Bubba Posted August 16, 2010 Share Posted August 16, 2010 Soo I got my HTC hero back from repairs with the new android system on it (i think 2.1) and i have to say it's miles better than when I bought it about 8 months ago. So I've been going around the app market in my spare time but with such a plethora making a decision on what's hot and what's not is kind of difficult. So as it seems there are a few android users on the forum I though we could start a thread about Utility: a) what's a great free appb) what's a great $$$ ap c) what are the benefits of the app, how is it used correctly (for example advanced task manager is great, but I don't know what stuff I can turn off etc. because I'm not a phone nerd) Multimedia: a), b) and c) Fun: a), b) and c) and further ideas are always welcome. So my must haves until now: 1. the google apps (maps and nav) - c is pretty clear here and has been convered in other threads b) advanced task manager - c i can't answer but its a good way to stop apps working in the background draining your phones capacites Other than that I can't really think of too many "must haves". peace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted August 16, 2010 Share Posted August 16, 2010 Utilities: - AppBrain - Free. It allows you to browse all of the apps in the Market from your computer. You can choose to install new apps or uninstall existing apps. The AppBrain app on your phone syncs with the website. App 2 SD - Free. Only useful for Android 2.2 users. Allows you to easily see which apps support being moved to the microSD card without having to go through the list one by one. Also allows you to move apps from the phone to the microSD card and vice versa. Evernote - Free. It allows you to create text based notes, audio notes, and picture notes. The notes are synced with an online account. File Manager - Free. Allows you to browse the contents of the microSD card and move, delete, copy etc. a bit like Windows Explorer. Installer - Free. Allows you to install non-market apps that come packaged as .apk files. NDrive - Cost depends on the maps. A really good sat-nav app. You get a 7 day free trial of the maps before you have to buy them. The UK and Ireland map is 30 Euros. One advantage of NDrive over the free Google sat-nav is that the map is downloaded in its entirety to your microSD card so it works even if you can't get a data connection and using it doesn't contribute to your monthly data usage. It reminds me of using a TomTom sat-nav. There's alternate voices you can download for free, and you can get speed camera alerts (also free). WiFi Analyzer - Free. A pretty useful app for computer nerds that gives you various data on any wireless networks that are in range. Amongst other things, it shows you which wireless channels the networks are on, so if there's overlap between your network and your neighbours' you can switch yours over to a different channel. Google Search - Free. On some phones as standard. Allows you to perform various searches, including searches of local businesses. If I type in "coffee" for example, it'll give me a list of coffee shops that are near to me, along with the usual web results. Swype - Free (non-market). Keyboard replacement that speeds up the rate you can type. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it's definitely faster than using the standard keyboard. Multimedia: - Video Player - Free. All this does is give you a text-based list of all of the videos stored on your phone (or microSD card). Clicking on one plays the vid. A long press gives you more options. It's useful, solely because the standard Video app displays the videos either using a coverflow interface or as a video wall, but it doesn't actually display the file names - it just shows thumbnails. IMDb - Free. Allows you to browse the IMDb site, but it's designed for browsing via a phone so it's nicer to use than the standard website via the browser. Cubed - Free. A music player with a cool cube interface. Hard to find in the Market because they've used ³ as the name. MixZing - Free and paid for ($6.99). Another very good music app that's worth a look if you want something to replace the standard player. Last.fm - Free. Custom streaming radio. Also scrobbles any MP3s you play on the phone, so it'll add those artists/songs to your library. Gmote - Free. You install the app on your phone and install the server part on your PC. Gmote then works as a remote control for the audio/video files on your PC. It also allows you to stream music from your PC to the phone. Shazam - Free and paid for version (£2.99). Identifies music for you via audio. It also tags each search you make and allows you to view artist information, discographies, search for YouTube vids of the songs you've tagged etc. Kindle - Free. eBook reader app that gives you access to the Kindle store. There's some free books on there too. TV Guide UK Pro - £2.50. TV guide app that covers all of the channels and allows you to set favourites. If you've got a Sky+ box you can use this app to set recordings while you're away from home which is pretty nifty. There's also a free version of the app that's ad-supported and doesn't have the Sky+ feature. RockPlayer - A multimedia player that supports formats such as DivX and MKV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppelkorn Posted August 16, 2010 Share Posted August 16, 2010 What Steve said... Nice to see a convert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d00ban Posted August 16, 2010 Share Posted August 16, 2010 Steve works for google as an android salesman if you didnt know already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted August 16, 2010 Share Posted August 16, 2010 Haha. The commission would be shit, considering Android is free and open source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubba Posted August 17, 2010 Author Share Posted August 17, 2010 jeez steve. that was one hell of a post and most definitely seems as if you were working for them ) I'll most definitely have to check most of the stuff you've mentioned. My main limitaiton is that I use a mac as a laptop, hence the managing of my files etc. is all done on the phone. in all honesty I would still love to use and have an iphone, but that's then also because it would sync perfectly with my mac. the htc hero was a free phone with my contract extension and with the new software on it (btw how do i check what version is on my phone?) it seems to be holding up quite well. as I said in the beginning it was absolute shite. after about a week or two it started crashing all the time. thanks again for your input steve. do you use any of the emulators for gaming? