I have no idea how this phone compares to other Android-based phones. I’m not going to compare it. However, compared to the Motorola Q9c running Windows Mobile, the Treo running Palm OS, and the Nokia 3650 running Symbian, this is clearly the best phone I’ve owned. I’ve now been using it for a couple months and I still make good use of it on a daily basis. I think it of it more as a small laptop than as a cell phone. I can definitely see what the appeal is for having a tablet like this with a larger screen now. My next laptop may be one of these mini-laptop/tablets running Android I see coming out soon.
So far the only downside has been the battery life, which is mostly a problem when I travel. However, I can use my mini laptop (with it’s very nice 6-cell battery) as a charger. The other downside I experienced was that Sprint installs a bunch of apps I don’t need or want running in the background. However, since I rooted the phone, I’ve solved that problem rather nicely and have extended my battery life a bit in the process.
One of the main thing that makes Android nice is all the apps. So, I’m going to list my favorite apps now. I have added QR codes to each in the Android Market, so you can get to them easily if you have a barcode scanner on your phone. If you don’t, I recommend ShopSavvy below or Barcode Scanner also works.
Auto Memory Manager
By Mad Squirrel. This app is, on it’s own, worth the effort of rooting your phone. Android allows you to run multiple apps at once. You can see the last 6 or so such apps by holding down the Home key. When too many apps are running, Android will kill of the lowest priority ones to keep the phone from getting too hot and running down the battery. Sometimes this isn’t aggressive enough.
There are apps you can get (such as the EStrongs Task Manager) that will kill off running apps on top of the built-in task manager, but why run an app to do that when you can just adjust the built-in one? That’s what Auto Memory Manager does. It lets you tweak the settings of the built-in task manager. You need root to your phone to do it, but it’s worth it. I keep AMM on the minimum settings (only slightly more aggressive than the factory settings) and it makes a big difference.
LauncherPro
By Federico Carnales. Android’s equivalent to the Start Menu is the launcher menu. It’s a little drawer you slide up with your finger from the bottom. The built in one is kind of boring. LauncherPro replaces this with one that gives you customizable buttons at the bottom and gives you the option to have a larger home screen. The animations and such are very smooth and I think it brings up the menu faster than the built-in one.
Bible (YouVersion)
By LifeChurch.tv. This is one of the two Bible programs I have installed. This one uses the Internet connection to pull Bible verses from online servers. I don’t like the reader as much as the one from Olive Tree, but it has some nice reading plan helpers that I use.
ESV for BibleReader
By Olive Tree BibleReader. This is a full blown Bible study program for the phone. I paid $10 for the ESV version, which is now installed on the phone directly. You can also purchase additional books and study helps if you chooes. I’ve installed a few of the free ones. Navigating the Bible is very easy with this and the text is nicely formatted. The main downside is navigating any other text is not easy and it has a few rough edges, like not remembering what you were last looking at if you don’t quit through the menu and the bookmarks are nearly useless.
WeatherBug Elite
By WeatherBug Mobile. I’ve tried Weather.com (which comes with the phone) and AccuWeather and WeatherBug and WeatherBug wins, easily, as the best weather app and widget set. I can now get a nice weather map on my home screen, the current conditions, and 2 day forecast at a glimpse. It also keeps the current temp up in the corner, which is nice. This one is less quirky than the other weather apps I’ve tried too. It was easily worth the $3 I paid for the version without ads and the extra widgets.
ColorDict Dictionary
By Notes. I’m a word geek. I look up words in the dictionary almost daily. This provides a dictionary installed on the phone so it works even if I don’t have a connection. It has a variety dictionaries available and a Wikipedia add-on that will look things up there when the Internet connection is available.
K-9 Mail
By K-9 Dog Walkers. Best IMAP mail reader on Android. This was the only app I knew about before I got an Android phone. One of my Perl-geek acquaintances, Jesse Vincent, wrote this to replace the built-in Mail app. It is very configurable and much nicer in nearly every way than the built-in IMAP mail program. I didn’t like some features of it at first until I learned that I’d just missed one of the settings screens.
Google Voice
By Google Inc. This is another excellent app for Android. This allows me to send all of my calls from my phone through my Google Voice account automatically. I already use this for voicemail, so I get my voicemail online and I get a reasonably useful text transcript of the voicemail. And that’s just some of the features.
AnyPost
By skAmped. I use this to send pictures and status updates to Twitter and Facebook from my phone. It connects to ping.fm. I prefer it to the Hootsuite App (which still only does Twitter) and just about anything else I’ve tried. This app is very simple and just does what it needs. Good enough.
Dolphin Browser HD
By Dolphin Browser. This is a new browser for the phone. The built-in browser is fine, but this one just adds a few extras that make it worth it. For example, with an add-on it will save bookmarks to the SD card so that you won’t lose them when you do an OS update or get the phone repaired.
Google Maps / Navigation
By Google Inc. The phone comes with Sprint Navigation. That application does the job, barely. Google Maps with Navigation does the job well, very well. I bought a dash-mount to put into the van because this app actually works to navigate me. With Sprint Navigation, I was always waiting forever for it to finish loading the route from the online service and if it thought you got off track (which is inevitable with the weak GPS chips in these phones) it would lock up trying to reroute. Google Navigation loads the map and then is smart enough to reroute in a second or two on it’s own without contact the server again.
