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Plume for Twitter

| FREE | LevelUp Studio

Taylor's top 10 Android applications (July 2011) | PhoneDog - PhoneDog.com | The #1 editorial news and video review site - cell phone comparison, cell phone reviews

When you first get a new smartphone, it's hard to know where to begin. Learning your way in and out of the menus and pages will eventually come with time. But one of the first things every newcomer will want to do is peruse the application stores for the coolest and snazziest apps and games available. In a sea of hundreds of thousands of applications, where do you start? I have been using Android for nearly two years now and I've come to love and rely on many apps. It's tough narrowing the list of roughly 100 applications on my phone down to just ten, but here goes: Chances are, if you haven't heard about Google+ yet, you probably haven't logged into Twitter or checked any major tech site lately. Aside from being a strong contender as a social medium, the Google+ Android app is phenomenal. It is the epitome of what all networking clients should be. Unlike most things Android, the Google+ app is very polished and pleasing to the eye. The app is also very smooth and fully functional. Notifications are a little buggy at the moment, but hey, the service is still in beta and the app released just days ago. Although I'm not currently using Plume as my main Twitter client for Android, Plume is one of the better ones out there. I've really taken to Twitter for Android as of late, but Plume is simply more user customizable and polished than the official client. If I had to pick one as my favorite, Plume would easily take the cake – I just like to switch it up every now and then. I miss webOS and some of its second to none multitasking features. While there is no way to get webOS cards or a left-to-right (or Read More

The Coupons App

| FREE | Most Popular Download

Nicole's 5 Android Apps for Holiday Shopping - PhoneDog.com | The #1 editorial news and video review site - cell phone comparison, cell phone reviews

The holidays are right around the corner, and that means your time to shop is running out. With the help of TGI Black Friday, The Coupon App, Astrid, ShopSavvy and Catch, you can make finding the best deals and gifts a little easier from your Android phone--while also preserving your sanity! With “Black Friday” approaching quickly, this is a must-have app. It's usefulness is never in question when you see that they have packed all major store ads into a tiny pocket edition. You can check out the most popular deals, recent additions, and search by store or category before and during your time in the long lines. Not only that, you can also share deals by email or add them to a list--that way you can remember which stores had deals that you don't want to miss! If you're going to be out and about on Black Friday, or any other day before the holidays roll in, do yourself a favor and look at this app first. Sometimes you don't even need a coupon code or printout to snag some the deals they list. From 10% off one item in a major store, to a heads up for BOGO at Starbuck's (to keep you awake in line), you have nothing to lose by checking out this app. No holiday shopping time is complete without a bunch of things to do and to buy. Astrid makes this easy by keeping all your “to-dos” in a neat checklist with urgency statuses, tags, and date reminders. There's even a classy widget for your Android desktop so you won't forget to check your list. Astrid also syncs with your Google Tasks to make managing your list a little easier from home or mobile. This is the power app for those who love to “shop Read More

TwitPlus - addon for twitter

| FREE | skyisle

Android App Review: TwitPlus - PhoneDog.com | The #1 editorial news and video review site - cell phone comparison, cell phone reviews

What’s Good: Fairly seamlessly adds photo previews to your favorite Android Twitter app; free to download and use. What’s Bad: The sharing functionality would not work, but that wasn’t a deal-breaker for me. The Verdict: I love this app. Twitter app developers should add this functionality by default. TwitPlus is a free app that extends the functionality of your Twitter app of choice.  It works on the official Twitter app as well as Touiteur (which is my Twitter app of choice). It is advertised to work with any Twitter app, but I just haven’t tried any others to test compatibility since I started using TwitPlus. After installing TwitPlus, upon the user’s first attempt to view a photo (or video or TwitLonger extended tweet) from the Twitter timeline, the standard dialogue box will open prompting the selection of either the browser or TwitPlus to view the linked item. To test the app, you could select TwitPlus without checking the option to use it by default, which may be selected later. After TwitPlus is selected, instead of opening a linked photo in the web browser as usual, a preview of the photo is shown as an overlay to the Twitter app, which conveniently fades in the background. The user can either pinch-to-zoom or use the zoom buttons at the bottom of the preview screen.  Zooming via either method is very responsive.  A long-press on the image prompts the user with the option to save the image, set it as the phone’s wallpaper, or open the link in the browser.   Additionally, there are various image quality, text size, and language translation options available in the app’s settings menu.  One of the neatest features offered by TwitPlus is the user’s ability to move the image from the center of the screen to the side in Read More

Kindle

| FREE | AMZN Mobile LLC

Android App Review: Kindle For Android - PhoneDog.com | The #1 editorial news and video review site - cell phone comparison, cell phone reviews

The Good: Whispersync provides instant access to books previously downloaded to a user’s Amazon.com account, as well as synchronization of the last page read, bookmarks and other annotations; the price is right - free. The Bad: You probably wouldn’t want to read a whole book on your phone.The Verdict: Kindle for Android is the perfect supplement (a/k/a time-waster or boredom-filler) for those users with Kindles, or perhaps those who enjoy Amazon’s multi-platform support and synchronization (Kindle, Mac/PC, iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, Blackberry, Android). Kindle for Android joins a vast array of platforms supported by Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book service, including obviously the Kindle hardware, Mac and PC desktop software, the gambit of touch-sensitive Apple devices (i.e. iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad), and Blackberry.  Kindle’s Whispersync system keeps books downloaded to the user’s Amazon.com account (both purchased and free) synced across each of the supported platforms. Upon first use, the user needs to register the app to the user’s Amazon.com account.  Any books previously purchased or downloaded to any Kindle or Kindle app that is also registered to the user’s Amazon.com account will be available in the “Archived Items” section of the menu.  Additionally, the user has the option to search and download books from the Kindle Store, which contains the largest selection of e-books available on the web, with approximately 630,000 titles. Books that have been downloaded to the user’s device, either directly from the Kindle Store or from the account’s Archived Items will appear on the app homescreen.  One tap on the book will open it to the front cover.  Turning pages in either direction is as easy as a swipe left or right, or a tap on the left or the right side of the screen.   There are a number of readability-related options available in the menu under “View Options,” including Read More

Slacker Radio

| FREE | Slacker Inc.

