Matt Cutts: Android apps that I love | Hacker News Reader

Matt Cutts: Android apps that I love

mattcutts.com

59 pointsyanw42 comments

I'd add in NewsRob, an offline RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader - excellent for public transport etc. Caches images, can cache linked web pages too.

Arity is a nice calculator - free expression input, can graph in 2 and 3d.

Battery Left is an decent widget. It has a 1x1 widget that you can put on your home screen which estimates battery time remaining, along with a more precise % figure. It learns based on previous discharge cycles.

Act 1 Video Player is IMO much better than the default video player - it has a nice touch-swipe skipping mechanism for locating in files.

ES File Explorer is a pretty good file manager, especially since it can browse remote file systems over FTP, SMB (i.e. Windows shares), Bluetooth, etc. This means you can copy over music, movies etc. from your network shares onto your phone without having to plug into USB or remove the SD card (usually requires removing battery, rebooting phone etc.)

Another file manager, ASTRO, is handy particularly for browsing photos. Android 2.1's Gallery app is fine for a handful of photos, but it slows to a crawl if you've built up a bunch. As a file manager, it understands nested directories, unlike Gallery. B&B Gallery is a useful counterpart to it; Gallery downsamples images before loading them, but B&B Gallery doesn't, meaning you can zoom in and see more details. ASTRO can also create zip files.

AutoRotate is another widget - it can sit on your home screen and toggle the auto-rotate system setting upon touch. Very useful for browsing the web in bed or similarly reclined. To get the same functionality on my iPod Touch, I had to jailbreak it.

And finally as a pure artistic toy, Doodledroid is a lot of fun. It has a selection of brushes with configurable dynamics, and fingerpainting with it feels good.

Great list. I'd add following:

- DoggCatcher: Fantastic podcast manager. I used Listen for a couple of months but I had several annoying issues with playback.

- WebSharing: A great little app that allows you to access and transfer files over Wifi. Great for when you want to move something to your phone and you don't want to get out the USB cable.

- ShopSavvy: IMO the best mobile comparison shopping app on any mobile device

- xScope: A great lightweight browser

- FeedR: A no-nosense feedreader

- DroidLight: If you have a flash on your phone, turn it into a flashlight!

- TouchDown: An amazing tool for viewing Outlook email/calendar. If you use Exchange for mail, this is a must have--it basically replicates all Outlook functionality on your phone.

Thanks for the tip on TouchDown. I'm finally free from having to punch in my username and password every few minutes just to get to Outlook Web Access.

The developer that did WebSharing also has another very good app, SystemPanel. Task managing (not that you need it, but it has more informative display than most others about what is and isn't using resources), app archiving, and history graphs for various system activities all quite nicely done.

Some apps he missed but are also very very good are..

Aldiko: Excellent high quality ebook reader, with automatic download from feedbooks, gutenberg and import your own. Thinking Space: mind mapping Instafetch: instapaper integration. Mint: Mint.com's app

Android is really developing.

It's really sad that Aldiko is such a good reader, but has no bookstore that sells current books for it.

I'm stuck with Kobo's old Shortcovers app, which even they admit is outdated.

Shameless self-plug: Phonalyzr is my little baby :)

Also, I just tried Swype and its actually quite incredible. I think you can easily type twice as fast with it. Since the beta is closed, you can get the apk from my site: http://phonalyzr.com/com.swype.android.inputmethod.apk

I like your app! Unfortunately, it's something to just look at once/twice a month, but, nice work! Excited to checkout swype, thanks for the link. It's not pirated, just a closed beta?

An insanely useful collection - I'd never have spotted some of these just browsing the Android app store, which badly needs improvement.

AppBrain is good for finding and managing apps. It also lets you put apps you hear about in lists, so you don't have to act on recommendations before you forget them.

Self promotion: "Edge Finder" applies an edge detection algorithm on the camera preview. Falls into the useless (but neat in my opinion) category. Also source is available :)

Do you charge for it? How did you build it?

