Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Best Free Android Power Management Widget - Toggle

The power management widget that comes as part of the HTC interface is great, but I’ve always been disappointed that it didn’t include the “airplane mode” toggle and even more importantly a ringer/vibrate/silence toggle.  It wasn’t enough of a nuisance that I was going to buy a different power management/toggle app, but it bugged me.

Today I went looking for a free app to improve this, and BK Mobility’s Power Widget is exactly what I’m looking for.  It’s the same size as the default system toggle app, but you can set it to include 7 (vs. 5) toggles.  You can also change the opacity and the active indicator color.  The application will be listed as “Free Power Widget” under your widgets menu, and allows you to change the various settings when you’re dropping it onto your home screen.

The brightness settings also allow for “auto” and then has a slider (vs. the lame “three levels” with the system power manager).

Toggles available are:

  • WiFi On/Off
  • Bluetooth On/Off (only Android 2.x)
  • Ringer Mode (Normal, Silent, Vibration)
  • Airplane Mode On/Off
  • USB Mount/Unmount
  • Lock Pattern Enable/Disable (only Android 1.x)
  • Brightness Slider
  • Brightness Toggle
  • Auto Sync On/Off (only Android 2.x)
  • Orientation
  • GPS
  • 2G/3G Link
  • Timeout
  • Stay Awake
  • Always On
  • Wifi Lock

Some people on the Android Market comments are bitching up a storm about the ad support, but it amounts to the app flashing “get the full version of Power Widget” for about two seconds in the tiny little icon bar at the very top of your screen (where the battery and network indicators are) when you click one of the toggles.

Who in the hell cares about that tiny little message if the app is free?!

Great widget.  Thanks BK Mobility.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your nice post about Power Widget!