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These are the apps on my pocket computer (at the time of writing).
The ones marked gapps
are all by Google and are from the Google
Apps supplementary package. The ones marked CM
come with CyanogenMod.
Many look like generic Android apps. CM*
indicates apps known to be
special in Cyanogenmod, or for which there is some evidence of improved
features (hacking). The classification of apps in these categories is not
too carefully cross-checked. Apps not marked with either of these symbols
were downloaded from the Android Market (Play Store).
There is also an alphabetical list of the apps.
The phone dialer. At least
in Android-2.3.4 Gingerbread
, the T9 predictive dialing feature
was added in Cyanogenmod.
Speech to text for the phone dialer.
Mail client dedicated and adapted for Gmail.
Mail client for generic IMAP or POP service.
Since I'm now using webmail on my home server I have not installed any advanced mail reader app. One of my objections to Android mailer apps is that they save the headers locally, or at least index the mail locally, which may speed up searching but which takes a lot of local space. Formerly I used K-9, which is a very nice mailer, if it would just be a little less helpful, particularly regarding push e-mail.
XMPP/Jabber client. This is an instant message protocol. Not like SMS at 20 cents per message.
XMPP/Jabber client dedicated to Google Talk.
Views and sends SMS
text messages
. Only this format.
Client for SSH and Telnet, and can also do local terminal emulation.
The standard Android web browser.
All it does is open the browser on Google with a query-string of your search terms. I don't use it much. Many desktop themes include a search widget on every page, but it's possible to get rid of it: Settings - Interface - Launcher - Homescreen - Search Bar (turn off).
Google Search with speech to text input, so you can speak your search terms.
Shows current and forecasted weather at your current location (or a custom location). Shows current news in various categories. The source of this information is not obvious, but most likely it's from Google, and the app is unlikely to be specific to CyanogenMod. I can't identify which APK file is providing this.
This is the standard Google Maps app. Includes traffic and terrain view overlays. If you search for advertisers in a category, e.g. restaurants, their locations will be shown, with a cross reference to relevant web resources. Install it from the Market (Play Store).
To activate, long-press on the map (preferably over a location marker or your GPS position). A pop-up will appear giving the address. Click on it. In the menu page that appears, pick Street View. You can change the direction and location of view to show your target. Install it from the Market (Play Store).
Shows Google advertisers near your location and allows searching by category. May have been installed with Google Maps.
Gives spoken turn by turn navigation directions to a destination, with a map in perspective view. May have been installed with Google Maps.
Turn so the back faces a point in the sky, and the app will show the stars, planets, constellations, etc. in that area. (Works in daylight.) Very nice.
Organizes your locally stored music and starts it playing. Can show the local library by album, artist, genre, custom playlists, etc. Can handle M3U playlists, and media in various formats including Ogg. Does not do trans-net URLs. In CM10.0 it had the annoying habit of shuffling everything always, but in CM10.1 it defaults to playing things in playlist order, unless you tell it to shuffle. I've settled on Apollo as my preferred media player.
The only music player I could find in the market that advertises ogg. Get the free plugin pack for MP3 etc etc. It handles Icecast and M3U URLs passed from the browser. Ad supported, pay $1.90 for pro version, to get rid of ads.
When you copy media (music, photos, video) onto your pocket
computer or delete it, the media indexer (Media Storage builtin app)
doesn't realize (no inotify?) and reports to apps (Gallery, music players)
deleted content and doesn't report new content. It runs at reboot, or when
you unmount/remount the (internal?) SD card, which is a pain. This app
will trigger it; if you turn on the auto quit
preference the app
will immediately exit.
You can set the DSP for bass boost or six channel equalization, separately for the wired headset, speaker or Bluetooth.
You can make voice notes with this app. The level was awfully low; I couldn't figure how to influence the volume or whether it was the record or playback volume at fault. Recordings end up in /sdcard/recording-${time}.3gpp where the format of the time is not obvious. 3GPP is a container format similar to MPEG-4; I haven't found what format the stuffing is in, but AAC is likely.
Takes pictures. Can use the rear or front camera. Can do video and panorama too.
Organizes still pictures (and videos?) all over your storage. It's pretty simple.
With this app you can edit movies. Some users complain that it needs richer features.
It can read several barcode formats including QR. It can look up UPCs, or pass URLs to the browser. If you copy a URL to the clipboard it can render it into a QR code that another phone can scan.
Turn your phone into a snoop box. It serves your front or rear camera stream on the net (password optional) in various formats. Audio too, if turned on. Good for testing cameras.
It turns on the
LED flash for use as a flashlight. In CM-10.0 I couldn't get it to work,
but in CM-10.1 it works (tap the lamp picture). But high brightness
mode still does nothing. I'll bet this app eats battery.
A simple contact list manager, which can sync to a cloud server if you have the right connector.
A simple calendar displayer, which can sync with a cloud server if you have the right connector.
Displays the current time, and can do alarms. Standard Android.
It turns the screen brightness to the lowest leval in a configurable color, and uses a giant font. This makes it able to replace a commercial alarm clock. In CM-10 it does its own alarms; in CM-9 it had to rely on the provided clock app.
