I'm not an iPhone guy. What's your favorite Android App?

[dawgfan]

Droid X and loving it. There's always another app that I haven't discovered. Which ones do you suggest?

[Mike4AU]

Moto Droid here.

Here are a few really good apps. My fav is Car Mode. I leave it invoked and all calls automatically go to the speaker phone (after you swipe to answer). That is especially helpful when driving. I don't have to touch my phone to talk.

Automatic Task Killer (saves battery life)
Photobucket, as you might imagine
Barcode Scanner
Shop Savvy
Bump
And lots of weather and news stuff.
Live Scores (great during FB season)

And then there are a lot of fun/silly apps....like Three Stooges, Looney Tunes, Air Horn, Transformers, Vomit Soundboard (what can I say, I am a kid at heart!).

What apps do you like?

[dawgfan]

Hey Mike, so far I've downloaded only free stuff such as:

The weather Channel
AppBrain
State Farm Pocket Agent
AudioManager
DroidLight
DataViz Documents to go
Layar
ESPN scorecenter
Bump
Evernote
Google Sky Map
Ringdroid
Just Compass
nook
My Collection
Shelves
ConvertPad
Tippy Tipper
KeePass
Google Goggles
Factbook
Key Ring
Shopper
Barcode Scanner
ShopSavvy
SMS Popup
SportsTap

[jephdood]

From what I've read, you shouldn't use task killers. Android is designed to deal with running apps, and TK's do more harm than good. Just in reading on various android forums anyway..

That said, things like Footprints, Goggles, and Shazam are kinda fun. Can't believe how often I'm using Navigation and Pandora/Slacker on my phone tho.

[dawgfan]

From what I've read, you shouldn't use task killers. Android is designed to deal with running apps, and TK's do more harm than good. Just in reading on various android forums anyway..

Agreed, check this out:

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html

[Mike4AU]

From what I've read, you shouldn't use task killers. Android is designed to deal with running apps, and TK's do more harm than good. Just in reading on various android forums anyway..

I dunno about that. One of the problems that most apps have is that they do not give one the ability to turn off the app after one finished with it. For example, on my PC, when I am thru with Excel, I exit out of the program. Many of the apps on the Droids just keep running (stay open), even though one has finished using the app. Screw that....eats up too much battery life.

The smartphones in general are notoriously bad on battery life. I'm doing good to get a full day out of just normal usage.

From what I can tell, the automatic task killer invokes when I turn my screen off, which I do throughout the day.

But I will quickly add that I am a neophyte when it comes to smart phones. If there is a better way to increase battery life, I'm all ears (well, since I'm online, I'm all eyes...).

[Sandbagger]

One that comes to mind is DealDroid, it run and updates, cheap and steap, Bonktown,brociety,chainlove,tramdock,Whiskey malitia,Slickdeals,thingfling,WOOT, and a few others

[mobileusa]

Buy a Seidio Innocell Battery...problem solved. My Evo lasts almost two days on one charge and I use it consistantly...

I dunno about that. One of the problems that most apps have is that they do not give one the ability to turn off the app after one finished with it. For example, on my PC, when I am thru with Excel, I exit out of the program. Many of the apps on the Droids just keep running (stay open), even though one has finished using the app. Screw that....eats up too much battery life.

The smartphones in general are notoriously bad on battery life. I'm doing good to get a full day out of just normal usage.

From what I can tell, the automatic task killer invokes when I turn my screen off, which I do throughout the day.

But I will quickly add that I am a neophyte when it comes to smart phones. If there is a better way to increase battery life, I'm all ears (well, since I'm online, I'm all eyes...).

[Sandbagger]

is that an extended larger battery that you cant use any regular cases with? or does it fit with the original back?

I have the evo and would love to get 1 full day out of mine ;(

Buy a Seidio Innocell Battery...problem solved. My Evo lasts almost two days on one charge and I use it consistantly...

[Jed M]

I have an ipod touch that I use mostly for my Sonos control, but admit to really liking how it works. However I am not an apple guy and my friend has an iphone and I can barely talk to him it drops our calls so often so I am definitely getting a droid phone (have windows mobile now, ugh), but would possibly consider getting a wifi ipad2 (whenever it comes out) and tether it to my android phone. I want to get the EVO because we have 4G in Kansas City or even the Epic, but the battery lives on these phones seem to make them really impractical. My contract with Att ends December 1st so I am hoping a miracle product is released by then but from what I have seen nothing yet. I will probably just get the EVO and deal with charging my phone every time I sit down.

