Android Apps - lets get them all in one place...

[MD]

As I sit here twiddling my thumbs waiting for Drop it Hide it Lose it to deliver my shiny new HTC desire I've been having a read around about the apps and how the android selection isn't as good as the iFollow version.

So what apps are your faves? Where can we get them? Do they cost? Lets get them all in a big thread for what is clearly a market thats only going to grow and grow (especially if 2.2 is as good as everyone is saying!)

So what you got? What you love? What you hate?

[jackvdbuk]

shazam - tells you what song is playing
traintimes - times of all the trains in the UK
tube service - details of any closures, delays e.t.c

[Mblaster]

My Tracks - GPS route tracking + statistics (distance, height gain, max speed, etc).
Advanced Task Killer - Kills processes after you're done with the program to free memory and speed up your phone.

[Carlh]

Only got a few installed on mine at the moment.

Fring - MSN, Skype (inc voice calls over wifi) and other IM Clients
SyncMyPic - This is handy if you link your phone to your facebook account
Engadget - Handy for keeping upto date with some technology news, includes a good home page widget

[Stephen C]

This is a list of all the apps I use on my phone, enjoy

Abduction World Attack - Addictive jumpy type game thing
Beebplayer - iPlayer
Classic Simon - Retro game
Compass - A compass
CoPilot - GPS turn by turn navigation
Googlemaps
Google Sky Map - GPS map of the stars and planets, one of my fav apps, a must have
GPS Status - Status of GPS :3
Groovey Fish - Turns your phone into a small pond with fish
iLightr - Fun little app to turn your phone into a lighter
Jewels - Bejewelled type game
Labyrinth - Tilting game, ball and maze stylie
LED Scroller - Scrolls messages LED style
Magic Marker - Simple little drawing app in neon
My Tracks - Records routes and other info for upload to Googlemaps
Pew Pew! - Big red button that makes a "pew pew" noise ^^
Schottgunn - Turn your phone into a pump action shottie
Shazam - Music identifier
Shoot U! - Great physics based game
Shopper - Identifies games and others by cover art and searches best price
Space Physics - Another superb physics based game
Speed Test - Connection speed test from Speedtest.net
Stopwatch - Stopwatch with various functions
Survival Manual - Lots of usefull info including full pictures of edible plants etc
Schwartz Saber - Turn your phone into a light saber .. swo0sh!
Trimble Outdoors - GPS type navigation
Tube Downloader Plus - Downloads Youtube videos to your phone
Unit Converter - Every conversion you could think of and more
Wifi Analyzer - Great little app for identifying wifi networks, channels and other data
Wifi Tracker - Records and plots wifi networks onto a file for exporting to Googlemaps (very handy)

[AndyCr15]

I'm going to cheat. I posted quite a bit over here -

http://www.lanarchy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11553

Pics and descriptions of many a cool app

[format]

Alarm Clock Plus, very hand alarm clock app.

Has a cunning setting that, when enabled, means that the only way to turn off your alarm is to solve a maths problem. Difficulty setting can be varied too.

[Whiternoise]

Utilities
APNDroid - Battery Management
Advanced Task Killer - Self explanatory
3G Watchdog - Monitors 3G usage and auto-stops the service if your data hits 99% of quota (you can customise it to your dataplan)
Smart Alarm Clock - Nice app, but currently broken whilst Android can't access the accelerometer in sleep mode
Barcode Scanner - Awesome app, use it to download apps using their 2D barcodes (c.f. www.androidzoom.com)
Lookout - Antivirus (scans incoming files) and has a "find my phone" setting

General Apps
Google Maps + My Maps Editor
Google Goggles - nifty image based search
Google Sky Map - looks awesome but i haven't really checked it out properly yet
AroundMe - tells you what services are near you (ditch it for Places Directory)
Dictionary.com
Dolphin Browser - nice tabbed browser, better than the standard built in one
Last.fm
NewScientist
Shazam

I haven't looked at games much yet, the battery is a bit too tentative

[AndyCr15]

AroundMe - tells you what services are near you (ditch it for Places Directory)

To confirm, Places Directory is better? If so, why post AroundMe and not PD?

[format]

Utilities

Lookout - Antivirus (scans incoming files) and has a "find my phone" setting

I didn't know you could get a virus on a linux system, or am I being naive?

[Stephen C]

I didn't know you could get a virus on a linux system, or am I being naive?

It'll be a virus that hides itself till connected to a host and then infects the host computer rather than the handset itself.

[Whiternoise]

To confirm, Places Directory is better? If so, why post AroundMe and not PD?

Because that's what I have installed (both), but I'm going to get rid of AroundMe. Thought i'd mention it because a lot of people harp on about the latter and I don't agree.

The only major difference is that AroundMe will do custom searches and Places Directory has a set list of location types, but generally it makes no difference and Places is a much nicer App to use - no ads, cleaner interface and the map view is fullscreen not a tiny little rectangle.

(Plus the thread did say "What do you hate?")

https://www.mylookout.com/features

Anyone got a good free RSS reader app?

[666moe666]

Air Horn - Self explanatory.

I find it to be excellent with the updates provided you can use loads of different horns including; Single Horn, En Espanol, Good Ol' Horn, Multi-Horn and Support The Team.

[Whiternoise]

Good point, need to find a good sound board app

Ah, fail button, how useful you are...

[SiM]

Advanced Task Killer - Kills processes after you're done with the program to free memory and speed up your phone.

http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-b...-with-android/

So… the TL;DNR Version:

* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it’s done doing what it needs to do.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven’t returned to it in a long time.
* Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
* A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
* Killing a process when it isn’t ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it’s needed again.
* Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
* Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
* The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
* Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting “back” until it closes rather than hitting the “home” button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it’s been in the background for a while.

[AndyCr15]

My point in favour of having a task manager of some kind -

If your PC ran every program installed when you started it up, you'd spend 10 minutes closing them all.

80% of the apps on my phone I don't use day to day, why would I want them sat in the background, holding memory?