You may remember my look at Flight Mode as a way of getting to 'Flight mode' quickly? APPA Shortcuts takes the idea and maxes it out across numerous other settings dialogs which you might need quick access to. Including opening up the idea to voice actions as well. The implementation is sound, as far as Windows Phone will let it go, but you have to wonder if it will save much time in real world cases.

From the Windows Phone Store description:

Use voice commands to enable Wi-Fi, location, flight mode etc. Simply say 'Shortcuts' or 'APPA Shortcuts' followed by:

• WiFi
• FlightMode
• Bluetooth
• Phone
• Location
• Lock
• Power
• Screen
• Email

Struggling to get your key in the lock? Simply say 'Shortcuts' or 'APPA Shortcuts' followed by: 'Torch' or 'Flashlight' to turn on the camera light (or display a white screen if camera light not supported). If you don't want to use voice to activate your settings, just start the application as normal. 

The buttons are colour coded to give an instant view of what is switched on, and what is switched off. Tap and hold on a button to pin it to the start screen.

Most of these shortcuts, then, take you to the appropriate Settings dialog in Windows Phone, though (sadly) can't actually affect the current setting. What would be more convenient would be to tap an icon on the Start screen to toggle that particular attribute/setting. As it is, you scroll to the relevant APPA Shortcut icon, tap it, wait for the right Settings dialog to come up and then tap the toggle to actually change it.  It's all Windows Phone will allow, it seems.

The voice actions support sounds cooler than it actually is, since going down this route is invariably a lot slower than using the touchscreen. In an ideal world, you'd press and hold a hardware button (e.g. the power/lock one) to allow you to start speaking. However, the procedure here is to:

• manually turn the phone on
• dismiss the lock screen with a swipe
• press and hold the Windows key
• wait for the speech recognition to crank into action
• say "Shortcuts Torch" (or whatever)
• wait for the speech to be recognised

You get the idea. Turning the torch on with a voice command sounds useful, but in practice it's over twelve seconds to achieve. It would be a lot quicker to unlock the screen and tap a single icon. These voice limitations aren't APPA Shortcuts fault, but they do rather make the voice side of things less practical.

The 'pin to start' functionality is much more useful, with single-tap conduits to the Settings dialogs you use the most.

APPA Shortcuts is free in the Windows Phone Store here.