Grate Shopping Guide left me hungry (Review)

Overview:

Grate is a shopping assistant app where you can scan product barcodes and have reviews and information shown to you along with Amazon reviews.

Developer: Botond Kopacz

Cost: Free

Impressions:

Grate Shopping Guide is advertised as a handy shopping guide for you to use while food shopping. Simply scan the product barcode and up will pop a collection of reviews from users and Amazon about the product, letting you know how it is and if you should buy it. A handy app to have, especially if you may be shopping for something unfamiliar, so Grate is worth the download, right? I’d have to say definitely not right now.

My experience with Grate has been frustrating, to say the least, with the app crashing consistently and most of the features not working properly. The barcode scan works well, when it doesn’t force close the app, and brings up the correct item that I was scanning, but that’s about it. The settings don’t seem to open, and the other features like search also don’t work. Essentially, in it’s current state, the app is simply a barcode reader.

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Grate is supposed to bring up both user reviews and, if applicable, Amazon reviews of the product you scan but neither come up. I suppose that part of the issue with that is that the user reviews are reliant on people actually using the app and reviewing the products. The Amazon reviews, on the other hand, just don’t show. I’ve checked the food I’ve scanned and all of them have reviews available on Amazon, so it must be an app-side issue.

Functionality-wise, Grate isn’t great either. The app consistently crashes after scanning, and won’t work until you close it completely and restart it. I get a few good scans before it fails each time. Nothing else in the app seems to work at all, settings and the individual tabs don’t work at all, just bringing me back to a blank screen. The only things that work are the sharing and review tabs for the app itself. Also, the camera interface isn’t fantastic as it lacks any focus or zoom features to help you get the barcode in frame better. I will say that the app can quickly decipher even poorly framed barcodes, or upside down ones as well, it took only a second or two to get the product page up. Overall, the app is just kind of broken.

I do have some positive things to say about Grate, however. Visuals in the app are nice, with material design and a nice, clean look. Also, the app is quick and responsive when I got it to actually work. There are also no ads to be seen, which is excellent for a free app. I do wish Grate offered a “shopping list” feature where you can save the items you scanned in a list, or make a list of products and let you search for them in the app’s review section.

Conclusion:

Conceptually, I like the idea of what Grate offers. It could potentially be pretty useful for people concerned about the products they buy, and could also be a handy shopping list app that also provides handy information about the goods on your list. Unfortunately it just doesn’t work much at all right now, and should be avoided until the developer has had a chance to address the issues in the app and make it functional again.

Download Grate Shopping Guide from the Google Play Store

Lifetracker will nudge you to get stuff done, but only when the time is right (review)

There are many to-do, task-keeper, and other list apps available for your Android device. The biggest differentiators between these options is seem to lie in two main areas:

Interface/input: How easy, intuitive, and creative can an app make it for you to want to initially, and (more importantly) continue to manually input new tasks into it.

Intelligence/Reminders: How consistent and persistent can an app be in reminding its user to complete their tasks, without being intrusive and therefore a put-off.

Lifetracker is an app that believes it has found a solution to both of these issues, and in a lot of ways, you could say they’ve attempted this with a common concept. That concept is “context”. More on this in a bit.

Lifetracker doesn’t fancy itself a ‘task list’ per se, but rather a more intelligent app that “helps users manage their free time and achieve meaningful life goals through the unique artificial intelligence prediction algorithms“. It comes to us from the developer PDNA Ltd; it’s an app that’s safe for all ages, though the more routine schedule you have the more useful you will find this app. Again, more on this in a bit.

Setup

The developer has made getting started a very easy effort. First off you simply download from the Play Store. Upon installation and opening the app for the first time you are asked to pair your Lifetracker profile with an email address of your choosing. Then you are greeted with a few simplified tutorial screens, showing you how to add a task, tweak completion times, and mark it with one or more “contexts”.
These contexts are key, and one of the cores to Lifetracker’s approach to its interface. Let’s finally address just how Lifetracker does what it does.

