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Hi. My name is Dave and you're watching a video about an application called Screebl,
an entry in the Android Developer Challenge Two.
Over the course of the next few minutes I'm going to try and accomplish three things.
First of all, I'm going to give you a little bit of a background about the application
and why I wrote it. Second I'm going to cover how the application functions and some of
its configuration options. Third, I'm going to talk a little bit about a surprising benefit
that you're likely to see if you install and use Screebl on your phone over an extended
period of time.
First the background. A few months ago when I got my G1 from T-Mobile, it didn't take
me very long to recognize that the power-saving features of the phone often got in the way
of what I like to call "passive activities" things like reading a long email, intently
studying an image, or even loading a web page over a slow connection. The screen kept blanking
when I was performing those operations and I found it quite distracting.
I could have of course increased the screen timeout but that would have adversely affected
the battery life of the phone. At the same time, I also noticed, that generally when
I was interacting with the phone, I held it in similar orientations: somewhere between
horizontal and vertical. It occurred to me that that might be a pretty good indication
of phone activity, and thus, Screebl was born.
Screebl is an application that runs in the background and monitors the orientation of
your phone. Based on the orientation, Screebl can keep your phone from hibernating and the
screen from blanking.
Now in addition to that background service, Screebl also provides a visual cue to help
you recognize when your phone is being held in one of the recognized orientations. Look
for an icon shaped like a smart phone with a glowing green screen. Move out of the recognized
orientation range and the glowing green screen turns white. This visual cue makes it easy
to know when you're holding the phone in a way that will keep the screen on.
There are many configuration options available for Screebl, including full control over the
orientation ranges for both portrait and landscape modes, whether Screebl should be turned on
by default when your phone starts, control over the display of notifications, and others
as well. The defaults are pretty good, but it's worth your time to play with at least
the orientation ranges.
Finally, I mentioned another surprising benefit of installing and using Screebl on your phone.
Beyond just helping you with the annoying screen timeouts during passive activities,
Screebl can actually extend the battery life of your phone. The way this works is you can
drop the screen timeout on your phone to an aggressively low value like say 15 seconds.
With Screebl running in the background you don't need to worry about the phone timing
out during those passive activities because Screebl is monitoring the orientation of the
phone. However you set the phone down on a table next to you, and within a few seconds
the phone goes into hibernation. The net result is your wasting less power. Pretty cool
So that's it -- that's Screebl. I hope you enjoy using it, and I'm looking forward to
hearing your ideas and your suggestions.