ZDBox: All-in-One Android Toolbox

When it comes to system tools and utilities, there is no dearth of options on the Android platform. You can get utilities to analyze, tweak, and mess with pretty much every part of your phone. And if you are adventurous enough to root your phone, the options grow further. The problem with all this choice, though, is that it’s pretty easy to fill up the phone with a ton of applications that each only serve a single purpose. ZDBox tries to solve that problem by clubbing the functions of several such applications into a single, streamlined package.

Introduction

ZDBox, in a nutshell, is an all-in-one toolbox for Android that packs a battery monitor, bandwidth monitor, app manager, task killer, and more into one sleek interface. But then, we’ve seen enough examples of the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none syndrome, haven’t we? How does ZDBox fair in terms of functionality in comparison with competing single focus applications? Let’s find out.

ZDBox Dashboard

Interface

As far as first impressions go, ZDBox hits the nail right on the head. It is a beautifully designed Android application. From the logo on the marketplace to the main UI of the application to the widgets (which we will get to in a moment), everything is designed to look sleek and stylish. The subtle gray gradient interface and blue icons do an excellent job of segregating all the information visually and make for a unique style that differentiates ZDBox from the rest. And for good measure, because the application integrates itself with many parts of the Android experience.

Status bar and Notification panel

To start with, you get an icon in the status bar that – by default – shows the current battery status. You can change that to a traffic counter, a running apps indicator, or an app lock status. For me, the battery indicator is the default for good reason. The second integration is in the notifications panel, where you get a quick summary of all four indicators. Tapping this bar in the notifications panel launches the main ZDBox dashboard.

Functionality

Like I said, ZDBox attempts to bundle together a whole bunch of features typically found in many individual applications. There isn’t a lot of depth beyond what the dashboard shows, and the settings screen has just three options: a toggle for showing the notifications, a selection for what appears in the status bar, and a option to choose whether usage information should be shared with the developers.

Battery Info

Apart from showing how much juice your battery has left, ZDBox goes a step further and tries to predict how much longer you have left before you need to hunt around for a wall socket or USB hub. This, in my experience, is not always accurate, but it does a fair job of providing a rough figure. Of course, the predictability goes for a toss every time you switch between regular usage and hardcore battery hogging tasks like gaming or navigation.

You also get a couple more datapoints like the battery temperature and voltage. Tapping the battery info bar lets you choose whether you want to enable the service and provides a link to the stock ‘Battery Use’ info screen.

Battery Manager Settings

Traffic Counter

If you, like me, are stuck with a ridiculously limited bandwidth plan, keeping an eye on the phone’s 3G bandwidth usage becomes critical. The 2G/3G Traffic counter does exactly that. It counts the amount of bandwidth used on cellular networks, letting you keep tabs on how you are doing with regards to the cap. You can even set the total cap figure manually as well as the billing cycle, so that ZDBox can tell you how much data you have left for the month at any point in time.

Traffic Counter

Do Not Disturb

Ever wished your phone knew your work schedule and adjusted accordingly, blocking calls on your work phone outside office hours and on vacations? The Do Not Disturb feature lets you set a time range and choose whether you want the phone to go into Airplane mode or simply switch to silent or vibrate during that period. Personally, I use it to automatically set the phone on silent mode at night everyday. What would make this feature even more useful though, is the ability to set multiple do-not-disturb profiles – different one for weekdays, weekends, vacations, etc.

Do not Disturb

App Lock

We’ve all been there. Everyone wants to have a look at your shiny new phone, check out the features, try out the applications. Problem is, some of them contain personal information that you would rather keep to yourself. The App Lock feature in ZDBox lets you assign a password to apps, keeping anyone from launching them without your consent. The process is simple – enable the feature, select the apps you want to lock and select your security pin. The security pin is a simple four-digit numeric code, which makes it much quicker to enter than fiddling with a full on-screen keyboard. You do get only a single password for all apps though, no unique passwords per app.

App Lock

Task Killer and App Manager

I’m going to club these two together because they are pretty much what their titles suggest. Task Killer shows you what applications are running and lets you either kill them individually, in batches, or all at once. Now whether this provides any real advantage to is a matter of contention, although the feature is a hit with users if you go by the number of applications in the market that do just this.

App Manager, on the other hand, lets you move applications between the phone’s internal memory and the SD card, or simply uninstall them. You can either do this individually for each application or in batch (which, I must admit, can come in quite handy when cleaning up your phone after a marathon app tryout session). ZDBox doesn’t highlight applications that can be moved to the SD Card though, making the process of identifying potential internal memory relievers extremely tedious. You’re probably better off with App 2 SD there.

Task Killer and Apps Manager

Widgets

Looks like no Android application is complete without a widget these days, and ZDBox is not one to shy away from the trend. Thankfully, the widget is pretty and functional – something one can’t say about too many widgets on the Market. Think of it as a supercharged Power Control widget with 10 one-click toggle controls on your home screen. You can either have all 10 controls in a 2-row strip, or select any five to put on a single row.

ZDBox Widget

Summary

ZDBox QR Code

Let me start by answering the question we started with. ZDBox does succeed at being a jack of all trades, for the most part. It isn’t the best memory or bandwidth management application out there, and the App to SD features leaves a lot to be desired. But it did lead me to get rid of a couple of applications in favor of a single control center for all of my phone’s commonly used settings. I give it a 8/10 for an excellent start, with quite some room for improvement.

ZDBox is available on the Android market as a free download for all Android devices.