Concept

To provide the intelligence it is advertising, Lifetracker uses three primary ‘context’ features:

The aforementioned “contexts”. In this reference, think of it as a ‘work context’.
Using [my term here], “best times” for task completion, in lieu of more traditional due dates. In this reference, think of it as a ‘time context’.
Using [again my term], “best place” for task completion. In this reference, think of it as ‘location context’.

First off, what is a “context”? It’s essentially a tag you apply to a task that relates to a certain part of your life, such as work, rest, hobbies, etc. You have to apply at least one context to a task, but are free to apply more than one if appropriate to you.

Secondly, what is a “best time”? Instead of a due date (I have to get X done by Y day & time), Lifetracker asks you instead for an optimal/best-possible time to complete the task.

Using these two contexts, Lifetracker then takes a novel (though quickly growing in familiarity) approach to its task tracking. It uses its version of artificial intelligence, employing varying and proprietary algorithms.

Example: As a user, when you are about to commence a certain task on your list that you’ve already created, you press the ‘play’ button on that task. When complete you click on the check mark, clearing it from you view. Lifetracker analyzes the task title & associated tag (‘work context’), and also the day, time, and task duration (‘time context’).
The app then uses this info for following tasks you input; any tasks with similar tags and completion dates/times will be used by the app in deciding when to “nudge” you, by way of notifications, to remind you that now would be a good time to work on that task.
The app learns the places, days, and time frames when you tend to work on tasks tied to a certain context/tag, and uses this knowledge to keep you on task!

What We Liked

The app interface is a very clean take on task input. Text is minimal, and the colors are a good mix of subtle but business-like. Tasks appear almost as Google cards in their look & feel.
The main interface screen has minimal but useful options for sorting your existing tasks (by date created by optimal completion time, and by tag). There’s also a toggle to hide these sorting options and sticking with the current one, to gain a bit more screen. Nothing is really missing that feels missed.

As far as performance, the app does a good job in notifying the user based on past performance. If you’ve logged completion time for a particular tag or generally work on a task at a regular day or time of day, you will be nudged by Lifetracker to get back at that task when that time comes around again.

What Could Use Improvement

While the app is very good at what it does, I tend to question how useful this app is, as it (in my opinion) overlaps at least once calendar/task/note-taking app you likely already have on your device.

You already have the capacity to log your to-do’s and view them, and more importantly, view them relative to all your other meetings, appointments, and other life events.
To fully use Lifetracker, you may have to input tasks redundantly, once to show in relative to your overall life schedule (see #1 above), but again so Lifetracker can provide the smarter learning & “nudging” to keep you on track (a calendar item can oh-so-easily be swiped away into oblivion…).

Also, it would seem as though the AI would be useful provided the user’s workflow is rather consistent and his/her life is fairly routine. I’m boring and routine, so it worked great for me. But if you complete tasks on a “swing-shift” basis, I don’t see the notifications being able to keep up with your crazy lifestyle.

Conclusion

Lifetracker is a polished and intuitive app that is best used to complete the want-to-do tasks in life, where time spent completing, finishing, and improving would be better spent that plopping down in front of the TV.
Where I see Lifetracker being best utilized is in one of two ways:

As a supplemental task app, for those “want to do” items, like practicing yoga after the kiddos are in bed, checking in on family members, practicing a musical instrument, or perhaps developing a writing habit.  Stuff that doesn’t fit into your already-crammed schedule, where it will almost certainly get lost.
Taking the smarts that Lifetracker leans on, and using that as an integral part of a calendar/task app, to supplement the hard-definition meetings with these softer, want-to-do tasks.

I’m all for smart and useful apps, but I’m even more for installing and managing fewer of them on my devices.

If you’d like to learn more, there is a decent FAQ page on the developer’s website.

Download Lifetracker here.

DU Battery Saver – Power Saver: Minimal gains with a lot of intrusive ads (review)

The mobile phone industry faces few “technological” limitations it cannot overcome, yet battery technology continues to plague our mobile devices. While we have not developed a new technology to replace our current battery tech, there have been huge strides in software and hardware optimization to make sure our devices are as efficient as possible. DU Battery Saver – Power Saver is one piece of software that you can download on the Google Play Store that claims to offer such optimizations.

