TheVinster
Member
From: Illinois
Registered: 2009-07-15
Posts: 985
Getting my first smart phone next week so what should I look out for in terms of apps? It could be related to Japanese learning or not. Since my previous phone was a Rumor Touch from 2 years ago I have no experience whatsoever. If it matters I'm getting the Samsung Galaxy S3.
rich_f
Member
From: north carolina
Registered: 2007-07-12
Posts: 1708
There's an Android apps thread around here somewhere.
My recommendations are:
ATOK for the JP keyboard. 1500 yen, but totally worth it.
TuneIn for listening to streaming sites-- a lot of radio/news stations on the internet that offer streams. This makes it easier to stream them. Doesn't work with everything, but handy.
DoggCatcher for listening to podcasts. The interface is a bit clunky, but I love it. Drop in your favorite RSS feeds (will even work with password-protected ones), and tweak the settings however you want.
Feedly for news. Flipboard is strangely appealing, but the back-end is lousy. Feedly is easier to customize for JP feeds (but not as sexy as Flipboard.) Flipboard is great for US stuff... weak and frustrating with JP stuff, and a pain to configure. Searches don't find anything, either, unless you change your locale. Feedly just works. Downside with Feedly is that you need to use its web browser to read articles-- there's no built-in publishing.
Google Currents is also there, but last time I used it, it was a total pig. Slow, fat, and ate everything in site. Looks good on a tablet, but takes forever to load.
EDIT: Tried Currents again. It's a lot better in the speed/downloading dept., but it still gobbles up memory. A 14MB app should not bloat up to 100MB from just looking at a few articles. -_-
EBPocket for EPWING. There's also DroidWing. Both are fine. I prefer EBPocket.
Vertical Text Viewer for 青空文庫-formatted books. FBReader for open-source EN books. Pefect Viewer for zipped .jpgs and PDFs. Kindle because it's Amazon. Google Books is okay-- the interface is great, but the selection is average.
Pure Music Widget and Pure Calendar Widget. Pure Music Widget controls Google Music better than the default Google Music widget, and Pure Calendar is just awesome.
Beautiful Widgets if you hate the TouchWiz clock.
DoubleTwist Alarm for a beautiful alarm clock. Works best with DoubleTwist music player, but I'm not a fan of the DT music player.
RealCalc for a great calculator.
Evernote because it's useful.
FlightTrack if you fly a lot.
Last edited by rich_f (2012 June 23, 1:58 pm)
