(My) best and worst Android app of June 2011

So now I find myself writing a post about my best and worst Android applications, at least just for the past month of June 2011, anyway. I don't usually do these, because a post describing the best, worst and/or both of [something here] usually calls in the fanboys. And nobody wants that.

WARNING: Opinions follow.

The Android Market is known for being a complete mess with tens of thousands of incomplete and/or useless applications created by hundreds of incompetent developers. However, just like with every big pile of crap, there's always something valuable to be found underneath (or on the top of) the Android App Market. There are also numerous good apps in the Android Market and some of them actually prove that Android is better at certain things where iOS isn't. But I'm not here to spark a war against the iOS fans, I'm here to criticize two Android Apps.

The Best App: Lookout Mobile Security

The one thing that sucks about an app market that isn't regulated by a team of Nazis led by a guy in a black turtleneck sweater is that most people aren't responsible with freedom. Apple prunes the bad apps from the good, while Google doesn't care that much unless the application is a duplicate or malicious app. Therefore, there will come the inevitable time when you accidentally download a fake, duplicate copy of some paid app that turns out to be malware that steals everything valuable within your phone (and no, it's not the photos of yourself).

There are many applications on the Android Market that offer malware protection and "app scanning" (comparing your installed apps to a list of known malicious apps), but I think the best choice for this is Lookout Mobile Security. Lookout Security scans every new application that you download from the app market, compare it with their list of known malicious applications, and give you the signal on whether the app you downloaded is malicious or not. Not only that, Lookout Security scans all the apps installed prior to your installation of Lookout, and you can set it to regularly scan your apps every once in a while in case one of them are late bloomers.

You might notice that Lookout Security is a "suite". That means it's a bunch of services grouped together into one program. Not only does Lookout Security check your apps, it also offers a phone-tracking service. Using your phone's GPS and phone network, you can easily find your phone through Lookout's website. Some phone manufacturers provide their own phone-tracking software into some of their devices (I'm looking at you, HTC), but those services require the GPS to be on. If you happen to have lost your phone without its GPS turned on, Lookout can remotely turn on your phone's GPS so that it could track it. If that fails, Lookout will try to find your phone using Wi-Fi connections and nearby cell towers, which is inaccurate by a lot of meters, but reliable. Want to lock access or even wipe the valuable data off your phone (you shouldn't trouble yourself over your pictures)? Lookout can do that for you.

Lookout Mobile Security also offers backup and restore of your phone's data. While all free features are good enough for basic security, you might want to purchase premium, which you can buy for $29.99/year or $2.99 a month. Luckily, all users are able to try out the Premium for free for two weeks.

The Worst App: Vaulty

Vaulty is a small application whose primary purpose is to hide questionable content from your phone's main gallery. At least, that's how I used it. But sadly, it did not do its job well.

First of all, Vaulty works to hide photos and videos from your phone's gallery, where all of your multimedia content is displayed in full glory. It works like this: Pick a couple of photos and/or videos that you would like to hide, and Vaulty will put them in itself, all while removing those photos and/or videos from the gallery and moving them to Vaulty's app folder in your phone memory/SD card. To top all of that, access to the Vaulty...vault is restricted by a password of your choosing.

Seems good enough right? But why is it my worst app for June?

First, moving your files to Vaulty is a tedious process. You can either (1) Do it directly from Vaulty, but Vaulty does not have an option to choose multiple files, so if you got more than 20 files to hide it's gonna take a while. Or (2) You can "send" it to Vaulty by using the Share function in the gallery, which is faster, by the way.

However, once your files are hidden, it's really difficult to navigate through them inside the Vaulty vault. For example, if I hide a manga that's sorted and organized in its own folder in the gallery, and is arranged according to ascending file names, they will most likely be separated if I put them alongside another manga. They will be helplessly jumbled especially if every separate page has a filename like [pagenum].jpg. You put folders in Vaulty, Vaulty lets you see them spread out and cluttered. What shame.

Finally, Vaulty is not really that secure - Vaulty puts your "hidden" files in its folder, which is located in /sdcard/DCIM/vaulty. That means anyone can access your hidden files if they use a file browser like Astro.

