I am your resident Android zealot.

SubJeff on 17/7/2010 at 11:52

As many of you know I was an early adopter of Google's Nexus One. And I'm still loving it. I'm starting this thread so that Android OS users can talk about stuff, apps, development etc. A lot of this has been discussed in a round about way in the "Hawt phonular action" thread in Comm Chat, but I feel it's more appropriate here.

Apps

Although I've a ton of apps I love there is a lot out there I don't know about. The other day I stumbled on a few that I should have had ages ago. So here is my non-default app list.

3G Watchdog - monitors how many Mb you use on 3G, and has a widget and/or notification icon.
ACV - comic viewer for viewing my .cbr files.
Advanced Task Killer - for auto-shutdown of apps/selective shutdown of apps. Invaluable imho.
AK Notepad - a notepad for storing random stuff.
App 2 SD - I guess this is Froyo only but it lists all the apps that can be moved to the SD card rather than you having to go through your list one by one. This should really be a stock feature of Froyo.
Astro - a folder explorer. Essential.
Documente to Go Full - word, ppt and excel viewer/editor.
Droidfit - a workout/gym recorder. Seems to be the best free one out there.
DropBox - cloud storage of files to and from the PC to the phone (and to anywhere else you might like).
EBay - it's EBay!
Epocrates - a medical app. I mostly use it to check up on drug doses if I need to (and don't have a BNF handy). Has a lot of stuff in it though.
Evernote - cloud storage of documents. If I ever get a decent Google Docs app this may become obsolete.
Forumulas Lite - a bunch of maths, physics and chem formulas.
gUnit Lite - a unit converter.
Layar - augmented reality browser. I'm not sure that this is necessary anymore with all the functions of Google Maps but I have used it to find places.
London City - an underground map/journey calculator. Really useful when on the move in London (just not in the underground!)
Memento - a database creation app. This app is awesome. I've used it to create a logbook for work that is superior to the iPhone equivalent that you have to pay for. And once template export is included (coming soon, so the author tells me) I'll be rolling this out worldwide, and it's all for free.
Movies - shows you local cinema shows and times. Love this. Doesn't matter where I am, if I have a data signal I know what's on.
Ringdroid - ringtone creator. "Cream on the inside, clean on the outside, ice-cream paintjob." Or whatever you want.
Spotify - ok, I pay £10/month for this. Almost any track you want to listen to on your phone though. With my FM transmitter I have an awesome car jukebox, and I preload most of my stuff over wifi anyway.
Stopwatch - what is says on the tin.
Thesaurus - what is says on the tin.
Your Orange - this is Orange's own app. 3G Watchdog monitors my data use, I use this to monitor my text and mobile to mobile calls.

Widgets

Retro Clock and Date - a big clock and date widget that link to the alarm and Google calendar apps. Elegant.
Battery Widget - a power meter that is larger than the notification bar one.
Nexus One LED Flashlight - turns the flash LED on to use as a torch. May or may not burn your LED out with prolonged use!
SilentMode OnOff - fast switching between ring on, vibrate only or off altogether.

Most of these are free, Documents to Go and Spotify are the only ones that aren't iirc. See if you fancy any of these, and suggest others. Note: I use the stock messaging and music apps since I haven't found a messaging app I like (and the stock one is fine) and I hardly use the music app since I got Spotify.

App Inventor

As you may or not know Google are bringing out a drag-and-drop app creation tool. You can read more about it here:

(http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/)

Potentially this will make app creation much, much easier than it is now since you don't have to install the Dev Kit and learn all those horrid programming languages :p
There is a lot of potential in this but sadly I feel that I won't have the time over the next year to do anything with it. Some of you would eat it up though, I imagine.

Anyways, get your Android chat/hat on!

Al_B on 17/7/2010 at 16:28

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Potentially this will make app creation much, much easier than it is now since you don't have to install the Dev Kit and learn all those horrid programming languages :p

Out of interest, did you manage to get that working? (You posted (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131120) in this thread a while ago). I have done next to no mobile development yet, but undoubtedly it will happen eventually.

