Saturday, August 27, 2011

Best Android Widgets - Clock, Weather, Calendar, Power Control, Music, Dictionary And SMS Widgets To Personalize And Beautify Your Google Android Home Screen

There are many beautiful Android widgets in market for every need you may have. If you know about Android widgets already then you must be wondering which are the best, topmost, coolest and must have Android widgets that you should download and install on your Android home screen. Here you will get to know few best and free android widgets for Clock, Weather, Calendar, Power Control, Music, Dictionary and SMS. If you do not know about Android widgets yet then do now worry, you will learn shortly about "What is an android widget" and how to use Widget to personalize and beautify your Google Android phone's home screen.

Android Clock Widget : There are two types of clock widgets, traditional analog clocks and digital clocks. Let's see a traditional analog clock widget first.

Android Widget - Clock
Android Widget - Clock
Above screenshot is showing the beautiful analog clock Android widget - NexTHEME. You can download  and install this beautiful Android clock widget from market. Once installed on your phone you can put this widget on your phone's home screen. If you are new to widget and do not know what are widgets and how to put those in Android home screen then hold on, read the next paragraph.

What Is An Android Widget : Android widget is a small gadget app which has a visible presence and can be put on your Android phone's home screen or desktop. Widgets are primarily used to personalize and decorate your phone and to get the easy access to frequently needed information or service. You can install the widgets from Android market or Android app store of your choice. Once installed then widget is available for you to put it on your Android home screen. You can either press Android phone's menu key and tap "Add" menu or long press the home screen of your phone to launch "Add to Home Screen" menu.

Android Widgets - Add to Home Screen
Android Widgets - Add to Home Screen
As you can see in screenshot above "Add to Home Screen" menu has two options to add widgets, "Samsung Widgets" and "Android Widgets". If your phone is different then you would see different menu in place of "Samsung Widgets". Tap "Android Widgets" menu and from the available android widgets list, select the widget that you want to place on your Android home screen.

Animated Weather App With Clock and Weather Widgets : This is one of the best and interesting app which comes with widgets. Animated weather app comes with beautiful weather animations. When you launch this app for first time then it prompts you to select the city by name or pin code. This information is used to define the location for which you want to see the weather information. Once you set the location then it fetches the weather information and display it to you with beautiful animated effects.

Animated Weather App for Android
Animated Weather App for Android
Above screenshot is displaying the animated weather of New York and it is being shown as thunder showers. Lightening and rain shown is screenshot above is not just a picture, it is live animation and is beautiful. It works with older phone versions and you need not to have latest phone to see these animated weather effects with this app.

At the bottom of the screen there are two tool bars, the one with larger icons with text "Sa", "Su" and "Mo" is indicating days of the week and you can tap the appropriate day for which you want to see the weather prediction. Tool bar with small icons indicates time in a day that is Morning, Day, Evening and Night. You can tap these small icons to see the weather at that specific time for selected day.

Android Widgets - Clock and Weather
Android Widgets - Clock and Weather
Animated weather app comes with two beautiful clock and weather Android widgets. The screenshot above is showing one of these two Android clock and weather widgets. Another widget is small in size from this and is equally beautiful.

Android Music Widget : Android music app comes with a nice widget which you can keep on your home screen to play music as and when you want to.

Android Music Widget
Android Music Widget
Refer to screenshot above. You can tap "Touch to select music" button to launch the Android music player and you can select the music that you want to play. You can tap the play button to start playing the music you have selected. Play button changes to pause when music starts and you can tap the pause button anytime to pause the music.

Android Power Control Widget : This is a very handy widget which allows you to control the power consumption of your Android phone from home screen.

Android Power Control Widget
Android Power Control Widget
You can see that it is a beautiful android widget which allows you to switch on and off various phone services like Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Auto Sync and Brightness. These are the services if switched off then increase the performance of your phone battery and you would need to charge the battery less frequently. This handy widget allows you to do that at a tap of a button.

Android Calendar Widget : Android calender app which is explained in one of the previous posts comes with nice Calendar Widget. If want to know more about it and have not read that earlier post then you can read it at : Android Calendar - Best App and Widgets with Google Sync

Android Dictionary Widget : Android dictionary app also, which is described in one of the previous posts comes with handy dictionary widget. You can use this widget to read about different words randomly and can increase your vocabulary drastically. If you have not read it earlier then you can read it now at : Best Android Dictionary - With Thesaurus, Widget, Over 140,000 Words and Works Offline

Android SMS Widget : In one of the previous posts a SMS app is described in detail. This SMS app comes with a nice widget which you can keep on your Android home screen and access the SMS easily. If you want to know more about it then can read it at : Android SMS App - With SMS Backup, Search, Quick Text, Widget, Scheduler and Batch Operations

These are some of the widgets which are useful and handy. Apart from these widgets you can find more on Android market. Few which should be mentioned here are note widget, email widget, agenda widget, contacts widget, news widget, photo gallery widget and twitter widget.

