Do you find yourself addicted to your mobile phone? Ask yourself these questions: What is the first thing you do after you wake up? Check emails on your mobile phone. What is the first thing you do when you are on the bus? Play games on your mobile phone. What is the first thing you do when your food is served? Snap a photo with your mobile phone and upload to Facebook. What is the first thing you do when you arrive at the club? Check in to Foursquare on your mobile phone.

Don’t you wish that you could take some time off from your phone and not to be bothered by any incoming call/email/notification?

Unplug and Reconnect is a simple Android app that allows you to schedule a period of time where you want to be unplugged from the mobile world. It can be during an important meeting, or just a stroll in the park with your loved ones where you want to have some peace and not have your phone disturbing you.

How the app works is by automating the phones call settings via scheduled events.

Once installed, you can go to “Menu -> Add” to quickly add an event.

Things you can enter in the event:

  • Name of the event
  • Details of the event
  • Unplug method (set your phone to silent, vibrate, airplane or call reject mode)
  • Start and end hours
  • Repetition
  • Alert
  • Social media options

Once you have created and saved your event, when the Start time arrives, the app will automatically set the phone setting to the mode (silent, vibrate, airplane of call reject) that you have configured. After the end time, the phone will be restored to the previous settings.

If you go to the Settings option, there is also an option to “auto-reply” for incoming calls. You can compose your own message and whenever someone call you during your unplugged time, it will automatically send a SMS to that person to inform them that you are unavailable right now. In addition, you can also add your Facebook and Twitter accounts so your friends will be notified whenever you go unplugged.

Back in the dashboard, you will be able to see all your schedule in one glance. Each event should run automatically according to the allocated time slot. You can also manually deactivate each event, which can be useful for repetitive event.

Conclusion

The general concept of the app is good, but the implementation could be better. The app requires you to enter every single field before you can save the event. There are times where I just want to quickly create an event and not to bother about the details, apparently this app doesn’t allow me to do that until I have entered the details. In this case, some sort of preset settings would be great here. In addition, there is no way to disable the alert. You can set 5 mins, 10 mins or 15 mins alert notificatio before the event start, but there is no way to disable it. If I have tons of scheduled event, that means I will also have tons of alert popping up to disturb me. Just this annoyance itself is enough to make me uninstall the app.

When it comes to automating your phone, Unplug and Reconnect is definitely not the best in the Play Store. Tasker or Llama can do the job better. However if you are looking for an app without a steep learning curve, and without plenty of useless features, then this could be handy.

Unplug and Reconnect

Damien Oh started writing tech articles since 2007 and has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry. He is proficient in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS, and worked as a part time WordPress Developer. He is currently the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Make Tech Easier.

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox