Timers4Me lets you set your favourite start tab

Timers4Me is the most versatile free Android stopwatch and countdown timer out there. It also comes with a built-in alarm clock, but this part is far from ready for human consumption. Alarms Solo is better equipped for waking me up.

The timer and stopwatch part of Timers4Me are excellent, though. Multiple timers that you can run together, lap timing, it's all there.

When you launch the app it brings you straight to the countdown timer tab, but if you'd rather go somewhere else then now you can. The new edition of Timers4Me lets you choose your own startup tab. If you want the app to launch straight into the stopwatch tab, just head to the settings menu and make it happen.

Room for improvement: make the scrollwheels for time entry optional instead of forced, increase alarm duration because one minute is not enough (tip: use a long MP3 to make the alarm sound longer), alarm tone looping, more snooze options, and maybe integrate the functions of ClockSync and TM World Clock? A few updates could turn Timers4Me into the ultimate Android time app.

• Timers4Me (Google Play)

Google Calendar behind the times

Task, memo, birthday integration

Back in my Symbian days I could schedule four types of events in the built-in calendar of my Nokia. Meetings, memos, anniversaries, and to-dos.

The advantages of having memos and to do lists integrated in a single app and a single widget are obvious. Anniversaries (birthdays etc.) could fit in one of the other categories, but having them as a separate type with a separate icon makes 'em easy to spot. And setting reminders is a lot easier too.

Reminders

Anniversaries last from midnight to midnight, but setting a birthday as an all day event in Google Calendar is not a good idea. Google Calendar can only handle reminders before an event, not during an event. If you want to be reminded of a birthday, Google Calendar only lets you set a reminder for the day before. Having the reminder sound on the day itself makes more sense, unless you want to call to say happy birthday on the night before. And you don't want to show up at the party a day early. Workaround: set a time for birthdays until Google wakes up and codes a fix.

More reminder issues: the Google Calendar app won't let you set your own reminder times. You can only choose from a list of presets that just doesn't cut it. Want to be reminded an hour and a half before an appointment? The list of presets only offers one or two hours in advance. Too late too make it in time, too early if you don't want your phone to ring a reminder in the middle of the previous meeting.

There's a way out, but it requires a trip to the Google Play store to buy Pocket Informant or CalenGoo. If you don't want to pay for a calendar app, point your web browser to calendar.google.com to set a custom reminder. If 3rd party apps and Googles own website are able to let you enter any reminder time you want, why can't the built-in calendar app do it? Custom reminder times could and should have been in the Android calendar app from day one.

Time zones

Enter the times of your flights, and risk missing your flight back home because Google Calendar shifts the times.

Airlines don't bother you with time zones. They just give you the departure and arrival times followed by a line that says "all times are local." They have a very good reason for that.

But Google Calendar times are tied to the time zone your phone was in when you entered the times. Your early morning flight to Europe moves six hours in your calendar when you arrive at JFK and the Android clock switches from CET to EST. If you're from Dublin and agree to meet your friend from Athens in a restaurant in Paris at 8 PM you better not let Google Calendar have its way, or you'll arrive at 9 and find your friend waiting since 7.

You could do the maths yourself and convert the times to compensate for your calendar drift, or switch off automatic time setting and manually change your clock (not your time zone) when you get out of your plane. It's how people used to change their watch before phones replaced watches.

Recent versions of the calendar app let you choose time zones for the start and end of an entry, but your calendar and its widgets will show the wrong time until you arrive in the matching time zone. You still have to do the conversion if someone across the ocean asks you at what time to pick you up at the airport. Or write the local times in the subject field instead of relying on your calendars erratic times. Or manually switch your phone to the destination time zone, and back.

Why enter time zones in your calendar? For international conference calls. Another reason: make your calendar wake you up in the middle of the night to watch Barcelona-Real Madrid in your japanese hotel room, because that's afternoon in Europe. If we add up conference calls and football games Google calendar still gets it wrong 99.99% of the time.

And it's so easy to fix! Just let us choose between time zone agnostic and time zone aware. The default behaviour of Google Calendar should be "all times are local unless I say they're not." It's how you'd write times in a paper calendar, and it matches the "all times are local" airline method. Let the 0.001% who fill their days with conference calls flip a switch in the settings to change their defaults instead of annoying everyone else.

Google, tell your calendar to adapt to people instead of the other way 'round.

MRKAlarm wakes you up smarter

There are many good reasons to ditch your stock alarm clock and wake up with an alternative alarm clock app on your Android phone instead.

