Monday, February 7, 2011

Essential Android Apps

CyanogenMOD
Already provides most essentials in the ROM image, including:
  • ADWLauncher
  • Power Control Widget / Torch  - widgets that let you turn on/off various wireless radios or activate airplane mode.  I use the LED as a flashlight much more often than as a camera flash.
  • Google Maps Mobile / Navigation / Street View
  • Facebook / Twitter - these are internal memory storage hogs, I kinda wish I could remove them
  • News & Weather - well, really just weather.
  • QuickOffice
  • ROM Manager
  • Sound Recorder
  • File Manager

Reference
  • Wapedia 
  • FBReader - hoping this supports the Palm Plucker format someday so I can use it with Sunrise-Desktop.
  • Goggles - also does OCR and auto-translation of text that you photograph!
  • Google Translate
  • Barcode Scanner / Shopper - UPC code lookups and online price comparison
  • Amazon
  • CraigsNotification

Network
  • ConnectBot - SSH client
  • AndFTP
  • AndChat - IRC client (though I usually just use SSH to a screen session running irssi)
  • androidVNC
  • Barnacle Wifi Tether - turns phone into an open HSDPA wifi hotspot
  • Opera Mobile - for websites that the built-in browser can't handle.
  • Dolphin - nice full-featured browser for beefier phones than mine.
  • Yahoo Mail
  • Yahoo Messenger  - also has a video chat addon, but haven't successfully tested that yet
  • Google Chat
  • Google Buzz - more useful than Twitter, esp. when used with location-aware Google Maps
  • StumbleUpon - when you're bored of the web
  • Blogger-droid - when your thoughts don't fit in a tweet.

Personal Digital Assistant
  • Evernote - web-based notes
  • Dropbox - syncs files between PCs
  • KeePassDroid - encrypted keyring
  • GTasks - Todo list sync'd with your Google Calender todo.
  • Draw and Share - Best drawing app, easy way to roll your own lolcats
  • Mileage - Track vehicle gas mileage and maintenance record
  • TripIt - email your travel itinerary to them and they'll show you everything in an easy to track format
  • EboBirthday - HappyDays list of the birthdays recorded in your Google Contacts / Facebook friends.
  • Google Voice - Transcribes phone messages for you, also lets you send free SMS messages without having to shell out extra for text plans.

Navigation
  • My Tracks - saves your GPS track and exports them to view online or in Google Earth
  • Layar - augmented reality!

Utilities
  • Titanium Backup - backs up all your apps to your SD card, which you then presumably back up to a computer somewhere.
  • Tricorder - Star Trek interface to your phone's various sensors.
  • Wifi Analyzer - shows all the wifi access points around you and helps choose a channel with the least interference.
  • Compass - uses the magnometer, corrects for local variations, and points the way to waypoints
  • gStrings - Audio tuning app.
  • GPS Status - shows where all the satellites are and your precision based on reception quality.
  • Ultimate Stopwatch
  • Metal Detector - uses the magnometer to find ferrous metals.
  • Droid48 - HP 48GX emulator, probably the best fully-featured graphing calculator app available to date.
  • RealCalc - simple scientific calculator
  • Speed Test - Measure your available bandwidth over the cell or wifi network.
  • Bubble - uses accelerometer as a level.

Media
  • Winamp - best streaming radio app, and should support wifi sync with your music collection
  • Camera 360 - nicer effects than the built-in camera.
  • Photoshop Express - retouch photos, enhance dark photos.
  • Ustream Broadcaster / Viewer - share / save your streaming video in near-realtime (~10 second lag)
  • BestTube - save videos from youtube onto your device for later viewing
  • JustPictures - nice photo viewer, includes Flickr / Facebook / Picasa sources
  • Floating Image - same as above, but also uses a neat thumbnail scroller
  • Solo Lite - guitar chords. Fun way to crank out simple tunes
  • Musical Lite - metronome and virtual piano / keyboard / drumset

Games
  • Angry Birds
  • Sketch Online - pictionary on the internet
  • Chess Online
  • Head 2 Head Racing - relaxing top-down racer that focuses on the technical aspect of following the ideal racing line
  • X-Plane - Very nice flight simulator, but still waiting for Austin to complete the Android port.
  • Bonsai Blast
  • Zombie, Run! - Use your GPS to run through a horde of zombie icons that chase you.

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