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Top-10 Android apps that survives

Av R Nilsson ⋅ ⋅ Kommentera

There are a few android apps that actually survives my rather frequent resets and rom-flashes. It is a painfully time consuming task to get everything set up just the way I want it every time, so installing lousy, boring or not used apps is not my intension. The survivors has proven their value.
Here is a list:
Launcher Pro

This is the home-replacement system that is a must. At least until something better shows up. Its highy customizable so it’s rather irrelevant to show any screenshots. You can make it look like you want it to. And it´s free! But I have chosen to pay for it because it deserves it. And you get some extra features as well for doing so. Link: http://www.launcherpro.com/

DropBox

If you have not yet discovered this app then you really shall check it out. It is a synced folder that is accessible from both the phone and the computer (and for others if you like). When I find something I want to have on the phone I just download it to the dropbox-folder and tada! There it is! No usb-cable or bluetooth. And as soon as I have installed this FREE app i can access all the files i need.
Link: http://db.tt/uBrc0yx

PowerAmp

This music player is as far as I know the best there is. Even when you compare it with other non-android platforms. It´s very good-looking, works in both portrait and landscape, and has a real equalizer. And the equalizer means everything when listening to music. There is a preset for the internal speaker that makes the Galaxy S go from boring speaker to pretty neat sound! It also features a widget and a lockscreen. The only thing I really miss is the ability to use Google Voice-actions to “listen to”. This works in the next app though. You have a pretty generous free trial-period and the price is very low. If you spend this amount of money on a handset you cannot afford to not use this app.

Link: http://powerampapp.com/

market-qr Top-10 Android apps that survives

Spotify

Spotify is not a freeware on the mobile phone and that is a pity. Actually I find it rather expensive… but then again, the service it offers is outstanding. Over 10 million tracks right there in your pocket and the ability to “offline-sync”, meaning download to sd-card (but only being able to play it in the spotify-client with a payed account). There is a nice widget but no lockscreen. And of course I miss the equalizer from Poweramp.
Very cool and useful in the car is Google Voice search. Press the Google-widget and Say “listen to Queen we will rock you”. Wait a sec and the correct song is played.

Link: http://www.spotify.com/se/mobile/android/

Widget Locker

This is a customizable lockscreen. It works as a replacement for the standard lockscreen. The good thing about this one is that you can place widgets on it. So you can have your clock, weather-forecast, newsticker or whatever directly on the lockscreen. And you can place your own sliders with shortcuts!
My setup it two sliders. Drag finger to the left and start the camera, drag it to the right to fire up the flashlight. You know when it´s so dark and you need that light, but don´t have the time to fiddle with the menus. The other slider fires up either the dialpad or the silence/vibrator-mode. You are in a meeting and need to silence it, slide finger and it´s done.
I also have set it up to wake on the home-button, and another press on the same button unlocks it. I don´t like to try to find the power button on the side.

You can also actually hack the apk and replace the images there to customize the look completely!

Link: http://teslacoilsw.com/widgetlocker

Fancy Widget

I like this one. It offers good visual customization and a good weather-forecast. I thing I like is when you hit the forecast, you can hit it once more and then open up a custom web page. In Sweden we have the klart.se-service which is very accurate with hour-by-hour forecast.

Link: http://www.anddoes.com/category/fancy-widget/

NDrive navigation

To review this system shortly is unfair so I just recommend you to check it out. It has the features you need and it looks really good on a 4 inch super-amoled from Samsung.

Link: http://www.ndriveweb.com/products/product/96/

NDrive-USA-iPhone-App Top-10 Android apps that survives

Multi Picture Live Wallpaper

This is not yet a survivor but I sure is a candidate. This buddy lets you set one unique image to each home screen instead of one large 960×800 wallpaper. And it lets you setup rather nice transitions between the images that looks very cool. Why want to have different images on each home screen you might ask. Well, I think it make sense to have one for the calendar, one for the start screen, one for the music etc.

Android Agenda Widget

This one is the most customizable calendar widget I have found. I like to have one full home screen for the agenda that fills the whole screen. This one lets you do exactly this (among a zillion other setups). It also lets you scroll the list. But beware, It is a PAIN to setup the way you want it to.

Tapatalk

This goodie lets you browse, read and interact on most of the large online forums out there. My choice is to follow xda-developers and swedroid.se

Link: http://tapatalk.com/mobile.php#android

ES File Explorer

A nice little file manager that lets you browse the local network by wifi. Thats about it.

Other obvious apps that I don’t even bother to mention is:

Google Maps
Google Earth
Google skymap (why?! well it´s just cool)
Google Goggles (perfectly useless but very cool)
Youtube
Facebook
Barcode-reader
AppBrain (to find new apps)

Sweden only:

Blocket
Bokus
SVT Play
Sveriges Radio player