A paid version of Vaulty is available, although the only feature it has over the free version is that Vaulty Premium is disguised as a Stocks App. That wouldn't be worth the money especially if you're hanging out with nosy stockbrokers.

What's a better solution for hiding your content from nosy people? Delete them and don't put them on your phone in the first place. However, if you really need to put these on your phone, but just want to hide them from the Gallery, the Gallery has an option to Show/Hide albums from view. This is great especially if you've arranged your questionable photos and videos into separate folders. They are still visible using a file browser though, but at least you're protected from nosy people who aren't that competent with Android phones.

Best Game App: Gun Bros

Gun Bros (pronounced as either Gun Brothers or Gun Brows) is a third-person survival shooter that pits the player against endless waves of monsters. You control one of either of the two Gun brothers, Percy and Francis Gun, the two superhuman members of F.R.A.G.G.E.D. (Freakishly Rugged Advanced Genetics Galatic Enforcement Division), and fight the T.O.O.L. (Tyrannical Oppressors Of Life).

Gun Bros is mainly survival. You are pitted against endless waves of opponents that get stronger and more numerous until your lose by either dying or quitting. As the player increases his level, new weapons and armor are unlocked, giving the player an edge over stronger opponents.

The best part about Gun Bros is its wittiness and humor regarding the age-old genre of shooter games. It has smooth, responsive controls, and every playthrough is bound to be challenging. And what's more, it's free.

Worst Game App: Attack of the Fanboys

Attack of the Fanboys is a survival third person shooter like Gun Bros, the only difference is that instead of being a superhuman fighting evil robots and aliens, you play a superhuman fighting evil fanboy zombies.

While the concept of the game is great, the game appears to be bleak, with its uninspiring level and enemy design. The controls were not very responsive. However, the game did succeed in introducing strategy to the survival shooter genre by adding a limit on ammo - something that Gun Bros did not bother doing.

HTC Desire HD Review

I have recently acquired a kickass HTC Desire HD, for reasons I won't divulge here, but let's just say that I've decided to dump iOS and give Android a try. Particularly because anything bearing the Apple logo (with the exception of my IBM Thinkpad X60s, I sarcastically stuck an Apple logo on its front) means it can be used by kids and will only be used by kids, or old people. Also, they can cost a whole semester's tuition or two. Since I do not fit in either demographic, and is not the kind who wastes money on shiny crap, I've decided to give Android a try with the HTC Desire HD.

The phone set me back Php26,700 (roughly US$ 603). It wasn't part of any postpaid plan, just bought it open line (meaning it's not stuck to any network), and set it for prepaid. When compared to the rest of the world, the system is pretty different in the Philippines, prepaid network services are available here in this country, which means you don't have to be prisoner to a network provider, and SIM cards are easily bought and used anonymously.

This review won't be that comprehensive. I won't go and discuss the insides of the phone, its technical specifications that much. I'll usually only review the essentials, and I've categorized them into categories courtesy of myself.

Performance

Speed is of the essence.

The HTC Desire HD is the fastest phone I've ever handled, thanks to its Qualcomm MSM 8255 1Ghz Scorpion processor. By the time I'm writing this review, 1Ghz smartphone processors are apparently the norm, and the world is currently bracing itself for the hour when dual core phones are distributed on the market. Also, the Desire HD's 768MB of memory allows me to multitask to my heart's content, although it poses some disadvantages (see below). Finally, Android 2.2 (Froyo) is faster and snappier here than its predecessor and the iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G. Comparing the iPhone 3G's performance to the Desire HD would be like comparing the performance of a bicycle with broken gears with a 1996 Dodge Viper GTS.

Concerning storage capacity, the Desire HD carries a disappointing amount of internal space - just about a gigabyte, but you can add in a microSD card with a size up to 32GB, which is probably more than adequate.

Score: 9/10

Market

While the Apple App Store itself is pretty huge and filled with millions of useless apps like flashlights, compatibility machines and Tap Tap Revenge, the Android Market is pretty much the same, albeit smaller, and does not include Tap Tap Revenge. Unlike the App Store though, the Android Market is a complete mess. While some apps on the iPhone are completely free on the Android (one example is Angry Birds), some weren't, a striking example is Remember the Milk, which is pretty disappoint since me and my friends use RTM to organize ourselves. I think the reason for this is that most developers who write for the iPhone first must have rewritten the app for the Android as an afterthought. Consequently, this led to generally bad ported apps.