Review Usage:

This entire review took place on the 128GB Google Pixel XL. I took usage statistics with my device for about a week before installing and using the DU Battery Saver – Power Saver for five days. While daily usage was not identical day to day, I did not add or remove any apps during the testing cycle since background app usage may skew results significantly.

Installation and Usage

The DU Battery Saver – Power Saver is easy to install, and the interface is simple yet deceitful. The large Optimize button will allow you to “optimize” you device for better battery life, and the Mode button will turn many of your settings off or down like screen brightness, screen timeout, vibrate, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sync, and the haptic feedback while also restricting phone calls and messages. I found this to be the most useful part of the app. I was able to create unique modes with custom settings to maximize battery life. Take note though that I was creating these modes as I found the preconfigured modes to be far too aggressive for everyday use.

Other than Mode and Optimize, the rest of the UI exists to sell users DU coin, advertise, and give you information your phone can already tell you. We will start with the Smart Tab that appears to give users fine control over schedules, lock screen apps, and other settings, but they all turn out to be useless to users before purchasing these features with DU Coins. Next, there is the Phone Cooler button. On multiple occasions after extended gameplay and TV show binges, I tried to use this feature to see what it was about, but I received nothing but ads. The Charge button lets you know if your phone is fast charging, trickle charging, or full. Monitor is a less detailed version of your battery settings panel, and Boost is just a button you hit when you want to see yet another ad.

After playing with the app a bit, I felt very cheated by the interface. I understand that the app industry is a business and that the ad revenue produced by people viewing and clicking on ads is what keeps the free app industry afloat, but DU APPS STUDIO, the creators of DU Batter Saver – Power Saver, were extremely deceitful with the layout of the app, using the allure of additional functionality to generate revenue.

Battery life improvement

While the interface may not be annoying, many would be willing to forgive this if the app did what it said and users phones saw significant battery improvement. In my experience, my results showed there was little to no improvement with one day, in particular, seeing rather poor battery life.

This is a screenshot from the second day I had DU Battery Saver installed on my Pixel XL. Note the similarity in screen on time and difference in remaining battery life

To establish how effective/ineffective the DU Battery Saver is, I will look at the average screen on time throughout the two weeks when I reached the 10% battery mark (I was always within 3% points). I will then break it down into day-to-day usage. Just a note, this is not the most definitive way to test the effectiveness of this app, but it is a way that will provide satisfactory results while staying within the testing time frame I have set. To more effectively evaluate this app’s ability, it would require more data over a longer period with much more rigid controls in place.

• Pixel XL screen on times (Without DU Battery Saver)
  • 5h 42m
  • 5h 50m
  • 5h 31m
  • 5h 38m
  • 5h 41m
  • Average screen on time: 5h 40m
• Pixel XL screen on times (With DU Battery Saver installed)
  • 5h 58m
  • 5h 9m
  • 5h 55m
  • 5h 52m
  • 5h 47m
  • Average screen on time: 5h 44m (5h 53m if you exclude the score in red)

After my two week test period, the numbers yielded about a thirteen-minute difference between my screen on times (excluding the outlying data in red). Without allowing the app to shut off my phone calls, messages, or other basic features that make my phone useful to me, I saw a 13 minute gain and spent my week squinting at a very dark screen due to lack of backlight.

Conclusion

After testing the DU Battery Saver – Power Saver, the app does little in the way improving battery life unless you are willing to sacrifice basic functionality. Combine the lack of battery improvement with abundant ads and I imagine users will find there is little offered by this app. For those looking to give it a shot, you can grab DU Speed Booster for free in the Play Store.

