The first app that really changed my Android experience was Teamviewer, an app designed for remote desktop capabilities. My uncle was visiting from Oregon about two months ago, and was using one of our computers to send off some important emails. He was kicking himself because he didn't have some files from his computer that he really needed to refer to, and he asked me if there was any way to get into his computer from Utah. I told him no as a short answer...at least not without someone on the other end setting it up, and without going through the hassle of setting up Windows Remote Desktop, which is a huge pain and has been known to be insecure at times.
I got to thinking about that answer, however, and decided to research different ways to remote control my computers, because I knew that it would be very convenient to be able to access my computer from school, or even to take over my dad's computer to help him solve a computer issue without having to physically be sitting at his machine.
What shocked me is that Teamviewer--which is a free program, by the way--has a mobile app for both Android and iPhone that allows you to access you computer(s) from your phone, using the touch screen to control the mouse.
It's crazy that you can actually do anything on your computer through your phone or the Web that you normally could do, including surfing the Internet, restarting your computer, or even playing games and watching movies. It even has a file transfer mode that lets you transfer files from your computer at home to the one you're using. For example, if I were to forget my homework on my personal computer, I could log in from a school computer, transfer the file, and print it out.
One thing I really love about Sprint is their cooperation with Google to provide a bunch of sweet features. Sprint just barely integrated with Google Voice, which has been super convenient for me. Now, my voicemail is completely controlled through Google Voice, which means that I can set up different voicemail greetings, depending on who's calling me (i.e. I can a different message play for when work calls me, and a completely different message for when a venue calls wanting to book my band for a gig). It also transcribes all of my voicemails into text, so if I can't listen to my message immediately because I'm somewhere loud or only have time to quickly glance at my phone, I can read when the message is about. It also uploads all of the messages to Google, so I can read and/or play them from my computer. It is a super time-saver.
Google has some really cool apps that I am impressed with besides Google Voice. A brand new app that was just released as a beta is called Google Music. This app has two aspects. The first is a music player that is very similar to an iPod, with the ability to listen to the music on your phone by artist, album, playlist, etc. I only have three albums on my phone at the moment, but I love cranking the tunes when I'm out feeding the dog or taking the car after misplacing my iPod, since I am very anti-radio when I can help it (why listen to commercials and songs you don't want to hear if you don't have to).
The even cooler aspect of Google Music is the "cloud" feature, which is currently by invitation only. It lets you upload music from your computer, like from iTunes for example, and listen to it anywhere. This means that I could pull out my phone and listen to any of the music on my computer, without actually having to download the song onto my phone or store it on my SD card. I have an 8GB SD card for my phone, but I still don't want to overload it with music. The three albums I have on my phone are two Coheed and Cambria albums that I listen to all the time, and my recently disbanded rock band Formerly So, in case I want to show it off to somebody. I really hope I get invited to participate in the cloud beta, because I'd love to have more music on my phone, especially because it has a headphone jack and a powerful speaker.
The last app that I found was actually made known to me tonight at work by my friend and coworker Jared. He busted out his phone while we were about to leave (which is also an Android phone), and I saw that his texting app was way cooler than the original Android Messaging app. It had a sweet grunge-like theme and had the threads animated with color-coded word bubbles, apparently like the iPhone.
The app is called Handcent, and--like all of the other apps that I've mentioned--is completely free. I chose to set up mine with the same grunge theme that Jared had, called Metal (shown above), but there were tons to choose from. I also like how the pictures for each contact are much bigger, which helps me to quickly recognize who I'm talking to.
I love how the Android phones are so easily customized. After installing these apps, and designing my own Coheed and Cambria wallpaper for my phone, I feel like it's completely different from the phone I bought a few months ago. Even though I'm anxiously waiting for my upgrade period to arrive so I can move up to the Evo or Nexus S, or whatever cool new phone is out when the time comes, this phone has been perfect for me and has really lived up to its name.
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