[an error occurred while processing this directive] Mobile Apps I am using

Disclaimer

This is my personal list of applications I am using on my PalmOS PDA and on my Android smartphone. I'll try to keep it up to date from now on. Due to the fact, that I am using personal information management (PIM) in an advanced fashion, I still stick to my PalmOS-PDA (Tungsten T3) for tasks like. And I made my point clear why this is the case.

Meanwhile I gave up on my beloved PalmOS-PDA because of my switch to Org-mode. Unfortunately I miss a lot of very cool PIM features while being mobile but the advantages of Org-mode in my daily work were far to impressive. So until MobileOrg for Android is practically usable, I currently do not have mobile access to todo-lists, contacts, memos, or notes any more.

I also do think that gesture based devices in general do have some limitations compared to a stylus based mobile device.

So you woun't find any good recommendations for PIM for Android devices on this page. Simply because there are not any good PIM apps around that excel only rudimentary PIM stuff.

I marked apps I do not use any more and informations that refer to outdated things like this.

Upfront, I want to explain my general setup:

Palm PDA

I was using PalmOS since 2001 or so. Starting with the good old Handspring Visor Deluxe, I ended up using a Tungsten T3. I did sync my Palm with J-Pilot (Linux). For a couple of years, I also used Pocket Mirror to sync my Palm with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 (and Exchange) without major problems. Additional, I was syncing my Palm with Mac OS X Addressbook although it only synced a small subset of contact informations, it was enough for syncing my Addressbook with my old Sony Ericsson cellphone I was using back then.

Android smartphones

In December 2009 I bought an HTC Magic. Since January 2010, I was using the ROM of cyanogen. When I updated CyanogenMod 4.2.13 to 4.2.15.1 I noticed a subjective speedup for the first time. Therefore I can recommend CyanogenMod for everybody who is not missing HTC Sense. With CM 5.0.7 it provided Android 2.1 on the Magic. This was a big step from the former ROM. Definitely a recommendation!

Since July 2010 I use an HTC Desire. It's got way faster processing power and a bigger display. What a great step forward. The software (like web browser) is also much better compared to Android 1.x. And I do like HTC Sense a lot: cool look and feel. What a great platform to use.

In summer 2011 I switched from regular ROM firmware to LeeDrOiD ROM to overcome shortage of internal storage capacity by using App2SD+. Soley for the usage of LBE Privacy Guard, rooting your Android is worth the little hazzle.

Contact me

If you want to contact me concerning the content of this page, write an email to mobile_apps_hp followed by @ and my domain (see in address bar; without the "www").

Mobile Apps I am using

Following widget shows the up to date list of Apps I am using on my Android phone. If your're using AppBrain too, you can subscribe to my account and email me yours.

You can take a look on my current list of installed Android apps which is kept up to date by AppBrain

Additionally you can read the informations below for a detailed (hi)story of my mobile apps (on Palm and Android).

Though I am using two mobile devices (PalmOS PDA and Android Smartphone), I organized this section in a task-driven way. And I stick to a special order: usage time and usage frequency. The more you reach the bottom of the list, the less dominant are the usage patterns in terms of time and frequency.

Entering characters

PalmOS

I do not like Graffiti 2 because I am not that fast while typing. Not all characters are drawn with a single stroke and I did notice some mistyping I did not see with Graffiti 1. So I just switched back to the first version of Graffiti.

Short phrases I do enter using Graffiti. For longer texts I often switch to the on-screen keyboard.

Android

CyanogenMod comes with pretty much the default AOSP keyboard. Being a german speaking guy, I want to use german umlaut characters like ö, ü, ß as well. I had some issues with CyanogenMod and installed the keyboard from HTC: HTC_IME.apk (german instructions). This keyboard is pretty good because you can type very fast and erroneously: the keyboard recognises the word you want to type with a clever algorithm that is error-correcting (to some degree).

You only get mistyping when the word you're typing is not in the dictionary. Then you have to start all over (the word) and type carefully character by character before you can add it to the dictionary.

In February 2010 I stumbled over another principle of keyboard interface: ShapeWriter. They do have several devices they support. And so I installed the Android version of ShapeWriter together with the german extension for it.

The cool thing about ShapeWriter is, that you do not lift your finger from the keyboard while "writing" a word. You just swipe over the keys the word contains (in the correct order of course) and ShapeWriter recognises the word by comparing it to its dictionary. It does work as long as the word is in the dictionary.

