Introducing: Pomodoro Timer for Windows Phone Mango
I’d like to officially take the wraps off the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango app that I’ve been working on for the past couple months and introduce you to the Pomodoro Timer for Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. For those who don’t know, a pomodoro timer is the basis of a time management system introduced by Francesco Cirillo back in the 1980s. You can read more about it www.pomodorotechnique.com. The general idea is that you set a timer for 25 minutes and focus on one task only for those 25 minutes. After the timer is up, take a short break, and go again. I’ve used it and found that it makes the day go by faster and keeps me ”in the zone” longer.
I wanted to make Pomodoro Timer for Windows Phone so that took advantage of many of the new features in mango and had a sense of style. So, lets take a look!
Features
- Multitasking
- Phone Reminders
- Switch Between Pomodoro, Break, and Long Break
- Track Internal and External Interruptions Quickly
- Live Stats for Today and the Past Week
- Live Tiles
- Edit Entries to Add a Description
- Delete Unwanted Entries
- Customize Timer Durations
- Customize Phone Lock Behavior
- Ad Free
Pages
The main page of the app is the timer page. On this page, you can select to do a pomodoro or a break. Tapping multiple times on the break button will switch between normal and long break. The great thing about this app is that you can start the timer and then leave the app. No need to keep the app running in the foreground. Your timer keeps going as expected. This is great for battery life as you can lock your phone while you’re working. Once the timer is up, you’ll get an alarm and you’re done. Go back into the app to start a break or check your stats.The stats page has three different graphs. The first is a glyph list of what you’ve done today; a tomato for pomodoro and a coffee cup for a break. A long break is three coffee cups. The second graph is from the past week. Red triangles represent completed pomodoros and accent colored ones represent pomodoros started, but not completed. One of the tenets of the pomodoro technique is that a pomodoro cannot be paused. It is voided if you stop. Those are marked as incomplete in my app.
The third graph shows the interruptions for today and how prevalent each one is. There are two types of interruptions, internal and external. The app bar has an icon for each that you can easily press while the timer is running to mark an interruption. A dot will appear above or below the timer and the graph will show you how you get interrupted more often. This helps in determining if you are being interrupted by yourself or by people around you so you can make changes.
Tapping the entry list app bar icon lets you see a list of each pomodoro and break for today. You can check one or more and either add a description or delete them. If you’d like to clear out all of your data, click the “clear log” button and you can start over.
Don’t like the default times? No problem. Just go into the settings page and set the duration for the pomodoro, break, and long break. You can even keep the phone from locking while a timer is active by switching the log toggle to on.
Screen Shots
[gallery]Get the pomodoro timer on the Windows Phone Marketplace!