Android must-haves

I've had my Android phone for a couple of months now and it seems to me that it's best treated, in some ways, as you would a Windows PC. By that I mean that, just like Windows, Android comes with apps that are basic and can/should be replaced with something better.

So here is my list of (free) apps that every Android owner should look at.

Browser: Opera Mini/Mobile

The built-in browser is ok but it's slow, not particularly easy to use, and lacks features. From my perspective the biggest flaw is the lack of XSLT support which is a must-have on browsers with limited bandwidth. Opera fixes all this. The Mini edition uses Opera servers to grab and render pages, which are then sent to your phone compressed. It's much faster than the built-in browser, has more features and is easier to drive. The Mobile edition is similar but does it's rendering locally, so it's probably a bit slower (I haven't tried it so I can't say).

Email: K9 Mail

The built-in email client on my phone was a bit clunky to start with but after a few days it started behaving strangely; it lost account details, changed ports at random, and would get stuck trying to download mail. Enough was enough.

K9 is much better. It's easier to set up, has more configurable options... It just works. Enough said.

Calculator: RealCalc

The standard calculator is truly horrible, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

Enter RealCalc. It has all the configuration options most people would ever need, includes many unit conversions (including imperial measures - not surprising because it's British (yay!)) and all kinds of constants. Best of all it does RPN!

In the next post: some useful add-on (as opposed to replacement) apps.