App Reviews - 15/19 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Oct

[App Review] WolframAlpha Makes Your Phone A Supercomputer

Posted by Brad Ganley in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Recently, Wolfram Alpha LLC dropped the official WolframAlpha app into the market. It is one of my favorite services and I purchased it ($1.99) as soon as it came out. For those not familiar, this is a clip from the "about" page of WolframAlpha to give you some idea of what this is all about:

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Oct

Webkey For Android: Take Full Control Of Your Android Device Using A Web Interface From Your Computer

Posted by Adam Litke in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Everyone knows that smartphones are awesome, but it’s hard to beat using a large screen and full keyboard to control a device. Developers Peter Mora and Zoltan Papp believe they have come up with a compelling compromise: Webkey, for Android. Webkey allows users with a rooted Android device to text or call contacts, view SD card contents, and more - all from a web based interface.

The Interface

Webkey's interface leaves a lot to be desired, as it is more bare and utilitarian than polished and perfected. As the picture above shows, you have access to the following options:

Phone
GPS
SMS
Call List
Notify
Export
Users
SD card
Help

Clicking on "phone" gives you the screen above.

Oct

[App Review] Graffiti for Android Improves Text Entry, Old-School Style

Posted by T. Carter Ross in App Reviews, Applications, Apps/Games, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Reviewed version: 2.0.4
Requires: Android 1.6 or newer
Cost: Free

I have fat fingers. There. I said it. With my old Sanyo Katana, it wasn’t a problem because I would just multitap and tap and tap to enter text. But when I finally made the jump to a smartphone, I quickly ran into a stumbling block with the virtual keyboard.

The HTC Hero has a pretty compact screen, especially in portrait orientation. Trying to hit letters on that tiny virtual keyboard drove me crazy, particularly since I usually touch type and find hunting and pecking my way across a QWERTY keyboard difficult.

Sep

[Android How-To] Make Your Own Ringtones, Notifications, And Alarms From Media Files

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Have you ever wanted to make custom ringtones, alarms, or notification sounds in Android but had no clue how to do it, even if you already put a media file onto your device? I can't blame you - Android is absolutely terrible about letting you do anything but pick one of the existing system sounds and offers no way of adding your own.

Enter Ringdroid. Ringdroid's sole purpose is to let you take an existing music file, crop it exactly how you want it, and then save it as either a ringtone, an alarm, or a notification. The end result - the newly created sound shows up in the corresponding dropdown, ready for all that waking up, notifying action you can throw at it.

Sep

Quick Hands-On: SendStuffNow - The Enterprise User's Solution To Secure Cloud Sharing

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Last month, AP contacted Smith Micro with the intention of writing a detailed hands-on with SendStuffNow (SSN). Specifically, we wanted to look at SSN from a corporate-use perspective with the (then) new Android app. They made themselves available in a beautiful fashion, with Matthew Covington, Senior Director of Product Management, taking the time to thoroughly demonstrate the software to us. Unfortunately, complications arose on our end of things, with the end result that SSN has landed in my un-corporate lap. Thus, I'll be providing an overview and a very brief hands-on, but not in the depth we'd planned and not from a corporate-use perspective.

Sep

[Productivity Series] Four Little Apps That Will Make Using Your Android Device A Whole Lot Easier

Posted by Ron Hamelin in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Get that boss-key ready, because it’s time to kick off the first installment in Android Police’s productivity series! We’ve scoured the [sometimes murky] depths of the Android Market for those vital productivity boosting applications that can save you time, money, and hopefully, some sanity. We’re always looking for new apps to cover, so if you have any suggestions, drop us a line at tips@androidpolice.com

I’m always looking for ways to make using my Android device easier and faster. Well, I’ve discovered four apps in the Market that will do just that… and, best of all, they’re free.

In-App WiFi

This little app does exactly what it says: it allows you to turn WiFi on or off, no matter what you’re doing on your Android device.

Sep

[App Of The Week] Audio Manager Pro: Make Volume Adjustment In Android Simple, Tolerable, And Powerful

Posted by David Ruddock in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

An Issue of Volume

From the day I eagerly removed the cellophane wrapping around the artful, Google-themed box which contained my Nexus One, I have had only one real gripe with Android: volume management. For a while I just dealt with it - the only way to adjust in-call volume was during a call, and other volume settings had to be controlled via the sound settings menu, or in their proper context.

It was a hassle. Reaching the settings aside, remembering if I had quieted my phone (unless it was silenced) or turned down the alarm volume was up to me, the user.

Sep

Zune Home Gives You That Zune HD Vibe, Tegra Sold Separately

Posted by Brian O'Toole in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Apart from SlideScreen, it seems like pretty much every alternative Android launcher out there is a slightly different version of the same thing; namely, the stock Android launcher. Well, SlideScreen is no longer alone. With Zune Home, we have something rather familiar but entirely different to what we’ve seen before on Android.

As the name would suggest, Zune Home is an homage to the laudably sleek interface found on Microsoft’s Zune HD portable media player. What it does is replace your standard homescreen with a simple list of clickable text labels: phone, contacts, etc. These link to applications of your choosing (apart from phone and marketplace, which are preset), meaning you can have the “internet” label open up your preferred browser, eg Fennec.

Sep

[App Of The Week] DiskUsage Helps Uncover Your Phone's Internal And SD Card Fat Deposits

Posted by David Ruddock in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Introduction

If you're like most Android users, you may run into slight space issues when it comes to available internal storage for apps. The daunting task you face, then, is to go through each of your apps and locate the major megabyte offenders. What a pain.

Alternatively, you may discover that your precious SD card is suddenly refusing to write a new episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast (which is awesome), so now you have to drop everything to figure out where the fat is.

Enter DiskUsage.

DiskUsage is really quite a simple application: upon being opened, you are prompted to select a storage location to view (internal storage or SD card).

Sep

[Hands-On] Android Remote Notifier For Your Win/Linux/Mac Desktop: For When Your Phone Isn't Notify-y Enough

Posted by Brad Ganley in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Most nights that I'm at home, my son is sound asleep in the next room. To avoid waking him up, I put my phone into silent mode faithfully every night at 9pm and, subsequently, miss a whole lot of calls and text messages. That's bad for two reasons:

I miss what could potentially be important information or, as in most cases, good times.
It makes me look like a jerk who never answers his phone and ignores his friends.

So I thought to myself "I'm on my computer all the time, I should make an app that puts my notification on my computer screen so I never miss this stuff." Turns out, somebody already made that app and it is as awesome as I had hoped.