Favorite Android apps for your phone

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t think we’ve done this in a while. I just got a new phone and I’m getting everything sorted out. Throwing out little used apps and discovering some new ones.

a41CV - I’m an RPN guying back to the HP-25, which I still have. This is a good emulation of the HP-41.

AP Mobile - Associated Press news feed.

Backgammon Mobile Online - Uses the Gnu Backgammon engine which makes it quite a challenge.

BBC News - More new from the UK perspective

Chess Free - I’m not much of a chess player but sometimes I’m in the mood.

DigiHUD - Speedometer using GPS.

FBReader Premium - The best ebook reader I’ve found. Very customizable.

Fing - for analayzing, troubleshooting networks

Flow Free - very addictive game but doesn’t get challenging until you get to the higher levels.

GasBuddy - Find the cheapest gasoline.

NextRadio - Turns your phone into an fm radio using the broadcast signal, not the data network. Doesn’t work on all phones.

Podcast Addict - manages my podcasts.

Poker Calculator - calculates equity/odds of winning.

Poker TDA - the tournament directors assoc. rulebook. I run a game three days a week and this what we use to settle disputes.

PokerStars - yeah, it’s just play money these days but at the higher levels people play like it means something to them.

PokerStove - same as Poker Calculator

QuickPic - easy to use photo viewer to manage my pictures.

Raindar - shows a doppler map of where it’s raining. Something we haven’t seen for more than a month now. Yeah, weather apps also have this but it’s faster with just the app.

Roku - Remote control for my streaming video device

Sky Map - Like Google Maps but for the night sky.

Sokoban - another addictive game.

Solar Eclipse Timer - Just in time for the 2017 eclipse this handy little device will tell you audibly when you are approaching the various contact times so you can listen while you are futzing around with cameras and scopes as we will be.

Tapatalk - makes the SDMB readable on my phone instead of trying to use the browser.

Translate - a universal translator for my phone. I’ve only ever used it for Spanish. Sadly, it does not support Klingon.

TuneIn Radio - radio over the data network. I mostly use it to follow sports when I’m out and about.

TV Guide - tells me what’s on the telly which isn’t much as I’m a cordcutter which is why I have the Roku mentioned above.

Twitter - twitter never made sense until I had a phone. Then it still didn’t make sense until we had a natural disaster and were without power for a week. It was my instant connection to the news, emergency services, etc.

Wikipedia - I could do this with the browser but the app is more readable and will store pages for off line reading.

So that’s about it. OK, one more: List My Apps which created this list for me.
I’m always on the lookout for cool apps so let me know.

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X-Plore it’s main function is to provide a file explorer similar to Windows.

It does so much more. I play all my music and videos with the Player. View images with it. It has a Wi-Fi server. You start it on the phone. Then use your browser on the PC to access files.

It’ll root your phone. I haven’t used that feature.

Kaspersky - I like the anti theft features. You can log into the web site and issue commands. Find my phone shows the location on a map, mug shot takes a photo, alarm, and as a last resort, wipe files.

Rec Forge II, A very nice digital recorder. You can configure it as a dictaphone or create high fi music recodings.

Amazing Slow Downer, great for musicians. Let’s you reduce the playback speed without changing pitch. You can change the key by half step increments. Export the file in the new key.

3

Notifyer. It allows you to place widgets on your home screen that look like the stock icons, but will add iPhone style notification badges to apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail. You can also add notification badges for the phone and text messaging apps.

Any calculator app beats the shit out of the stock Android calculator. I have Calc, which is extremely customizable. It’s free, but does have small banner ads which are barely noticeable. I’ve customized mine to look like the calculator on the iPhone.

4

I really dislike the mobile wiki page, though I haven’t tried the app. And I’m not sure I understand what the advantage of Kaspersky is over just logging into your google account. From there I can locate my phone, lock it, set off the alarm, install/uninstall apps and wipe it. From the short description given upthread and having never tried it from my google account, I don’t think I can take a picture.
Of course, keep in mind, all someone that steals your phone has to do is put it in airplane mode to buy some time and figure out what to do. I’m not sure if the thief wiping the phone works or if the IMEI is still tied to your account.

Anyways, as for me. I just downloaded Imgur. I like Imgur to begin with and I’ve been playing with it to replace photobucket and the website has been nagging me to install the app so I finally did it. It works really well for endlessly scrolling through random pictures.

