Three Recommended Apps for Android OS
The list of best Android apps is bound to be subjective, based on the users’ interests and lifestyle as much as the app’s actual quality. Although there are plenty of excellent choices among the sea of Android apps, favorites depend largely upon what a person uses their phone for and no two users’ needs are completely alike. However, there are a few apps whose design, versatility and overall quality make them indispensable to any Android user.
TuneIn Radio
Enough people use their phone as radios and mp3 players now that at least one music app is necessary to mention. Of all the music playback and streaming radio programs available for the Android, none have the features, customization and convenience of TuneIn Radio. You can choose from over 70,000 stations through a detailed search function (artist, song, genre etc), and it is entirely free. There are also a wide variety of podcast programs available to choose from in every format imaginable. You have control over your streams – you are able to rewind, pause and play back stations at your leisure.
With TuneIn, you can search from either your local radio stations or online streams by format (music, talk, or sports). After choosing a category, you can click into its menu of subcategories until you find what interests you. Every radio station shows a brief description of what is currently playing underneath it. You can use any of the stations as an alarm, or add them to your own presets selection for easy recall.
TuneIn combines a great music selection with excellent features and an easy-to-navigate interface. I would recommend it over an mp3 player because you can search for a wide range of songs without filling up your memory with mp3 files. Whether you stick with the basic version or upgrade for $19.95 (which allows you to record, among other things), TuneIn is probably the single best choice in Android music apps.
TED Air
Although most people think of smartphone apps as entertaining timewasters, there are some which can actually be used to expand your mind. TED Air is among the best of these. For anyone who doesn’t know, the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) are a series of conferences and lectures that have grown over the years into a website offering a comprehensive range of educational and instructional talks on a variety of subjects related to science, culture, technology and more. The TED website features a variety of streaming video talks, and there are several Android apps designed around them. Of these, TED Air is probably the best available due to its interface and wide range of features.
TED Air features a fast, highly customizable function for searching talks – you can use the built-on search box to search by theme, tag, or category. If you want to save money on data charges, you can download the videos straight to your Android instead of streaming them. You can also view the talks with your choice of language subtitles. My favorite feature, however, was the share function – if you find a talk you like, you can share and discuss it with your friends.
TED Air does a good job serving TED’s stated goal of “spreading ideas worth sharing”. Not only is it addictive and fun to use, it will actually make you smarter instead of just being another distraction.
Skype
The Skype Android app should be on every list of essential downloads, especially those who want to save money on long-distance calls. Although the initial release of Skype for Android left much to be desired, the developers have continued to improve the app since then, and it has grown by leaps and bounds in the past two years. Although it is still something of a work in progress, it merits inclusion on this list because it is gaining ground on other messenger programs, and now that Microsoft has taken control of the project, I believe Skype will eventually be the best of its kind.
In addition to free voice communication with other Skype users, Skype messenger now supports direct video, photo and file sharing. While the video conferencing feature is not yet supported on all handset models, Skype is continuing to add to its list of smartphones that are compatible with this feature.
Although these are just a few of the many excellent mobile apps available for the Android mobile OS, their quality of design and wide range of uses make them among the first downloads I would recommend to any new smartphone buyer.
