Must-have Android apps

Flashlight
Handcent SMS
GasBuddy
EasyTether (or PDAnet)

 

Games:

• Angry Birds
• NinJump
• Scrambled Net
• WordzUp
• Speedx 3D
• Air Control Lite
• Plants vs Zombies
• Cut The Rope
• Dragon, Fly
• Shot 2 (the most frustrating puzzle game I've ever come across)
• Tank Hero
• Canabalt (ported from iPhone)

Apps:

• Onavo Lite
• Barcode Scanner
• Shazam & Soundhound (one will sometimes pickup songs the other one doesn't)
• WhatsApp
• Opera & Dolphin Browser
• VCE Mobile (for taking tests)

Wow, when listed like that it looks a lot more than I expected it to be.

 

It's actually not even that bad, pretty much all phones nowadays will have a one click application that lets you root your phone by just plugging it into the computer and clicking "ROOT" and unrooting is just as simple. It's also pretty much impossible to brick your phone, fixing it is as simple as holding a few buttons to get to the Recovery Console and try again or in the worst case scenario reflashing everything from the computer.

Except for the first generation or so I haven't heard of any android phones that can be genuinely bricked beyond the ability of the end user to fix with a simple reflash, since all android phones afaik can be put into a special "download" mode that lets you completely redo them from a computer.

 

can't believe nobody has mentioned NFL mobile.

For quick and dirty picture editing try Pixlr-o-Matic and for fun editing try PicsIn.

Groupon - no brainer there.

EasyTether beats the hell out of PDAnet

UrbanSpoon- Foodies beware of addiction.

Poynt-- keeps you up to date on shit goin down in your town.

Gtunes- better than crappy ringtones

JEFIT -- keeps you on your workout routine

I haven't rooted my phone yet. I'm not sure if I'm going to go ahead and root it, or buy a new phone. I'm looking at the Bionic, Samsung Charge and the iPhone 5. Since I haven't held an iPhone 5 yet, it's last on the list. The Charge is at the top of the list only bc I've always had better phones from samsung vs motorola.

 

You are asking for serious trouble if you use a one click method without knowing anything else, like how to access/operate recovery, complete backups, restore from a backup, etc..., especially if you get flash-happy with ROMs, like I do. It also helps to know how to use ADB (Android Debug Bridge) to help you get out of really sticky situations, like when you can't access recovery and need to push a backup from your PC to your phone.

These things are easy to learn, however, and can be found in just about any Android developer forum.

 

I just can't muster the strength of language to call it serious trouble with how trivially simple recovering from even a bootloop is. I bungled my phone into a paperweight with the stock recovery and even then all I did was just put the phone in download mode and basically click "next" a few times after plugging it into a computer. When that's the worst case scenario, and the alternative is just going back to recovery and clicking "install update zip" for another try I find it hard to call it more than an annoyance.

 

I can't believe NOBODY has mentioned SWYPE. This keyboard kicks so much ass.

 

My latest phone upgrade was enough to actually browse the web but not use any of these apps. I logged onto TFP and found the tapatalk page quickly enough but my "much better than straighttalk but not Android" phone could not actually use it as I already knew. That touch screen thing where you can zoom in and out w/ your fingers must make a world of difference for such things.

 

I tried 8pen in an exercise to how easy it is to learn a new type of keyboard. It's not very easy, but I can now type well with one hand while not looking at my phone. I figure if it took me over 10 years to get good at QWERTY, a few months on something new means it's a decent idea.

 

CJ2112 and MSD, I can see that SWYPE can be really helpful but if your language isn't English then it's usability is highly affected by how well your language is supported.

 

I tried it a few times and haven't been able to make the change on a long term basis... my fingers are too well programmed to use my default keyboard which makes switching extra hard. Next time I get a new phone, I plan on trying to switch to swype as my brain will be getting used to a new device as well.

 

I'm on a custom rom with SWYPE and I've found it to be a massive step up from the stock keyboard. My only real beef with it is that there's no "Just Type It" option so I wind up tapping a lot of things out when it decides that GPS Status must be Gustavus.

I've also got Swiftkey which is a pretty standard keyboard but specializes in word prediction. After you let it learn for a bit it's so accurate that it gets a little spooky around the time you go through half a text message without using the keyboard. I stopped using that one though because when I used the hardware keyboard it would lag so badly that I'd have to stop and wait about 10 seconds for the text to catch up.

 

I used to love Tasker when I had it during the beta, but I think the $6.50 price is a little too much. I think it is worth about $3 and hope to see it on sale sometime.

 

Drag race. Awesome free car gaMe

Sent from my HTC Evo using Tapatalk

 

Also.. Wolfram Alpha.

Sent from my HTC Evo using Tapatalk

 

Swype kicks ass.

Many people seem to like BeyondPOD for podcasts, but I haven't used it enough to form an opinion; and it also is not free.

 

I know a Cayvmann that just got an Atrix 2... Now for the apps

 

I've found that Google Listen is good enough for the 5 podcasts I listen to, but if you subscribe to a lot I could see it being worth the money to pay for something else.

 

PocketCasts is what I use for podcasts: http://www.pocketcasts.com/

Oh, and while I was a fan of ASTRO File Manager for a long time, I've since made the switch to ES File Explorer. It's more attractive and it also supports Dropbox and SugarSync integration.