Simple Mobile Tools review

Last updated : 6/4/2024

Introduction

Simple Mobile Tools (or SMT for short) - a group of simple & open source apps without ads & unnecessary permissions; and with customizable colors. Since I've daily driven them for a while, I suppose I'll be reviewing them now.

And with SMT being bought by ZipoApps (an ad corpo that goes against SMT's ethics, but somehow not the dev's), Astian & Fossify has took the torch of continuing SMT's old legacy, with Fossify leading the charge & Astian yet to release anything but a stub. And with that, let's take one last shot at SMT.

The Apps

Thank You

To start the per-app reviews, let's start with the "unlocker" app - Simple Thank You. Weird name aside, this is probably the only unlocker app that's fully open source AFAIK.

As an unlocker, Simple Thank You merely unlocks the "Shared" theme, where any & all color changes can be applied (and enforced, as once an app runs Shared theme (≤A11) any changes will apply to everyone) to all of SMT's app suite, though it is opt-in in ≥A12 as SMT defaults to Material You. It also claims to unlock icon color customization, although the rest of the suite has working icon color customization without Thank You installed, so this claim's debatable at best, at least until SMT actually implemented it. As far as unlockers go, this is debatably the best, especially since it's gratis (at least if you got them from GitHub / F-Droid) & libre (unlike everything else AFAIK).

Gallery

Honestly, Simple Gallery's something I never thought I'd review. But still, since I've thoughlessly daily driven this app for quite some time (to somewhere before I made this site), might as well put one up (with some serious thoughts of course).

First off - Simple Gallery's highest point; its interface. On first launch, it shows albums on a grid first instead of scattering the entire gallery based off the files' last modified dates. This is actually a great approach for those who sort pictures into folders, me included (though I'd prefer albums on a list, but it's a simple navigation to 3 dot > Change view type).

For the innards... TL;DR: they do the job well enough for me.

• Image viewer... just works. Leaves nothing to be desired, except for that annoying gesture where fullscreen can be closed by 1 swipe down (toggle in Settings > FULLSCREEN MEDIA).
• Media editor's here for pictures & videos, though since I didn't really use them I couldn't say much about it. Not that big fingers are ideal for editing graphics - you could, but mouse (assuming you connected to one) and/or stylus (assuming your device & ROM supports it) are more precise... which you can also apply to Simple Draw.
• Video player's definitely the weakest here. Sure, you can play videos here; but horizontal swipes will switch whatever's being viewed, stopping the playback immediately. It's also the least relevant point since it doesn't matter if you have a dedicated video app (like mpv-android).

In conclusion... it's simple, just works, & leaves me with very little to say... and that's after me nitpicking. OK, maybe it ruins all other gallery apps for you if you're not used to album-first views. But still.

Music player

Prior to 5.15.0, Simple Music... is mediocre. Sure, it has some of the basics in place (triple tap to rewind/previous track (no media button customization); folder-based playlists; user-friendly interface (with SMT's color customizations on top)), but music library often resets itself (and there's only automatic library scanning), making it unbearable for external storage users (haven't really tried Simple Music with internal-only music so there's that) like me where music is stored there. I mean, setting up my playlists again after detaching external storage? Not fun, especially since SMT's playlist-making UI is a far cry of what AIMP brought.

However, some updates did fix Simple Music & made it better. In 5.15.0, music library no longer auto-resets, making it much more viable for me. 5.16.0 introduced X to stop music & its notification tab. 5.17.1 also added manual library scanning, though only for "tracks" tab; for which I'd say "better than nothing, but I'd rather have one for the playlist". At that point, I'd be content in replacing AIMP for Simple Music if it weren't for the playlist creation UI (which I only tolerated as a tradeoff for having an up to date music app), and one more thing I've mentioned below which blew me back to AIMP 3.10.1052.

Of course, that "one more thing" is bungled headphone controls. In 5.18.1 (maybe 5.18.0? I mean, changelog's literally unchanged between that & 5.18.3, so...), Simple Music rewrote playback handling, destroying triple tap to rewind/previous (into double tap to next & single tap to pause; just like Auxio & Symphony) in the process. And with that, I'm back on AIMP 3.10.1052, where I still have triple tap to rewind / previous after setting it up (and playlist maintenance is a breeze, so I'd take that as a bonus).