Timers4Me comes with an alarm clock (in addition to a stopwatch and countdown timer), but not a very good one. My favorite alarm clock app for now is Alarms Solo.

But that may change, because MRKAlarm looks very promising. If the app matures and the bugs get ironed out it may become the default alarm clock on my phone.

Good stuff

MRKAlarm is free, and it doesn't have any ads. It has a PayPal donation link hidden in its About screen, but that doesn't work on my phone so for now I have a good excuse for not donating until it gets fixed ;)

It has a simple user interface, lots of options, and some features that you won't find elsewhere.

You can choose between the alarm tones in SD card/media/audio/alarms folder (if you added any in there), but it won't use Androids built-in alarm sounds (not on my phone anyway). On the bright side, you can choose any mp3 as an alarm tone, and it doesn't stop there. You can select multiple songs to wake you up with a playlist.

What makes the app unique is its calendar integration. You can set an alarm for every weekday, and then open the calendar tab to auto-disable the alarm on public holidays, days marked as vacation, etc. Instead of shutting off the alarm you can also make it ring later on holidays.

When the alarm rings it wakes up your screen and pops a large snooze button and a small shut up button. A "slide to stop" option to avoid dismissing an alarm by accident would be nice to have, but it's not a dealbreaker. Of course you can set your own snooze interval in the alarm settings. The alarm doesn't need to start at full force, because you can make the volume increase gradually over a period up to a minute.

Nice touch: you can set quiet hours and choose what should happen during that time. You can either silence the app, make it shake instead or scream, or play the alarms at a lower volume. And you can tell the app to sound an alarm when your battery level drops below a critical value.

Things to fix
Update: most issues are fixed in new versions.

It takes too many taps to see which alarm tone you've set, and if you've chosen a bunch of mp3s there's no list of what you've picked. If you've set some songs and you want to change them, you have to tap the right artists and albums to sea and deactivate unwanted songs. That's a tedious job if you have a large music collection and you don't remember what songs are on your alarm list.

MRKAlarm only uses sounds from your SD card. If your SD card is disconnected because you forgot to take it out of USB mode you might miss your plane or lose your job. The app should be able to use the default sounds from your phones internal memory, or at least have a built-in backup sound to play when your SD card is unavailable.

Cosmetic issue: wednesday is abbreviated as wen, not wed, in the alarm settings. I guess that will change in the next update.

Another cosmetic issue: snooze interval input needs fixing. MRKAlarms default snooze interval is 5 minutes. If I set it at 10 minutes and then copy or edit the alarm, MRKAlarms says 5 minutes on the Alarm Detail tab even though the 10 min. checkbox is checked. I have to check another interval, and then 10 min. again to make the app get it right.

Major issue (not cosmetic, but functional): you can't set a one shot alarm. If you set the alarm for 9 am it won't ring at 9 the next morning unless the proper weekday box is checked. But if you check the box your single shot alarm will become recurring, so you have to enter the alarm settings and uncheck the day again after you wake up. MRKAlarm would be much better if it understands that an alarm time without day should sound at the earliest opportunity (usually next day, unless you set it after midnight), and not every week.

Missing: a setting to choose whether the alarms should ring in silent mode or not. If I set my phone on silent I may not want to hear my alarms, or I may not want to hear anything (especially incoming phone calls) except for my alarm. Alarms Solo lets me choose whether its alarms should override silent mode or not. MRKAlarm would be a much better app if it had a similar option.

A non-critical annoyance is that you can't set your own default alarm settings. When you create a new alarm you have to set your own snooze interval, alarm sound, etc. again. You can work around the problem by long-tapping and copying an existing alarm, because then its settings are copied over. Anyway, having your own defaults for new alarms would make things a lot easier.

Finally, MRKAlarm needs some options to set the maximum amount of snoozes and maximum alarm duration (after which it stops or auto-snoozes), or else the neighbours might smash my door if forget to take my phone with me and MRKAlarm keeps shouting with nobody home. The main screen could be polished up a bit, because not everyone likes to have a bright white clock flashing off the screen. Grey text on a grey background is not a smart move either, so a few ways to customise the looks of the app are welcome.

Verdict

MRKAlarm is not ready to replace Alarms Solo on my phone yet, but it has lots of potential. With a few more options, tricks and tweaks and it could easily become the best alarm clock app on the Android Market. Take it for a test drive to see for yourself.

