Okay, now that Android handsets seem to be achieving World Domination, the quality of the Apps is also improving. Here are most of the ones I've discovered/installed for my own use thus far:

AdFree Android
Downloads a crowd-sourced advertising blacklist, redirecting in-app adverts to localhost.

Adobe Reader
PDFs at the beach: life is good!

Advanced Task Killer
Nuke leftover tasks to save battery, bandwidth, and reduce snooping.

Android Assistant
Swiss-Army-Knife grab bag of useful tools, most of which I've now replaced with better standalone ones.

Android Terminal Emulator
The dreaded command-line.

Barcode Scanner
Google Goggles
RedLaser Barcode & QR Scanner
Vivino Wine Scanner
Scan and identify just about anything, get in-store price comparisons etc.

Battery Indicator
Show battery level as a percentage, along with a notification tray item.

BusyBox Pro
More command-line stuff, but some apps rely on it too.

Call Control - Call Blocker
To reduce the carpet-cleaning calls to a dull roar.

Canada Topo Maps Pro
Free backcountry GPS navigation, world-wide (not just Canada).

Canadian Weather
Graphics and text straight from the Environment Canada website.

Crossword Solver
SWMBO does a lot of crosswords, and this helps keep me sane.

Data ON-OFF
A widget for those of us on finite data usage plans with exorbitant overage charges.

File Manager
The current BEST file explorer/manager app (I've tried many others).
Can even browse/transfer files over wifi to/from Samba servers.

Flipboard: Your News Magazine
News and stories, beautifully presented.

Free Dictionary Org
A really good online/offline english dictionary.

GCC - GeoCache Calculator
A heck of a lot more than just "Geocache" calculations.

Mobi Calculator Free
RealCalc Scientific Calculator
More useful number crunchers.

GPS Status & Toolbox
Mandatory app: see the sensors on the phone do their tricks.

IMDb Movies & TV
Okay, not useful, but entertaining.

K-9 Mail
For non-Gmail email. The built-in email client sucks worse.

Lux Auto Brightness
Way, WAY better than the default "auto-brightness" app from Jelly Bean.

Ottawa Citizen
My local community news.

Permission Friendly Apps
Permissions Denied
Figure out which apps might be snooping, and put a stop to it without uninstalling useful things.

Smart Magnifier
Flashlight & magnifier card -- works well enough.

Smart Tools
More clever tools to measure things with the camera etc..

Smart Screen Off PRO
Automatically turns the screen off when in my pocket or face down on a table.

Smooth Calendar
Great calendar/reminder widget (not a full calendar app, just a widget).

Titanium Backup Pro * root
The gol^H^H^Htitanium standard for backups. I back things up locally within the Galaxy Nexus,
and then copy the backup off over Wifi to my server.

TuneIn Radio
Internet Radio. Good app.

Voice Calendar
Really, really good voice-entry system for use with the Calendar app.

WiFi File Explorer PRO
Exports the droid's filesystems over Wifi for access from any other computer's web browser.

Wifi Analyzer
A really, REALLY cool Wifi access point detector and reception analyzer.

Wifi Toggle Widget
A simple touch widget to toggle wifi on/off -- other similar widgets available for bluetooth etc..

Wikipedia
My external memory.

ConnectBot
SSH client -- I'm actually running the latest development snapshot which is less buggy than the one at the Play store.

Blik Calendar Widget
A really cool Calendar manager with activity icons. Except it just hangs when I try it here. I want it though!

Openvpn for Android
If you need to use OpenVPN, then this is the modern way to do it on Android 4.x, rather than the old way that required rooting the phone.

I've also tried about twice as many other apps, and uninstalled them afterwards again. Didn't keep good enough records to list them here though.

Don't use a task killer. They are counterproductive. If you have a misbehaving app, find a replacement. I could go into why, but a quick Google will explain better.

Yep some common ones there. I have an Galaxy S III (ICS) and in the pull down it has toggles for things like data, wifi, bluetooth etc. Does Jellybean not have that? This may be a Samsung customisation but plain Android installs I've used on my HD2 had them also.

I'm yet to find a good data usage counter by app. I have "Traffic Counter" and "Traffic Monitor Plus" and they're not quite what I want.

A few from me.

Agenda Widget (calendar widget that scrolls etc - very customisable)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...24uYWdlbmRhIl0.

Battery Monitor Widget (good battery logger):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ccc71.bmw

GPS Logger (logs GPS tracks in to kml files)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mendhak.gpslogger

Lightflow (paid)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rageconsulting.android.lightflow

Paw Server (good webserver type app for access to the phone over Wifi)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.fun2code.android.pawserver

SMS Backup+ (backs up SMS to Google mail account):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zegoggles.smssync

Torque (reads vehicle error codes via BT - Lite but there is a paid app)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torquefree

JB has that, but the Mobile Data toggle is buried really inconveniently deep in the submenus. Bluetooth and Wifi are more accessible.


