Scan to download Google Books

Google Books is available in the Android Market, and requires Android 2.1 or later. The app is free and handles the user’s book library, reading the books and shopping for e-books through the web browser. Books are purchased through Google Checkout, and once a book is purchased, it immediately appears on all user devices with Books installed. Google Books maintains all devices synced with the cloud, so opening a book on any device takes you to the last position read on any device.

Settings can tailor the reading experience to user preferences, including text justification, typeface, text size and a night viewing mode which displays white text on a black background. There’s also a tag to override the system screen brightness setting to allow changing the brightness just for this app.

Reading in Google Books works like other apps, with page turning accomplished by swiping side to side. There is no way to tag pages with bookmarks as in other apps, but Google Books always opens with the most recent position read in the current book. Strangely, being from Google, there is no in-book search function in this first version of the app.

The Google bookstore has millions of books that the company scanned into the library, and this enables a cool feature in Google Books. It is possible to read from the original scanned page in the app for those who find that appealing.

Google Books is a simple e-book reading app that, in typical fashion for the company, concentrates on doing the basic functions well while skipping the frills. It works equally well on the small screen of a smartphone and the 7-inch Galaxy Tab display. It’s easy to use for reading and buying books from the Google store. Pricing for e-books seems to be on par with Amazon and Barnes & Noble at first glance.

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The Vario snaps onto the back of the iPad for instant use as a stand, and only adds a small amount of weight, unlike some other cases. It has a textured surface, so the iPad isn’t slippery in the hand with the Vario attached. It only adds a tiny bit of bulk to the thin iPad; I don’t normally like cases that add weight or bulk, but find the Vario to be tolerable given the benefits of using it as a stand.

The Vario serves double duty, as in addition to the stand feature, it can be snapped onto the front of the iPad. This turns it into a screen protector, which may come in handy for those who throw the iPad into the bag with other gear. The Vario is definitely worth a look if you are wondering what gift to get that iPad toter in your life for the holidays. It’s not cheap at $69.99, but is solidly built and attractive. Zerochroma has other versions of the case for the iPhone, iPod touch and the Kindle, with a model “coming soon” for the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

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Prior to the release of the Droid Pro, consumers wanting an Android phone had two choices: a large touchscreen-only device or a handset with a touch screen and a sliding QWERTY keyboard. Motorola has merged the two forms with the Droid Pro by combining a 3.1-inch display (320×480) with a QWERTY keyboard that sits beneath the display. The keyboard rivals those found on the BlackBerry, making it ideal for extended text entry.

The Droid Pro has a candybar form that is a little long due to the keyboard sitting beneath the screen. It looks like the phone would be top-heavy for thumb-typing on the keyboard, but that’s not the case. The keys are sculpted like those found on the BlackBerry to prevent typing mistakes in spite of the small keys. With a little practice, it’s possible to get quite proficient using the keyboard, and BlackBerry users should feel right at home.

Motorola has built the Droid Pro for the CDMA network of Verizon, but has added GSM capability for international use. The Droid Pro can be used most anywhere in the world with the appropriate plan with Verizon.

Standard Exchange Server support is included for enterprise purposes, along with other features to appeal to business users. QuickOffice is included for Microsoft Office support, as is Skype mobile for VoIP calls. There’s a VPN client for accessing corporate environments, and the full Google software suite is installed. Motorola has included advanced security features that appeal to enterprise tech support staff, such as remote wipe capability, which makes it possible to erase the memory on a lost phone. Data encryption can be employed for all documents stored in internal memory and on the microSD card.

The Droid Pro may be aimed at the business user, but the Android OS is also consumer friendly. The handset will appeal to any consumer who wants a thumb keyboard like that of the BlackBerry, yet who also craves the Android touch-friendly OS. I showed the Droid Pro to a few BlackBerry users over the week I’ve been testing it, and invariably, the response was positive. BlackBerry owners are curious about the Android phenomenon and found the keyboard of the Droid Pro makes it possible to “ease away from the BlackBerry.”

