Last year, T-Mobile released the first smart phone with Google’s new Android operating system: The T-Mobile G1. The T-Mobile MyTouch is the newest Android device on the market. I have owned a white G1 for the better part of a year. My husband and I chose the G1 over the IPhone, which has similar features, for several reasons: cost of the phone, cost of the data plan, availability of free apps. Every app I list here is free. I have only ever paid for 2 apps and they’re not the coolest ones I have. The coolest are free.
All apps mentioned below come from the Market unless stated otherwise.
Google Maps comes integrated with Android, so you don’t have to download it from the Market. It still makes my 10 coolest apps list because of what it can do. It’s better than our GPS because we can not only find our route but pan around that route to see where it’s going. And it incorporates Street View. With Street View, you can pick a spot on a street and get a 360-degreee image. I can see my house in Street View. I can also see the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Sadly, I cannot yet view my beloved Prague in Street View. Kdy, Google, kdy?
LOLCats
If you love the I Can Has Cheezburger site or Fail Blog and such sites, you’ll love LOLCats. LOLCats photos and videos are delivered right to your phone through an RSS feed. LOLCats, for those of you who have been missing out, are funny or adorable pictures of cats and kittens (with an occasional walrus) with hilarious captions. Some are also just videos of cats doing something cool or funny. Videos are played though YouTube. Yes, that comes with the G1, too.
Cats not your thing? Maybe you’re a dog person. Well, LOLCats, the app, can get you LOL dogs. It also includes FAIL blog, Graph jam, Pundit Kitchen and There I fixed it. Just click the menu button and touch “Choose LOL” to pick your poison.
Abduction!
Abduction! is quite possibly the most addictive game in the G1 Market. Premise? You are a cow. The rest of your herd has been taken by an alien space ship. The tractor beam that got them also pulled up chunks of the ground. You jump from chunk to chunk (by moving your G1) to get up in the sky and reach that UFO to save your herd.
You get points for going higher. You also get points when you collect a parachuting cows floating back down. But not all parachutes are good. Bombs in the higher levels will kill you. As will gravity. There are little gifts along the way. Touch them and you open them. You might get Extra Life, which saves you if gravity or a bomb would kill you. You might get High Jump so you can jump higher, or More Platforms to give you more chunks to land on. Or you might just get points. But you might also get Fewer Platforms or Crumble. With Crumble, each chunk you land on disappears so you can’t land on it again. Extra Life bonuses stay with you. The others last for five seconds.
The Easy level is fairly easy. Medium is a bit harder. Hard is just as it says. Honestly, I’ve yet to reach the UFO in Hard. But there’s Infinite beyond that and even Evil Infinite. It’s addicting, funny, and entertaining.
androidVNC
androidVNC allows me to connect to one of my home computers and control it remotely from my phone. If I’m home, I can connect my G1 to my wifi and reach any computer in my house through local IP addresses. That means I can even control my TV computer from my phone. If I’m out and about, I use T-Mobile’s network to reach my external IP address, which then is forwarded by my router to a particular computer. Once in, I can pull up any of my computers though the VNC viewer on that computer and control them with my phone.
Lexic
Lexic is a simple game, but quite challenging. You are presented with a number of lettered tiles and a time limit. You must find as many words as you can in that time limit, using letters only once, and they must touch each other. The longer the word, the more points it is worth. I’ve never managed to find all the words. After the time is up, you can see which words you missed. Sometimes they’re words you never heard of, but other times you want to smack yourself for not seeing them.
FlyCast
FlyCast allows you to connect to dozens of internet radio stations. Pick your favorite genre or a city to find stations. Or pick Top Stations to see the most popular. You can add your favorite stations to Favorites to pull them up quickly. Personally, I like Accu Mozart, BBC Online, NPR Boston, Comedy104, and several oldies stations.
BarCode Scanner
Barcode Scanner, in conjunction with ShopSavvy, Compare Everywhere, or Anobit, allows you to scan bar codes. The first two apps use Barcode Scanner to scan UPC codes and offer comparison shopping for the item scanned. Anobit allows you to scan a book’s UPC using Barcode Scanner and then you can add that book to your Anobi account (not just for iPhones anymore) on either your Shelf or you Wish List.
My Coupons
My Coupons tells you about deals, free offers, and coupons at various stores and manufacturers. My husband has this app, too, and found out that on a particular day, if we wore a jersey or other sports wear, we could get a free sandwich from Chick-Fil-A. Right now it says we could get a free Quizno’s sub with purchase of another. Or take $10 of a $25 purchase at Yankee Candle. Just keep scrolling for more and more and click on one that interests you.
Pro Translate
I downloaded several translation apps and chose Pro Translate as the one to keep. It translates to and from English, French, German, Czech, Hungarian and Russian (all languages I’ve studied to various degrees) and a plethora of others. Need to look up how to say Saturday in Danish? Lordag (with a slash through the o). It’s there. Or how do you say kitten in Albanian? Choose the languages, type “kitten” and click Translate. Kotele is revealed. You can email, text, or tweet the result.
World Tour
Finally, World Tour is quite possibly my favorite free app. I use it every time I close an app, every time I turn my phone on or wake it up. It is my home screen. World Tour allows you to set up a live shot from a web cam as your home screen. Mine , of course, is Prague. Charles Bridge to be exact, from the Mala Strana side. It updates every 20 or 30 minutes. So now I can see my beloved Prague any time I want. Really, I wouldn’t have any other web cam.
So there you have it, 10 cool free apps for the T-Mobile G1. I’m sure they work on the MyTouch as well. If only I could load programs onto my SD card and run them from there. I’d never have to delete an app again to make room for a new one. Sadly, I must from time to time. These are the ones I never let go of.
