mobile phone. For ages, it was either an Android or an iPhone and the Droid won when it came to price and flexibility (and me being a Google fanboy didn’t hurt either!). As soon as I took it home, and it was activated, I started browsing for the right free Android apps to put on it. This can take a while because the Android Market, which is the Google equivalent of the Apple iTunes store, has lots of good stuff. Granted not as much stuff as the Apple iTunes store, but it’s slowly getting there. So, just like a kid in a candy store, you are likely to start installing everything to see what it is all like.But in the long term, you can’t install everything you find (phone performance would take a serious hit if you installed the kitchen sink) so finally you have to scale back to the best, most essential apps.
To help all you fellow new Android users out, here’s the ones I personally consider to be keepers. After less than a week, I am still looking and refining my phone but the following are ones I will find really hard to get rid of. To find them, just go to the Android Market on your phone and search for them.
Meebo
As someone who makes his living online, being able to chat to my colleagues and other contacts is a must. Pidgin is my favourite IM app but until they make a mobile version of their software, Meebo seems to be the best option for multi-client instant messaging.An online account from the Meebo website doesn’t seem to be needed for this app. Just add your instant messaging ID’s and passwords and log in. You may be asked to confirm all your contacts again (it asked me to confirm 5 of my contacts who have been on my Pidgin IM list for over a year) and then you will see everyone in a neat vertical list.
If you are more of an AIM fan, check out the Android app Hi AIM. Yahoo Messenger fans can download Hi Yahoo, ICQ users have ICQLive (does anyone still use ICQ?) and Windows Live Messenger users can use Hi MSN Beta. But honestly, if you use more than one of these apps (and who doesn’t these days?) then Meebo is an easier tidier option.
Skype Lite
Another of my requirements, when buying the Android phone, was that it had to be able to run Skype. Not all mobiles can run the Skype Lite app (my partner bought a Palm Pre phone last week and then discovered that it doesn’t run Skype. Boy is she unhappy!).The Skype Lite app (as it name suggests) is a slimmed down bare-bones app that allows you to call your Skype contacts via your mobile (so very useful for national and international calls). You can also instant message your contacts.
But what Skype Lite will NOT do (at least for me here in Germany) is allow me to send SMS messages, which is rather inconvenient as I am a big SMS sender. You also can’t receive video.
Nevertheless Skype Lite is an extremely useful app to have on your mobile phone and absolutely essential if you need to make a national or international call (and you don’t want to pay your mobile company’s extortionate standard rates).
Twidroid
The next essential thing I needed on my phone was a good Twitter app. As someone who is really getting into the swing of twittering, I needed something other than visiting the mobile version of the site. I needed a proper app which would allow me to follow / unfollow people as well as do other things such as make changes to my Twitter profile. I found it in Twidroid.Twidroid allows you to do virtually everything you can do on the regular Twitter site, as well as give you a nice clean easy to navigate interface to read and respond to tweets. You can also read peoples profiles and follow / unfollow them.
If that wasn’t enough, you can also be notified on your Android desktop when new tweets have arrived (and you can choose what notification tone you want). But having this one is actually a battery drainer so I chose to switch it off. As well as a battery killer, it is also a productivity killer. I don’t want to be looking at my phone every 5 minutes reading the latest tweets. I can easily wait a couple of hours and then scroll through them all in one go.
I am not THAT much into Facebook but every now and then I like to visit the site and see what my friends are saying. Android has a nice Facebook app which, like the Twitter app, puts everything into a nice compact easy-to-read format.You can like / dislike entries, write on peoples walls, comment, upload photos, poke people, send friend and invite requests and much more.
One of the things I really like is that, to refresh the app, you just need to shake your phone! That’s right, find out who has just poked you by shaking the Droid.
Again you can be notified on the Android notification bar at the top when new updates come in (as well as get an unique sound to alert you). But once again, these features are battery drainers and if you have a battery which runs out after a day, then it would be best to switch off all the instant notifications.
Last.FM
The phone shouldn’t only be for work but also for play. It should be able to relax you when you’re feeling a bit stressed out. Until Android develops a back massage app, then Last.FM is the best app for you to close your eyes for 5 minutes and unwind.Just like the website, the Last.FM app allows you to
- Log into your account and listen to music.
- Choose a radio station (or start a new one),
- Say who you like listening to and the Last.FM app will find similar artists and play them.
- Like / dislike the currently playing song
- Skip to the next song
In the next post, we will discuss the next 5 free Android apps you should be putting on your Android phone. In the meantime, what do you think of these 5? Do you have these ones or do you prefer better free alternatives?
