AndroidEgg

2008 has been a great year for the Android community, with the T-Mobile G1 being introduced in October, and many apps being released since then. The platform is growing in strength, and will continue to get better, as paid apps come to the App Market.

As the year winds down, we've gotten in on the "top 10" list action with our own listing of the top ten most indispensible apps for the Android platform in 2008. We made our selections with an emphasis on smaller apps, like utilities and tools, instead of picking the most popular apps, in the hope that people will find a great app that they may not have heard of. We also included a game, for some fun.

Reviews and listing after the break.

#1: AnyCut

A bridge to anywhere

AnyCut is one of the few Android tools that has no downsides, and everyone can find a use for. Using it, you can place shortcuts to just about anything on your desktop.

Anyone with a significant other will benefit from using AnyCut to place a shortcut on their desktop that calls that loved one with one tap of the finger. Do you text somebody often? A one-touch shortcut for that can also be arranged. An interesting secondary use of AnyCut is to edit the names of existing shortcuts on your desktop, including shortcuts not created by AnyCut.

If you're more serious and understand anything about how Android applications work, you can create shortcuts to individual "activities", including some not easily accessible from the main menus, such as detailed battery information. However, most people will find more than enough benefit from AnyCut just from the direct-call and direct-text shortcuts.

#2: Toggle Settings

A universe of on and off

You may not know it, but on the Android Market, there is a "settings war". Various apps have been constructed to help you toggle and set and set and toggle. Among them, the king, the lord, is Toggle Settings.

After all, you can't just have your Bluetooth and your 3G and your Wifi and your GPS on all the time, or your phone won't last more than a few hours. Toggle Settings began as a simple, one-screen app with all the right checkboxes to help you save or expend battery when you need it. Soon, in response to competitors, and to advances in toggling and setting technology, it expanded to two screens, and added fancy animations.

Finally, Toggle Settings added the ability for users to take their toggling and setting into their own hands, enabling full customization over one's settings palette. Don't like two pages? Cut it down to one. Never use your Bluetooth? It's off the list! Once you've downloaded Toggle Settings, and behold its firm commitment to empowering users' toggling choices, you'll agree that you and your battery have been well served.

#3: ConnectBot

Android's Terminal

ConnectBot is *the* SSH program for Android, and for many, it is a killer app; I know at least one person who bought their Android phone primarily for this program. Most users of the Android platform will have no desire for a terminal, or even an idea of what SSH is. But, for the power user, there is something completely novel and seductive about having complete remote control over another system, from your phone.

ConnectBot does it all: tunneling, public-private key authentication, command history, intelligent keyboard and finger shortcuts, even streamlined support for 'screen' users. It'll even let you put a shortcut on your desktop directly to a particular host, AnyCut-style. There's no room for debate: anyone familiar with the command line who owns an Android phone must have ConnectBot, and that is all.

#4: SpellDial

A better dialer

Your Android's built-in contact list is okay for finding the person you want to dial, but it is, at the end of the day, just a list. SpellDial takes a completely different, approach to sifting through your contacts, to very quickly deliver you to the one you want to dial.

Instead of a list, you are presented with the familiar virtual dialpad. Start typing the name of the person you want to dial with it, and the list of potential targets quickly narrows, until you can easily tap the right person's name. The vast majority of the time, this is much quicker than flicking your thumb over and over on your huge list of contacts. It also supports gesture recognition -- to backspace, flick your thumb to the left. Everything about SpellDial is geared for efficiency.

One of SpellDial's best and most subtle advantages is that searching for a contact through a dialpad is exactly what most people are accustomed to from their older, pre-Android phones. It comes naturally. Put this on your desktop, and when you want to call somebody, get used to tapping it, instead of opening your contacts and scrolling your life away.

#5: Klaxon

Alarm Clock +

Klaxon is just like your Android phone's regular Alarm Clock program... except better.

For those who can't stand waking to an icy shock of sound, Klaxon will be a huge improvement. Not only does it let you set your own MP3s as alarms, but it even offers control over how gradually your alarm increases in volume. Thanks to Klaxon, you can now wake to the sounds of the sea.

