5 Simple Apps That Could Improve Your Experience with Android

HaxSync – ICS Facebook Sync

During February 2011, Google released an update for the Nexus S, which at the time was its flagship handset. This update removed Facebook contact sync (as well as doing other things) due to Facebook and Google’s less than cooperative relationship. As this update rolled out from other manufacturers, the sudden lack of Facebook sync annoyed a lot of people and began to infuriate the masses.

With the release of the Ice Cream Sandwich update, the default People application for Android had a massive overhaul with a lot of emphasis on contact pictures and social updates. Although adding information from Twitter and Google+ works fine, it isn’t enough without Facebook. It wasn’t long before this problem was solved; Mathias Roth created HaxSync – ICS Facebook Sync.

It works perfectly and leaves your Google contacts full of all the content that should be there: statuses, profile images, birthdays, and events (which can be synced to the Android Calendar app if you so choose). The options for this app are all only accessible via settings, which I like; it is less obtrusive and more discreet.

This app costs $0.99 US or £0.89 UK and is well worth it for any Ice Cream Sandwich user.

Shush! Ringer Restorer

Shush! is probably the most simplistic application on this list; in fact, I would say it is more of a tweak, but with over 500,000 installs in the last 30 days, and a 4.6/5 average rating, I would say its simplistic quality is a thing of beauty.

When you put your phone on silent by hitting the volume rocker, a box will pop up with an intuitive timer. You select how long you wish your phone to be on silent, and that’s it. Simple!

This app does have a couple of settings: one to toggle notifications regarding the timer, and the other is for you to choose the color of the highlighted area.

This app is completely free and is compatible with nearly all devices and versions of Android (2.0 and up).

Car Home

Another official Google application, Car Home surprisingly isn’t included on a lot of phones. There’s not a lot to say about this one; it’s just a simple interface with big icons for the applications that are relevant while driving such as music, navigation, etc., but you are free to customize and add your own shortcuts. This is all translucent and laid over your phone’s wallpaper. Over all, the application is free, responsive, and very handy if you like to dock your phone in your car.

doubleTwist

doubleTwist is a very popular free app for Android (as well as other mobile platforms) that gets a lot of coverage all over the Internet, but it is generally referred to as a way to synchronize an iTunes library to an Android device. In my opinion, it is a lot more than that.

One potential problem with Android is the fact that it doesn’t really have any features to help you sync your content from a PC. Google seems to be encouraging everything to be pushed to the cloud, which is nice… when it works. But this is still unrealistic for a lot of people with data limits, lack of signal, and other complications, people still want to have content stored on the mobile device rather than over a network to which they may or not be able to connect.

If you want your content to be stored on your device, you will quickly find that this is easy on Android — easy, yet tedious, as the Android device will be recognized as a mass storage device. Dragging and dropping through a file explorer can take time, especially when trying to arrange everything neatly in folders.

This application works with two parts: the mobile app, which is a nice, simple media player, and the desktop client that is basically a stripped-down and lightweight iTunes. All you have to do is import your music library into the desktop software and from there you can make playlists and play your media as you desire. It actually makes a nice desktop app in its own right; it has a podcast feature and uses the Amazon Music Store as a download service. Nice!

There is an add-on for this app called AirSync, which works in much the same way, but lets you sync your media over a Wi-Fi network. It works quite smoothly and is generally considered to be a good app. The only criticism I hear is that you have to initiate the software from the desktop client — it is not automatic. The price is $4.99 in the US and £4.99 in the UK.

Unlock with WiFi

With more and more personal data being stored on mobile devices, it is important to have at least some security features enabled. Android offers a few different screen lock formats — some more secure than others — but generally, the more secure they are, the more annoying they are to use. It can be a real frustration to unlock your phone every time you want to check a message, but it can be dangerous to leave a phone unprotected.

Unlock with WiFi doesn’t solve that problem completely, but it helps and will make your experience with Android less frustrating. It’s simple, really. This app will detect when your device is connected to your specified home network and disable the lock screen, meaning you don’t have to deal with a lock screen as often.