Android Paid Apps Reviews

Cut the Rope

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Price: $0.99
Category: Brain & Puzzle
Website

Welcome to the world of an adorable green ball of love called Om Nom.  Om Nom is hungry, and in the Android app game “Cut the Rope,” it’s up to you to give him what he ultimately desires in life – CANDY.  Cut the Rope is essentially the 21st century offspring of the late ’90′s hit, Tamagachi; but, rather than just continuously tapping a tiny rubber button for your little monster, you have to travel through 250 levels of complex puzzles to please your baby with food.  So, in the end, your green buddy better respect you for the blood, sweat, and tears that strenuously poured out of your body just to nab him a piece of sugary delight – but, with that smile, you know he does.

This game has respectively won multiple awards, including, Apple Design Award, GDC Award, and Best App Ever Award.  The gameplay is innovative, the physics are realistic, and the graphics are outstanding.  Also, with the Facebook and Twitter in-game integration, you’ll be able to show off your achievements and leaderboard rankings; prove yourself to others that you aren’t a neglectful owner.

Grocery Boy

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Website: facebook.com/pages/Grocery-Boy-For-the-Android/

This application is meant to help you save the frustration of forgetting your list at home, or even losing your grocery list and starting over.  How easy is it to just whip out your Android when you learn you need to buy more!  This application features have very nice looking controls, this is not just another list app!

How often do you go shopping, only to find out you forgot the list at home?! Since your Android is now a permanent appendage on your body, this app makes it easy for you to remember your grocery list. When you run out of something at home, plug it into Grocery Boy. When you shop, Grocery Boy is there! Thank you Grocery Boy!

Open Home – Full

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Website: betterandroid.wordpress.com

Open Home allows users to customize their Android phone’s desktop.  The application allows for multiple virtual screens to place icons or widgets as well as customizable skins and icons packages.  It also features a virtual keyboard (similar to the default Cupcake keyboard) as well as auto-rotate to rotate the screen in landscape mode using the phone’s sensor.  Finally a feature called Live Folders allows to display application data on the fly from the home screen (useful for widget type applications).  A Live Folder can be used to display weather info, contacts, RSS feeds, battery status and more!

Greed

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Website: fognl.blogspot.com

Greed is an Android application that allows users to read their Google Reader RSS feeds. The application allows users to do the following with their RSS feeds: read and maintain Google Reader articles and sync with reader, email/copy article links, organize and favorite RSS feeds and mark them as read. Included in the full version is podcast support, sharing options via Twitter, and SD cache to support offline reading.

aHome

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Website: www.mappn.com

aHome is the highest-rated Android home replacement application in the Android Market. With aHome, you can download and customize multiple home themes and have access to real-time weather through its built-in widgets. In addition, aHome’s dock bar displays your four most frequently used icons, that continue to stay on the screen, even when you slide to other screens. aHome also supports third-party widgets, thereby allowing you to run your own!

To preview all available themes, please visit
www.mappn.com/community

Hello IM!

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Hello IM! is an AOL Instant Messenger Android application. It enables users to customize their IM experience. Users can set custom ringtones for up to eight buddies, enable or disable the LED and vibrator for notifications, change the LED color and display a pop-up window when you receive an instant message. Users can also view their buddies online status and their icon, change their presence status with custom status notifications or set away messages with just a few taps on the screen. While chatting with their buddies, users can insert emotion symbols in their text messages by choosing from an emotion gallery. With the G1 phone, users can also easily send geo location messages which can be viewed on a Google map. With instant messages, users can forward or e-mail text messages or e-mail entire conversations as well as open web links, phone numbers and e-mail addresses within the text messages.

Power Manager Full

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This application adds NEW power settings to the phone (e.g. how long the screen is on during a call, if device stays on while the keyboard is open, etc.) and allows you to quickly view and change other phone settings depending on different conditions (e.g. turn off the GPS when the battery level drops below 30%, lower the brightness of the screen when on battery power, change the screen timeout if on A/C power, etc.)
It comes with a set of predefined profiles and automatically starts working after installation. Unless you want to change any of these definitions or use advanced features nothing else has to be done after the program is installed.

