Applications are a must for every PC user out there. But today with smartphones being such a major part of a person’s life, productivity apps have made its way to these portable devices as well. Android and iOS are currently going neck to neck in terms of the number of apps in their respective app stores, with certain reports suggesting that the Android Market will overtake the iTunes AppStore easily in the coming year.
Since we’re talking about apps here, we thought it would be fun to mention some cool productivity apps for Android. Lets check them out. (You might want to check out our list of iOS apps too if you own an iOS device)
1. Astro
This is a cool file manager app for Android which facilitates easier navigation of the contents of your SD card. The new updated version also comes with a new UI and some other cool tweaks. The app is available in a free version and a separate pro version. We recommend you try out the free version first to get a hang of things and then get the paid version. You can download ASTRO to your cellphone with a couple of clicks by heading over to the Android Market. Installing APK files on your device is also made much easier with Astro.
2. Advanced Task Killer
ATK, as the name sounds is a task killing app to save up some RAM on your device. This app is particularly helpful if you find that your handset has too many apps running at once (which could lead to slow responsiveness). Additionally, you can add a homescreen widget of ATK on any of your homescreen which will kill apps with a tap. This saves time since you don’t have to open the app to kill apps. However this doesn’t give you control over the apps that you will be killing. To be able to do that, you can head over to the main app and select or deselect apps to be killed. Advanced Task Killer is a free app as well, so you might want to try this one out.
3. SplashID Safe For Android
This app will be of great help to most Android users since it keeps record of all your passwords and other information in a safe location. The app uses 256-bit encryption, so you can be assured that your information is pretty safe. SplashID Safe is also available for PC and Mac, so they’re not new to this by any means. The app is not free though and it will cost you $9.90. But for the work that it does, we don’t think the price is high. The developers of the app mention that the app is not compatible with tablets, so tablet owners might want to wait for a while. Download SplashID Safe For Android for your Android smartphone today.
4. Skitch
Everybody likes playing around with their devices to kill time and have fun. And what better way to do that than to edit your images and share them with your friends? Well, that’s what Skitch promises to do. This app gives you all the essential tools to edit an image from your gallery and give it a new touch to show around to your friends and loved ones. This app comes from the makers of Evernote and assures you a great experience. Skitch is downloadable for free on the Android Market, so it shouldn’t hurt you to download the app and give it a try.
5. Swiftkey X Keyboard
Most users want more out of their Android device than what is offered. And most of the times, we don’t seem to like the keyboard that Android has by default. Well, Swiftkey X Mobile is a great app for all you deprived users. The app brings back the fun in typing and is very intuitive as you would expect from an app of this caliber. I have personally tried this app and the usability is great and the predictions are just remarkably good. Download Swiftkey X Keyboard from the Android Market for $3.93. There is a tablet version of the app separately available in the Android Market.
All these apps are as great as you would like them to be. The best part however is that the developers are ever so keen to keep the apps fresh and updated which will not let your investment or time go waste.
We’re sure there are a lot of other cool apps out there, but since this is a list of five apps, there’s only so much room to mention them all. Thought we missed out on some apps? Let us know in the comments below.
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Written By Chethan Rao and published on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011. Chethan is a young tech-blogger from India. He follows technology extensively, loves gadgets, and is a huge social media fan. You can follow him on twitter @RaoChethan.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
netMemo is a pretty neat voice-memo recorder, built to minimize the number of clicks it takes to record and send a voice note to a pre-set e-mail address.
Refrain from using Task Killers.. they actually aren’t all that helpful.
Google it!
The fact that you’re advocating the usage of task killers shows that you don’t know crap about how the Android OS works.
Also, ADW is a different application (it’s a launcher).
You may have meant “ADK” for Advanced Task Killer.
When an app is running in the background, you can either wait for them to close on their own or close them then and there. Well, the Android system closes certain apps if need be (when the RAM is running out of memory). So you can either wait for the apps to close on its own, or use task killers like these to shut it down immediately. That being said, I’m not advocating the fact that task killers are handy at all times. It’s just that in certain situations, you need apps like these. Waiting for an app to close on its own means that it will still be running in the background, which translates into lesser battery life. Imagine the GPS app running in the background.
And yes, ADW is a launcher. I’ve been using it personally on my phone. I apologize for the error in the article as it was a very silly mistake. Either way, it has been corrected. Shouldn’t happen again. Thanks
NO! In Android killing apps does NOT translate into more battery life. There are even a lot of situations where it actually translates into less. Apps in the background use zero CPU and therefore no battery but restarting them every once in a while instead of pulling it from the background uses more CPU. Seriously, google it! There are several really great articles about the harm task killers actually cause on Android.
The absolutely only situation where you _may_ kill an app is when it goes rogue (like 100% CPU for several minutes and the phone burns through your pocket). You could use an app like WatchdogLite (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.zomut.watchdoglite) to get an alert when that happens and then manually kill that single app.