Appearances

Another year, another Nexus and it is time for another round-up of Android apps. Despite having had the Nexus 5 since its launch a few months ago, I have only just flashed CyanogenMod 11. With each consecutive release of stock Android there seem to be fewer reasons to switch to a custom ROM. The major features for me are the built-in equaliser and the recent addition of WhisperPush for encrypted SMS.

Hello is my new preferred SMS app. It takes some design cues from Google Hangouts (into which Google merged its text messaging app) but its tabs are more usable and it is beautifully minimalist.

Google Play Music unexpectedly became my default music player because of their exceptional cloud mirroring service. It will mirror your entire music collection (up 20,000 songs) irrespective of where you obtained the music and make it available to stream anywhere via the app or desktop browsers. If the song is already in Google’s library, you do not even have to upload it first. The app makes great use of full-screen album artwork, and losing Poweramp‘s impressive equaliser was alleviated by CyanogenMod’s in-built option.

SolCalendar and Cal are both vying for the position of default calendar app. Cal may be the prettier with its animations and integration with the Any.do To-do List, but SolCalendar’s clean UI offers better usability. Or at least it will as soon as addresses are clickable to launch mapping/navigation, which is a major drawback at present.

Feedly became most popular replacement feed reader when Google shelved Reader last year to much consternation from users. Fortunately Feedly’s qulity on the desktop is matched by a great mobile app for swiping through subscriptions and then putting the text of stories front and centre.

Timely is a stunningly beautiful alarm clock app, with the usual extras like a stopwatch, but also cloud synchronisation of alarms. Its “smart rise” feature was an interesting idea with gradually increasing volume over an extended period of time but as a light sleeper I found it woke me almost instantly.

Muzei is an simple live wallpaper from Google employee Roman Nurik who became prominent for producing the Dashclock lock screen widget.  Muzei cycles artwork on your home screen with a gaussian blur applied until double-tapped to prevent it being distracting. Like Dashclock it supports extensions and a dozens emerged within days (such as National Geographic and Flickr).

Otherwise things remain largely unchanged:

Utilities — It can be assumed I use pretty much all of the Google suite of apps, with their acquisition of Quickoffice making it my default document viewer. SwiftKey has not been challenged as my keyboard of choice. Tasker is still at the centre of automating phone functionality. Despite Chrome‘s prominence and briefly trying Mercury, Dolphin remains my browser of choice. ES File Explorer is my preferred file manager, particularly for easy access to shared network content. Evernote remains one of my most-used apps for storing and retrieving information, although I also use Pocket for reading web content later. Light Flow allows for granular customisation of notification lights. For cloud storage I now use Google Drive, Dropbox and Box for different aspects. SMS Backup+ syncs my text messages with GMail and now boasts WhatsApp support.

Media — DoggCatcher remains my podcast aggregator with DICE Player for video playback of nearly anything (along with the YouTube and Vimeo apps). Google Play Music has removed the need for other streaming apps for music I own but I still use SoundCloud. Meanwhile I have switched to Yatse as an XBMC remote which has provided a smoother experience.

Misc — I am split between the overhauled official Twitter app and newcomer Talon. BeWeather still provides both a weather app and the integrated clock widget on my home screen. Whilst I have always enjoyed its attractive weather animations, what keeps it on top is the at-a-glance hour by hour graph for the day that shows you exactly when it is likely to rain.