As you might have noticed if you've been on the Play store, its celebrating one year since the renaming and rebranding of the Android marketplace. To celebrate, Google has launched a sale across its movies, books and apps, which is a bit of a letdown to say the least. There's not much on there that's enticing or new in terms of sales. It's basically an EA sale at the moment, one that happens every now and again and I really hope that more apps are added otherwise this will be the worst promotion they've done, period. It's also quite difficult to find what's on sale as there doesn't seem to be somewhere on the Play store where all these promotions are collated. You can check out the 'sale' here.
Since we're on the topic of apps, I always wonder what apps other people have that they think are 'must haves'. I mean the ones that you can't do without and quite unique in what they do. I have quite a few, with the most used app on my phone being Whatsapp, if you don't know what it is then either you've been living under a rock or you have no friends (sorry!), or both. I think the next most important app I have is Titanium Backup but this one is only for rooted users and if you're rooted then you've probably heard about it and what it can do. I guess most of my 'must have' apps are some of the most popular on Android so here's a few gems which I think people could definitely do with:
mSecure
Store all your important data in this app, be it credit card details or website passwords. You can even create complicated, random passwords that the app can store for various websites so you can rest easy in the knowledge that your password is very strong and you don't have to remember it as it's stored, fully encrypted mind, on your phone. Instead of having to remember all your passwords for various websites, you only need to remember the password to access the app! Bear in mind you, if someone manages to guess this password then all the information stored is at their mercy. If your password is strong enough you can at least be assured that no-one can access the data stored on mSecure even if your phone is stolen or lost.
AirDroid
A very neat, simple app that allows you to access many of your phone's functions over wifi. You can send text messages, check your phone log and access your media and files and transfer files to and from your phone to your PC/Laptop. It's a feature rich app that you have to try to understand where the reviews are coming from and I think once you've tried it, this app will definitely remain on your phone. One drawback if you plan on using this app for transferring files is that you have to accept the slower transfer speeds compared to connecting your phone up using a USB cable so I wouldn't plan on transferring movies or your music library just yet using this method. For the odd files here and there though it does save you the hassle of connecting your phone up every time or trying to use Dropbox/Google Drive.
CurrentWidget
This is a bit of a niche app, but I think a lot of people have come across a time when their phone hasn't been charging as quickly as it usually does. This clever widget can tell you what current your phone is accepting when charging so you can see whether your phone is charging normally or not. If it's not, you usually need to unplug your phone from the charger and just plug it back in. If this doesn't solve your issue you might have to change your charger or there could be a more serious problem. Either way, this phone is very useful for isolating the cause of why your phone is charging slowly.
Endomondo PRO
Do you do any sort of distance sports? If yes, then the chances are Endomondo can track your progress when your training. I do a lot of running and use it very regularly, it provides invaluable data when you're training and helps you to train with different modes such as interval training. The best part of the app in my mind is that you can make an Endomondo account online and view in depth how you work out and view all the data the app has collected. I haven't come across another app that does what Endomondo does anywhere near as well or as efficiently. It's definitely one that you must have if you do distance based training of any sort.
Kingsoft Office
One of the best mobile Office suites I've been able to find and it's free! It really doesn't get any better that this, I've tried both free and paid Office apps but none of them are as functional as this or as easy to use. I use this day to day and have slowly started removing my other Office suite apps as I've always kept a few on my phone just in case I want to use a feature that one of them didn't have. It doesn't feel like this with, I can do everything I need to do and do it well and on top of that, it can read PDFs. Perfect, well near enough.
Plume
For Twitter users only! This app is one of the best Twitter clients on the market in my opinion. We've lost quite a few Twitter apps recently owing to the ridiculous 100K user token ceiling that some apps have hit. But that aside, I've found Plume to be a very clean, efficient Twitter client that is much better than the official Twitter app (then again most 3rd party clients are) and competes very well with other Twitter clients on the market. I especially like the design of the app and how easy and intuitive it is to use.
I'm sure there are a lot of apps that are vital to other users, let me know what your 'must have' apps are and your reasons why.
Mo
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