But coolness is the most dominant part of ShapeWriter: it's pretty slow to type with ShapeWriter. I did a study on text input methods on mobile systems and then I used HTC_IME.apk instead of ShapeWriter for a while.

On my HTC Desire, I used the default HTC keyboard which is quite good. After I tested SwiftKey X I bought it and I am using it right now.

I once had the opportunity to test a portable bluetooth keyboard called Freedom Pro Keyboard which costs about EUR 75. In short: Pairing was no problem. The Layout is pretty weird and you have to get used to it. The lock to get it stiff looks pretty fragile. I would not recommend it for typing on your lap. You can map Apps to special keys. Android 2.2 does not seem to support cursor movements by words. For me it is no substitution for my Notebook with its superior lenovo keyboard. But with 380g it is light.

Text replacements and snippets

I do like productivity enhancements. One basic tool for this purpose is some kind of text replacement. Imagine you have to type phrases like your email address or your phone number every day. And then imagine a tool, that replaces some pre-defined string like "myea" (my email address) or "mypn" (my phone number) with your (correct) email address or phone number. This saves you much time and prevents typing errors.

PalmOS

On my Palm, I switched from the built-in replacement (see preferences "ShortCuts") to ShortCut5 v1.6 by Mark Tamura. It allows not only static strings such as your credit card number but also dynamically generated strings like the current date or time.

Android

On Android, I just could not find any tool that provides a feature like that. Contact me, if you do have a suggestion!

Calendar, Todos

PalmOS

I bought DateBk6 which is the most advanced PIM application I ever saw on any system. I do like it very well. It's not perfect but the best I know of.

Please help yourself with Google to find out the power of DateBk6. It's worth every cent and any minute reading the manual.

Android

Well in January 2010, I tested every calendar and todo app I could find. I summarized my findings concerning todo-apps on a blog entry which covered Astrid, Shuffle, ActionComplete, myGTD, OpenLoopz For Android, NextAction, GOALS ToDo Free, and Doit.im. Summary: I'll stick to DateBk6 on PalmOS. For displaying calendar, I'd use Calendar Pad.

The guy who wrote DateBk6 also created an Android calendar software called Pimlical. Although beta, it is superior to the built in calendar software solution. But it still needs lots of time and features to reach the quality and featureset of DateBk6 on my Palm.

Quick Addroid provides you a quick method to create events for your calendar. But be aware: Pimlical offers such a feature too.

Reminder

Android

RemindMe does the job quite well. Previously used (but rejected): QuickAlarm, built-in Calendar, Astrid.

SMS

Android 1.x (until 2010-05)

Handcent SMS offers way more (and better) features than the built-in SMS/MMS-app. Although I lost two SMS with Handcent SMS, I used it on my HTC Magic.

Android 2.x (since 2010-05)

On my HTC Desire I am using the built-in HTC SMS App. It has an appealing design and covers my requirements pretty well.

Twitter

Android

Besides the fact that I did not see any Twitter-client, that supports keyword-filtering and some kind of scoring and other advanced features I'd like to see, Seesmic is good. Previously used (but rejected): Touiteur, Twicca, Twidroid, TweetCaster, "I Tweet!". Those previously used twitter apps are pretty much the same except for minor features, font size, and colors.

Reading RSS feeds

Android

I like to read my RSS feeds while being on bus, waiting for a train, or other idle times. For NewsRob I switched from Bloglines.com (which I'd still prefer!) to Google Reader. NewsRob is a very decent RSS aggregator and syncs perfectly with the web version (Google Reader). Your handful of Dollars are quite good spent on the commercial version. It offers very cool features. NewsRob is the Android app which I am most fond of.

Email access

Android 1.x (until 2010-05)

One of the advantages I see related to smartphones is the ability to access email while being mobile. My personal requirements are just related to reading emails. I do prefer writing emails on a standard keyboard with my usual mail client. The built-in email client "Email" (I do not use Gmail) would be sufficient for that purpose. But unfortunately it has some issues with IMAP: it shows some emails in my inbox that were deleted before. And once I deleted such an email but in real another (important and still unread) email was deleted!

Therefore I switched to K-9 Mail which is known as the most used email client (besides Gmail) on Android. It's pretty advanced but I still use only a small subset of its features so I can not write anything special about it.

