The best Android apps this week will change the way you use your phone day-to-day. That apps can have this power is one of the things we love most about Android. Unless you hack your iPhone, apps can’t fundamentally change the way your phone works, but they can in an Android phone. Apps can change how your phone looks, how you navigate through its features and how it reacts to incoming messages, emails and other communication.
Fancy giving your Android phone a features boost? Read on…
Before we start, search for, download and install Barcode Scanner, then point the Barcode Scanner app at the QR codes on this page to zip straight to the Android Market to install everything listed. Chop chop!
Google Sky Map (UPDATE)
Look up at the night sky today and what will you see? Light pollution mostly, painting the sky with an unnatural orange smear. Google Sky Map is the best Android app for tracking the stars you would be able see if it wasn’t for the sad state of today’s night sky.
The new version even lets you track back into the past, to see what the sky would have looked like when you were born, during World War II, or even when good old JC was handing out the loaves and fishes to the 5000 – whenever you believe that did, or didn’t, occur. Each star still shows up as a little blip on the screen though, so this is an app for Astronomers rather than sci-fi fans looking to see what the surface of Alpha Centauri looks like in Spring. Just wait though, once Google starts making little space shuttles with cameras on them as well as little cars, you can bet that Google Stars is on the cards.
Box.net
Androids may be flexible and customisable, but want to know the one thing they’re still rubbish at? It’s storage. Sure, just about every Android under the sun accepts microSD cards, but few Androids come with a decent-sized one and even fewer will let you install apps onto your memory card. How rubbish is that?
Box.net isn’t the complete solution, but it is one of the best Android apps to ease your Android storage pain. It’s an app that gives you access to 5GB of online storage, and is completely free (More than the superb Dropbox). You can’t install apps onto the cloud and transferring movies to and from it isn’t going to be easy on your mobile internet allowance, but hey if that isn’t good enough for you go and buy a Nokia N97 and a 32GB microSD card and enjoy Symbian.
AppBrain
Only masochists like browsing the Android Market. It’s clumsy, slow and badly organised, and after two years, there still isn’t a bleeding desktop version. Will it ever change? Who knows, but for now AppBrain is one of the best Android apps to alleviate the Android Market blues.
It’s an alternative way to access the Android Market’s wares, one that gives you many more ways to filter and organise the app store’s apps, and see how popular they are without going into the app’s own page. It’s still not perfect, with an annoying advert that pops up at the bottom of the screen, and no ability to buy apps directly – find your app and the buy link takes you through to the Android Market – but if you’re fed up of waiting for Google to pull its finger out and fix the Android Market, give it a download.
Tether
If you have an Android 2.2 phone like the HTC Desire HD or Google Nexus One you can ignore this one, as Wi-Fi mobile internet sharing is packed-in as standard, but the rest of you should consider giving Tether a download.
Tether lets you share your mobile internet connection with a computer over USB. Just plug a microUSB-to-USB cable into your phone and laptop or desktop and you’re good to go – typically you can get slightly faster speeds this way than through WiFi hotspottery. Make sure you read the small print in your network’s mobile internet policy though, otherwise you might end up incurring extra costs – networks’ definitions of “unlimited” plans aren’t as straightforward as you might assume.
Totemo HD
Compared to the iPhone, Android gaming is disappointing. Why? Because the game makers have to keep the users of ancient HTC Magics in mind almost as much as those that use much newer and more powerful Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S. The result? Most Android games only use a fraction of the power available to newer Android devices, and many of the best mobile games don’t make it onto the Android Market at all.
Hexage has side-stepped this problem by creating “HD” versions of its top titles. These HD editions feature flasher graphics designed for the higher-resolution screens of top-end Android phones. Totomo HD is a brain-teasing puzzler where you tap on balls in order to try and make them all disappear – it’s not desperate for top visuals, but hey, if you have a high-res screen, might as well flaunt it, right? One of the best Android apps for shoving in the face of hoity toity iPhone 4 owners.
QR Codes courtesy of www.cyrket.com