Looking through the Android Market, I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot of crap in there (busty bikini girls washing your Android screen with soap and water, while grinning insanely at you?) but there are also a lot of gems. Finding those gems can be really difficult, unless you know exactly what you are looking for. I have found things simply by thinking to myself “what would be useful to me? What do I need on a phone?”. Busty bikini girls are definately not on that list but the following items are.
So let’s start once again at looking at some of the things you should consider installing on your Droid.
PicSay
I have an excellent camera on my phone but nevertheless, some photos just don’t come out the way I want them to. In the absence of an official Photoshop app for the Android, PicSay is a suitable alternative in the meantime.As well as being able to alter the photo in terms of contrast, brightness and many more (see the screenshot to the left for examples), you can also add fun special effects such as word balloons, titles, graphics, color correction and highlighting. Just increase or decrease the desired special effect by running your finger over the bar at the bottom of the screen and see the photo being updated in real time.
PicSay then saves the altered photos in its own folder on your phone so if you ever need the original photo for whatever reason then it’s still there.
A great app and one that is definately needed if you use your phone camera a lot.
WikiMobile
OK, you could go to the mobile Wikipedia website but that is just a stripped down bare-bones version of the regular Wikipedia site. WikiMobile on the other hand is another version of Wikipedia which has some extra features I like when I am looking for some obscure fact while out on the road.Searching for a topic is as simple as inputting it into the search box. Entries are laid out on the screen nice and compactly, and are easy to read.
If you don’t know what you are looking for, try clicking “Random Article” to see….yes, you guessed it….a random article! Clicking it just now took me to the page for “naked imperialism” while clicking it again took me to the page about koala bears. You can also click the popular button to…do you need me to spell it all out? Nah, I guessed not. You can work out all by yourself what the “popular” button does.
With “My Bookmarks“, you can easily save WikiMobile entries to a bookmarks section for later reading. Just go to the entry you want to save, tap your menu and choose “add bookmark“. Now article research is made much easier and those visits to the doctor’s waiting room need not be boring ever again. Who needs to read a woman’s magazine when you can read about how to build a fractional rig on a boat?
Barcode Scanner
This one is limited in its usefulness but I included Barcode Scanner because I still like it and I love the looks I get in shops when I walk up to products and zap the bar code with my phone!Starting the app, you will get the red laser-like line across the middle of your screen. Just place the barcode completely within your screen with the red line through the middle. Hold it steady for 30 seconds or so and the barcode scanner will then give you the option to open a product search or a web search. Both options lead to Google so I recommend going with the web search.
The app is most successful with books as it takes you to the book on Google Books. I particularly like this part as I am often in bookshops, trying to figure out whether to buy a particular book or not. Now I can just get my phone out, scan the barcode and then quickly scan the relevant book reviews on Google Books. No more buying total stinkers.
Nightwatch
Nightwatch turns your Android phone into a glowing alarm clock. You will need to either lay the phone down on its side (the screen turns as you turn the phone) or you will need to buy/make a stand for it to sit on. But either way, this allows you to see the time in the dark and set your alarms effectively.The clock is very customisable :
- Choose from either an analog clock or a digital clock.
- Choose how you want the date to be shown.
- Choose 24 hour clock or am/pm.
- Choose how bright you want the screen.
- Choose how loud you want the volumes to be.
- Choose what colours you want the screen to be.
Process Monitor
This one is perhaps one of the most important ones of all and I don’t understand why Android doesn’t include this as a default function. Process Monitor is basically an app to mimic Windows’s Task Manager. You can see a list of all running apps with the ability to either kill the application (shut it down) or open it. To choose, just press down on the desired app and wait for the pop-up menu to show.One of the things you have to bear in mind about an Android phone is that the battery is not that great. If you use the internet and apps on it quite a lot, the battery will drain in less than a day. So you should always be looking for ways to decrease the pressure on the battery such as disabling needless taskbar notifications and killing unneeded apps. Since Android doesn’t have a similar default app, Process Monitor is definately needed. As well as showing all the currently running apps, PM also shows you the level of your battery and the amount of currently available memory.
So that concludes my ten recommended apps for the Google Android phone. In the next few articles, I will be looking at the games you should be installing on your Droid as well as the best websites to view on a mobile phone. While you are waiting for all that, let us know what you think about these 5 apps and whether you know of any better ones. I am always open to suggestions about how to improve and refine my phone!
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