iLuvAndroid – Feeding your Android Addiction with news, reviews and guides

If you are one of the many that enjoy installing and using the variety of applications available on the Android Market, then you would have noticed that managing such a large number of them at a time can be quite slow and cumbersome using the default methods. AppManager Full is designed to make installing, backing up and un-installing applications at a glance a breeze.

Interface & Userability

App Manager is a joy to use with a very clean and clear interface. All of your applications are listed in alphabetical order of which you simply scroll through vertically to find the application you want to edit.

Along the bottom is the main menu where large icons showcase the Apps, Widgets, List View and the More button; which once pressed, an additional menu glides into view giving you the option to Backup, Install or to go to the Settings menu. Everything is well contained and self explanatory with the icons large enough to be finger friendly.

Features

Upon doing a long-press on the application in question, a sub-menu appears giving you the option to Launch, read additional Details, Search on the Market, Backup to SD and to Uninstall. Launch is self-explanatory while the Details button sends you to the default Android page illustrating the version number, size of the application and the ability to clear the cache.

The feature to backup individual or batch programs is a welcome one as is the application restore feature, taking out the long and often dull process of installing applications individually. On the SD Card the applications are saved under the folder “backups/apps” for easy retrieval either from App Manager itself or via your computer.

Uninstalling applications is as short and sweet as possible as a simple long-press on the app in question brings the sub-menu and the Uninstall option.

Thoughts

A clean and efficient way of managing your applications installed on your Android device, with a very clear user interface. It works perfectly with Donut builds (tested). Being a paid application there is competition from the Free versions available however, but if you are willing to pay for such a tool, you cannot go far wrong with this.

Cryket link to App Manager Full costing $2.95.

App Manager Pro

Rating: Recommended

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Popularity: 100% [?]

The Guardian is one of the UK’s premier newspapers when it comes to covering all aspects of the news. Developer James Hugman and Future Platforms have teamed up together to help bring such content to the Android masses and has released an application called “Guardian Anywhere”.

The concept is simple, to deliver you all of the Guardian’s content to you on your handset, whenever you want, where ever you are. What differs though from other applications is that instead of needing a constant connection to the internet via WiFi or 3G, Guardian Anywhere downloads the whole content first before presenting it.

This concept has pro’s and con’s as the content offered by the Guardian is vast and requires a long time to load completely, something that the application even tells you in its disclaimer. Even via WiFi content can take a considerable amount of time to download to your handset as for example it took 10+ minutes before all the content was loaded during reviewing.

Interface & Userability

Once it was loaded the interface is clean yet uninspiring as it just feels that its lacking polish throughout. Straight away you can see the large volume of content which is available as well from the Guardian and everything is listed in a presentable manner with distinguished categories.

Images within the content itself are quite large and of high quality making it perfect if  you were to use them as a wallpaper. However, I would have liked to see a lower resolution image in place instead to save on storage and bandwidth use as this would save time on downloading the content immensely. If one wanted to use the image as a wallpaper then an option to click-hold on the image which prompts a download of a higher resolution image would suffice instead.

Browsing around the vast amount of content is easy enough as is subscribing to content to suit your needs. On the main screen just go to All Stories and then press the Menu button and then Manage Tags. This will bring up the feed list where you can simply tick or untick content relevant to you.

Features

One of the features available though to make the downloading pain a bit more bearable is the ability to subscribe to parts of the Guardian that you actually want to read so subsequential use of the application becomes faster. Also you can even schedule when the application begins to download the content, so setting it to download in the morning whilst your mobile is still on charge and before you wake up is a good idea. However I do not know when the content itself gets updated in the morning, so setting it too early could infact just load up old news.

Guardian Anywhere displays images picked by the newspaper itself with good quality and you can even save it to your mobile or set it as a wallpaper which is a neat feature. The ability to select items to put into a “Saved Articles” folder for later viewing is a good idea as is being able  to search content via tags.

Thoughts

Being a new application it hold much promise and the ability to pre-load content before viewing can help in areas with low or no signal. Even if content has yet to be loaded, it can be done on demand instead which is something most Android users are used to. With WiFi enabled it took well over 10 minutes for me to load the content into Guardian Anywhere which makes me question if the content is optimised enough yet for mobile use, especially those with a limited data plan.

The interface still requires some polish as I feel that the logo itself could be more appealing along with the icons. In the world where everyone thinks the Apple iPhone is the standard for style and user interface, Guardian Anywhere does not quite reach such levels. It is however still early in its development phase.

In all, once the content is loaded it is a good and usable news reader dedicated to the Guardian Newspaper. With some speed optimisations for 3G, which should be the lowest denominator on a mobile, and some polish this application could go far. If you’re a fan of the Guardian then its worth checking out, its totally free to use too!

Guardian Anywhere

Rating: Good

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Popularity: 72% [?]

One of the criticisms of the HTC G1 handset was that the audio volume and quality was not as loud as other handsets in the market. The speaker itself isn’t of the highest quality but the Android Community wanted to squeeze as much as possible from it. A project then came along to improve the audio quality and volume and hence AudioHack was born.

Currently released as version 2, it includes revised files as the developer Meltus discovered he could manipulate the equaliser settings directly.  As you can see from the title screenshot there are multiple versions available for you to choose from, each with unique properties. Here’s a rundown of what each version does, direct from the developer.