Download and install the widgets that you are interested in and start putting those on your Android home screen to personalize it. If you like this post then you may would like to check out few more Android apps from popular section if you are reading it from desktop browser or by going to home if you are reading from your mobile browser. Keep coming back to read more about cool and best apps for Android.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Android Messenger - For Facebook, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Skype, AOL And More

This Android live messenger is one stop instant messaging app for Skype, MSN (Live Messenger), Facebook, Google Talk, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL / AIM, VKontakte, Yandex IM, Jabber and Myspace. With this app installed on your Android phone, you can quickly connect to all your different messenger accounts in one go. You can see all your online and offline contacts in one single screen and chat with all live contacts using common interface.

Best Apps For Android Messenger IM Plus
IM+ : This is one of the best messenger apps for Android. It has all the wonderful features which you would like to have in messenger app. It has very useful features like custom message templates, emoticons and custom messenger status. It connects to various messenger accounts very fast and you can experience the instant messaging at lightening speed.

Android Messenger Accounts : When you launch this Android IM+ app for the first time then go to Accounts tab to set your messenger accounts.

Android Messenger - Accounts
Android Messenger - Accounts
As shown in screenshot above, you can see all the accounts here that you have added to your messenger app.    It displays your account id and small icons at right of each account id to indicate what type of messenger account it is. Above screenshot is displaying three accounts, MSN, Yahoo and Google Talk. You can tap the individual account id to connect to that account or simply tap "Connect All" button to connect all the accounts you have added. Similarly you can tap the already connected account name to disconnect it or you can simply tap "Disconnect All" button to disconnect all the accounts you have connected.

Add Messenger Account : You can either tap the button with "+" (plus) sign shown in screenshot above or can press the menu button of your phone and tap "Add Account" menu, to add new messenger account to this app.

Android Messenger - Add Account
Android Messenger - Add Account
You will see the list of messenger services that are supported by this instant messenger app. Tap one of the messenger service and follow the instructions on the screen to add your account for that service. As you can see in screenshot above, it supports Skype, MSN or Windows Live Messenger (WLM) , Facebook, Google Talk, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL / AIM, VKontakte, Yandex IM, Jabber and Myspace messenger services. Add as many accounts as you have. You have to do this only first time and once you perform account configuration then connecting to those services is just one button tap.

Android Messenger Contacts : Once you connect to your configured messenger services then you are automatically switched to contacts screen. You can also tap "Contacts" tab from accounts screen whenever you would like to see the contacts screen.

Android Messenger - Contacts
Android Messenger - Contacts
Here you can see all your contacts from different messenger services at one single screen. You can see the name of the contacts, their status and icon at the right indicating their messenger service. You can see that just below the tab bar is a messenger status bar. Status bar in screenshot above has a text "On Android with IM+". This is your current messenger status. You can tap the status bar to change your messenger status to predefined status from "Online", "Away", "Do Not Disturb", "I am here", "Invisible", "Offline" or "On Android with IM+". You can edit the predefined status messages or add new one to suit your need.

Android Messenger Live Chat : You can tap any of the contacts from your contact list to start chatting with them.

Android Messenger - Live Chat
Android Messenger - Live Chat
You can start instant messaging by typing the message you want and tapping the small enter key button at right hand side of the message text box. If you tap the smiley icon at left hand side of the message text box then it displays a dialog with different emoticons which you can use in chatting to express your emotions. Your current conversation is displayed in this screen with time stamp at right of each message.

Instant Message Templates : When you are at live chatting screen then you can press the menu button of your Android phone to display the menu. From this menu tap the "Templates" menu to display the list of message templates.

Android Messenger - Message Templates
Android Messenger - Message Templates
There are many predefined messages templates in the list which are suitable for different occasions. These message templates can be really time savers. You can also create your custom message templates by tapping "Create New Template" button. This would allow you to add new message templates which you use very frequently with your friends and relatives.

You can install this wonderful and cool Android live messenger on your phone from Android market or app store of your choice. If you enjoyed reading about this app then you may would like to check out few more apps from popular posts section. Keep coming back to read about more such exciting and best apps for Android.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Android Contacts App - With Manage, Search, Sort, Sync, Groups, Speed Dial, Ringtone, Events and More Features

This is one of the best android contact managers you could find on Android market. This Android contact app comes with wonderful features like search contacts by name or number, sort contacts by last name or other parameters, sync android contacts with Google Gmail, send SMS or emails to groups, speed dial with single key press, set different ringtones to group or individual contacts, create event reminders for contacts and many more.

