It’s the holiday season and everyone should be full of good food and surrounded with friends or family. You might be having hot cocoa this Christmas morning, or maybe even some Mimosa — either way we hope you enjoy it. Here at Android Community we decided to round up a small list of our must have top apps for that new smartphone anyone may have received for Christmas. Below are just a few of many we thought were worth mentioning. Hit that little white and green icon shaped like a shopping bag titled “Market” and get started.
Now we know not everyone uses their smartphone for the same thing. Some people love games like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja — and others just want to take notes, get help with shopping lists, track their fantasy football team and more. The list below are a few that may appeal to a wide array of users although you can hit our hands-on portal to see many more we’ve featured in the past.
This post is all about smartphones as I’m sure many got a shiny new Galaxy Nexus or HTC Amaze 4G this holiday season and were looking for a few good apps.
First off we must mention Beautiful Widgets. Not only is it on sale currently but it’s also the most popular widget and most purchased Android application and is a sure favorite for any Android phone or tablet.
Beautiful Widgets will tell you the weather and time and look good while doing it — it also has widgets for anything and everything from battery meters, WiFi easy toggle switches, and much much more. We’ve reviewed it a few times here already and it shouldn’t need much explaining. If someones Android phone had a neat weather/clock icon taking up part of their screen that you liked — most likely it was Beautiful Widgets.
Next we have Dolphin Browser. The stock web browser is quite excellent and many love it but Dolphin just adds that extra level of polish and options many users need or want. With tabbed browsing, gestures, color themes, add-ons like FireFox or Chrome and more it is highly usable and very versatile.
Everyone loves the simple games we listed above like Fruit Ninja or Angry birds so how about a few that are even more amazing that most might now know about. There is way too many to list so here are just a few:
Shadowgun
EA Real Racing 2
Grand Theft Auto III (oh yea!)
Madden 2012
Words with Friends
and a couple of my favorites are Asphalt 6 or Cut the Rope
We could go on forever on games as there are a plenty but they aren’t for everyone so here are a few more must get apps.
Evernote — the easiest and most simple way to take and share notes. This is great for shopping, keeping track of your day, or basically any of the other thousand reasons we all take notes. You can snap a photo and make a note, write it down, or even record your voice.
Evernote turns your Android device into an extension of your brain!
File Managers are a very popular Android application as they give users complete and absolute control and access of their devices. Basically making your Android phone display every file in a PC or computer style for easy access, navigation, copying and more. We’ll recommend three — one is our favorite but ad based, one is absolutely free with no ads and the other is a MUST have for root users.
Astro File Manager
ES File Explorer
and last but not least is Root Explorer for everyone that roots their phone — this is a must have app.
Next we’ll mention keyboards since not everyone likes the stock keyboard that comes with their smartphone. I’d highly recommend SwiftKey X as it is the most useful and amazing keyboard for a phone hands down. Next would have to go to Swype because it is just awesome and fun to use — not to mention the new updates they’ve recently released.
We’d also like to round off this list with a few random but excellent applications for Android other than the usual Google Maps type of comments — since most Google apps come standard out of the box. We’d recommend Pandora Radio, Dropbox, Google Reader, AirDroid (control phone from pc), and Shazam for music tagging.
This is a pretty random selection but after gathering the lists from everyone here at Android Community we just had way too many and figured we’d round em all up and list the most popular or useful ones of all. There are hundreds of thousands of apps in the Android Market so head on over and see for yourself. Feel free to see our Tablet Apps roundup post for anyone with a new Galaxy Tab or Transformer Prime.
We’ll end it right here as I’m sure you’re all dying to enjoy those new phones just received for Christmas so give a few of our suggestions a try, or feel free to recommend a couple favorites of your own in the comment section below. Don’t forget to stay right here at Android Community for all your Android related news. Get the AC App for the latest and greatest from the world of Android.
thanks 🙂
These are all great suggestions! Another great brand new game is “Strategy, Skill, Smarts: Orts”.