Genial Writing
By zenpie studio. When I first downloaded this app, I just wanted to see what it was since it looked interesting. Now, I use it to take notes more often than my other note taker app. It lets you take notes using your own “handwriting.” This is very appealing for a number of reasons. This is a purely emotionally satisfying solution, even though it lacks certain practical features like being able to search (how can it search when all it does is record your writing). I still recommend it. It’s fun to use.
ColorNote Notepad
By Notes. This is my favorite general note taker app. I use it for shopping lists and reminders that I want posted to the home screen. It’s handy.
Handcent SMS
By handcent_admin. I’m not totally sold on this app yet. It adds a bunch of extra junk that isn’t related to SMS (font packs, it’s own voice input, it’s own notification system, etc.) I also find the default colors and theming to be very ugly. I didn’t buy an iPhone and I don’t really think apps on my phone need to look like one.
It is an improvement over the built-in SMS Messenger in some small ways, like the fact that it gives you a popup for quick replies and lets you do some nice per-contact customizations.
StopWatch
By sportstracklive.com. I use this for lots of things. If I need to time something or if I need a countdown to something (like Terri has asked me to take something out of the oven), this is a very nice app. It has a nice large timer display, allows for multiple countdowns, and has a button for recording laps (which I mostly use to help me track time while grilling).
Droid48
By [shagrath])(http://twitter.com/shagr4th). The HP 48 is the Best. Calculator. Ever. This provides the classic calculator with RPN and everything. I wish it handled the (real) keyboard a little better, but I like the app anyway.
Congress
By Sunlight Labs. This is a beautiful app for keeping track of what your local Congressmen (or anyone’s Congressmen) are up to. It provides news about them, easy access to their Twitter and Youtube feeds, and information about bills they are currently sponsoring. If you want to stay up to date on national politics, this is great.
EStrongs File Explorer
By EStrongs. I’ve tried a few different SD card browsers and this is probably my favorite, though Astro is a close second.
EStrongs Task Manager
By EStrongs. This is the task manager that goes with the file browser. It’s pretty standard and I use it to kill off apps every now and then.
ConnectBot
By Kenny Root and Jeffrey Sharkey. Gives you a terminal on the local machine (i.e., on the phone) so I can execute Linux programs and such locally. It also gives me SSH in case I need to manage one of my servers.
TripIt - Travel Organizer
By TripIt, Inc. I organize all my trip itineraries on TripIt.com. This brings the web site to my phone, which is very helpful on occasion when I need to remember where I’m going, what my confirmation numbers are, or whatever.
By Twitter, Inc. The official Twitter app is better for checking my Twitter account and getting updates when someone mentions me than anything else I’ve tried. It works really well, actually. I wish the Facebook app was half as nice.
ShopSavvy
By Big In Japan, Inc. This is the best bar code reader and shopping helper I’ve found for Android. It’s better than Google Shopper. You can use it to enter a search for a product or scan a bar code and then it will search online for Internet stores and local shops that have it and help you compare prices. Very nice.
Aldiko Book Reader
By Aldiko Limited. I don’t have a ton of e-books, but this has a nice library of public domain books, many of which are on my list of books I want to read. Currently, I’m reading Alice in Wonderland. This has a very nice interface and works well. I wish the Bible readers I had worked like this app does.
AndChat
By Al. R. This is an IRC client. It works very well. I don’t use it quite as often as I would like to, but it is a good client in addition to my usual lurker connection (I log a number of IRC channels that I rarely interact with anymore).
eBuddy Messenger
By eBuddy. This is a decent IM client. I do not like the user interface of this one as much as the Meebo IM client. However, it does not use up battery like Meebo does and Meebo does not seem to maintain the Android app very well.
Movies
By Flixster Inc. I use this to help organize our Netflix account and check for movies in the unusual case I’m actually thinking of going to one. This actually provides a nicer interface to Netflix than the Netflix web site (which is what I say about just about every alternative web site for accessing Netflix since I find the main web site of Netflix to be impossible to navigate).
Facebook for Android
By Facebook. This is the official Facebook app. I use it because it’s about the best there is, but it’s pretty bad. The notifications work every month or so. The UI uses a home page rather than the more usual menu or tab-based navigation. Clicking on notifications (when they come) or on many of the links within the app take you to the Facebook web site in the browser instead of the screen that exists within the app. When it takes you to the web site, it doesn’t even take you to the touch-site (the one made for iPhones and Android, etc.), but to the standard mobile site.
Robo Defense
By Lupis Labs Software. This was the first game I tried on the phone and the one I’ve liked the best. It is extremely repetitive, but I’ve enjoyed in anyway. You have to protect one or more gates to your base by placing defense towers around it. Each game has 100 waves to it that steadily get harder. The thing that made me keep playing is that there are number of achievements you can get for doing certain things and you use points earned to buy upgrades. I’ve mostly exhausted these, so I haven’t played much recently, but it was a fun game.
Blow Up
By Camel Games. This is another fun game. In this game, there are little stick buildings that you blow up with dynamite. The goal is to get all the pieces to settle in as small a heap as possible. In addition, you have a stuffed panda that you need to get to fall toward a certain spot on each level. Gabe likes to push the button that causes the dynamite to blow and especially likes it if I put the dynamite on the panda and blow it up.
