So what are the best android apps?

[Brainonska511]

gps app with offline maps completely free. not as slick as a garmin gps unit but its free!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navfree.android.OSM.ALL&hl=en

you can download any maps of any countries/areas

I used this app once on a trip from LI to Boston with an old Samsung Galaxy Player (thus, no way to have maps on the go with Google maps). Works pretty well. Google Maps is good too, but if you got stuck in an area without cell coverage and didn't have the map pre-downloaded, you might be wandering around for a bit.

 

[Yuriman]

Some of mine:
Chrome
Swype/Swiftkey
Beautiful Widgets
DraStic (perfectly working DS emulator)
Currents (I like the widget)
Greenify (root)
Keep
Mort Player
My Boy! (Best gba emulator)
PowerAmp - I actually like Apollo better but PowerAmp has its own media scanner and can play music off of my Meenova adapter
Rewards
Root Explorer
Screen Filter
TTorrent - much less resource hungry than uTorrent
Voice
WiFi Analyzer
WiFi Web Login

 

[MrSquished]

you can cache maps offline with google maps. was very useful in Cyprus this last summer.

 

[Brainonska511]

you can cache maps offline with google maps. was very useful in Cyprus this last summer.

I've had issues in the past where cached maps would stop loading.

 

[Raduque]

seems alright, though a little slow to find music. Don't see a reason to use it over stock though.

Need a podcast player. Anyone? I don't like the top two results on the google play. Beyondpodcast and podcast kicker. One big problem is that if I sleep the screen, it shuts off the app!

Also, any word processing recommendations? I would really love it if we could find an app that could edit MS word files on MS skydrive...probably not.

For some reason, garmin GPS is not compatible with my device and cannot be installed.

Poweramp's strength lies in it's ability to limit the folders it looks in for music. It'll ignore the system-wide Media Library if you chose folders manually. It can also play pretty much anything.

I use BeyondPod and don't have any problems with the app stopping when you sleep the screen, whether by power button or letting it time out. Videos casts yes, but audio casts play back fine.

My required list of apps
Amazon MP3
BeyondPod
DropBox
ES File Explorer
Poweramp
Pure Grid Calendar
SMS Backup+
Torque
and Zooper Widget Pro

 

[Yuriman]

Poweramp's strength lies in it's ability to limit the folders it looks in for music. It'll ignore the system-wide Media Library if you chose folders manually. It can also play pretty much anything.

I use BeyondPod and don't have any problems with the app stopping when you sleep the screen, whether by power button or letting it time out. Videos casts yes, but audio casts play back fine.

My required list of apps
Amazon MP3
BeyondPod
DropBox
ES File Explorer
Poweramp
Pure Grid Calendar
SMS Backup+
Torque
and Zooper Widget Pro

Adding a ".nomedia" file to a folder makes the system media scanner skip it, so that functionality is unnecessary.

 

[luv2liv]

FREE
====
afirewall- block private number, annoying txt from strangers. private numbers auto sent to your vmail. the phone wouldnt ring, but it will have an alert for missed call. set a schedule so numbers can go through at certain hours, very nice!

camScanner: scan receipts easily for reimbursement or whatever

DSLR remote: if your phone has IR, as my HTC One, this will trigger your DSLR remotely

FreedomCU: my local bank app. great for depositing checks. no more walking to the bank. the PNC mobile app is pure crap.

MX Player: plays all of my MKV vids so far. none of that transcoding crap or file conversion

File Hide Expert: my phone turns on instantly. i dont waste time with annoying passcodes. if phone is stolen, all the personal files/folders can only be opened with a pw thanks to this app

not Free
======
cerberus: track your phone. take photo, record vid, record audio, wipe the phone. all remotely. this app can be used for evil purposes and i love it!

 

[soccerballtux]

..

 

[soccerballtux]

Or you could just turn off background data for those apps.

doesn't solve...

App Quarantine. Drag drop the widget to use for Facebook, Drive, Dropbox, Google+, and any other apps that insist on running in the background data mining and syncing data.

They wake up when you turn on the phone (slower boot up), and persist themselves in RAM.

 

[z1ggy]

Question about the music playing apps- I notice now that I have downloaded the cyanogenmod 10.2 on my phone, I don't get harmonies out of a lot of my songs. I listen to mainly rock/metal bands that do a lot of harmonizing, and my phone speakers only play one of the parts now. This never used to be be a problem when my stock ROM used the Beats audio paired with Winamp.

 

[Oyeve]

i'm waiting for Grand theft Auto - San Andreas to hit this week.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Authy - Way better than Google Authenticator as it backs up your keys. With recent talks about passwords being insufficient, people are activating 2FA everywhere they can. However if you lose the key, you could get screwed, especially by smaller companies or especially in the Bitcoin community where they take security very seriously. Resetting 2FA is a big deal and is the equivalent of a password reset to many, and therefore can result in many delays.

