Making your Android phone smarter by programming task automation using Automate

Automate is a freemium Android app developed by LlamaLab that enables you to perform task automation in your smartphone.

With it, you can really make your phone much more smarter by running programs constructed using simple flowchart called Flows. All programming in Automate is done graphically by drawing flowcharts (without writing a single line of code) by joining building blocks, whereby each block will perform a single task.

A sample Automate flow looks like this:

Some of the examples that you can program your phone with Automate to do smartly:

• Every morning when you wake up, greet you with a female voice with weather information and major stock markets closing index point. Pick up your calendar event and read out your appointments in the day.
• When you are driving your car, auto enable Bluetooth and auto connect your phone to your car's Bluetooth hands-free function, and auto answer any incoming calls. When you leave your car, auto disable Bluetooth and resume manual phone answering.
• When you are approaching home, auto send a Whatsapp message to your spouse that you are on the way and will arrive soon.
• When you arrive home, auto turn on WiFi function and connect to your home WiFi. When you leave home, auto turn off the WiFi function to save battery.
• Whenever you open Spotify app at home, auto enable Bluetooth and connect to your wireless speaker. When you open Spotify at other places, it won't do this and will play the music using your phone's speaker instead.
• Whenever you enter into your favourite cinema hall, auto mute your phone and set it to vibrate mode. Unmute it when you leave the place.

Automate comes with several hundreds of ready made building blocks. There are basically just 2 types of block:

• Action block which has a single output (example: Enable WiFi)
• Decision block which has 2 outputs, 1 for Yes and 1 for No (example: Is WiFi enabled?)

For decision block, you can set the evaluation to be tested immediately (example: Is WiFi enabled?) or wait for the condition to change (example: When WiFi is enabled or disabled).

The ready made building blocks are grouped in the following categories:

• Apps
• Battery & Power
• Camera & Sound
• Concurrency
• Content
• Date & Time
• File & Storage
• Flow
• General
• Interface
• Location
• Messaging
• Sensor
• Settings
• Telephony

Here is an example of available blocks inside one of the categories above (Camera & Sound).

To use Automate, you can either:

• Just run the sample flows that suit you
• Create your own flows and run them
• Download flows shared by other users in the community
• Download flows from the community, and modify them to suit your need

Automate comes pre-installed with several useful sample flows.

There is also a user community for its users to upload and share their flows with other users. You can upload your flows in the community too.

Community flows are categorized into the following groups:

• Business
• Communication
• Education
• Entertainment
• Finance
• Games
• Health & Fitness
• Home
• Media & Audio
• News & Magazines
• Personalization
• Photography
• Productivity
• Security
• Shopping
• Social
• Sports
• Tools
• Transportation
• Travel & Local
• Tutorials & Examples
• Weather

Below are some of the top rated community flows available for download:

A running instant in a flow is called a fibre. Each flow when executed will have one or more fibres.

The free version of Automate app is fully functional and ads-free, only with restriction of allowing up to 30 running blocks in all the running fibres. This is sufficient for most simple tasks. If you need to run more complex flows, or need to run a lot of flows concurrently, you can pay a small fee to upgrade to the Pro version.

If you configure Automate to run on system startup, all its running flows will resume from their previous running state even after a restart.

With Automate, you can make a lot of wonders in your phone, without writing a single line of code. All you need is constructing your logics with blocks and charting them into flows.

Automatic incoming and outgoing calls recorder for Android phones

Have you ever encountered any situation that you wish to record down your phone conversation for future reference?

It could be a negotiation talk, or a sales order through phone, or any conversation containing message which you need to record down that typically you'll quickly search for paper and pen and asked the other party to repeat it. It could also be a scam call that you want to keep evident, or any other phone calls that you just want to save.

I use Automatic Call Recorder developed by Appliqato Software for this purpose. It is free for use (with ads), and you can also purchase the ads-free Pro version which will also unlock some of the unique functions not available in the free version.