You can change individual settings (e.g. WiFi) by clicking the buttons on the panel at the top of the screen or you can change several settings at once by using a profile. Profiles define what settings should be modified and can also contain triggers that indicate if they should be applied automatically (e.g. when on A/C power, when on battery power, when the battery drops below a certain level).

NOTE: THE MONITOR MUST BE ENABLED IN THE STATUS PANEL FOR PROFILES TO BE APPLIED AUTOMATICALLY.

This application comes with predefined profiles for the most common conditions. These profiles can be changed or deleted by either long pressing on the profile name or by selecting the profile with the track ball and clicking on the menu key. You can also create additional profiles and shortcuts on the desktop to a specific profile. Power Manager also gathers statistics as the device changes power states. These statistics and can be written to a CSV file on the SDCARD (in the power_manger sub-directory) and can then be loaded into a spreadsheet application (e.g. Excel) to perform analysis (e.g. determine if your battery does not last as long it used to, or if an application is affecting your battery life).

QuickOffice for Android

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QuickOffice enables viewing of MS Word (.doc) and Excel (.xls) files stored on the G1 phone memory card or Gmail attachments. The application supports zooming, quick scrolling, and automatic orientation adjustment using the G1 phone sensor. For MS Word documents, it auto wraps text to avoid horizontal scrolling. All formatting, tables, and images are displayed. Telephone numbers, hyperlinks, and email addresses are all linked to the Android dialer, browser and GMail applications respectively. For Excel spreadsheets, it allows viewing standard Excel spreadsheets and resizing rows and columns. A basic file manager is included which allows users to view files, rename and delete them as well.

Overall complaints from users who have purchased the application include: won’t open MS Word 2003 documents, no PDF support, no editing documents (just a viewer), no PPT support.

Re-Translate

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Re-Translate is and android application that translates from one language to another. It is a very small application in size, and very fast. It has the ability to translate single words and phrases from one language to another and then back again.

Features:
- Only requires Internet
- Translates instantly as you type
- Long press for copy/paste
- Directly send translation to SMS/Email

BudgetPro

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BudgetPro is an Android application that allows users to keep track of expenses and daily, weekly or monthly budgets. Each entry of an expense or income is tied to an “Item”. Items can be specific things like “Latte”, “Pay Check”, “Gasoline” – or more general, like “Entertainment”. Accounts are combinations of Items, with the ability to set a Budget or Target. They can be linked to any combination of Items, both expense and income. This method allows easy display of histories and stats of multiple Items, while still allowing access to individual Item totals. For instance, “Coffee”, “Coffee Beans”, and “Latte” Items can be combined in an Account “Caffeine”, allowing you to track or set a budget on all together. Accounts can share Items, so there can be a “Caffeine” account which includes the “Latte” Item, and another Account called “Starbucks” which also includes it. If you want to set a budget, or track daily totals of just one specific Item, you can make an Account for just that Item.

There are two ways to set a budget. For instance at the top of the Main screen there are three $ fields which can each be set to an Account (top row) and TimeRange (buttons just below give options: “TODAY”, “THIS WEEK”, “THIS MONTH” OR “ALL”), and when a Budget is set it shows a simple color progress bar of how much money is left. Also expense and income Items can be combined in an Account so that you try to reach a Balance. For example, You can combine a “Paycheck” income Item and several expense Items in one Account. You enter your weekly pay, and then when you spend money in an Item linked to that Account, it subtracts from the Balance, so you can see exactly what you have left.

Spending data from different accounts can be viewed in graphs or statistics as well as exported or imported to CSV format. The Graphs allow you to see expenses/income by DAY, WEEK, MONTH, or HOUR. You can use the zoom buttons to see more or less time at once, or pan forward and back in time by swiping your finger on the Graph, or pressing the directional buttons. The Stats screen allows easy Totalling of time ranges, while mixing and matching Items, or Accounts. BudgetPro uses a standard csv file format: Date, Time, Name (Item name), Memo, Amount.