With the arrival of high-profile Android phones on so many new devices this holiday season, many of my friends are finally jumping on the Android bandwagon. First off: Welcome!

Second, many of you keep asking me (as someone who’s been using Android for almost a year already with my 1st gen G1) what apps you should install.

So, here is a list of the apps I currently use, in no particular order. I probably won’t keep this very up to date, though if something life-changing comes along I’ll try to remember to update the list. I’ll try to update the list occasionally.

APPS

• Advanced Task Manager – One of the few pay apps I run and worth every penny. Allows you to manage which apps are allowed to run and which ones aren’t, etc. One of Android’s biggest features is also one of its drawbacks: multitasking. Much like WinMo devices, it can run multiple apps at once but many of those apps don’t “quit” when you leave them. They simply go to the background. This costs you battery life and CPU cycles. Sometimes that’s a good thing, other times not so much. This app lets you kill apps that need killing and even lets you schedule regular termination to squash some pesky apps that auto-start periodically in the background. I got an immediate boost in battery life and performance with this relatively inexpensive app.

(continued after the break)

• AK Notepad – One of dozens of basic notepad apps on Android. Nothing special, this just happens to be the one I picked.
• ASTRO – my file manager of choice. Worth noting that the pay version of this app also has some task management features like “Adv Task Manager”, but I prefer that apps features to the one’s built into ASTRO. ASTRO does allow you to backup any free apps to your SD card (though sadly not run them from the SD card unless you have rooted your phone) and copy/paste/move/rename files like any good file manager program should. Don’t use ASTRO anymore. Good app, but got to be a little too bloated with scope creep. For the moment I’ve shifted over to Linda File Manager. Good, small app for file management.
  
• Barcode Scanner – used for one thing: Scanning QR-Code barcodes for hours of fun.
• Base Toucher Lite – Cool app that reminds me to call and talk with friends. Sounds lame, but I’m just that antisocial sometimes. This lets me set 5 friends with “touch” frequencies. Reminds me to touch base with them every X number of days so I can maintain those friendships. [good app, but discontinued using it myself]
• Bloo – Best Facebook app I’m aware of. More features and better implemented than the official Facebook app or the Facebook mobile page. I found it worth paying for.
• Toggle Widgets – A set of widgets I put on my desktop that let me turn on/off features of the phone. I use the Bluetooth, Wifi, and Brightness Toggle Widgets. They look nice and function perfectly.
• Bookmarker Bookmark Manager Free – For some weird reason the default Android browser bookmark system arranges your bookmarks in the order they were created and cannot be re-ordered. This app lets you rearrange your bookmarks however you’d like.
• Bookmarks 2 – allows you to create shortcuts straight to any of your browser Bookmarks on your homes screen – but with prettier icons. Even allows you to take/crop screenshots of the webpage as the icon if no favicon, etc is available.
• Kaboodle – Tiny little app that just gives me an “Add to Kaboodle List” option on the “Share” menu for any browser page. Lets me quickly add things to my Kaboodle wish lists from my phone.
• mAnalytics – Great mobile interface for Google Analytics web stats
• wpToGo – WordPress authoring/editing tool. Doesn’t allow you to manage your WP dashboard, but is a remarkably good editor for WP posts.
• SportyPal – An running/jogging/biking, etc tool. Just started using it myself. Looks cool and supposedly helps me keep track of how much I’ve been working out, etc. Cool app, just too bloated and I didn’t use it. Go figure, since I’m obviously a workout nut.
  
