Favourite Android Apps

[Crushdepth]

Still installing and experimenting with Android apps on my Nexus One. Here's a list of things I've found most useful - most a free, the pay ones are like $2-3 dollars. Doesn't include things that ship with the phone (otherwise Google Maps would be in it!). In no particular order:

* Places Directory - lists stuff in your vicinity (restaurants, hotels, attractions), range, direction needle and user reviews. If you're hungry and in an unfamiliar part of town - its great.

* Dolphin Browser - adds tab functionality and is generally better.

* Instant messaging - eBuddy, supports all major services except Skype.

* Twitter (the official client) - works great. Very useful for following red riots and discovering that there are snipers in your street.

* Wifi Analyser - gives you a nice color chart showing access points, signal strength, channel overlap, which are open, recommends best channel for your router.

* Podcasts - BeyondPod, automates downloads of your favourite podcats, very nice, has revolutionised my commuting.

* A Online Radio - zillions of internet radio stations, add your favourites.

* Network Discovery - one click lists machines on your network, open ports, allows you to connect.

* Server Assistant/ConnectBot - SSH into your servers, key based authentication supported. Good in combo with Network Discovery, which will launch it.

* ASTRO file manager - includes network browsing but via FTP. The least fiddly interface I've found, buttons for common commands.

* Maverick - a GPS/mapping app, see whats around you, indicates field of view, record tracks and waypoints, coordinates, speed, bearings, choice of maps.

* ES Task Manager - good for killing stuck or annoying services

* Google Skymap - point your phone at a piece of sky, shows you what the star names are. Amazing app.

* Aldiko - a very nice ebook reader.

* Calorie Counter - so I'm on a diet, you gotta problem with that, punk? Educational tool, some stuff is much fatter than you think

* Stocks - current stock prices, charts and news.

Fun things I like but don't actually have much use for:

* ShopSavvy - scan barcodes with the camera, recover product info from the internet and list prices in online shops

* Metal Detector

* Tide

* Unit coverter

* Tricorder

* Compass

On the subject of Google Maps, if you haven't played with Street View yet you should. Put it in compass mode, hold your phone up and spin around. You can look around as if you were really there.

What gems have you found?

Edited May 18, 2010 by Crushdepth

[Phil Conners]

Agree with many of your apps. Additionally:

- Layar reality browser - shows you various stuff around you such as who in your vicinity is tweeting

- Jevels - the game

- aCurrency - currency converter with a cool little widget

- AndroZip file manager

- GPS status

- MortPlayer - audio book player

- Shazam - listens to music, then looks up track, author etc in a database. Awesome!

- Thai Lottery - enter your digits and it tells you what you (haven't, usually) won

- ConnectBot for those needing a SSH client from time to time.

- MyIP - show you your connected IP address, sometimes handy.

and in the "silly" department:

- Noble Fart - well, look it up

- ColorFlashlight - use the display as a flashlight or a message board.

- Talking parrot - talks back what you say in "helium" style.

How do you get to Street View?

Edited May 18, 2010 by Phil Conners

[Crushdepth]

How do you get to Street View?

In Google Maps, hold your finger on the screen until it pops up the address box. Tap on that it opens an info screen, street view is the last button on the right. I probably should have said it isn't available for Bangkok yet - but you might be able to check out the street back wherever you came from!

[Crushdepth]

I just tried the Layar reality browser. Amazing, thanks!

The Twitter layer scares me though - that is the most incredible stalking tool ever invented. No way would I ever turn the 'location' feature on in Twitter!

[quiksilva]

Advanced Task Killer i'd say is a must have great for killing the occasional pesky app that doesn't like to shut down.

Nesoid Lite and Gensoid Lite are emulators that allow you to play Sega genesis and NES ROms (which are freely available on the net just google NES ROMS... I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog today!

Qik is a good, allows you to do live video broadcasts from your phone, online!

Evernote is a decent notepad it can syncs notes from various places, even say tweets

Retro Defense Lite is a brilliant time waster as is Teeter

No more.."oohhh who sings this?" Shazam recognises music!

