Favorite Android Apps

Far be it for this Android newbie to get into the Task Killer kerfuffle, but everything I've read against task killers sounds very plausible while everything I've read for task killers sounds very anecdotal.  So I'd have to say no to task killers in 2.1 after having tried it out for a week and found zero difference in battery life or phone performance.  However, the conventional wisdom wrt task killers in 2.2 is that they aren't needed and they definitely screw more things up than they fix because of the way froyo manages memory and programs.  YMMV.

Astro File Manager and Astro SMB module are must haves.  The latter allows AFM to browse network shares and move files between them.  I upload all my pics and vids to my PC wirelessly this way.

Remote Droid is a wifi based remote keyboard and mouse controller.  A small program runs on the host machine and Remote Droid acts like a trackpad and the soft keyboard can be used as well.  The only thing is, it seems to only like the stock keyboard.

Wyse Pocket Cloud.  This is the best RDP program I've ever used.  I'm a bit bummed that they're going to start charging $30 or so at the end of the month when the software leaves beta testing.  I think I can get my company to pick up the tab on this one.  BTW, Pocket Cloud also handles VMWare and VNC connections, so it's an all-in-one solution for IT admins.  Again, seems to only like the stock keyboard.

I use Real Signal all the time to see how good my 3G connection is.  There are no bars in the taskbar that measure 3G strength, so Real Signal is the only way to measure it.

BatteryLife widget is a great way to see your battery life in 1% increments, especially since the task bar battery meter is too small to get a good idea of how your battery is really doing. 

Kindle!  Aldiko is great for browsing public domain and free books as well.

Meridian is my main music player.

 ACV is a nice, free comic book reader.

Here is my list, copied from another thread.  All apps are free.

1. Places Directory -- lists nearby points of interest, such as restaurants, hotels, entertainment, etc.

2.Amazon -- manage your Amazon.com account, place orders, etc.

3. Movies -- shows what's new in theaters, on DVD and Blu-ray. Read reviews, watch trailers, etc.

4. Wifinder -- shows you what 802.11 wifi networks are in range.

5. Password keeper -- keep track of userids and passwords

6. Dazzle widget -- quick buttons for turning on/off gps, wifi, putting into airplane mode, etc.

7. A Online Radio -- free radio streaming. I picked this one because it streams the local radio station that carries Plymouth Whalers hockey games (we are season ticket holders).

8. Video player -- works better for me than the stock video player

9. Daily Strip -- read your favorite daily cartoon strips. I can keep up with Dilbert this way.

10. SportsTap -- get score and news updates from the major sports -- NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, college football/bball, golf, auto racing

11. NFL Mobile -- ties into NFL.com and The NFL Network. Can watch NFL Network content.

12. Call Log trimmer -- automatically cleans your calling logs based on how many instances you set.

13. Astro File Manager -- already mentioned above

14. Weather Bug -- more useful widget than the stock HTC clock / weather widget.
 

15. Ring Droid -- create your own ring tones from mp3 files.

16. My Verizon -- manage my Verizon account. Maybe there is a similar app for Sprint.

I have a Samsung Captivate I've been using since launch on July 18. Here's the apps I use in ABC order

ADW Launcher - lightweight launcher, very nice

Advanced Task Killer

ASTRO w/ SMB module

Barcode Scanner - integrates with some other apps

Bubble - level program

Cor.kz - integration with Cellartracker.com wine cellar database

Daily Strip

doubleTwist - music player, better than the stock app, has a companion syncing program for the PC, but it's not needed

Handcent SMS

Google Maps and Navigator

Mileage Log - for tracking business use of vehicle for multiple businesses and multiple vehicles

Pandora

PrinterShare - print to my network printer

RadioTime - one of the top organizers of online streaming of terrestrial radio (already been using it with the Squeezeboxen for years)

Ringo Lite - setting manager

Retro Clock / Retro Date - clock widget

ROM Manager - for switching ROMs on a rooted phone

ScoreCenter - ESPN scoreboards

Smooth Calendar - widget that shows up to 3 appointments, had a bunch of settings

SqueezeCommander - for running the Logitech Squeezebox system

Terminal Emulator - command line

Titanium Backup - remove pre-installed bloatware (requires Rooting/busybox)

Ultrachron - advanced stopwatch/countdown timer

XDA - easy to use access to xda-developer.com forum (how else are you going to root and hack the device without a good reference?)

Still trying to find a good weather widget/app

And of course, the gmail and google contacts sync are invaluable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nolesrule 

 

Still trying to find a good weather widget/app

 

 

Check out Weather Bug, Joe. I like it much better than the weather widget that is supplied by HTC. It's a free app.

