I had pretty the EXACT same complaints with the Car Dock feature. So annoying to mess with all those settings.
Tasker is the answer.
I have never been more amazed by an Android program like I am with this one. The $6 is a steal for what this thing can do. I would have paid $20 for it I like it so much. It can literally make your phone do whatever you can imagine within the limits of the phone. Here are some of the things I have done..
1. Location - Probably the coolest feature. The location is set to a fixed GPS location determined by you. Once the program determines that you are inside of a certain area, it can carry out specific actions. So, when I get within 200 meters of my house, Wi-Fi automatically turns on. When I am within 200 meters of my church, the ringer automatically turns to vibrate. When I am within 50 meters of the movie theater, the phone will set to silent. Then, whenever you leave the pre-determined area, the phone can revert back to whatever state you want. Wife constantly want to know when you are coming home? When you leave work and get outside of a certain radius of 1 mile, 2 miles, whatever, it can send her a text message "I'm on my way home." Taking the kids to visit grandma? When you are within 100 miles, 50 miles, it can send her text messages telling her how far away you are.
2. State of the phone - When I have the phone plugged into the car dock, the following actions automatically happen.. Display set to be always on. Screen brightness to maximum. All incoming calls set to speakerphone. GPS turns on. Wi-Fi turns off. When the phone is plugged in to a USB port or the charger, the display is always on. When the battery is at a certain level, a pop up message and an alert tell me to plug the phone into a charger. Another alert can be configured to notify you when the phone is fully charged You can configure the phone to respond to gestures when certain things happen. Phone ringing? Tilt the phone to the left and the speakerphone will turn on and answer. Listening to music? Set the phone face down and it will silence. When you plug in headphones, the volume can be set to whatever you want.
3. Calendar events - You can make it to an amazing alarm clock. You can set specific days and at specific times to play different songs each time. You can configure it to automatically send a Happy Birthday text message to people. You can configure a different wallpaper for each day. Got a doctor's appointment next month? Configure a reminder text a few days before. Phone wake you up at night? You can set it to silence all alerts except phone calls during the night Or you can be more specific and set it to only ring certain calls during the night (work, parents, close friends, etc) and all other phone calls will be silent.
4. Application - You can configure the phone to do certain things whenever an application is started. Watching a movie or TV show on your phone? You can send all phone calls to voice mail when the video is playing. Reading an ebook? You can set the display to always on Get irritated when you open Maps, try to use it, then realize the GPS is turned off? You can set the GPS to automatically turn on when you open Maps, Navigation, or any GPS related program. When you open Pandora or Slacker, the volume will be set to high and incoming text messages will be silent so it won't interrupt the song. When I turn on the camera, the GPS turns on so every picture can be tagged by location.
5. Phone calls - Pretty standard but a few cool things. You can assign ring tones to people. Busy and can't take that call? A shortcut on the homescreen can be pushed, and a text message sent to the caller telling them you are busy an will call them back. Friend or family member constantly call you too early or too late in the day?. Configure their call to go to voicemail at certain times. Got a friend that talks really, really loud? Their phone calls can be set to a certain volume.
Once the task is set up, you never have to mess with it again. You can always override any task manually and the task will still be active the next time. Example: You are in the lobby of the movie theater, you can turn the ringer on manually and the task will still work the next time you come to the movies.
The possibilities are endless. I lost sleep last night thinking about what this program can do. I gotta be honest, some of these tasks are pretty easy to set up, however, some are difficult and will take some time and patience for the average user to figure out. Just go a little google research and you can figure it out. I am in complete amazement of the Android, just when I thought I have seen it all, a program like this comes along and blows me away.
Can an iPhone or Blackberry do all of this? LOL