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The Style is very thin for a flip phone and fits nicely in the hand for operation. It’s small and very light compared to most smartphones, and is the first phone I’ve used in quite a while that’s actually pleasing to hold. The smooth lines and size are designed to be easy to use with one hand, and the lack of a touch screen is actually a plus for operation of the Style. The trackpad beneath the main screen is very responsive and makes it easy to operate the new BlackBerry OS.

The flip form makes it possible to see any missed calls, messages or social network status updates at a glance on the external display. There’s a clock on the display along with battery and carrier network meters. This display auto-dims after a short time to save battery life, and comes on with the press of any button on the phone.

There are volume buttons on the right side of the Style, situated next to the camera button. Pressing the camera button fires up the camera app, and snaps photos if the app is already running. The internal display is the viewfinder for the camera, and there is a noticeable lag between pressing the button to snap a picture and the actual photo capture. The 5 MP camera takes decent photos, but won’t replace your good point-and-shoot for important picture-taking.

BlackBerry is famous for good messaging capability, and the Style carries on this tradition. The unified inbox is front and center on the main screen, accessible with simple taps on the trackpad. BlackBerry fans won’t be disappointed with the Style messaging capability and the new BlackBerry 6 OS. The interface is very fluid and intuitive, and much better than previous versions of the OS. The performance of the Style is good, and operation with the trackpad is easy.

The BlackBerry Style is aimed at current BlackBerry customers, who will like the new OS and the form. I’ve been surprised at the reception folks have given the flip format; it has been universally favorable. I have been told by more than one current BlackBerry user that the Style puts an end to “butt dialing” the phone, something that apparently happens with regularity with “candybar” style BlackBerrys in the pocket.

My 17-year-old stepson is absolutely smitten with the Style, primarily due to the flip form. He has a smartphone he uses for calls, texting and Facebook, and he finds the Style to be superior at all of those functions. He’s also in love with both the web browser and the YouTube app on the Style.

The BlackBerry Style is available exclusively from Sprint in the U.S., and is a handset with RIM’s typical attention to usability. The two displays work well together to make the flip form work, and the BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard will make BlackBerry fans happy. The Style is $99.99 with a new contract with Sprint, and there’s a “buy one, get one free” promotion for the holidays.

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DataMan tracks all data usage (Wi-Fi and 3G) and calculates how much you can use per day and per week to stay within your data plan. It also informs you, via push notifications, whether your current usage is within or beyond your daily and weekly budget. DataMan can even run in the background and geotag data usage. You can then see exactly when and where you use the most data on a map.

I learned the value of a tool like DataMan last month when my wife somehow switched off Wi-Fi on her iPhone (which only has a 200mb plan). Suddenly, she’d used 90 percent of her data plan with most of the billing period to go. With DataMan, we wouldn’t have been caught by surprise.

I now set the app to alert me on heavy usage days. I don’t worry that I’ll hit my 2GB limit, but I still appreciate the ability to know where the data is going and where I was when I used it. Being able to see the pinpoints on a map, connected by time of usage, allows me to literally track where I was going throughout the day. Between battery drain concerns, though, and the big-brother feel of the geo-location, some users may wish to disable this feature — something that’s now possible in version 3.

DataMan could come in handy for developers looking to study usage trends on test devices. For those who’ve mysteriously exceeded their data allowances and been dinged by AT&T, the $1.99 price of DataMan is well worth knowing exactly how and why. 

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The app is a simple reader designed for fast operation. Articles are organized in three tabs: Unread, Starred and Archived. These work as expected, and to read an article in any of the tabs just tap it. The article opens up in the reader, complete with any images, with a very simple display. When an article is displayed, hitting the Menu key pops up selections for starring, archiving, deleting, sharing the article or opening it up in the phone’s web browser.

Hard Copy can be configured to sync with the user’s Instapaper account in the background at a specified time interval, ensuring that new articles saved on other devices are present when needed. The reading screen is configurable, with control over the font used to display articles among other visual settings. There’s a free version of Hard Copy that contains ads, and a paid version (which I use) that eliminates the ads and adds some features for $1.99. Both are available in the Android Market.

