[definitive] Best Android Apps

[shakey]

The task killer kills itself too, I thought.

Anyway I've only had my Moment a week. Can somebody explain what it means to root your phone.

Look at it this way. The Moment you have can be seen as like a Dell PC. Full of bloatware and with restrictions. Rooting resets your phone, but to more of like a self built pc. You basically set it up as you would like, without any pre-installed software and without any real limitations to what you can do to the OS, depending on the ROM you get.

Putting a custom rom on your phone can be a great thing, but can also hurt it depending on your service, where you live, and the device being rooted. Most root versions require you to get a "radio" which is basically what picks up your cell signal. Some of these roots do not have very good "radio" software and can leave you with less than desirable sound quality during calls. Others may not let you use bluetooth properly, while others work just fine and even give you the ability to OverClock your phone.

I'm still a little too worried and into my new Hero to want to try any custom roms, and am quite pleased with sense ui and launcher pro.

--------- Task killers do kill themselves sometimes, sometimes they don't. What is the problem is not it killing itself or not, but the other programs it kills which impact many other programs from running properly. Disabling 1 service can lead to many other things not working.

[Singh400]

KeyRing - No more carrying around a wallet of membership cards. Use this app to scan your cards and have them all on your phone.

Sounds like a fantastic app, thanks for the heads up.

I Wish these phones came with a IR sensor/transmitter, then we could control our TV's and such with ease.

Me and you both mate.

[Richard Hammond]

Dunno if its already been said but Endomondo is a decent app for fitness and weight loss it uses GPS to track your workouts using google maps and displays all sorts of information,

[shakey]

Sounds like a fantastic app, thanks for the heads up.

Me and you both mate.

KeyRing is probably the most used app I have. Blockbuster, CVS , Autozone, and even Bestbuy. Just scan your card and when your at the counter show them your phone lol. I've had 1 store not be able to scan the code on my phone, but they were able to type in the digits.

[Bag]

Home Screen

QuickDesk - Set as your main launcher it will work in combination with your launcher of choice, adding the option to double click the home button and bring up a second homescreen like window on top of your running apps (Put your control widget on it and its great for turning wifi/bluetooth whatever else on and off without leaving your current app)

Adw.Launcher - You can run up to 8*8 icons, widgets are re-sizable, its fast, its stable, its very customizable - By far the best home screen out there

Folder Organizer lite - Kinda like better cut, but with more options and doesn't mess up your icons. Great for renaming or changing the icon's on your apps :)

Utilitys

TaskPanel - Nice easy to use task manager for android, easily kill apps when needed.

MultiTask - Lets you easily switch between running applictions - can be added to long press of search button

Stats - Tracks your Calltime, texts and data against your monthly allowances

3g Watchdog - same as above but for data and keeps it in your ongoing panel

Battery Time Lite - Adds an icon with battery shown as a %

AndroidVNC - nice vnc client, works well with tight vnc

Useful stuff

HandCent - Great text messaging app

Ebuddy - Nice app that allows you to log in to msn, facebook, myspace, yahoo and many more messengers

Tube - Provides a route planner and map of the underground without the need for data, meaning you can check your routes while underground.

BUMP - Transfer apps, contacts and many other things by just bumping your phone with another - Also works android to iphone :)

Is my quick list for now.

[crazzy88ss]

Look at it this way. The Moment you have can be seen as like a Dell PC. Full of bloatware and with restrictions. Rooting resets your phone, but to more of like a self built pc. You basically set it up as you would like, without any pre-installed software and without any real limitations to what you can do to the OS, depending on the ROM you get.

Putting a custom rom on your phone can be a great thing, but can also hurt it depending on your service, where you live, and the device being rooted. Most root versions require you to get a "radio" which is basically what picks up your cell signal. Some of these roots do not have very good "radio" software and can leave you with less than desirable sound quality during calls. Others may not let you use bluetooth properly, while others work just fine and even give you the ability to OverClock your phone.

I'm still a little too worried and into my new Hero to want to try any custom roms, and am quite pleased with sense ui and launcher pro.

--------- Task killers do kill themselves sometimes, sometimes they don't. What is the problem is not it killing itself or not, but the other programs it kills which impact many other programs from running properly. Disabling 1 service can lead to many other things not working.