SubJeff on 17/7/2010 at 16:49

No, I never could get the SDK to work. It seems much easier than setting up, say, an Apache/PHP/mySQL setup (sans one of the auto-installers) but it just wouldn't play ball.

Al_B on 17/7/2010 at 17:02

I know what you mean (Apache / MySQL / PHP). The first time you have to do that and diagnose why things won't work together it can be a real pain. It gets easier once you've done it a few times (and the individual installers do seem a little better these days).

The App Inventor looks good for putting together a quick application, which would probably satisfy 80% of needs. I suspect from what they show on that page that it would be end up being unwieldy to develop a large application in that way - but then that's probably the role of the SDK.

Fafhrd on 18/7/2010 at 05:42

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Apps

Advanced Task Killer - for auto-shutdown of apps/selective shutdown of apps. Invaluable imho.

Get rid of this. Efficient task management is inherent to the Android OS, and running a task killer app is actually worse for your battery life, because it overrides Android's management in order to be running constantly monitoring all of your processes. IF you have a process that's somehow taking more than it's fair share of CPU when it's supposed to be idle, you can kill it manually in Application Settings, but usually the root cause will be a case of shit coding on the part of whoever developed the app and you should just dump that app altogether. Why carriers keep telling people to get task killers for their Android phones is a source of near constant befuddlement for the Android community at large.

My most used apps are largely stock: Maps/Navigation probably gets the most use. MyTracks is a pretty cool fitness related app that uses the GPS to track your running/jogging/biking routes and will spit out elevation/speed/distance stats for you. Google Translate is pretty spiffy. Google Voice is a must have, especially if your carrier doesn't offer some form of visual voicemail (or requires you to switch data plans to get it).

SubJeff on 18/7/2010 at 13:04

I've never had a problem with my battery life but I'm going ahead and removing ATK to see how it affects the OS.

Yeah, I use the stock apps - Browser, Google Navigation (which I love) and Translate. I have 3 email accounts; Gmail, a "professional" one and a work one and the stock way of handling all this is great. The work one (for work info, rotas, blah blah) is sadly a Yahoo email account because work are backwards that way but I have the Yahoo Email app which is quite nice actually.

No Google Voice (yet?) in the UK though.

SubJeff on 21/7/2010 at 22:03

Well I've been using my phone without Task Killer and yeah, it seems fine. Better even. Thanks Fafhrd!

In other news; I has been accept'd to the App Inventor beta!

But it don't work, no doubt because of the Java issues on my puter :(

Fafhrd on 18/8/2010 at 18:08

Bump because T-Mobile has (http://g2.t-mobile.com/) sort of announced the G2. If rumours bear out it's the (http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/25/htc-vision-headed-to-t-mobile-in-new-spy-shot-dubbed-g1-blaze/) HTC Vision/G1 Blaze. Snapdragon powered, with a GPU, running android (possibly Gingerbread, but that seems unlikely what with the supposed September release and almost no Gingerbread info coming out yet), HSPA+ (though I don't think T-Mo has rolled that out in my town yet) and with a physical keyboard? Everything I've been waiting for. Shame about the keyboard only having four rows, though. And hopefully I won't be forced to switch to a significantly more expensive data plan.

Matthew on 18/8/2010 at 18:19

I very nearly bought a Desire two weeks ago! But then I didn't.

Renzatic on 18/8/2010 at 23:55

I've been lusting after the HTC Evo since I got to play with one. And this is coming from someone who isn't too terribly excited by smart phones. Great screen size, lots of neat and useful apps, speedy and responsive, it's the first smartphone I feel is a good replacement for the PDAs of old. Hell, it even has an Expose type windows manager on it. That's neat as gangbusters.

Shame I'm still stuck on Verizon for another few months. Despite them being the most expensive of all the cell carriers in the US, they never seem to get any good phones. Well, they have the HTC Incredible, which is practically a smaller version of the Evo, but it's the larger screen that makes it so appealing to me. Oh well, guess I'll either pay the $400 early termination fee (and get ripped off considerably), or just wait and go with Sprint later.