My Droid does apps

Here is the current list of apps I have on my Droid and my comments about them – It’s a long list…

Roughly grouped by category. Rated 1 – 5 smilely faces. There are no zero ratings since I took those apps off and have forgotten them already.

🙂 – Eh. It’s worth keeping on the phone until you need more space.
🙂 🙂 – A semi-useful or fun app. Could use some improvement.
🙂 🙂 🙂 – Most of these are apps I have installed, like the looks of, but have not used much yet.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 – Very well designed and useful or fun apps. Almost a must-have app.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 – Must have applications. These are the apps that make having a Droid worthwhile.

So far I have only purchased two apps. Everything else I’ve found has been free.

As many of the links as possible go to pages with QR codes on them so you can use ShopSavvy to easily install them.

Games

Abduction! 🙂 A silly game about cows abducted by aliens – uses the tilt sensor to bounce a cow up the screen.
Air Control 🙂 🙂 🙂 A challenging and somewhat addictive game where you have to guide airplanes in for a landing.
Better Settlers 🙂 🙂 🙂 Not really a game, this is an application that generates tile layouts for the Settlers of Catan board game.
Dice Bag 🙂 🙂 Rolls various combinations of dice – useful for D&D games.
Frozen Bubble 🙂 🙂 Knock down balls by matching colors. Pretty entertaining. There is also a level editor available.
Graviturn Extended 🙂 Navigate balls off the screen by tilting the phone. It’s a little glitchy on the Droid.
Jewels 🙂 🙂 🙂 Bejeweled on the Droid. Need more be said?
Magic 8-Ball 🙂 🙂 It’s a Magic 8-Ball. You can add custom responses, so that’s something.
Mojo NES Lite 🙂 A Nintendo emulator – I’d like this a lot better if I grew up playing Nintendo.
Netwalk 🙂 A computer version of the Pipes game.
Robo Defense Free 🙂 🙂 🙂 Fun and addicting version of Tower Defense
Real Blackjack 🙂 🙂 🙂 A pretty good version of Blackjack
Slugs 🙂 🙂 Another silly tilt the phone to control it game. Try and shoot the falling slugs. Nice graphics.
Solitaire Free Pack 🙂 Solitaire – This version has 19 different games. Haven’t played it much yet.
SuperYatzy 🙂 🙂 Like Yatzhee but uses 6 dice and has slightly different scoring.
Tower Raiders Free 🙂 Another Tower Defense game. Haven’t played this one much yet.
Trap Detector 🙂 Just a stupid app with a photo of Admiral Ackbar that says “It’s a trap!” when you touch the screen. Makes me laugh.
Trap! 🙂 🙂 Trap the moving balls by dividing the playfield with walls. Jezzball clone.
Tricorder 🙂 🙂 Not really a game. Looks like a Star Trek first gen display. Shows GPS info and other data.
World War 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 This is the game I play all the time. Multiplayer PVP and Mission based combat. Don’t know why, but it’s addictive.

Sound Boards

Pulp Fiction Soundboard 🙂 🙂 🙂 Clips from Pulp Fiction. What can I say?
Team Fortress 2 Taunts Soundboard 🙂 🙂 🙂 All the taunt sound clips from Team Fortress 2. “You ladies shoulda oughta brought some menfolk with ya.”
Heavy Team Fortress 2 Soundboard 🙂 🙂 🙂 Sound clips from the Heavy in Team Fortress 2. “Entire team is babies!”

