Free android apps that you must have in your android phone

Android is gaining more popularity as a mobile operating system with recent indication of overtaking iPhone OS. The most attractive feature of android is the availability of large applications that you can easily download from android market. Moreover it is open source, owned by Google, Linux based, fully customizable etc the list goes on.

Here is the applications that you must have in your android phone.

1.Media Players (Rock Player, QQ Player, Real Player, Mobo Player)

Rock player is one of the best media player available for android phone. It can play all formats including AVI, DAT, MPEG, FLV etc even if your phone hardware does not support formats other than 3GP, MP4. But in the newly updated version available in android market in order to play or formats you have to buy the software. Otherwise the formats that it can play will be only those supported by your hardware. In low end android phones like Galaxy 5 of Samsung, you can play only 3gp and mp4 videos. But if you install Rock Player in this phone you can play all formats. But be careful to download old version of it. Because in new version you can play all videos only if you have purchased it. This software has two modes hardware accelerated mode and software accelerated mode. Hardware mode saves battery and processing power but it can play only those formats supported by your hardware. Software accelerated mode can play all formats but it will take more battery and processing power. In the latest version Rock Player lite you cannot use software mode if you do not purchase full version. So try to get old version of Rock Player which is not available in Android market

Now QQ Player is becoming more good in features. Now QQ player supports all the videos formats and it is a free software also. This makes this software more good than Rockplayer. Everyone can download this software for free without any payment or advertisements. All these features makes this player a better one compared to Rock Player. In low end phones its performance is very good. Also as there is no paid version all features are available in the free version itself. This player performs very well even with the video formats like MKV which are not usually supported in phones.

Real Player is another good media player for Android. Already this player has proved good in most of the old platforms like Symbian. The main feature in this player is that you can use it as a music player also. So there is no need to use one music player and another player for playing video files. But its performance is good only in case of default supporting formats in the phone.

Mobo Player is another media player which is worth a try. But for using this player, I recommend your phone to be at least a mid range Android phone. Because its performance is bad in low end phones, videos will get stuck while playing. This software provides separate codec package for different hardware architectures in phones. So the developers claim that the performance will be more hardware optimized.

Summer player or V player is another player worth a try. It also plays some formats very well.

Even in the presence of all these players, I am using QQ player in my low end android phone. Try all and select your favorite player.

2.Advanced Task Killer

It is the best free task killer available for android market. As android is Linux based, it has the provision to kill programs that are not used when memory is needed. But keeping more programs running will drain your battery more fastly. Even without task manager android phones will work fine, because of the facility called low level memory killing of unused applications.

But the main advantage of task killer is that you can terminate the programs whenever you like. It is also a solution to RAM decreasing problem in android phones.

It also have auto kill feature in settings. Select auto kill level and frequency then the killer will free up memory by itself. It also have feature to display running applications based on security level. If security level is high it will not show system applications. Also there is medium and low levels of security.

3.Browsers (Dolphin Browser, Opera Mini browser)

This is the best browser for android phones. It is free also. It posses many add on features than your default phone browser which is also of good quality. This browser has the feature of creating shortcuts using gestures. For example you can go to Facebook by simply typing 'f' on your touch screen. Also bookmarking facility is very good. But it is a bit heavy almost same size that of default phone browser..If you are also feeling in that way you can try for mini version of dolphin browser.

Opera mini is a very light browser consuming very low RAM and doing all the functions of default browser and many third party browsers in android. The main reason for me to list Opera is that your android phone browser will not allow you to login to hubpages. But using Opera mini browser you can easily login to hubpages account. So if you want to check the status of your hubpages from your android phone the best way is to install Opera mini browser. Opera mini browser is very fast also. The reason for its fastness is that it is directly connecting to opera servers. It will give considerable speed improvement. Also you can try Skyfire browser. This is the only currently available android browser which is supporting flash but for some phones especially low end android phones, this browser is not available.

4. AndroZip

This is the best and free application available for android phones for zipping and unzipping. This small sized application also have the feature for backing up installed applications. The size of this application is also very small. Also this can be used as a file explorer. It can show the system files and hidden files.

