Top Android Apps

Reading RSS feeds on your phone has become a whole lot easier recently, with the introduction of the official Google Reader app for Android. But what Reader doesn’t bring is, well, sex appeal – it’s as plain Jane as a Loose Woman sans makeup.
Pulse on the other hand is Google Reader slathered in Sex Panther and injected with the libido of Hugh Hefner. It’s an app that begs you to cheat on Google, offering a quick way to import of Google Reader RSS feeds.
It teases you into submission by showing off your favourite websites in such a coherent way. Once you import your feeds, they appear in rows. In each row is a thumbnail story that you can click and get a nicely reformatted page of the article.
It works brilliantly and makes reading on your Android device that little bit sweeter.
If you don’t have Google Reader RSS feeds, you can also Bump to get other feeds across or choose from the plentiful feeds on offer through the app. Be warned: most of what is on offer is US based so this may put you off taking from this archive.
Lucky then there is a decent search option to find the websites you want to add.
Pulse is one of the best looking and easiest news reading apps to use on the Android Market – you’ll wonder how you lived without it for so long.
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Skype cemented itself as the go-to choice for free video calls years ago but its move to mobile hasn’t been so clear cut. This is because it is not about video calling, well not in the case of the app on Android. What you get on Google’s mobile OS is free Skype-to-Skype chats, low global rates to mobiles and landlines at home or abroad and some IM functionality.
Loading the app on to your phone is a cinch. If you already have a Skype account, then all you have to do is log in and you are away.
If you need an account, then it is fairly simple to set this up on your handset.
Once in, then it is all fluffy clouds in the land of Skype. There’s a nice intro explaining how you can use the service.
There’s a number of things you can do to integrate Skype into your phone. The first is the opting to synch your Skype contacts with the rest on your phone. This makes it a whole lot easier to use Skype, as the option will be there when you load up a contact.
Speaking through Skype to another Skype user works extremely well. To be honest, you won’t notice a difference, except for the lack of bill at the end of the month.
The IM is decent enough, but the amount of text bundles around on contracts, you may not be pushed to use this as much.
To use the low-cost calling you do need to set up a credit system with Skype, which is a little bit of a pain. Couple this with the lack of video calling (which could be a massive rival to the iPhone’s FaceTime) and what you have is a very competent app but one which is missing that special something.
Best Android apps: The Top 10