Up to 3 down-counters which beep and flash the light when they reach 0. We were cooking, and my wife and my son were using the 2 available timers, so I downloaded this app on the spot and had a timer for my dish!
An excellent Sudoku game. Includes extra and non-square regions.
Gives a 4x4 or 5x5 grid of random letters; you're supposed to find English words.
A collection of card games. Ad supported.
One of the major proprietary e-book formats. The app can also display PDF.
An excellent Bible reader. It has a library of Bibles in various languages: English, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, etc. etc. Many are free, some cost money.
A good general purpose text editor. I use this to record my blood pressure daily in a flat file, and to take notes on generic topics. It has syntax highlighting for some programming languages.
For storing passwords, account codes, etc. under protection of a master password.
Scientific and engineering calculator with unit conversion. It imitates one of the old Hewlett-Packard calculators with RPN (but can be configured for infix also).
Simple 4 function calculator (infix) with some extras: transcendental functions, decimal/binary/hex input and conversion, graphing.
A simple spreadsheet program, the best in the Market of a limited lot. Ad supported.
A very complete file manager and browser, well liked by forum posters. It has integration with cloud services like Dropbox.
Simple but complete manager for local files. It can use root privilege to monkey with any file (on a RW filesystem, i.e. /system is readonly). It includes a simple text editor (not as nice as Jota+, but useful).
Manages downloaded files. Particularly, to delete one or more files, click on the line item(s) and a checkmark will appear, and in the top row will be a garbage can icon, which you press to delete them.
For backing up, restoring and sorting your bookmarks in the Android browser.
This is where you can obtain apps (some free, some cost money), and where you can purchase various DRM-controlled music, videos, and e-books. Formerly it was called the Android Market, a much less juvenile name. According to Nathan Snyder on AndroidAuthority dated 2012-08-09, three gapps packages are needed for this: GoogleLoginService.apk, GoogleServicesFramework.apk, and the very revealingly named Phonesky.apk.
Allows programs
to run as root. Installing this app (successfully) is what makes it a
rooted
phone. It is bundled with CyanogenMod.
Runs a shell on the local machine. Bundled with CyanogenMod.
Can report your phone's physical (GPS) location if you lose it. Various countermeasures if it's stolen.
Tests the speed of your CPU, GPU, SD card, etc. Unfortunately there are no units or interpretation of the measurements, so it's hard to compare with other devices.
The main interest here is the dead pixel detector and the battery tester. It does a standard CPU-intensive task until your battery runs down to 15%, then shuts off, showing how long it ran. You can write down the time, then re-run the test a year later, and see if you need to replace your battery. The lack of units or interpretation on the score makes it kind of useless.
Displays all your sensor outputs and a variety of other information. Useful when checking out the phone.
It
displays a lot of sensor outputs. The user interface imitates a Star Trek
tricorder. Since the UI imitation was not licensed, the copyright holders
put a DMCA takedown demand on the Market. However, copies can be found
floating unofficially on the web; look for quadcorder
.
Simple FTP client, useful for getting photos onto and off of the pocket computer, if the destination has a FTP server. Also can act as a SCP or SFTP client.
Uses NTP to sync your clock on a schedule or at boot time. The Galaxy S III generally drifts 0.5 to 1.0 sec/day, not too bad, but Froyo on HTC Dream lost a lot more (must have been losing clock ticks) and this app was essential.
Shows the exact GPS position and which satellites are being received, plus other data. Also has a readout for the light level. Ad supported.
Shows the signal strength of detectable Wi-Fi access points. Very useful. Ad supported.
You can set up a VPN tunnel to a remote OpenVPN server.
You can use SSH to connect to the pocket computer from another machine, like my backup server.
Provides the normal rsync command, for scripting, and a GUI to run it. Mainly useful for making backups.
The updater is a new feature in CyanogenMod-10. It checks on the
CyanogenMod download site(s) for new versions of the system image, analogous
to a carrier's OTA (Over The Air) updater, like Samsung's Kies Air
.
It also checks for themes on multiple sites.
You don't start it from an application icon; instead look in this unlikely place: Settings - About Phone - CyanogenMod Updates. You can set the frequency of checking (default is weekly), and what stability level you want. When an update is found, click on the menu item to download it. Doing this on Wi-Fi is recommended because images are large, e.g. 171Mb, and so take a while to download, and they eat up your cellular data allowance if limited.
When the download finishes you are given the option of installing it immediately or later. You will want to do user-level and system-level backups before installing, particularly if you plan to wipe data, so invariably cancel the installation.
When you're ready to update, make sure your phone is fully charged;
having the battery die in the middle will likely brick your phone.
Click on the update line item. Clicking on the filename itself gives you
the changelog, and long-pressing gives
the choice to delete it (not what you want, yet). Click on the download icon
at the right of the line, and it will offer to install. Tell it Update
.
The phone reboots into Recovery. It is told by the updater which file to update (not automatically wiping data), takes about 30 secs. It does clear cache. The phone reboots into the OS, and it takes a while to recompile the Java bytecode, maybe 60 secs.
The whole process is easy and very user friendly, not like the procedure to install CyanogenMod in the first place.
text messages
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