This is the first Android Contacts App that is presented here. If you have not read about second app then you  can read about it at : Contacts App For Android - With Themes, Backup & Recovery, Sync And Contact Management Features

DW Contacts Android App
DW Contacts : As mentioned earlier this is one of the feature rich and best Android contacts apps. User interface of this app is very crisp and user friendly. You can choose themes from Black or Bright and can customize colors, fonts and many aspects of the app to match your taste. It comes with many powerful features like group call filter, multilingual support, multi select operations and much more. It is an excellent replacement for stock dialer and contacts management application of your Android phone.

Android Contact List : When you first launch this app then you may see a pop up with recent changes to app. Once you dismiss that pop up you would see the contact list screen.

Android Contacts List
Android Contacts List
Icon highlighted by red color on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen indicates what you are currently working with. In above screenshot it is contacts list.

You can tap the phone icon at the right of each contact to dial the number. You can decide which quick icons you want to display next to contact by selecting it from app settings. The available choices are phone, SMS and email. Small icon at left to phone icon indicates if contact is from your phone, SIM card, Google, Twitter, Exchange or any other source.

Sort Android Contacts : The magnifying glass icon at right top corner of the screen is search icon. Icon immediate left to search icons is sort icon. When you can tap sort icon, it displays the Sort List By dialog as shown in screenshot below.

Android Contacts Sort
Android Contacts Sort
Here you can choose the parameter of contact by which you want to sort all contacts in list. You can sort Android contacts by last name (Lastname), First name (Firstname), Nick name (Nickname), Recent Contacted, Frequently Contacted or System Default.

Android Search Contacts : As explained earlier, the magnifying glass icon at right top corner of the screen is search icon. You can tap this icon to display the search text box. You can type the required search text in text box and perform the search to find the contact you are looking for. Apart from the search box, there are two more ways to search for the contact you are looking for.

When you scroll the contact list you would see small transparent scroll boxes with up and down arrows, appearing at both sides of the contact list. Drag these scroll boxes up or down vertically and you would see alphabets indicating where you are in contact list.

One more search option is provided on contacts dialer screen which is explained next.

Android Contacts Dialer : When you tap the phone button, which is the left most button on toolbar then you can see the phone dialer screen as shown in screenshot below.

Android Contacts Dialer
Android Contacts Dialer
When you start typing numbers on phone dialer it is automatically searched for matching contacts and filtered contacts are displayed above. The matching contacts are searched in call log as well as your contacts list. Once you see the required contact in filtered list then you can tap the phone icon next to it to dial.

You can switch the keyboard from number to alphabet to search contacts by first or last name instead of their phone number.

Android Contact Groups : Tap the groups icon on toolbar to display the contact group screen as shown below.

Android Contacts Groups
Android Contacts Groups
You can see various contact groups in this screen. You can create a new group by pressing menu key of your phone and tapping “New group” menu.

When you long press any of the groups then you would see the popup dialog with actions which you can perform on groups. You can choose from, “Send SMS/MMS to group”, “Send email to group”, “Edit group”, “Delete group”, “Add contacts to group”, “Remove contacts from group”, “Set ringtone for group” and “Create shortcut to home”.

Add, Delete and Duplicate Android Contacts : You can press the menu button of your Android phone to display app menu as shown in screenshot below.

Android Contacts Menu
Android Contacts Menu
Tap the “New contact” menu to add new android contact to contact list. You can choose to save contact to Phone, SIM or any of your Google Gmail accounts. If you create new contacts for Gmail then you can sync android with Google Gmail contacts.

When you long press any of the contact in list then you would see popup dialog with various options. You can choose from “Call”, “Edit number before calling”, “Create appointment”, “View contact”, “Edit contact”, “Send SMS/MMS message”, “Share contact” and “More”.

If you tap “More” then you would see more options – “Copy to clipboard”, “Add contact to favorites”, “Edit event for contact”, “Delete contact”, “Duplicate contact”, “Set group for contact”, “Set ringtone for contact” and “Create shortcut to home”

You may have noticed that there are two ways to set Android contact ringtones. You can either set ringtone to individual contact by long pressing it in contact list or you can set ringtone to group of contacts by long pressing group name on groups screen.

Android Phone Contacts Toolbox : When you tap toolbox icon on toolbar of the app then you will see the toolbox screen as shown in screenshot below.

Android Contacts Toolbox
Android Contacts Toolbox
As you can see in the screenshot, there are features like Phone, Favorites, Contacts, Groups, Organizations, Tittles, Events, Search, SMS, Call log, Call Filter and Toolbox. As the name suggest some of these features are exactly same as described earlier. It is just one more way to access the same feature.

Call filter is one interesting feature where you can define which calls should be blocked and when. You can select the day and time range to block certain calls.

Events allow you to see all the events like birthday and anniversary which are associated with contacts.

You can download this Android contact app from market or app store of your choice and start enjoying it.

