The Android Market may not have as many apps as the iPhone App Store yet, but there are still enough to be overwhelmed, and it’s growing at a breakneck pace. These indispensible Android apps serve a number of purposes with little overlap. Some are free and some have a price tag, but all of them are at (or near) the top of their category.
Advanced Task Killer
One of the realities of having a
multitasking mobile OS in Android is
that you have to manage your apps so
that they don’t hurt performance or
battery life. Advanced Task Killer is
one of those apps you hope you don’t
need, but you sometimes must have. It
allows you to kill an application with a
single click. This particular app killer
includes an ignore list, a widget version,
and a long-press to menu feature.
Photoshop Mobile
Photoshop is, of course, the best known photo editor in the world and its
mobile app doesn’t do anything to hurt that reputation. But while the desktop version is know for having a zillion features, the mobile app is distinguished
by its simplicity. It’s the best Android (and iPhone) photo editing app for
simple crops, brightness adjustments, and sharpens, for example.
Documents To Go
offers a great little reader for Word
and Excel files. You can upgrade to the
full version (for $15) if you want to edit
files and add PowerPoint files to the
mix. If you do want editing capability,
we’d also recommend taking a look at
QuickOffice.
Google Goggles
can take pictures of things and then
the app tries to tell you what they are.
It’s limited in its scope but it is pretty
cool, and it’s definitely a peek into the
future. One of the coolest features is the
ability to take pictures of text in a foreign
language and let that app translate for
you. In a foreign country, this can help
you read street signs and avoid going
into the wrong bathroom. :-)
Aldiko
You can download thousands of public
domain books right from the app and
you can import your own if need be. The
only downside is that it only supports
epub books. If you have a collection in
some other format, Calibre is a great free
ebook manager that can convert to epub.
Shazam
Ever hear a song being played at a store or on the radio and ask yourself,
“Oh, what song is that?” That’s where
Shazam comes in. Just hit the button
and let it listen for 15 seconds, query its
database, and then return the name of
artist and the song. It has about an 80%
success rate
DroidAnalytics
For some reason Google doesn’t have an official app (for either Android or
iPhone) for Google Analytics. The
best one we’ve found on Android is
DroidAnalytics. Another good one is
mAnalytics.