I recently lost my iphone while back country skiing. The economics of the iphone/att discount program made the economics of switching to Verizon/Android pencil out. So I got a Motorola Droid, and Danielle got the HTC Droid Eris, and we cancelled our ATT plans for $30 more than it would have cost to replace the iPhone.
First, the droid is everything the iPhone was, at least to me. The upside is that Android lets apps take over and access core services like sms and user interface and adds apps to things like share/upload options whenever they come up. Plus apps can run in the background. How novel. The downside is that there aren’t as many android apps as there are iPhone apps, but I don’t play the games, and most of the 6 pages of apps i had on my iPhone were either buggy or useless. There just aren’t that many iPhone apps (or Android apps) that I really need.
Below are the best Andorid apps I’ve used so far:
Twidroid:
A great twitter client. You can control background notifications, make it come on at startup, access multiple accounts, sync with a bit.ly account, and when tweeting you can select which account you want to send from when you send it rather than switching account views. It’s way better and faster than any of the iPhone Twitter apps i used. (twitteriffic, tweetdeck, tweetie).
The best thing is the background notifications. I have mine set to only update me when I get @replies. I have a custom ring applied so i can differentiate the notification from an SMS or email. The iPhone apps are a big step up from the SMS or web interface for Twitter, and the Android apps, with background notifications, are a huge step up from that.
Picsay Pro:
A great photo editing tool. Way better than the free Photoshop Mobile. You can adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, temperature, tint, brightness RGB, sharpness, smooth and bur as well as add a bunch of atrsy filters, crop, mask, add text, arrows and bubbles. One of the cool things about android is that when you click export from PicSay Pro (or any other app) you get all of the platform native options like sms, email, picasa, plus you get options for any installed apps to upload like Twidroid, or FlickrDroid.
FlickrDroid:
A great Flickr browsing and uploading app. This more than makes up for the fact that there is no Flickr app for android. The Flickr iPhone app was pretty useless anyway. FlickrDroid lets you upload photos. So far this is the best way to upload mobile photos to flickr I’ve found.
Sugarsync:
A free app that interfaces with your SugarSync online file backup service. I use SugarSync to back up my My Docs on my laptop and to sync a folder between my personal laptop and work laptop thus eliminating the need to ever carry around a thumb drive. The Android App lets you download, view and share any of your files. This comes in handy when you get a call from a client who needs a file and you can’t connect with or don’t have your laptop. Just find the file, share it and get back to skiing. The app also backs up all your mobile photos to a web folder as well.
Stitcher:
Stitcher is a free podcast player that lets you search for and play almost any podcast over the air. At first I thought I wanted to have all my podcasts downloaded, particularly my favorites, The Moth and This American Life. But after a few weeks of using Stitcher, I find in unnecessary for two reasons: 1) most of the podcasts i listen to i never listen to again and i listen to them in town where i get good wireless connection and 2) TAL and The Moth are both available on CD, and I don’t mind paying for it to support the programs.
Stitcher is better for podcasts than others like Google Listen and NPR News because it lets you load up a playlist and plat it through. It’s also the least buggy of the podcast apps I’ve found for podcast playback.
Google My Tracks:
I like to map and log my runs and rides. On the iPhone 3g i was using the MotionX GPS app, which was great wen it worked. It was always loosing signal, crashing and was really slow to startup and run. Plus you had to start your music before starting the app cause it wouldn’t run in the background.
My Tracks runs well, and the Droid seems to have a good signal reception, though I haven’t used it in any remote or mountainous areas yet. The cool thing is that when it comes time to share your track, you give it name, a type (run, ride, swim etc) and a description and it adds it to the Google My Map of your choice and creates a Google Doc Spreadsheet for that activity type.
I really like the functionality of this app and will really like being able to mess with the data it creates and stores in the spreadsheet.
SMS Popup:
The base SMS functionality of the Droid isn’t as good as the iPhone, except that messages go through more reliably on Verizon than ATT. SMS Popup displays incoming messages on the screen before the unlock screen allowing you to go straight to the message rather than unlocking the screen and clicking on messages. It is simple and works really well.
