Great Apps to Try on Android

The Android Market may not have as many apps as the iPhone App Store yet, but there are still enough to be overwhelmed, and it’s growing at a breakneck pace. These indispensible Android apps serve a number of purposes with little overlap. Some are free and some have a price tag, but all of them are at (or near) the top of their category.

Advanced Task Killer 

One of the realities of having a 

multitasking mobile OS in Android is                                 

that you have to manage your apps so 

that they don’t hurt performance or 

battery life. Advanced Task Killer is 

one of those apps you hope you don’t 

need, but you sometimes must have. It 

allows you to kill an application with a 

single click. This particular app killer 

includes an ignore list, a widget version, 

and a long-press to menu feature.

Photoshop Mobile

Photoshop is, of course, the best known photo editor in the world and its 

mobile app doesn’t do anything to hurt that reputation. But while the desktop 
version is know for having a zillion features, the mobile app is distinguished 
by its simplicity. It’s the best Android (and iPhone) photo editing app for 
simple crops, brightness adjustments, and sharpens, for example.

Documents To Go

The free version of Documents To Go 
offers a great little reader for Word 
and Excel files. You can upgrade to the 
full version (for $15) if you want to edit 
files and add PowerPoint files to the 
mix. If you do want editing capability, 
we’d also recommend taking a look at 

QuickOffice.

Google Goggles

This is a fun app that is a little but ahead of its time. It does visual searches. You 
can take pictures of things and then 
the app tries to tell you what they are. 
It’s limited in its scope but it is pretty 
cool, and it’s definitely a peek into the 
future. One of the coolest features is the 
ability to take pictures of text in a foreign 
language and let that app translate for 
you. In a foreign country, this can help 
you read street signs and avoid going 
into the wrong bathroom. :-)

Aldiko

Aldiko is the perfect app for book lovers. 
You can download thousands of public 
domain books right from the app and 
you can import your own if need be. The 
only downside is that it only supports 
epub books. If you have a collection in 
some other format, Calibre is a great free 
ebook manager that can convert to epub.

Shazam

If you want to impress your friends with a mobile app, show them Shazam. 
Ever hear a song being played at a store or on the radio and ask yourself,
“Oh, what song is that?” That’s where 
Shazam comes in. Just hit the button 
and let it listen for 15 seconds, query its 
database, and then return the name of 
artist and the song. It has about an 80% 
success rate

DroidAnalytics

For some reason Google doesn’t have an official app (for either Android or 
iPhone) for Google Analytics. The 
best one we’ve found on Android is 
DroidAnalytics. Another good one is 
mAnalytics.