What is it that you can’t do on your smartphone or tablet? I know that you still can’t get your swanky new Galaxy S6 Edge to make you coffee but that will be sorted soon.
There are applications for almost everything under this sun. You can employ the services of an application to find a girlfriend. You can get yet another application to tell you what is currently showing at IMAX so that you can take her to watch Jurassic World and get yet another app to facilitate how to get there. If things don’t work out and you need to politely tell her that parting ways is the best option, you don’t have to beat the bush about it. Or stop answering calls and texts and her midnight Whatsapps. Some app will do the heavy lifting for you. Easy world I tell you.
How easy? Some 4 year old kid will grow up knowing that Periscope is a window to showcase his prowess at Minecraft to millions of strangers online not the one you were taught in a junior science class.
Yes apps bring all this convenience but while there are millions of them, we only use a handful on a regular basis. I, for instance, get to test quite a number of devices. While depending on their capabilities the sort of applications I use on those devices will vary, there are some applications that are a constant feature because of the convenience they bring to my life. I’ll ignore the obvious ones like Uber, official Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp apps and the like in my listing. Some are premium apps and others are basic free apps. Some are new and colourful with all the bells and whistles of Material Design while others are those that have withstood the test of time. Those that I’ve used religiously since my first interaction with Android in 2010.
Here are my 15 must-have Android applications in no particular order:
1. Google Keep
Note-taking comes natural if you do the things that I do or have been a student recently. It is convenient and pretty much to the point. There are better propositions to Keep like Microsoft’s OneNote or Evernote but I stick with Keep for the convenience.
2. Solid Explorer
Other platforms can pretend to have file managers or whatever they call them but there is nowhere (on mobile) you’ll find the execution half as good as it is on Android. There are veterans when it comes to file managers like Root Explorer and others but Solid Explorer simply gets the job done for me. Everything. Including support for root. You know, those moments when you’ve messed up your efs partition and need to find out what’s going on back there? Solid Explorer is my go-to guy. Solid Explorer would do with a nice text editor though. Material Design for the application has been under testing for the last few months and it is only a matter of time before it exits beta and shows up on the main app.
3. Pushbullet
It’s 2015. You shouldn’t be suffering under the bane of cables. You shouldn’t be anyone’s slave at the office simply because you forgot your smartphone’s USB cable at home. Pushbullet not only eliminates the need to continuously connect your phone to your laptop so as to send things back and forth (small files like photos, website links…) but also makes it easier to respond to text messages and Whatsapp chats and monitor notifications on your phone.
4. Clipper Plus
I use Ditto on my Windows PC to access all my clippings. Thankfully, I’ve been able to do the same on Android since day one. From the days when I was content with the basic app to the days I upgraded to the plus version, it’s excellent. What’s more, I can access all my clippings anywhere anytime thanks to Clipper Sync.
5. MX Player Pro
I really like the video player application on my Galaxy Note 3. I’m not a fan of any other bundled video player on Android. Even Samsung’s isn’t as pleasant as I’d want it to be. MX Player Pro is everything I desire in a video player. Support for more file formats, codecs, better hardware acceleration… name it! It got Material Design and it has never looked better! The best thing about it? It is actively being developed. It is always being constantly updated to keep up with the times (support newer Android devices) and fix a bug here and there. Four years and counting, I’m hooked.
6. Poweramp
I like BS Player. I also like N7 Player. And GoneMAD’s stunning Material Design implementation. Yes, I’ve bought all those music players but for some strange reason I always go back to Poweramp. The themes, the equalizer… I won’t spend any more of your time trying to convince you why I keep it. Because it is the very best. End of discussion. You can never go wrong with the free apps on the Google Play Store but buying Poweramp’s license at just $4.99 could be some of the best things you’ll ever do.
Check out the second part of this article here.
