Away Text for Android, Auto-Reply your SMS or Emails to let people know you are busy

Away Text is an app that will create an automatic away message for your phone. The idea is that when enabled, it will automatically text those who call or text you with an auto-response. Lets take a look and see if it really will!

Using Away Text

Away Text has a super clean interface that’s incredibly easy to use.

Away Text's Home Screen

As you can see, there is a single textbox where you can put your status in, and an on-off switch in the top right corner to enable or disable Away Text.

Aside from the main screen, Away Text gives you 2 other screens: missed calls, and settings.

Missed Calls and Settings

The Missed Calls screen is pretty straightforward; it displays a list of texts and calls that were sent the auto-response. One thing to note about this is that if you opt to only have the response sent to people in your Contacts, people who are not in your Contacts will not show up on that list. It also looks like each entry will not show up more than once, so if you’re looking for a comprehensive missed calls list, you will still need to go to the phone app for that.

In Settings, you are given a set of options on who to send the auto-response to. You can choose from missed calls, text messages, and limit it (as mentioned above) to people that are only in your contacts. Away Text also integrates Twitter and Facebook. If you authorize Away Text for Twitter and Facebook, whenever you enable Away Text, it will automatically post your auto-response to those sites.

How It Works?

Now that you are familiar with the app, lets talk about how well it works. I did a couple of tests to check the functionality of auto-responses for phone and SMS both separately and together and for posting to social networks.

First, posting to the social networks worked perfectly. You authorize Away Text just like you do with any other app, add your auto-response, turn it on, and you are done. Your auto-response is added to Facebook and/or Twitter. The same thing goes for responding to text messages.

I really like how Away Text completely silences your phone, turning off both sound and vibrate. I thought that was a really nice touch as, after all, you are supposed to be unavailable. There are no settings to change this, but I do not think thats a problem at all.

With the tests I did, I sent texts from my Google Voice number to my cell and it worked great. The response was sent automatically, albeit with a little ad that says, "Sent by Away Text." I also tested this cell-to-cell and it worked fine.

While social media and texts worked fine, I did have trouble with auto-response to phone calls. At first I tried my Google Voice number to my cell; when that didn’t work, I assumed it was because it was VoIP to cell and there was some bug. Then I tried using a couple of other cell phones to call my cell phone, but none of them got a text message with my auto-response, even after disabling and re-enabling, changing the messages, and playing with the settings. I also tried different call lengths (two rings, three rings, go to voicemail, etc.), but nothing seemed to work. After reading comments on the Market page, it looks like this is an isolated case as no one else is reporting that issue.

Download From Android Market