Top Android apps you can't live without [2010]

By Andrew Lyle
in Hardware Hangout

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Grand Master

Nagisan

Posted
Posted

What the hell is Swype? I tried looking for it on the Marketplace but it's not there (Telstra HTC Desire) :/

Swype is still officially in Beta, and registration closed back in June. Swype comes standard though on the Droid X and a few other newer phones. There may be ways of getting Swype on other phones, but your on your own if you wish to go that route.

http://swypeinc.com/

In short though, it is a text input method that allows you to put your finger on the screen, then slide your finger to each letter in a word to type in words, instead of pressing each word one-by-one. You get one continuous swipe for each word, hence the name Swype. Once you get use to it, it is MUCH faster than most other input methods (unless you text 200 times a day and could do so blindfolded, then Swype might seem slower....but with enough time it would probably be about the same speed).

Looks awesome, got it doing what I want except one thing. It can't turn on or off Mobile service (3G)?

The bad thing about Timeriffic is its only time-based and not location based like Local or Tasker. For me personally, its only useful for disabling the volume at night so my phone doesn't wake me up. Probably the best way to disable 3G with it would be to enable Airplane Mode, it essentially disables all broadcasting features of the phone (if I understand it right, thats 3G, wifi, bluetooth, etc).

Also, if you want to be geeky, Binary Clock Widget is awesome. Of course, you have to know (or learn if you do not know) how to read binary clocks, but once you learn it well enough you will be the only person in the room able to read your clock widget. :p

Grand Master

+longgonebn Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

Swype is still officially in Beta, and registration closed back in June. Swype comes standard though on the Droid X and a few other newer phones. There may be ways of getting Swype on other phones, but your on your own if you wish to go that route.

http://swypeinc.com/

In short though, it is a text input method that allows you to put your finger on the screen, then slide your finger to each letter in a word to type in words, instead of pressing each word one-by-one. You get one continuous swipe for each word, hence the name Swype. Once you get use to it, it is MUCH faster than most other input methods (unless you text 200 times a day and could do so blindfolded, then Swype might seem slower....but with enough time it would probably be about the same speed).

The bad thing about Timeriffic is its only time-based and not location based like Local or Tasker. For me personally, its only useful for disabling the volume at night so my phone doesn't wake me up. Probably the best way to disable 3G with it would be to enable Airplane Mode, it essentially disables all broadcasting features of the phone (if I understand it right, thats 3G, wifi, bluetooth, etc).

Also, if you want to be geeky, Binary Clock Widget is awesome. Of course, you have to know (or learn if you do not know) how to read binary clocks, but once you learn it well enough you will be the only person in the room able to read your clock widget. :p

I was thinking about Airplane mode, but there are times where I want Wifi On but 3G off.

Grand Master

Xerxes

Posted
Posted

Swype is still officially in Beta, and registration closed back in June. Swype comes standard though on the Droid X and a few other newer phones. There may be ways of getting Swype on other phones, but your on your own if you wish to go that route.

http://swypeinc.com/

In short though, it is a text input method that allows you to put your finger on the screen, then slide your finger to each letter in a word to type in words, instead of pressing each word one-by-one. You get one continuous swipe for each word, hence the name Swype. Once you get use to it, it is MUCH faster than most other input methods (unless you text 200 times a day and could do so blindfolded, then Swype might seem slower....but with enough time it would probably be about the same speed).

< snip >

Cool, thanks for that :)

Grand Master

LiquidSolstice

Posted
Posted

I tried my hardest to use K-9 Mail. My issue with it is that it appears to be POP, since it has to download each time I want to open a message, and there is no threading at all. Currently, GMail handles all of this for me, so I don't think I can switch.

Grand Master

Nagisan

Posted
Posted

I tried my hardest to use K-9 Mail. My issue with it is that it appears to be POP, since it has to download each time I want to open a message, and there is no threading at all. Currently, GMail handles all of this for me, so I don't think I can switch.

You misconfigured it when you added your gmail account. I added my gmail account with automatic settings (as opposed to the manual settings option) and it defaulted to imap. At the time I was not happen with this as I like to only truly delete emails through gmail.com just in case I accidentally delete something from the messages I have, but I have adjusted my email methods and grown to actually like it, only deleting messages from my phone that I am okay with getting rid of for good.

I am not sure about threading, as I do not know what the term means email-wise to begin with, but I know for a fact K-9 defaults to imap for gmail accounts, so its something you did that caused it to revert to pop.

Grand Master

LiquidSolstice

Posted
Posted

You misconfigured it when you added your gmail account. I added my gmail account with automatic settings (as opposed to the manual settings option) and it defaulted to imap. At the time I was not happen with this as I like to only truly delete emails through gmail.com just in case I accidentally delete something from the messages I have, but I have adjusted my email methods and grown to actually like it, only deleting messages from my phone that I am okay with getting rid of for good.

I am not sure about threading, as I do not know what the term means email-wise to begin with, but I know for a fact K-9 defaults to imap for gmail accounts, so its something you did that caused it to revert to pop.

Hmm. I used the automatic settings, I'm going by the fact that some messages had to "download".

When I say threaded messages, I mean the way that Gmail handles multiple messages with the same subject topic. I use my Gmail as a central notfiation hub as well as email, so for this thread, I have all the Top Android apps you can't live without reply notifcations grouped together so that I don't have a flood of 12 seperate messages, only one message that lists all the replies as just that, replies.

K-9 doesn't do this, it makes each message separate, which I don't want, and so far, the only email client for Android that actually handles this properly is, obviously, Gmail itself.

Grand Master

SMELTN

Posted
Posted

LauncherPro Plus with Sense UI + Fancy Widget. All the awesome Sense apps, none of the Sense lag.