Productivity Applications

aCar 🙂 🙂 🙂 A program to track maintenance and gas fill ups with MPG calculations for multiple vehicles. We will see if I actually record the data since my track record for this kind of thing is poor.
Aldiko 🙂 🙂 eBook reader – reads most popular formats. Unfortunately I don’t have any eBooks yet.
ColorDict 🙂 🙂 A dictionary to use with ColorNote (and other apps?)
ColorNote 🙂 🙂 🙂 A simple notepad app that uses color coding to sort your notes.
Database Lite 🙂 A simple database program. Haven’t really used it much yet.
Documents To Go 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Purchased for $5.55 (on sale) – Reads, edits and creates Microsoft Office documents: Word, Excel, Powerpoint. I used this with Dropbox to create a spreadsheet on my laptop and edit it on my Droid.
Dropbox 🙂 🙂 🙂 If you want to share documents between more than one computer – or with your friends or coworkers – you need a dropbox account. The Droid app is new and needs a couple of tweaks, but the computer apps are rock star!
Memento 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Memento is a personal database that allows you to store all personal data in one place. Collections, purchases, inventory, recipes, tasks
Thinking Space 🙂 🙂 A mind-mapping app for brain storming ideas. I just installed this and haven’t played with it, but it looks very finished.
Tomdroid 🙂 🙂 Read your Tomboy Notes on your Android phone. Still a work in progress – is currently read-only and you have to manually copy the notes to the phone. I use Dropbox to sync my Tomboy Notes around and when Tomdroid is r/w and has sync then I’ll be all set.
TxtPad Lite 🙂 🙂 Your basic text editor.

Shopping and Eating Out

Barcode Scanner 🙂 🙂 A basic bar-code scanner. Needs to be installed to qenerate QR codes from the contacts list.
Grocery IQ 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Grocery shopping list. Sorts by category instead of aisle, but you can arrange the categories in aisle order. Nicer interface than Shop List. Also displays coupons and will email them to you.
Key Ring 🙂 🙂 You can scan in your various rewards cards and then it displays the barcode on the screen while you are shopping so you don’t need the cards. Just installed this, so we see how well it works.
OpenTable 🙂 🙂 Find restaurants that use the OpenTable system and make reservations from your phone. Have not used this yet.
Shop List 🙂 🙂 🙂 Grocery shopping list. Works pretty well, sorts by aisle which was a major feature I was looking for. Interface is not as nice as Grocery IQ.
ShopSavvy 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Scan a bar code and it will tell you where the cheapest place to purchase the item is based on your location. Also searches the web for pricing. Scans QR codes for web sites, applications, etc.
Urbanspoon 🙂 🙂 🙂 Port of the iPhone app to search for resturants based on criteria and location. Has a fun “slot-machine” interface.
Yellowbook 🙂 🙂 🙂 Yellow pages search. Have not actually used this yet so I don’t know how good the results are.

GPS Apps and Utilities

CoPilot Live 🙂 🙂 🙂 $29.95 – First app I purchased. This is a full-blown GPS app. It includes all the North America maps so that it will work in areas where there is no cell coverage. (An issue with Google Maps.) I have not extensively used this yet but it looks pretty good. Need to get a car cradle.
Car Finder 🙂 🙂 Get out of your car in a parking lot and press a button – it records your location. Press another button and it guides you back to the car. I have not used this yet, but I tried one called ezParking and it never got a lock on my location. Hopefully this one works better.
GPS Status 🙂 🙂 🙂 Shows you all the GPS info – Lat/Lon, altitude, compass bearing, which satelites you are using, accuracy and phone attitude (tilt).
Just GPS 🙂 🙂 🙂 Basic GPS info. Lat/Lon, altitude, bearing, accuracy and speed.
RMaps 🙂 🙂 Online/offline map viewer. Uses Google maps data and you can create your own maps. Have not played with this much.

Misc Cool Stuff

Google Sky Map 🙂 🙂 🙂 Shows you star maps based on your location and phone orientation. Have not used at night yet and don’t know if it works where there is no cell coverage.

Social and Internet Apps

Facebook 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m using the built-in Facebook client. It does what I need with a minimum of fuss.
Handcent SMS 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Nice SMS client. Allows you to use custom fonts. Have not explored all the features, but I like it. I don’t send a lot of texts.
eBuddy 🙂 🙂 🙂 IM Client – interfaces with all the various IM flavours. I have not done any IM on my Droid yet.
NewsRob 🙂 🙂 🙂 Just installed this. Don’t know if it’s better than using the mobile page of Google Reader in the browser yet.
NPR News Live Streaming 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Installed this one day to listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Worked fine for that.
Seesmic 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Twitter client. Works. Easy to use. I installed the new one from Twitter recently but don’t really see a reason to change.
Wapedia 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Simple lightweight search app for Wikipedia (and other on-line reference sources.)