Yeah i also have layar too, the wikipedia layar is awesome and yeh the stalking thing is scary!

edit to add I have been thinking of rooting the Desire so I can use "Market Enabler" to get access to the premium market, which is not here yet.

Edited May 19, 2010 by quiksilva

[Wolfie]

If anyone decides to root the phone so they can get Thai Language support, please let me know how you did it... i miss Thai Script!

[Phil Conners]

Have you had a look here: http://androidforums.com/all-things-root-desire/

[Crushdepth]

Anyone found a decent video player that can handle MP4? I can kind of open videos and get the audio, but the frame doesn't update. Not sure why.

[Phil Conners]

How about an alternative to the music player that let you specify which directory(ies) it should read music files from. The standard one will read all music files on the device regardless if it music or directions for a gps navigator. You can put a .nomedia file in directories to make it ignore the directory but then you have to remember to do that every time you install an app.

[rooster80]

Anyone found a decent video player that can handle MP4? I can kind of open videos and get the audio, but the frame doesn't update. Not sure why.

I found a solution.

I have a huge video collection mostly .avi files.

I tried all kinds of conversion software but most of them took forever to convert, and when I played it, sound was out of sync or like you said, the picture gets stuck or lag.

Here's the solution:

1. Go to www.doubletwist.com

2. Download the software, install on PC. (It's free)

(It's a sync and converter software that works just like itunes. You can sync your itunes library and other files to all kinds of phones and devices.)

3. Open Doubletwist software

4. Connect your Android Phone and choose "Disk Drive" as connection on the phone.

5. Your android Device will now appear in the list on the left, just like an Ipod in Itunes.

6. Pick any file you want to put on your device, in this case a Video file. Simply drag it over from its folder to your HTC Android Device and drop it in the video folder and the software will perform the best conversion for the type of file.

If it's a full length movie, it might take a while.

But once finished, your video will appear in your media folder and you can use the original video player on your phone to playback the file perfectly.

Simply drag and drop!

I was really impressed with the free software, got curious and found out the software was created by DVD Jon.

This Norwegian guy is a legen-WAIT FOR IT-dary hacker who revolutionized DVD copying back in the days when all DVD players and movies were restricted to regions. Remember?

Anyway, enjoy.

I already put lots of TV shows and movies on my Desire to enjoy when boredom strikes.

[Crushdepth]

APG - encrypt/sign email and files, integrates with Gmail. Decent choice of algorithms. A bit clunky but workable.

[quiksilva]

check out www.slideme.org for an alternative android market place with premium apps available in Thailand, in English ! All sorts there including two highly rated apps PlaysVideo and mVideoPlayer both of which support MP4 and they are both free.

[Phil Conners]

How about an alternative to the music player that let you specify which directory(ies) it should read music files from. The standard one will read all music files on the device regardless if it music or directions for a gps navigator. You can put a .nomedia file in directories to make it ignore the directory but then you have to remember to do that every time you install an app.

MortPlayer Music.

[quiksilva]

"Music Wizard" is brilliant. Not a music player, but a searchable database of millions of free songs. Highly recommended.

Edited May 24, 2010 by quiksilva

[Crushdepth]

If you install the Astro File Manager, search for related apps and install the Astro SMB Module and the Bluetooth Module. This significantly improves the file manager's network browsing on Windows / Samba servers, and transferring files via Bluetooth (you'll find them on the network screen).

[Crushdepth]

The excellent open source Password Safe program has been ported to Android. If you are using it on the desktop you can import your existing database.

[Crushdepth]

Tiny DVR - view remote webcams, several at once if you like. Seems to offer some control of the camera (pan tilt zoom) but haven't had a chance to test it. Can login etc. Has some random feeds you can use for testing.

[grrr]

A couple that haven't been mentioned:

KeePass password safe - very cross platform (Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone, Symbian).

Quick Settings - my most used app! Turn wifi, gps, access points on and off very quickly among other useful settings.

[Phil Conners]

Anyone found a decent video player that can handle MP4? I can kind of open videos and get the audio, but the frame doesn't update. Not sure why.

I found a solution.

I have a huge video collection mostly .avi files.

I tried all kinds of conversion software but most of them took forever to convert, and when I played it, sound was out of sync or like you said, the picture gets stuck or lag.

