All the Android apps I have

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Last autumn, I made several rash promises to friends who were considering buying an Android phone, that I would at some point blog the list of applications I had on my HTC (slogan: "quietly brilliant") Magic, and what they were good for. I procrastinated sufficiently that this eventually became a Christmas holiday task, and then my phone decided on Christmas Day that it no longer wished to turn on, causing me to spend nearly 3 weeks without it, and also necessitating a complete reinstall of all my apps.

Luckily, my phone did have a rough idea of things I had downloaded before (thank goodness) so reinstalling was not as painful as I had anticipated. Nonetheless, I am now writing that blog post... If you are not interested in Android, you should stop reading here, as it is about to get boring.

The HTC Magic has three "home screens", where shortcuts and so on live. On one, I have useful things I often need (email, calendar, weather, RSS feeds). On the main first screen, I have things I need to access instantly - turning the phone onto silent/vibrate, camera, messaging, contacts and maps, and folders (of which more later). On the final screen, I have frivolity - facebook, ebooks, games. I've found apps through searching the Android Market with intent, browsing "featured" Market apps, the odd Lifehacker post, and occasionally a recommendation from a friend. I have made very little concerted effort to find good things, so imagine that I am using far less than the full capabilities of the phone; on the other hand, I am impatient and fussy, and avoid or reject apps that insist I set up new web accounts with a lot of information in them to make them useful (I'm thinking of you, FlyScreen!). So this list may be of no use to others; but will hopefully be of value to me, if I have to restore everything again...

