Observations: Choosing Apps for My First Smartphone

Monday, May 28, 2012

Choosing Apps for My First Smartphone

My New Droid RAZR

Well, I finally decided to replace my nearly 10-year old flip phone. Even though you could make a strong case that my Virgin Mobile pre-paid flip phone was already overkill for me, I finally tossed the flip phone and upgraded to a Motorola Droid RAZR.

Motorola Droid RAZR

My home phone is still my primary phone; my mobile phone doesn't get very much use. So, if the increase in the cost of my mobile phone service from $5 to close to $80 a month is going to be worth it, the increase will have to be justified by apps, not phone calls. Here are the apps that I have so far.

Droid RAZR Home Pages

The Droid RAZR has five home pages that you can use to organize your apps. Each of my home pages has a theme: communications, social networking, productivity, entertainment or phone utilities. I describe each of these home pages in more detail below.

The Dock Row Apps

The same four shortcuts are docked on the bottom row of each of the five home pages; you get to choose three of the four. The fourth is always the shortcut to your apps catalog (a list of all of the apps on your phone).

I chose the phone shortcut, My Music, and Xfinity Mobile. Xfinity Mobile is Comcast Cable's app. It gives me access to my Comcast email account to send and receive emails, access to my Comcast voice mail, and free text messaging.

The Central Home Page (Page #3): My Communications Apps

If you tap the "home" icon, it generally takes you to the third/middle home page. I use this page for my communications apps.

Headline Widget: (note: This is the widget that I have at the top of the page. Widgets are basically shortcuts that have a little bit of functionality built in to them.)

Favorite Contacts (portraits of the people I contact most frequently, with easy links to phone, text or e-mail them -- or navigate to them).

Shortcuts:

Contacts
Voicemail
E-mail
Text Messaging (the native texting app)
Reminder: Shortcuts to the phone app and Xfinity Mobile app are already docked on the bottom row.
Skype will get added to this group one of these days, but the droid version doesn't appear to be ready for prime time yet.

Home Page #4: My Social Networking Apps

Headline Widget:

My Gallery: Media updates from friends (generally pictures they've added to Facebook)

Shortcuts:

Social Networking (Combines Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. posts)
Facebook
My Gallery (pictures)
Camera

Home Page #5: My Entertainment Apps

Headline Widget:

My Music (shows "now playing" and lets you navigate within current album)

Shortcuts:

My Music
IHeartRadio (ClearChannel radio stations), Radio.Com (for Houston sports radio station that carries Texans & Rockets)
Amazon Kindle
Houston Texans Mobile (football)
Solitaire (my only game)
Xfinity Mobile (TV listings, remotely program DVR, etc.)

Folder (Folders are like folders on your PC)

Urbanspoon (restaurant reviews)
Places (restaurants, bars, nightclubs, attractions)

Home Page #2: Productivity Apps

Headline Widgets:

Google Search
Calendar (shows day, date, scrollable window of upcoming appointments)

Shortcuts

Calendar
Quickoffice (Word, Excel, PPT, PDF)
ColorNote, Sticky Note, Tasks (still trying to decide which I like better)
Calculator
GoToMeeting
Browser

Home Page #1: Phone/utility Apps

Widgets:

My Verizon (shows billing cycle-to-date data usage)

Shortcuts

Guided Tour, Help Center
Play Store: Google's app store
Smart Actions
DroidLight - flashlight
Where's My Droid - tracking & finding lost phone
My Accounts

Applications Groups

Finally, I have a couple of groups defined in the apps catalogue.

Travel Group ("Travel" is defined as away from home.)

Alarm & Timer
American Airlines
Bank of America
Dropbox: sync file updates between desktop, PC and phone
Find My Car
Maps
Navigation
New York City (restaurants, hotels, nightlife, attractions, shopping...)
Places
The Weather Channel
Translate: translate from any one of 60 languages to any of the others.
Urbanspoon
Wi-Fi Finder to help minimize data charges
Yelp: restaurants, gas stations, plumbers, .... the yellow pages

Miscellaneous Group

Instant Heart Rate: heart rate monitor
MapMyRide - cycling (or running) and nutrition app
Barcode Scanner (shopping, price comparisons)

What's Your Favorite App?

That's what I have so far. Biggest downside is giving developers who you know little or nothing about access to your phone. As a result, I try to minimize the amount of sensitive/confidential data on my phone.

I'm a newbie, so I'm sure there are still many great apps that I don't know about. If you have suggestions re great apps that I have overlooked, please leave a comment below.