Android App Review: Slacker - PhoneDog.com | The #1 editorial news and video review site - cell phone comparison, cell phone reviews

The Good: Free app; great customization; easy to use and figure out. The Bad: Ad supported; paid version gives you more options; free version has slowly lost features that have moved into the paid version; a FEW glitches. The Verdict: I’ve tried different internet radio web sites and apps. Slacker Radio is the best for easy customization and features. Obviously, the paid version is better, but you can get by just fine with the free version. Slacker Personal Radio started as a website and moved into the app market, so most of the features can be accessed only from the website. From Slacker.com, you can create your own radio station (several, if you want to), name it whatever you want, and pick which artists will play on that station. You can choose if you want only hits to be played or just any song from your chosen artists. You can also choose if you would like new songs, old songs, or songs from any time period. If you would like for Slacker Radio to play bands that are similar to the ones you chose, you can turn on Artist Discovery. These settings also have varying levels so it's just not Hits only or any song. You can choose Hits, Familiar, Deeper, or Fringe. Artist Discovery can be set to Off, Some, More, or Max. (Artist Discovery was formerly a choice with the free version, but now it must be on unless you have a paid subscription. You can, however, set it to Some, the lowest setting.) To top it all off, not only can you choose which bands the station plays and how popular the songs have to be, you can Heart songs so they'll play more often, Ban a song so it will never be played again, and even ban Read More

Quickoffice Pro (Office & PDF)

| $14.99 | Quickoffice

Android App Showdown: PDF Viewers - PhoneDog.com | The #1 editorial news and video review site - cell phone comparison, cell phone reviews

Although there are several PDF viewer app choices available for Android, most users will use the PDF viewer that comes standard with their particular flavor of Android.  For HTC branded handsets, that app is called PDF Viewer.  There are several other choices available including one from the creator of the Portable Document Format (”PDF”) file format - Adobe, and one from one of the most popular document viewing and editing app makers - DataViz, maker of the Documents To Go application suite. Motorola packages QuickOffice standard with the Droid and possibly other Android handsets. This week, I put these PDF viewer apps to work, using the same PDF for control purposes, to see which one reigns supreme. PDF Viewer is the PDF reader app that comes stock on HTC’s Android devices. It’s included with my HTC Droid Eris, which is a SenseUI device, and I checked with DroidDog.com’s Carlos Graves (@carlosgraves) to verify that PDF Viewer was installed on his Nexus One, a vanilla Android device also made by HTC.  HTC’s PDF Viewer is based on Adobe Reader LE 2.5.  When a PDF document is opened with HTC’s PDF Viewer, the opening view is zoomed into the upper left-hand corner of the first page of the document.  Scrolling slowly was relatively smooth, but became choppy when attempting to scroll kinetically. Pinch-to-zoom works almost as well in PDF Viewer as it does in any other app on the device, which is to say it’s relatively smooth. Options available by pressing the “Menu” button include the ability to open PDF’s stored on the device, the option to toggle the toolbar on and off, a couple of pre-defined zoom options, the option to go directly to any page within the document, the option to search for any word or character within the document, and Read More

SportsTap

| FREE | Score Media Ventures

Android App Review: SportsTap - PhoneDog.com | The #1 editorial news and video review site - cell phone comparison, cell phone reviews

Price: Free (ad supported) The Good: The icon based (iPhone-style) sport/league/series selection interface is intuitive and allows a user to quickly drill-down into a particular sport/league/series. Notifications are vastly customizable to accommodate the most voracious fan as well as the casual observer. The Bad: Photo browsing worked only occasionally. The phone’s “back” button sometimes returned me to the homescreen instead of back one level within the app. Advice: SportsTap is the best sports score/news app in the Market, and at the tremendously attractive price of FREE, what are you waiting for? SportsTap is a sports score and news app available for free in the Android Market (it’s ad-supported and is also available for the iPhone).  The user interface is very iPhone-esque in that each sports league is represented by a colorful, square icon. If there are specific series within the selected league, those series are represented by a sub-set of icons. Once a user has drilled into the interface to landing page for any particular league, the current day’s scores, photos and news headlines are presented in a very logical and easy to understand way.  Red circles found on the upper right-hand corner of any league or series icon indicates the number of games or matches currently in progress for that particular league or series. For purposes of illustration, I’ll describe the experience within the MLB (Major League Baseball) section. The landing page of MLB lists the current day’s scores at the top (with links to the previous day’s scores and a preview of the subsequent day’s games), followed by a photos section in the middle, and a list of the day’s three or four top news stories towards the bottom.  Below the news stories are links to more news, standings, transactions, season leaders and team schedules.  Listings for upcoming games Read More