The word ‘Chronos’ is taken after the name of an ancient Greek time god. It is an exquisitely designed skinnable clock that supports screensaver mode and allows you to set multiple alarms with customizable sound settings. It also includes other timing features like countdown timers, lap timers and much more. It is compatible with MP3, WMA and OGG audio formats and you can assign any audio file stored on your phone or storage card memory as a sound alert. It even allows you to set one time or repetitive alarms that also support vibration alerts and blinking of your devices LED.
Chronos is developed by Active kitten and can be purchased from their website for $14.95. If you want to test the app before buying, the developers also provide a 15-days free trial version on their website that can be downloaded from the description page.
The program is compatible with all Pocket PCs fitted with ARM/Xscale processor and operating on Windows Mobile 2003 - 6.0. I was able to install the app on my Pocket PC without any major difficulty. I connected my device to a desktop computer and used Microsoft ActiveSync to run the downloaded setup file.
After completing the installation process, I opened the program by tapping on → Start Menu → Programs → Chronos which by default opens at the clock tab indicated by a clock and displays a beautiful clock that can also be used as a screensaver. You can download beautiful skins for this clock by clicking here.
All the main tabs are neatly placed at the bottom of the screen and I tapped on the ‘Alarms’ tab indicated by a bell which directed me to a new window where I could add a new alarm. This window displays a list of all the configured alarms and you can add or delete any alarm by selecting it and then tapping on the ‘Add’ and ‘Delete’ tabs respectively. Clicking on the ‘Properties’ tab then displayed a list of all the options allowing me to customize alarms behavior according to my convenience.
Here I was able to configure the time of the alarm and could select any days of the week when I wanted this alarm to be active. I was also able to select the snooze time and specifically liked the auto-snooze and force-snooze options. I could also configure and associate vibration alerts and blinking LED along with my alarms by tapping on ‘Vibrate’ and ‘Blink LED’ options respectively and selected the ‘Notify once’ option to alert me only once.
Next, I tapped on the ‘Timers’ tab that displayed a list of all the configured timers and I could start, pause, stop, and delete any timer by selecting that entry from the list and tapping on the respective buttons.
Selecting and tapping on the ‘Properties’ tab displayed a list of all the available options to configure a timer. These options include choosing time interval, next template timer, start next manually, start now, save as template, blink LED, play sound and vibrate.
Then I tapped on the ‘Sound settings’ tab that guided me to a new window where I could configure the sound settings for my alarms and timers. Here I could select whether I wanted a repeating sound or not and was also able to configure repetition count and repetition time.
The ‘Play with ascending volume’ option even allowed me to play the sound alerts with ascending volume and I could also select the ascending time in seconds. I was able to select any audio file stored on my phone or storage card memory and assign it as a sound alert to my alarms and counters. This window also allowed me to configure the volume of these sound alerts and I could also test the selected audio file by tapping on the ‘Test’ button.
Chronos turned out to be a beautiful and well-designed timing app. I instantly developed a liking for it and it became one of my favorite Windows Mobile clock apps.
It not only has a graphically pleasing and exquisite interface but it was also simple to use and can be handled even by beginners with ease. The settings menu is highly customizable and you can tune the application in any way you want.
The application also includes every timing feature that one can think of and its ability to set unlimited alarms and timers with customizable sound settings easily give it an upper edge over other Windows Mobile timing apps. I specifically liked the blinking LED and vibration alert features.
Also, I think it is quite reasonably priced at $14.95 considering the fact that at this price you get all the timing features and can also download an unlimited number of clock skins from the developers website.
SOURCE: Active Kitten