As mentioned earlier in this post, this app is the first Android Contacts App that is presented here and you can read about second app : Contacts App For Android - With Themes, Backup & Recovery, Sync And Contact Management Features

If you like this app then you may like to check few more apps from popular sections at the right. Bookmark this URL and keep visiting us to find more exciting, coolest and best apps for Android.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Android Office Suite - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF And Other Office Documents On Go

This is one of the best and feature packed Android office suite. This Android office can open commonly used document formats namely DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX, TXT, CSV, PDF and ZIP. It supports documents of Microsoft office versions from 97 to 2010. With this powerful app you can access the Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Reader documents on go.

Best Apps For Android Office Suite
OfficeSuite Pro : As mentioned earlier this Android office application can read commonly used document formats. It also allows you to create new documents or edit existing documents of type DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT and PPTX. With this app on your Android phone you can also open PPS, PPSX, PDF and ZIP documents. It also allows you to open, edit and save TXT and CSV files.

When you launch this application and take care of few initial informative screens then you are presented the following screen.

Android Office Suite - Document Sources
Android Office Suite - Document Sources

Here you can select the location of documents to access. As you can see you can access the office documents stored on internal memory of device, your phones memory card or on cloud. Android office suite provides Google Docs integration where you can keep your documents on cloud.

You can tap “Download dictionaries” option to download the dictionary which can work with this Android office suite. You can quickly look meaning of a word by long pressing a required word while reading MS word documents. You need not download dictionary if you have already installed a dictionary after reading my post : Best Android Dictionary - With Thesaurus, Widget, Over 140,000 Words and Works Offline

Integrated File Browser : When you tap “Memory card” option then you can navigate the folder structures on your phone's SD card to select the folder where your documents are stored. After you select your directory on memory card where your office documents are stored then you can see the documents available in that directory as shown in screenshot below.

Android Office Suite - File Browser
Android Office Suite - File Browser

You can see that Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents in selected folder are displayed with familiar icons. Tap the file which you want to open for reading or editing.

Excel Document Editor : When you tap XLS or XLSX document then it opens in Excel interface of Android Office Suite.

Android Office Suite - Excel Document Editor
Android Office Suite - Excel Document Editor

You can see that it is very similar to look and feel to desktop excel interface. You can tap the worksheet names at the bottom of the screen to see the worksheet that you want. You can tap the cell that you want to edit. Tapping the cell would display that cell’s value in the text box at the top of the screen. You can then modify the value of text box. This interface is very similar to how it works in desktop excel program and hence it can be understood with ease.

You can press the menu button of your Android phone to see the various options that you can perform with excel sheet. You can view sheet or charts, perform cut / copy / paste, format the cells, rows or columns and more.

PowerPoint Document Editor : When you tap PPT, PPTX, PPS or PPSX document then it opens in PowerPoint interface of Android Office Suite.

Android Office Suite - PowerPoint Document Editor
Android Office Suite - PowerPoint Document Editor
You can see that in small screen size of the mobile device you can still see slide as well as it’s notes. You can drag the note header to increase or decrease the space occupied by notes area.

When you tap on slide then controls are displayed as shown in screenshot above. Controls with left and right arrow allows you to navigate to next or previous slide. Controls with magnification glass allow you to zoom in or zoom out the slide. For additional functionality you can press the menu button of your Android phone and it displays the menus available with PowerPoint interface.

Word Document Editor : When you tap DOC or DOCX document then it opens in Word interface of Android Office Suite.

Android Office Suite - Word Document Editor
Android Office Suite - Word Document Editor
As you can see the word interface of office suite automatically fits the text in available width. This makes it easy for you to read the text without need for scrolling or panning it frequently. You can press the menu button of your Android phone where you can find the “Edit” menu. Tapping “Edit” menu allows you to modify the text in word document. After modifications you can save the modified content if you want. You can also perform the search for a specific word using “Find” menu. Get the word count and related statistics of the opened document using “Word count” menu.

Android office suite can display embedded images of format BMP, PNG, JPEG, TIFF (only for PDF), DIB, WMF/EMF, and PICT. You can also insert images in your word document from image gallery of your phone.

PDF Reader : When you tap PDF document then it opens in PDF reader interface of Android Office Suite.

Android Office Suite - PDF Reader
Android Office Suite - PDF Reader

As shown in screenshot above when you change the orientation of PDF reader then it automatically rotate the view to occupy available screen size. Tapping the screen displays two controls similar to that in PowerPoint interface of office suite. Tap the controls with left and right arrow to navigate to next or previous page in PDF document. Tap controls with magnification glass to zoom in or zoom out the PDF document.

Like all documents explained above you can also open TXT, CSV and ZIP files, with appropriate interface.

You can download this Android office suite from market or app store of your choice. If you liked this app then you may like to check few more wonderful apps from popular sections at right. Keep coming back for more coolest, exciting and best apps for Android.