Some essential G1 Android must haves

I’ve been playing with my Android G1 since the day it came out. I consider myself pretty tech savvy.  With all of the many applications that have been coming out, I’ve tried about 65% of those.  Some just look bad, some get really awful reveiws, and some I just have no interest in. For the G1 newbies, I would like to offer my advice on some essential applications that are a must have.

First off is ShopSavvy.  This is an awesome shopping assistant to have on your phone.  It uses the camera on your phone to scan the barcode on any product and find the best prices on the internet and at local stores.  As of yet, most local stores aren’t getting into the mix, but since you can find pretty much anything online, it often gives multiple sources and prices to choose from. What is really great is that is also creates a wishlist, you can create a price alert for when a product drops below a certain price, and even see product reviews.  This by far is my favorite application so far.

Next would be The Weather Channel.  This allows you to view weather information currently, by the hour, the the day, and by the week.  There are customizable weather maps, video forecasts, and even severe weather alerts.  You can also add multiple places and pull up any one of them with just a push of a finger.  Very nice, very accurate, and comes in extremely handy.

iMeem Music is the hottest streaming music application on the marketplace.  You can choose from your favorite arts, songs, albums, etc and works seamlessly with the imeem.com service.  Plus the great thing about this is that with the right bluetooth headset, you can stream the music right to your headset and nobody around would notice a thing!

T-Mobile HotSpot Connect allows you to use your GPS location and find the nearest T-Mobile hotspot network to use for some free surfing.  I wasn’t sure how well this worked, but then I noticed that everytime i drive thru Starbucks, it automatically turns on and lets me know there is availability right then.  Very nice to have if you use the WiFi frequently.

PicSay is the award winning image editor for Android.  You can add word balloons, titles, graphics, and effect like distortion, color correction & highlighting.  It’s a very fun easy to use interface and not many mobile devices can say that they have a picture editor right there on the phone to use.  Very cool and a must have application if you have an Android.

Twitli is also another must have application, especially for those Twitter users.  Twitli has a little harder to use interface then Twidroid, but Twidroid has more connectivity issues.  Twitli has had less problems and always seem to function of Twidroid, but right now I’m using both!  So pick one.

Lastly, wpToGo is the WordPress.com application that allows you to upload text and images to your wordpress blogg right from your android device. So far my tests with this application has been great.  It’s one of the newer applications, but one I have been looking forward to using.

There you have it everone! Several essential applications to get your Google Android G1 device ready to use and forget about your home computer! I rarely log onto my laptop anymore now that I have this.  Once they get the exchange application developed, I won’t even need my work computer anymore! G1 FTW! (twitter talk)