myAndroid – part 3/3

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Welcome to the last part of the myAndroid series in which I will mention some good entertaining apps.

My fourth home screen is just used for the widgets of these three apps:

1. The last.fm community could be circumscribed as a personalized webradio social network. While I’m not so much interested in the social network part, the personalized webradio is cool, because you just need to enter the name of one of your favorite bands and you get to listen to songs of that band – and bands which are similar to it. That’s pretty useful for finding new artists that you will probably like, too. Now, the last.fm app itself is quite good, except that it tends to crash often. Rating: 8/12
2. Fancy Widget is a beautiful widget that displays the current time and weather at the location of your phone. Weather forecasts can be accessed easily, too. Rating: 9/12
3. PowerAMP is the big brother of the free Winamp player. It might have it’s price, but PowerAMP is much better than the Android version of Winamp. Rating: 10/12

On my last home screen, which I call the “entertainment screen”, I also have two fine widgets, which belong to even better apps:

1. You probably know Facebook. The (official) Facebook app is quite handy, although not totally overwhelming. Rating: 9/12
2. For connecting with Twitter, Twidroyd is the absolute app of choice. It is nearly perfect and using it is pure fun. There’s simply no better way to use Twitter on the mobile. Rating: 11/12

Before diving into other spheres of entertainment, let’s take a short look at some cool music related apps:

• While finding the lyrics for a song might take a while on the PC, there’s an Android app that does the finding and downloading automatically: LyricsApp. That app supports the most common music players and can be accessed over the status bar where a single click reveals the lyrics for the currently playing song. Rating: 9/12
• MusicGrid is more of a nice toy than a seriously helpful app. It lets you make music by activating a pattern of lights in a grid. What’s really amazing about that, is that almost every music you make with this app sounds at least acceptable. Sadly, the app lacks almost all features that would turn it into a serious music making tool. However, it’s simply fun to use. Rating: 8/12
• Where do you get fresh music from the internet? From Tunee, the best song searching app for Android! It’s amazingly fast, finds almost everything and has a very satisfying set of features. Rating: 10/12

You might want to disagree with me, but I think news are mainly just another form of entertainment. When was the last time that you really profited from a news item? If you have problems remembering when that might have been the case, then you might understand my point. So, here are some of the best news apps for Android:

• CNET News: If you want to read some interesting news about computers and technology, then this is the right app for you. What’s not so good, is that news updates don’t come very often. Rating: 9/12
• Pulse: Want some total news overload? Then get this fancy app that displays selectable news sources in scrollable rows full of pictures with links to news items. Rating: 10/12
• Tech Buzz: For getting the most recent news about cyberspace, this app is a pretty good choice. Rating: 9/12

If you live in Germany, these news apps might be of interest to you:

• n-tv: This app belonging to the news channel N-TV is really good. It also comes with foto slideshows and videos. There’s an option to get notified about breaking news, but I suggest switching off those alarms, because they are really annoying sometimes. Rating: 10/12
• Stern: I have never seen a more professional looking app! This masterpiece is a nearly perfect mobile news portal. Be amazed! Rating: 11/12
• Zeitungen FREI: Get quick access to the web portals of the most popular newspapers in Germany and a lot of other countries. Very useful… umm entertaining! Rating: 10/12

What would an article about entertainment apps be without games? Probably just unfinished. So, here are some games that can enrich (or waste) your time immensely:

