Tag: android

Perfect Keyboard An Amazing Alternative To Your Stock Android Keyboard

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date August 13, 2011
No Comments on Perfect Keyboard An Amazing Alternative To Your Stock Android Keyboard

We have been using the same old Android stock keyboard for quite some while now and certainly the time has come for a changeover. Perfect Keyboard is a must have android keyboard alternative available on the android market and imparts the ability to do a lot of customization with immense convenience. Now typing would no more be a tedious job.

The main screen has some options which are only needed once, like enabling Perfect keyboard, switching to perfect keyboard, sharing it on tweeter, facebook, email etc and removing it from the app drawer. You can enable it and then switch to it so that you don’t have to use the stock keyboard. Initially you will have to enable it which you can do either from the app’s interface or by going to settings<language and keyboard settings.

After you are done with enabling and witching to the new keyboard, you can take a look at it by long pressing the menu button on the home screen or anywhere.

Now that you are all done, you must start customizing it so that it suits your needs and likes. Go to the settings of the app to access a host of features available which eventually will let you explore the same.

The first word suggestion settings gives you the power to use features like touch to correct words, auto capitalization, quick fixes, show suggestions, auto complete etc, which are also available in the stock .

The next which is vibrate and sound enables the user to activate vibration and sound and even select the intensity. You can also switch the pop on keypress feature on, which pops the a particular character when you press it.

Coming to layout now which is the most important feature of the app, you can simply do amazing customizations on the keyboard. Options like horizontal layout, vertical layout, landscape layout, portrait layout contain a number of sub-options which will help you personalize as per your convenience. Through horizontal layout, you can change the key height, row gap, text size, bottom padding and arrows keys height, so that all the keys fit your fingers and typing becomes easier.

Similarly you can do with the vertical layout so that it suits your preferences. In portrait layout, you can change it to normal, T9 and compact.

From landscape layout you can switch to normal view, which is the conventional one, or to split view which is an impressive feature as it splits the keyboard into three sections with the first and third one for alphabets and other characters and the middle one for numbers.

You can also enable the feature to show the settings key on the keyboard so that you can access the same anytime to make required changes. The settings key will be next to the mic key.

Tweaks is an option on the app’s settings, on entering which you will find a number of small yet useful tweaks to perform. It includes show touch points, enable debug logs, set long press delay, enable no landscape full screen option where the keyboard does not go full screen on switching to landscape mode, enable portrait full screen where you can switch to full screen keyboard even in portrait mode, access number keypad by 123 key and a number of other features.

Another very cool feature is where the app auto enters the domain for incomplete addresses. Also you can access all the domains instantly by long pressing the / key.

App Requirements: Compatible with Android deices. Requires android 2.2 and up.

Conclusion: All in all it is a brilliant piece of work which is way beyond our expectations in terms of productivity and I personally recommend you to download it. In case you like to try out other features like keyboard themes and domain editing etc, you can switch to the paid version.

Our Rating: 4| Price: Free | Visit Android Market Link To Install Perfect Keyboard Free

[ This app comes for iPhone – No ]

Tags android, android phone

Utilities

Add Widgets, Shortcuts On Android Phone Lock Screen

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date August 12, 2011
No Comments on Add Widgets, Shortcuts On Android Phone Lock Screen

XDA developer, who dedicatedly work for Android OS have come up with a new lock screen for the same which is quite nice and easy to use. It is perfect for all sorts of devices and is pretty fast.

The app is not available on the Android market but its APK file is available on the developer’s website. So you will have transfer the apk file to your device first and then install it. When you start the app it will open the settings first from where you must enable it first.

Now once you have enabled it, you can lock your phone and then unlock it to see the lock screen. The screen will be brand new and fresh and supports widgets only. So you can hold the screen until the widgets window pops up.

From here you can select as many widgets as the space on the screen allows. Most importantly you must put the GWL unlock button on the screen so that you can unlock your phone.

On my lock screen I have added the android market widget, the power button widget, a battery solo widget and last but not the least the GWL unlock button. Please remember wherever you hold your finger on the screen, the widget will be added at the same place and you will not be able to place it anywhere else or drag it.

In order to remove all the widgets, since you cannot remove one by one, press the menu button and the trash bin will appear at the bottom.

Now that you know how to apply and use the app, we can now come to the settings part. As displayed in the first image, the main sections are the General settings and the Advanced settings. In general you will get to see options like use secret code, custom wallpaper, enable volume keys, and lock on calls.

The most important feature of adding a security code at the time of unlocking the phone works great. I used it myself and when tapped on the lock button, a window asking for the password appeared.

In the advanced settings you can use options like Use the force which is used to unlock the screen with the help of light sensors. The force skip option skips the original lock and uses the GWL lock screen.