My turn: isn't this built-in, or is it just Jelly Bean that has it?

You know what? That's actually pretty useful and I hadn't really looked that closely at it. It does data by app and I can select the date range (although only to a maximum of a month). I had played with ICS on the HD2 but not much. Before that it was Gingerbread mainly. Not sure whether the data app was that useful or not in Gingerbread. Perhaps it was and I just didn't look hard enough... Ooops. Thanks for pointing me at it... This will probably do.

Oh, and with the odd quirk that it thinks I'm in the UK, because my system language is "English/UK". Useful that, as I'm currently following British/World sports (football, cricket, etc..) far more than USA style sports these days.

Perfect. Installed the pay-version here now.

Thanks.

May I chip in:

Seesmic, for Twitter

Voice Note, to send yourself a voice memo by email

Songkick, reads your MP3s, creates an artist list, tells you when they’re in town

HulloMail, if you are charged per message for voice message retrieval by your carrier (might only work in UK)

FolderSync, automagically syncs to a variety of cloud stores

Sipdroid, best of the SIP phones [I haven't tried the JB stock one yet so it may have improved]

Elixir Widgets, control and toggle widget manager, has a companion app called Elixir 2 for all sorts of phone info and stats

WifiMatic, watches your location by cellphone towers, and turns your wifi on and off accordingly. Excellent battery saver.

Moxier, the least bad connector to Exchange/Outlook, from a crowded field of bad choices. This is the only one I could find that would successfully sync Notes and Tasks.

Market Enabler, allows you to come into the market as if you were from a different country

Gesture Search, quickest way to look up contacts, with an added warm glow of Palm Pilot nostalgia

Oh dear. I installed that as the first file manager I found when searching, thought "ok so it is functional but a bit crappy, I'll find a decent one later".

I hate to think how crappy the worse ones are

I much prefer Astro, which can do those things as well.


I prefer using built-in functionality to installing an app to do it. If you initiate a voice command in Android and simply say "Note to self" then say what you want, it will automatically attach a recording of that message to an email, with the subject line containing the translation. I use it several times daily.


I should point out that ICS has a good version of this, too.


Mark, I think you might be misreading what he said. He's saying there's toggles in the notification shade, not as a widget on the home screen. AFAIK, there are no toggles in ICS on the notification shade, and this is something I've seen on Samsung devices in the past (though as usual, they don't do it very well). The app I just started using is this one, which has tons of customization options: Notification Toggle


I use this thing ALL the TIME for work to troubleshoot WiFi networks and sort out which WAPs are having issues. I love it. The only negative I have about it is that you need a plugin in order to connect to networks through it, which includes the ability to connect to specific WAPs. I've noticed on previous phones that this plugin is a little flaky and messes up my WiFi connection, and things improved when I uninstalled it. So I use WiFi Analyzer purely for scanning now, which is fine because it's great at it.

The link for Market Enabler does work from here. Is this one of those apps to re-enable the unknown sources check box, which some carriers remove/disable by default?

The "unknown sources" check box works fine on my GN w/stock Jelly Bean.

EDIT: Oh, wait.. found it with Google Search, located here.



Looks potentially useful, that.

I don't see a "toggle bar" in the JB notification shade. Mostly all that's there is a quick access link to the Settings screen, where the Wifi and BT toggles are located, and where two more menu levels gets me to the Mobile Data toggle.

And those toggles don't toggle easily -- some fumbling about seems to be necessary to get them to switch.

I'll try the app you suggested and see if it works on JB or not.

Okay, I gave Notification Toggle a test drive, and it's not for me. I need to see the status toggles right up front, not hidden away. And using discrete toggles shows me more information (eg. Wifi SSD) at a glance too.

In theory, the very top line of the screen has microscopic status icons on it (stock JB feature), but I can't see those without reading glasses on.

So I'll pass on that one for now, useful as it is. Thanks.

Pilot error -- even though they're drawn as "slider switches", they're really "tap" buttons. Doh!

There was some odd restriction in GB and ICS that meant that some non-US phones didn't get access to Note-To-Self as one of the available voice commands. Just tried it on my JB phone and it does work.

However it doesn't seem to be configurable to do what I use Voicenote for, which is to create Outlook tasks while on the move. One button press gets a series of events where Voicenote converts my speech input to a mail, which is sent to my Outlook, which parses it and drops it into a task list (which is then synced back to my phone!)

I got tired of Astro expiring all the time (usually when I needed it and didn't have time to update) and getting progressively huger, so I changed to OpenIntents File Manager, which is not great, but it's small and it works consistently.

The paid version of Torque is WAY different from the lite version. It's well worth the purchase.

If you're a sports fan, I would recommend an app made by Google, but sadly it doesn't exist anymore! I LOVE the app Scoreboard, which Google first made sometime in early 2009, I believe, but seemingly went without updates for the last two years.

