SGP Recommended Apps

[Floyd2006]

Just got my 5.0 & loving it and all, but it is so time consuming searching for good apps. Recommend any good apps? Thanks.

[Blackdog]

Well, yeah, you could look at it as time-consuming, but most of us find it pretty interesting I think. If you don't like futzing around and getting nerdy, maybe Android isn't for you? Anyway, here's some feedback from me...as posted on another forum which rhymes with Android Borums.

+Android Market Apps and Widgets:
+Tape Machine: GREAT sound recorder and editor! Records in WAV, MP3, OGG, and FLAC
+Weatherbug Widget: Pain in the neck for me...constant "Refresh"
+Weather Channel not bad.
+Dolphin Browser: comparing this to stock browser. I like it. May make this default. Like the bookmarks menu as a left-side-swipe menu.
+Real Calc scientific calculater: Great. Has RPN too!
+Wifi Analyser: Great too to see various wifi networks in your local zone and displays strength and placement on the channel spectrum, and displays open/unsecured hotspots. Very cool.
+Over Drive: for getting free Kindle books from libraries. Very good. A bit complicated to set up since you also need to have a library on-line account and you need to get an Adobe account to make OverDrive work. But ultimately you get Kindle books on your 5" screen for free. Awesome.
+Bar Code Reader: Works great.
+SoundHound: Works surprisingly well!
+Autodesk's Sketchbook Mobile: Awesome app for drawing and using photos. Photoshop "Lite".
+ Flashlight. Very cool. Works well on the 5.0 (4.0 does not have LED flash)
+ GoogleEarth: Fantastic!

Plus:
Some good apps I've been using lately:

StumbleUpon: Sort-of "best of" app. you enter your interests, from photography to geology, from blues music to parenting, from graphic design to art...and the app throws you samples of stuff from the web. some interesting, some not. you vote thumbs up or down. Pretty cool.

TuneIn Radio. Streaming radio, broken down by country/state/region...all the way around the world. pretty cool! Some streaming issues but apparently improving.

MyFitnessPal: Calorie counting...works pretty well. big database of foods.

K9 email: Now that I've got it configured, it's awesome. Takes a bit of head-scratching and forum-searching because developer has absolutely no documentation of website help, no on-app help, and does not answer email. but, it's free and very powerful...MANY options and parameters.

SketchCamera, Paper Camera and Square Camera...each fun in it's own way.

Camera 360: Interesting options.

Out-of-Milk: Awesome app for grocery shopping. Create a list of normally used stuff in your pantry...make grocery lists from that...more than one for different stores if you want...and scan items to get price into database if you want...pretty cool.

G-Strings: Free guitar tuner. Nice.

but hey, go explore on your own. That's half the fun. enjoy your new device.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by Blackdog

G-Strings: Free guitar tuner. Nice.

Sounds like porn!

[Blackdog]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

Sounds like porn!

yeah- not dat.
Works quite well and nicely designed graphic appearance too.

When you consider some of these apps versus dedicated pieces of hardware/firmware (n individual guitar tuner, gps, handheld recorder,)...it's pretty amazing what can be contained in a single handheld device.

I like that Flashlight app, which aside from the flashlight, has a bunch of other options. One of which is morse code blinker. Enter your text and it flashes out the message. Of course when a literate coder flashes you back, you're pretty much on your own.

[ForkliftFred]

Originally Posted by Blackdog

I like that Flashlight app, which aside from the flashlight, has a bunch of other options. One of which is morse code blinker. Enter your text and it flashes out the message. Of course when a literate coder flashes you back, you're pretty much on your own.

I saw Flashlight on a YouTube video of "5 apps you probably don't know about" and he just showed it as a flashlight (maybe it's been updated since then) but I thought if the SGP screen can be so bright, surely that would do just fine as a light But the morse code aspect is clever. Actually, maybe not all that clever but it's an inspired addition. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before a morse reader is added, you've got a camera already pointing in the right direction

As my player is barely out of the box, I don't have much to recommend but I followed other peoples suggestions and picked up these two free apps for starters...

Sky Map is a bit of a mind blower! Point it at the night sky and identify the stars you are looking at or it will direct you to ones you know the names of (or planets or other celestial stuff!) I might have got carried away with the moment but as I was playing with it today I thought "That alone is worth the money I've just paid for this device!"

ES File Explorer has proved very handy today too. Transferring files between the SGP and PC over my wifi (I mean directly, no via Dropbox or anything) Normally I'd want to plug a USB cable between the two and use my PC to do the transfers but this lets you do it the other way around and without needing the cable... use your SGP to browse the shared folders on your PC as well as the Player's content of course.

[Daniel644]

don't forget Poweramp.

[Goucham]

Originally Posted by ForkliftFred

ES File Explorer has proved very handy today too. Transferring files between the SGP and PC over my wifi (I mean directly, no via Dropbox or anything)

Shame on me for doing a me-too post but ES File Explorer really is a great piece of software. I love the fact that it CAN do Dropbox, Skydrive and Google Drive in addition to local SMB and FTP shares.

Combine it with the MX Player media player and you can stream media files (MKV, AVI, MP4, etc.) off of your local network without having to download the whole file first.

