Posted on 03/08/2012. By Pete Otaqui.
This is a personal list of apps that I find most useful for myself – your mileage may vary.
ConnectBot
ConnectBot is a rather nice SSH client, fairly indispensable for most people connecting to a linux box. It’s hugely improved by using the Hacker’s Keyboard.
I haven’t included any native code editing apps in this list since, lets face it, Vi and / or emacs leaves them all in the dust – and connecting to a server with ConnectBot gives you the full editing power of a real editor.
Hackers Keyboard
One of the ways that Android is a more powerful platform, that gives more responsibility to its users compared to iOS is the ability to change input methods. The Hackers Keyboard gives you, with a bit of tweaking if you are using a phone rather than a tablet, a full keyboard including Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Function keys etc. Fairly indispensable if you’re using ConnectBot or other SSH client, and in quite a few other cases as well.
Google Analytics
This assumes obviously that you use GA on your sites, but if you do it’s really very nice to have quick access to data while you’re out and about.
Dropbox and Google Drive
A couple of similar apps here – but both give you a local copy of files you store online. This is a fantastic form of backup, but if you store anything sensitive do bear in mind the risks of losing your phone.
Astro File Manager
Not related to being a developer directly, but extremely useful in all sorts of contexts. You can also install various plugins including bluetooth and SMB (i.e. Samba) modules to increase your sharing options. Unfortunately this file manager is as ugly as every other file manager I’ve seen for Android.
Some other apps worth checking out:
HulloMail – visual voicemail in a similar form to iOS, although ugly it does have some nice (premium) features like emailing voicemail to you.
Swype Keyboard – a fantastic form of keyboard entry, installed by default on some Android phones, but available (as an *.apk file) to anyone
MoboPlayer – play almost any video format, with software decoding if your device doesn’t support a given codec natively.
Here are some other lists you might want to check out as well as this one: