You forgot to turn off your mobile phone – the BQuiet application solves that problem

Innovative solution of the team that won the mts app competition and the Regional app challenge

You must have at least once found yourself in a situation where your phone rings at the very moment when it is not desirable and when it can disturb you and the people nearby. A team of students from Mitrovica High School, which included Andrej Filko, now a student at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, designed a useful and interesting application that automatically mutes the sound of the mobile phone depending on where you are.
With this application, Andrej and the “Sylent” team were one of the winners of the previous mts app competition and the Regional app challenge, and now he remembers how it all started.

“I found out about the mts app competition through social networks, and I also heard from a friend and colleague who later became part of my team. That gave me the idea to gather a team and apply to the competition, and then we immediately started creating the application together,” says Andrej.
As the main motive, Andrej emphasizes the desire to make something useful, which contributes to society, which is also one of the goals of the mts app competition.
The application “BQuiet” enables the automatic turning off of the phone when entering institutions such as colleges, hospitals, theaters and other institutions where it is desirable that the phones be silenced.

Student Andrej Filko

“In places where phones should be turned off, the application automatically turns off the ringtone. Our team, with the support of professor of informatics, Nada Mišković, developed an application that also tracks the phone’s location. If you are in an institution, the sound will automatically turn off, and the user can choose the institution or place where he does not want his phone to ring,” adds Andrej.

As one of the winners of the main prize at the 7th Regional App Challenge, Andrej and his team visited the OFFF conference in Barcelona this year, which represents a kind of festival of creativity and design in the field of digital and visual arts.

However, victory was not easy to come by, with all the obstacles and difficulties on the way to a solution. “The main challenge for me was to learn the programming language “Java”, since the entire application works in that language, but I managed it very well. Of course, the programming of the application itself was a real challenge that we overcame with the advice and support of our professor-mentor,” points out Andrej.

Andrej states that for him the experience with the mts app competition was very valuable, because in addition to programming, he overcame the fear of presenting in front of a wider audience. He says that now he is more open, more self-confident, that he presents his ideas more easily and can present them in an argumentative manner.

As advice to future high school students who want to apply, Andrej emphasizes the importance of gathering a quality team, developing an idea, where everyone will have a clearly defined role, as well as commitment, hard work and perseverance until the very end of the application.

The company Telekom Srbija launched the mts app competition in 2011 with the aim of giving talented high school students the opportunity to show their creativity, innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and skills in the digital world through the creation of mobile applications. The new cycle of the project started on October 10, and applications for future participants are open until November 27. All registered teams will have two months to design and implement an idea for an application that will bring positive changes to the local community and improve communication among its members.
Grammar school students from all over Serbia participate in the mts app competition, which implements a program aimed at talents in the fields of mathematics, informatics and computer science.

Photo authors:
Team Sylent mts app contest, cover photo – Siniša Dugonjić
Team Sylent Barcelona 1 and 2 – Miroslava Tešin Popović
Student Andrej Filko – Aleksandar Miškov