• MRKAlarm in the Android Market
• MRK Alarm on xda (forum discussion, do post your ideas)
• Alarms Solo

Countdown timer Timers4Me improves stopwatch, adds alarm clock

Sign of the times

Need a good free countdown timer/stopwatch combination for your Android phone? Go get Timers4Me. It stores multiple timers and you can run 'em together. Minor issue number 1: you have to set the timers with annoying scrollwheels. Issue number two: alarms only sound for one minute or the length of your chosen alarm tone (tip: use a very long mp3). Even so, it's lightyears ahead of the other free timer apps floating around on the Android Market.

Stopwatch

Ultimate Stopwatch used to be the best free stopwatch, but then Timers4Me added a stopwatch of its own. The first attempt wasn't a very good one, so I kept Ultimate Stopwatch next to Timers4Me.

But Timers4Me doesn't waste time. The latest updates improved the stopwatch (now it measures to 1/100th of a second instead of a just a tenth). I uninstalled Ultimate Stopwatch because it's not so ultimate anymore.

Alarm clock

New in Timers4Me: an alarm clock! Not a very good clock, because it only screams for one minute or a single alarm tone duration (a flaw it shares with the countdown timer). A clock that wants to wake me up on an early monday morning after a long weekend of sex & drugs & rock & roll needs to work a lot harder. That's why Alarms Solo is still my alarm clock of choice.

On the bright side, the new alarm clock in Timers4Me doesn't bother you with a scrollwheel like its countdown timer does. It simply lets you punch in the time with your numeric keypad. Transplant that mode of entry to the countdown timer tab and we have a winner. For those who really want to keep the scrollwheel, a simple toggle in the settings menu to choose your favourite input method would do the job.

Times ahead

If Timers4Me upgrades its snooze options and adds alarm tone looping it may boot another competitor off my phone.

Who knows what's next? Maybe Timers4Me will integrate the functions of ClockSync and TM World Clock to build the ultimate app for all times?

• Timers4Me (Android Market)

Timers4Me adds a stopwatch to its countdown timer

If you're looking for a free countdown timer or a stopwatch app, there's plenty of choice on the Android Market.

If you're looking for a good free timer or stopwatch your choice is limited. Ultimate Stopwatch does both, but its timer is terrible and its stopwatch doesn't cut it if you want to record lap times.

Countdown timers that let you store multiple timers and run 'em together are few and far between. A good timer and stopwatch together in one app? Doesn't exist yet.

But we may get there. Timers4Me is a pretty good countdown timer app, and the latest update adds a stopwatch.

Timers4Me is far from perfect, though. Its timer and the timer preset screen are good, but setting the time is done with a scrollwheel. There's no way to just type a time. The timer alarm won't play longer than one minute, even if you set a ten minute song as alarm tone.

Its stopwatch does the job, but only to 1/10th of a second. I'd like a second digit behind the dot. And although you can run multiple timers, you can only run a single stopwatch.

The interface of Timers4Me could use a bit of polishing too, because white text on a light grey background is not a good idea. And if you send the stopwatch to the background and pull it to the foreground again, it may start running way too fast.

Timers4Me is the best out of all the timer/stopwatch combos on the market. Not because the app is that good, but because it doesn't have serious competition. If the remaining shortcomings of Timers4Me are fixed in future versions it could become a really good app.

• Timers4Me (Android Market)
• Ultimate Stopwatch (Android Market)

Problem: Missed alarms and notifications when SD card is mounted. Workaround: root your phone and move your sounds to internal memory

When you hook up your phone to your computer to transfer files, your SD card is "unmounted" and Android can't access it.

And then you receive an SMS. Or your calendar is supposed to sound its alarm to remind you of an important meeting. Or you've left your phone hanging on your computer overnight to back up your entire SD card and get your phone charged at the same time, and then the alarm clock has to fire off...

...but it doesn't.

Because when Android can't access your SD card, apps can't access the custom ringtones stored on the card.

Sometimes it will play the default tone when the custom tones are unavailable. This works for calls, but not always for messages, calendar alarms or alarm clock apps. For example, if you switch off notification sounds in Androids settings (because you don't want to hear a sound for every email or incoming IM) but enable a custom notification in your SMS app, the custom SMS sound fails if your SD card is not mounted.

Soulution: each and every app should play a backup sound from the on board memory if it can't play files from your SD card. Unfortunately there will always be programmers who forget to add the few lines of code needed for that.

Workaround: copy your custom sounds to the internal memory of your phone. This way you can unmount or remove your memory card without having to worry about missing your early morning flight because the alarm clock stays silent. Of course you need root access for that; yet another good reason to root your phone if you haven't already done so.

Always check if alarm clock apps, calendars, SMS programs and other apps play a backup sound if they can't reach your memory card. If an app fails to make some noise when it should, you should use a sound from your phones internal memory.

image from Wikipedia