Also, I use IP Cam View to pull up my security cameras at work, however, IIRC from when I set them up, there’s a lot of publically available web cams that you can load into the app if you just want to zone out and stare some random store’s front entrance or a library in Vietnam or a the main strip in a tourist trap in Japan. (FTR, I don’t use it for that, but it did come with the ability to pull that up very easily, I also found you can find those feeds on the internet as well).

5

With the Factory Reset Protection built in to all recent versions of Android, Google will not allow someone to use any Google services on your phone again without having your Google password.

If you want to give/sell your phone to somebody, you would have to remove your Google account before you or anyone else does a factory reset, or else the next person that wants to use any Google services on that phone will be screwed without your password.

6

My most used apps are:

RealCalc - great scientific calculator
MapMyWalk - great for tracking power walks
Nova Launcher - don’t let your service provider dictate your user interface!
genina.com Sudoku - the best sudoku app I’ve found
MortgageCalc - a must for real estate investors

7

Not very fun, but very necessary utilities:

CallControl
AdGuard
Rotation Control

Most of the rest is either specific to me (banking apps, games, travel, retail, etc.) or just not very interesting overall.

8

Sticking to potentially interesting ones:

Google Arts & Culture
AsciiCam
Genius
Librivox
NPR One
Old Maps
Google Opinion Rewards
Wolfram Alpha

9

Cookie Jam
MLB Trade Rumors
BBC Sports
Plague Inc
Reddit

10

If you have Location Services turned on this is a good thing to install. It’s free money for the Google Play Store, in exchange for a few seconds of your time every couple of days. It mostly asks me about shops I’ve been in the vicinity of, but not actually been in. :smiley:

Still, it’s been nearly £50 over the past few years, which is enough to have the ad-free/pro versions of all the apps I use, and quite a few ebooks.

Recommended apps:

Flightradar 24 - point your phone at a passing plane and find out where it’s been and where it’s going, amongst other things.

Tapet - generates wallpapers on the fly. You can tune them to your preferences - I prefer geometric/tesselation ones.

Google Photoscan - this is wizardry. Scans physical photographs, does some technomagic on them, and now you’ve got really excellent electronic copies.
Star Walk - Sky Map with bells on.

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Nova Launcher, yes! It completely hides the Google Now home screen, or whatever the fuck it’s called. It lets me have my first screen just showing apps. It’s also ad-free and is completely devoid of all of those fancy 3D wallpapers. It also removed the Google search bar from my screens and gives me space for 20 apps on each home screen. It also lets me give customized names to my apps.

I also installed Norton Security on my phone. It found malware on one of my apps that kept randomly popping up the Play Store. The paid version will also scan the apps in the Play Store and tell you if they’re safe to install.

12

Llama - Lets you set up different locations, home/work/etc depending on what cell towers you phone can see. You can also set up different profiles, like silent, quiet, loud, no ringer, etc. So then you can have your phone go silent when you enter the “work” area. I also have my phone go totally silent except the ringer after 11pm at home. Very handy, I hardly ever touch my volume controls.

Instagram - This one is pretty popular but I think it’s worthwhile. It’s a simple app for photo sharing. You see a top-down list of mostly interesting/amusing photos posted by people/places you follow, newest photos first. Double-tap a photo to like. You’ll find everyone from movie stars to local bands to family members on there. You can easily post photos from your own camera folder if you like, and all your followers will see them.

13

Apex launcher.

FiveWallpapers–allows you to assign a different wallpaper image to each home screen page.

CrystalBattery–a large 3D-ish sphere icon that sits on your screen telling battery time in percentage and by changing colors.

F-Stop–photo viewer.

Mobile Observatory–Don’t use the actual program that often, but like the sun/moon rise/set times widget.

Moon±-Ebook/PDF/comc/manga reader.

Camera FV-5–I have several cameras installed, but FV-5 is the one I use most.

PhotoAF–for panoramas. Records compass directions, too, so that you can view the image in the same cardinal directions you made it by revolving the phone about you.

MX Viewer Pro–for watching video.

White Noise–for white noise.

14

Thanks to everyone who have responded so far. Lost my ability to quote threads for the moment. For some reason it comes and goes.

But I will be checking out Nova Launcher, NPR One, Flightradar 24, Star Walk as well as some others.