• T-Mobile Hotspot Connect – only useful for those of you on T-Mobile of course, but lets me find and get on any T-Mobile HotSpot around the US
• Contact Owner – Very simple app that adds your basic contact info to the lock screen. That way if you lose your phone someone knows how to contact you even though they can’t unlock your phone.
• Contacts GroupU – Lets you create more custom groups for contacts. The built-in Contacts manager is pretty basic. Nice app, but didn’t really give me the extra function I was looking for.
• ConvertAll – basic unit converter. Don’t use it much, but just seems too useful not to have installed, right? In an effort to clean up my app installs, I mostly just use the built-in capabilities of Google search for this now.
• Facebook Sync – Syncs all my Facebook Contacts’ profile pics and sets them as the caller ID pic on my phone. Pretty cool :-)
• Flashlight – Very basic app that just turns the screen all white and the brightness all the way up. Turns the phone into a pretty effective flashlight. Returns all settings when the app exits.
• FTP Server – yes, an actual FTP server for serving files off my phone on the web. Don’t use it often, but has served me well when needing a way to get files off my phone wirelessly. Awesome if you need it, but I never used it, so I uninstalled after a while.
• G-Mon – a war driving app that simply scans the area for any WiFi access points (open or not) and then tags them on a map with GPS. Set it to running, drive around your neighborhood, then go home and load the map in Google Earth. Very cool results :-)
• GPS 1 Click Direction – Turn-by-Turn GPS with outloud (voice) directions. Worth every penny, though once Android 2.0 and the enhanced turn-by-turn stuff that is on the Verizon DROID becomes standard on Google Maps, this will be obsolete. In the mean time it beats the heck out of the default Google Maps app for getting somewhere in the car. Obsolete now that Google has built-in Navigation for Google Maps. Much improved. 1 Click was a great app to fill the gap though. Just not needed anymore.
• GPS Tracker – Basic app that lets me record raw GPS data for recording where i am and have been, but more useful than that it also has a mode where you can setup a special SMS code for your phone. Then if you lose your phone, just use another cellphone to send your phone a SMS message with that special code. When your phone gets the message it will turn on GPS, find out where it is, then text the GPS coordinates back to the phone you texted from. Boom, found your phone!
• GV – Google Voice app that is far superior to the one Google makes (sad isn’t it?)
• Google Voice – The official app has caught up with GV and has much better features now. Development on GV has actually been discontinued.
• gTask – very small “app” that is a glorified shortcut to the mobile site for Google Tasks. Makes it a little faster and easier to load though.
• Home++ – Best Home replacement app out there. Allows for more home screens, features a great quick-access bar and a few other features. Best part is that it is faster than most other home replacements, smaller install, and FREE. Did i mention it was FREE. Only downside vs. other home replacements is that it doesn’t allow skins, but I’ll take free and more features over skins any day.
• Layar – Augmented reality app. Very cool. Just try it out. Trust me.
• Listen – Google’s “official” podcast app. Best podcast manager/player out there, but unfortunately it doesn’t let you easily add any link for a podcast. It has to been one in a preset (though admittedly large) directory of podcasts. Also doesn’t support video podcasts. Still my preference compared to other options though
• LukLuk – simple app that lets you watch a selection of movies and TV shows streamed over a 3G connection. I’m sure this is all perfectly legal and licensed…
• Metal Detector – Turns your phone into a metal detector. Not a very useful one, but cool for showing off your phone
• NewsRob – Google Reader client. I just use the web-based Google Reader mobile site. It has improved a lot recently so this is one more app I could clean off my system. Good for what it does if you need off-line Reader capabilities though.
• OI Safe – password safe. If you have to remember a huge set of passwords that constantly have to change (like i do for work) this is a must-have app
• Pandora – Lets you listen to (and create new) Pandora stations on the fly. This app is a MUST
• PdaNet – this one isn’t on the Android market but can be found on the web. Simple tethering app that lets you use your phone’s 3G data connection on your laptop/PC.
• Pure Calendar Widget – Lets you put your day’s calendar on your home screen. Very useful for me to stay on top of my day.
• Qik – Live video broadcasting from my phone. I also use the uStream app occasionally, though i like the Qik app a little more.
• Rings Extended – By default Android only lets you use certain built-in sounds for many notification events, etc (though you can set ring tones to just about any MP3 on your phone). This lets you use any sound file anywhere on your phone for any sound event.
• Ruler – gives you an accurate ruler on your screen. Kinda useful/cool.
• Shazam – Lets you hold your phone up to a speaker playing any music anywhere anytime, then identifies what you’re listening to. Great for when you hear some song on the radio and want to know who it is, etc. Also lets you then buy that song on AmazonMP3, search for the artists on MySpace/YouTube, etc. Very cool
• Shop Savvy – Lets you scan the barcode of any product anywhere, then searches the web for the best prices online and in stores, gives you reviews of the product, and lets you save products to a list. Amazingly useful. Amazon also has an official app (that is a huge bloated piece of software) that lets you just take a picture of the item and supposedly identify it but it doesn’t work so well. This app uses barcodes and pulls from more sites than just Amazon
• Skype – Simple app that lets you see who is online and text chat with them through Skype. Unfortunately doesn’t allow for voice or video chat right now.
• Snap Photo Pro – first app worth paying for. The built-in camera app on Android kinda sucks. This one gives you TONS of options (including the ability to edit/crop/adjust levels) and lets you take much higher quality pictures. Worth every penny to buy the full version
• Spare Parts – Kinda like “power toys” for old versions of Windows. Just opens up settings and tweaks for the Android system that are normally hidden.
• SportsTap – shows me scores, summaries, and box scores for just about any sports/team I want.
• StreamFurious – lets me listen to any ShoutCast server on the web
• Stopwatch – Basic stopwatch app.
• Talk To Me – Think universal translators from Star Trek. Talk into your phone, select the language you want, it says (out loud) what you just said in the language you selected.
• TwitterRide – my favorite Twitter client. I’ve had others in the past, but this is my fav of the moment. Faster and smaller install than the very bloated Twidroid. Great feature set, etc.
• twt – the smallest/lightest/most basic Twitter client i could find. I use it for quickly checking my work Twitter account occasionally.
• Twidroid – Speed has improved since early versions and the feature set just beats all other Twitter apps. Keeps all caches on the SD card rather than in system memory like TwitterRide and allows for multiple Twitter accounts to be managed from one app. Also supports the new ReTweet function and Lists better than any other Twitter app. Costs more than it should, but I do find it worth it now.
• Voice Recorder – simple voice recorder app
• Voicemail – T-Mobile visual voicemail app.
• Weather – basic, small weather widget for my desktop. The Weather Channel app is cool, but huge and bloated. This does everything i need in a weather app in under 500k
• Xtremelabs Speedtest – lets me test the speed of the network I’m on at the time (EDGE, 3G, wifi, etc)

GAMES

• Battle for Mars – Awesome realtime strategy game. Worth paying for if you like RTSs at all.
• Phit Droid – Fun, simple puzzle game.
• Chess – Um. It’s a chess game.
• Mahjongg
• Friction Mobile – really addictive, very fun little arcade-style game.
• Droid Mini-Golf
• Labyrinth Lite – marble maze game
• Shot – another fun, simple puzzle game
• Nesoid – Nintendo Entertainment Center emulator. Pay app but worth every penny.
• Snake – old time snake game
• Solitare
• Trap – fun little arcade game