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kut_class Posted November 10, 2010 Share Posted November 10, 2010 got myself a wildfire last week, taking a bit of getting used to but found a few good apps ES File Explorer - File manager for the SD, but also does WIFI networked computers , has bit in streaming for music, download for media. also got connection for ftp if your into that kinda thing. pretty good ZXing Barcode scanner - pretty good fun bar code scanner , download it and try scanning the barcode i made below ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 Not a "must have" by any means, but I really like the Beautiful Widgets app. Amongst other things, it gives you a bunch of really nice skinnable weather and clock widgets with animations. Here's the one I'm using on my main home screen: - http://i.imgur.com/e5Isa.png Much like with HTC Sense, clicking on the time takes you to the alarms section and clicking on the weather takes you to a detailed forecast. It's on sale for 89p in the Android Market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 WiFi File Explorer. There's a free and paid for version. I don't know what the difference is, as the paid for version was only 69p so I went straight for that. It allows you to browse the contents of your phone's microSD card via the web browser on a computer as long as the computer is on the same Wi-Fi network. You can do all of the stuff you'd do with Windows Explorer on a PC - delete files, download files, upload files, create directories, rename files etc. and of course it's all done wirelessly. It's really handy cos it saves you having to connect your phone up with a USB cable if you want to put some new tunes on there, or copy a photo/video over to your PC. You can password protect the login to make it secure and it's really easy to use - you just start the app, then enter a particular address into your web browser. Remote for iTunes. It works with iTunes and MediaMonkey and does what you would expect - works as a remote control. The UI is really nice and it pulls in metadata (including album art) from the tags of your files on your computer. It's not free, but it's pretty cheap (about £1.30 I think). MPC/VLC Remote. Another remote, but this time for Media Player Classic/VLC Media Player. It allows you to browse the contents of your hard drive for files and has all of the controls you need for MPC/VLC. This one is free and the only time it displays an ad is when you go into the options screen (which you only need to do once to set it up really). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppelkorn Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 WiFi File Explorer. There's a free and paid for version. I don't know what the difference is, as the paid for version was only 69p so I went straight for that. It allows you to browse the contents of your phone's microSD card via the web browser on a computer as long as the computer is on the same Wi-Fi network. You can do all of the stuff you'd do with Windows Explorer on a PC - delete files, download files, upload files, create directories, rename files etc. and of course it's all done wirelessly. It's really handy cos it saves you having to connect your phone up with a USB cable if you want to put some new tunes on there, or copy a photo/video over to your PC. You can password protect the login to make it secure and it's really easy to use - you just start the app, then enter a particular address into your web browser. YES! This is what I've been after forever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kut_class Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 ^^ i had something like that, thought it was gonna be a game changer but then wifi takes ages to transfer files compared to just pluging in via usb. Let us know if its any good .. My phone was so full of shit that it crashed and i had to factory reset it. There was an unbelievable improvement in speed - that quite possibly saved it's life, since i was a bout to smash it to pieces for being impossibly shit. I've been pretty selective about what i put on it since .... Dropbox - pretty useful cloud storage. You download the client for you PC, drag files into the online storage, pick up from your phone when ever. Found this pretty useful when i've been in a rush to go somewhere and take a film or music and don;t quite have the time to wait for it to transfer, i drag the file into the drop box , head to where eva, download and share. GReader - Its the google RSS feeds on your phone. If you got chrome and a gmail , setting up the RSS is a piece of pish, it will sync and can store articles offline. Find it pretty useful on the train when i forget to bring something to read. apprently the latest version can do podcasts, but not had a play yet. Tapatalk - for cruising DV. Timeriffic - you can schedule basic tasks like ring tone volume , wi fi on off ... basicly flicks between work mode ( phone slient , wifi off, dim screen) and home mode, until i got this my phone mostly stay on silent and i missed so many calls... Soundcloud - basic soundcloud functionality really, pretty good for a bit of diggin on the go. Audiogalaxy - allows you to stream music from your PC to phone (and web site) over the web via a pc based client. Kinda good when i get bored of whats on my phone or really wanna hear a song that i hadn;t transferred. to be fair , rarely gets used and does use up precious Mb's if your on a fixed amount contract. Life is crime - incredibly sad location enabled mmog thats like crack to give up. If you like jabbing buttons, being the (virtual) kingpin of your area, and leveling up you might wanna give it a go .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 I don't find transferring files via Wi-Fi to be any slower than transferring them via USB. The bottleneck is the speed of the memory card itself, even with the class 10 card that I'm using. YMMV though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 TuneIn Radio - This is a great Internet radio app. You can browse in the following categories: - Local radioRecommended (based on things you've already listened to)MusicNewsSportsTalkBy locationBy languagePodcasts Then each of those categories is broken down into sub-categories, so genres for music, for example. You can also do a text-based search. You can set bookmarks for stations or individual songs. You can shake the phone to switch to a different station that's similar to the one you were listening to. You can pause/resume live radio for up to 30 minutes. You can switch between different quality streams if your connection is slow. It has a widget that gives you basic player controls which you can tap to open the app. The basic app (that does all of the above) is free. There's a pro version that costs about 70p which adds recording. Keep Safe - This is an app that lets you password protect photos and videos with a PIN. Aside from the obvious use of hiding your porn collection, this is handy if you have apps on your phone that use images that show up unwanted in your gallery app as you can password protect those and then they'll no longer show up. It's free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted January 8, 2012 Share Posted January 8, 2012 Soundcloud - basic soundcloud functionality really, pretty good for a bit of diggin on the go. I really like this app. I like that it sends you notifications when people comment on your mixes/tracks or add them to their favourites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vekked Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 mmm, just picked up a galaxy nexus after my lg finally bit the dust for good, gonna make some use of this thrad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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