Fitbit Charge 2 review

With phones and apps getting smarter all of the time, it’s easy to track your basic movements and activities. Be it counting steps in Google Fit or heart rate monitoring in a Samsung phone, it’s not hard to keep up with your basic health-related tasks. But, by being able to do everything in a handset, the question arises of whether we need purchase additional hardware. Is it worth it to buy a fitness band, activity tracker, or smartwatch?  And, if so, which is a good brand to start with?

Fitbit is one of the first names that pop up when the discussion turns to wearables, and rightfully so. It offers a wide range of activity trackers, each of which comes with different features and price points to match. One of its latest, the Charge 2, is a $150 affair that builds on a predecessor by adding new hardware and features.

We’ve had a Fitbit Charge 2 for the last few weeks as it was provided to us by Fitbit for review consideration. What follows is our impressions of the wearable, its hardware features, and its accompanying app. Spoiler alert: we love the Fitbit 2 and think it’s probably the best value you can get from the brand.

What is the Fitbit Charge 2?

As part of the “Active” models in the Fitbit lineup, the Charge 2 offers up more than just step counting, sleep tracking, and other basic functions. It’s not quite along the lines of a full-on smartwatch or the Fitbit Blaze, but it’s a terrific middle ground unit.

If you’re the type of person who wants to keep an eye on how much you’re moving, heart rate, how you’re sleeping, and other activities, this is the one to consider. Moreover, it ties nicely to your phone, delivering call, text and other notifications as well. It’s smarter than a traditional activity tracker and half the price of a full-on Android Wear or Apple Watch experience.

The Charge 2, while a successor to an already existing model, picks up some of the functions of the Charge HR. In other words, it now offers the heart rate monitor. From what we can tell, Fitibit has merged the Charge and Charge HR into one experience for this season.

Features of the Fitbit 2 include an always-on heart rate monitor, an OLED display, swappable bands, and a five-day battery. It’s the sort of thing that’s comfortable to wear, easy to read, and designed to get through a work week. You can do just about anything you want with it, just don’t wear it in the shower or to go swimming.

Design

The Fitbit Charge 2 is available in three sizes (Small, Large, and Extra Large) and comes in no less than four standard color options: Black/Silver, Blue/Silver, Plum/Silver, and Teal Silver.

Additionally, there are two special edition textured colors (Lavender/Rose Gold and Black/Gunmetal) which can be had for a $30 premium. Shop the Fitbit official store and you’ll find there are leather bands which can be purchased, switching it from hip and modern to classy or demure.

The default bands are made of a flexible, durable elastomer material that bends and flexes like most smartwatch bands and wearables. It’s rugged enough to take bumps and scrapes without getting scuffs but it’s flexible enough to move when in a pinch.

A little bit bulky, it’s still sleek and unassuming. It’s not uncommon to see people wearing stuff like this in 2016; the Fitbit Charge 2 is every bit as modern looking as you’d expect. The colors might sound more vibrant or attention grabbing, but in practice they are muted and professional shades.

The bands buckle like a traditional watch and are comprised of “surgical-grade” stainless steel. We found it easy to put on and take off after only a few tries and now it’s a mindless process before showering or swimming

Display

The Fitbit Charge 2 houses an OLED display that provides images and text which are easy to read and discern. Be it checking heart rate, glancing at notifications, or simply eyeballing the time, it’s sharp and clear.

The screen is not always on, but a simple lift-to-peek gesture works to bring up the display. Moreover, you can also tap on the display to wake it or press the button on the side, too.

Functions

The Fitbit Charge 2 does quite a bit on its own, including functions such as stopwatch, exercise tracking mode, heart rate, and a new “Relax” mindfulness app. There’s not much need to open the app on your phone throughout the day unless you are looking to dive deeper into stats and historical data.

The Fitbit Charge 2 is capable of tracking distance, calories burned, active minutes, floors climbed, stationary time, sleep quality, and hourly activity. Additionally, it can connect to your phone for GPS stats on distance and mapping. The SmartTrack feature can automatically detect certain activities and record them in the app in a mindless and pain-free way.

The aforementioned “Relax” option is a guided and timed focused breathing exercise. Designed to center you, it coaches you into a breathing pattern based off of actual heart rate readings. It’s a nice touch that you might not use all that often, but one that’s welcome when you want or need it.