So, my useful things screen has:
  • Starred bus stops, a widget which is the fastest way to access MiniBus, a wonderful little app from the DTG at the Computer Lab, which lets me see real time bus information for Cambridgeshire
  • Android marketplace (for finding new applications or upgrading the ones I have)
  • Settings (which I don't actually use much, now)
  • NewsRob, the best RSS reader I've found, which synchronises with my Google Reader account perfectly. It's a lot more usable than using Google Reader directly in the browser
  • Browser (for when I have a URL I want to look at, or fast access to some sites through bookmarks)
  • Google Mail for my personal email
  • K-9 Mail for my work IMAP email
  • BBC News shortcut, which takes me straight to the "low graphics" news
  • BBC Cambridgeshire Weather shortcut
  • Google Calendar widget, showing the next event across my various calendars, and giving me quick access to the full Agenda mode (a nice view for checking what is coming up!)
On my rapid access first home screen:
  • Camera - letting me take photos very quickly
  • Toggle WiFi, so I can save power if I need my phone to last a long time through heavy use. This widget also shows me whether or not I'm on a wifi network in the status bar
  • Ringer Toggle Widget, enabling me to move from ring to vibrate to silent with single clicks
  • PdaNet. For the cost of an expensive (~£18) one-off payment, I can use my phone to get my laptop online via 3G with just a click at each end - very convenient and worth the money
  • Messaging. The built-in app for text and multimedia messaging. Straight in to my Inbox or to compose a new message
  • Contacts. This one is really only here to enable me to get quickly to my favourite ("starred") contacts if I want to phone them, or to get to a regular numeric dial if I'm calling someone new. I don't use this much, because I don't call people much!
  • Twidroid Pro. Still the best Twitter app I've found, copes with my multiple accounts and set up to give me neat notifications of replies and direct messages.
  • Maps - because when I need to figure out where I am or how to get where I'm going, I want to launch this straight away, so it must be on the first home screen
  • Folders, which I've only recently taken to: for tools, web-based tools, and search. I can click a folder, and see another screen full of shortcuts to more applications.
Tools is full of little utilities I like having to hand.
  • Alarm Clock
  • Calculator
  • AK notepad - a basic notepad with separate notes. Quick to add/check notes.
  • Barcode Scanner. I can take a photo of a barcode, and instantly find out all about the product online. Worked nicely for the few things I've tried it on, including QR codes.
  • StopTimer, which has one initially confusing UI flaw, but otherwise is a great app as a stopwatch or countdown timer
  • ShopSavvy. Another barcode reader, this one tells you how cheaply (or otherwise) you could purchase the product online
  • Compass (only for when it's cloudy!)
  • Gmote, a remote control app for my laptop - not used this in anger yet, as all my recent talks have been without visual aids
  • GPS Speedo (who doesn't want to know how fast they are going?)
  • My Tracks. This is Google's own app for tracking where you've been, on foot or otherwise. I don't use this much, but it's fun for random walks and mazes
  • Voice Recorder. A lovely straightforward app, although I've been bemused (foolishly) to find it doesn't work so well for noises which aren't voice. Easy to forget that phone mics are designed for the narrowband of human voice, not beeps :)
  • Unit Converter. This has small, non-intrusive ads - unusual, as most of the apps I have are not ad supported, but generally seem more likely to be free than the equivalent iPhone apps, based on experience with Michael's phone on the App Store.
  • Draw! A really simple thing which lets me draw shapes on the screen and save them for later.
Web based apps are slightly more obscure, but fit here within my personal categorisation system. There would probably be lots more of these, but I am lazy and actually use surprisingly few Web2.0 services (although I have accounts on more than I use, and am aware of more again).
  • MiniBus - this time the full app, not just the widget
  • Say no to 0870, for those moments when I do need to use my phone as a phone!
  • Advanced Postbox Hunter. A little app which lets me record postboxes I find, so that the world can have a free database of postbox locations
  • AudioBoo, which I've never used, but vaguely think I'd like for some situation I've not encountered yet
  • Bump. This is a little app, also available for iPhone, which lets you exchange contact information - a business card, essentially - with someone else's phone, by physically bumping the phones together.
  • Fix My Street. An essential app from the lovely folk over at MySociety, which lets me report potholes and other issues to the local council or other responsible body, with a note of location and a photograph
  • Google Sky Map. A truly wonderous thing, which means I can point my phone at the sky, and see what stars I am looking at. One of the big advantages of the Magic over the original 3G iPhone (which had no compass, and so couldn't manage this real augmented reality. The 3GS does have this though).
  • Here I Am, which is a nifty thing converting one's location into something which other people can use
  • London Tube Status
  • Qik - see AudioBoo
Search is an interesting category. On my home screen I also have a box where I can type in a search term, or I can click a button and then talk into Voice Search, but these days there are many specialist applications which bear on search too. So, in this folder:
  • Google Goggles. A very strange app which tries to figure out what you are looking at, by visuals of logos, landmarks etc. It sometimes works; perhaps I see too many obscure things.
  • Shazam. Listens to music and then tells you what it is (artist, title etc).
  • Taptu, a mobile search engine. Downloaded because a friend works there
  • Wapedia - from Taptu. Mobile wikipedia content. Quick and simple.
  • Layar is another augmented reality thing, for which you can create layers of content about different, erm, realities, such as local tourist information or whatever. The user-generated content aspect should make this interesting, but in practice, I've not yet encountered a dataset I've wanted to see.
  • OpenTable for restautrant bookings. Not used.
  • Places Directory is Google's own "yellow pages on a map". Works OK. I usually use it in combination with:
  • Qype - another location-based directory service. Have found at least one stunning restaurant using it. Should try to evaluate it harder against Places, next time.
  • Panoramio finds photographs taken near you. Seems OK but I suspect it could use a larger dataset of photographs, as I don't think it pulls in Flickr for example, so it's of limited use.

