Best Android Apps

[flyingscot]

The live stuff on beebplayer hasnt been working for a while. The last time I tried, none of the iplayer stuff worked either, which was after it was taken off. Havent tried it lately though

The GPS track isnt too bad on the battery at all, nowhere near as much as I thought it would be

Tried it tonight and watched a couple of mins of have I got news for you, so I think it is still working.

[Homer Thompson]

Tried it tonight and watched a couple of mins of have I got news for you, so I think it is still working.

I stand corrected

[paisleysaints]

I noticed that on the Iphone well i was shown an app called cyclemeter which i would think would be handy, Trying to find something simaliar on the android phone has anyone came across anything like that

[Homer Thompson]

I noticed that on the Iphone well i was shown an app called cyclemeter which i would think would be handy, Trying to find something simaliar on the android phone has anyone came across anything like that

Try GPS tracker, or the google tracker program, MyTracks.

[paisleysaints]

Try GPS tracker, or the google tracker program, MyTracks.

Thanks I'll give them a go one at a time of course lol and let you know how it works out, Found ridetrac also

Worked a treat which could be a bad thing I thought I was going quicker haha

[NorthernLights]

RemoteDroid - Download the app for the phone and the client for you PC and you can use your Android phone as a mouse and keyboard. Very simple to set up and use.

[paisleysaints]

As Beeb player isnt working at the moment is there anything else on the market for watching any free view channels, missing to much world cup lol

Why has beeb player stopped working anyone know

[Homer Thompson]

As Beeb player isnt working at the moment is there anything else on the market for watching any free view channels, missing to much world cup lol

Why has beeb player stopped working anyone know

Something Ive been looking for since I got an android phone. Let us all know if you have more luck than me!

The only thing thats come close is Ustream viewer, but its incredibly unreliable. There is talk of a "Tvcathcup" app coming to android, which would be superb

[paisleysaints]

I seen online to use yamgo its an website for mobile tv. Couldn't get it to work earlier, let's hope tv catch up becomes available soon they could coin it in just now with the world cup

Just tried yamgo it is working now maybe just a poor connection at work

[Mik]

spooted an app called myPlayer on the market this morning, it's just another BBC iPlayer, working fine just now. It has all the iPlayer programs but doens't do Live tv like the other one did.

Another app i found this morning:

WC 2010 - FotMob - Brilliant WC app

[Homer Thompson]

I seen online to use yamgo its an website for mobile tv. Couldn't get it to work earlier, let's hope tv catch up becomes available soon they could coin it in just now with the world cup

Just tried yamgo it is working now maybe just a poor connection at work

You can try the beta version of tvcathup just now by going to

http://m.tvcatchup.com

in your browser (note, no www) I tried and couldnt connect, apparently I have to put the phone into a DMZ on the router. Might give it another try tonight.

spooted an app called myPlayer on the market this morning, it's just another BBC iPlayer, working fine just now. It has all the iPlayer programs but doens't do Live tv like the other one did.

Another app i found this morning:

WC 2010 - FotMob - Brilliant WC app

I've got a really good world cup app, but cant remember the name of it!

edited to add - there are also a few vuvuzela apps floating around too

[paisleysaints]

You can try the beta version of tvcathup just now by going to

http://m.tvcatchup.com

in your browser (note, no www) I tried and couldnt connect, apparently I have to put the phone into a DMZ on the router. Might give it another try tonight.

I've got a really good world cup app, but cant remember the name of it!

edited to add - there are also a few vuvuzela apps floating around too

Tried using tvcatch up got it working after I installed Skyfire browers got the world cup now at work :-)

WC 2010 - FotMob - Brilliant WC app ive got the same app it's really good

[Homer Thompson]

Tried using tvcatch up got it working after I installed Skyfire browers got the world cup now at work :-)

WC 2010 - FotMob - Brilliant WC app ive got the same app it's really good

The WC app I've got is just called World Cup 2010, its by a guy called Luke Shan.

I have Skyfire too, Im off to try tvcatchup

[flyingscot]

TV catchup works well at times, other times I cannot connect to server. 90% of time I choose LQ as it streams better.

For those networks that charge for voicemail try Hullomail which is free. Forwarded to an 03 landline using your mins (I'm unlimited landlines and thus totally free). It is cracking, does an excellent job- notifications can come by e-mail or status bar, bring up the app everything is listed so just press play. Magic.

[StewartyMac]

This Task-killer sounds quite useful. One thing though, and bear in mind I'm new to this malarkey, how do you know what tasks are actually open? If, for example, I'm using Google Maps, then hit the menu button and start using Facebook, is Google Maps still effectively running (and using the battery)?

[Homer Thompson]

This Task-killer sounds quite useful. One thing though, and bear in mind I'm new to this malarkey, how do you know what tasks are actually open? If, for example, I'm using Google Maps, then hit the menu button and start using Facebook, is Google Maps still effectively running (and using the battery)?

Its still running, yes. Using the battery? Unknown!

If you get a task kiler ap - I use ADvanced Task Killer - it tells you whats running. You can then select what to kill off

[pantene proV]

Android doesn't need a task killer

It's a bit long-winded but i've c'd & p'd the salient points

• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it's done doing what it needs to do.
• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven't returned to it in a long time.
• Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
• A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
• Killing a process when it isn't ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it's needed again.
• Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
• Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
• The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
• Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting "back" until it closes rather than hitting the "home" button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it's been in the background for a while.

Task killing reasons

Battery life - it will drain if you have an app open that requires the processor. Just exit properly (back button until out of program).

