With the doors to the Android Market open to developers as of yesterday, the applications have begun pouring in. To celebrate, we decided to take a look at some of the notable applications lurking about in this first batch. Notable, mind you, doesn’t necessarily mean the best. A few were highlighted for their greatness. Some were noted because we just like the concept. And the others? Well, they were just too weird not to mention.
Title: Twidroid
Summary: One of the first, and best Twitter clients out there for Android so far. Twidroid does what you expect it to, and has some great features in the works, such as photo uploading and background updating so you can always get the latest tweets. Replying to your fellow Twitts is a breeze as well, just press the direct or public reply button.
The Good: Easy to use, clean interface.
The Bad: The photo feature isn’t quite ready for the masses, but they decided to leave it in there anyway. Sometimes gets stuck loading tweets.
Worth the download? Definitely. If you use Twitter and don’t want to do it through the web interface, this is the best alternative so far.
Title: LOLcat Builder
Summary: Exactly what it sounds like: you can build your own LOLcat images on the go. You snap a photo, open it in the program, and add text. It’s already formatted so no scrounging through Photoshop to find the perfect LOLcat font. It’s already done for you. You then have the option to share the images you’ve created with your unsuspecting contact list, who will soon come to hate your guts.
The Good (or the bad): This application could create a whole new method of picture messaging fun. Why just plain text when you can LOLcat text?
The Other Bad: No camera button in the app, so you’ve gotta have your photos ready when you launch the app. Also, there seems to be an alignment bug that cuts off text at random.
Worth the download? Probably. Not for everyone, but there’s an audience for it. And if you have friends that are far, far outside of said audience, it’s a great way to drive them up the wall.
Title: SpellDial
Summary: SpellDial is a simple application that allows you to search for contacts without requiring you to open the keyboard. Enter the contacts name T9 style and it will start narrowing them down.
The Good: Simple to use, and can replace the normal dialer. Not having to open the keyboard to search for the contact is fantastic. It also supports keyboard input, so it really can replace the standard dialer fairly well.
The Bad: The only way to backspace in numeric keypad mode is to swipe left, and the icon for the program is ugly.
Worth the download? Definitely. Great if you want to quickly find contacts without opening up the keyboard.
Title: BudgetDroid
Summary: With the economy the way it is right now, everyone is watching what they are spending. It’s not always easy, so that’s where BudgetDroid comes into play. This application aims at helping you budget your money better by splitting it into categories. Each category has a limit, and you are free to create as many new categories as you need, such as Entertainment, Books, Groceries, Expensive Girlfriend and whatever else your life requires. It also features a history view, so you can view recent purchases that you entered all in one fell swoop.
The Good: Helps manage your money more wisely.
The Bad: The UI is hideous. When entering in your purchases, the dollar and cents are entered separately instead of in one box.
Worth the download? If you are looking to start purchasing more wisely, then this is a great app. It requires discipline though, since they haven’t coded in the sucker punch feature when you go over your budget.
Title: Krystle II
Summary: In the developer’s words, Krystle II is a “simple pet application” meant to give “a little life” to your Android handset. In our words, it’s a close up shot of a shag carpet which giggles when you touch it.
The Good: It might make you smile the first time you play with it.
The Bad: It’ll only make you smile the first time you play with it.
Worth the download? If you’re deathly afraid of animals but want to experience the warmth of a pet’s love through the cold, hard touch screen, then yes. If you’re deathly afraid of giggling carpets, then no.
Title: CallerID by Whitepages
Summary: Are you sick of answering the phone, expecting important calls, when it’s actually a machine calling to tell you the warranty on a car you don’t even have is about to expire? CallerID is here to try and help fix that. Using the 3G/WiFi connection, it runs in the background and attempts to identify who is calling you, as long as the number is listed in the Whitepages. If it’s not, it will display the geographical location of the number instead.
The Good: Lets you answer only the calls you want to answer.