We also appreciate that the watch can detect that you’ve been sitting idle for too long. A gentle vibration and encouraging word pop up on the display to remind you that it might be time to get up and stretch those legs. You might be surprised at how quickly an hour rolls around.

App

One area where Fitbit has gotten exponentially better over the years is in the area of its apps. The Charge 2’s dashboard is comprehensive and full of all sorts of wonderful details. If you’re looking for historical data, there’s plenty here to dig through.

It’s also in the app where you can record stats for water intake or weight; users can also adjust personal goals for movement. Is it hard to get in 10,000 steps in a day? Set things down a bit and start celebrating a more attainable goal first and then move on to more lofty ambitions.

The Cardio Fitness Level is a really cool way of looking at your overall fitness level. Rather than simply giving you dry statistics, this becomes more of a game or score. In short, it takes everything it knows into consideration and provides you with a number. The goal is to raise that number with activity, weight loss, better sleep, etc. The app can help set realistic expectations and will work to get you there, but you just have to hold yourself accountable.

Conclusion

Battery life, at five days, was great and we appreciate only having to charge it up once or twice in any given week. Speaking of which, we kind of dig the charging mechanism and clamp which hold things in place.

There’s a lot to be said about the overall accuracy of consumer-grade wearables. Numbers can vary from one brand to another and things could change with a simple firmware update. But, when you take something like the Charge 2 as a whole and work with it, it’s a great way to get a base line read on your life.

Sure, steps might differ once in a while, but you can generally take the numbers as a solid indicator on things. Are you moving in the right direction? Are you even physically moving? The same goes for sleep. Maybe these wearable devices are not going to truly be able to discern between light and deep sleep, at least not for this price. What they can do, though, is tell you that you’ve been getting an average of five hours over the last two weeks and that you need more sleep.

Although Fitbit says the Charge 2 can take the occasional splash in stride, we would love to keep it on all day. Showers are a risk because of the jet streams and it’s simply not built for diving deep into water. If it were able to handle the former, we’d be totally fine without the latter. With that said, don’t sweat it if you’re sweaty. A summer rain isn’t going to do anything to your Charge 2, either.

There’s no internal GPS in the Fitbit Charge 2, but we’re okay with that. When paired with a phone and apps it can keep a nice set of data for runs, bike rides, and walks. You’ll need to keep your phone with you if you’d like

As a whole, there’s very little here for us to fault. The price is right and the functionality is more than what most people need. We might like a smarter experience in something like an Android Wear, but we’d have to drop twice the money. The Fitbit Charge 2 is a solid wearable from top to bottom.

Where to Buy

The Fitbit Charge 2 can be purchased at Fitbit’s site as well as other established retailers. Moreover, you may find it on the shelves of your wireless service provider. Pricing, as indicated above, is listed at $150. Below are some links to get you headed in a few directions.

• Amazon
• B&H
• Best Buy
• Target
• Walmart

Facemoji Keyboard: A fun, customizable keyboard

Keyboards might be the most boring things on our phones. For the majority of people, the keyboard that comes on your phone is the one you stay with. But there is a world of third party keyboard apps out there that do more than a stock keyboard app could ever dream. Today, we are taking a look at a keyboard that is trying to add some fun to your typing experience – Facemoji Keyboard.

Setup

If you have ever used a third party keyboard before, the setup here is no different from that. However, for those of you just now moving away from your stock keyboard, the setup has a couple of extra steps. After downloading the app, you will have to enable it on your device and set it as your default keyboard. Thankfully, when you first open Facejomi Keyboard, it walks you through these steps in a way anyone can follow. After that is all done, you are ready to type.

Experience

So what makes Facemoji Keyboard different from all the other keyboards out there? Over my week or so using the keyboard, I have to say that it is the most fun one I have ever used. The first thing you will notice is the emphasis on personalization within the keyboard through keyboard themes and emoji styles.

