Your quick guide to the very best of Android Apps.
Best Apps Android
Best Android Apps - Five Most Popular Android Apps
Android is an operating system used for various mobile devices as well as tablets. During the first quarter of 2010 unit sales for Android Operating System smartphones ranked second behind BlackBerry phones and ahead of the third place iPhone operating system. The first Android-powered handset was the G1 launched by T-Mobile in 2008.
With the recent introductions of the Hero by HTC and the Cliq and Droid by Motorola there has been a rapid increase in the number of Android applications available. With several more high-profile Android handsets just over the horizon the number of Android apps should be skyrocketing in the near future.
The main source for Android apps is Google’s Android Marketplace where the selection is enormous and you can spend countless hours reviewing all of your options.
BestAndroidApps helps you find the best among the huge number of Android apps now available. Get the most from your smartphone with exciting and useful Android Apps.
Let’s start off with the five most popular Android apps.
SHAZAM [Free Android App; Multimedia]
Perhaps the most popular android app of all, Shazam allows you to instantly identify music tracks, store them, buy them, and email them to friends.
Whether the music is playing on TV, in a store, in a movie, or on the radio you can tag it and identify it, and then if you wish you can go directly to the Amazon MP3 store to preview the song and/or purchase it.
The user interface for this app is very simple - just hold the phone’s microphone up to the music and hit the “Tag Now” icon and the name of the song will appear along with the singer and the album.
Shazam also helps you find out more about the artists, and if you wish you can connect directly to their MySpace band/artist page or see a related video of the track on YouTube. Shazam also allows you to build your own soundtrack which gets longer with each tag.
BACKGROUNDS [Free Android App; Entertainment]
This easy-to-use Android app lets you find new backgrounds for your phone and customize your home screen wallpaper and your contacts. Simply browse through images and select one to suit your tastes. Images appear either three or four at a time, and you can just tap on an image to select it and either make it a favorite or install it onto your screen or for a contact.
Images are divided up into more than 50 categories which makes searching easier. Some popular categories include Animals, Beaches, Love, and Sports. You can even set icons for your contacts. The Backgrounds app features more than 10,000 designs with new wallpapers being added all the time. The app interface is optimized for mobile phone use.
After scrolling through the images and finding one you like, just tapp “Set Wallpaper” and you are finished. No cropping is necessary. This is one of the most popular apps with nearly 1.5 million people using it each day on Android phones, iPhones, Blackberrys and Palm Pre’s. Check out this Backgrounds YouTube Video demonstration.
RINGROID [Free Android App; Multimedia]
Create your own ringtones on your mobile phone! Record and edit sounds with the Ringroid Android application. File formats that are supported include MP3, WAV, and 3GPP/AMR which is used directly on the phone’s handset.
The Ringroid application allows you to record an audio file or open an audio file and then view a scrollable waveform representation of the file at five different zoom levels. An optional touch interface lets you choose the start and end points in the audio file and also play the selected portion.
Then you can save the clipped audio as a new file and designate it as a Ringtone, Notification, or Alarm. Ringroid also launches automatically to work with other applications (e.g., Rings Extended) that want to pick an audio file.
BARCODE SCANNER [Free Android App; Shopping]
This straight-forward Android application scans barcodes on a variety of products (e.g., books, CDs) and then allows you to quickly check reviews, prices, etc. as well as search for words in books and determine exactly where they occur for books on http://books.google.com.
Scanning QR Codes provides access to email addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information as well as calendar events, SMS text messages, URLs, and Geo location.
Users can quickly download Android applications from the Android Market because AndroidTapp.com has included QR Codes on every Android App Review. If you are viewing an Android application on an Android phone then you can just “tapp” the QR code to get the app, or you can scan your computer monitor with you Android phone and “Tapp” the Open in Market button and it will send you straight to the app in the Android Market.
Check out this YouTube Barcode Scanner Video demonstrating how to use the Barcode Scanner application to directly launch an Android market application on an Android phone.
Barcode Scanner also includes a Help section and is a great help for savvy shoppers. The newest version, Barcode Scanner 3.2, provides Google Shopper integration, allows you to email your history, and provides new translations.
THE WEATHER CHANNEL FOR ANDROID [Free Android App; News & Weather]
The premier and most comprehensive weather application, The Weather Channel Mobile provides a variety of tools including interactive maps, plotting your location using GPS, long term as well as short term forecasts, customizable neighborhood points and weather layers. Select from multiple different map layers to place over Google maps and see the weather conditions.
A popular feature of the Weather Channel app is the newscast style video forecasts hosted by The Weather Channel and streamed over WiFi.
Helpful search features including searching by zipcodes and landmarks, or just let the phone pinpoint your location and give you the forecast for wherever you are, including severe weather warnings.
The enhanced new application includes up-to-the-minute weather data and works faster and with less battery use than before. A “Did you know? weather facts feature is also quite interesting.
More of the Best Android Applications Recommended by Best Apps Android
FOURSQUARE - This is a fun location based game that will have you hooked as you check in to your favorite venues and score points for it!
OPEN HOME - Customize your wallpaper, widgets, icons, and device layout.
ANY CLIP - Working with an iGoogle widget this app gives you a code to input linking the web and the mobile applications, pushing notes to your mobile device. This can include URLs, shopping lists, phone numbers and email addresses.
MOVIES BY FLIXSTER - This free Android application is free and lets you watch movie trailers as well as find out what time movies are playing in your town.
SPORTSTAP - Keep tabs on the scores of your favorite sports teams.
AUTOLOCK - The nice thing about this security scree locker is that you can set the time frame to decide when the screen lock becomes active, avoiding having it happen every time your screen goes dark (which can be quite annoying).
HANDCENT SMS - This free Android app is a nice option to the standard messaging apps and will allow you to receive as well as send MMS and SMS.
PANDORA - Working great on WiFi, 3G, and EDGE, this Android application saves the songs you like as well as the stations and you can perform other tasks while the music is playing.
WAPEDIA - Many people consider this Android app superior to simply googling a particular Wikipedia term.
PIXEL PIPE - This Android app lets you send images to various sites including Flickr, Twitpic, your blog, and others. The photo delivery is fast and consistent, and the app works on various platforms including email, S60, and Windows Mobile.
USA TODAY - This Android app provides a great way to keep up with global news.
UPSTREAM BROADCASTER - Broadcast from your mobile phone or from your computer with this free Android app - we really like it here at Best Apps Android. If you don’t want to broadcast live then you can record it to your SD card and upload it later.
SMS BACKUP - Save some or all of your SMS, and if you enable IMAP for a Gmail account this app will upload the SMS to Gmail so you can read it as well as forward it, and also search for it as if it were an email. This means you don’t have to keep a large number of messages on your mobile device.
TASKILLER - View all the Best Apps Android you have running and end them individually or all together. You can also exclude some from the “Kill All” command.
PING DROID - This Android app helps you provide updates to social networks as well as other services as well as posting to a blog.
LOCALE - This Android app helps enable profiles that are based upon your location using either a Wireless GPS or GPS to find the location of the device and then sets the profiles. For example, you can a profile for work, home, and elsewhere. There are also plug-ins including SMS and Twitter which send messages. This is the best profile manager on the Android apps market.
Check out these other great tech links:
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www.freeonlinegamesmultiplayer.com