It's funny, the app worked like crap on my G1 and Nexus One, despite being a pretty simple app (it just notifies you of scores for teams you ask for). But now that I have my Galaxy Nexus it works beautifully, and way more reliably than it used to! Very weird.

Fortunately, it gets reinstalled when I log into a new phone. When I recently wiped my GN to put Jelly Bean on, it was automatically pulled back down when I logged in, which is pretty neat...

A few more:

Vplayer
Excellent video player for Android. Supports way more formats than the included player handles, and the paid version is only a quid or so right now.

Droidwall
A point and click interface to the Linux kernel's excellent Xtables firewall packet filters. Use this to restrict data access (wifi and/or mobile-data) on a per-app basis. Excellent.

Jota Text Editor
A very useful text editor, with available plugins for speech input and spell checking, all English and all FREE!

And one I'm dithering about: looks excellent, but I just don't have a real use case for it at CAD$5.90:

Android Office
For MS Word, Excel, and regular text files, with PowerPoint and others promised for future versions.

Mmm.. so Android veterans..
What categories of apps am I missing out on through ignorance right now?

EDIT:
Also, I'm looking for a Calendar front-end which is easy to see and interact with on a 4" screen. The built-in Google app sucks -- fonts too small and it's just dumb in many other ways.

I want something like the PalmOS calendar I've been using for years here. Readable, and thought-out.

I've gone for a free app instead:

Kingsoft Office
View & Edit DOC/DOCX/TXT/XLS/XLSX/PPT/PPTX files etc.

Like the attached?

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for. Have you tried pinch to zoom on the default calendar?

Hmm, hadn't seen that one. Have you looked at Moboplayer?


My favorite app of all time, one I use every single day, sometimes for several hours a day:

Doggcatcher

You will never shake my faith that this is the absolute best podcast player in existence. I adore this app for so many reasons:

Customer Input:

The developer might be the best developer on the platform in terms of customer input. He's worked with his users from the very beginning, listening to all their bug reports and feature suggestions. I've even had a suggestion or two put in. And even with that much customer input, it's still a fantastic app He's amazing and really puts a lot of work into this app.

Options? You've got options.

I've spent ages in the settings pages, getting everything just perfect. The player pauses when I unplug my phone from power or disconnect headphones or bluetooth. It also resumes playback when I reconnect just my headphones. If I wanted to do the opposite of that or anything in-between, I could. I can set to download podcasts only on WiFi, or only when plugged in, or both, or neither.

I can adjust how each feed downloads independently. Car Talk downloads every episode, but the 7-minute news podcast from NPR only downloads the most recent episode.

Best of all, when I wanted to wipe my phone, I was able to export all my settings and import them when I had the phone set up again, so everything was just how I liked it.

Playback

It's so easy to skip around and select new episodes. You can order your unlistened episodes several ways, you can set (independently) how far the FF and REW buttons will scrub through your podcasts, you can play back at different speeds (requires a plugin), and the app ties into Android for lock screen controls like Play Music does.


I could go on and on about this app (and I have, sorry). This is far and away my most used app and also my absolute favorite. I could never give it up.

I used Datebk from Pimlical on my Palm, and that guy has now got an Android version out.

Also take a look at Touch Calendar and Calengoo.

Ah! My apologies. I was so focused on praising my favorite app, I completely forgot about this. I second Touch Calendar. I used that all the time on Gingerbread until they improved the default calendar in ICS. It's not bad in terms of appearance, either...

Yeah, that's the one. Here's a side-by-side comparison in "Month view", at the size/distance I'd typically be viewing them.

Which of the two is more readable ?
That's what I want on my Android handset.

Mmmm.. Ancal is almost exactly what I want -- except it doesn't appear to sync with Google Calendar. If it did that, things would be perfect!

But I think I'll go with it, if I can now figure out how to import the calendar from the Palm (easy if Ancal did Google sync).

Edit: Or maybe not.. it only saves "start times", not durations or end-times. And while it does have the ever so valuable "snooze alarm" feature, it's a global setting rather than a per-task setting.

So near, and yet so far..

The source code is available. I've never formally learned Java, but it all looks reasonably simple and clear -- not a pile of spaghetti like some apps.

There appears to be support for activity "Duration" in the code, but it's just missing from the "Edit Appointment" screen (or whatever that's called). So I guess I'll put that aside as yet another project to work on if/when I ever stop being so darned busy with paid work.

Edit: There's also j2cal, which is a fork of ancal that adds Duration to the GUI along with other minor tweaks. Unfortunately they've broken the "Day" view -- teensy tiny font on my handset. That's probably easy to fix though, if I can find the source code.

Okay, I've purchased CalenGoo to use as the Calendar interface. It syncs with gCal, has built-in "snooze", and can be customized to resemble a poor imitation of the Palm Calendar app.

Seems to work well enough.
I've tried about a dozen other apps before settling on this one.