Do you mean the real Sense UI as you have an HTC phone? Or are you downloading a Sense UI skin for Launcher Pro?

Grand Master

Singh400

Posted
Posted
Looks awesome, got it doing what I want except one thing. It can't turn on or off Mobile service (3G)?
Use APNdroid for that. Timeriffic and APNdroid will work together you can set 3G to be turned off in Timeriffic, but for the actual action done by APNdroid.
The bad thing about Timeriffic is its only time-based and not location based like Local or Tasker. For me personally, its only useful for disabling the volume at night so my phone doesn't wake me up. Probably the best way to disable 3G with it would be to enable Airplane Mode, it essentially disables all broadcasting features of the phone (if I understand it right, thats 3G, wifi, bluetooth, etc).
I personally prefer Timeriffc, as my weekday routine hardly ever changes, and it is great for auto-managing my phone. Also, worth noting that enabling Airplane Mode will also disable the radio in your phone. So you won't be able to make/receive/send phonecalls/txts.
I was thinking about Airplane mode, but there are times where I want Wifi On but 3G off.
WiFi takes precedent over 3G. So if your phone detects that there is a WiFi connection that it can connect to, and 3G is currently switched on. It'll will automatically switch off 3G and connect to WiFi.
Grand Master

+longgonebn Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

Use APNdroid for that. Timeriffic and APNdroid will work together you can set 3G to be turned off in Timeriffic, but for the actual action done by APNdroid.

I personally prefer Timeriffc, as my weekday routine hardly ever changes, and it is great for auto-managing my phone. Also, worth noting that enabling Airplane Mode will also disable the radio in your phone. So you won't be able to make/receive/send phonecalls/txts.

WiFi takes precedent over 3G. So if your phone detects that there is a WiFi connection that it can connect to, and 3G is currently switched on. It'll will automatically switch off 3G and connect to WiFi.

Awesomeness, thanks :)

Grand Master

LiquidSolstice

Posted
Posted

Do you mean the real Sense UI as you have an HTC phone? Or are you downloading a Sense UI skin for Launcher Pro?

See, the issue for me is that I love the Sense Apps and the Sense skin, but have no real need for the Sense Widgets. Therefore, I use LauncherPro + with Fancy Widget (because I love the clock so much). Therefore I get the best of both worlds; the refinement and beauty of Sense, and the incredible speed and lightweight opperation of LauncherPro.

I've got the CDMA Sprint Hero, with RegawMOD. (rooted. I would love to move up to Froyo, which is out for my phone, but Sense UI has not been ported over for Froyo. Unfortunately for me, the actual apps (clock/messaging/calender etc) are not open source and cannot run on Froyo the way they are.

It's kind of confusing to explain, but I'm happy with where I'm at.

Grand Master

AJerman

Posted
Posted

Yeah, doubleTwist plays local content on the phone which is what I want. I don't need to carry all my music, I just copy across a random selection of music to my phone and change it now and then, works for me and keeps the space usage down (Y) although I mainly use my iPod touch though :p but still use my Desire for occasional use too.

Subsonic is better than HomePipe anyway if you want something to stream your music. 28,000 songs on my Captivate! :)

Well, let me list some apps I suppose.

AppBrain of course, but I may switch to just TiBackup instead. It kind of duplicates the functionality and does an even better job if you're rooted.

Dropbox needs no explanation.

WordFeud is my favorite spare time game.

Jewels is my other favorite spare time game.

Lookout is a an absolute requirement for me.

LauncherPro Plus is my launcher of choice.

MiniInfo is a nice system info widget that I originally used just to see the battery percentage, but it's gotten more useful with recent updates.

Battery Indicator has kind of taken over the battery percentage role for me though.

Beautiful Widgets are beautiful widgets.

Subsonic, as mentioned above, is a great media streamer from your home computer. Requires a minimum €10 donation for app use past 30 days, but it's probably worth it.

Last.fm, Slacker, and Pandora are necessities for feeding my music hunger. I use all of them and don't really have a preference.

DoubleTwist is my music player of choice at the moment. It also feeds to Simple Last.fm Scrobbler unlike the stock Samsung music player.

Astro for file management.

Google Voice for voicemail.

TiKL is an interesting push to talk app. It seems to do a good enough job, but sometimes it's hard to get audio to come through clean. I expect it to only get better though.

That looks like about all I really need to mention from my AppBrain list.

Collaborator

kiwi89

Posted
Posted

1. GameBoid - priceless if you like playing gameboy advanced games. Even better if you have a phone with a physical keyboard

2. Barcode scanner - handy every now and again

3. Facebook - self explanatory

4. Jewls - bejewled type game, really fun

5. CPU usage

6. Boxee remote - very handy if you use boxee

7. overclock widget - great for overclocking + seeing what clock your cpu is at

8. Wordfued - great game to waste some time on

Grand Master

Teebor

Posted
Posted

This thread is great for tips and apps, havin just got an Android phone I'm following this thread with much interest at the moment.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed, and if I find anything truly great I've not seen on here I will post it up

Grand Master

SMELTN

Posted
Posted

TiKL is an interesting push to talk app. It seems to do a good enough job, but sometimes it's hard to get audio to come through clean. I expect it to only get better though.

Its funny there are about 10 of us at work that have Android devices, and we all use TiKL to talk to each other. I agree its like a free version of Nextel Push-to-talk, and while it does work, it is not perfect yet, but I see it only getting better.

Explorer

footballmad909

Posted
Posted

Its funny there are about 10 of us at work that have Android devices, and we all use TiKL to talk to each other. I agree its like a free version of Nextel Push-to-talk, and while it does work, it is not perfect yet, but I see it only getting better.

I can't find this anywhere in the market :(

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