Here's the solution:

1. Go to www.doubletwist.com

2. Download the software, install on PC. (It's free)

[...]

I downloaded doubletwist and gave it a try last night. First of all I must say I always hated iTunes so seeing this has been molded right after it wasn't the best news for me. Things like it expect your videos to be located in your "library" i.e. on your C drive is just typical Apple. My movies are located on 5-6 other drives so first I had to copy a move to my "library" before I could even start the conversion (i.e. move to the phone). Next it took forever, the "progress bar" was hardly moving. Given the phone needs to be connected during the transfer/conversion that just won't work for me. If at least I could set it to start convert movies in the background and then copy them to the phone in my own time it would have been usable. No thumbs from me I'm afraid.

Edited May 29, 2010 by Phil Conners

[rooster80]

Hi Phil,

Well, sorry to hear you didn't appreciate the program.

I too, do NOT like iTunes at all.

Just a little tip, you don't have to import your files into the program library before you transfer them.

Just leave all the sync options unclicked and drag whatever file you want from its windows folder directly.

That should save you some time.

Secondly converting/optimizing Video will always take time, depending on your computer.

Your phone is still on network while connected as a drive.

[Phil Conners]

I see. Yeah being able to drag the file directly does make it a easier to work with. I tried to convert a couple of movies and though it starts painfully slow it seems it suddenly speeds up and completes much faster than expected.

What's the built-in video player called? I can't see to find any? I'm able to use the Astro file manager to go to the video directory and that way play the video, but what is the actual player called? Pressing "menu" which usually should lead to an "about" page has no effect.

Edited May 29, 2010 by Phil Conners

[Phil Conners]

Anyone know how long actual playtime the Desire would offer playing video?

Edited May 29, 2010 by Phil Conners

[Wolfie]

Using the battery monitor program i have, it suggests that at 100% battery, you would get 3hrs 30mins video playback

The program is BatteryTime Lite

[Crushdepth]

This is a little weird, but the MP4 movies I couldn't get to play now seem to be working. Not sure why - but I was running low on internal storage and cleaned up a lot of space. I'm guessing that it didn't have enough left space to buffer things properly before, but really I don't know.

Anyway Voyage to the Planets is working great, check it out!

The playback image isn't as crisp as I would like. I suspect you would get a much better picture if you re-encoded the movie down to the native screen resolution of the phone. Will try to figure out a way to do that later on.

[Phil Conners]

Using the battery monitor program i have, it suggests that at 100% battery, you would get 3hrs 30mins video playback

The program is BatteryTime Lite

Hm, that's a little disappointing. Not much point in being able to store a lot of movies if you can only watch one or two before it's time to recharge...

The playback image isn't as crisp as I would like. I suspect you would get a much better picture if you re-encoded the movie down to the native screen resolution of the phone. Will try to figure out a way to do that later on.

Isn't that what doubletwist does?

Edited May 30, 2010 by Phil Conners

[Crushdepth]

Unfortunately Doubletwist didn't give me good results. The picture is even less clear and looks overly compressed - while the file size of the movie has *increased* from 162 MB to 191MB! (Maybe it upsized the video?).

Doubletwist doesn't offer any control over the level of compression at all, so I think I'll have to find a way to squash them down myself.

Edit: Handbrake looks like it could be the way to go. There's a guide on encoding video for the nexus here.

Edited May 30, 2010 by Crushdepth

[Phil Conners]

I just gave handbrake a try. It froze about 5% into the conversion. Just hung. Uninstalled.

[Crushdepth]

Didn't have any luck trying to compress an existing MP4. Blank screen with audio.

But I did manage to get Handbrake to transcode a DVD I'd decrypted to disk. Quality is beautiful.

[quiksilva]

I really like AVS Video Converter, its not free (59$ for 18 tools) and it is widely available..

http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Converter.aspx

It converts just about anything to anything and does a good job of batch converting a bunch of avi's and h.264's i had to mpeg4 format which have come out great on the phone.

[Phil Conners]

BTW how do you play video on the Desire? I've found I can go through Astro filemanager, find the file and play it, but there must be an app somewhere as well?