In conclusion, Simple Music's a rocky trip for me. It started out mediocre, slowly climbed to greatness, and fell off really hard. Le sigh.

Notes

Not much to say here, except 6.7.0 not being able to open any text files larger than 1MB. Regardless of that, I'd say it works really well for quick & persistent note-taking.

Other apps

Aside from all the notable apps I've mentioned, SMT also makes various apps, with varying degree of success - none of which were enough for either me or my comrades to daily drive.

• App Launcher : Not to be confused with Simple Launcher found somewhere below this one, this app is quite pointless for me, especially since I've already set up Nova Launcher to my liking (and/or restored the backup I've made) far before I've even considered installing this app.
• Calculator : No result preview whatsoever. Prebuilt AOSP calculator has one, allowing me to be done with calculations in 1 less button tap. And, in the possible case I don't have a prebuilt calculator app, I'll take OpenCalc.
• Calendar : To be frank, I don't really use my devices' calendar app (99% because I have a physical calendar that also shows local holidays that I can plan around), so it generally doesn't matter to me. But still - for calendar apps, Simple Calendar is easier to set events compared to Etar (which generally requires adding an offline account) & also provides some well-known holiday dates (whereas Etar doesn't); but when I don't use them all that often, Etar's flaws can be considered tolerable, especially since it's prebuilt on most custom ROMs (unlike Simple Calendar).
• Clock : AOSP Clock exists for me & Simple Clock won't replace it anytime soon, except for when AOSP Clock brings that dreadful pure-blue UI around (something I now rarely see thanks to Material You I suppose...).
• Contacts / Dialer : Alright for contacts and/or phone calls, though they have to exist alongside the prebuilt contacts & dialer app since they can't really be made into system (or /product) apps (in my anecdote the system doesn't boot after I did it, but YMMV I guess...).
• Draw : It's... a quick drawing app? Maybe get a stylus for drawing, assuming your phone (and/or its ROM) supports it? Anyway; neat, but not all that useful. Not that you'll be drawing blueprints and/or advanced arts on a 5-7' rectangular displays anyway, but anything can be a canvas I guess.
• File manager : DocumentsUI exists in AOSP (and does most document management well enough) & Simple File Manager isn't capable of replacing it. For injecting stuff into /Android/data (something I rarely do nowadays), you can use this one without root, though up to A12L because ≥A13 outright bans access to /Android to "protect your privacy". If you must run another file manager... use Material Files?
• Flashlight : Considering anyone can just toggle the flashlight with a quick settings button, flashlight apps are pointless (including Simple Flashlight obviously). Maybe the lack of ads (on F-Droid / GitHub builds) might be a notable point, but still.
• Keyboard : Clipboard tab, emoji shortcut, and random first letter capitalizations; all without any ways to disable it - at least back when I last tried it out (June 2023).
• Launcher : Workable Launcher3 replacement... albeit too barebones to replace Nova Launcher's supremacy. It doesn't even come with backups, which means every installation will come with a set-up phase that quickly gets old & grindy (for clean flash frequents like me).
• SMS messenger : QKSMS allows blocking (and/or marking as read) carrier ad spam SMS (which usually may not be blockable - though not to be confused with the beast known as class 0), something Simple SMS Messenger (or every other SMS messengers not named QKSMS) doesn't really do.
• Voice recorder : I'll be frank - LineageOS & its forks already provided a workable one, and I don't even use these all that often anyway (even less than calendar).

Conclusion

Welp, I just remembered some old video on enthusiast brands eventually betraying us. Believe it or not, SMT turned out to be yet another one of those "enthusiast brands" that guy just referenced, albeit indirectly (because it's mostly one dev's brainchild (along with some contributors' efforts) and/or non-profit before ZipoApps got him, instead of the various for-profits the guy mentions like BBK (OnePlus & Oppo), Fitbit, & Nextbit). And with that in mind, we can only wait & see what comes next.

