The Best Android Apps of 2009
12/23/2009 12:27:00 AM
kenmouse
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With glowing reviews of the Motorola Droid and buzz about Google’s plans to build its own phone, 2010 could be the year of Google’s Android mobile phone operating system.In the spirit of growing Android enthusiasm, Digits has rounded up the best-reviewed Android apps for those of you who might be joining the Android revolution.
While there aren’t nearly as many to choose from (Google has said there are around 16,000 available to date, as compared with Apple’s 85,000), the past year has seen the birth of a number of great Android apps.
Among music apps, TuneWiki, a winner in the Android Network Awards, allows users to stream music and Internet radio while showing the lyrics of songs that are played, or to view music videos from YouTube while also displaying song lyrics. Shazam, an app that’s also popular on the iPhone, solves the ever-present conundrum of “Wait, what song is this?” by identifying the artist and title of a tune while it’s playing, and then allows the user to download the song or visit the artist’s MySpace page.
Ringdroid allows users to clip portions of an MP3 or recorded audio by displaying its waveform, and then create original ringtones or alarms for their mobile phones. And the music streaming and social networking site iMeem, which was just acquired by MySpace, was voted as the best app for streaming music in the Android Network Awards.
In the entertainment category, Google Listen has been lauded for using Google search technology to help users find podcasts across categories, which can be streamed and stored.
MobileCrunch’s Greg Kumparak called Flixster’s Android app “one of the most well-designed applications I’ve seen on the Android platform,” adding that it’s one of the few he uses regularly. And SportsTap for Android provides sports news and stats with notifications from a user’s favorite teams.
As for productivity, utilities and reference, the ShopSavvy app makes it possible to comparison shop on the fly. Snap a photo of the barcode on a specific product using your mobile phone’s camera and the app tells you how much that product costs at various retailers, and also provides product reviews. With Wikitude, a user scans his or her surroundings with the mobile phone’s camera, and GPS provides information and commentary about surroundings and landmarks in the area.
Astrid, a to-do list app, is one of the most-downloaded free Android apps. It allows users to check off tasks as they’re accomplished and receive motivating reminders, and it backs up tasks for free at the task-managing Web site Remember The Milk.
The Talk To Me app translates between English and French, German, Spanish or Italian–when you say a phrase in one language, it will speak back in the translated language.
PC Magazine called Google Voice for Android “the best way to use Google Voice on a cell phone,” saying that it “offers a near-seamless experience with the company’s Web-based voice service.”
And the Google Sky Map shows a star map for a user’s location when the mobile phone is pointed toward the sky, displaying constellations, names of planets and the like.
Additionally, Google just announced the winners of its second Android Developer Challenge, which included SweetDreams, an app that lets users sleep worry-free by filtering out phone calls, saves battery power and inactivates WiFi and BlueTooth without the user having to disable each setting individually.
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