Smartphone Apps

[sunset]

New smartphone user here (I'm not what you would call an early adopter). Hoping some of you in the know can help out an old-timer. What are the must have apps, what security risks are involved, are there "safe" sites to download from, etc. Interests would be news, sports, games to take up time on flights/subway, kids games, etc.

In case it's pertinent, I have a droid phone made by Samsung and use Verizon.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tre4ISU]

Just go to the market which should be on your phone already. I use Scoremobile for sports. AngryBirds is a game a lot of people play. I play Words with Friends a lot. That's basically a social version of Scrabble.

 

[cyfan50438]

cyclone fanatic has a free app

 

[alarson]

Second the 'just use the market' in your phone.

Apps i use regularly\would recommend

ESPN scorecenter
Facebook
IMDB
Angry Birds
Words With Friends
Google's apps- Voice, Voice actions, search, goggles, maps, youtube
Amazon
CF has an app, but i find it still needs work.

 

[1100011CS]

I use W&Y Pages a lot when travelling.
Slacker and Google Music for music.
I've tried a lot of sport scores apps and I've (surprisingly) settled on Yahoo!s Sportacular. Scores update better than any other I've tried and the alerts actually work.

Also, get the Amazon App store. They have a free app every day and you can get some good add-free apps that way.

 

[CyLoboClone]

Lose it

Great weight loss ap

 

[JP4CY]

I use W&Y Pages a lot when travelling.
Slacker and Google Music for music.
I've tried a lot of sport scores apps and I've (surprisingly) settled on Yahoo!s Sportacular. Scores update better than any other I've tried and the alerts actually work.

Also, get the Amazon App store. They have a free app every day and you can get some good add-free apps that way.

I recommend that too. I've gotten some good free apps.

 

[Farnsworth]

Lose it

Great weight loss ap

My Fitness Pal has a great app if your trying to lose weight. It has a scanner built in to enter in food.

 

[marothisu]

If you like music, get Shazam. It's a free app that basically listens to audio and tells you the artist, song name, and album. Good a lot of times, especially if you are asking "who is this?" or "what song is this!?"

For sports, get the ESPN Scorecenter. If you do fantasy football, especially with ESPN they have fantasy football apps.

Google Goggles is cool too. Like you could take a picture of a restaurant and it might google it for you type of thing.

You live in San Diego, so maybe something like Yelp or Zagat. Zagat I think will tell you which restaurants are around you which is nice. I think it's Zagat. If not then it was Open Table's app. If you take the bus, then I'm sure San Diego has apps for its bus system too.

For games, Angry Birds is really popular, as is Words with Friends (Scrabble basically). If you like Sodoku then get mPuzzle. Has Sodoku as well as games like Kakuro and thousands of puzzles. Word Mix is like an anagram game. I don't know what games you like though, but there's games for everything

I also have Netflix in case I want to watch Netflix on my phone..

 

[sunset]

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[goldmember]

TuneIn radio app. is a must.

 

[dmclone]

AVG Antivirus
Apps organizer-Helps a lot with screen organization
Audiomanager pro
beautiful Widgets
CamScanner
Chrome to Phone
Circle Battery Widget
Circle Launcher-Really like this
Cyclone Fanatic
DropBox
Evernote
Extended Contorls
Finance-By google
foursquare
Google voice
Iheart radio
My Phone number-I have a hard time remembering my number
On the fly
Opera Mobile
Package Buddy
POalmary Weather Pro
Pandora
Pdanet
Picasa tool
Pintley
Real HDMI
ScoreMobil
Shopper
Shopsavvy
Slacker
Slingplayer
SportsTap
Swiss Army KNife
Swype
Taptu-One I just discovered and like
Tasker
Tikl
Translate
Tripadvisor
Tripit
Tweetdeck-I've stop using this now because I like Taptu better
Where's my droid

 

[acctingCLONE]

A few others:
Urbanspoon - great to for dinning
Flixter - if you want to go to a movie on a whim
OpenTable - reserve some dinning locations without calling
ihearRadio - know others have mentioned radio apps but I like this one

 

[wxman1]

Weatherbug
Skype
TV Listings
GasBuddy
Scanner Radio
Live ATC
Flightaware
juice defender
Google Sky Map
GPS Status
Foursquare
My Tracks
Hey Tell
Movies
Barcode Scanner

 

[cstrunk]

Battery Solo Widget... shows % battery life left and batter temperature when you tap it.

HeyTell... Works great, like walkie-talkie's. If you have an unlimited data plan, this is very nice.

Angry Birds, Words With Friends, X Construction (building truss bridges) are fun games.

SoundHound... listens to songs/hums/lyrics and identifies the song/artist/album and provides real-time lyrics for many songs.

Mixology... lots and lots of drink recipes.

Lighter Free... a novelty, great if you go to a bunch of slow rock concerts.

Opera Mobile... good browser.

PYKL3 Radar... for radar/weather nerds.

Pandora

Netflix

Yahoo! Sportacular... pretty good sports app.

Cyclone Fanatic... nice, but needs some work.

 

[theantiAIRBHG]

2 words.

Fruit. Ninja.

Great pooping game.

 

[wxman1]

Battery Solo Widget... shows % battery life left and batter temperature when you tap it.

HeyTell... Works great, like walkie-talkie's. If you have an unlimited data plan, this is very nice.

Angry Birds, Words With Friends, X Construction (building truss bridges) are fun games.

SoundHound... listens to songs/hums/lyrics and identifies the song/artist/album and provides real-time lyrics for many songs.

Mixology... lots and lots of drink recipes.

Lighter Free... a novelty, great if you go to a bunch of slow rock concerts.

Opera Mobile... good browser.

PYKL3 Radar... for radar/weather nerds.

Pandora

Netflix

Yahoo! Sportacular... pretty good sports app.

Cyclone Fanatic... nice, but needs some work.

How do you like it? Have you ever used stormscope? I use stormscope on my iTouch and love it and I am currently debating which one to buy for my phone.

 

[sunset]

My daughter loves Google Sky Map and my son is addicted to Angry Birds.

Sound Hound sounds cool, I'll hve to give that one a try.

 

[heitclone]

I've DL'd a flashlight ap for each of my smart phones, a friend recommended it, I thought I'd never use it but it comes in handy.

 

[marothisu]

My daughter loves Google Sky Map and my son is addicted to Angry Birds.

Sound Hound sounds cool, I'll hve to give that one a try.

Go with Shazaam. They are the originators of the technology, but also I've used both SoundHound and Shazaam. I abandoned SoundHound because it couldn't identify **** and it would get it wrong too sometimes.

Shazaam has pretty much never failed me. It knows the most obscure songs, stuff you can barely find a record of online. I've heard SoundHound is better with a lot of obscure jazz, but there's not been many times where Shazaam has been stumped. I guess get both, who knows.

My 2 cents from someone who uses these types of apps almost every day.