetrants is suggesting.

[kodiak799]

It's basically a dumbed-down version of Tasker or Locale (which, if you've used those, is needed for novice users or people with limited time to learn). Throw in a few basic battery management things most roms/kernels do and it's hardly evolutionary.

One of the things missing are master sync/refresh scheduling. Sense does this, in a very limited way, with gmail and exchange. In my experience, most apps don't give you enough options with respect to updates/refresh (if they have any at all).

Some more advanced needs (maybe Tasker does this, but I run Locale) would be automatically turning on the screen and perhaps launching an app for certain triggers. You might, depending on your location, even want the screen lock enabled or disabled (I think GB killed the ability for most apps to do that, maybe there's a work-around now).

Google could certainly do a lot more to make these stock features of Android, but maybe they don't want to step on the wallets of any developers or OEM's. Like flip your phone upside down to enable speakerphone on calls - great idea, if we had mics on the back of our phones!

[2THEXTRM]

I keep seeing Tasker coming up, going to have to give it a try

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