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Gallery: 10 useful Android apps

By // May 25, 2009, 10:16 PM PST

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  • Cab4Me

    Fancy loading your Android phone up with some cool apps? So did silicon.com's Natasha Lomas - and over the next 10 pages you can find more info on the ones she liked.

    Being handy is the watchword of this app which makes the bold boast to let you "Get a cab. Anywhere". And that's pretty much it in a nutshell. Tell it your location, scroll around a map and pinpoint where you are (or let it use GPS to find out) and Cab4Me brings up a list of user-rated cab companies in the locale, furnishing you with phone numbers and other useful details such as payment methods accepted and service hours. Automatic cab ordering is planned for later versions of the app where you won't even have to speak to the cab company but just send them your location and destination data instead.

    Image credit: Skycoders/Cab4Me

  • Voice Recorder

    Keep an aural record of meetings or record voice memos with the Voice Recorder app which turns your G1 into a - you guessed it - recording device. Sound quality is low but it should still suffice for meetings, memos etc. There is also an option to turn on 'background recording' so you can perform other tasks while it's recording.

    Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

  • Tube Status

    This handy app aims to help Tube-hopping Londoners get their daily dose of travel woe. Misery line suspended yet again? Oh well, at least you'll know before you go. The app also offers info on 'this weekend ' - aka the time when Transport for London is most likely to be flicking the off switch on your travel plans.

    Image credit: Maxence/Tube Status

  • The Weather Channel

    A fully featured app that will help you keep an eye on goings on in the sky. You can add and save places for one-click weather checking, or ask it to give you weather by location (using the G1's built in GPS) and/or browse a map view. Forecast options are: now, hourly, 36 hour and 10 day, and weather characteristics offered include temperature, humidity, wind, UV index and visibility. The app also has a video feature for a larger map view of how the weather is shaping up around the country.

    Image credit: The Weather Channel

  • Translate

    Another does-what-it-says-on-the-tin app 'Translate' will do just that, or it will at least most of the time. But it's free so you can't complain about the inevitable translation wobbles. It supports a raft of languages - counted 32 linguistic options including three versions of Chinese. It'll even transcribe into Cyrillic so Greeks and Russians rejoice. The app also has a 'history' feature so you can quickly refer back to find phrases you looked up previously.

    Image credit: Cédric Beust/Translate

  • TooDo



    TooDo is a life-organiser app from French developer Édouard Mercier so if making lists of things you need to get done and giving yourself deadlines floats your boat TooDo could work for you. There's a handy dashboard view for an overview of impending tasks, while to-dos can be categorised by context - such as 'at work', 'back home', 'shopping' etc - and it'll also let you filter by importance of tasks and more.

    Image credit: Édouard Mercier/TooDo

  • Mileage

    Another app for those who believe the devil is in the detail. This app lets car lovers track their petrol usage down to the last penny and then geek out over fuel economy charts and graphs. It also supports multiple vehicles - and allows data imports/exports to SQLite DB, SQL and CSV.

    Image credit: Mileage

  • Wikitude

    This is a travel guide app with a twist: it'll let you impress your friends with your ability to correctly identify prominent landmarks on the horizon (provided they don't see you reading the description as you hold your phone up to said landmark... ). The feature works by making use of GPS and the G1's embedded compass to pinpoint landmarks as you view them via the device's camera, then mashing the location data up with info from Panoramio, Qype and Wikipedia to correctly identify them and provide additional details. The result is what the developers describe as an "augmented reality view".

    Photo credit: Mobilizy/Wikitude

  • PicSay

    PicSay is an image editor for Android that lets you turn camera snaps into greetings cards, invites, meetings reminders - with a little photo-wizardry on your part. Perfect for knocking up that last minute e-card birthday greeting at the airport (so you don't return home to the dog house).

    Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

  • Compare Everywhere

    Compare Everywhere is a barcode-scanning app lets you price-check items by scanning the barcode to find out whether it can be bought more cheaply elsewhere before you part with your hard-earned cash. And, while it's a nice idea in theory, it is however early days for this vision of a connected future to truly work.

    The issues are two-fold: one that the scanning results are often hit and miss, depending on the type of item you're scanning. And two that the 'Everywhere' of the title does not mean 'everywhere in the world' it means 'everywhere in the US'. Results, therefore, appear in dollars and 'local stores' means Walmart or, if you're lucky, a .com shopping site which may offer international shipping. So this app can be handy, certainly, but more so if you're looking to buy a book in the US, say, than tea-bags in the UK...

    Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

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Cab4Me

Fancy loading your Android phone up with some cool apps? So did silicon.com's Natasha Lomas - and over the next 10 pages you can find more info on the ones she liked.

Being handy is the watchword of this app which makes the bold boast to let you "Get a cab. Anywhere". And that's pretty much it in a nutshell. Tell it your location, scroll around a map and pinpoint where you are (or let it use GPS to find out) and Cab4Me brings up a list of user-rated cab companies in the locale, furnishing you with phone numbers and other useful details such as payment methods accepted and service hours. Automatic cab ordering is planned for later versions of the app where you won't even have to speak to the cab company but just send them your location and destination data instead.

Image credit: Skycoders/Cab4Me

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