One of the features I was dearly missing when I finally switched my main device from a Symbian phone to an Android device was that I had to give up the feature to put the device into silent mode but still make it ring for selected contacts. This was and still is an important feature for me, especially when traveling to other timezones and people being unaware that they are calling while it's night in my current time zone and I'm sleeping. So for the last two years I fixed this with a kludge, i.e. taking an extra phone and SIM only known to few contacts. Now I discovered that the feature was introduced on Android and the iPhone at some point between then and now.
On my Android 4.4.4 based CyanogenMod Samsung Galaxy S4 which I've been using for more than half a year now, the sound menu now contains a menu item called "Quiet Hours". When selecting the item it's not only possible to set the quiet hours but also further things such as which events shall not be indicated to the user and the "Phone Ringer" menu item which can be set to "Ring for Favorite Contacts" (only). Works like a charm!
O.k. so this is a pretty much stock Android OS, how about customized variants? I had a quick look on a current high end Samsung device with Android L and while it looks slightly different the option is there as well. Also I could find a similar option on the iPhone.
Great stuff and nobody told me… 😉 Must have been in the software for quite some time now.