It doesn't take a lot to make a good alarm program, but Klaxon gets the little things right. Phone alarm programs have always been oddly difficult about communicate how to set a non-recurring alarm. Perhaps recognizing this, Klaxon brings up a tooltip in an alarm's edit screen to tell you to deactivate each recurring day to make a one-shot alarm. Most of my alarms are one-shot, so I'd rather this be the default, but that's a small tradeoff to accept for a solid alarm app.

#6: Quickpedia

The favorite of Encyclopedia Brown

Quickpedia isn't the only Wikipedia app on the market, but it is the best, and the quickest. Open the program and start typing the name of the article you want, and before you're done, it will likely have presented you with the name of the right article. Press it, and soon the article will load, in special Android-friendly formatting.

There are other features to it, like a tab for displaying featured articles, popular articles, and even news, but these aren't that useful for most, who use Wikipedia solely as a reference for the things they encounter in their real life. More interesting is a location-aware feature that presents you with articles about the things around you, especially valuable for tourists.

The main goal that Quickpedia has to achieve is to be faster and better than opening up your browser and searching Google for the subject. Quickpedia definitely is that, and so this app comes recommended for everyone.

#7: Text Edit

It edits text

A simple text editor it may be, but Text Edit effectively addresses a number of problems.

Despite owning one of the most powerful smart-phones in the world, if I needed to jot something down for later follow-up, the best way to do it was to send myself an email. Having a simple, no-frills text editor offers a better way of collecting notes, that won't clutter up your inbox. Additionally, though there are several "todo list" applications for Android, but for those who can't stand their overhead, and just want space to jot, Text Edit can also admirably fulfill the role of your prioritization software.

Text Edit is a text editor. You can make new files, save them, and open them. Past that, Text Edit does have a few frills that go a long way, such as auto-completing filenames when loading a file, and letting you choose your font shape and size. Text Editor is a humble app that finally gives us the Notepad for our phones, and the many who have been awaiting such an application should download it now.

#8: Twidroid

The 'droid you're looking for

Twidroid is clearly meant to be the Android's Twitterific: feature-rich, sexy, and ubiquitous. When it was first released, performance issues and garishly visible bugs held it back from achieving that post. Since then, its performance and reliability have been significantly enhanced, and it's difficult to justify using an alternative.

Twidroid works as expected -- there's a place for replies, direct messages, and the main page, with its flood of your friends' egos. However, there are issues. While the performance has improved, there is still some room to go, and the app will usually freeze during the few seconds that it's fetching the next flood. Links and buttons are also uncomfortably small, and you'll want to use the trackball more than your finger.

Still, it's worth it. There are several competing Twitter apps on the market, and while they are certainly worth trying (especially nanotweeter, which has no UI and is notifications-only, for the minimalist), you will likely find that Twidroid is the only one that looks decent, and delivers.

#9: Maverick

Google Chat, plus drawing

Maverick is a featureful GTalk IM client, and one of many inventive and useful Android apps to come out of Google's Android Developer Challenge from this summer. Unlike most of them, people can use it, as the developers actually released it to the Android market.

Besides being a stable and easy-to-use client for GTalk, Maverick has some extra fun features. Sending pictures is easy, as Maverick will automatically upload the pictures to a service online, and then IM the link to your friend. Even more cool, is that you can do some simple image editing before actually sending it, such as applying doodles and frames. Admittedly, whether people would use this on a regular basis is an open question, but I don't know of any other IM client, desktop or mobile, that lets you personalize images on the fly before sending.

The real question with Maverick is whether or not it's worth using over the default IM client. If you care about sending pictures easily to friends, then it definitely is; otherwise, it may just be a flashier, less official client that you should pass over. As it stands, Maverick is more an experiment than a "serious" IM client.

#10: Coloroid

Simple and addictive

One of the earliest games on the Android market, Coloroid doesn't get a lot of notice. It's entirely 2D, not at all flashy, and its rules and controls dirt simple. It's also terribly addictive.

Given a randomized grid of squares, each given one of 6 colors, and "ownership" of the top left square, turn the board all one color within a certain amount of turns. On each turn, you select a color, and the squares you "own" will gobble up all the adjacent squares of that color. On the smaller boards, this can be trivial, but as the size increases, the need to strategize becomes more apparent.

Coloroid will appeal to both fans of logic games, and people who respond better to visuals. This review isn't meant to call out Coloroid as the absolute best game on the market, but instead to point out a little noticed gem. Give it a chance, and it could dominate your commute completely.