Get the most out of your Android

So I wanted to buy an android phone since a long time, and I narrowed down to buy LG Optimus P500. This phone has all features a capable phone should have, and its pricetag fits in my won't buy-a-phone-costlier-than-10000rs rule. But this post is not really about this phone, it is mostly about efficient use of android, especially for an Indian audience.




(Keeping widgets and icons on the Desktop)

First things first. Get an internet plan on your phone, even if you think you are around wireless hubs all the time, sometimes we need information while standing on the streets. I will not recommend 3G (because not worth for the cost), get a gprs plan. I am using the Airtel 98rs plan which gives me 30 days validity with 2GB download limit on my prepaid number. 2GB for a month, is a lot for a phone, trust me!


Alright, lets assume we are all set, first lets talk about some of the non-internet applications that would be of great use.

1. OI File Manager: Just so that you can browse around files and have the flexibility of exploring the garbage that android keeps creating on your SD card, I found this file manager to be working pretty great. Came installed by default. It is simple and sweet, and is not heavy at all.

2. Notes: Again, a notes application should be easily accessible on your phone's desktop, and should allow you to jot in whatever you want instantly. I found the app named "Notes" being again very simple and fully functional.

3. Thinkfree office: Functionality of Microsoft Office (doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, txt) and Acrobat Reader (pdf) in one single application. I think enough said.


(Different supported file types)


(Reading a PDF file smoothly)

4. Dictionary: Well, an offline dictionary always helps when the girl sitting in front of you says something intelligent and you cannot respond because you just don't know the meaning of that one word. Well tell her that you need to process what she said, while frantically finding the meaning, and when you have it, you can start talking smart saying civil disobedience is such a menace in this nation and needs to be eradicated while maintaining... and more blah, to impress her.



5. QuickPic: This is an application which doesn't behave stupidly like Gallery which comes in your phone by default. Yes, gallery shows images and albums in 3D and what not, but it has very less options. It tries to create ablum of every image it finds on your phone including thumbnails and downloads all your picasa albums and you cannot even hide or delete albums that you don't want to see.

Basically just get QuickPic, it lets you select folders to look in for images. And gives you a simple UI to go through your clicked images and share them accross facebook or email or whatever. I havn't found anything simpler and better than QuickPic.



6. PicSay: Now if we wanna take pictures from our camera, it would be great to edit them and then share them accross, don't you think? PicSay is pretty much the application I have found which doesnt have irrelevant gimmicks and does its job perfectly well. You can transform the image (rotate, scale, crop, even shear) with ease, add text bubbles, put some filters like sepia tone etc. All in all, a brilliant app.


(UI lets you resize rotate and crop at the same time)

7. SketchBook Mobile: Ok, only if you like to draw, this is an app for you, also it will cost around 55rs or something, it is not free. The app is made by AutoDesk, so you instantly know that they have taken care of sketching workflow really well supporting brushes, pens and layers with working undo and redo functionality. I love it.



8. Aldiko: This is a fantastic book reader, and I love it, because unlike Amazon Kindle, you don't have to log into some server to read a book. In fact, you can download a lot of free books from it's market and best part is you can import epub books which you might have downloaded from elsewhere on your PC. Basically a beautiful looking book reader for someone who likes freedom of choice as well. I am not going to talk shit about Amazon Kindle's book reader, I am sure that is awesome too, just that I did not find it logical to log on to Amazon to read a book that's stored on my SD card.






(This app simply looks great)

9. Shootme: Some of us geeky ones like to take screenshot of our phone's display ones in a while when they run some crazy shit on their phone, or sometimes when a guy gets a crazy message from a girl, he would wanna share it on the internet for everyone to laugh upon. Yup, it works, and its fantastic. Screenshots on this blog post are taken with ShootMe.

10. Compass: Umm well, a small ancient navigation tool is handy when your GPS is not working right? This one is really up to you. The app is simply called "Compass"


Ohkay, now that we have covered some of the basic non-internet applications, the fun begins with the apps which connect to the internet:

1. TubeMate: I have always found it better that I download a youtube video I would see again and again. Also, if the network is slow, I don't wanna wait around for it to get buffered. Lets just download that youtube video as an MP4 on your SD card and see it later without hiccups. This smart app, actually can resume your inturrepted video downloads as well. I find this app really important over a slow data connection like GPRS.



2. Facebook, Gmail, Gtalk, Twitter: I don't want to describe. If for some reason you don't have these on your phone already, just get them.

3. Buxfer Mobile: This is a very handy application, you just paid a bill, you wanna record it instantly and split it accross a bunch of your friends. It is instantaneous and you don't have to go back to your computer at home and then try to remember who the hell paid for that last tequila shot?

4. tTorrent: Umm, well, because that 2GB never gets used fully from my data plan, I like to consume it a bit by humbly downloading small things over our favourite website called piratebay, lol.



5. ShopSavy: Honestly this is a fun app and I havn't yet found a good usage of this yet. You can scan barcodes of items and get information on that instantly. Well, its fun.