Though, when it comes to apps, I'd say we're not missing out much, but there's still some things that need improving, at least until we see something out of SMT's successors (either Astian or Fossify). That said, I'd personally prefer the successors working on their own, if only to see a backup in case one fucks up (more on 5/1/2024 update).

• Firstly, the gallery. I've tried out Aves, and it's not quite ideal. Aside from providing 4 release flavors, 2 of those (one of which F-Droid also did, so you better check if it matches your architecture before downloading from there - last time I downloaded it I got the x86_64 variant without realizing it & it's the "top" recommended version) also provide no universal releases (only releases for different architectures - though still full APKs at least), making initial access confusing (I knew the only "correct" way for me would be app-libre-arm64-v8a-release.apk). Setting the rather questionable releases aside, Aves' interface is definitely more feature-rich - perhaps a bit too much for me. Oh yeah - timeline-first approach by default, though switching the "home" tab to Albums mitigates the issue.
20/1/2024 Late update : Fossify has released its own gallery app, and so far it's the best SMT gallery replacement (I mean, it's basically rebranded).


• Calendar... there's always paper (and it will also show holidays for your area, so I'd say it's superior despite being environmentally challenged). If you must use a calendar app... well there's inbuilt Etar from LineageOS (or whatever calendar your ROM provides), though neither will show your region's holidays by default.
• Anything involving telephony : Inbuilt works (even if you might have to neuter some of its' internet-dependent nonsense), so just use them instead of adding yet another phone stuff app alongside inbuilt. Except for SMS - replace whatever inbuilt with QKSMS unless it's inbuilt. Also, I don't use Android phones as "phones", so take these as you will.
• Music : Yeah... this is where I'm seeing issues. Sure, we have up-to-date music apps (AIMP, Auxio, Symphony, VLC). But those have butchered triple tap to rewind / return in their own ways (AIMP doesn't rewind to beginning after setup since 3.20; Auxio & Symphony (alongside basically everyone else, essentially making it an Android-wide issue) just double tap to next & single tap to pause without any option for it). I've stuck with AIMP 3.10.1052 (which does properly feature triple tap to rewind and/or return), though it's not ideal if I am forced to switch to future Android releases.
• Launcher : We're probably screwed here if we're sticking to Launcher3-based launchers that can be downloaded without Play Store & their unofficial "mirrors". Nova stalled especially after Branch's acquisition. Lawnchair & Neo Launcher has been lagging far behind with no new stable releases from either. Sure, if we don't mind changing standards (such as tolerating Play-Store-only releases and/or abandoning Launcher3-based launchers), we'll have better (and worse) results, but still.

6/4/2024 Update : Fossify's starting to roll out apps (to date, I've tested its calendar, gallery, music player, & notes). So far, it's mostly SMT with different default icon colors (aside from the music player - it hasn't inherited any of SMT's media button controls), which I can appreciate (GitHub hosting's still a shame though, but there's rumors of mirroring the Git repo which hasn't happened so far). BTW, I'd prefer Fossify over Astian since the latter couldn't even start convincing me on its privacy posturing :

• First off - Astian's site (astian.org). Dysfunctional without enabling 1st-party JavaScript & XHR. There's 1st-party tracking as well (analytics.astian.org) & its assets are set on Microsoft's CDN (astian.azureedge.net).
• Speaking of Microsoft, GitHub hosting. It might be a popular choice (but so is GitLab, though I'd argue it's worse), but then again there's less vile alternatives (Codeberg, Notabug, ).
• Midori Browser, despite being advertised for privacy, doesn't document its default connections (let alone whatever was made by its tools) whatsoever. Oh yeah - its Android build's primarily stuck on Goolag Play (used to be available on F-Droid, though last version is from 2021), but there's a teensy tiny 1st-party alternative (directly below that big-ass Goolag Play button) that only offers the latest, and in full APKs for different architectures. It's also based off Firefox, so it also inherits Firefox's issues. And I discovered all of these by simply looking at the site (and not testing the browser at all, so who knows what else I might dig up if I did).

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