It's more of a tech demo than a game, but Scatter is a very cool looking free game.  Basically, they take a bitmap drawing and them covert it into a cloud of 3D pixels.  You rotate the cloud around until you have it at the correct angle that creates the complete image.  It's confusing to describe, but definitely check it out.

Sounds like eBoy Fix Pix...

Probably.  I don't know if there's a single Android game that doesn't have at least an analogue on the iPhone.  Android game dev is pretty generic right now.

Okay, so there's a new update for Voice Search for 2.2 phones:

http://www.androidcentral.com/google-ups-ante-voice-search-all-new-voice-actions

I haven't played around with the direction search but I can tell you this:  the voice dialing is still TOTAL FAIL.

I tried voice search for my name, and it never, ever even came close to coming up.  The kicker is, my name itself came up, but as a Google search.  I tried the "call [contact]" command 20 times, and it kept googling random things.  At one point, it started dialing "Dan Rodriguez".  Okay, finally.  But then I realized it was some random Dan Rodriguez in Brooklyn and not the one in my contacts list.  Again, it recognized the name, but decided to call a randomly googled name instead of selecting one of my contacts.  This is seriously WTF.  At least have a "call contact [contact]" to specify what to search.  But all of this is moot, since the program will decide to either call whatever result is returned without confirmation, or bring up list that requires you to tap on your choice.

Seriously Google, why aren't you using voice confirmation?  There's a text to speech program already -- why are you making users touch the phone at all?  Why are you dialing shit without confirmation?  It's like the engineers on this project take the short bus to work every day.

The listen to command will not work with any of my music players, so another fail.

I guess searching for businesses generates more revenue than dialing your friends.  I can't conceive of any other reason for this to be implemented as poorly as it is.

Oh yeah, one more thing -- since the search is the same server based voice to text that the voice to text feature uses, a) you must have a working data connection, and b) it tends to be slow to goddamed slow.

Vlingo is now a free app! It used to be $10, but it's free now in light of Google's voice app upgrade. But Vlingo actually works, except it still doesn't ask you to confirm. However, it's 1000 times more functional.

I forgot to add -- Vlingo does not require froyo to work.

Thanks for the tip on Vlingo, Hanson. I installed it, and first impressions are that it works much, much better than the native voice dialer on my Droid Eris. Of course, it does not take much to improve on the native app, which is useless, IMO.

The only value of the native app is that it prompted Vlingo to makes theirs free.  It is inherently worthless.

It turns out that Google voice only goes through your gmail contacts. Mine are all from Exchange, so I would need to sync them to gmail for them to work.

Not bloody likely.

Thanks again, Vlingo.

There's a new update for Dolphin HD.

The best new feature is the ability to use gesture to switch between tabs. There are also a bunch of little 2.2 compatibility updates including the ability to run from the SD card. This may come in handy, as the program runs around 15MB or so. I'm not at the point yet where the lack of app space is killing me (that happens around the 40MB free mark).

Which brings me to the subject of moving apps to the SD card -- I had thought this was simply a feature like it was in WinMo, where 95% of apps could run from SD out of the box. But the program has to be written to work this way -- you cannot move any old program to SD. Since 80% of my apps are under 2MB, this isn't a big deal for me, but there are some owners who install lots of games, and the more complex ones can run 15-25MB. If the devs don't get on the stick, especially the ones who make the gignatic games, this is going to be a major buzzkill. I know a lot of froyo upgraders were excited for this feature, but the reality is that a small percentage of programs can actually work this way.

BTW, you should check out EStrongs File Explorer. It's an alternative to Astro, and for LAN data transfers, it seems 2X faster than Astro SMB. It also doesn't disconnect when the phone locks (but it also seems to pause when the screen locks). When I'm transferring a large file, I will set up the transfer and leave a program on that forces the screen to stay on. Alternately, I just use the phone as the file transfers in the background.

I checked out arcmedia, and aside from the persistent logo in Rockplayer (which may only appear in the free version), I can't see arcmedia donig anything better than Rockplayer.  In fact, it is worse in all phases -- it doesn't bookmark your place in the file, the video quality is much worse (lots of pixelation and aliasing where Rockplayer is smooth) and it appears to stretch video to fit the proportions of the screen, which means a DVD movie at 1.78 ratio will look distorted vertically instead of having a little bit of letterboxing like you get in Rockplayer (the Evo screen is 1.66).  And Rockplayer also supports every file extension arcmedia does.

For me, Rockplayer is the clear winner here.

i grabbed an app called 'sound manager'. it gives you sliders for all volume controls on the phone. system, ringer, notifications, media, alarm, and in call. The one thing i missed from my ipod was a software volume slider when music was playing and this fits the bill and then some.

If you want to see how your android phone handles 3D games, Gameloft is offering free demos:

http://wapshop.gameloft.com/wifi/tryandbuy/

Heads up -- the demo isn't that big, but the data you have to download after the install is HUGE. Make sure you have wifi and plenty of juice (maybe even just let it run overnight plugged in).

