“There is an app for that.”
A phrase I never tire of saying or tire of hearing about Android. No matter what you want your phone, or tablet, to do there is an app for the job. If your phone does not do everything you could ever possibly want out of the box then somewhere someone has made an app to do what you need. And I am pretty sure that if you can think of something that there is no app someone will make one sooner or later.
SMS WakeUp by dberm22 is one of those apps. When Google first revealed the new UI for their messaging app in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich we finally had a message app that looked as it should. But gone was the one thing I was used to the most. My screen lighting up.
I had been using, like many others, 3rd party SMS apps. One of their greatest featues was when a new messages was recieved the screen would turn on for a few seconds. I am not talking about a pop-up of the the message, just a simple screen on for a few seconds before turning off again.
After a night moaning on G+ about there being no app just to turn screen on, or at least no app that I could find, my friend Keith introduced me to SMS WakeUp. And life was good again.
Once you install it, it is a free app, all you have to do is open it once and that is it. No crazy menus to figure out or settings to bypass – it just works. If you are using a 3rd party SMS app it tells you how to get SMS WakeUP to work with them.
If you do decide to jump into the settings what you are faced with is the option to change the screen on time from 0.5 seconds to 10 second, with 7.5 seconds being the default. There is also the option to have the screen turn on at full brightness, that however is turned off by default.
For me I would have happily paid money for this app. In the screenshot above you can see that he asks that if you like the app you might consider going and buy his paid app 3D Metal Theme for ADW Ex in the Play Store. It is a great looking icon pack that not only works works with Adw but other popular replacement launchers such as Nova, Apex and others. And it is only 65p.
This is a great little app. If this is the sort of thing you have been looking for then your search is now over. Head over to the Play Store and install it. I recently updated to Jelly Bean one of the first apps I went to install was this and found it was now listed as ‘incompatible with my device’. I fired an email off to David, the developer behind SMS WakeUp, explaining that I could no longer download it and within the hour he had sent me a copy. As a result of this if you head to the play Store and find your unable to install it fear not as we here at Droidaphile can provide you with a direct download.
Now since I have to I do have to address the small issues I have with it. First is the UI. It is not the best. However it was designed, from the looks of it, during the days of Gingerbread and has not been updated to current UI guidelines. An update of the UI, along with some other features, is something David expressed to me that would be coming at some point in the future all being well. While it is something I am bringing up I do not feel that it is an issue really. Most people will install it, open it and never look at it again and never even go into the settings as it just works as is.
And that is it. Nothing more to say other than this is the reason I love Android so much. Because if your phone does not do it out of the box “there is an app for that.”
UPDATE 15/09/12:
SMS WakeUp got a little update bringing the UI into line with Android Holo guidelines and a Pro version has also been released with a few new features. Check out all the details here
Download links
I’m Robert Best, founder of this little site that you are looking at. And I hail from Lisburn. That is in Norn Iron, or Northern Ireland as everyone else calls us. Now on my 9th Android phone I am always looking for interesting and new things to do with Android. When I am not thinking about Android or anything Android related I can be found making music for either for my solo project or for one or two of the bands I am currently playing with. And there generally is not a moment of the day that goes by without you being able to see me with a cup of black tea.
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[...] month we talked about a little app that I adore so much. SMS WakeUp. To sum up all it does is turns your screen on for a couple of seconds when you receive a text [...]
[...] Just fixed the “This program is incompatible with your device” error with Jelly Bean! If you guys are still getting this error, let me know, and head over to droidaphile where they have hosted the apk for you to install. Just click the link below to access the file and ind an unbiased review of the app: http://droidaphile.com/sms-wakeup-it-is-the-small-apps-that-make-life-all-the-better/ [...]