Android App Review - Fuelio

+Fuelio  is a great utility app available on Android for logging your car fuel consumption and other costs such as insurance, repairs and maintenance. The app was so popular and well loved it was acquired in March 2015 by navigation app company Sygic. Pleasantly the Sygic has allowed the original developer Adrian Kajda to continue with development and product management rather than taking it all in house. As well as tracking your fuel top ups and consumption together with various car-related expenses, Fuelio also has many useful reports for gaining insights into your spending habits over various time periods and graphs to visualise the data.

Fuel Tracking and Reporting

Entering fuel is easy with the app showing your most recent odometer reading and calculating whichever of the fuel cost, total cost or amount of fuel you don't enter. Conveniently, you can still go back and edit any of the values - it will only auto-calculate the missing data once, which is what you'd want.

If you want, you can use the trip meter instead of the odometer reading, save the GPS location of the fill up (and report on it), and add a note.

The "(not set)" option in the Fuel type refers to the octane of the the petrol or the appropriate subtype of fuel based on the type for the car (diesel, ethanol, electric etc.)

So far though, I haven't found a way to include the fuel type in any reports, but it might be added in a future release.

With a full-tank fill up Fuelio will calculate the mileage between that fill up and the previous one, displaying it in green if it's more economical than the previous mileage calculation.

Cost Logging and Reporting

Fuelio has many built in cost categories such as insurance, tolls, maintenance, registration and you can add your own or delete those you're not using. In my case, I've created a CLUB cost category for the auto club memberships and of course I used the built in categories of SERVICE, REGISTRATION etc.  I like the segment graph of the various costs - it's handy to see an easy breakdown of costs of owning a vehicle.

  

The statistics are useful, providing averages, year-to-date, fill up and fuel statistics and km travelled.

  

Graphs

You can visualise the costs of your fill-ups and costs in a line chart over selected periods. The line graph of fuel and fill up costs helps you see price trends, and I like the bar chart of monthly costs to find expensive months.



If these aren't enough, there's a dedicated Create Report function which you can choose a custom time period and get aggregated statistics for Costs or Fuel or both for that time period.

Other Features

Calculator

A nice feature is a fuel economy calculator accessible from the home screen - enter the distance you plan to travel and the most recent millage (which the app of course can automatically surface for you) and Fuelio can calculate the cost for that distance. Apologies for the red tinge, I forgot I had Twilight running when I took the screenshots at night.

Syncing and Backup

Fuelio can backup it's data to Dropbox or Google Drive which I have used to sync to the tablet or of course you can restore to a new phone anyway. There is a new feature to sync between devices, presumably automatically (I haven't used it), but in the past I've just downloaded from Google Drive on the tablet as a spare copy for reference or something. Of course, I used the phone as the main device rather than the tablet.

Reminders

If you have recurring costs like tire checks every X KM or services every year, Fuelio can also remind you about them as appropriate when you fill up.

Multiple Vehicles

I only have one car, but for those that have multiple you can track all of the above features separately for each car, and record notes like make, model, year and registration.

Final Thoughts

I've been a long time Fuelio user and have appreciated the regular updates from the developer and the thought they've put in to the features and functionality. The app uses the Material Design language so it fits in well to the Android ecosystem, and looks good too. There are also app shortcuts which the new Pixel Launcher and Action Launcher 3 have exposed or you can manually set shortcuts to go straight to the fill up or add cost screens - handy at the service station or repair shop. Fuelio is available on the Play Store and Fuelio has a friendly website with an FAQ.

A week without 3G - Day 7!

I guess that's a week now! My experiment is nearly over, of course I could continue crux of the matter. Though now I'm pretty used to it so I don't actually think I will. Maybe I'll cut back on this blogs though now at least.

Following is my Note from today (notes from the day in italics, in-place amendments in normal script):

Day 6
On the bus in, I switched to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, rather than the random Pocket articles on brain studies or motivation or life/relationships. 

I got a Facebook message from a friend via Wi-Fi just before I left the house, which I couldn't reply to. I'd have liked to, but it wasn't necessary because a) it's Facebook chat (IM shouldn't have an importance placed upon immediate replies anyway), and b) they know about this experiment anyway. 

I also wrote these notes. Which unfortunately caused me to stop reading the book. 

On the way back home I read more of the book from this morning, tried to play more of the game from Day 1 and also just thought some more.

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Today, I didn't even turn on 3G once! Not even to receive an MMS or look up a map! I'm certainly getting better at choosing bus routes. I do think I'll try to keep 3G off more, and I like that the addiction to socmed has waned now.

To be honest... This whole thing started because I wanted to save power on my phone the night before I started the experiment and then I thought of doing the test, and blogging about it. How about that!

Sunset landing over Brisbane

A week without 3G - Day 6

I'm getting pretty good at this no 3G thing! 6 days into the experiment and I only had to turn on 3G once because the Wi-Fi was playing up and I wanted to catch up on a chat. I'm not really going to count it because I would have used Wi-Fi anyway, but thought I'd be honest on here.

Again, on the bus I got more reading and thinking done!

My Facebook and Reddit addiction is waning too now.

Funnily enough, it'll take longer to find the unrelated cool photo of the day than it did to actually write the words of this post!

The Wheel of Brisbane. I've modified it for dramatic effect!

A week without 3G - Day 5

This dairy is getting boring because there isn't news today. My experiment to turn off 3G and document its effect continues and now I'm almost used to it. I've got some more bus routes sorted out, the only time I had to turn on 3G again was to receive an MMS (I turned it off afterwards).