By default its home directory will be memory card. If you press up button you can go to system files area. It will show the file structure of your phone which is similar to that of Linux file system with root, etc, home directories

5.Advanced English Dictionary & Theasurus

This is the best free dictionary available for android phones. This is developed by Mobi Systems. This is a large dictionary with a large number of words more than you expect. This is large sized with dictionary data size nearly 25MB. So it is better to select data storage location as memory card. Also be aware that it will take a lot of time to download the dictionary completely.

Do not clear the cache of this application, otherwise it will erase the dictionary data fully. If it happens so you again have to download the dictionary data fully again.

6. Launcher Pro

This is a very good and free application that allows you to make your phone's interface much more interesting. But surely it withdraws some RAM. In this application the home page and application drawer can be customized in an amazing way. It also have a 3D application drawer. It also have much more facilities like dock in the home screens. A lot of Launcher pro icons for your apps. This application will not be shown in you application list. You can edit the application options by selecting options menu in the home screen and selecting display options. Inside advanced settings there is an option to show the memory usage for debugging purpose. It offers a lot of switching styles between home screens like rotate, flip etc.

Also try Go launcher. It comes with a go market where you can purchase additional themes and all. Also there is a default task manager associated with this launcher which allows you to kill open apps from the menu itself. Also themes like iPhone theme looks very well for this launcher. The only problem I felt with this launcher is that your phone screen needs to be at least 3.5 inch big to look good with this launcher, otherwise icons will be very small.

7.Facebook

This is another application which is free and cannot be avoided by any android phone user who has an account in Facebook. In this software you can achieve all the features that is available in the online version of Facebook that you can achieve through your computer. In this software also there are options like news tab showing recent updates of your friends. Notification panel showing notifications in Facebook. A chat tab which is similar to any mature chat client available for Facebook. Also there are more tabs like friends, events. In events you can get the birthday calender of friends

8.Quick Pic

It is another free application that is worth installing. It acts as a replacement for your default gallery viewing software preinstalled in your android OS. You might have felt that opening gallery in android phone is slow if the number of pictures is very large. It is not a problem of android it is there in Symbian also. Quick pic is a very good application that will open you gallery instantly irrespective of the number of file that you have in your gallery. It works keeping thumbnail images of pictures. Irrespective of the working algorithm it is working very fine and surely you will find that it is very much faster than your default gallery viewing software.

9. E book Reader (Moon+ Reader, Kindle)

Moon+ reader is the best eBook reading software for Android market. You can read any ePub format books using this software. I will say it is the best professionally designed mobile app I have ever seen. Because just check the settings in this app. There you can find a large number of options allowing you to fully customize the application right from the way app looks to the way you can control it. Also there are some links to famous books inside this software itself. All these books are free also. You can start reading these books, from the moment of downloading the small application and the free books. Most of the books that you need to pay you can get in this reader for free. That is the point where it overtakes Kindle.

It is the second best book reading software available for android platform. Very easy to read books in it. Very attractive user interface. Comes with three free books treasure Island, Pride and prejudice, esope fables. You can find more free books in kindle market. If you want more good books you can get by paying also.

10. Messaging apps (Handcent SMS, Go SMS)

Android default messaging app itself is not bad (you wont feel it bad if you are moving to android from any phone other than I Phone). But there are some very good messaging apps that makes the messaging very easy and interesting. The best custom app in replacement to default messaging app that I would suggest is Handcent SMS. It comes with a very cool interface. You can make it more cool using custom themes that you can get along with the app. Messages comes in bubble style. Just select the black theme, and tune the color of bubbles in setting as you like it will look awesome. This is only the look part. Feature wise also it is very nice. You can get pop up window when message comes. You can set this pop up even in locked screen. Which makes replying to message, just the case of typing the reply (no need to unlock screen or go to notification panel). Also unselect the unlock screen when message comes option if you are using a phone with resistive display (which is very rare to find in android phones. If you enable this touches in your dress also will cause replay message to go). Go SMS, Champ SMS are also worth trying