Most smartphones have silent and airplane modes, which let you turn off the ringer and system sounds or disable all wireless communications, respectively. But what if you want to create deeper profiles, for instance telling your phone to vibrate when you’re in a meeting, send an auto-reply SMS when you’re asleep, or perform other context-appropriate actions.
Nokia Situations is a new app for Nokia Symbian phones which can do that. It lets you create a series of profiles, such as “in a meeting,” watching TV,” “sleeping,” or “playing with kids.” The app runs in the background and can detect certain conditions to determine whether to activate an appropriate profile — or you can switch profiles automatically.
Each profile can let you do things like adjust the ringtones (or ringtone volume), auto-reply to text messages, disable Bluetooth or switch to power saving mode, change the theme and/or wallpaper, or even open web sites or apps. For instance, you can have Nokia Situations open a weather app when you’re sleeping so the first thing you see when you grab the phone in the morning is the weather forecast.
You can automatically trigger profiles by setting a schedule or location, so that your phone could switch to the sleeping profile after 10pm and a work profile when you approach your office. You can also trigger profiles by WiFi or Bluetooth connectivity.
There are similar apps for Android, including Tasker and Locale... but while you can pick up those apps for under $10, Nokia Situations is available as a free download for supported Symbian phones.
You can check out a demo video after the break.
via ReadWriteWeb