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Why would you want to set the resolution higher? Just like on a desktop computer, changing the display to a higher resolution makes everything on the screen smaller, which means you can display more on a screen at one time. This can be advantageous on a phone with a small screen.

ResToggle provides two methods to change the screen resolution: a radio button scheme that toggles between standard and hi-res settings, and a custom box that allows setting any resolution with a numeric setting. I have tried both methods, and caution the use of the custom method, as you might create a problem with an invalid value. I find the hi-res setting to be adequate for my needs, although I’ve tested a custom value of 160 (standard=240, hi-res=200), which makes things pretty darn small. It ran fine; I just couldn’t read things that small.

Once the resolution is selected in the settings screen, the phone can be rebooted immediately by hitting a button. The reboot is required to enable the new screen resolution. While I’ve experienced no problems using ResToggle, any time you fiddle with system settings, there’s a possibility your particular phone won’t behave properly. In the event this happens, your phone won’t reboot normally, but the developer has you covered. If your phone cannot boot after changing the setting with ResToggle, simply send your phone a text message with the phrase “ResToggle:ResetOriginalDisplay” (caps not needed) and your phone will automatically reset to normal and reboot.

The ability to slightly increase the display resolution is wonderful, even on the large screen of my EVO 4G, as displaying slightly more at once is very useful. Take a look at the comparison screen shots I took on the EVO to see how different applications benefit from the additional resolution. Note that some apps may have trouble at a higher resolution, but most I’ve tried work just fine.

ResToggle is only $0.99 in the Android Market, and the developer supports it on his website. The app works fine on my EVO 4G, and should work on any phone running Froyo, but some have reported difficulty getting it to work.

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Sprint TV gives free access to a varied selection of content, including ESPN, ABC, NBC and CBS. Not all content on the service is free — some requires subscription fees — but a good selection is included in the basic service. This video demonstrates the high quality of the streaming video, and the simple touch operation to watch the shows. Full episodes of major U.S. network TV shows are available on Sprint TV, and outside of a short ad at the beginning of each one, the shows are without commercial interruption.

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Evernote is the cross-platform freemium note-taking system that has millions of users. While the Mac and Windows desktop clients are robust, the mobile clients (for most smartphone platforms) have been more limited in functionality, designed primarily to provide simple note-taking capability on the go and access to the cloud storage. Evernote 2.0 for Android extends the mobile capability, and adds the ability to fully reference the user’s stored notes along with extended note creation functions.

I have been using an advance copy of Evernote 2.0 on my Android phone, and the interface is very clean. It is easier to do most things with this version than in earlier renditions of the mobile client. Notes can take several forms — text notes entered via the onscreen keyboard, images snapped with the phone camera and audio notes recorded. The latter can be recorded while text notes are being entered to help capture the information that needs explanation.

The major feature added in this new version is the ability for paid account holders to tag Evernote notebooks for downloading to the Android phone. This provides full access to notes, along with all images and audio recordings, even when there is no network connection. Users can have access to important notebooks while on a flight without web connectivity. All notes created on the phone are also stored locally for both free and paid account holders, making all mobile notes available without access to the network.

The entire user experience with Evernote 2.0 is very fast and fluid, and it is easier to work with lots of notes than ever before. The first time this Android app is run it syncs with the user’s cloud notes, a process that can take some time for a lot of notes, but once this is done access to all notes is lightning fast. Thumbnails of each note are stored on the phone for instant previews of each, making it easy to find the information needed. When a search returns multiple notes, it is now possible to swipe through the results to find the desired note.

Evernote 2.0 for Android is a big leap forward in utility for those with lots of notes in the Evernote cloud. The ease of use makes working with the notes more productive than earlier versions, and the ability to access notes locally is not a trivial feature. Capturing information into Evernote has always been its strong point, and that is now fully extended to the Android platform.

Evernote 2.0 is now available for free download in the Android Market. Note that the Evernote Premium account that is required for local notebook access also provides 500 MB of note uploads per month for $5 per month or $45 annually.

