Actions Pro – Comprehensive Profile Management App to Make Your Android Phone Smarter
by Paul Wilks
Dec 31, 2011 10:36 AM –
Install
Actions Pro is a massively comprehensive profile creation tool for Android. Highly functional and user-friendly, Actions lets you create custom profiles based on a wide variety of factors. Effected actions are also incredibly varied- giving you more control than ever on your phone. Actions goes far beyond simply being able to make your device go onto silent while you’re sleeping- it’s an incredibly powerful tool that is essential for people with busy lifestyles.
Price: $3.00
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Hugely customisable!
- Easy to use!
- Great interface!
- Comprehensive help section!
Cons
- As ever, ensure that the ROM you are using does not already perform the tasks you need.
Features:
Many of us lead busy lives where we consistently find ourselves in a variety of situations. Whether it be a funeral, a work meeting, a night club, shopping, asleep… etc. The way your phone behaves is often important in these situations- for example your Maroon 5 ringtone perhaps wouldn’t go down well if it erupted during a sales meeting. You perhaps do not want to be woken by a text message in the middle of the night. All these can be smoothly handled by a profile manager, enter Actions Pro.
We have reviewed profile managers before on AndroidTapp, they are often seen as a useful tool in managing your devices behaviour. The best examples of these would include Smart Volume Profile Manager, ProfileComfort, PhoneWeaver and Locale. However, Actions I believe, goes a whole lot further, giving you even more control. Instead of having a distinctly set number of triggers, and responses (eg. at 10pm your phone volume goes on silent, returning to usual volume at 7am) Actions blends far more conditions and triggers with a far wider variety of outcomes.
For Example…
A perfect example of this might be if you read books or magazines in PDF format on your device. You can set the following conditions: App Launched- PDF Viewer, Time- 7pm to 11pm, Location- Home / Actions: Display brightness to max, set screen timeout to 10 minutes, block or divert incoming calls, provide a pop-up reminder “Wear Your Glasses”. Therefore if you begin to view PDF’s within those conditions, your device will automatically create the perfect reading environment for you. Perhaps you want the screen dimmed a little for casual reading. Maybe you want to make sure you can hear your ringtone over the thump of a nightclub. Maybe you want to only allow GPS reading when you open Google Maps. The possibilities are pretty much endless, and therefore the customisations are incredibly detailed and varied.
Smarter Devices
Actions simply makes your phone ‘feel’ smarter. It reacts promptly to any number of conditions, including App launch, event (such as battery level falling or starting up the camera), Location, Phone (whether you are on an incoming call, outgoing call, if you miss a call, SMS incoming, etc.) State (Airplane mode, docking, headset plugged in, calendar event, mobile data/network availability, etc.), Time or even Voice commands.
Once these triggers are set, you can create the actions you want to see: Alert, App launch, Clear Data, Settings Dialogue, Display, Media, Phone, Profile, Settings, Social or Voice. There is a veritable wealth of differing actions beneath these subheadings so it’s worth exploring just to see the full capabilities. It’s all very deep, and utilizes the very guts of your device in both intuitive and helpful ways.
Help is at hand
With the options available here, it’s great to see a depth of help available. You can choose to view the Help section related to the particular screen you are on, or visit the main help menu, which is extensive and easy to view. Perusing the help section is actually a good way to get a grasp of the app’s full capabilities. I always find with these kind of apps that you often tweak the settings as you go along- so if I’m reading PDF’s preset to full brightness, I can alter it at, say, 9pm to a dimmer brightness setting. You can alter these to what suits you and in Actions, it’s all beautifully executed.
Watch on Mobile
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Actions – Event setting
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Actions – Time settings
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Actions – Date and Time setting
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Actions – Display setting
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Actions – Gesture setting
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Actions – Add condition
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Actions – Add condition help
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Actions – Hardware conditions
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Actions – Speech recognition
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Actions – Location trigger
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Actions – Application launch
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Actions – Docking conditions
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Actions – History
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Actions – History page help
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Actions – Comprehensive Help section
Usefulness:
There are perhaps few tools out there that can perform the range of tasks that Actions can. The app does require some pretty deep permission authorizations, but the abilities it allows your device are utterly extraordinary. The potential your device has with this app installed is incredibly impressive.
Certainly consider though if your device and lifestyle need this. On the ROM that I use: Cyanogenmod 7.2, I already have Profiles settings which allow me to make my phone go silent during the night. If that is all you might need a Profile for, Actions might be a bit of an overkill. It’s very cool, but have a think about whether you need it.
Ease of Use:
There is quite a lot to learn about the app to get the full benefit of it, but it’s fun to explore and comes with a comprehensive help section. Navigation is also relatively straightforward so rest assured you won’t be getting lost!
Frequently Used:
Depending on the business of your life and the kind of profiles you might need to deploy, Actions is easily an app that can be running all the time in the background. From there you might tweak it as you see fit.
Interface:
The interface is a series of bold menus that look slick and perform very smoothly. The settings, etc. are all highly responsive and the app is very polished. Some apps like this appear to neglect the UI, often placing more emphasis on the outcome and capability of the app. Actions however is nice to use, intuitive and simple to navigate.