ANDROID APPS I COULDN’T PART WITH (UPDATED)
Advanced Task Killer - If you find your phone ever slowing down after you’ve ran some apps then this is a great app for shutting down stuff you might have forgotten was running in the background. It can drain your battery a little faster, but it can be a life saver if your phone forgets to close apps properly.
Gameboid/GBCoid - Gameboy Colour and Advanced emulators. What can I say? I fucking love playing Pokemon on my phone.
ShopSavvy - Barcode and price comparison app. Used with the GPS on your phone and you can see if you can get whatever you’ve scanned cheaper from somewhere nearby. I use this for clothes and books. Handy if you ever see a QR code and wonder what the fuck it’s there for.
Handcent SMS - *sighs* I love this app. It makes texting on Android even easier than it already is. It gives you a re-styled sms inbox (really similar to the iPhone sms style. I like that) with additional customisation available too. The feature I really love is the quick-reply option. Whenever I get a text a pop-up will appear with the text on the screen and it’ll let me reply without going into the inbox and finding the message… It’s fantastic. Get it.
Twitter - Probably the best Twitter app on Android.
Extended Controls - Great app for making sets of widgets for key phone functions. I put 2 of them on a home screen. I know there’s a widget similar to this, but Extended Controls gives you access to more functions and lets you re-design the order, indication style and design of the widgets.
Google Goggles - Great text translation, photo/logo/anything recognition app. This seems to constantly get updated and I often use it when I’m out to remember cool things I’ve seen. If you take a photo using it or scan a barcode it’ll store the search you’ve done on the phone. Like I said, handy when you want to remember items you just know you’ll forget. Even handier with Christmas being just around the corner.
Radiant - Space Invaders on stereoids
LauncherPro - Probably the best homescreen replacement app for Android. It’s not free, but if you fancy it (you should) then there’s a free version with a few less features (nothing you’d miss). HTC Sense is nice, but it can eat up memory like a fatty fat person. It allows you to customise your home-screens in a lot of detail. I’m still finding new features on it and I’ve been using it for ages.
BBC iPlayer - Mostly because it’s awesome to have 6 Music as an alternative to all the mp3s I’ve probably already listened to on my phone.
Amazon UK - Where else are you going to buy your shit on the move?
Soundhound - The best music discovery app I’ve found. Shazam is similar, either do the job well, I’ve just stuck with Soundhound.
Skype - Y’know, if you use it.
Sky News - The best news app I’ve came across.
Airsync - Used with Doubletwist it lets you sync your iTunes library wirelessly.
Flixster - For all your cinema time needs.
Batterylife - The best battery widget I’ve used. Compact, informative and it just looks great.
Meebo IM - Best IM app for Android. You can link it to Facebook, AIM, MSN, etc and have them all running at once with zero hassle. Y’know, if you do any IM’ing.
Camera 360 (pro) - This app actually gets me excited about taking photos on my phone, haha. It offers a wide-range of controls, presets and features that really should be in the default Android camera app. This will help you get your money’s worth from your bitching camera (if you have one).
Picplz - Similar to Instagram (I imagine). Great if you want to be more social when it comes to your photos. This can also be used in combination with the dropbox app to back up modified and original versions of the photos you take without any extra work.
Better Keyboard - A keyboard replacement app. I go through phases of using this and then returning to the default keyboard. It’s sleaker to use, but in my opinion the predictive text on the default keyboard is far better. Occasionally I use Swype from time to time as well.
Droid Comic Viewer - I sometimes come across digital comic books on the net (…) and want to read them when I’m out and about.