Take note that there are quite a number of "call recorder" apps that can be found in Google Play Store. The one that I mention here is developed by Appliqato Software which has already achieved a few hundred million installation.

The beauty of this app is that once installed with automatic recording turned on by default, it will automatically record all your incoming and outgoing calls on its own without the need of prompting you. You can also temporary turn off this automatic recording function in its Settings.

Recorded calls will appear in its Inbox which you can replay and perform further action, such as save it permanently (will move from Inbox to Saved folder), jot down a title and notes about what is the call about (for your search reference), delete it, share the recorded audio to another app (such as sending to Whatsapp, Telegram, email, cloud drive, another phone through Bluetooth, etc.).

This call recorder can save the recording in either one of AMR, AAC, MP4 or WAV format. The default AMR format is suitable for voice recording, which produce relatively small file size. In case the recording sound volume is too soft, you can make configuration to increase the loudness.

You can configure the app to automatically save a copy of the audio record to your Google Drive or Dropbox, and you can specify for this synchronization to happen only when the phone is connected to WiFi.

Under Storage setting, you can specify how many number of recordings to retain in the Inbox, and the storage location path of your Inbox.

Under Filters setting, you can specify whose phone calls to record, and whose phone calls to skip recording. By default, all calls will be recorded.

In case you find the app failed to record some of the calls, it might be due to battery optimization function of your phone, which you can set to ignore battery optimization for this app.

My Snapware Eco Grip 600ml glass drinking water bottle

To keep myself well hydrated at work, I have bought a Snapware Eco Grip 600ml glass drinking water bottle at AEON department store. This drinking bottle with premium quality comes with a price slightly higher than normal plastic or aluminium drinking bottle. Luckily AEON was giving a 30% discount when I made the purchase.

Anyhow, its price is still comparatively cheaper than glass drinking bottle for some other brands.

This drinking bottle is FDA compliant, totally free of Bisphenol-A (BPA), and dishwasher safe too. It can be used to contain either hot, cold or warm water and beverage.

I prefer glass bottle than plastic or metal as glass is non-toxic and has non-porous surface that won't accumulate bacteria or residual. Besides, the glass is transparent in nature, easier for us to detect any contamination or change to the liquid inside the bottle. Glass material also won't have chemical reaction to the liquid it contains, which could be neutral, alkaline or acidic in nature. It also won't melt or release harmful chemical under direct sunlight.

The type of glass used for this Snapware product is borosilicate, which has higher resistant to thermal shock and less dense (weight lighter) than normal glass. Borosilicate glass is commonly used in laboratory glassware, medical devices and cookware. Its working environment can go as low as -20 degree Celsius to as high as 400 degree Celsius. However, being a glass material, it is not recommended for it to undergo a sudden huge temperature change within short period of time (don't take it out from a freezer and directly heat it up in a microwave oven).

Being a glass bottle, it is easy to break if not handled with care. The Snapware Eco Grip comes with a Neoprene sleeve with nylon strap. This non-slip sleeve covers most part of the glass bottle, protecting it from accidental breakage to a certain extend. It also provides a comfortable and easy grip, couple with the ergonomic bottle design.

Neoprene is the same material used in diving suit and certain swimming suit. It is waterproof and heat resistant in nature. This means you can hold the bottle without much problem even if the water inside is cold to freezing point or hot to boiling point.

The cap of this bottle is very easy to open and close, without the need of much twisting and turning compared to normal bottle cap. It is designed to be leak proof too.

Its size is just right, easy to put in bag and carry along. With only 600ml capacity, it won't feel heavy even when fully filled with water. Some people might prefer bigger capacity such as 1 litre, 1.5 litre or even 2 litre container, which will be heavier to carry. However, 600ml is not enough for whole day drinking. It needs refilling during half-day.

Snapware has another similar product called Eco Flip which is taller but thiner. Take note that the Eco Flip drinking bottle has even smaller capacity of 500ml only.