Android 2.x (since 2010-05)

On my HTC Desire, I was using the built-in HTC Mail client. Is is not that powerful as K-9 but it looks quite good, offers all features I need, is integrated into HTC Sense and handles multiple email accounts the way I want. Then I needed a few features from K-9 and therefore I switched back to K-9.

Launching Apps and Accessing Contacts

Android 2.x (since 2010-05)

I love using Google Gesture Search for launching apps with no fast accessible desktop icon. And it is very good for accessing contact informations of people. Just scratch the first few characters and face your desired contacts. It works adaptive so that popular apps or contacts appear higher up. Perfect tool, used very often.

Silencing the phone

Android

At the moment I am using the HTC/Android default method for silencing the thing: a long press on the I/O button pops up a dialog where I can switch to silent mode, vibrate-only mode, and other things.

I often forgot to re-activate the ringer tone after meetings and so forth so I made myself a widget using Tasker (you'll read about Tasker further down). This widget let's me choose a count down time. After the count down reaches zero, the ringer is activated again. Quite handy ;-)

Previously used

Silent Time Light is able to put your phone into silent mode for a certain period of time. This is very handy because I often forget to activate sound again after a meeting or such. Additionally, Silent Time Light is able to silence you phone according to scheduled times like being in the gym every Monday 6 to 8 p.m.

Be careful: if used together with other apps that modify ringer sound level, you do not know, what's going on. One of those apps that interfere with it is FoxyRing: it polls the internal microphone and listens to the sound level around your phone. According to that, the ringer sound level is modified. When you're in a loud environment, your phone rings loud. While being in a silent environment, the sound level is turned down. Clever idea but it costs power in background and I can not use any other app that controls the sound level.

Browsing the Web

Android 1.x (until 2010-05)

Dolphin seems to be the most widely used web browser on Android. It's got way more features compared to the built-in web browser of Android. I personally like accessing Delicious and all connections to related apps like Beelicious which I used for adding bookmarks. Dolphin is not as good as the mobile browsers from Apple (big! difference) but it's OK as a workaround.

Android 2.x (since 2010-05)

Once again, I am using the built-in HTC Web-Browser. Fast, good usability, looks great. In combination with Andricious for my bookmarks it serves me well.

Searching for public transportation connections

Android

FahrplanAT is very cool. It provides me current connections in Graz (GVB) as well as train connections of Austria (ÖBB). Unfortunately it stopped working for the GVB in 2010. Therefore I switched to "Fahrplan" which stopped working too. 2011-02 up to 2011-11 I was using DB Navigator which covers ÖBB trains and GVB. Now I am using SCOTTY mobil Android which has a neat interface and uses data at least for ÖBB trains and GVB.

PalmOS

For Austrian train connections, I used the software from Hafas. I had to request a file for each distinct connection from the web form of ÖBB. But unfortunately this feature is hard to find on the website.

The tool is very good and when a connection is found, it's very easy to add it to the calendar.

Listening music

Android

I seldom listen to music on my mobile devices. But every know and then I got the chance to listen to a recording of a talk I downloaded from the web. So I am not using my mp3 player for navigating through a big collection of music files. The ability of jumping to a spot in a large file is more important to me. The built-in Music app was not OK to me. I am using Meridian.

Notes, Memos

PalmOS

I got lots of memos on my Palm: IP numbers, gift ideas, project ideas, infos related to insurances, health-related data, job memos, hardware infos of my computers, small documentations of tools I use, recipes with their shopping lists (handy for deciding what to cook while being at shopping), sport statistics of me, and lots of other stuff. For this purpose, the built-in memo is enough for me. It syncs with J-Pilot.

Android

I seldom take notes on my Android phone. For this purpose I am using Note Everything.

Phone

Android

I stick to the default phone app.

Taking photos

Android

Digital camera app that comes with LeeDrOiD.

Egg-timer

Android

I am using RemindMe (see above) and the HTC Sense clock/timer widget. Previously used (but rejected): TwoTouch Timer Free, QuickAlarm (reminding was not reliable).

Scanning barcodes and QR-codes

Android

I am using Barcode Scanner. Also tested but found no reason for a change: Goggles (still beta, no additional features), Shop Savvy (no prices for Austrian shops).

Contact management

PalmOS

Most of the time I prefer doing contact management in J-Pilot which is in sync with my Palm. But the built-in contact app is fine too.

Password storage

PalmOS

I save all my (several hundreds!) passwords in GNU Keyring. It syncs with a J-Pilot plugin.

