Essential Android Apps

I have to say this first since I’m looking to get a new phone shortly, but I love Android. It is open, stable and not too irritating. However, the fact that I have to use a Google account to use the phone is very annoying. I’ll say that I’ve grown a little apprehensive about what they collect, but I’ll save that for another day. But like I said, I do like Android and the fact that I can do whatever I want with it. Right now I’m using an unlocked G1 running Cyanogenmod and this is what I consider essential apps for Android in no particular order:

Beem: great Jabber client – since I’m moving away from Google, this is a great alternative to the built in Talk app.

Seesmic: nice and fast Twitter client. I used to use Twidroid, but I found that it was just annoying with the constant notifications, but that is just me.

Advanced Task Manager: great for killing Twidroid.

Aldiko Premium Boookreader: tons of free books to download here. I recommend Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I read the entire thing on my Big Brother phone.

Astro File Manager: handy for poking around the SD card.

BeamReader: best PDF viewer I could find.

CM Updater: upgrade your ROM with ease.

Shazam: music tagger – I love this so I can identify songs that I’ve never heard of before. Try it at Old Navy.

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Wireless Tether for Root Users]10: This allows your phone to be a wireless access point. Handy for when your hotel wants to charge you 15.00 a day for internet access.

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ConnectBot]11: Awesome SSH client – this even allows port forwarding.

Transdroid: this lets me monitor my linux distro torrents from the comfort of my couch. Also scans barcodes and searches for applicable torrents.

Did I miss any must-have apps? Let me know!