Again, on the train, I read some saved articles on Pocket. I had no real reason to check Facebook or anything like that. I'm beginning to better separate my life away from social media and gather my thoughts. If nothing else I'm getting things read and other things worked on.

Random photo of the day is from one
Christmas decoration in Brisbane City

A week without 3G - Day 4

Has it been 4 days of this experiment already!? So it has. (My experiment to see how my life is affected without the use of 3G internet on my phone and in what cases I'm forced to turn it back on.) (No notes taken during the day, this time since there was nothing to note down. Of course an unrelated picture for fun too.)

Again, today I was mostly at the coding event again, and again with Wi-Fi or "busy". (I use that term loosely because I didn't really achieve as much as I'd hoped.)

The one time when I needed 3G on my phone was for navigation and Google Voice control in the car, later on in the afternoon. Once I realised I was lost, I turned on data access on the phone so I could use voice directions to get myself unlost.

I didn't end up turning it off again, because once I got to the destination (a science and technology event), I was pretty busy looking around at the event and with friends so it didn't end up being a distraction anyway.

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Today, 3G was useful for the navigation and voice control. I had a car GPS but it's hard to use and the Google Maps are much easier to use with intelligent searching. I think offline navigation with Google Maps is possible now, and also with other mapping applications. The voice control is useful while driving though - having said that, with planning just pull over and type out the message or open the navigation app!

Freemantle Maritime Museum in Western Australia.

A Week Without 3G - Day 3

Continuing my experiment still, today wasn't much a problem without 3G (I took notes throughout the day when I had to turn 3G data back on or what I did instead):

Day 3
I was at a coding event today I haven't had to turn on 3G at all to check any timetables or anything. Once though, my friend sent me an MMS so I to turn on the carrier data to receive it. The rest of the day I was busy coding or on Wi-Fi anyway.

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Of course, today I drove to the coding event and was on Wi-Fi or busy, so the lack of 3G data never really came up apart from when my phone couldn't download the MMS picture from the carrier's network. (I guess if you're on Wi-Fi, when the MMS comes through, the phone normally just temporarily turns data services back on in the background to receive the MMS.)

Fancy pants cupcake in front of a fire at an outdoor night market!

A Week Without 3G - Day 2

Following on from yesterday's post, I'm documenting my experiences in trying to leave 3G data off for as much as possible. I'm taking notes throughout the day on my phone of what I do instead of using 3G data or when and why I had to turn it on (e.g. need to check a timetable or map or expecting a message.)

Day 2 26/08/2016
On the bus in to work I read an article about what happens when you get shot.
But later, taking another bus I had to turn data back on to check some timetables.

On another bus, I caught up on an article about the size of Google's code repository. A filtering system for Pocket to tag articles by approximate reading time helps with choosing articles to read.

In the evening I went to a coding event, so I could use the Wi-Fi there, but didn't really need to because I was at an event.

On the way home I had some Wi-Fi at the bus stops, but not much. Fortunately I was able to keep the 3G turned off and use that time to gather my thoughts and think about the coding event.

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End of day thoughts
So far I'm mostly finding that this is forcing me to do offline things like catching up on reading, or even simple things like sorting out niggling issues with my phone. I'll say that having access to timetables or maps is so useful it's difficult to stick to the experiment to check it. Though, with thought there are ways to fix this too - I can set up more locations in GoBrisbane offline public timetable app (but the list gets a bit tedious to scroll through then); use offline maps with Google Maps or Open Street Maps or similar (and most universities will have some sort of navigation app, probably offline); and of course the tried and true - plan such that you don't need to check the time table as much (may depend on your public transport stops and method of course).

I'm hoping, with practice I could get better at planning to not need the online timetable as much - this would be a useful skill anyway.

A water fall at JC Slaughter Falls at Mt Coot-tha in Brisbane.
With a few effects for visual interest.

A Week Without 3G .... And Day 1

I've decided to start an experiment, where I'll attempt to turn off 3G data on my phone (in software) and document the experience - How I felt, if I could resist turning it back on or why (what happened), how does it impact my life?

To help keep things in perspective I'm taking notes throughout the day of what happens when I do or don't use 3G data. I'm allowing myself to use Wi-Fi if available without any restrictions though. So this experiment will only really affect me when out of the house or elsewhere without Wi-Fi.

Following is the story of day 1: (words in italics are from my notes I kept throughout the day, other words I've added in while writing this blog.)

I'm going to try to post a diary like this every day and an unrelated (that I took) picture for fun.

Day 1 25/08/2016
Morning. I'm waiting around the bus stop, and have to think rather than Facebook or Reddit. I had a Google+ thread already open so I could keep reading that. On the bus, I'll have to read some Pocket article. (I ended up reading this cool article on neuroplasticity.)

I was just now reading an article that referenced an Android app, had to remember until I got to WI-FI. I also opened the app Play Store page, which didn't work, but hopefully will open when I retry it. 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=debugger.nqr.com

After I got off the bus, I ran into an acquaintance who needed some directions, so I turned on data again to check the map, but luckily I was able to turn it off again before I got distracted.

In the afternoon I had to re-enable 3G to check the bus time, then of course I got distracted by a Facebook notification and then Facebook generally. 

I ended up playing a bit more of that cool brain game from the earlier article. This is something I might have done anyway of course - played a new game or with a new app.

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Today I haven't noticed much of course because of the Wi-Fi inclusion, but it's kind of nice to be able to think or something on the bus, and it does provide a sort of demarcation between home and outside. I haven't noticed the battery life on the phone performing much differently, but then, it's still on Wi-Fi - it maybe different if I was away from data completely.

Aquarium is Melbourne.