Android

As a fallback possibility (my Palm PDA is not always with me), I was using Android Keyring (from the market) which is able to import GNU Keyring data files. After my switch away from PalmOS, I started using KeePass Password Safe on my compters. Using Dropbox to sync the (encrypted) password database I can access it on my Android phone by using KeePassDroid.

Watching movies

Android

From time to time I watch the recorded news or a film on my Android while being e.g. on a train. I stick to Meridian because of its easy usage when skipping a view seconds or minutes. I do have to recode all movies (to PSP-format) to be able to watch it.

Games

I seldom play any games. But if I do, I like the following ones:

PalmOS

Bubbles is a fine game as well as Vexed! for PalmOS. Do also check out Traffic! which has also got simple rules and difficult levels.

Android

I do like the gameplay of

Geotracking

Android

My Tracks is a cool app for recording geographical locations e.g. while doing a mountainbike tour.

Navigation

Android

I tried several navigation apps but none was even able to provide me basic features:

In 2010, Google provided navigation in Google maps. For occasional purposes it is quite good though not as good as TomTom on my Palm.

PalmOS

TomTom: my T3 in combination with a GPS bluetooth mouse: it works, got nice user interface, perfect.

Misc Android stuff I tested

There is no special order or sequence of the following sections.

Translating words

ColorDict and its extensions offers cool offline translation service with links to Wikipedia and such.

Doodle-Client

I like using Doodle for organizing things with other people. On my Android I got Doodle Scheduling. At the present (2011-01-30) this apps is usable for quick looking up poll status but it lacks features for a full replacement of the web page.

Calculator

Since I used an HP48GX on the university I like Droid48 app for calculating things. I plan to backup my old hardware HP48 and install my own HP48-tools into this emulator but I guess this will be a long-term wish ;-)

Locating your phone

With WatchDroid Lite you can find your phone in your messy appartment by sending an SMS to it: it rings. Or you can force the ringer sound in an endless loop when your phone gets stolen. Or you can get the location of your phone per SMS. Or you can activate the SIM lock of your phone all by sending an SMS.

File management

ASTRO is a good file manager. It's below in this section because I do not use it frequently and I did not test other file managers.

Phone/SMS statistics

I stumbled over an app called Phonalyzr which analyses your phone and SMS habits according to the stored phone call logs and SMS messages. Besides the fact that those results are pretty interesting (at least to me!) they are a very important help for choosing your (next) phone contract. You know exactly how many phone calls you are receiving and initiating on weekdays, evenings, weekends, and so forth.

Context awareness

This is gonna be cool: imagine your phone reacts according to your situation. Ringer sound level is turned down while working in the office. Notification of errands while passing the store. Hiding the nude girl on the homescreen background when the bluetooth-signal of your girlfriend is nearby. Silence the sound of your phone when something with "meeting" appears on your calendar. Activating WiFi when reaching home. And so on. Cool stuff, right?

OK, this is the theory. How about real apps that want to jump in? First of all I tested Locale. It's got a nice interface where you can define situations and their configurations. Locale got a Plug-In system which is able to extend it's featureset. Great!

But: you have to choose from Locale Beta and an expansive full version. It'd be OK if the full version would be better. In fact, the full version is a complete rewrite that has its own bugs. To some degree the Beta version is better than the full version! You've got a wishlist on the webpage of the project. Unfortunately the developers are not quite ... cooperative when it comes to very popular (and reasonable) feature requests. So many really cool feature requests are turned down with various excuses. Not happy.

And then I found Tasker which basically offers the same as Locale does but with some differences: it's far more flexible. Its interface does not look that stylish. It offers far more possibilities. It's a bit more complicated. The developer is far more cool than those of Locale.

It requires some period of studying documentation and adjustment but it is worth it. It is available on its homepage and in the Android Market. Worth every cent and let's you adopt your phone in incredibly many ways!

With Tasker I accomplished following things:

Analyzing WLAN networks

Looking for any free WLAN around your? I take Wifi Analyzer for that purpose.

Flashlight

You know the situation: it's dark and for finding something you'd be glad to have a flashlight with you. With LED Desire Light I am using the bright phone flashlight.

xkcd

If you do not know xkcd, you *have* to visit the web page now! For reading the great comics and their very important ALT text you'll be happy using xkcd viewer.

Austrian Ski Weather

Do you like the web page of Bergfex? Then their app is worth the money.

