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.