Also, since Android phones have a lot of performance differences with each other, particularly with screen size, processor speed, memory and whatnot, some apps are optimized for slow phones, others for fast phones such as the Desire HD. Not like I'm complaining, because [1] My phone is fast, and [2] There were a lot of game apps in the App Store which ran horrendously slow on my iPhone 3G.

Score: 6.5/10

Syncing

Since Android phones don't usually come with magical and painfully slow software like iTunes, the Desire HD can be quite a bitch to sync, especially when your music collection is in question. Android phones, however, are associated with your Google account, which means your contacts, calendar, etc. are all synced with your Google account. Winamp is currently touting its ability to sync to Android phones, however, my Winamp doesn't really store any local media in its library, it only imported itself from iTunes. Fortunately, there are plenty of third-party syncing applications available on the Web, some are even able to integrate itself with iTunes (if slow media players are your forte), and there is a chance that your phone's manufacturer bundled your phone with their own syncing tools, that usually suck like shit (according to my experience with such software).

Score: 7/10

Battery Life

As with all smartphones (especially Androids), the Desire HD's battery life is a lot shorter than the lifespan of a domestic house fly, especially if the phone is running on 3G signals all the time. While the solution for this is simple (don't use 3G, goddamnit), the Desire HD, along with other phones not created by Apple give you the ability to change your phone's battery without taking it to some shiny, white shop to be replaced. However, the phone's powerful processor and continuous multitasking, together with its huge 4.3" screen can drain the battery quickly. Some apps even quietly but quickly drain your battery in the background because some of them go on recursive loops trying to refresh itself (even when there is no Internet connection), so there.

Score: 6/10

Media

One of the key selling points of the Desire HD is its oversized 4.3" SuperLCD screen, so no wonder HTC decided to add "HD" to this phone's name, right? I find it great to watch videos of all sorts on the Desire HD, even Youtube videos (provided that I don't get the read the comments). Also, its 480x800 (218 ppi) makes reading e-books and manga very comfortable. Sound quality is excellent too, with its built-in Dolby Mobile surround system and SRS effects, which can be greatly improved more if you have the proper sound output gear (such as good noise-cancelling headphones or a true 5.1 surround sound system).

Score: 9/10

Uniqueness

While the Desire HD follows the design guidelines of Android phones (huge screen, four navigation buttons below), it does stand out from the rest with its non-physical navigation keys and its "totally-not-ripped-off-from-the-iPhone" appearance. The backside of the phone is in matte, unlike most other phones who imitate the iPhone's glossy finish.

The Desire HD is also highly customizable on the inside. You can use live wallpapers (something my iPhone did not have), have several home screens, and other customizable features common to Android phones. While customizing your Android is a little on par with customizing an iPhone, Androids are easier to customize than iPhones since you don't have to jailbreak your phone to have a totally different look. Unless flashing a new ROM is your thing.

Score: 8/10

Misc

There's one thing Google overlooked in Android. There's NO fucking proxy configuration support for wireless networks. Sure, my Desire HD is fast, not too shiny, but it's unable to connect to proxy servers. This sucks, because I spend the majority of my time in DLSU, where our wireless network there is protected by a proxy server. The only option to have proxy configurations is by gaining root (super user) access to the phone, or installing a new ROM (particularly Cyanogenmod), both of which will instantly void my phone's 1 year warranty. I don't really need warranty that much, since I can pretty much fix problems myself, but I think I'll wait a good two weeks first and see if the phone has any defects before I decide to fiddle with it.

Waiting for Gingerbread (Android 2.3) to be supported by HTC would be useless since apparently, from what I've heard from some comments, Google continues to flip the bird at corporate users by ignoring the requests (no, demands is a better term) for proxy support.

Score: 0/10

Verdict

The Desire HD is overall a great phone for media enthusiasts and those who thinks performance-wise in the phone while also being conscious about his budget, since it costs less than an iPhone 3G (at least in my country). It's also a great way to stay away from those kids who got those iPhones that all look alike, without sacrificing your dignity.

Overall: 8/10