Disk usage statistics

Do you wonder where all that SD card space is lost? Well, Disk Usage helps you to find the things that eat up all your memory.

XING Client

I do not like Facebook and such but I maintain a (minimum) account on XING. For accessing contact informations from this network, I use their client app: XING.

Instant messenger

meebo IM: I tried it for ICQ and Jabber. It works but it looses network connection from time to time. I just do not use IM while being mobile. I prefer SMS instead.

Offline maps

With RMaps you can scroll around a map while being online. When you're offline, RMaps displays your position on the map which is used from the cache. But you have to scroll the map on every level of detail, if you want to be able to zoom in and out while being offline.

Sharing data over the air

Hoccer is a cool method to share data. Visit their Homepage and watch the video for a short introduction. Disadvantage: your partner has to install Hoccer too in order to be able to share files.

Impressing women

With Google Sky Map you can impress your girlfriend with an augmented view of the stars above you. It lets you search for Venus and watch out for the sun in the night (through the earth).

Who did not want to impress his girlfriend with the romantic app called G1 Psycho? You can transport yourself in this cool movie without having to show up at any casting event! And for german users it's got an additional feature: the translations are that bad, that you'll have fun activating and deactivating features for hours!

Airplane Mode

Airplane Mode Wi-Fi Tool (or its Widget) is able to put Android in airplane mode but keeping WiFi still running. With CyanogenMod 4.2.15 this feature is also provided by the ROM. So I do not use this app any more.

Cisco VPN

Having your phone rooted, you're able to connect to any Cisco based VPN by using VPN Connections. But be warned: the network speed is awful slow. In my case, I got a better bandwidth using HSDPA than with the VPN.

In any case, you need to root your phone which I do not want to do with my HTC Desire (yet).

Lyrics

I am a big fan of reading lyrics of currently played music files. Instant Lyrics Lite displays the lyrics from the id3-tag of currently played mp3 file.

Music title

You might already have heard of Shazam: it's able to get track name, artist, and album of a song by holding the microphone of your phone directed to the speakers. It work's astonishing great!

eBay

I found Pkt Auctions eBay. It's a nice app that provides more than basic features for eBay. It's cool that I do not have to wait infront of my computer just to be able to catch an item on eBay.

Managing Apps

AppManager offers you cool features to manage your Android apps. AppBrain is my tool of choice for mow.

Handcrafting

Bubble is the ultimative helper for friends of Binford.

Logging network traffic

I wanted to keep an eye on my transfer limit so I used 3G Watchdog for a while.

I noticed an issue: the app of my provider showed the number of transferred megabytes too. But those two numbers differed up to 20 percent! I did not track down this issue because I never reached my 1 GB limit anyway so I quit keeping an eye on the limit.

Screenshots

In order to get an idea, how my devices are being used, I do think it is cool to see actual screen shots. Those are from 2010-03-21 and are not being updated since I need to root my HTC Desire or install the whole development suite on my computer. So you'll see a snapshot of my HTC Magic before I switched over to HTC Desire.

Palm T3

Palm T3 Homescreen with recently used apps

This is my main screen of my Palm T3. You can see my main apps, a menu of the six recently used apps, and the Graffiti 1 zone.

Android HTC Magic

Android Homescreen 3 - the main screen

Here is my main screen (screen number three) of my Android device. At the top I can quick access wireless settings activation, sync behavior, and screen brightness.

In the second row I can quick access the contact of my girlfriend, silence my phone for a defined period of time (FoyxRing Widget), add a reminder, and have a quick view on the battery status.

Then there is a link to the Gesture Search app I like, digital camera, countdown (as an egg-timer for all kinds of stuff), and my Twitter client.

The last row consists of my browser, RSS client, email client, and my SMS tool.

Android Homescreen 1 - Games, Music, Toys Android Homescreen 1 - Games, Music, Toys

My Android screen one (the one at the outer left) offers me access to games, toys, and music stuff. The screen number two (left of main screen) provides me settings and system informations.

Android Homescreen 4 - Location based apps Android Homescreen 5 - Apps to test

Right of my main screen is the screen number four. On this screen I place apps related to location based services like Google Maps and such. Additionally, I have two bookmarks for web pages I visit regulary: Wikipedia and a translation service. The outer right screen number five holds apps that I installed recently and are being tested. So those change often.

Android Notification Menu

In my notification menu there is the information of my task killer and the bandwidth logger.

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