The Market app, which available as one of the pre-installed applications in Android device, gives Android users access to over ten thousands of application, games and widgets, with most of them are available as free download, from the Android Market. Besides accessing Android Market directly from your Android device, you can also visit the online software store from your web browser.
FYI, the growth rate for new applications in Android Market has been very promising, whereas their counterpart, the Apple’s App Store for iOS has lesser new applications added recently. According to Techcrunch, the Android Market would surpass the App Store in size before the end of July 2011. This is definitely a great piece of news for Android users! Don’t you think? 🙂
Although the choice of applications is quite impressive for Android phone, but as long as the Android OS still doesn’t support full installation on memory cards (you can only move portion of the application to the memory card), you need to be selective in choosing the right applications for your phone.
For HTC Desire S, the phone comes with 1.1GB internal storage memory (with most of which is user available). But for a hardcore application hunter like me, this size of storage is very much not enough for me to load all my favourite apps into the phone.
However, if we are to compare HTC Desire S and the original Desire, the internal storage for Desire is much worse. It comes with only 512MB of internal storage. But with almost 80% of the storage size is used for the Android OS, you have only 120MB free space for all your apps and games. 🙁
Okay, without any further fluffing around, here is my pick of Android apps (for everyday use) for the HTC Desire S. There are altogether 10 essential and must-have applications (in no particular order) for your Android phone. Hopefully it suits everyone’s needs (productivity, social media, blogging etc). By the way, all applications are FREE! 🙂
Advanced Task Killer
Android phones allow multitasking, where you can run multiple applications in the background. When you return to that app, it was right where you left it. But running too many applications (in the background) at the same time can eat up quite a lot of memory, which can affect your phone performance and drain the battery life too.
Here’s where Advanced Task Killer comes in handy. It frees your phone memory by allowing you to take a look at all the running applications and select the (unwanted) applications that you wish to shut down. Although Advanced Task Killer claims that they don’t help converse the battery life, but by switching off those battery-draining applications can help the battery to last longer. 🙂
Lookout Mobile Security
The first thing before installing any applications or games in your HTC Desire S, is to get a good security app installed. Lookout Mobile Security is not just our favourite security app, but also the number 1 security app in Android Market.
Lookout is lightweight, uses minimal battery and consumes the same amount of battery power in one day as a 33 second phone call. The app gives your protection against viruses and malware. It automatically scans every new app you download for threat. If your phone is really infected by virus, the virus is prevent from transferring to your computer when you connect the phone to PC.
Moreover, you can set your phone’s contacts for automatic backups. Plus, the app comes with a phone locator, at which you can track your lost phone on Google map (GPS can be turned on remotely) and activate loud alarm on the phone remotely.
NOTE : You can try Lookout PREMIUM for free with 30 trial days.
Install Lookout Mobile Security
ASTRO File Manager
Get the most out of your HTC Desire S! ASTRO File Manager enables you to work with multiple files and folders in your phone. The interface presents a folder view of your phone. The toolbar at the top screen enables you to do a lot of tasks like navigate the directory, run a search, edit an entry (copy, move, rename), bookmark a folder, create zip file and more.
Moreover, you can use Astro File Manager to backup applications, manage running applications, send files as attachments. also kills tasks, sends files as attachments, and creates and stores backups of your apps.
3G Watchdog
Almost every mobile broadband comes with a monthly bandwidth volume allocation at which the volume allocation may vary for different broadband plans. Once you have exceeded the data usage for the month, your internet speed will be throttled.
3G Watchdog is a nifty application for Android that enables you to keep an eye on your mobile internet (HSPDA/3G/Edge/GPRS) data usage with a detailed report page. You can set the app to alert you when you’ve exceeded a specified percentage of data quota. Also, there is a status icon in the notification bar with colour indication (green/orange/red).
Hootsuite
Although HTC Desire S has the Friendstream app that pulls the contents seamlessly from your Twitter and Facebook accounts and displays them under one interface, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t get another of such application.
Hootsuite for Android brings Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare into one place, and it’s one of the best Twitter clients available on Android. You can manage multiple Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare accounts.
Wherever you are, you can check on latest tweets, Facebook’s updates, check in on foursquare, send or schedule tweets or Facebook updates, share photos, import Twitter lists, receive notifications for new tweets or Facebook updates and more!
Facebook for Android
There is no other great and complete Facebook app for Android other than the official Facebook for Android app itself. The main screen contains nine icons that lets you read the latest status updates on Facebook, view your profile, view your friends list, check your messages, check in to Places to get Deals, check out your groups, events and photos, as well as chat with your friends.
At the top right of the screen is the buttons for updating your status and run a search query. Meanwhile, at the bottom are the photo reel, which contains the thumbnail of your friends’ recently uploaded images, and also the notifications bar which enables you to read the latest activity on your Facebook.
WordPress for Android
A must-have for WordPress blogger like me. It gives you the pleasure of managing your WordPress blog on the go. The WordPress for Android app enables you to write and edit posts/pages, moderate comments and view your WordPress blog traffic stat, directly from your Android phone.
Pulse News Reader
Unlike the traditional RSS reader, Pulse News Reader is a one-of-a-kind RSS reader that delivers articles from blogs and webpages in a visually rich magazine-inspired layout, rather in an usual and boring plain text. The application pulls in articles from RSS feeds, then take images from the articles to display alongside with headlines.
Tapping on the headline will expands the article in a clean and elegant view. All the articles can be easily shared to friends via email, Facebook or Twitter. Also you have the option to read the article from your phone’s browser.
RockPlayer Lite
One of my favourite media player for HTC Desire S. It supports audio and video playback for almost all media formats (avi, mkv, rmvb, xvid, divx, 3gp, mp4 etc). However, I only prefer watching videos using this application, but not audios because of the lack of functionality.
Using RockPlayer Lite, it saves you the time to convert videos to playable formats in Android phone. It also supports subtitle. So let’s load your memory card with all sort of movie or video titles, and watch them on the go. 🙂
PicSay – Photo Editor
As the name suggests, PicSay is a photo editor for Android, probably the best of it’s kind. 🙂
You can improve your photos with color corrections, sharpen, and red-eye removal. You can get creative by adding word balloons, titles, graphics, stickers and effects like distortions, cutouts, special effects, and more. Get ready to discover all the functionality!
So there you go the 10 essential Android apps for HTC Desire S (according to me :-)). Anyway, these are just some of the recommendations from me, there are of course plenty more must-have applications that waiting for you to discover. Go make your discovery now, and let’s us know any great apps that should be install in HTC Desire S or any other Android phones. 🙂