[Marvin the Martian]

I've had ES File Explorer ever since I flashed this ROM onto my SGP (it was baked into it) yet I never knew it was capable of all this....lol.

[steinburger1109]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

I've had ES File Explorer ever since I flashed this ROM onto my SGP (it was baked into it) yet I never knew it was capable of all this....lol.

Yea, I actually spent the last few days trying to get it to either connect to my ftp server or work over lan. Haven't gotten it to work yet.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by steinburger1109

Yea, I actually spent the last few days trying to get it to either connect to my ftp server or work over lan. Haven't gotten it to work yet.

I still haven't bothered. If I'm within wifi range of the computer where my stuff is, then I'll just plug it in....lol.

[Blackdog]

ES File Explorer is new to me. Certainly has a massive amount of positive reviews. Just dl and will be giving it a shot. Thanks.

[steinburger1109]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

I still haven't bothered. If I'm within wifi range of the computer where my stuff is, then I'll just plug it in....lol.

I prefer leaving my cord in my room and my laptop stays in my kitchenish area. So my laziness dictates some sort of wireless transfer should be set up!

[ForkliftFred]

Originally Posted by steinburger1109

Yea, I actually spent the last few days trying to get it to either connect to my ftp server or work over lan. Haven't gotten it to work yet.

I had trouble initially. I'm no network expert so didn't really know where I was going wrong. It turned out to be my PC's anti-virus/firewall settings that were blocking it. Mind you, it still has trouble accessing the standard Shared Documents folder. It can see it but not get into it.

So glad to have had such a positive effect with this suggestion

[barryem]

I've been using two ways to transfer files from my computer to the tablets. One is Dropbox. It's good when I have files I might want to put on more than one tablet. I have and use several tablets.

The other is Wifi Explorer. It's advantage is that it works with any PC with wifi, or on my LAN. I run it on the tablet and it gives me it's IP and on the PC I open a browser and go to that IP. I then see a file explorer-like screen that I can use for transferring files. It's simple and works just fine. I generally use this to put files on a single tablet.

Barry

[alljokingaside]

I second the Wifi Analyzer rec. See signal strength, channel use, etc. It also has a cool option to toggle the Wifi on as long as Wifi Analyzer's on.

Powertutor (measures energy use and reports in mW, among other things)

Watchdog- app manager. It supposedly monitors and reports "stray" programs. I haven't had a problem yet, so no real chance to report.

Nightvision Camera- Why not.

Floating Gallery- fun way to look at your pic gallery

Talk To Me Cloud- voice translations. Fairly accurate, depending on the language

Brightness Control- set as much as (i think) 10 brightness levels. (I sure that Tasker might be able to replace this once I figure out how...)

Tasker- It seems like a powerful little thing, but it's pretty complicated to learn. Basically, it automates tasks as you see fit and more. (eg Headphones in->launch player pro & set volume to 15 ; make battery bar ; etc.)

PowerAMP sounds great, but it's a little too resource/energy demanding. I've been trying out Player Pro w/ DSP and it seems a little better w/r/t power, though the volume doesn't go as high. (It also sounds less bright. Not muddled, though.) I've read that PowerAMP doesn't employ the media scanner, while Player Pro does.

[Daniel644]

Originally Posted by alljokingaside

PowerAMP sounds great, but it's a little too resource/energy demanding. I've been trying out Player Pro w/ DSP and it seems a little better w/r/t power, though the volume doesn't go as high. (It also sounds less bright. Not muddled, though.) I've read that PowerAMP doesn't employ the media scanner, while Player Pro does.

The NOT employing media scanner is important to me because I don't want to have to wait 5 minutes for it to scan all my music on my microSD card when I power on, on the way out the door to the the car on the mornings after I charge (I have a .nomedia file on my microSD to stop the scanner) also the volume level of Poweramp and voodoo sound (4.0 player) at 0db is like a dead match to CD volume level when I plug it into the car stereo aux input, so that is super important to me as well as that is my PRIMARY use for my player.

[steinburger1109]

Btw, I have a full 32gb micro sd card in here, and after the first time it had to scan, so long as I don't change the music on there, the media scanner hardly takes any time at all.

[alljokingaside]

Ditto on the memory scanner thing, except I've a Class 2 or 4 16 GB card. (I'm sure it's 2, but one can hope). Actually, on power levels, I did a comparison "test" (the rigors of actual testing that goes beyond my concern) and it seems like they're even...except Poweramp spikes regularly (eg 30 mW usage to 500 mW down to 100 mW etc.) Hm.

[Daniel644]

Something else worth mentioning regarding the media scanner is if you have a damaged id3 tag the stock scanner will not show that song (it just skips it like the file doesn't exist) whereas the scanner in Poweramp will recognize it, I've got about 50 songs out of my 4.5K songs that are like this.

[alljokingaside]

Hm. Is there an alternative to the stock media scanner, I wonder....something more efficient, both in terms of time and energy would be nice.

To the OP, if you like customizing your Player to meet your own needs and don't mind doing a bit of learning/trial & error, check out Tasker. It's a bit expensive for an app, (around $6), but is worth it if you figure it out. I'm currently in the process, myself. Although, I do think that some features require you to have root access....that or I'm just really bad at it.