In my final screen, I have used up half the available space with a FaceBook widget, so I can always see what everyone has been up to. I can browse status updates from my friends in the widget, update my own status, or whiz straight into the full FaceBook application.
  • Gallery. This is a slightly different view of my photo "reel" than available through the Camera application. (Aside: why do we still use the term reel?)
  • eReader. My first ebook application, and very nice, with the ability to buy online through a webstore, as well as downloading project Gutenberg titles for free
  • Aldiko Premium. A second eBook application, bought when eReader seemed briefly to be unable to sell me new books. This one has a beautiful user interface, and a fair selection of books, which I can buy in the app.
  • FaceBook PhoneBook widget. Never used this, but it seemed a nice idea and it's functionality I can only get through a widget - a list of FaceBook friends, with their photos, and I can click them to call them on their FaceBook phone numbers. This is probably useful for my friends who update FaceBook but whose moves from job to job and country to country pass me by
  • A shortcut to the FaceBook mobile site, which has a very different set of functionality to the FaceBook application
  • And my Games folder...
What games do I have? Since getting the Magic, I've been most impressed with Abduction!, a delightfully silly casual game, involving bouncing a variety of animals up to a flying saucer at the top of the screen. At the time, nothing comparable was available for iPhone; you can now get a game where you navigate platforms with a little green alien instead, but the gameplay is much weaker. Abduction! remains the top Android game for me.
  • I have the paid version, Abduction! World Attack.
  • ActionPotato because I liked the name. It's a simple casual game and probably too hard for me
  • Colossal Cave. You can't beat a traditional text adventure for casual gaming on the move :) although the need to hand-draw maps is starting to be pressing, and I've hardly made any progress yet.
  • Flight Director is a clone of the startlingly popular Flight Control on iPhone. I have friends who seem to play Flight Control together whenever they meet. Director uses real airports, and I am hopeless at it. Don't recruit me into air traffic control.
  • Frozen Bubble
  • Friction Mobile is a very simple monochrome game. Wouldn't stand extended play but fun to fiddle with.
  • Space Physics, which sounded great but I've not played yet. If it's anything like the various physics puzzle games I have installed on Michael's iPhone, it will be too hard for me (at least, for me in the state I usually am when I resort to phone games).
  • robotfindskitten - purely for the nostalgia of playing this on my very first computer, after I'd installed linux on it, in 1997.
  • Scrambled Net. A relaxed, untimed puzzle game where you aim to connect servers to terminals via cables.
My need for games on my phone is mostly for time on buses or trains, especially when there isn't an internet connection; games dependent on the accelerometer for control (I'm thinking of Abduction! here) are not good when your transport lurches around corners. More puzzlers which do not require lightning reflexes or fine motor control, and which follow some logic, would be superb.

Of course, I also have apps which do not appear on my home screens. Some of these are things I've downloaded, found less than useful, and abandoned, but many are simply applications which I don't need to open directly.
  • Beam Reader lets me open PDFs
  • Documents To Go opens word files and, I think, Excel
  • fIRC chat, in case I ever need to leap into technical conversations with colleagues whilst on the move (so far, never, probably to the relief of our operations staff)
  • Flickr Droid. I use this indirectly from Camera to upload images to Flickr, at least in theory; in practice, I take few pictures, and tend to dump them into twitter these days.
  • FX Camera makes funny pictures
  • Google Talk. I thought I'd use this a lot, but in fact I've barely used it at all. I guess I tend to be at a computer when I want to talk with people.
  • Last.fm, for when I need music on the move without my iPod (so far, rarely)
  • Learn! - another DTG app, downloaded mostly because I met the developers, although visual flashcards for language learning are neat too
  • Listen. I gather this is what in the argot is termed a podcatcher. As I have not once used it, I can clearly survive without pods.
  • Locale. A fancy tool to enable your phone to set itself up appropriately, depending on where you are (WiFi on when you are at home, low ringer volume for the office, etc). Not used.
  • Meebo IM would be a wonderful supplement to GoogleTalk, bringing my other instant messaging networks online, if I was ever struck with the wish to MSN with folk away from a computer.
  • Meridian, which plays various formats of media file
  • Metal Detector, which actually works better than one might expect, but is in no way a serious or useful application
  • Mother TED, downloaded in the hope that one day I'll have free time on the move to watch lots of lovely TED talks
  • My Maps Editor
  • Nimbuzz. This was recommended somewhere as an alternative to Meebo, and has received less use (mostly because it requires an account to be set up, and I'm very lazy).
  • Trimble Outdoors. A GPS app, bought because I've visited Trimble and their engineers were very friendly.
  • Tunes Remote lets me control iTunes around the house from where ever I am
  • YouTube
And that's it. Phew!