I just upgraded my old flip phone to a Samsung Intercept running Android 2.1 on Sprint. Thought I would start a thread to see what some of your favorite droid apps are.

I spent almost the entire weekend downloading and testing who knows how many apps. Many were deleted, and the best ones stayed. They can all be found on www.androidzoom.com with descriptions and screenshots.

Here's my top 25 (so far) in alphabetical order.

1. Advanced Task Manager
2. ConvertPad - Unit Converter
3. CSDroid - Clear Sky Droid (for the amateur astronomers)
4. ES File Explorer
5. Gauge Battery Widget
6. Google Goggles
7. Google Maps and Navigation
8. Google Sky Map (see #3 above)
9. GPS Status
10. gStrings (decent guitar tuner)
11. Handcent SMS
12. Mileage (EXCELLENT app for logging and calculating mileage. It also tells you when different maintenance is due)
13. MixZing
14. Mobile Metronome
15. Mute Widget
16. Opera Mini
17. Pandora
18. Password Keeper
19. RealCalc
20. Shazam
21. Speedview (nice little GPS-based odometer and speedometer)
22. Tricorder (just too damn fun...based on Star Trek, displays gravitational field, magnetic field, audio analysis, solar activity, wireless/EFI signals, and GPS info.)
23. Ultrachron Lite (good stopwatch)
24. Vlingo Voice
25. Zedge (countless free ringtones and wallpapers)

I've played around with several other auto apps including aDyno, Car Performance, and Dynomaster...but they all pretty much suck from what I can tell.

Let's hear your favorites!

I just got mine about 2 weeks ago and love it. I do way too much business online not to have a smartphone.

Some of my most used/favorites are:

Chess
Color Flashlight
Dominoes
Ebay
Email
Facebook
Yahoo Fantasy Footaball
Moron Test Lite
NFL Mobile
Paypal
Photobucket
Useless Facts
Weather Bug
Word Search
YouTube

I cant believe neither of you listed robo defense tower.

Read up on why you shouldn't run task killers in Android.

ASTRO
Handcent
Google Voice
Google Docs
Screebl

aDyno
aCar
Pandora
Slacker
SportyPal

Live Holdem
Traffic Jam
Toss It
Air Control

I have robo defense and a few other good games...just didn't make the list as I don't have time for much gaming on it.

I also have Color Flashlight, Paypal, eBay, and Weatherbug that were mentioned...all very good as well.

Absit said:

Read up on why you shouldn't run task killers in Android.

Click to expand...

Care to elaborate? Everything I have read explains why you SHOULD run a task manager app. I use it all the time to manually kill orphaned processes, and to automatically clean it up once a day or so.

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BTW - Does anyone know how to make Handcent the default SMS app? Everytime I get an incoming text, the default app still pops up and wants to open the message.

Also, how much effort is it to get into the OS so I can delete some of the factory loaded apps that are just taking up memory?

There needs to be an app that will scan your contact list and find all the Sprint (or Verizon, etc) users. I can't believe this doesn't already exist... unless I just can't find it.

For what reason? I have unlimited everything so I guess I can see if you have like 500 texts out of verizon.

+1 on NOT running a task killer with Android.

Some apps I have that aren't listed:

tasker
Lookout
AppBrain
Apps Organizer
Barcode Scanner
Documents to Go
Gmote
pda net
ringDroid (create custom ringtone from music on your phone)
NFL Mobile
nesoid lite ))
skydroid
speed test
skype mobile
TFLN
The Hangover Soundboard
Super Mario Bros Soundboard
TiKL (awesome. It is a "push to talk" thing for Android. Only works if people you want to talk to have TiKL installed also)
Trapster
urban spoon

For us EVO/Droid x users only:
DroidLIght

For us Droid X users ONLY :
Real HDMI

Tikl is the shiznit! Its only beta so it's gonna get alot better. I hope they add a feature to where it displays a photo of who's talking. Nice to know when you have a big group connected. Tapatalk too if no one listed it.

Some one needs to put the vfaq in the market place!

Sent from my Eris using Tapatalk

here are some good ones i havent seen mentioned.

Chomp SMS
aDyno
Aldiko
antivirus
barcode scanner
bump
FML official
Fx camera
iheartradio
music junk ( download free music, full songs. cannot get from the app market google "music junk download")
shazam
torque
wheres my droid

Noones mentioned tapatalk
I haven't opened tuners on desktop in forever

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

you can get the paid apps for free from http://www.4shared.com/ just copy the download link, send it to your gmail, then use astro file explorer (in market free) to open and install, then you have the paid app free . i like the GDE- it changes the entire layout of the phone, more slide windows, cool effects, themes. i also really like the hancent sms app for txting

TRSblader said:

The Hangover Soundboard

Click to expand...

just got this since i didnt even know something of such awesomeness existed!

19TSI95AWD said:

For what reason? I have unlimited everything so I guess I can see if you have like 500 texts out of verizon.

Click to expand...

What was this in reference to?

TRSblader said:

+1 on NOT running a task killer with Android.I

Click to expand...

Still waiting for a reason for this.

SlowChild3 said:

Tikl is the shiznit! Its only beta so it's gonna get alot better.