- V1 revision 2
Due to it not being distorted at all anyway, I added the compressor and made it slightly louder. not a lot has been changed here.

- V2 revision 2
Completely distortion-less! The most popular version due to it’s loud volume and good sound quality. Now being used pre-built into many custom ROMs.

- V3 revision 2
Not sure about this one. Still very distorted (due to it’s volume) and it’s now slightly quieter than the original v3. Some of you may like this version, some of you may hate it.

- V6 revision 2
Managed to retain the bass whilst removing some of the distortion. I also lowered the volume slightly.

TIP!!! – Have the volume set 3 below maximum to get the best sound out of this version. At this level it sounds pretty good.

The most popular version is V2 Revision 2 (aka V7) which offers a great balance of volume and quality through the loudspeaker and in-call volume too. So popular it has become for example, many ROM chefs have included it into their own custom ROMs as standard. It really does make a difference and the best way to see if it has is to have some music playing while you’re applying the changes. The music track will skip and then you can hear the changes straight away. As a side note, NeoBlade of eMagi.co.uk designed the interface for the application too and will continue to offer support for AudioHack in the future!

Available for £1.50 from the Android Market you can either buy it there or visit the official XDA Thread for more details.

AudioHack

Please note that this application only works for mobiles which has been rooted.

Rating: Highly Recommended

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Popularity: 16% [?]

With the recent news that iTweet is now free, now is a good time to check out the popular twitter client if you haven’t just yet. Using the application is simplicity itself just enter your credentials to log in and you are presented with the main interface. From here you can have an overview of all tweets, messages, your profile, favourites, your replies and your own tweets.

To send a tweet you press the Menu button and more options become available to you, to either customise the look or to follow users and look at the public timeline. iTweet can also notify you whenever new tweets occur and you can set the time interval for how often it will check for new tweets. The default setting is every 20 minutes however setting it to a longer interval can save you battery life.

In all iTweet is a solid Twitter client and now that its totally free to download it should attract more users than ever before. If it is enough however to dethrone the current leading twitter client, Twidroid, only time will tell.

Rating: Highly Recommended

iTweet

Popularity: 35% [?]

Having a functional SMS program is essential to those who text frequently and ChompSMS has long been a favourite due to the additional features included over the plain default Android Messenger application. The last few revisions has not only included some much needed customisation (as my screenshots illustrate) but also some performance tweaks so the application runs faster.

There is still a little bit of loading time but nothing to get overly concerned about, but once it does you are presented with a well laid out interface. Firstly you are greeted with your text history as a scroll list, but is organised by contact name. By clicking on the contact, a new window appears which hold all of your previous texts to and from said contact, much like a conversation.

This makes keeping track of your texts easier as it feels more natural, plus it becomes easier to know what the last text from your friends said before replying back. Even when typing out a reply you can still scroll up or down through the text history as a reminder as to what went on, or to simply copy and paste to quote.

Previously ChompSMS could not handle MMS messages at all, however it now can open MMS files without a hitch which was the only thing that prevented me from keeping it as the default SMS Application. Little touches like adding a character remaining list, the ability to add your contacts pictures next to their name, easily send texts to multiple recipients, assign individual notifications per contact, integrated blacklist and more just make it fully featured. Here’s a list from the ChompSMS website:

Quick Compose

Chat Style Bubbles

Contact Pictures

Quick Reply

Signature

Quick-Pick Contacts & Groups

Character & SMS Counter

User Interface Customizations

Notification Customizations

Ringtones per Contact

Blacklisting

Speak Text

Mark all as Read

Hide Keyboard

Save Money!

Quick Compose allows you to instantly reply back to any incoming texts, even when you’re browsing the web or using another application. No need now to close the application you are using and then opening ChompSMS just to read a reply. This is a great feature as it allows you to be more productive with your time.

Another feature I like is the ability to customise not only the colours for the text bubbles and the whole interface, but the ability to add images to be set as backgrounds too. I have used an image from the Japanese anime Macross Frontier featuring Sheryl Nome as my wallpaper as an example. Any un-read texts can also be read out to you, which is perfect if you are using a hands-free device or a Bluetooth headset. It takes advantage of the free TTS (Text-to-Speech) Library and does a fairly decent job of reading out the text to you. The new Donut build of Android has a built-in TTS Library which is vastly superior however no applications as of yet takes advantage of this as only recently the Android 1.6 SDK was released.

ChompSMS also allows you to buy credit so you can send texts instead of it going through your carrier. This can save you money in the long run as the rates offered by ChompSMS is pretty competitive. The downside of this is that it requires an internet connection for the text messages to be sent through. Depending on how much it costs you to access the internet this can be a real money saver as in the UK many networks give you an allowance of around 1MB of data free before charging. 1MB for example is enough to send 1,000 ChompSMS messages over the internet. Here are the rates offered:

For the UK it is 6p per text which is half the price it is on many Pay as you Go networks unless of course you are on an unlimited text package which is becoming increasingly popular.

In all, ChompSMS does everything you ask of it to do and the great part of it is, it is 100% free with no adverts. It comes highly recommended and is one of my Android Essentials. Go download it from the market now or use your Barcode Scanner on the image below for it.

Scan using your Barcode Scanner to download ChompSMS

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Popularity: 7% [?]