myAndroid – Part 1/3

Before I had a smartphone, I had vastly underestimated the usefulness of these new devices. To emphasize their handiness, I would call them the digital Swiss army knives of the 21st century. With my Android smartphone I feel well equipped wherever I go. What’s so great about those devices, is that they are computers, which fit into your pocket and have more functionality than one would expect at the beginning.

Let’s assume that you want one of those high-end Android phones. Yeah, there’s also this iPhone4 with the very high resolution display, but it’s too expensive and not an Android phone, so let’s focus on phones that use the rising star of mobile operating systems: Android. Here’s a brief comparison of the three best (in my opinion) Android phones currently on the market:

Google Nexus S:
+ NFC chip (It’s something like RFID, but with better security. However, there’s no infrastructure for using that chip yet.)
+ Pure Android experience with the very latest version of Android
- No SD-card slot
- Not yet available in most countries

Samsung Galaxy S:
+ Cheaper than the alternatives
+ Built-in video call function
- No LED flash
- Performance problems due to the use of a suboptimal file system (will probably be fixed with the next Android updates – can also be fixed with lagfixes, which require root rights that can be obtained by readily available hacks)
- Samsung’s software for connecting the phone with the PC is horrible

HTC Desire HD:
+ Best performance and 50% more RAM than the other phones
+ Biggest display
+ 8 Megapixel camera with dual LED-flash
+/- Solid metal case (instead of plastic), which makes the phone heavy
- Display not as shiny as those of the other phones
- Only 1.5 GB internal memory.
- No front camera for video chat
- Short battery life compared to the other phones

1. General Hints
You might want to buy a second battery and a fitting recharging station, because heavy use of those phones can deplete the batteries within hours!
The standard home screen can be replaced by other ones, which have significant advantages, so I reccomend doing that. Probably the best ones are these here:

• Zeam Launcher: I use this one, because it’s very fast, but still has all the cool features I want.
• Launcher Pro: This is a very good launcher which also has some nice widgets in the full version, but it caused too much lag on my Galaxy S, so I deleted it.
• ADW Launcher: This one is also pretty good and there are many themes available for it, but currently only has maximally 5 items in the quickdraw dock.

For switching between these home screen replacements, you need the Home Switcher app (or a similar one).

In the following paragraphs I rate the apps I use with my own rating system, where 8/12 means good, 9/12 means very good, 10/12 means excellent, 11/12 means outstanding, and 12/12 means absolutely outstanding. I won’t mention any apps who have a rating that is worse than 8/12.

2. Apps in my Quickdraw Dock
These apps are available in all my home screens:

• Call
• Fring: A VoIP service with chat and video call functions. Rating: 9/12
• Contacts
• App drawer
• Dolphin Browser HD: This is simply the best browser for Android. There are many useful add-ons for it. Rating: 11/12
• Astro file manager: This is an extremely good file manager with lots of useful tools. Rating: 11/12
• Dropbox: Pretty useful for storing any files in the cloud. Rating: 9/12
• ClipStore: Saves a history of texts in the clipboard and can place them in the current clipboard again. Rating: 8/12

3. My First Screen: System Apps
I use these apps in my leftmost screen:

• Market
• AppBrain App Market: Manages apps and suggests apps based on the apps you already have. You can also follow other users to see which apps they use. Rating: 10/12
• AndroidPIT: This is a German app portal with app reviews, blog and forum. Rating: 8/12
• Android System Info: Can show you virtually everything you want to know about your mobile. Rating: 10/12
• Task-Manager
• Quadrant Standard Edition: This is the most popular benchmark (due to the bad file system my Galaxy S only gets around 960 points). Rating: 8/12
• Traffic Counter Pro: Counts calls, texts and all cell/WiFi traffic and finds out which apps cause that traffic. Rating: 10/12

These widgets are placed in that screen:

• Market: Displays currently popular apps.
• Android System Info: Displays battery life and MB left in storage.
• Traffic Counter Pro: Displays total duration of all calls, number of SMS sent/received and data traffic by cell or WiFi.

In the next part I will present some really useful apps.

Go to part 2 of the myAndroid series ->
Go to part 3 of the myAndroid series ->