• Age of Conquest: Europe: There’s a free demo version of this game, but the paid version is much better. This risk-like game looks deceptively simple at first glance, but turns out to be quite a challenging and addictive strategy game. Rating: 9/12
• Andor’s Trail is an old-school RPG game that’s currently still an unfinished beta, but it already provides hours of excellent hack-and-slash action. The graphics are far from impressive, but who really needs graphics in such an RPG? Rating: 9/12
• Angry Birds: I guess because this game is so exceedingly popular, I am supposed to write something about it here. Okay, it’s really good and provides endless hours of instant kamikaze bird fun. But apart from that it’s not totally amazing. Rating: 9/12
• Angry Birds Seasons is more or less just a level-pack for Angry Birds. Rating: 9/12
• ConnecToo: Somehow this game feels like an exercise in applied topology. You have to connect boxes of the same color by paths of boxes that are painted on a grid. What makes this task complicated, is that different paths are not allowed to cross each other. It’s a really lovely puzzle game. Rating: 9/12
• Dungeon Defenders: Now this amazing game is the only game that doesn’t run totally smoothly on my Samsung Galaxy S. It also crashes sometimes and it’s not for free, but it’s still so good that these problems are acceptable. In this fantasy game you have to defend a dungeon against monsters by using different defense turrets and more conventional weapons. What’s really cool about this game is that there are four character classes, a skill system and multiplayer support! Rating: 10/12
• Game Dev Story: In this game you can manage a small computer game company. Small is also the right word for the graphics, which are more suited for older Android phones. The actual gameplay is amusing, but provides no real challenge. Rating: 8/12
• Gem Miner: Dig Deeper: As paid version of Dig Deeper, this game provides the player with the complete fun of digging your own mine and creating intricate mazes of tunnels, ladders and lifts. Somehow this game is more fun than it sounds like, so check it out! Rating: 9/12
• infeCCt: In my opinion, this is the best puzzle game for Android! Planning paths for some kind of growing plant to fill the whole screen feels like an exercise that might actually increase your IQ. Using my brain to this extent has rarely been so much fun. After every three levels there a 15-second break in which you are confronted with advertisement. Once I really clicked on the advertisement, which simply crashed the app. So, don’t do that and consider the advertisement as signal to give your brain some short rest. Rating: 10/12
• Pocket Legends: How cute! A little brother of World of Warcraft for your pocket! Yup, this is really an excellent game, but there’s the problem that getting access to the higher level areas costs around 10$ (you can get access to a few of them for less money). Rating: 10/12
• Replica Island: A jump’n'run game about a robot with a non-chronological story. What’s really good about this game is the smoothly increasing difficulty level. I also liked the story. Rating: 9/12
• Rocket Bunnies: In this game you play a bunny in a small spaceship who has to collect other bunnies from planets as quickly as possible. But don’t get hit by space spiders, asteroids and other space hazards! Rating: 9/12
• SliceIt: Estimating the volume of (parts of) certain areas of different shapes has never been so entertaining. Cut 2d-shapes into the desired number of pieces with a fixed number of lines, but try to make all those pieces have roughly the same area. Hey, it’s not like there’s an overwhelming number of good mathematical puzzle games, so try this one in any case! Rating: 9/12
• Star Traders: It’s a trading/RPG game in (2d)space, but a really addictive one. If there’s anything about this conveniently complex game that I don’t like, then it’s that there are too many low-level ships and the game becomes relatively easy after you get a really powerful ship (like the Paladin class), but apart from that weakness the game is really great! Rating: 10/12
• The Sims 3: Yeah, this is a mobile version of the popular games about virtual persons called sims. Although you have to pay for this game, the price is relatively low for such a high quality game. I like it! Rating: 10/12
• Zenonia: Like Andor’s Trail this is a RPG, but finished, with better graphics, much more stuff and complexity, and not for free. It would be a totally good game, if the controls weren’t so awkward and counter-intuitive. Rating: 9/12

In addition to all these fine apps, there are also a few ones that really don’t fit into any of the previous categories:

• Talking X (just search for “Talking” in the Android Market): Not a single app, but a family of apps that all feature a 3d-character that repeats the words and sounds that reach the mic of the phone and are loud enough. That’s fun for the whole family, but not terribly exciting. Rating: 8/12
• YouTube: I just wanted to write that the official YouTube app is pretty good indeed. Fine, I have done that now: Rating: 10/12

Conclusion: Android is very cool, useful and entertaining and supports lots of really good apps. Yet, there’s no app that completely blows my mind. While most apps are for free, there are also very many apps that are worth their relatively moderate price.