Email article
Today’s Apps
- Androidify: turn yourself into an Android (avatar)!
- Metal Sniffer: turn your phone into a metal detector
- Speedtest.net: check network speeds
Subscribe to dotTech to never miss an article: RSS Feed | E-mail
About Android Apps of the Day
Android has over 450,000 apps. With so many apps out there, app discovery (aka finding new and useful apps) is extremely difficult. With our Android Apps of the Day initiative, dotTech aims to change that. Everyday we post three apps, allowing our readers to discover new apps, daily. Enjoy! [Subscribe to dotTech to never miss an article: RSS Feed | E-mail]
Developers: Click here to get your apps featured here!
dotTechies: Want to see an app on here? Send us a tip!
Apps for August 11, 2012
Androidify
Looking for a flashy new avatar for Twitter, or a new Gmail icon to wow your contacts? Androidify is a silly little app that lets you design a Bugdroid avatar. It can be based on a person, or just entirely made up! Personally, I think I look rather fetching in Bugdroid form.
With Androidify, you can change a lot more than clothing to make a Bugdroid more like you. It lets you change skin color, clothing, shoes, glasses, and even some optional fun accessories. Here’s a video, created by the developer, showing off what you can do:
It’s hands-down a fun little app, and is worth getting if even to play around with. Download it now!
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v1.13
Requires: Android 2.1+
Download size: 2.1MB
Metal Sniffer
Did you know your phone has the ability to track metal using its built-in magnetometer? So long as your device has a compass, it actually does! Metal Sniffer is a free and fun app that lets you detect both metal and magnets with a great-looking, Holo-style interface.
Metal Sniffer doesn’t actually show you any type of distances, but instead shows the magnetic field in microteslas. It shows both the current magnetic field, and a graph showing the magnetic field over time. It can show you X, Y, and Z coordinates, but these are unfortunately just directional coordinates rather than locational coordinates.
In essence, Metal Sniffer is a fun but quite useless app. It’s definitely not designed for actual use cases, as it’s built using the side effect of having a compass in your phone, and is only as accurate as the cheap chip your manufacturer bought as an afterthought in design. However, it’s fun to wander around and see what you can find. Let’s have a contest: what’s the strongest magnetic field in your house?
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v0.6.0
Requires: Android 2.1+
Download size: 808KB
Speedtest.net
Ever wonder if you’re really getting those 4G speeds? With Speedtest.net, you can find out for sure! Its global network insures accuracy, and means you can set out on a personal mission to find where you have good and bad coverage.
Speedtest.net brings the popular webapp to your mobile tablet or phone, and lets you test both your Wi-Fi and cellular data connections. Its results list lets you compare various past tests, allowing you to see what you get, and where. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show you the location of each test, but it does differentiate between cellular and Wi-Fi tests.
Overall, Speedtest.net is a great app for testing network connections in various locations, and even on various networks. It’d be nice to see exactly what network you were connected to when you took a test, but as it is, its ability to show you what type of network you took it on is plenty.
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v2.0.9
Requires: Android 1.6+
Download size: 3.0MB
dotTechies: We have tested all the apps listed above. However, Android Apps of the Day articles are not intended as “reviews” but rather as “heads-up” to help you discover new apps. Always use your best judgement when downloading apps, such as trying trial/free versions before purchasing paid apps, if applicable.