Ah thx. I think I'll pass on that lol

[shakey]

Ah thx. I think I'll pass on that lol

Rooting is really for the technogeeks who want full access to the phone and how it operates. As is, android os is open enough for most to enjoy it without the need to root. For others, they need more. To each his own.

[spikey_richie]

JuiceDefender and JuicePlotter are must haves. They tweak the APN settings to limit the amount of battery they waste. JuicePlotter shows a graph of how quickly your phone discharged, and what was on at each point in time a record was snapped.

Also liking Google Navigation (in Beta) from Google Labs page with Street View and Voice.

Astro file manager

Listen (for podcast subscriptions) also from Google Labs

myPlayer for BBC iPlayer playback

Shazam for getting music info

Where's my Droid is freaking AWESOME! Text your phone with "GPS my Droid" from another device, and it replies with the GPS location and Google Maps link to your phones exact location. Also if you lose your phone in the house and it's on silent, text "Wheres my Droid" from another phone, and your will ring for 30seconds at full volume and vibrate.

[Singh400]

doubleTwist is an excellent media player. Almost like the VLC of Android, plays anything I throw at it. Very impressive.

[shakey]

doubleTwist is an excellent media player. Almost like the VLC of Android, plays anything I throw at it. Very impressive.

can it play different video file formats other than the norms? Like could I put a .avi or .divx movie and have it work instead of it needing to be mp4?

[Singh400]

can it play different video file formats other than the norms? Like could I put a .avi or .divx movie and have it work instead of it needing to be mp4?

I threw a .wmv at it the other day, and it played it fine. Haven't tested .avi or .divx, sorry.

[xendrome]

Games

• Doom for Android!
  
• Wolfenstien 3D!
  

Where can you find these at, it appears they have both been removed..

[Singh400]

Where can you find these at, it appears they have both been removed..

You can still get Doom here.

[Arkaic]

thank you! :)

[danton47]

My Tracks - GPS track recorder / uploader

RMaps - nice Google Maps alternative (with support for alternative map sources, compass rotation etc.)

Seesmic - twitter client

Tricorder - funny sensor monitor

WeatherBug - weather conditions/forecasts

Astrid - TODO manager

FBReader - eBook reader

Barcode Scanner - indispensable barcode-to-url translation tool

Ulysse Gizmos - compass + gps info + inclinometer + magnetometer

[m-p{3}]

WikiDroyd - Offline Wikipedia reader. You have to download a "snapshot" of Wikipedia, which are HUGE (the most up-to-date English Wikipedia snapshot they have is around 6 GB :blink: ) but can be useful if you have no coverage and want to read some Wikipedia articles wherever you are. It works mostly like Wikipedia, you can click on links to other referenced articles, etc. External links are colored differently.

[Nagisan]

Just got my new Droid X and, after using Task Killers for the first few days, I found a post that explains why you SHOULDN'T use task killers on Android phones (at least any newer phones or 2.x+ phones). In short, the way Android managers tasks means you should not have to end tasks unless a task goes out of control and gets stuck in a loop.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html

Basically, Android will kill an inactive task if it runs low on memory......its like comparing Windows 7 superfetch/memory management to Windows XP memory management......Android is on the scale of Win7 memory management, while non-android phones are generally on the XP level. Do you go around killing Windows 7 tasks and disabling superfetch to keep your memory open? Didn't think so.

JuiceDefender and JuicePlotter are must haves. They tweak the APN settings to limit the amount of battery they waste. JuicePlotter shows a graph of how quickly your phone discharged, and what was on at each point in time a record was snapped.

JuicePlotter is in my own experience a HUGE battery drain. I just got a Droid X which has very good lifetime compared to most other phones, with JuicePlotter running, my phone dropped from 100%, down to 40% in 8 hours of standby (remember, the phone is suppose to have around 220 hours in standby, based on my 8 hours for 60% drain, that would mean around 11 hours for a full drain in standby). I disabled JuicePlotter the following day (while leaving JuiceDefender enabled, free version though) and from a 100% charge, it dropped down to 90% after the same 8 hours of standby. Perhaps still a fairly large drop (that would work out to around 80 hours of standby), but considering the combination of apps I am using are bound to lower battery life a bit, and the fact that my battery is probably not fully conditioned yet, JuicePlotter essentially lowered my battery lifetime to roughly 1/8th of what it was without it.