Camera and Graphics

I’m not impressed with the built-in camera app, but haven’t found one I really like better yet.

Camera Magic Just installed – no rating yet.
FxCamera 🙂 🙂 Adds special effects to the photos as you take them. Several different modes.
Pro Paint Camera 🙂 Editing and marking up of photos. Seems interesting, haven’t really used it yet.
Photoshop Mobile 🙂 🙂 🙂 What’s not to like about a version of Photoshop that runs on your phone?

Utilities

Advanced Task Manager 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Manage running tasks on your phone. Lets you list and kill programs.
Astro 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 File manager for the phone. Very useful.
Battery Left 🙂 Shows you how much time is left on your battery. Just installed it and it’s not calibrated itself yet. If it works as advertised then it will be pretty usefull.
RealCalc 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Replace that lame 4-banger that came with the phone with a real Scientific Calculator. Even does RPN if you are into that kind of thing.
ConnectBot 🙂 🙂 SSH terminal for your phone. I would rate it higher but I haven’t figured out yet why I can’t SSH into my home server with it.
Explorer 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Another file explorer. Better than Astro? I like the Astro menu bar interface better.
IP Info 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Tells you what your IP address is on 3G and WiFi.
OI File Manager 🙂 Yet another file manager. I’m pretty sure this was installed to support OI Safe.
OI Safe 🙂 A password safe. Not really what I want since I use PasswordSafe on my desktop machines. I really want something that reads my PasswordSave DB that I have in my Dropbox folder.
Contact Owner 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Puts your contact info on the lock screen of your phone so if someone finds it they can contact you. (If they are a nice person anyway.)
Pkt Auctions 🙂 🙂 🙂 Lightweight interface to eBay. Search, bid, watch items on your phone.
Quick Settings 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Fast access from the status bar to turn on and off the different radios and adjust the screen brightness.
Ringdroid 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Create ringtones from your MP3 files right on your phone. Interface is great, works really well.
ShapeWriter 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Replaces the on-screen keyboard and allows you to “type” by swiping your finger through the letters of the word. Works amazingly well!
Shazam 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Listens to the song that is playing (in a bar, on the radio) and tries to figure out what it is. Usually works surprizingly well.
StopWatch 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Need a stop watch? This one has a nice feature that saves the lap times. Also allows you to use the buttons on the side of the phone as start/stop/lap buttons.
Terminal Emulator 🙂 🙂 🙂 Opens a terminal session to the OS on your phone. Probably more useful after you root the phone. (Haven’t done that yet.) But it does at least demonstrate that the phone is running a Linux varient. It’s geeky fun to open a terminal session to your phone and type ‘ls -l’.
Toggle Settings 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Another settings toggle panel like Quick Settings. This one looks much more configurable. I need to spend some time with it and it might replace Quick Settings.
Unit Converter 🙂 🙂 🙂 Converts units. kilometers to miles, quarts to liters, etc. Tons of units to convert between. Interface is a little clunky, but it works.
WeatherBug 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Weather reports. Has a nice looking widget that I put on my home page. There are other weather apps, but this one is pretty nice. Lets you store multiple locations.

WiFi Apps

Wardrive 🙂 🙂 🙂 If you are into wardriving (driving around and finding open WiFi) then this app is for you. Interfaces with Google Maps and puts POIs where there are open WiFi spots. Allows you to upload locations to WiGLE.
WiFi Analyzer 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Analyzes all the WiFi signals in the area. Graphs signal strength, channel usage and has a directional finder to help you track down the AP.
WiFi Buddy 🙂 🙂 🙂 Same kind of app as WiFinder, but not as nice an interface.
WiFinder 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Shows all the open WiFi around, their strength and whether they are encrypted or not. Allows connecting with one click.
WiFi Scanner 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Same kind of app as WiFinder with an actual signal strength listed instead of just a bar graph. Might replace WiFinder with this one.
WiGLE WiFi 🙂 🙂 🙂 Same kind of app as Wardrive, but doesn’t have the map interface.