I admit it. I came fairly ill-prepared for the first edition of Techie Tuesday. It’s OK, though, because my nifty little Samsung Moment is a nearly endless supply of material. Let’s talk about Android apps.
Android apps are discussed all over the fucking place, so you may have seen some of these before. Or maybe you’re holding on to a virgin phone. In any case, on with the list!
1. Advanced Task Killer
I was extremely impressed by my last phone’s ability to run multiple (3) apps at once. The Android, the portable little computer is is, doesn’t have this limitation and will only stop when it runs out of memory. One thing my old phone did beat my Moment at is the ability to exit apps. When you start a process on Android, unless the developers were nice enough to give you an exit button, it just…keeps…running.
Enter Advanced Task Killer. It’s a lightweight app that runs in the background all the time. Once you add the widget to your home screen, just click a button and all those nasty processes are stopped, freeing up memory and letting you eat your lunch without the persistent ding of a new instant message.
2. Facebook
Keeping up with Facebook is a pain. Finding something to do while you’re standing in a mile long check out line is an even bigger one. The Facebook app merges the two by displaying a scrollable list of your news feed. Click on a post to see it on the website, where you can comment, see the persons whole profile or skip back to your own home screen.
3. Opera Mini 5
The built-in browsers on Androids are a huge improvement over the WAP browsers found on lesser phones. But, they don’t have the same level of support as a desktop browser. On my Moment, for example, I need to click menu, select “Windows” and pick from a tiny list of icons to switch to another website. While it’s better than the old standard, there’s room for improvement.
Opera Mini 5 bridges a lot of the gap by retaining many of the features that made its younger siblings so popular. Your home page is a list of 9 speed dial options, you can easily stop a page load or fresh right without opening a new menu, and you can switch between tabs with ease. Opera Mini 5 also featured Opera Link, so you can sync your bookmarks with your Opera account and download them to your computer.
4. Always Local
Known as Aloqa on your home screen, Always Local is a neat little app that uses your location to tell you what’s around. Whether you’re looking for food, sports, movies or beer, Always Local has a channel to keep you in the know. The interface is amazingly intuitive and gives you what you’re looking for. Clicking on coffee will bring up a list of national chains like Starbucks or local options through Yelp.
You can also find pizza, restaurants and great Dad locations. Best of all, it won’t leave you waiting for results that never come. If nothing’s nearby in a category, you can’t click on it.
5. Google Shopper
Google Shopper is a neat little app that helps you decide if you’re about to be ripped off. It’s come in handy several times at Borders while deciding whether or not to buy a book at full price.
You can either scan the cover art of a book or album or scan the barcode. Just hold your phone’s camera up to either one and let it do its thing. Once it’s recognized the item, you’ll get a list of prices from Froogle as well as links to buy. Google Shopper also further invades your privacy by saving your historical scans to provide more relevant ads in case you forget what you were looking at.
Note: All of these can be downloaded and installed through the Android Marketplace. Just search for their names and click install. If you have problems with one of them, let us all know about it in the comments below (be sure to leave your phone model).
Feedback