When you enable the option of Use the Force, you will be able to set your level of experience of using this feature so that it could well assist you and does not bring any trouble while using the lock screen.

Conclusion: The concept is nice and works well except for crashes which happen sometimes since it is the beta stage.

Our Rating: 3.5 | Price: Free | Visit XDA Developers Link To Download Generic Widget Lockscreen Beta4.apk

[ This App Comes For iPhone – No ]

Tags android, android phone

Photography

Modify, Add Preset Effects On Camera Pictures On Android Phone

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date August 8, 2011
No Comments on Modify, Add Preset Effects On Camera Pictures On Android Phone

When it comes to apps that let us add cool effects to our pictures, there are many options but according to me, today’s app is the best one so far. Magic Hour Free is the latest app to add cool effects to your shots at the time you take it and one can also perform some nice filtering over those freshly clicked pictures.

Before I start with the app let me tell you that it is a free version of the app, so features like the Photo Album and a few others are not available on it and if you find the app really interesting, then you can buy the paid one from Android Market. The main screen has five buttons, the Take Photo, Photo Album, Manage Filters, the settings button on the right side in the middle and the Filter Market Go button at the bottom.

Starting with the settings first, we have options like take photo at the time the app starts, enabling guides, saving location, saving directory path, image size, and sharing options for twitter, facebook and a few other websites.

Press the take photo button and after making changes to focus and flash options, you take a picture. The moment you do it, the app will take you to the favorites page with all the 40 awesome filters waiting to be added to your picture. You can scroll through all the filters and add any of your choice. Interestingly you can also create your own filter by hitting Make Your Own Filter button at the bottom. In my case I went with the latter and created my own filter and the option lets you do literally anything with your photo.

As I hit the make your own filter button, I was taken to another screen where there are some nice modifications which you can adopt. On the top you have the back button undo button and the Black and White, button which changes a coloured image to black and white. At the bottom, the Curves option lets you change the overall contrast and brightness of the photo. Through Adjust you can manually change the contrast, brightness and saturation of the picture.

Through the Vignette option you can add a blur effect to the surroundings and can also increase or decrease the intensity of the effect by moving the slider. You also get a number of blur shapes to add.

Via Texture option, as the word says a texture could be added to the photo and once again you can change the intensity and choose from a number of textures.

From the last Frames button, some nice photo frames can be applied.

Once you are done adding the effects, hit done and option for saving the filter, sharing the photo and saving will appear on the screen. You can also go back to the original photo by hitting the Original button with a reverse arrow.

So as far as taking pictures and adding filters are concerned, I have explained you each bit. Now let us come to the management part by hitting the Manage Filters button from the main screen. Here you have a number of sections like Favorites, Presets, My FIlters and Download. Favorite keeps all the 40 preset filtes in the list so that you can add any but if you want only a selected number, you can delete filters by simply tapping on them.

The preset is the list will all the 40 filters which can be added or removed from the favorites list by tapping on the star next to them.

My filters contains the filters that you create and save when you edit pictures on your own. The Download section contains all the downloaded filters which could be downloaded from the Filter Market option, present on the main screen or you can tap on the drop down button next to the Manage Filters button present in the middle at the top, and the select Filter market.

App Requirements: Compatible with Android deices. Requires android 2.1 & Up

Conclusion: It certainly does wonder to the pictures you take and it’s a must one.

Our Rating: 4.5/5 | Price: Free | Visit Android Market Link To Install Magic Hour Free

[ This App Comes For iPhone – Yes, Visit Apple Store Link To Download ]

Tags android, android phone

Social Networking

Play Chess, Checkers Online With Other People On Android Phone

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date August 5, 2011
No Comments on Play Chess, Checkers Online With Other People On Android Phone

Social Networking is gaining new heights everyday with countless apps to download from the internet. Android Market has been recently added with yet another social networking app called as Keyja. Its completely new, user friendly and offers least possible interface tweaking to keep it running fast.

The main screen has four main sections, Play, Talk, Meet & Settings. To see what these menus contain simply tap on the + sign to expand them. The Play section contains games like Checkers, Chess, Connect4 and Othello. In the talk section you have instant messaging, chat rooms and keymail.

The same way the Meet section contains My profile and Search a profile features and the Settings section has account settings, booky list which means bookmarked users list, iggy list meaning the ignored users list and buddy list.

To play games with online users you can tap on any game and enter the lobby. You can create room there or join other’s rooms.

While playing you can also chat with the other player through a small messaging window provided at the bottom.

In order to edit your profile so that people come to know everything about you, go to Meet and select my profile.

If you want to search users online you can once again go to Meet and select Search a profile from where you can filter your search according to country age group, by login, by gender etc.

