Ever wished you could stay away from your phone longer than you currently can?
Don’t worry, you’re not the only one.
These days, it is almost impossible for the average smartphone user to focus on work or study without the urge of wanting to be connected to their phones, making such a powerful tool an even more powerful distraction.
On a global scale, research has it that 75.4% of smartphone users are experiencing the irrational fear of being without their smartphones, scientifically known as ‘Nomophobia’.
Fighting this struggle is what brought Opaleye Olabamiji Samson and Bolakale Mallick to found Applatch, a mobile app that helps you be more productive and maintain sound mental health by locking addictive apps on your phone for a period of time while extending your fight over social media addiction to a brilliant cause – helping an African child who is in need through school.
Applatch’s CEO Opaleye Olabamiji Samson and COO Bolakale Mallick decided to design the product as a true solution to battling the App addiction problem; something they had experienced personally.
This challenge led the two friends and co-founders to engage the third co-founder and CTO Adekola Akano, an expert in developing android and iOS mobile apps for startups in various industries.
“How does Applatch work?” You might wonder.
“Can’t I simply just unlock the apps I get enough of?”.
With Applatch, it’s really not that simple.
Applatch’s MVP currently has 3 lock features; ‘Lock now’, ‘Lock by daily limit’, and ‘Schedule Lock’. You are also expected to choose an accountability partner that will grant you permission by giving you a code to pause or end the ongoing locked session.
Users who wish to lock distracting apps immediately for a period of time use the ‘Lock now’ feature. A user who uses the ‘Lock by daily limit’ wants a particular app or a set of distracting apps to lock after using it for a fixed specific number of hours per day, for example, you want Snapchat to lock after you have used it for 2 hours in a day, then your daily limit will be 2 hrs and you will no longer have access to it for the rest of the day.
If you are big on productivity and you live a routine-based life, you are probably going to use more of the ‘Schedule Lock’ feature, it allows you to schedule lock sessions into the future, and you get to set the day and time a lock session should start and end, you can decide the session should repeat every day or select a few days of the week if that’s your preference.
Applatch has a feature that allows the user to track overall phone usage analysis, shows the total number of times you unlock your phone, average daily screen time, the apps you spend the most time on and shows average time duration, as well as the time of the day you spend the most time on a particular app.
Now the best part is, “how does this put a child through school?”
Applatch would be connecting users’ efforts to a child in need, recognizing them as beneficiaries.
Every time a user completes a locked session without pausing it or ending the session before the allotted time, the beneficiary tied to the user’s account will get more funds to further his/her studies.
While the vision of the CEO Samson Opaleye is to ensure a minimum of 500 African children is working to ensure that every child on their social cause program will be funded through school, from primary to tertiary education regardless of whether users complete their sessions or not, they want users to be a part that journey as they improve their productivity rate and mental health.
The funds required for the school fees of the program’s beneficiaries will be gotten as grants from foundations and organizations that are big on quality education for all and sound mental health willing to be a part of this impactful social cause.
The team at Applatch have collaborated with LAHAfrica (Lend a Hand for Africa), an experienced NGO to execute the social cause program. They are helping in the scouting for beneficiaries and executing the processes involved in ensuring confirmed beneficiaries get admitted into a great school and equipped with quality education, all paid with the grants received from foundations in collaboration with Applatch.
Applatch is currently available here only on Google Play Store for now, but it will be available on iOS in the near future. You can follow Applatch’s journey by checking via their social media @getapplatch or visiting their website www.applatch.com
