56. London Bus
Checker
Price: Free
London Bus Checker is a very well designed
and attractive app, which pulls in live data for all London bus stop display
boards. It’s almost certainly of most use to people who live in London, who get
full route maps, diversion and cancellation updates, GPS support for finding
the nearest stop and an arrivals widget. All the fun of actually hanging out at
a bus stop, basically.
57. Met office
Weather Application
Price: Free
Find out whether there’s likely to be any
drinkable water left this summer with this app, the official weather checker
from the Met Office. It’s just about as comprehensive as a weather app can be,
offering homescreen widgets, a five-day forecast, severe weather warnings, maps
just like on the telly, and the ‘feels like’ temperature so you know whether a
jacket is required when you venture out.
58. Netflix
Price: Free
As soon as the streaming service hit our
shores, so did its accompanying Adnroid app. And the Netflix app does it all,
offering access to the full catalogue of digital film and TV rentals presented
in a clean and simple layout. The only fancy features are PC syncing so you can
pick up where you left off on mobile if it’s getting near bedtime, plus
Facebook sharing so everyone can keep up on how your Secret Diary of a Call
Girl marathon is going.
59. Wikipedia
Price: Free
A new way to look at the pleading face of
Jimmy Wales. The official Wikipedia Android app is very nice to use, presenting
a simplified version of the desktop website’s content, plus an ever-useful
offline saving option fi you need access to pages when out of reception range.
You also get location – aware features, making it easy to randomly browse for
interesting things in your vicinity
60. FitBit
Price: Free
If you’re still struggling to lose the
Christmas weight heading into Easter, you may benefit from having a little life
coaching on your phone. FitBit’s main feature is a food plan that keeps track
of how many chocolate Brazil nuts you’ve had today, plus a logging feature that
tracks you claims of exercise and adjusts you’re eating allowance accordingly.
You’ll be like the woman off the Special K adverts inside a month.
61. Sky Cloud
WiFi
Price: Free
This one’s a great way of automating the
process of signing into a Sky-managed mobile Wi-Fi spot, minimizing stressful
time spent not being connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot. The Sky Cloud Wi-Fi app
senses Sky-friendly hotspots, then signs you in automatically. So no more
fiddling about with a crappy 3G signal when out and about or typing in
passwords in a hurry to use a bit of internet.
62. Ticketmaster
UK
Price: Free
After an age as a US-only exclusive,
Ticketmaster UK is now live for Android users right here in Blighty. It does
what you might expect, offering a full database of events, complete with simple
buying options from within the app. There’s even a local search option for
accessing a list of what’s on near you should you fancy taking a punt on some
random artistic happening or gig.
63. Gumtree
Price: Free
The popular sofa-ditching website has
finally joined the mobile age, with a very flashy Gumtree app. It’s presented
in the Ice Cream Sandwich design style, with a nice tab bar and clever floating
and segmented item listings, and it looks even better when used in landscape
orientation. Trawling for an executive massage in the local area has never been
easier.
64. The
Guardian
Price: Free
The Guardian has had an Android app
available for a while, but it was significantly first-generation in look and
feel. A recent update took care of that, thankfully, boosting the layout to modern
Android standards, adding in support for live blogs, enhanced section
navigation, swipe navigation through photo galleries and much more. Nice. And
free.
65. HotUKDeals
Price: Free
The amazing bargain portal, which has
actually defied its purpose and cost us millions through encouraging
unnecessary impulse purchases of discounted gear, is on Android, with a very
posh and feature- packed HotUKDeals app now available. You can search for local
deals, submit ones you’ve spotted yourself, with the app including an easy
category view and search facility for finding new ways to buy things you don’t’
really need.
66. Amazon MP3
Price: Free
Amazon’s MP3 service is surprisingly
clever. Tracks bought from the retail giant are automatically stored within the
company’s cloud servers, from where you can instantly stream them back to your
Android derive. Sadly, you’re a little limited in the number of existing MP3s
you can upload from your own collection, but for building, managing and
streaming a legit Amazon music catalogue, the Amazon MP2 app is a great,
stylish option
67. TVCatchup
Price: Free
For those of you who still pore over
listings and watch television live, as it happens, and at the original time of
broadcast. TVCatchup is for you. But it’s not a catch-up service at all. It’s
simple re-broadcaster of the terrestrial Freeview channels, enabling you to
watch everything, live, right there on a phone or tablet. A good test of how
reliable your mobile data connection is, too.
68. Barclays
Mobile Banking
Price: Free
The big banks are gradually moving away
from mobile websites and embracing full power apps, with the Barclays Mobile
Banking option a particularly fine example. Logging in is a simpler task than
accessing the desktop site, with the app just requiring a PIN to access your
data. It also cleverly works as a PIN Sentry card reader, ideal for managing
Barclays services that need its pain-in-the-arse card reader to grant access.
69. Amazon
Appstore
Price: free from www..co.uk
There’s only one reason to have the Amazon
Appstore on your phone or tablet- free stuff. Amazon is enticing users to stick
its alternate Android app store on their devices with the promise of a free app
every day, with some classics such as Sega’s ChucChu Rocket and World of Goo
featuring as previous daily freebies. The catch is these are unsupported
releases, meaning no updates or fixes in the future, but you can’t moan too
much about getting some ace freebies every day.
70. Flipboard
Price: Free
Flipboard is pretty much just a posh RSS
reader, which does a superb job of pulling text and images from pages, websites
and social networks, and presenting it in a gloriously sexy magazine-like
manner. The Flipboard app has recently been updated with a full tablet
interface style, for the ultimate in glossy media consumption.
