Best Android apps

IceBone

Blue Wheel Hipster
Joined
Jan 14, 2007
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Slovenistan
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The Android market is growing at an astonishing rate, just in March over 9000 :)|) apps were released. Most of it is crap, of course, so why not make a repository of the good ones?

Here's the ones I use very frequently and enjoy a lot:

Mobisle notes (free without ads, paid version with more features (coming soon))
Notes is a simple and straight-forward notes app for Android. With it you can:

  • Write plain text notes or checklists and switch seamlessy between them
  • Cross off items on your lists and delete them when your done
  • Send your lists to anyone via e-mail or SMS

And soon, in our Pro version:

  • Sync your notes to the web for automatic backup
  • Edit your notes from any computer using our webapp
  • Access your notes through a home screen widget

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/mobislenotes.png

aCar (free with adds, paid version with more features)

aCar is the tool to effectively track the maintenance, fuel mileage and expenses of your vehicles.

Feature List:

  • Tracking gas mileage and vehicle maintenance
  • Multiple vehicles support
  • Storing vehicle details (Make, Model, License Plate, etc.)
  • Exposing your data as report sheets and graphical charts (Fuel Efficiency, Fuel Price, Fuel Expenses, Service Expenses, Fuel Statistics)
  • Supporting several international units: MPG (US, Canada & Imperial), gal/100mi (US & Imperial), mi/L, km/gal (US & Imperial), L/100km, km/L
  • Service reminders for vehicles (both time and mileage based). They can be separately customized for each vehicle
  • Powerful searching and filtering
  • Full manual/automatic data and application settings backup/restore (Pro Feature!)
  • Importing data from various sources: Mileage application, Road Trip application, Auto 3in1 application, Fuelly.com, FuelFrog.com and any plain Excel compatible CSV file (Pro Feature!)
  • Exporting data to Excel compatible CSV format (Pro Feature!)
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/screenshot-07.png https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/screenshot-03.png https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/screenshot-08.png

Astro file manager (free without ads - still in beta, might change once final)

Android File Manager. Features: Download any file with browser, Browse, create, extract zip files, Back up and restore public applications to the SD card, Create shortcuts, Send files as attachments, Thumbnails, Multiselect, Search, Image, Text, HTML Viewers.

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/Astro-File-Manager.jpg

SMS backup & restore (free with ads - can be turned off)

A simple App to backup and restore SMS Messages, useful when doing a factory reset or installing custom ROMs. The backup is stored in /sdcard/SMSBackupRestore folder.

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/device1.png https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/device21.png https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/device2.png

Smooth Calendar (free - widget)

Simple widget to keep track of your agenda - syncs with calendar

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/04/10/30_smooth_calendar_icon.png

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These are all I use as of now, any more and my phone starts lagging (HTC Diamond, not made for it, limited ram).

What are any of the others I should look into?
 
I use Astro, quite nice. I have tried a few others but I just find I never end up using them. Robo Defense is an epic game that I've spent way too much time on, the free version has one stage and 10 difficulty levels but that will actually last you quite a while.
 
I never liked the defence games, they just get so boring after the first few minutes.
 
Not going to list the obvious ones (Taskiller, etc.) since people have probably already heard of them.

Bambuser: Live video streaming from your phone. Basically makes your phone a mobile webcam.

Appbrain: Ever have to factory reset/wipe your phone, and hate having to find and redownload all your apps manually cause Astro Backup doesn't sync with the Android Market. Appbrain is basically the Android Market with cloud storage for all your apps, so you can automatically store, catalog, and download your apps. You can also search for and quene app installs inside your web browser.

Easy Tether: Tether your computer to your phone so you can use your phone as a mobile access point (3G/Wifi). Basically makes wireless cards useless, especially on desktops.

Tapatalk: Basically a mobile forum app for vBulletin, phpBB, etc. It has a specially designed format to make surfing forums on your phone easy and intuitive. Need to pay for Pro version though.
 
I use Easytether, the free version is very functional and the paid version is cheap, and it works well (I get better speeds on my phone than some people get on DSL). Very nice app! The only major downside is that it requires a Windows PC and you have to install software but it can still all be done from scratch without another internet source.
 
I can't seem to find easytether, as the official website tells you to get the lite version from the market, but it isn't there. I think I like tapatalk, but it won't let me view youtube videos, it just shows the BBcode.
 