6. QRDroid: Lets you create and read QR codes for a piece of text, or a hyper link. Now use this only if you are into creating QR Codes, because ShopSavvy does a pretty good job of reading QR codes.

7. SwiFTP: is for creating an FTP server on your phone, so that you don't have to go through your collection of USB cables to connect your phone to your computer just to transfer a small file. Your computer can connect to your phone's FTP server and download that file instantly, with out the need of a cable. How cool is that?




(FTP Server is started on phone, and I am wirelessly connecting to that FTP server to browse files)

8. AndFTP: is an FTP client, nothing much to add. If you have a web server and you wanna upload or download files from it, well, there you go.

9. ConnectBot: is a fantastic SSH client for your android phone. I faced a problem of DNS name server errors, and I had to use IP addresses of the servers I connect to instead of using the name... but other than that, works pretty well.

10. BookMyShow: I have not used this application yet, but I find it quite amazing that you can book a movie ticket right from your cellphone. Bookmyshow does not include PVR so that sucks a bit and I am hopeless on PVR creating an app like this. But over all, I think bookmyshow should be a really good application if it does what it says on the market.


Few applications which seem necessary but you don't need them

1. IMDB: IMDB application does nothing, but open imdb.com for you and not display the address bar on top. Trust me you don't want to run an application to browse IMDB. Just bookmark imdb.com on your browser.

2. Google Docs: Opens docs.google.com on your phone and nothing more. Again just bookmark it on your browser.

3. Newspaper website applications: Again all they do is open their website. Just book mark em.

Now why I am ask you to bookmark them, is because you can have these bookmarks as shortcuts on your desktop, while they look like applications. So your immense hunger of filling up your 7 desktops with app icons is fulfilled while not installing crappy apps.


(These are not app icons, these are bookmarks)

Since we are talking about that, these are some of the best sites to bookmark:
Google News, NDTV Active, Imdb, Engadget, Tech2 (Indian tech news), Beemp3 (to download mp3).. for gamers: Kotaku, Gamespot.


Now lets see some of the crappy application you wanna stay away from.

1. Gallery: If you read above, you already know my complaints about this application. Its just so dumb. Gallery may be shows images and albums in 3D and what not, but it has very less options. It tries to create ablum of every image it finds on your phone including thumbnails and downloads all your picasa albums and you cannot even hide or delete albums that you don't want to see. Not under my recommendation.

2. Adobe Photoshop Express: As tempting as it may sound to install photoshop on your phone, trust me this application sucks balls. It will run in the background all the time, doesnt really have all those features you would expect, and the worst of all, you can edit only and only the pics you took from your camera. What if I wanna edit a Sketch I made, or a general case in which I wanna edit something I downloaded off the internet or some friend of mine emailed me? No Sir, you cannot! I think photoshop puts effort in restricting you only to your camera pictures. Royally sucky. Stay away from bloatware like these.

3. Google Docs: Now I am putting it in the list of "stay away" because it does nothing that the description of the app on the market says. It just opens docs.google.com and then you are limited to what you can do on docs.google.com. Don't waste your memory, don't install.

4. PicsIn: Ohkay, now here we have an image editor which provided has all the features like those of picsay... But it is supremely slow, installs two app icons I dont know for what godforsaken reason, runs a service in the background additionally running itself in the background, and asks you to register on their own random album website. I just know a bloatware when I see it.


Now some things about unlocking your phone. Well, you don't really need to unlock your phone. Unlcoking your phone means that you have the root password for your phone. And what does that mean? That means you can uninstall all those crappy stock applications which comes installed by default on your phone.

You heard it right, you cannot uninstall the stock applications, if your phone is not unlocked.

Lets see some of the stock applications installed on my phone.

1. BollywoodJi: The name of the application itself is so fucking lame, that I don't want to go into what it does. Ok, I guess I will go into what it does, it drops bollywood bullshit news about what celebrity is having anal sex with what another celebrity since they were together in some god forsaken event. You understand the gravity of the situation right? I CANNOT UNINSTALL THIS FUCKING APP FROM MY PHONE. And of cors it runs in the background, how about that?

2. Bollywood Music: Just look at the icon of this thing, fucked up lame stuff. I like hindi music but I will play my MP3 thank you very much if I want to listen to them.

3. Games: is a link to a crappy mobile game website. Wow! How amazing is that?

4. Now there are apps installed like Layer and PhotoFunia etc. which I havent used but have heard are quite good apps, but I dont want to use them.



Really man, these applications should be uninstallable like any other app I download off the market. These app run in the background and you can do nothing about it unless you root your phone and lose warranty. There are ways to hide them or stop them but ultimately they are unwanted stuff on my phone occupying my phone's internal memory.

Oh well, just can't get rid of bullshit from our life can we?


So all in all, the recommended apps for android are what I found are the ones someone should have at minimum. They are perfect for a regular everyday normal guy like me. You can go crazy on the market and get even more amazing free apps. That's it people, let me know if you found this post helpful.