I am using the stock Android keyboard as my default keyboard, and it is a tremendous upgrade over the stock HTC keyboard.

It does predictive text and spell checking, but unlike the stock HTC keyboard, it adds spaces after words.  If you add punctuation, it will backspace and add it.  I can tap out messages very quickly using this keyboard, and since I'm choosing the words, I rarely need to go back and correct myself.  And unlike the stock HTC keyboard, it doesn't go overboard with the suggested words and requiring you to add everything you type into the library.  The stock HTC keyboard annoyed me with its constant interruptions to add words to the library, many of which I didn't want.  And not only does the Android keyboard have a nicer and richer library of words to choose from, it scans your contacts so that if you start typing a contact's name, it comes up as a suggested word.  On top of that, the feel and responsiveness are miles better than stock HTC.  I don't hit as many wrong keys as I used to, even in portrait mode.

Even better:  I can do all of these things one-handed now.  So I don't go into landscape mode that much when typing since it works very well in portrait mode.

Added bonus: The keyboards appear to interact with the text to speech feature.  When I use text to speech with stock HTC, it will not capitalize at the beginning of sentences.  With Android, it capitalizes the beginning of sentences and seems to do a much better job of picking the correct words.  So not only will your typing improve, but the voice recognition improves as well.

There is one little bug that is annoying but not a dealbreaker for me -- when inputting text into some forums, the keyboard will start chugging and slowing down occasionally.  I don't know why this happens, but I just power through it.  I don't think I will be able to beat a seasoned Swype user or hard keyboard vet in speed tests, but the is the least frustrating keyboard I've ever used.  And that includes my Touch Pro 2 keyboard, generally regarded as the best slide out keyboard ever made.

Directions for downloading an installing the keyboard in the link:

http://www.goodandevo.net/2010/08/stock-froyo-keyboard-available-for-htc-evo-4g.html

I picked up the Samsung Interceptor about 2 weeks ago.

The apps I enjoy are.

Pandora

ArcMedia

Wifi Analyzer

ACV (Comic book reader)

Tv.com

Mort Player (Audio Books)

Weather Channel

Verizon Fios DVR Manager.

Google Sky Map

I love the phone it self it has a speedy 800mhz processor and also a pull out Keyboard.

Not that the touch feature isn't a cool thing just stinks for texting.

I was using a HTC Touch pro with Windows 6.5 and it was touch only no pull out KB was rough.

I got nothing, Parker.  Maybe you'd have better luck on the XDA-Dev forum.

BTW, here's a sweet little program that fixes a small flaw in many Android apps: SDRescan.

The issue is, when I add music or other media to the SD card, it won't show up in some of the players.  I'm not exactly sure why this is, but if you restart the phone, it will show up when the system scans the SD card on bootup.  Which is all fine and dandy, but you don't want to go restarting the phone every time you want to a single song.  SDRescan reindexes the SD card contents so that all apps can see all files.

Do all the EVO's lack a KB? I am with Sprint so not sure if there are other EVO's with a KB.

The Samsung Epic 4g is identical to the EVO in every way but has a Keyboard and uses an Amoled screen it is 4.0 inch screen instead of the EVO's 4.3 but when I was looking at both side by side the Epic took the EVO out in picture quality with ease.

There are no Evos with keyboards. The only Sprint Android option with a keyboard is the Epic (correction: the Samsung Moment and its successors all have keyboards, but I would not recommend them) . Verizon has a few Android phones with hardware keyboards, most notably the Moto Droid 2. The G2 has a slide out keyboard and is coming on TMo. AT&T has a very small line up of Android phones, with the Captivate being pretty much the only option. With Windows Phone 7 being GSM only until the second half of 2011, it looks like AT&T won't be doing much in the way of Android while Verizon appears to be going all in with Android.

Dolphin HD 3.0 is out, and it seems to have been optimized some for froyo.  I noticed that the pages load faster, and a lot of the slowdowns and choppy scrolling that would occur as pages loaded are gone now.  The lag I would occasionally encounter with gestures seems to have been fixed.

But while these are good enough reasons to upgrade, the big thing for me is the new window shade feature for tabs.  Just like the notification bar, when you touch to the top of the screen, you can pull down a shade that shows you all your tabs with thumbnails and descriptions.  You can then swipe between the tabs or close them altogether.  It also shows you the notification bar which you can pull down as well without having to go to the home page first.

The only drawback to this feature is that if you touch anywhere near the top of the screen, the shade activates.  So if there's a link at the very top of the browser, you have to zoom in so that it clears the very top of the page. 

Still, I use the tabs all the time in Dolphin, so this is great feature.  It's also really convenient for me to check for notifications without having to leave Dolphin for the home page.