The Bad: May enrage credit collectors, scammers, and your aunts and uncles. Actually, that’s probably not a bad thing in most cases.
Title: SantasWorldWar
Summary: I think this game was supposed to be like Mario, but totally missed the mark. You play Santa who is bent on destroying the Russian leader who has overtaken the North Pole.
The Good: Uh.. Hrm. Oh! As moving in this game is quite hard (you need to roll the trackball really quick), it could be a great hand workout. That’s about it.
The Bad: The graphics are awful, the controls are awful, the coding is awful.
Worth the download? If you’re looking for something to make you really, really angry at your handset, sure. (Editor’s note: Seriously, this game made me want to punch myself in the eyes.)
Go Open Handset Alliance!!!!
I didn’t realize I was on MobileCrunch after I had finished reading the article. Very clever! But all of these apps are so bad that I was glad I didn’t buy the GPhone.
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to be honest the greater majority of the apps coming out BLOW. and then theres some that are only demos…..
besides that twidroid, all the bar code scanner apps, imeem, and tune wiki are awesome.
Nice post. Thanks for this review.
I totally want an Android phone but don’t want to switch carriers.
*smacks Alltel around a bit*
Get with the program, you lazy SOBs.
Well I wanted to comment on what I think so far about the G1 phone. First off it’s a great phone especially since I am a big Google user. I use Gmail daily as well as the calendar. I used the Blackberry Curve before this phone and liked it, but missed the HTML emailing capabilities. I felt like the Blackberry Curve was caught in the stone ages while G1 Android provided a more up-to-date technology.
The imeem application is great. I work with Chamillionaire and to have this application right on my phone to easily show others while I am out away from home his new freestyles on my phone, is very beneficial.
Pro Football Live is a great application if you are into football. It’s so easy to check what time the game is on of my favorite team (GO DENVER BRONCOS! – DON’T HATE HAHA).
I think the myspace application is really awesome. But I have switched to Facebook a while ago so I am not really that much into Myspace anymore. I think Facebook really needs to come out with their own application and stop making us customers suffer because they got their issues with Google. Drop the Digital Beef, get to work on a Facebook application!
I think it’s really early to really tell which applications are going to be the best or biggest. I am very interested to see what happens in the near future.
Get a life mate! I mean is it really necessary to tell us that you use more FB than Myspace? Or that u use Gmail and so on? Did make us laugh though! haha
I’m simply giving my point of view of stuff I like and don’t like about the phone…calm down a bit eh? Call one of your friends and get a hug.
Twitli is a Twitter client for Android that uploads your photo’s to flickr before tweeting them. It’s extremely easy to use. Available through slideme.org and andappstore.com.
That’s it. I’m getting a g1. You had me at awful graphics and awful controls. Don’t you love old-school gaming!
but seriously. I’m getting one. can’t wait.
Although some of the initial offerings for the G1 look questionable – and, as you’ve pointed out, Santa’s World War looks particularly awful – it’s great that Google has managed to get people talking about applications in this way. With only free applications available at present, it’s perhaps understandable that a lot of these aren’t going to set the world alight.
However, things should hopefully get more interesting in January, when Google releases all of the G1’s paid-for applications. Google has been making all of the right noises about the G1 as a serious business device, and so one would assume that there’s a host of really innovative corporate applications ready to be unveiled. There’s a massive potential market there for Google to exploit, so let’s hope it manages to do so.
I would wait for GPhone to become bit stable then I will decide whether to buy that or not…
In response to the “waiting for the phone to become more stable” comment. I’ve used BB’s and treo’s before making the switch to my g1 and its amazing that google has built a more solid OS on its first release than palm, microsoft, and rim currently have. And these companies have been doing it for years and google was able to come along and get it right the first time. I’ve had my g1 going on two weeks now and have only rebooted once. The best purchase I’ve made in quite some time. Hopefully I’ll be so lucky again with my d90….
-written on my g1 while on the can.