Click to expand...

One of the reasons I want an app that will scan my contacts to see who is running android.

I heard about TapATalk, but haven't tried it yet. FX Camera is ok, but I'm not a big cam photo person. I forgot all about the ADW Launcher...one of the better home apps I tried.

Thomas91169 said:

just got this since i didnt even know something of such awesomeness existed!

Click to expand...

Lots of Soundboards... check out the Fat Bastard soundboard.

casperfast said:

you can get the paid apps for free from http://www.4shared.com/ just copy the download link, send it to your gmail, then use astro file explorer (in market free) to open and install, then you have the paid app free . i like the GDE- it changes the entire layout of the phone, more slide windows, cool effects, themes. i also really like the hancent sms app for txting

Click to expand...

Someone took the time to write some nice code. Just pay for the app.

Sent from my Eris using Tapatalk

SlowChild3 said:

Someone took the time to write some nice code. Just pay for the app.

Click to expand...

+50

Is $1-$5 really too much to pay for some good software?

Thieves suck.

Trapster
LastFM
Bruce (Family Guy) soundboard ... a must for my "Oh heeeey" message notifications

I have a bunch of the previously mentioned ones as well on my GalaxyS

In simple terms, you don't need a Task Killer because Android kills tasks themselves.

In slightly more advanced terms, Android will automatically kill apps that haven't been accessed in some time down to their root level, basically using no system resources nor battery life. Thus, When running a task killer you are interrupting what is already happening and Android is now slightly lost making sure that nothing bad is happening because it can't fulfill it's tasks suddenly. This can actually make your phone slower and run worse (can even make your phone freeze/shut off/restart) when this happens.

Also, if your phone needs more memory for an app you are currently using, it will effectively kill other apps to their root level even if they haven't been open long enough for the above process to happen.

You ONLY need a task killer IF your third party app is poorly written by someone who has no idea what so ever what they are doing, and is trying to get a quick buck or their 15 minutes of fame with their friends for "making a program." In which case, you should delete that poorly written app and get something better, and ditch the task killer also

And please support developers. They help you out by giving you games/apps to use as much as you want, and generally only ask for a couple bucks in return. They're trying to make a living as this is their job. Let them feed their family each day

I've read the same, but I've benchmarked, batter life tested, etc with the ATK variant and haven't seen anything to convince me that the OS gets "lost". No noted performance hits at all. :shrug: Could it be dependent on the flavor of the OS? Maybe.

I used "lost" loosely. I don't mean that it completely stops functioning or anything like that. I should have just said it's instruction is interrupted.

My Droid X would restart quite often if I tried using a lot of apps quickly together (4-5). Someone at motorola actually asked me if I had the task killer installed. My phone hasn't restarted/frozen in over a month now (since the day I uninstalled task killer). Also, I haven't noticed any difference at all in battery life, but have noticed my phone runs smoother without it, and I'm a pretty heavy user.

Then maybe the task killer is a badly programmed app Android is based on Linux and it is just one command to kill a running process. So the only way a task killer app would be bad is if itself is badly written. If there is a shell for Android you should be able to enter commands to list and kill processes.

LandoAWD said:

Bruce (Family Guy) soundboard ... a must for my "Oh heeeey" message notifications

Click to expand...

oh noooooooo.

downloading a Will Farrell one right now.

"If you dont like Big Red then #### you!"

You young'uns and your shiny new phones!

On newer gear (with considerably more RAM) like the Galaxy S, Droid X, Droid 2, Evo, N1, etc. (ie. anything released in the last six-eight months), I'd be inclined to let the OS handle process cleanup; you'll be more likely to keep common shared libraries in memory rather than requiring a reload when you've killed off the last process using them and then later go to launch something else. Reading from flash is slow by comparison. It's a similar tradeoff that the JIT in Froyo makes: more memory use in exchange for faster execution speed.

tl;dr: Apps will launch faster, and you probably weren't using that memory anyway.

One caveat: poorly-written apps that continue to chew on the CPU even after they've lost focus. You fix those by uninstalling them and giving them a 1-star rating in the market, because they're poorly written.

On my wife's G1, though, there's not nearly enough memory to go around. Froyo runs, but that's probably the last OS upgrade she'll see until the end of her contract. A process manager is critical for her, as otherwise she ends up in swap (which is the touch of death: see above about flash being slow) while waiting for Froyo to clean up after itself. Dalvik does very well in RAM-constrained devices, but it's no miracle worker.

(I'm in a similar situation with my iPhone 3G; upgrading to iOS 4 was a big mistake, from a resource utilization perspective. Amusingly, and IMHO, Froyo actually runs better on the iPhone 3G hardware than iOS. )

That's my issue. I've already run the phone low on internal memory, and the task killer frees up some room. (The trick is in setting up the app and service exclusion list).

I really wish there was a relatively easy way to remove the factory installed apps...that would free up a BUNCH of memory in my case.

calan said:

I really wish there was a relatively easy way to remove the factory installed apps...that would free up a BUNCH of memory in my case.

Click to expand...

Technically you can. You would have to "root" the phone. From there you can really do whatever you want if you know what you're doing. It does void your warranty though, so might not be the best idea.