Now, for my must-get apps:

AppBrain - Makes it super easy to manage apps, you can browse it with your computer and save an app you want, then sync your phone with your AppBrain account and get those apps. You can also browse it like the normal Android Market.

Astrid - Task scheduler/manager.

K-9 Mail - Much better than the stock mail apps, you can manage multiple accounts from various providers with ease.

Timeriffic - Easily set times for your phones ringer to be disabled and many other things (sleep times, so you are not woken in the middle of the night by a random phone call).

Dolphin Browser HD - Great browser....supports up to 8 tabs and tons of other features.

Battery Indicator - Only bother if your phone does not easily display the % charge (such as the Droid X)

Quick Settings OR Dazzle - Dazzle is a Widget-only app that can instantly toggle (one-touch) Wifi, Bluetooth, Ringer, airplane mode, data sync and screen brightness. It has a GPS control but it takes you to the settings (due to widget limitations). Quick Settings is an app that does the same basic thing, but you must open the app first. Being a Droid X users, I have a widget called Power Control which does all of the above except ringer and airplane mode control, as a trade-off, being a Motorola widget, it CAN toggle GPS without going through the system settings.

If anyone has suggestions to replace my above list please feel free to tell me, I am quite new to the Android market and have no clue what the absolute best apps for things are.

[Jme621]

i like google goggles cause you can do barcodes as well as images, logos, buildings,........

[Nagisan]

i like google goggles cause you can do barcodes as well as images, logos, buildings,........

It was fun to play with when I first got my Droid X, but the 2nd day when I tried to use it it wouldn't work.....first it would take a picture then the screen would blank out, then after a couple of attempts to get it to work the screen would simply blank out as soon as I opened the app (hitting back or home would go back/home and the screen would re-appear though).

I did manage to fool it with an image in a calendar....it was a sailboat but it didn't find any info about it.

[Another Canuck]

doubleTwist is an excellent media player. Almost like the VLC of Android, plays anything I throw at it. Very impressive.

Still doesn't support FLAC unfortunately, which comprises about 90% of my music library.

In other news, I've recently switched to Estrongs for my file manager. Astro was good until they added ads in a recent update. That's alright, since they also made available a paid version without... but decided to charge $5 for it. Too steep considering Estrongs is just as good and free.

[Singh400]

Still doesn't support FLAC unfortunately, which comprises about 90% of my music library.

Does the Android even support FLAC yet?

[spikey_richie]

JuicePlotter is in my own experience a HUGE battery drain. I just got a Droid X which has very good lifetime compared to most other phones, with JuicePlotter running, my phone dropped from 100%, down to 40% in 8 hours of standby (remember, the phone is suppose to have around 220 hours in standby, based on my 8 hours for 60% drain, that would mean around 11 hours for a full drain in standby). I disabled JuicePlotter the following day (while leaving JuiceDefender enabled, free version though) and from a 100% charge, it dropped down to 90% after the same 8 hours of standby. Perhaps still a fairly large drop (that would work out to around 80 hours of standby), but considering the combination of apps I am using are bound to lower battery life a bit, and the fact that my battery is probably not fully conditioned yet, JuicePlotter essentially lowered my battery lifetime to roughly 1/8th of what it was without it.

I've removed them both for comparison; will report back in a few days. I found it to extend my battery by quite a lot pre-conditioning.

[Nagisan]

I've removed them both for comparison; will report back in a few days. I found it to extend my battery by quite a lot pre-conditioning.

juice Defender can help battery life, but all plotter does is essentially monitor the battery and show you how fast the battery drops. JuicePlotter does nothing to extend battery charge.

[divinatum]

Does the Android even support FLAC yet?

CyanogenMod adds FLAC support.

[Cereal Bawks]

Still doesn't support FLAC unfortunately, which comprises about 90% of my music library.

Your Twitter says you've a Hero. All HTC phones have terrible noise floors, FLAC's of no use here. Might as well go with high bitrate AACs.