Saturday, 19 May 2012

Tools / Utilities Apps for Android - India

A list of top free Apps for Android Phones falling in the category of Tools / Utilities. On top of the list is an app that lets you type in a quite a few Indian languages. The other apps help you to get the most out of your phone and make it more convenient to use.



  • PaniniKeypad: Many of the new Android phones support quite a few Indian languages; phones running on Android 4.0 Ice-Cream Sandwich do and many of the older Samsung phones also do support Indian languages. The next step is to be able to type in Indian languages. For this you will have to download virtual keyboards from the Play Store. Many versions of PaniniKeypad are available for typing in  Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. The keyboards are simple to use and use some sort of text prediction to choose which alphabets or abugida to display to be shown first. Its is not very difficult to find the letters of choice and typing is quite easy using these keyboards.
  • Color Notes: This is a note-taking app on which you can also create task lists and set alarms. The notes can be made to appear in different colors to differentiate the important ones from the others. The app comes with a widget that allows you to stick the notes to your home-screen, just like you would stick a post it in real life, so that they are easily visible. This is a good way to note your reminders.
  • Advanced Task Killer : At times some android apps keep running in the background even if you have closed them. Advanced task killer shows you a list of running apps and gives you the option to close them. Most of the newer high end android phones come with a pre-installed task killer these days, but in case your phone does not have one, then this app is a necessity.
  • Astro file manager: While many phones come with a file manager, not all do. It is convenient to have a file manager that you can use to navigate through the different folders on your phone. Astro is a free app that lets you do just that.
  • EverNote : Evernote is a note taking app that has a widget that allows you to quickly access the important notes. You can take audio notes and add pictures. Evernote has desktop clients as well for Google Chrome etc so that you can sync notes between your Desktop, Mobile and store them in the cloud.

    • GTasks: An app on which you can store your tasks and to do lists. It has an option for having different lists for different topics. There is also a widget that allows you to keep a particular list or the combination of all the lists on the home-screen so that you can view them quickly and easily. The main draw of this app is that it syncs with google Tasks that you can view and modify on Gmail or Google Calendar.

    • Google Goggles : This is an image search app. You can shoot a picture with the camera or load an image from the gallery and use it to search the internet. Goggles can scan barcodes, QR codes, recognize text, scan business cards and also recognise some logos. It can also be used to scan text and translate for certain languages. A handy app to have on the smartphone.
    • HandiCalc: It is basically a calculator with a many extra functions that would top even a scientific calculator. There are many built in functions, a currency convertor, an equation solving mode, a graph plotter and the ability to save your previous calculations in a notebook. This is easily the best calculator app that I have come across.

    • Weatherbug: Weather bug shows the current weather and weather forecasts for your current locations as well as a number of set places that you can change. The app comes with a widget so that you can view the information right from your homescreen.

    • Wapedia: This is an app on which you can search wikipedia, wiktionary, wikiquote, wikitravel etc. There is also an official wikipedia app with many added features such as the ability to save pages etc, but wapedia is a more versatile app.

    • Merriam Webster: The Merriam Webster Dictionary right on your android phone. You can look up the meaning of words without requiring an internet connection. Added features include a list of recently searched words and favourited words  along with a word of the day and voice search that require an internet connection to work.

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