Gone are the days of having multiple apps hogging the memory and processing power of your android phone, so too are the days of having more devices connected to your body than Neo from The Matrix..
Now you can track everything with Instant 2.0, and not just fitness related activities. The app can also track things such as how many times you unlock your phone, how long you spend at work and many others. It can track how long the phone has been used for, which I can see parents finding a very attractive selling point.
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The app also allows you to graph your usage, displaying in a self-gratifying way how long you’ve spent doing things. It’s all very well having the figures there to monitor actual usage. It can be useful to check your work travelling time or how long your kids are using their phones for during the day – but once you start making it into pretty little graphs it becomes more of an ego stroking method. I can guarantee that the people in my social groups that get this app will spend more time showing other people their results than actually using it to quantify and change their life-styles.
Although, maybe I should just get better friends.
On the plus side, the App is actually free! Which means you get all of this monitoring equipment with a just a few easy taps of your screen. On the official google play download page, it does “Offer in-app purchases”. The trouble with this is that it appears to be following a similar trend to so many apps and games that market themselves as free these days.
One reviewer, on the official page, commented:
“The cost of in-app purchases is not mentioned in your description. It is fair enough to charge for features but please be open up front about them” – Mark Focas
To which creator Emberify responded:
“Apologies, we have 2 weeks of free trial for it and take the user’s consent before they make the in-app purchase” – Emberify
So it certainly seems as if there is some level of underhandedness going on here…
Other reviews on the site do not seem to be very keen on the app either. Giving comments such as:
“The app is only productive enough when you pay.” – Amit Tanwar
This is a theme that is repeated throughout the “most helpful” section of the comments. Doesn’t really paint the app in the greatest of lights.
The app is advertised as having the following features:
- Automatically track your device usage time & daily unlock count
- Track your app usage
- Integrated with Google Fit to track your fitness and travel time
- Graphs for a Quantified Self
- Get reminders as notifications according to usage time
- Widget for quick tracking
You can bet your bottom dollar (and probably will have to) that most of those features are only unlockable by paying for them.
Tech specs for Instant 2.0:
Requires Android 4.0+
Size: 2.2MB
In-app purchase cost: £0.79 per item
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