The result with all the users as per your preference will be displayed on the next screen from where you can contact them either by instant messaging(by tapping on the right button of the two in front of each user) or you can contact him by email or add one to your buddy list or ignore list etc by tapping on the first small button with a card on it.

From the settings menu you can alter the invitation settings to confirm whether you want to get invitations from anyone, buddies only or no one.

From the same settings menu you can also see the list of moderators. As of now only Joel could be seen as a moderator in the list.

From the Talk menu as I mentioned above, you can go to the chat lobbies, go to instant messaging to talk to already added friends from your list.

Keymail is another cool feature where you can create and send emails to users on your Keyja list. You can also access Inbox, sent and read folders from the keymail section.

App Requirements: Compatible with Android deices. Requires android 1.6 – 3.1.

Conclusion: Its amazing to have friends and this app will be helpful in finding more of them

Our Rating: 3.5/5 | Price: Free | Visit Android Market Link To Install Keyja Social Networking App

[ This App Comes For iPhone – No ]

Tags android, android phone

Utilities

Track Daily, Monthly Data Usage Of Wifi, 2g/3g On Android Phone

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date August 4, 2011
No Comments on Track Daily, Monthly Data Usage Of Wifi, 2g/3g On Android Phone

It is quite important to keep an eye on the amount of data you are using a month on your phone when it comes to limited data plans since at the end of the month you might end up paying a handful of money which could have been avoided. If you own an android phone then we have found the solution for you to keep a track of your monthly usage.

Traffic Statistics is the latest and most accurate application developed so far and tracks the amount of data used on a daily and monthly basis.

The interface is extremely clean with the least possible confusing details, making it user friendly. On the main screen one can see the wifi and 2g/3g traffic for the current day as well as the current month. Analyzing the on-screen options, starting from the left we have the settings button, clear counter button, button for changing colour, feedback button, help button and lastly the exit button with an arow towards right.

In the settings menu the application has a number of options making it more convenient and productive for you to use. The first option is the Is enabled alert for enabling the service, followed by options like Alarm Value, Clear Date, Set Unit, 2g/3g Traffic Correct and Wi-Fi Traffic Correct.

The alarm value option can be used to preset the amount of data one wants to use for both 2g/3g and Wi-fi, over the whole month or for a particular day, after exceeding which the app will raise an alarm to notify the user that the limit has been reached. So to enter the value just tap on it and type in the numbers in the desired section.

Clear Date is another good feature where the date can be set for all the months on which the traffic counters will be cleared bringing the data usage value to zero after which the app will immediately start tracking again.

If one wants to see the usage in terms of megabytes, bytes, kilobytes or gigabytes then he or she can change it from the Set Unit option.

The traffic correct options provided at the last are used to correct the data value. For instance after correcting my wifi traffic value by 1 MB, the mainscreen started counting the data after an MB and not from zero.

In case you have any suggestions or feedback about the app, you can use the mail button on the main interface and send your opinion along with your age and gender to the developing team.

Conclusion: So far this is the most simple and easy to use app for tracking monthly data usage

Our Rating: 4/5 | Price: Free | Visit Android Market Link To Install Traffic Statistics

[ This App Comes For iOS – No ]

Tags android, android phone

Utilities

Stop Receiving Spam, Advertising SMS On Your Android Phone With SMS Blocker [Free]

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date August 1, 2011
1 Comment on Stop Receiving Spam, Advertising SMS On Your Android Phone With SMS Blocker [Free]

Whether you own a Vodafone number or an Airtel one or any other, the biggest problem now a days is the uncountable number of advertisements through SMSs. Many do get Do Not Disturb a.k.a DND service activated but it hardly helps but if you own an Android device then I have probably found a solution to these unwanted messages.

smsBlocker is the best spam message blocker so far and I believe it’s the perfect app for your phone and will not disappoint you. In fact I have been using it for a while and found it simply amazing. At the first screen you just have to set the country code and proceed.

At the beginning it will scan your inbox and will ask you to check the boxes for the messages that you want to block in the future. So select all those messages and hit the Add button present at the bottom.

The next screen will take you to the actual interface of the app where you get tabs like Block, Allow, Filter, Logs and Settings.

In case you want to add more numbers to your block list you can tap on menu and select add which will being a small pop up window on your screen with options like Inbox, Phonebook and Manual Entry. Through Inbox option you can go to your inbox again and select the respective messages. With the Phonebook option you can block numbers already existing in your contact list.

Just to make you understand, I did add a few more messages by tapping on Inbox and then selecting the unwanted ones.

Switching to the allow tab will take you to the next feature where you can manually enter the numbers which are to be allowed.

