If you’re anything at all like me, you have come to love and depend upon your Android devices, which of course leads to the wealth of applications on the Android Market. I often hear from the iPhone users that unlike the iPhone App store, not every Android app is a worth downloading. Due to this reason you may have found yourself installing and quickly removing a number of apps from your phone, hoping to find those apps that are truly useful.
Like the iPhone and Blackberry smartphones, users of Google Android phones are able to access a marketplace to download applications, or “apps,” to increase the functionally of the smartphone. However, with the growing number of both free and paid, and multiple apps for similar purposes, it is hard to determine which ones are truly useful. This is a list of apps that I personally use on a daily basis.
Seesmic
Seesmic now offers the Twitter client you’ve been waiting for! A powerful feature-rich application that’s simple and easy to use. Share photos on Twitter, post videos to YouTube, Search on Twitter and get notifications for new messages! With Seesmic, you can save important messages and updates by storing them to Evernote. You can share updates by email and upload photos to the most popular photo upload service of your choice. You can also add your location to your updates, and see them on a map.
FourSquare
Foursquare helps you find new ways to explore your city. See where your friends are, learn about the places they frequent and unlock rewards as you travel. Foursquare is primarily for letting your friends know where you are and figuring out where they are. Secondarily, it’s for collecting points, prize “badges,” and eventually, coupons, for going about your everyday business. Not bad at all.
TV.com
TV.com brings personal TV to your phone on WiFi and cellular networks. Access the videos you want anywhere you go including full episodes…and it’s free! Get video from CBS, The CW, CNET, ET, Showtime, CBS News, CBS Sports and much more! Watch your favorite shows anywhere, anytime on TV.com. TV.com is an Android app that brings personal TV to your Android phone. Now you can access videos from the shows you care about on the go! There are no subscription fees and everything this app offers is free. This app is great when you find yourself waiting to kill time.
Documents To Go
Documents to Go really makes accessing your documents super easy. Once you open up the application, you’re presented with 4 simple icons: Word To Go, for your word processing needs, Sheet to Go, which handles spreadsheets, Slideshow to go, for presentations, and PDF to go, which as the name says, accesses PDFs.
The bad news is that this type of app typically means work. Face it, if your going to be loading up productivity apps then in most cases this means so type of work.
Evernote
Evernote turns your Android phone into an extension of your brain.
This award-winning app lets you remember and recall anything that happens in your life. From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, put everything into Evernote and watch as it all instantly synchronizes from your phone to the Web to your PC. Evernote for Android comes equipped with native note browsing, which means that you can easily browse and search through all of your notes. Thanks to Evernote’s synchronization features, all the notes you make in the desktop or web versions of Evernote are instantly accessible from your Android phone—and vice versa.
WeatherBug
WeatherBug is a free, ad-supported weather app providing users access to the largest network of professional weather stations. Get current conditions, forecasts, maps, severe weather alerts and much more! Well what is there to say here. We all need to know what the weather forecast is. what makes this weather application unique is that it will integrate itself with Google Maps so that users can chose to see temperatures and radar, through the use of multiple layers. This integration with Google Maps, which has street level accurate maps, will allow users to pinpoint the exact location of weather patterns. In the event of severe weather patterns, the application will send an automatic warning to the user. The app will also allow users to view local forecasts, and forecasts for areas that the user can determine on a customizable home screen.
TripIt
TripIt Travel Organizer puts all your travel plans right on your Android no matter where your travel was booked! TripIt for Android is a free travel app that keeps your TripIt itineraries at the ready. Get instant access to all the trip planning information you might need while you’re traveling, even when you can’t connect to the Internet.
- Forward travel confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com to build a trip itinerary
- Access all of your travel info from your Android any time with our free app
Congress
Congress is an open-source community of developers and designers aimed at opening up government to make it more transparent, which is aimed at getting Android users more involved in government. This app empowers you in a way that you feel like you are connected to your local congresswomen and congressmen by finding out where they are and also being able to contact them. You can also see what they are tweeting. Great way to keep tabs on the elected officials.
DoggCatcher
Doggcatcher manages your podcasts and RSS/news feeds with the most highly rated Podcatcher in the Market. One of the nicer features of DoggCatcher is its usage of notifications. It will alert you to new podcasts downloaded, errors in downloads, etc…so you can do other things while you’re downloading your podcast. I love the fact that I can configure the setting to only performed downloads only when connected via WiFi and while charging. This is a great app and while it is not free it is worth the cost.
EStrongs File Explorer
EStrongs File Explorer is a local & network file manager. It provides a file explorer for both local phone and one’s remote computer. The user can view the files in his/her phone and in the computer’s shared folder. Transfer and operate files (multi-select, copy, cut, paste, delete, rename, view property) freely between them (one can add all his/her computers on the network into the list, so that they could be managed by the phone easily). The user can play audio and video use inside or chosen player, browse the images, view text, and search files, even can play remote stream media.
There you have it. While I have a number of other applications installed on my device these are my top ten choices. What apps do you use?
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[...] third link is to a list of the Ten Must Have Android Applications. I am an iPhone user myself but it is good to see such a great list of apps that includes Evernote [...]
I like the list. One question/change: you have EStrongs File Explorer. I happen to use Astro file explorer. I personally don’t have a preference. I think it showed up on a gizmodo, or other “must have” list. Have you tried it? If so, any thoughts about the two?
Also, I would add Dropbox. That one is great!
I prefer EStrongs File Explorer since it supports bluetooth, LAN, and FTP as well as application, process, and file management. This product has a number of features that Astro does not and EStrongs has done a wonderful job with this app. The key difference that I see between EStrongs File Manager and Astro File Explorer is what I have indicated earlier in this response. I also have used both and each work very well in my opinion however, since I had to choose between the two, I went with EStrongs due the fact I can share data with others easily.
As far as Dropbox is concerned, I had not heard of it until now. It does look very interesting and I am going to have to look at it much closer.
How can you include evernote? Its lack of offline note viewing makes it unusable a lot of the time
The answer is very simple. It works well in my case and the subject of offline viewing is not a show stopper in my opinion. In fact more and more of my life is digital as is the majority of population therefore “offline” is typically a bottleneck from my point of view. I cannot speak to others, but in my cause the Android device gives me a constant connection and therefore I am plugged in no matter where I am.