I see that since when we began using touch phones, without a real keyboard, many of us had the problem of doing complex things without having to look at the screen. This is also what motivated the authors of pressy. This is a nice little device that can be plugged into a phone's audio jack.
Pressy is not so cheap, 15$ for something so simple can be considered not cheap...
Anyway my problem with pressy, is that I find it not so useful as you cannot have both pressy and the headphones plugged together. Additionally, my main point with such a thing is that I would really want to use the phone without looking at it, when I walk with my phone in my pocket and the headset plugged.
I found quite a simple and cheap solution for Android. I make use of AutomateIt (both free and paid versions are ok) and its pressy plugin, along with a headset that has a button as most phone headsets as of today. The pressy application is not needed, nor the real pressy button.
When you plug the headset, AutomateIt asks you what you plugged in, and you tell it that's a headset to use as pressy.
Now, I defined some nice rule... a short press, open/play/pause my podcast player... two short presses, the radio... long press short press, low volume... long and long, high volume.
This is really nice... you can go along with the phone in your pocket, and do some operation on it without looking nor touching it.
The results are not so perfect, as you have to practice a bit in order to use the right length for pressions, and the right distance between them... anyway that's something I have been looking for for some year, at least since I abandoned my old nokia phone, plenty of keys that I could reach while in the pocket, without looking at anything.
I hope that someone else likes this solution... I really like squeezing a bit more from my plain old hardware.
Pressy is not so cheap, 15$ for something so simple can be considered not cheap...
Anyway my problem with pressy, is that I find it not so useful as you cannot have both pressy and the headphones plugged together. Additionally, my main point with such a thing is that I would really want to use the phone without looking at it, when I walk with my phone in my pocket and the headset plugged.
I found quite a simple and cheap solution for Android. I make use of AutomateIt (both free and paid versions are ok) and its pressy plugin, along with a headset that has a button as most phone headsets as of today. The pressy application is not needed, nor the real pressy button.
When you plug the headset, AutomateIt asks you what you plugged in, and you tell it that's a headset to use as pressy.
Now, I defined some nice rule... a short press, open/play/pause my podcast player... two short presses, the radio... long press short press, low volume... long and long, high volume.
This is really nice... you can go along with the phone in your pocket, and do some operation on it without looking nor touching it.
The results are not so perfect, as you have to practice a bit in order to use the right length for pressions, and the right distance between them... anyway that's something I have been looking for for some year, at least since I abandoned my old nokia phone, plenty of keys that I could reach while in the pocket, without looking at anything.
I hope that someone else likes this solution... I really like squeezing a bit more from my plain old hardware.
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