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Today’s Apps
- SMS Backup +: back up SMS and MMS messages
- GuidePal City Guides: get carefully curated guides to over 60 destinations
- Omega StatusBar: customize your notifications bar
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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]
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Apps for August 21, 2012
SMS Backup +
Are you annoyed whenever you flash a ROM that your SMS are not in fact backed up, and are instead missing from your device? SMS Backup + is able to back up all of your SMS, MMS, and call log data to Gmail and Google Calendar. It even lets you automatically back up your messages.
SMS Backup + is quite simple and easy to use. You just open it, connect it to an account, and click Backup. You don’t need to keep it open while it uploads, as it’s designed to work in the bcakground. Wait a while for all of your texts and messages to be safely and automatically uploaded straight to the Google hivemind, and you’re done!
If you want your messages to be backed up automatically, it’s easy to do that as well. Just hop over to the Auto backup settings area and select a scheduled upload time. Every once in a while, your device will automatically upload your messages and call log data to Google. SMS Backup + is a very nice little app that lets you backup your messages with great ease.
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v1.4.5
Requires: Android 1.5+
Download size: 1.2MB
GuidePal City Guides
Are you looking forward to your next trip, but dreading becoming the American tourist visiting all of the American touristy places? GuidePal City Guides knows just how you feels, and has an innovative way to counter it: instead of hiring a bunch of tourists to create guides, locals can create the guides for them.
The resulting guides are quite unique. You get a much more realistic view of your destination: no more brand-new tourist attractions that are designed only to suck money from your pocket. These guides feature real places inside of real working cities, and are curated by leading travel journalists. It also includes a handy offline maps feature, allowing you to visit a foreign city without racking up a thousand dollars in roaming fees.
Of course, what’s the use of a guidebook if it doesn’t support your destination? GuidePal City Guides covers over sixty major cities, including 16 North and South American cities, dozens of European cities, and numerous other cities in the Middle East, in Asia, and in Australia. There are always more to come, as well!
There’s even more to GuidePals City Guides than simple maps and lists of attractions. You’re offered a list of transportation, from the usuals to things that would stretch your imagination. You also get easy access to a phrase book, so if you are ever lost in Paris you can ask where the nearest toilettes are.
GuidePals City Guides is a very comprehensive travel aid app. While it lacks things that other apps offer, such as itineraries and text-to-speech translation, its travel databases make it more than worth it for travelling to most any supported destination.
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v1.0.3
Requires: Android 2.1+
Download size: 3.6MB
GuidePal City Guides on Play Store
[via AddictiveTips]
Omega StatusBar
There are a thousand ways to customize your Android device, but unfortunately, as everyone knows, the notification bar is pretty much off limits. There aren’t any apps that can completely replace it with a more-functional, more beautiful status bar, are there? Wrong. Omega StatusBar is a free app that lets you customize virtually every aspect of your bar.
Does your phone run Samsung’s highly customized TouchWiz interface on Ice Cream Sandwich? You’ll notice that it totally disregards anything Google was trying to create with their flat blue design schemes and replaces it with a gaudy green and orange theme Google abandoned with Gingerbread. With Omega StatusBar, you can wipe away the last traces of Samsung’s notification bar changes by simply setting up an Ice Cream Sandwich theme.
Omega StatusBar does more than just theme your notification bar. Because it completely replaces it, you can do anything: you can be notified of device errors, including warnings if your phone is heating up too much, and you can globally ignore any app’s notifications. It also animates the charging icon, something not all phone manufacturers have added, and can group multiple notifications from the same app together. No more receiving twenty notifications for one text conversation!
There’s so much to Omega StatusBar that it’s hard to scratch the surface. It provides additional warnings, as well as complete themeability and greater customizability. If you upgrade to the Pro version, you’ll get better themes, as well as more app ignore slots, more animations, and better system sensor access. Overall, it’s an awesome status bar replacement app and is free for anyone to use.
Price: Free with $1.29 Pro key
Version discovered: v1.2.0.0
Requires: Android 2.1+
Download size: 581KB
Omega StatusBar on Play Store | Pro key
[via AddictiveTips]
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.