There are the normal keyboard themes like dark, light, and colors, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Just scrolling through the library of themes for a few minutes, I came across ones about baseball, flowers, tattoos, and Paris. Some of the themes are even animated to add to their uniqueness, but I don’t know how friendly that will be to your battery life. I personally stuck with a normal blue color, but the option is there to pick anything you want. The default emoji style is iOS-like, but it can be changed to several different styles. I went back to the standard Android emojis as I am one of the few that seems to actually like the way they look.

After spending some time making the keyboard look just the way you want, you can finally get into the typing experience itself. At the top of the keyboard, you will notice several hotkeys. The left-most one that resembles a four-leafed clover will show you different settings options. The shirt icon will let you choose a theme to apply from any of the default themes or those you have downloaded. You can also quickly access the theme gallery to find a new one. The cursor icon in the middle lets you precisely move the cursor around to place it exactly where you want. While I appreciate this addition and love how useful it is, I wonder why it was not done in a similar fashion to Google Keyboard where you long-press the spacebar and drag to position the cursor. This way would have freed up a spot in the top bar for another hotkey, but at least the feature was included in the app.

The ghost emoji will take you to the sticker page, which we will talk about soon. Finally, the downward arrow on the right will minimize the keyboard. I think this is another wasted button as the back key on Android phones will minimize the keyboard already. I would have rather seen another shortcut in place of the arrow.

The inclusion of stickers and GIFs is what set this keyboard apart from many others that I have used. For those of you who do not know what stickers are in a keyboard app, they are basically advanced emojis that are more detailed and sometimes animated. I personally have never used stickers or GIFs when texting anyone, but the features were integrated so well into Facemoji Keyboard that I decided to give them a try. The included sticker pack is iOS-style emojis that have been animated, but you can search through the sticker gallery and download any pack that you find interesting. I personally like the sloth pack, but your options are numerous.

When you switch to the emoji tab, you will find the option to use GIFs. You can choose from trending GIFs, select a tag to view related GIFs, or just use the search function. Earlier, I mentioned that Facemoji keyboard was the most fun keyboard I have used, and that is thanks in full to the inclusion of GIFs. Being able to quickly search up a GIF and drop it into a conversation is great, and although I know the same feature is available in other keyboard apps, I still thoroughly enjoyed it when using Facemoji Keyboard. My only problem was how Textra handled selecting a GIF from the keyboard. Instead of just sending it directly in the conversation I was in, a window would pop up and have me select who I wanted to send the GIF to. I did not experience this problem with other texting apps.

There are a few time-saving features that Facemoji Keyboard also offers. Emoji prediction is exactly like preditive text but for emojis. Suggested emojis are displayed in the bar at the top of the keyboard, and you can tap directly on them to avoid having to swipe through multiple tabs of emojis. Holding down on the Enter/Return key will bring up your five most used emojis, which definitely saves time for those of us who use emojis constantly.

The overall typing experience with Facemoji keyboard is about average, and I still cannot match the speed I get with Google Keyboard. The inclusion of swiping to type is wonderful, but I found myself typing at the speed I get with most other keyboards. There were a couple of problems I encountered while using this keyboard, too. If a word was autocorrected to another word after I pressed the space bar, I could not simply backspace and be given a list of words in the top bar (like I do in Google Keyboard). This meant I would have to retype any word that was wrongly autocorrected.

Also, when backspacing to add on to the previous word, the keyboard would sometimes randomly scramble the letters of the word I wanted to add on to. Finally, the keyboard would often overlap popups or boxes that were not covered up by other apps. Most notably, anytime I wanted to add a word to my dictionary, the button to press in the popup was covered by the keyboard. Thankfully, I believe all of these problems can be fixed through a software update.

Conclusion

I have enjoyed using Facemoji Keyboard over the past week, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to add some personal flair to their typing experience. As for me, I will be switching back to Google Keyboard for the typing speed improvements alone, but I will definitely miss the ease of sending GIFs with Facemoji Keyboard. For those of you looking to try this keyboard out, you can grab it for free from the Play Store.