 

[s44]

Authy

Cool, but how the hell does that work?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Cool, but how the hell does that work?

How the hell does what work? The backup of your 2FA keys? They're backed up to the cloud, simple. It's synced with some unique ID--probably your phone # or your e-mail address or both. But don't worry, you can't just take someone's 2FA just because you have their #. It sends the confirmation to your e-mail AND as an SMS that you need to verify. On top of that you need the password to decrypt the keys.

My rough understanding of how they do it is they store your encrypted keys on their servers. I'm not sure how big of a tinfoil hat you may wear, but to some this may be a big hole in security. If done properly they should not have any knowledge of the decryption key. It's described more in detail here: http://blog.authy.com/backups

The way I see 2FA backups is more for convenience. You don't want to dig through your Titanium Backups of Google Authenticator or whatever.

With that said, there seems to be a button that says on on your Google 2FA settings page that you can move to another Android device. I'm not sure if that moves ALL your keys or only the Google 2FA token. Either way, I find Authy a lot easier to use, as you can set it up on your tablet or multiple devices if you even wanted to.

In the end you can totally turn backups off and multiple devices off and store everything on your phone and only your phone. I'd trade just a little security for a huge gain in convenience, especially with 2FA. Remember, even if someone has your 2FA token, they need your password

 

[WelshBloke]

doesn't solve...


They wake up when you turn on the phone (slower boot up), and persist themselves in RAM.

Unless you never open those apps (and in which case you should probably uninstall them) then worrying about them data mining in the background as opposed to when you open them seems pointless.

If you turn off background data for them they don't send/receive any data till you open them up, which is exactly what they do if you allow them out of quarantine and open them up.

 

[peroni]

Here's the most interesting apps I'm running on a non rooted phone

Facebook: when using ART runtime it opens instantly, not like on IOS
Maverick: excellent mapping tool for hiking/mtb etc.
Metam: Current weather from reliable sources
MusiXmatch: for instant lyrics support
Nexus flashlight: on lockscreen
Pedometer: uses the built in sensor in nexus 5
Plane Finder
ProCapture: for extra camera features
SCreen Off and lock: handy little tool to instantly lock the phone
Shazam: picks up more songs that google soundsearch
Skeye: better than google's own Sky Map
Spotify: would prefer grooveshark but no free option
Strava
Tapatalk
Whatsapp
Wifi Analyzer: handy when troubleshooting connections
Youtube
Speedtest
Pushbullet: instantly transfer info from pc to phone
Password safe: you only need to guess one password to have access to all my accounts
Guitar tuner
Fing Network tools: Another troubleshooting tool
Expense Manager: I'm a cheap bastard trying to figure out where all money go
ES File explorer
Compass
Battery guru: Seems to work well on Nexus 5


Looking for a good altitude app that can reliably use the built in barometer but also provide a value based on position and raster data.

 

[alangrift]

Good music player apps for android would be pandora or spotify.

 

[bamx2]

WAZE navigation has saved me lot of time in traffic. (Set to 2D to help reduce data consumption).

 

[alangrift]

A good gps map would be google maps.

 

[rituraj]

Some of my personal favourites.

1. My Script Calculator. Amazing to use with a stylus. Couldn't believe it was free.

2. Tubemate. Can download youtube videos and not available in Play Store for obvious reason.

3. line Tools. Contains tools like protector, ruler, compass, sound scale (decibel), magnifying glass and several others. can't say how useful in daily life, but at certain moments some of them come quite handy.

4. Parallax 3D wallpaper. Gives the parallax effect to any picture you choose as the home screen background.

5. Timely. An Alarm clock app. Simple and don't know what features are offered by the paid version, but the UI in the free version is excellent.

Besides these there's AutoCAD, Sketchbook pro, Kingsoft office (a few more offices suites are there) etc. Can't say if they are the best in their categories, but can get the work done until you reach your PC.

Hope I've added something useful.

 

[balloonshark]

Although its GUI is very plain Naked Browser is a web browser focused on privacy and speed. It also has lots of options.

 

[mikcav]

for android
i prefer xbmc to plex for streaming
ucweb and opera browser
xplore file manager
appbox
netqin security
awallet
remote mouse
fast burst camera
weq4u... great for 0800 and premium rate calls

 

[s44]

PowerAmp is on sale. So buy it. With your money.

 

[luv2liv]

can we list some ROMs in here? what is everyone's favorite?

im about to install this Android Revolution HD ROM. any good?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2356654

the only reason im installing it is because the htc sense rom does not support ps3 controllers! unbelievable

 

[SilthDraeth]

can we list some ROMs in here? what is everyone's favorite?

im about to install this Android Revolution HD ROM. any good?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2356654

the only reason im installing it is because the htc sense rom does not support ps3 controllers! unbelievable

I use it on my note 2. Basically for the Note 2, it retains stock touch wiz, which I enjoy, but adds some features. In fact, I am about to go check for latest update of it, just because.