Eight Free Apps That Every Android Device Must Have

With the advent of the Android operating system, Google is now producing the Smartphone operating system with the largest user base. There are two reasons for the huge success of Android as a smartphone operating system:

1. Its intuitive design and features, and

2. Opening up of the source code resulted in a large number of developers getting attracted to it. This resulted in the generation of the largest market among smartphone operating systems: The Google Play Store.

There are over one million apps in the official Android market, and an average user will be perplexed at the options available. Here, I list my pick of eight apps that every Android phone should have.

1. Tiny Flashlight + LED

Unlike i-Phones that come pre-installed with a flashlight, the unmodified Android operating system requires you to download and install one. I use the Tiny Flashlight app for this purpose. It is tiny, ad-free, and comes with a home screen widget for one click access. It is feature rich, too. However, I am not sure how useful these features are going to be for most people. As this uses the LED flash of the camera of your device, prolonged use of this app may cause reduction in battery life.

2. aTorrent – Torrent Downloader

Having a torrent download client is a must, for all users who wish to download files through the torrent protocol. My pick of the list is aTorrent. It is free, there is no speed limit, and come with a handful of useful features that most other torrent clients for Android does not offer, such as protocol encryption, peer visibility, etc. This, in my opinion, is the best torrent client for Android.

3. QuizUp

How would you like to get your knowledge tested? Won’t it be better, if it were a one to one dual with another person in some other part of the world? QuizUp is a quiz app with a social focus. It is extremely fun and addictive, has a large user base, have a large number of topics to choose from, has an interesting reputation system and best of all, it is free! It is a very good way to spend your free time, and provides the added advantage of improving your knowledge too.

4. Software Data Cable

If you own one of those mobile phones without a Wi-Fi Direct, you would have found yourself staring at the walls when one of your friends asked you to share a large file with him as Bluetooth is painfully slow when it comes to file sharing. The latter members of the Samsung Galaxy S series offer solutions to this, but are of some use only if your friends own a phone of similar calibre. The solution to this problem is software data cable. It supports all Android phones with Wi-Fi enabled. It creates a direct push network where other devices can join, and simultaneously share data through high speed Wi-Fi connection. It even supports sharing of apps by pushing the .apk file and is a useful feature for people who intend to share apps.

5. 7Zipper

An extremely useful utility app, there is no limit to what this app can achieve. It can open virtually any compressed format. It comes with a file browser that can let you browse system files. It was also successful in running some .exe files on Android. It is definitely a must have app, for all utility purposes.

6. Avast Mobile Security

Security is usually a concern in anything popular and Android is no exception. With the advent of better online shopping experience on mobile phones, it became extremely important to prevent eavesdropping of vital payment information from your mobile phones. Avast is a Mobile Version of the popular Desktop Antivirus of the same name, and is the best free Antivirus for Android devices available in the market, as of now. It comes pre-installed with a host of impressive features such as Virus scanner, anti-theft and firewall, it offers in-app payment for upgrading to pro version that offers improved anti-theft and ad-removers.

7. Flipboard : Your News Magazine

An impressively designed news aggregator, Flipboard is a must have app for all news enthusiasts and magazine readers. Flipboard collects news, articles and stories from popular sources, categorize them, and bring them to your phone is an aesthetically pleasing and readable form. The in-app sharing option is a boon for the social junkies who like to let their friends know of anything they come across.

8. Clean Master – Free Optimizer

Just like any other system, junk tends to accumulate in Android too. This might be cached files from applications, left over files from uninstalled applications, broken files that were left untreated, etc. You might bewilder at the amount of memory this application can clear the moment you install it. This might make you ponder over at the ways you managed your smart phone till now. It also comes pre-occupied with a RAM clearing option where it kills all the apps running in the background to clear up RAM. Even though the RAM clearing is not something that I would recommend, not only because of the fact that it is not very different from the clear memory option that you can make use from the task manager, but also because it is not a very healthy for your phone to stop apps at once. However, I urge you to use the memory clearing option, as it will save you considerable trouble and disk space.

This is not an exhaustive list, and was never intended to be one. This is a list of handpicked apps from the Android market that I found would be most useful for the majority of the public. If you defer in your opinion, or would like to inform me of something that I missed in the list, feel free to comment below, so that others can know about it too!