It is free. I just thought it would be a fun experiment while learning the android SDK. It ended up being more difficult than I thought it would due to how the camera preview works. There doesn't seem to be any way of getting the camera preview without displaying it on a SurfaceView. The only way I could figure out how to get it to work was to put a View on top of it to draw the edge image on. I also tried making the View I draw on top a SurfaceView which allows for more control of when you update the view but you can only have one and for some reason that I don't understand I only ever saw the camera preview when trying this. The algorithm itself is just the most basic edge detection algorithm I could find: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_detection#Other_first-orde... I'm not entirely sure if that is what you were asking. It just requires the android NDK and SDK to build it. The source is at http://github.com/bwr/edgefinder

Well I've bookmarked this thread as I get my Android phone (Droid Incredible) tomorrow. Verizon surprised me with a ship date earlier than expected.

Good list,

I would also add the following:

a good sudoku game like opensudoku.

connectbot for when you need to fix stuff on your server on the go (I did an app review on this app ... it's a must have).

I think slacker is better then pandora (better variety imho)

Bonus: For those who still go into video stores... use google goggles. If you take a pic of the dvd case, goggles usually is smart enough to take you to the IMDB page for that movie. - Instant movie review w/ no typing

Any recommendations for a Google Reader app? The mobile site is nice but I would like offline access for commuting.

NewsRob, as I mentioned in my other comment.

I'm amused at how high/low-tech the method for passing on apps recommendations to friends is (generating a 2D barcode encoding some kind of URL that the other phone owner photographs, presumably with a special app?). Sound like something Google should standardize on.

AppBrain has a "Share with a friend" function to send a recommendation via several channels (email, IM, etc).

Good list, I just installed Compass and BBC news apps.

"Car Home" remains my favorite app because it can show the area you are in as a composite satellite image and roads, do voice navigation, voice queries to find specific types of businesses near you, etc.

How can the metal detector app work? I'm drawing a blank. Does anyone have any theories?

My guess is the electronic compass sensor is precise enough that passing by a ferrous metal will change the reading for a moment. If you have a weird 'spike' in the sensor reading it would be easy to see, rather than the gradual change you'd get from a directional change.

Maybe by bouncing radio waves, similar to this?

http://books.google.com/books?id=91B7QvCX_iAC&lpg=PP1...

It's not the same thing by any means, but I'd imagine you could bounce the cell signal off something, and capture the echo, or "listen" to its interference of surrounding background noise.

(for non-clickers: Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things: calculator + radio = metal detector)

The internal magnetometer can measure local magnetic field changes due to ferrous metals.

He says it works on non ferrous metals too. That's what really baffles me.

Well, most things will have some non-zero magnetic susceptibility that will affect an ambient magnetic field. Ferromagnetic materials will have a larger effect.

I just loaded "Metal Detector" on my Nexus One and played around with it. It seemed to only detect ferrous metals. For example it picked small steel tools fine, but couldn't sense an entire plastic bag full of (US) coins or aluminum objects.

Did you see the Metal Detector app? I don't know if it's useful, but it's a cool idea.

It works most of the time, but it's not accurate enough for any sort of application other than, "hey my phone told me this file-cabinet is metal!"

I'm surprised no one mentioned evernote. They released an android app a while back, very useful. I use it a lot for keeping track of receipts for invoices and various things I want to take a picture of and return to.

DroidSound: MOD, S3M, XM, IT, NES, Genesis, etc. music player

Wifi Analyzer rocks. Also try these: StopWatch, Timeriffic (ringer & radio settings based on schedules), Toss It, Trap! (it's Jezzball!)

I hate that I can't download google listen on my phone, restricting an app such as this per carrier makes no sense to me :/

Get a pre-paid sim from another carrier. Don't activate it, just put it in your phone while you install whatever you want. Then switch back to your normal sim card. Presto - apps installed!

Pretty awesome hack, but doesn't work if you're on a lame network that doesn't use SIM cards.

Just get the APK from somewhere on the internet, rather than searching in the market. If that doesn't work, there are several really good stable roms out there you can flash onto your android device, which will get rid of any narrow-minded restrictions your carrier is pushing on you.

Sorry, what's google listen?

http://listen.googlelabs.com/

Listen from Google Labs brings podcasts and web audio to your Android-powered device.

I love "Remember the Milk". Wonderful android app and even better web app

shameless self-plug: soccer world cup 2010 - wm2010 is my app fo the coming soccer world cup, if you love soccer you should give it a try.

I also like the Mint app and my tracks.

Great list! I'm installing some of the apps now.

cant wait to buy a htc evo and use some of these apps

The only app I miss from my iPhone is Amazon Kindle. I really hope they make an android version soon.

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