Memory gain - Linux runs the same regardless of how much memory is available so no need to close apps to gain memory

Although there's no hard and fast way to shut down what we're using, the reason is just because the phone keeps things available for us for when we next need them. If it realises we're not coming back to the program and requires RAM for other processes, it'll shut it.

I don't have a task killer anymore on my Legend and haven't noticed any significant problems with battery, memory, lag, anything. I found when I had it, it wanted to force close or reboot from time to time - not good.

Of course there may be other reasons for you to have one that i've not realised (you might just be nosy about what your phone is up to), I just think that constantly killing and reloading apps that weren't ready to be killed is doing more harm than good. The whole point of a phone is to have your processes on tap ready to go and I find it ironic that we crave multitasking yet want to punish the phone for doing so.

We're all different though. If you think a task killer helps your phone then fine but honestly, you're not missing much by not having one.

It's all about retraining your brain and realising the phone knows better than the control freak inside us does!

[Homer Thompson]

Android doesn't need a task killer

It's a bit long-winded but i've c'd & p'd the salient points

• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it's done doing what it needs to do.
• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven't returned to it in a long time.
• Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
• A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
• Killing a process when it isn't ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it's needed again.
• Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
• Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
• The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
• Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting "back" until it closes rather than hitting the "home" button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it's been in the background for a while.

Task killing reasons

Battery life - it will drain if you have an app open that requires the processor. Just exit properly (back button until out of program).

Memory gain - Linux runs the same regardless of how much memory is available so no need to close apps to gain memory

Although there's no hard and fast way to shut down what we're using, the reason is just because the phone keeps things available for us for when we next need them. If it realises we're not coming back to the program and requires RAM for other processes, it'll shut it.

I don't have a task killer anymore on my Legend and haven't noticed any significant problems with battery, memory, lag, anything. I found when I had it, it wanted to force close or reboot from time to time - not good.

Of course there may be other reasons for you to have one that i've not realised (you might just be nosy about what your phone is up to), I just think that constantly killing and reloading apps that weren't ready to be killed is doing more harm than good. The whole point of a phone is to have your processes on tap ready to go and I find it ironic that we crave multitasking yet want to punish the phone for doing so.

We're all different though. If you think a task killer helps your phone then fine but honestly, you're not missing much by not having one.

It's all about retraining your brain and realising the phone knows better than the control freak inside us does!

Thats all fine in principle, but it doesnt really work in practice - not on my Hero anyway. It quite often slows down if there are lots of things open and speeds up again when killed off.

Any decent task killer app will let you set exclusions, so you're not always killing everything off and anything that genuinely needs to run in the background can continue to do so. Theres also a difference between killing off apps and services. Many things use services that run in the background and I never touch them, but I do quite often kill any apps that are still 'running'. I dont see any downside to this, to be honest. The apps still load up as quickly when opened. For example, if I leave the browser running it will still be on the same web page I last visited. Thats fine, if I hadnt finished looking at that page, but totally pointless if I had finished and want to go somewhere else instead. Leaving it open in the background, until Android decides to kill it off, has no benefit whatsoever, but still uses memory.

All of those points are great and Im sure Android is designed to do that, I just dont think it does it very well.

[pantene proV]

Thats all fine in principle, but it doesnt really work in practice - not on my Hero anyway. It quite often slows down if there are lots of things open and speeds up again when killed off.

Any decent task killer app will let you set exclusions, so you're not always killing everything off and anything that genuinely needs to run in the background can continue to do so. Theres also a difference between killing off apps and services. Many things use services that run in the background and I never touch them, but I do quite often kill any apps that are still 'running'. I dont see any downside to this, to be honest. The apps still load up as quickly when opened. For example, if I leave the browser running it will still be on the same web page I last visited. Thats fine, if I hadnt finished looking at that page, but totally pointless if I had finished and want to go somewhere else instead. Leaving it open in the background, until Android decides to kill it off, has no benefit whatsoever, but still uses memory.

All of those points are great and Im sure Android is designed to do that, I just dont think it does it very well.

I had Advanced Task Killer and found it hindered performance to the effect that reboots became the norm, emails stopped updating and even my onscreen keyboard was laggy when pressed. There's also nothing wrong with going back into the browser and it being on the last page you viewed - it has to show a webpage so doesn't really matter which one to be honest and as previously stated Android runs the same no matter how much memory is available (i'm sure a tech savvy guy like yourself knows Linux handles memory different than Windows does - we don't need to keep freeing memory on our phones).

I take your point re your own experience though - there are so many handsets with differing versions of the OS and hardware that each of us has varying success/failure. I thought i'd post that article to give people another point of view for task killing but as you said, sometimes it helps your phone to have one.

My experience? It didn't help and i'm certain Stewartymac's Desire, with Android 2.2 coming and 1GHz Snapdragon/loads of RAM, wouldn't need it either. It's all dependent on your phone's horsepower. If I want to kill an app - which isn't often - i'll go to Setting/Applications/Running Services and do it there.

I mentioned brain training before because, as most of us are Windows users, we have this mindset that killing apps MUST be good yet that isn't the case for most new Android phones at all. As always though, do a comparison. It doesn't hurt to download one and see if it helps.

[pantene proV]

Can I also point out if people do want an app killer, if you have Astro File Manager installed you don't need to download another program to do it.

Go to> Astro/Menu/Tools/Process Manager/Apps then press which one you want to stop and a choice menu appears;

Kill App

Open App

App Details

Ignore App

So, don't add another app killer program and certainly don't pay for one 'cos Astro is the mutts baws.