Filter is the next option where you can enter the words that are supposed to be blocked or allowed. For example I wanted to block all the messages with any association with snapdeal, so I entered the word snapdeal in the block content category so that the filter can do its job.

The Logs option is similar to your call logs and keeps a record of the blocked messages. In my case it was one so the app is showing a single message in the logs section.

From the settings menu you can enable or disable the app and can also set the country code.

On hitting the menu button in the settings section, you would also a Share option with which you can share it via Bluetooth, Facebook, gmail or many other options.

One can also track the number of messages blocked in the notification drop down menu and interestingly by the time I ended reviewing the app, it blocked 2 more messages taking the total to 3 from the previous 1 as seen in the logs section.

Conclusion: So far I bet it’s the best spam message blocker app and is definitely a must one.

Our Rating: 4.5/5 | Price: Free | Visit Android Market Link To Install smsBlocker

Tags android, android phone

Utilities

Make Android Phone Faster In Single Tap With Easy SpeedUp

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date July 30, 2011
No Comments on Make Android Phone Faster In Single Tap With Easy SpeedUp

There is no end to the list of utilities available for android to make it run faster and the newest one to be added is known as Easy SpeedUp. The application is an amazing piece of work and helps make your phone run faster at one tap of your finger. The top portion of the app shows the percentage of CPU being used and just below is the total memory available on the phone for application use.

The application frees up space by closing the running applications and to know which one will be closed just look for the nuclear button on the right hand side of each app. If that button is present, the app will be terminated and restarted once you use the one tap SpeedUp feature. SO to use it just hit the 1-Click SpeedUp button present at the bottom and it will do its job.

Once hit a small pop up window will show the number of processes terminated and the amount of memory freed as seen in the above image. Some apps, termed as Favorites are not terminated and are represented by a star button, instead of the nuclear button on the right. In order to hide or unhide the favorite apps, which includes only Easy SpeedUp for the moment, just tap on the star present on the right bottom corner.

In order to refresh your phone just tap on the left bottom corner button with two arrows and your processes will be refreshed.

The app is so simple that it does not contain any settings menu so if one hits the menu button to explore the app more, you would only see an about tab where information about the app such as version etc will be displayed and an exit button.

App Requirements: Compatible with Android deices. Requires android 1.6 – 3.1.

Conclusion: In all this seems to be a simple yet powerful app to make your phone faster

Our Rating: 4/5 | Price: Free | Visit Android Market Link To Install Easy SpeedUp

Tags android

Utilities

Copy, Save All Android Phone Data Includes SMS, Settings, Call logs, Favorites Etc With Backup Everything

Post author By Kashish Bidsar
Post date July 29, 2011
No Comments on Copy, Save All Android Phone Data Includes SMS, Settings, Call logs, Favorites Etc With Backup Everything

We have covered a lot of backup applications like MobileGo, Application Backup & Restore and many others here at this link. Some are meant for backing up SMSs only, some for applications and some for a complete backup. Backup Everything is an amazing small application for creating backup of literally everything present on an android devices.

I believe it’s the easiest to use android backup application existing on the internet and is of extreme use under conditions where you want to make backup of the following things: SMS, MMS, Bookmarks, Call Log (including missed, dialed and received calls, System Settings, Alarms, Apn and last but not the least, your Applications.

The same application can also be used to restore the above mentioned sections from a previous backup file and restoring is again as simple as one could think of. In order to start backing up your data follow the steps given below.

Start the application. The first interface of the application would be similar to what you see above where you can Check All or Uncheck All or manually select the following sections you wish to make backup of.
Hit backup after which the app will ask for a confirmation of the sections whose backup will be created where you have to press OK and as you hit Ok the backup will start immediately.

The app creates a directory/folder named Backup Everything in your SD-card where the backup files will be stored and will be retrieved for future restorations.

For restoring, tap on the Restore tab present next to Backup at the top of your screen and follow the same steps which you followed for Backup process. The only difference is that instead of a Backup button at the bottom, a Restore button will be displayed.

One can also manage previously made backup settings by pressing the Menu button and then selecting the only option present there, View And Manage.

The developer has done an amazing piece of work by keeping the interface extremely simple and clean and also by adding only the required options with no tantrums for the users.The app is not available on the android market but for your convenience you can search on google for an APK file through which you can install it manually on your android phone. For those of you who don’t know how to install an app through APK file, navigate to Settings>Applications>Unknown Source and check the box. Transfer the file to your phone by connecting it to PC and then you can install it.

App Requirements: Compatible with Android deices. Requires android 1.6 – 3.1.

Conclusion: In all this seems to be a simple yet powerful app to backup of your personal data and settings.

Our Rating: 3.5/5 | Price: Free | Search On Google For The APK File To Install Backup Everything

Tags android, android phone