I guess my question to you guys using the EVO, would you still do it a couple months from now or by then would you just hold out for the next latest and greatest? I guess I am just curious how satisfied everybody is with it.

[woofersus]

If you use any POP mail you'll quickly find out the included app sucks big time. Check out K-9 mail for a better experience.

A few others I like that I don't see listed here yet:

Handcent SMS
Google Voice
Google Translate
Google Shopper
Movies
MixZing Media Player
Paypal
Adobe Reader
White Pages
Yelowbook

[Sandbagger]

Tim

Is K-9 mail really that much better?? cant say I have had any real complaints with the regular mail client and I use it with 3 accounts?

what does it do so much better?

[Jason]

Lol...I was just thinking about starting an Android thread a few days ago.


Some of the charter members might've noticed I'm not on the boards as much...well it's because I'm spending a ton of time in the android development community. I'm not a computer "person" but for whatever reason I've really taken an interest in this platform. And last night I got my invitation from Google to participate in the App Inventor program:cool: (I'm working through the tutorials now...)

Anyway, I really don't use a ton of apps (some folks have like 200+), but here's some that I use regularly:

Astro-now I do use this one a lot. It's probably the best file browser on the market, and has some cool backup features, as well as a process manager (and that is correct, you really don't want a task killer ESPECIALLY if you're running 2.2) This is always the first thing I download.

Titanium Backup- This is for rooted phones only, but it backs up all my apps, AND settings....real handy when I'm switching between roms (already flashed 2 different roms today to test a couple framework files I modded before I sent them out)

Google Maps- This blows away anything I ever used on the iphone. And the newest 4.5 update that came out just this week makes it even better.

Voice Search- For me, I'm using it mostly in conjunction with maps, but with the new version they came out with a couple weeks ago, they really improved it from what it was. Here's the new video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGbYV...layer_embedded

Google Voice- y'all already know about that one

PicSay Pro- Pretty cool photo editing app, there's a free version as well just doesn't have as many features.

Gmail- This is done really well. Waaaay better than iphone.

There's more I could add, but many of them require you to be rooted. If anybody's interested in doing that I can help. It's pretty fun, and my phone screams now. I have no problems streaming live TV over 3G...with a few apps running in the background.



OK.....one more. :D I already pm'ed Ray and Jack about this, but now that I know there's some more android guys here I'll share.

NFL Mobile (this is a direct download link to my dropbox, put it on your sd card)

This is the Verizon app, but has been hacked to work without the vcast subscription. It does not require root access. However, it may or may not work over your 3G. I get mixed results with ATT. Always works on wifi though. The live channels are: NFL RedZone, NFL Network, NBC's Sunday Night Football, and NFL Network's Thursday Night Football live. Plus there's recorded video available. It's a super sweet app...but be careful how/where you share it. Someone posted the first hack on Twitter several months ago, and VZW changed the app. Hopefully the VZW secret police aren't watching here. No guarantees how long it will be online or if they'll close this one down, too.Also, I don't know how it will work for those already on verizon as far as billing, but for those on sprint/t-mobile/att, we're all good..

[woofersus]

Tim

Is K-9 mail really that much better?? cant say I have had any real complaints with the regular mail client and I use it with 3 accounts?

what does it do so much better?

Well I don't have much use for advanced features when emailing from my phone, although there is a slightly expanded feature set in K-9. The biggest thing for me was that the built-in mail app was unable to flag a message as having been downloaded already so it re-downloaded the same old emails over and over and over. Maybe it doesn't help that I'm an Outlook user and don't normally use the webmail interface for everything, but it was very frustrating for me. Maybe they've fixed that since then. I know there were some other complaints I had but I honestly can't remember most of them since I ditched that app pretty quick after I got my droid last December. Either way, android is perfect for gmail, but I found POP3 to be greatly lacking.

[Jason]

I haven't used a pop mail addy for quite some time or else I'd check myself, but I'm pretty sure you can have gmail fetch your pop mail. I'm not 100% sure of the interface.

...just checked it's called Fetcher and the account it's fetching must be POP3