That’s it. I have other apps, but for the most part I can live without them. The Android, from what I’ve experienced so far, is definitely as capable a mini computer as the iPhone. And the Google Android OS allows app developers the tools to make far more functional and useful apps.
If you know of other useful Android App, please post a comment with a link!
-M
Ditto what Ryan said, except saying it “works” might be a stretch.
I <3 my Android.
A couple I didn’t see on your list that I love:
1.) i Music — download any MP3 to your phone… for free. They say it’s legal. I’m not arguing….
2.) TV-Guide — I have AT&T uverse, and the program guide does fine for most things, but it’s handy to be able to have a TV Guide for anywhere you go. We used this in TN over new year’s to see what was on TV for my daughter, in Sandusky for a conference, etc. Generally, it’s nice for anywhere that I don’t have the comfort of my home DVR
3.) 3banana — this is a really nice note-taking app that allows you to take notes on your PC (snaptic.com) and sync the notes with your phone. Great for just about anything. I’ve found lots of uses for it.
4.) “You’ve got shopping” — this one’s pretty dang cool — you do some basic setup, and then you can send yourself an email shopping list that this application will suck into list format for you to quickly use at the grocery store (or where ever). Check off the items as you buy them, etc. It’s great for the “I’m on the way home… need me to get anything?” calls — my wife emails me the list, and I get a notification: “You’ve got shopping! You need to buy 21 items”. It’s all automatic based on a standard email. Sweet.
5.) Amazon.com — self-explanatory — I use amazon for tons of stuff / buy tons of stuff there. I’m an amazon prime member which is a fantastic deal. If you’re an avid amazoner, you may already have it. If not… might want to check it out. Barcode scanning / quick searching is handy. It’s nice to have the amazon reviews of products 1 or 2 clicks away. Also, the UI / usability is fantastic
6.) For sports, I like “Sports Tap” and “Live Scores”. Sports tap has great coverage of lots of sports, and, as the name says, Live Scores does a bit of a better job than sports tap with real-time game updates.
7.) AK Notepad — pretty nice (and basic) note-taking application (basically notepad for your phone). Good for quick notes… duh. Wasn’t sure why I’d need it when I downloaded it, but I’ve found uses for it over time.
8.) My Coupons — this is a feed of coupons you can use on all kinds of things. For example, I don’t know if you ever rent from Red Box DVD machines, but if not, check it out. They’re cheap ($1 / night) — and with this app, there are always a few promo codes available on your phone, so we’ve been getting new DVD releases from Red Box for free left and right. There are lots of other good coupons available, too — restaurants, retailers, etc. Can save you quite a bit of money.
9.) Backgrounds — you can probably guess what this is for. It’s god a lot of nice, pretty landscape pictures, cool underwater shots, some strange stuff, etc. Fun to always have a nice background for your phone just a few clicks away.
10.) ASTRO File manager — windows explorer for your phone. Useful in many ways.
11.) Movies (by Flixter) — awesome interface for checking out box office results, looking up what’s in theaters, what showtimes are at theaters near you for any movie, what’s coming out soon, what new DVD releases are coming, reading critical reviews, watching trailers, etc. Great app.
12.) PdaNet — free tethering / 3G connection sharing with your laptop. Pretty simple to set up, and cool. Really only a must-have if you “need” to have a high speed connection on your computer / laptop. Maybe just stick this one in the back of your mind in case some day comes and you need to get online..
13.) Shop Savvy — scan the barcode of any item in a store, it tells you the price of this item from various local and online retailers. Basically, you can make sure if you buy something at Walmart, you really ARE getting the best deal… or if you’re NOT, you know about it right then.
Thanks for the good recommendations above! I’m going to definitely check them out.
Phil
Thanks Phil. I like that shop savvy. I just have to remember to use it.
Astro File Manager looks useful to.
For movies I use Fandango, for notes I use Evernote which is the same as the iphone app. Don’t care about sports or TV…
-M
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