of 11 Posted on 5 Sep 2011 at 09:00 We hunt down the best tablet-optimised apps for Android devices, from great games to essential business tools Android apps had a bad reputation in the first generation of tablets, with screen sizing causing issues for several apps originally designed for smartphones. The situation might remain imperfect, but we've sifted through the best software available for Android tablets, saving you time and potentially wasted money. (Note: application prices and availability are subject to change) PRESSREADER (Free - 7 free issues, 79p per issue or £23/month) The large screen of a tablet is perfect for reading, and for newspapers there’s no better app than Pressreader. This app offers digitised versions of all the national dailies, free and paid for, plus thousands of other international newspapers. The papers can be pinch-zoomed, flicked around and browsed, and since they’re effectively straight PDFs of the pages, they look exactly like the real thing. But, best of all, once you’ve paid your subscription, editions can be delivered instantly – you’ll never have to wait for the paperboy again. AMAZON KINDLE (Free) Recently revamped to take full advantage of expansive tablet screens, Amazon’s Kindle app is full of thoughtful touches. Wireless synchronisation allows you to pick up where you left off on your Kindle reader or smartphone; screen brightness controls and a choice of background colours help counter eye-strain; and the search facility quickly hunts down keywords in text. An iBooks-style double-paged spread option wouldn’t go amiss when reading in landscape mode, but when you can download and read classic books for free, it seems almost churlish to complain. ZINIO Free (magazines cost extra) Long before Apple announced its own digital newsstand for iOS devices, Zinio was offering electronic versions of many of the world’s greatest magazines (including PC Read More
Last.fm used to be one of the best streaming music apps but, since the firm’s decision to switch to subscription-only access, we’ve been hunting for a replacement. Luckily, with we7’s radio tool hitting the market this week, it looks like we’ve found a worthy successor. Previous Last.fm users will be right at home with the free we7 app, which is still in beta. You can create your own station by searching we7’s database for artists or genres of music – both options will result in a station that riffs off your first keyword to find songs to your liking – and these choices can then be saved for later consumption. There’s also a list of popular searches from around we7’s community – handy for looking up top artists – and a selection of preset stations centre around popular themes, too. At the time of writing there are Ultimate Working and Best Driving Anthems themes alongside selections based around the lineups for this year’s Glastonbury and V festivals, for instance. we7’s player is easy to use, too. Album art is automatically hunted down to sit in the centre of the screen and, like Last.fm, highlighting a track as a particular favourite will see your station skewed towards other similar songs. While this app is free, more options are available if you choose we7’s £10 monthly subscription, with playlist creation and the option to search for individual songs and albums available for premium customers. It’s also a shame that there just isn’t the range of options offered by Last.fm, which allowed you to connec to other users by tracking and observing the music that they played. Still, if you’re looking for a way to listen to music on the move then this is worth a look – we7’s broad catalogue ensures you’ll get Read More
Android’s default picture viewer is fine for flicking through photos, but it’s not what we’d call versatile – aside from basic picture viewing, there’s rudimentary integration with Facebook and Flickr, and little else. If that’s not enough, then it’s worth downloading JustPictures, our Android App of the Week, to take advantage of its broad swathe of options. Putting the extra features aside for a moment, JustPictures simply looks much better than the stock Android app. Albums are presented as stacks of pictures that increase in size depending on how many pictures they hold and, when you load up an album, your pictures are displayed at jaunty angles and surrounded by a Polaroid-style border. If that doesn’t float your boat, then turning it off displays your pictures in a slick grid format. Delve into your albums and the app’s full range of options come to the fore. You can scroll through pictures, use multitouch gestures to zoom in and out, and use your phone’s accelerometer to change picture orientation automatically. Clicking on a picture will reveal its EXIF data, and you can send pictures using your full range of apps – so on our test phone, for instance, JustPictures can access Facebook, Dropbox, Handcent SMS, Google Mail, TweetDeck and more to distribute snaps. The full range of options can also be applied to photos stored elsewhere. JustPictures is compatible with a huge range of photo services: staples such as Facebook, Flickr and Picasa are supported alongside services such as Tumblr, Windows Live, Photobucket and Smugmug, with password-protected accounts supported where relevant. Adding accounts is easy, and JustPictures will cache your pictures locally so you don’t have to reload them every time you want to reminisce. If you’re short on space, though, then you can clear the cache or limit its size. The app Read More
