what’s actually useful and what is just data eating dross?

STRAVA!!!!!!!!!!!

Rainwatch
CNET
Dropbox

Poweramp for music, Airdroid.
The usual social networking apps.

STRAVA, I’ve found that my Garmin gives better results than a phone b based on the miffed faces of others I have ridden with

Tetris

ones that you are interested in?

For me it’s my bank, instagram and stuff like that, the facebook one still does sort by most(highly random) relevant only so the webpage is better, twitter, Linked IN, Spotify (pro for downloadable play lists), BBC Sport, key ring for loyalty cards, red bull tv, light flow, swift key, STW Mag thing, convert pad, drop box,

Viewranger
Navfree
Fotmob (if you like football)
BBC news app
Flipboard

google sky
google drive
showbox

Get a good app/task killer to help extended battery life.

If you’re looking at following bike routes on your phone in OS maps (rather than paper map/guidebook), I’ve found Backcountry Navigator to be a cheap option and it works well enough. You pay a one off fee of £6.99 (3 weeks free trial) and get OS maps down to 1:25K. It works by you copying and saving selected sections of multimap to use when out of range (do this on WiFi at home). If you’re in range then it will just use multimap. It’s not quite as slick as some of the other ones, but with them you have to pay quite a lot to buy small tiles of OS map. It does everything you need.

if you use google calendar then Business Calendar is good,

Camscanner – creates PDFs from photos which you can then email.
Flashlight
Metoffice
iPlayer
3G Watcher – monitors data usage
Advanced Task Killer – though I only need it because my phone is gash and slows down sometimes.
Endomondo

Some geeky ones:
Google Sky maps
Lunafaqt – has sun/moon rise/set times. Also has twilight times etc. Quite useful for working out if you’ll need lights

EDIT: As ^ BBC News and Viewranger (I’ve got full N England at 1:50k, not cheap though)

Spotify, Currents, Kindle, Field Trip, Drippler, Player Pro for music and if you want a really good satnav then CoPilot is well worth the £20

Google drive for storing docs
Google keep for making notes
Dogcatcher for automatically sorting out the podcasts i listen to
Endomondo for tracking my rides/runs
Outofmilk for shopping lists
Feedly for grouping together all blogs etc. i read
Pocket for storing web pages/articles for reading later and when offline
Mightytext so i can text etc. from my PC
Flashlight for when it’s dark
Echo112 just in case

TuneIn radio

Youtube

BBC’s range of apps…iplayer, BBC News, BBC Sport, BBC Weather etc etc

Eurosport

Google’s range of apps…Earth, Maps/Navigation, Music, Translate, Chrome etc etc

Strava

Mytracks

Smart Tools….measures angles etc

Unit Converter

AppyGeek….tech/smartphone news

Other than that the phone can be set up with Google’s default widgets and apps, they really are market leading at the moment.

Due to the customisation on Android and the ability to have multiple home screens i have my Gmail inbox taking up half a page and my Hotmail inbox taking up the other half…notifications come in on the bar at the top of the screen and the first part of any email (sender, subject, first line or two of text) can be read without actually having to open the email, great for saving time and deciding whether an email needs attention or can be left for later and all without opening the app properly….Android does the same for texts, the notification will show in the bar and then the sender and first line or two of text will scroll across the top of the screen, you can then decide if the text is urgent or can wait but crucially you dont need to stop what you’re doing and go into the messaging app itself, you can also reply from the notification bar.

BBC and the Met Office both offer live widgets for their weather apps, this is great too…no need to open the app just unlock the screen and there it is already displayed.

Google’s own calendar is great and syncs to my hotmail account, Google Now is astounding and gives live info on my journey time home, traffic updates etc etc

I have all this running on a Nexus-4 and easily get a full days use from the phone, the bad old days of power hungry Android apps and widgets are a few years ago now….the HTC One-S i had last year was also very good with it’s battery.

Back country navigator + a bazillion. The ‘Pro’ version is pennies and is simply brilliant. You will never regret spending the paltry £7 or thereabouts. I’ve downloaded hundreds of miles of OS maps onto my memory card so no need for phone signal. Combined with a little AA battery pack thing, I’ll never be lost again!

And Co-Pilot for about £20 is the best sat-nav going without actually buying a sat-nav.

The ones on mine I use the most are

Endomondo
Twitter
Enjoy Suduko
Dolphin Browser
Netflix

I’m still struggling a little to find an app that allows me to share photos with everyone rather than just people using the same app.

I want to be able to upload photos from my phone and then using the link, embed those images in forums like this one. At the moment I have to upload them to flickr, then go to the classic site using a browser and then use the share option from there but it’s very clunky.
Any suggestion?

crush83 – Member
Get a good app/task killer to help extended battery life.

They don’t work.

JuiceDefender does save battery though.

Flipboard is decent. Terratime is a great widget or animated wallpaper. Yahoo weather or Beautiful Widgets good weather widgets. Youtube, Gmail, GoogleCalender. Flexr good shift planner if you work rotas. Viewranger and Google Maps. Facebook if you like that kinda thing. WhatsApp messenger. RealRacing decent driving game. MapMyRide. DropBox.

Best thing you can do for battery life is turn off auto-updates

Whatsapp, as has already been said above, brilliant for texting friends abroad for nuffink.
Oruxmaps
Lookout for those of us that lose phones when left on silent/vibrate!
Spotify premium for the offline playlists.

On my home screens at the moment, plus a load of others tucked away…

GMail
Facebook
Facebook Messenger
Whatsapp
Skype
Amazon MP3
Nectar
My Fitness Pal
Play Store
YouTube
Met Office
Polaris Office (Excel/Word etc)
Leveler (a surprisingly accurate spirit level/angle finder)
Ebay
Angry Birds Star Wars
Play Books
Viz’s Profanisaurus
Google Maps
Bandsintown
ITV Player
Sky Go
BBC Media Player
iPlayer
Spotify
Absolute Radio
Fotor
Pixlr Express
Instagram
AV Forums
Flickr
Speed Test
Football League
Strava
Endomondo

Hmm nobody using dashclock? basically its a screensaver widget for when your phones on charge, it can show time, date, weather, sun rise/set, music playing etc via extensions

mxplayer for video
shuttle for music
hootsuite – twitter
google calendar, keep, gtasks, chrome, gmail, google keyboard with swype
dropbox, dropsync, keepassdroid synced to pc
screebl beta – stops screen locking out when reading, put it down and it locks!
some other useful stuff
android weather, feedly, pocket, wol wake on lan, subsonic, upnplay, strava

Dashclock’s a good lockscreen replacement.

PowerAmp
MXplayer
AOSP Browser

the built in google widgets/apps are all good, google maps, nav, drive

banks & utility companies often do an app – usually worth using

swiftkey
goweather
whatsapp
facebook/twitter/etc
gtasks & gnotes (front ends to google task lists)
quickpic
strava
ebay
a torch

oh, and keepass2droid

catch notes
convertpad

both useful apps

My new favourite – Cloud app. Locates nearby Cloud hotspots and automatically logs you in