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Firing up Lookator starts the phone camera to show the surrounding area on the display. The app detects all hotspots in range and puts them on the display in their actual location. It uses the phone’s GPS and compass to pinpoint hotspots with accuracy. The hotspots are indicated on the screen using icons that show at a glance if the hotspot is openly accessible or secured. The strength of the Wi-Fi signal is indicated, and since AR is in play, you can use the screen to move in the proper direction to get a better signal if needed. The little radar in the upper right corner of the display depicts the direction is currently being shown.

The app is free in the Android Market and is useful in its own right, but it shines when coupled with the WeFi app. WeFi is the online hotspot indicator that uses crowdsourced information, and it has tens of thousands of hotspots in its database. This information is derived from real-world information shared by WeFi members, and is a great resource for those frequently looking for hotspots.

With the WeFi app installed on the Android phone, Lookator can use the massive database to include hotspots on the AR display that are out of range. The app gives a clear indication where these hotspots are located relative to the user’s position, so it’s easy to move toward them to get into range. This shines in dense urban locations where there are lots of unfamiliar hotspots. The video below shows Lookator in action in a busy urban location.

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Twitter for Android keeps the light-blue-and-white theme that has come to represent the social network in the public consciousness. It has an uncluttered display that keeps the focus on the tweets at hand. This version is noticeably faster than previous versions, and scrolling is smooth.

The main timeline display has some nice updates, primarily the ability to pull down on the timeline to force a refresh. This is like the iPhone version, and it’s an elegant, intuitive method to get fresh tweets. The home screen is the base for accessing all normal Twitter functions, and is always accessible by hitting the Back button.

Clicking on any tweet in a list view takes you to the new tweet details page. This is where standard interaction with a tweet happens: retweet, reply and clicking on links in tweets. The retweet function now offers the ability to edit a retweet before posting, in addition to the standard method that has become the norm.

A new gesture has been added that lets you bypass the detail view if you’re in a hurry. Swiping to the right on any tweet in the timeline shoots it off the screen and exposes a simplified list of commands for interaction with the tweet. These include retweet, reply, favorite and view profile. It’s a fast way to do the common functions.

This being Android, two widgets for the home screen are installed by Twitter. They are bare bones, and display only one tweet at a time in real-time. The larger of the two widgets adds the ability to enter a tweet without opening the app.

The new Android version of Twitter may just be an incremental change over the previous version, but it brings the app closer in parity to third-party alternatives. It’s lacking the cool preview version of Twitter for iPad and Twidroyd Pro for Android, but it’s a solid method to use to hit the Twitterverse.

You can find Twitter in the Android Market (it’s free), or just scan in the QR code below.

The app can become the default launcher, which lets it take over use of the Home button to trigger the graphical task manager. Apps currently running are displayed in a revolving carousel method, or a simple flat display can be set in the preferences. The carousel of apps can be swiped left or right to spin through running apps, and tapping on one brings that app to the forefront for use.

Itching Thumb uses gestures in a unique way to interact with apps. Swiping up on an app’s card closes it (like in webOS), and swiping down triggers a gesture editor to assign a gesture to that app. Once a gesture has been assigned to an app, drawing the gesture at the bottom of the Itching Thumb screen will fire up that app. It is simple and works well.

There are a lot of settings to configure Itching Thumb as desired, most of which control the look of the app carousel.  I haven’t decided if Itching Thumb will remain as my full-time task manager, but it’s a fun diversion in the meantime.

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Hellotxt works with not just the primary social networks, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, it also handles many more. The premise is the service pulls in all updates from all of the networks you’ve enabled, so you have a one-stop source for all of your social network updates. It’s not just about following your friends; hellotxt makes it easy to share your thoughts with all of the networks at once: a one update fits all, if you will.

The Android app is simple to install from the Android Market, and once you tell it which networks you want to follow (along with providing your access credentials), you’re ready to go. The main hellotxt screen has only four big icons–Post, Feeds, Outbox and Networks — which provide access to all functions of hellotxt. The Feeds function fires up a Twitter-like stream of updates, aggregated from all of the networks you’ve defined.

