Best Android Apps 2011

Best Android Applications 2011

 

HopStop (Free)

Those of you who don’t live in a city, this won’t be an app for you, but those of you in New York City or other cities full of complicated subway and bus routes, HopStop is one of our favorite services. The Android app (m.hopstop.com works as well), but it’s the most accurate subway and bus navigation system we’ve used. You do have to know the address of your location, but HopStop does a good job guiding you to more generic locations like an intersection, which some services struggle with. It also maps out how long it will take you to walk around, features a lot of flexible options to modify your route, and lets you save routes for the future and view them offline, which is helpful if you’re underground. Give it a try. (The tablet version is coming soon.)

Weather Channel (Free)

This is the weather app you’ll find yourself checking before you even crack the blinds in the morning. Besides offering accurate current conditions with extreme detail down to wind speed, humidity and UV index, the Weather Channel’s app offers hourly and 10-day forecasts for planning ahead, plus advanced features like animated weather radar.

Google Voice (Free)

With Google Voice, you get a free number for receiving calls, sending texts, and even receive access to your voicemail and text messages over the Web. With the Android app, you can even keep your true mobile number private by making outgoing calls using your Google Voice number instead. Another handy feature is voicemail transcription, which automatically transcribes your voicemails to text so you can read them like e-mail.

iTriage Mobile Health (Free)

Created by doctors, this app is designed to give users quick and easy access to medical info as well as nearby treatment facilities. With just a few clicks, users can find the nearest medical facility based on need (emergency, urgent care, pharmacy, etc.) and quickly use built-in Google Maps to navigate to the destination. The app also features a symptom-checker, doctor directory, and information about diseases and procedures.

Opera Mini Web Browser (Free)

We loved the drastic speed boost from Opera Mini on the iPhone, and it delivers the same shot of adrenaline on Android. Opera greases the wheels of the Web using special servers that compress pages prior to sending them to your phone. Besides using less bandwidth, pages appear in a fraction of the time, which makes it the go-to browser when you need to know who won the World Series in 1964, the colors of the Estonian flag, or the population of Miami in a flash.

Pulse News (Free)

This free app is a great reader for those who like to get their daily dose of news or gossip on their Android device. Pulse lets users select up to 30 online sources to pull from, and then creates clean, magazine-like pages that feature thumbnail photos and headlines from each source. Most articles or blogs can be easily read within the app, and the sources update in a flash. It’s the perfect substitute for your morning or evening Internet scan. Add sources like CNN, Gawker, Salon, Wet Paint, MSNBC, and Mashable.

IMO Chat (Free)

If you like to use your Android phone to chat with friends using instant messaging applications instead of simple text messages, you most likely find yourself shuffling between Facebook, GTalk, and AIM, or some similar combination of apps. While most of those individual apps for Android are great themselves, IMO Chat eliminates the hassle of carrying on multiple conversations on different IM apps. IM on Facebook, GTalk, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, Skype, and more with this app. The IMO Chat app also supports voice IMs, group chat, and multimedia attachments.