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All apps are free unless otherwise noted.
The following sections are in roughly descending order of recommendation. So, sections "On home screen" and "Favorite apps that you don't need to put on your home screen" are the most useful, followed by "On secondary home screens", followed by "Other apps that I use"
| Alarms | Alarms subactivity of "clock" (created via Anycut) | ||||
| Ringer Mode Timer Widget | switch the ringer mode in one click. After a specified amount of time has elapsed, the ringer mode automatically changes back/reverts. i wrote this, it's not on the Market yet, but you can d/l it here (download in browser on phone, then click on the downloaded file to install; make sure you have Settings/Applications/Unknown Sources enabled first) (source code). | ||||
| Contacts (builtin) | |||||
| Agenda widget | calendar widget (displays agenda in small font; gTasks too) | ||||
| Dialer (builtin) | |||||
| Maps (builtin) | note: be sure to go to Menu-Labs and turn on Popular Categories, at the least | ||||
| Messaging (builtin) | |||||
| Steel | Web browser, imo superior to built-in Browser and Dolphin Browser (except that the current release is buggy and crashes sometimes) | ||||
| some shortcuts to text files (todo list, notes) | see below | ||||
| (an ebook app) | whatever i'm currently reading | ||||
| (a music/internet radio app) | still choosing which one; see the relevant section of tips-computer-android-appsMb |
| AdFree? | blocks ads in other apps (by blocking network requests to ad servers) (ROOTED PHONES ONLY) | ||||
| Any Cut | create shortcuts; see below | ||||
| Button Shortcut | reassign camera button (and quicksearch button) (i reassigned the camera button to TextEdit?) | ||||
| Missed Call | remind periodically (vibrate, etc) when a call was missed | ||||
| Searchify | wikipedia, dictionaries, calculator, unit conversion, calender search, and more in quick search | ||||
| SMS Popup | pop up the text of incoming SMSs in a window | ||||
| Text Edit | text file editor | ||||
| UpSoundDown? | turn on speakerphone when your phone is not pointing up -- i.e. if you put in down on a table during a call. stays resident in memory. | ||||
| Where's My Droid | upon receiving a certain SMS, makes phone ring even if it's turned off. Upon receiving a different SMS, replies with current GPS location of phone |
Shortcut to text files via Any Cut and Text Edit:
I use Any Cut to create shortcuts to text files on my SD card. To do this, create a new shortcut in Any Cut, and then choose "Make your own". There are three fields to fill in, Action, Data, and Type. Here's what to put in them:
| Action | android.intent.action.VIEW | ||||
| Data | The path to the file, e.g. on my system, /system/sd/root/todo1.txt | ||||
| Type | text/plain |
Then I associated the app Text Edit with text files. NOTE: as of this writing, Text Edit sometimes has some trouble if you exit it by pressing Home and then using a shortcut to open a different file -- DATA LOSS IS POSSIBLE. If you always exit it using the Back button rather than Home, it works fine, though.
| Calculator (builtin) | |||||
| Camcorder (builtin) | |||||
| ConnectBot? | ssh client | ||||
| some ConnectBot? shortcuts | |||||
| Flashlight | makes your screen bright | ||||
| Food Finder | Find nearby restaurants by category | ||||
| Gmail (builtin) | |||||
| Google Voice | free visual voicemail, and it can send you a speech recognition transcript of voicemail messages as text messages; see http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/06/29/hack-use-google-voice-to-add-visual-voicemail-to-your-g1-dream/ | ||||
| K-9 Mail | email client (used to be superior to builtin one for IMAP, but i havent compared them recently) | ||||
| OffiViewer? | viewer for PDF, excel, powerpoint, word, opendocument, rtf. Uses web service to render PDFs | ||||
| Shazam | identify songs | ||||
| SnapPhoto? | camera with different options, like whitebalance | ||||
| some shortcuts: bookmark to my website, direct call and direct messaging shortcuts, navigate to my apartment, some text files | |||||
| folders full of shortcuts to more text files | created using AnyCut?, see above | ||||
| Tip Calc | tip calculator (actually the app is called Tip Calculator, a different one is called Tip Calc -- the one I like has an icon with a coffee cup) | ||||
| Quick Settings | control panel to access frequently-changed settings that affect battery life, like turn on/off GPS, wifi, brightness |
| Advanced Task Manager Free | Task Manager that shows services, too | ||||
| APNdroid | turn data plan on/off | ||||
| ASTRO | file explorer | ||||
| aTrackDog | exports list of apps as a text file (also tracks versions) | ||||
| Gallery (builtin) | views pics and videos | ||||
| Google Sky Map | constellations and planets, (augmented reality) | ||||
| Here I Am | send your GPS coordinates via email or SMS | ||||
| Youtube (builtin) |
Note: if you are using Google Maps, go to Menu->Labs, and consider turning on some options. I turned on Scale Bar, Terrain Layer, Popular Categories, Compass Arrow, Traffic with lables, My Location Button, Bubble Buttons. Also, you may want to use Google Latitude, which allows your friends to track you.
For a list of apps that I installed that I think may be useful someday but that I've almost never actually used, see tips-computer-android-appsMb.
For a list of programming language apps that might be useful for someone learning to program, see tips-computer-android-programmingApps.
Most people will also want social networking, IM, twitter, and/or blog apps and perhaps an RSS reader. Also, I have a custom sync setup (using unison under GNU/Linux), but until DropBox? comes to Android, most people will want to use a note editor with sync rather than using a plain text file editor like I do -- I hear EverNote? is popular.
