Android essentials

Four months and a lot of playing into Android phone ownership, here's a list of the most useful apps I've found. Tools and toys to delight and entertain...

I've skipped the many (many, many) weather apps and the fun stuff like Google Sky, which is amazing once and then you'll only ever run it again to show off your phone. I'm going to save the games for another day too. These apps are less glamorous, but they're must-haves and they're all free!


Advanced Task Killer
Cleans up all the unwanted apps your phone is running in the background to speed it up and save battery. You choose the apps it's not allowed to kill.

Alarm Droid
Fantastic alarm scheduler that wakes you up with music, says hello and then reads you the weather forecast. Multiple alarms and only on the days you choose.

Appbrain App Market
Want to know about all the best apps as they come out? You need this. The Google Market just recommends the same apps forever.

Astro File manager
A file manager and a good one. Does what it's supposed to.

Box.net
Box.net online storage on your phone. I like box.net and I like my phone so it's a winner.

Camscanner
Never lose a note or a handout again. Brilliant

Dolphin Browser
Whatever internet browser your phone came with, this is better.

Google Earth
You know what this is already. It's very, very nearly as good on your phone.

Gallery Map
Photos you take on your phone get geotagged with the location where you took them, so of course you'll need them nicely plotted on a map! Why are there so few gallery apps on Android? The HTC standard gallery is functional but not very pretty.

Glympse
Send anybody you like (via phone or email) a link to a web page with a live updating map of exactly where you are. Works only for as long as you specify and then stops.

GPS Wifi
Turns your wireless on and off depending on where you are, to save battery. If you're out and about away from your broadband, the app turns it off.

Guardian Anywhere
Dowloads the Guardian newspaper every morning for you to read later. Or you could pay Rupert Murdoch for The Daily.

Journey Pro
Fantastic public transport journey planner. You should get Google Maps and Navigation too, but you knew that.

Maverick
A mapping tool that lets you flick between different providers' maps (Google, Microsoft etc.) and makes waypoints really nice and easy to store and share.

Picasa Tool
I kind of assumed Android would interface on its own with Google's photo storage. This fixes it.

Silent Time Lite
Puts your phone on silent at times you specify. No text message wake up calls at 4am.

Soccer Scores
Best footie scores and league tables app I've found.

Springpad
Notes , to-do lists and much more. If they add handwriting recognition for uploads then it will be perfect.

Vlingo
You need it for the in-car mode speech recognition. It's genius.

Volume Ace Free
Why is it so complicated to put an Android phone on silent? Now it isn't.


There you go, now you can save loads of searching time, install those apps and spend the rest of the evening playing Angry Birds.

Misleading Statistics: B+, Good Effort

American app tracking company Flurry has realeased some data showing that iPhone apps in the US are now as big as prime time TV shows.

In a blog post, Peter Farago of Flurry claims that "Social games on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices are competing for television viewers". Personally, I doubt it; in my experience they're either used with the TV on at the same time, or at times when you couldn't watch TV anyway - like on the train.

Still, they might be competing and they might not. The data doesn't tell us either way though. Let's have a look.



Wow, that's impressive! Social games on the iPhone are bigger than Sunday Night Football on NBC!

Before you dump TV from your plan, what's the catch?

• Nothing about this chart suggests that the iPhone is competing with TV. Even if the data is as stark as represented here (which I don't think it is), there's nothing to say TV viewers are switching off and playing iPhone games instead.
  
  
• All the iPhone apps aggregated into one bar and all the TV programmes separated out? Now come on chaps, that's not really a fair fight is it?
  
  
• The Flurry blog post talks about minutes of use, penetration and frequency but that's not what's on the chart, which shows number of viewers divided by number of sessions.
  That's a cracking way to mask the fact that the TV shows don't have exactly the same audience every week, so their overall reach is higher than the chart suggests.
  
  When you add this point to the previous issue (that all the TV programmes are separated out) you're potentially vastly underestimating the overall reach of TV vs. apps.
  
  
• Those TV programmes are an hour long each. Flurry themselves claim people spend 22 minutes per day using iPhone apps.
  
  
• How attention grabbing is a TV ad vs. an in-game game ad...?
  
  
• ... and so how effective is a TV ad likely to be vs. an in-game ad?

Nice try, B+.