passy
commented
8 years ago Veteran seems quite accurate indeed. Here's a non-complete list of apps that are even unique to Android or special in some other regard compared to other platforms. That means, the obvious ones like WhatsApp, Twitter aren't included as well as all the Google apps which are usually the best you can find for anything on the platform (especially Google Photos which is outstanding, but I know from your tweets that you're already using it).
Signal (formerly TextSecure) is the best messenger if you care about privacy and secrecy. Period. It's available on iOS and Android and I'm trying to convert more friends and family to use it. If you need a bigger endorsement:
Pocket Casts is, unsurprisingly, a podcast player. I've tried a whole lot of them and this is by far my favorite. One of the few on Android with filters that remove silence from the audio. It's only a month or two since I've wiped my phone for the last time and since then it has saved me 25 hours and 45.1 minutes of silence.
I've only installed IRCCloud again today but it looks pretty solid. A lot has been written about Slack and OSS so I'm trying to get back into IRC.
SeriesGuide is one of those unique Android gems. If you're at all into TV Shows, this one's absolutely fantastic to keep track of upcoming episodes, new releases and collect embarrassing stats about the time you've spent in from of a TV screen.
Sleep as Android is an amazing sleep tracker. Crazy detailed stats and if you have a spare Android Wear Watch (yup, that's actually true for me) you can use that one to get even more accurate stats. The feature that I'm absolutely useless without is the sleep phase alarm clock that tries to wake you up when you're in light sleep.
Everyone loves weather apps, right? Weather Timeline - Forecast is special, though. Not super special in terms of features, but it's definitely one of the most polished apps out there. If you ever come to London, make sure to enable the rain alert. It also comes with some nice precipitation graphs letting you know when it's (probably) safe to leave the house.
Pushbullet makes me hate using iOS devices. Even though they have an iOS app nowadays, the integration with Android is just so much better. Send links, photos, files directly from your desktop to your phone and vice versa. I use it multiple times a day.
This one's a bit odd, because the link for Vysor goes to the Chrome and not the Play Store. It's an incredible piece of software that mirrors your device screen on your desktop. The most astounding thing is that it requires absolutely zero setup, apart from you having to enable the developer mode - which I suspect you have already done. There were so many people who tried to make this work before but this is arguably the first time someone actually did.
I think that covers the Android-specific, non-Google apps that I'd recommend to everyone. There are some more specific ones like Yatse which is a must-have if you have a Kodi player in your house or Telecine if you want to record your screen - but that seems a bit more niche.
getsetbro
With your veteran status as an app maker on the platform, I assume you've come across some gems in your day. I recon that would help a new user of an Android phone, such as myself, and maybe others. Thanks!