The last couple of weeks in the PC Pro office have demonstrated that plenty of third-party companies are keen to capitalise on both Android and its apps, with tablets from Samsung and Creative boasting their own app stores and, in the latter’s case, preventing access to the standard Android Market altogether. This approach is fraught with potential pitfalls, not least that these stores can never hope to compare with the sheer variety of offer in the standard Market – although Google’s offering has issues of its own, with poor navigation and search options. Step forward AppBrain, a third-party app store that lets you browse Android’s 100,000 apps in a much more intuitive way. For starters, there are more ways to sort through apps than you’l find in the official Market, from common choices such as the highest-rated software and the latest uploads, to the week’s hottest apps or those that are popular in different countries or, remarkably, with different demographics. It’s also possible to sort through apps using the same categories available in the Android Market, and you can filter search result to see apps that are free, paid-for, updated or discounted. AppBrain can also help manage the software that’s already installed on your phone. Sign in with your Google account and you’re presented with a list of existing apps, and you can even see which ones are ready to be updated – and, in an ingenious touch, one click will let you update all of your apps in sequence. As with the official Android Market, there’s a section dedicated to Recommended Apps, but AppBrain’s is far more sophisticated: the software scans your phone, evaluates what you’ve got installed and returns a list of software that it thinks you’ll like. It’s accurate, too, with some of its recommendations being apps that Read More
The Android Market’s brimming with media management apps but, until this week, I hadn’t been entirely convinced by many: GrooveShark proved buggy, Last.fm seemed slow and kept churning out the same tunes, and others are hampered with fiddly user interfaces. WinAmp, though, is a name I trust, having used it for years on desktops – and now that it’s arrived on Android, albeit in beta form, I had to give it a go. It certainly makes a good first impression. It’s styled after the desktop version, and the UI is clean and simple – a breath of fresh air when so many apps try to cram as much information on screen as possible. Instead, the bottom of the screen offers play/pause and previous/next track controls that remain persistent across every screen in the application. If you’d like more information, though, simply swipe upwards to open a larger tab, which contains the song’s name, album art, repeat and shuffle settings and a link to the song queue. You can also press the song’s name to search for it on YouTube or Google and, if you’ve got the app installed, scrobble the track with Last.fm. The main screen offers buttons to browse your media collection by artist album or song name, as well as view playlists, your history and searches, while the advanced settings menu can enable lock-screen controls, wireless syncing and more. It’s in this wireless syncing where Winamp really starts to shine. If you already use version 5.59 of the app on your desktop machine – or you’ve been persuaded to start by its arrival on Android – you’ll be able to access your media library wherever you find a wireless connection, and the included widget lets you control media from your phone’s home screen. It’s very impressive when it’s set Read More
Android may have its problems, as committed iPhone owner David Bayon highlighted earlier this week, but Google’s open-source OS excels in technical areas that Apple’s handset just can’t reach. Take our latest Android App of the Week: while Proxoid wouldn’t fly on the iPhone – it’s evidently not allowed into Apple’s walled garden – this impressive tool is freely available in the Android marketplace. While it replicates the functionality of a tethering app nicely, it works slightly differently: while the former set up your phone as a wireless hotspot of sorts, apps like Proxoid turn your phone into a modem without the need for root access As an added bonus, Proxoid is free – the best of its tethering app competition, PdaNet, costs a whopping $19 – and could be greatly appreciated by regular travellers: after all, why use a 3G dongle when you could just plug your phone in, especially if you’ve got an unlimited monthly data package? Unfortunately, getting started is quite tricky. This page explains how to install Proxoid but, in a nutshell, you’ll need to take a few steps that’ll be more familiar to app developers: enable USB debugging on your handset, download the Android SDK, and download and install Proxoid’s own driver. Once that’s done, you need to configure your browser to use a proxy server and then run a batch file that was downloaded with the driver as well as the Proxoid app on your phone. It’s not easy, at least initially, but the benefit far outweighs a little bit of legwork. After all, harnessing your internet connection for use on your laptop is a godsend, especially during long journeys, and it’s far cheaper than splashing out on a 3G dongle. As an added bonus, it’s free, but it’s worth checking the terms and conditions of Read More
The 26 best Android tablet apps | Analysis | Features | PC Pro - Technology, News and Reviews | PC Pro