The Post function is where you share your information with your networks. Hitting the Post button opens up a big text entry area and fires up the onscreen keyboard for entry. The lower left corner of the entry area shows the icons for all of the networks to which you are about to post. Posts can be simple text, attached photos and even doodles drawn by hand on the screen. All posts can attach geolocation information if configured to do so.

The Outbox function simply shows all updates you’ve made to date, including image previews for easy recognition. The Networks function is the place to go to add or remove networks you want hellotxt to interact with. So many networks are supported that it takes a while to scroll through the list to see them all.

The app is fun to use and very easy, and is designed to take advantage of the Android interface to the fullest. It probably won’t replace your dedicated social network apps, but it’s a nice place to visit from time to time.

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The EVO 4G is one of the thinnest Android superphones available, and the key for the Powermat back cover that replaces the original EVO back is that it doesn’t add thickness to the phone once installed. In the video, the entire Powermat system is demonstrated, and it’s clear the folks behind the technology devoted a great deal of attention to detail in order to make it a viable consumer product.

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Pocket Informant (PI) has been around for a long time, and its longevity in the market is a testament to how good it handles PIM functions. It has been a long-time player on the Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and the iOS platforms. The introduction of the beta on the Android market makes PI available on the majority of smartphones on the market. The app is free while it is in beta.

I have been a PI user for years, on all of the supported platforms, and I was anxiously awaiting its appearance on Android. I installed it as soon as it appeared in the Android Market, and I have been using it heavily. The app has been working solidly for me even though it is a beta, although some users have reported problems to the developers.

PI consolidates all calendar and task functions in one place, and provides two advantages to users. The first benefit is demonstrated through the many ways to view PIM information. The program can display calendars in daily, weekly, monthly and agenda (list) views, and each of those have multiple options. The goal is to allow the user to view a lot of information in the manner that provides the best focus on what needs to get done. That ability to focus on what’s important is the second advantage to PI users.

I am not a practitioner of the Getting Things Done (GTD) method of time management, but those who are should note that PI has native support for the methodology. The GTD support is enabled with a setting in the app, and activates the use of locations, contexts and projects for task management.

The app is fully integrated with Google calendars, which requires no user configuration given Android’s native Google support. All Google calendars are visible in the PI displays, although the user can turn off any calendars as desired. Each calendar can appear in a different color, either the default Google calendar colors or user defined, making it easy to focus on particular information. Switching calendar views is done by selection on a tool bar at the bottom of the screen. The app supports both portrait and landscape orientations, with a smooth transition between the two.

Google tasks are not supported by PI due to the lack of an API by Google. The developers have chosen to provide sync support for online task manager Toodledo, and this support works well. I use Toodledo, and as I use PI on both Android and the iPad, all my tasks stay in sync everywhere.

This is an early version of PI for Android, and there are features missing that the developer promises for a future iteration of the app. Android has advanced the use of widgets by apps, but PI is lacking this ability in version 1.0. My experience with Pocket Informant over the years leaves me confident the Android version will evolve quickly, and will soon be one of the most-used apps on my smartphone.

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ShootMe is available in the Android Market as a free download, and once installed, it allows capturing the screen no matter what program is running on the phone. Since some apps, notably games, take control over the phone hardware buttons, the ShootMe developer made a smart decision to use the accelerometer found in most Android phones to trigger the screen capture. A simple shake of the phone generates the capture, which is signaled by the sound of a camera shutter. The captured image is saved on the phone in a ShootMe folder, so all images are grouped together in any photo viewing app that is used.

While taking screen snaps is something that app reviewers do a lot, once ShootMe is running, the ease of taking images opens up new uses for all Android phone owners. When I run across something in the phone browser I want to share, rather than copy/paste a link in an email, I simply send a screen snap. It’s also a good way to share things on Twitter, as most Twitter apps have a simple way to tweet an image.

ShootMe works on the HTC EVO 4G, and users are reporting successful usage on other phones running Android 2.2.

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