Best Apps for Android, July 2011

Titanium Media Sync

Auto-sync any folder to your Dropbox account.

From the maker of the nerdtastic Titanium Backup comes the missing piece in the Android backup puzzle; Titanium Media Sync.

Titanium Backup does a ripper of a job backing up your apps, and includes a schedule function and the ability to upload the backups to Dropbox, but it doesn’t combine the two. Until now, I used to have to manually upload my backups to Dropbox, but it doesn’t combine the two.

I also had no way to automatically back up my photos, videos, and downloads. Now, with Titanium Media Sync, every time I recharge my phone, my Titanium backups plus any new photos or videos are auto-magically uploaded to dropbox. Despite an initially confusing UI, the app is simple to get going: you log into your Dropbox account and then drag any number of files or folders over to the Dropbox folder you want them backed up to.

Then choose the conditions that trigger uploads. The standard is to upload only over Wi-Fi and only when the phone is charging over AC (not USB), but you can change these as you wish. Power users can then set up any number of filters to exclude certain file types from being backed up.

$2.83 > Titanium Track

SMS Scheduler

SMS Scheduler offers a simple but very useful feature: the ability to schedule SMSs, either as a once-off, or repeated at specified intervals.

Quite often I find myself thinking of something important to tell a friend - but it’s way past bedtime for a school night.

SMS Scheduler allows me to type up a message and have it sent at a more reasonable hour. Added bonus: some other scheduling apps don’t write the SMS to the system database – this one does, however.

Free > lylynx.com

Quota

Quota offers a single place to keep track of all your phone, internet, and other quotas, balances, or points. It’s Australian, and as such supports our telcos and ISPs, but also others you may not expect.

Some of the non-telco, and non-internet balances include frequent flyer points, tollways, Skype balances, currency prices, stock values, Everyday Rewards, Fly Buys, CineBuzz points and a fat stack more. If what you want to track isn’t included, there’s a free developers’ kit available, plus an eager dev community out there.

$2.75 > South Freo

WidgetLocker Lockscreen

One of the best features of Android is the ability to replace anything: the phone app, SMS app, even the home and lock screens.This particular replacement lock screen allows you to drag and drop the placement of sliders, widgets and app shortcuts. Why do this? At-a-glance information, of course!

But, isn’t a lock screen meant to prevent accidental interaction with your phone? No problem! You choose which of the widgets you can interact with, so you’ll never accidentally poke your Mum. From a Facebook widget, I mean.

$1.89 > TeslaCoil