Connection Tiles lets you make your own tiles, or choose from a list of pre-defined tiles for each type of tile supported. If you're creating your own tile its possible to choose from a list of pre-defined icons or choose a photo stored on your device. That means your flight mode tile can feature a 747 or a flying cat. The app also lets you give tile a custom name, optionally show the connection state, and specify the tile colour.
Connection Tiles functionality will be particularly welcomed by those moving to Windows Phone from Android and Symbian. Typically these platforms have widget based switches for key connectivity tasks and, out of the box, Windows Phone is lacking in this department, though it is, of course, possible to go the long route via the Settings application.
Putting these kind of toggles on the start screen make it more likely that you'll use them and that's a good thing because of the potential power savings (and therefore longer battery life) than can be achieved by switching off Bluetooth and WiFi when they're not needed. The power savings aren't going to be that great, but for some every last minute of batter life counts.
The app has benefited from a number of recent updates (most recently to version 1.7), which added Polish, Spanish, French, German and Finnish language support, increasing its addressable market.
Marketplace description:
Simple connectivity shortcuts on Tiles to quickly access to WiFi, Bluetooth, Cellular and Airplane settings. You can also create Tiles for new messages or status posts and choose different Tiles with different images and color to pin.
Connection Tiles, which has been developed by Thepagedot, can be download from the Windows Phone Marketplace for free.
There are a number of similar applications that help you create shortcut tiles including Toggle (review), Connectivity Tiles and WP Shortcut Tiles, but Connection Tiles is probably the slickest implementation.
