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May 24, 2017

Peel Smart Remote Dumb Decision

Peel Smart Remote Dumb Decision

Peel Smart RemoveI really don’t want to write about the Peel Smart Remote dumb decision but since it took me so long to figure out what was happening with my phone I feel obligated to do so. You see after a random set of app updates to my Samsung Galaxy, Peel Technologies’ Peel Smart Remote must have been one of them, I began to see this popup on my phone’s lock screen.

It reads, “Phone is in silent mode. You might miss calls.” and has two options, “I don’t want to miss calls and “It’s ok.” If you press, “I don’t want to miss calls” it turns your volume up to just beyond silent. Of course since my phone is basically always on vibrate adjusting the volume to be incredibly quiet and to not vibrate would cause far more missed calls if it were not for the smart-watch which I wear that alerts me to incoming calls (which one of the reasons I leave my phone on vibrate all the time). If you choose “It’s ok” then you’re permitted to leave your phone on silent until the next time you try to unlock it wherein the question will pop up again – every time.

There is no “Don’t ask me again” option. There is no branding to tell you that this isn’t a new Android, Samsung, or carrier specific popup. Additionally the popup typically gets in the way of your unlocking activities forcing you to tell it every time that it’s OK to leave your phone on the setting that you’ve chosen. Often the popup interferes with your phone’s unlocking making you clear the notification before you can continue but on occasion it will either popup and disappear several times in a row even after you’ve unlocked your phone demanding your phone’s focus, and not allowing you to do what you’ve picked up your phone for.

As you can see in the screengrab above it kept coming up as I was trying to use Sleep As Android to activate my alarm for the morning and connect to my watch for sleep tracking purposes. I couldn’t hit the little crescent moon shaped button without having to tell this popup It’s ok several times. In fact it insisted so many times that I got tired of it and screen grabbed it so I could once again conduct a search all throughout my phone trying to find a way to turn it off.

Peel Technologies Incredible Overreach

This leads me to the real meat of this post that I don’t want to be writing. This popup is an example of Peel Technologies Incredible Overreach and incomprehensibly inflated sense of importance. This app, that has taken over my lock screen is for changing channels and adjusting the volume on your television in the event that you’re too lazy to walk across the room to where you’ve left the actual remote sitting. It’s one of the least important apps on my phone and one that was pre-installed. I’ve used it a handful of times, mostly to mess with my wife, but usually to change the volume on the television. I don’t use it to keep in touch with people, I don’t use it to listen to music, I don’t use it to track my fitness, I don’t use it to track my finances. I don’t use it to play games that improve my cognitive function. In fact, the thing it helps me with probably does the exact opposite of what all of those other apps do. It keeps me watching dumb programs and movies, it keeps me from exercising and talking to friends, it encourages me to order movies on demand that I didn’t budget for and it helps rot my brain.

Ok, maybe I’m being a bit facetious but truly this app is probably the least used and the most useless app on my phone so in what in the world were the people at Peel Technologies thinking when they added this “feature” and automatically enabled it. I can’t even come up with an analogy to explain how far beyond their worth they’ve reached with this popup. A popup which, as you can see, conveys no evidence that it’s related to their application when it insists on telling you what you already know. Oh, wait, I’ve got an analogy.

Peel Technologies Peel Smart Remote’s “Your phone is on silent” unrequested lock screen popup is Donny in the Big Lebowski telling the Dude that his phone is ringing. Actually it’s worse than that. Despite the fact that the Dude knew his phone is ringing that incident only happens the one time. This is like having the “your seatbelt is unbuckled” alarm in your car going off for the opposite reason. Yes, it’s as if the seatbelt alarm “dinged” constantly to remind you that your seatbelt was in fact buckled. Actually it’s worse than that because your car has a reason to let you know that. It’s as if the same drunk guy who you once met at a party was at every place your car came to a stop including traffic signals and intersections. It’s as if he walked out in front of your car every time the speedometer reached zero, prevented you from continuing, and told you that your seatbelt was buckled. That is what the Peel Smart Remote is – a useless drunk standing in front of your car.

How do you get this drunk guy to stop telling you that your seatbelt is buckled? Oh, that’s easy you just need to call your dentist who told him to do that after your last appointment. Did you talk to your dentist about your seatbelt? No, you didn’t? Oh, that’s fine your dentist is telling that drunk guy to tell everyone that sees him once every 6 months that their seatbelt is buckled because that is something clearly within the scope of practice for your dentist.

The real reason that I’m writing this post is because the first dozen times I searched for “phone silenced popup” and so forth I came up with pages upon pages of results for how to silence my phone (even using the exact language of the popup). Finally this morning I found a post on Android Central where others were reporting the same incredibly annoying popup. My search skills are fairly good. I understand how to phrase a search in different ways to try to find satisfying or hard to find answers and it took me dozens of tries before I found out that it was Peel Technologies and their Peel Dumb Remote who were at fault.

The problem with trying to find the answer is that the terms you have to use are so ubiquitous and they return links full of solutions for questions about how to silence every phone that has ever been made or how to unsilence them. This is because there are a ton of people who have searched for how to silence each phone because nobody reads the instruction book that comes with their phone. They’d rather type the question into Google and because of that there are boatload of sites, posts, forums, etc. dedicated to answering that question for every phone, for each tablet, etc. and you will get all those results because they’ve worked hard on their SEO so they can make money on the ads they’ve got next to the answer.

All this means if you’re searching for how to disable the “Phone is in silent mode. You might miss calls.” popup on your Samsung Galaxy phone you’re probably not finding the answer so I’m hoping that my post will show up in your search results not because I’ve got ads next to the answer but because I’ve been where you are and I too was as frustrated as you are.

Turn off “Phone is in silent mode. You might miss calls.” Popup

If you are looking for how to turn off the “Phone is in silent mode. You might miss calls.” popup on your Samsung Galaxy phone you simply need to open the Peel Smart Remove app, go to settings (click on the gear icon) then onto Notifications and scroll to the very bottom. Uncheck the Ringer Alerts under the General heading. Because of course not only do they automatically turn on this non-branded notification that is well outside the scope of their application but they also hide how to turn it off under submenus and at the bottom of those to boot.

May 24, 2017 | W.D.Orkoskey
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