SpeedXGalagus, a space shooter game
Air Control, you have to lead planes to the correct airfields
Air Attack, shooter game, good fun
Shazam, when you hear a track on the radio or even at a party it will tell you what it is and save it
GBCoid etc. GBC, GBA and SNES emulators that work really well.
Photobucket Mobile, handy if you use photobucket
Photoshop Mobile, nice way to edit your pictures
aNetShare for tethering
Handcent SMS, must have for everyone, huge improvement over the stock SMS app, customizable too
 
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Astro is a must, definitely. Thanks for the Smooth Calendar, way better looking than CalWidget, has replaced the standard issue for me now.

Among what I use myself are:
  • Barcode Scanner - a must for Android, the app QR codes alone justify it's presence
  • Simple Last.fm Scrobbler - does what the name says, works with most players
  • OI Shopping List - again, does what it says
  • Torrent-fu - remote control for downloads on the homeserver with some neat features
  • Mileage - seems to be an alternative to aCar, simple and usable
  • OpenSudoku - timekiller
  • Places Directory - useful when travelling
  • and how not to promote Quoter - my own timekiller app, quotes from bash.org and many other places :)
 
I had trouble with NESoid. Terrible performance and no multitouch for the on-screen buttons (because my Hero does not have enough off-screen buttons to work with). I'll try some others I guess.

I just searched "tether" on the market and EasyTether was the first result, with the Lite version the third.
 
Advanced Task Killer
Shazam
Tweetcaster
 
It seems the reason for my inability to find easytether is AT&T. Did a couple of side by side searches with my friend that has Verizon and it came up for him, but not me. So now I'll probably have to root my phone in order to tether. If somone could pm me the apk I'd appreciate it. Maybe it will work if I sideload it.
 
Astro is a must, definitely. Thanks for the Smooth Calendar, way better looking than CalWidget, has replaced the standard issue for me now.

Among what I use myself are:
  • Barcode Scanner - a must for Android, the app QR codes alone justify it's presence
  • Torrent-fu - remote control for downloads on the homeserver with some neat features

I use all of those, specially Torrent-fu and Astro.

Some other apps I like a lot:

aDyno, a car performance calculator.
RealCalc, a scientific calculator, that features among other things Reverse Polish Notation :)
3G Watchdog, a must for those who have to be careful to avoid busting their data quota.
Twidroid, one of the best twitter app out there. The free version works great, I upgraded to the pro mainly to contribute, but the few extra features are nice to have also.
 
It seems the reason for my inability to find easytether is AT&T. Did a couple of side by side searches with my friend that has Verizon and it came up for him, but not me. So now I'll probably have to root my phone in order to tether. If somone could pm me the apk I'd appreciate it. Maybe it will work if I sideload it.

I don't know if AT&T provides any additional protection but you can just uncheck the setting that requires apps to be downloaded from the market. Not sure where to get the lite version apk though. I'll look into it more when I'm not at work.

SO glad we dumped fucking AT&T in favor of Sprint :D
 
So i just installed ShapeWriter, which is the same thing as swype, but actually available for android. There's definitely a learning curve, and it could use a few tweaks, like having a easy way to capitalize a letter, but so far i think i could get used to it. By the way I'm using it to type this, which is why i seem to have a loose grasp on the concept of pronouns.
 
ShapeWriter is nice but though it comes in swedish it does not yet come in danish. That makes it a showkiller for me :(
 
Just installed Smooth Calendar, very nice indeed! Way better use of the screen real-estate than the regular calendar widget, and the small things I didn't like at first where configurable, so now it behaves exactly like I want.

I also installed Mobisle Notes, but I haven't tried it yet.
 
Just installed Smooth Calendar, very nice indeed! Way better use of the screen real-estate than the regular calendar widget, and the small things I didn't like at first where configurable, so now it behaves exactly like I want.

Ok, now I feel stupid. One of the configuration options (that I was so happy about) was the action to do when the widget is clicked, and I set it to directly open the calendar.

But now there doesn't seem to be any other path to the widget settings than the prompt you get on clicking the widget before you change that behavior. Did I just lock myself out of any other setting changes for that widget by choosing to go straight to the calendar?
 
It might one of the ones where you have to delete and re-add the widget to bring the options up again.
 
I'll email the developer, see if it is an omission on his part, and if it is, hopefully he'll find a workaround in the next release. I know some widget-only app add a widget-config app to the launcher, so that could be a solution.
 
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