Recommended Android Apps (you might not know) – Part 2, Media
This will be a loose series of blog posts presenting my favourite Android Apps. This selection is naturally quite subjective, but you might find some apps you don’t know yet. If root access is required, this is mentioned, as well as free vs. ad-supported vs. paid.
This second part is about apps for media
– like music, pictures, ebooks etc.
SoundHound
Music identifier
This is by far the best application for identifying/recognizing music. It works better than the other well-known app and has a very friendly user interface. The recognition rate beats everything else on the market, even obscure dubstep b-sides and classical music is identified correctly.
Free, paid version available | Market link »
QuickPic
Very fast and capable image and video browser
This is a very good (and free) replacement for your built-in image/gallery browser. Not only it’s very fast – it also lets you edit your pictures and organize them.
- Very fast
- Plays videos
- Lets you organize your pictures and videos
- Basic editing features: rotate/crop/resize
- Plays a diashow
- Folders to include/exclude can be configured
Free | Market link »
PlayerPro
Deluxe media player
PlayerPro is first at all a media player. So it reads your media files (mp3/aac/wav/ogg etc.) and also plays videos. You can view your media by different criteria like genre, artist, album, playlist or folder. Besides the usual features like all kinds of playback options, shuffle and organizing your library it has some quite unique and useful features. It doesn’t only read the filenames but handles ID3-tags. Cover-art can be downloaded automatically if desired.
It can read tags from mp3-files, has useful widgets, a built-in equalizer with effects, a lock-screen interface and some other, quite unique features.
- Very stable
- Works with iSyncr (see below)
- Good integration via widgets and lockscreen interface
- Free skins can be downloaded
- Can be controlled by gestures
Paid, trial available | Market link »
MoonReader
The E-Book reader.
Free and very capable, reading is fun with this app. The UI is very good and configurable. The reading screen has very useful features like using gestures, volume and headset keys. Shaking the phone can be used to trigger text-to-speech. Swiping can be used to change the brightness.
- Reads nearly every imaginable format
- Continue where you left, bookmarks
- Looks very good, great UI
- Configurable reading view with very useful features
- Can access free online libraries (some built-in, more can be added)
Free | Market link »
iSyncr
Synchronize iTunes playlists, pictures and videos with PC/Mac via USB/WiFi
Great tool to synchronize your media (in iTunes) via USB or WiFi. Also has nice other features like: Automatically upload all new photos and/or videos to your computer, select playlist(s) to sync. And a very helpful and responsive developer.
Only downside is that the number of apps seems confusing: There’s iSyncr for PC, iSyncr Lite for PC, iSyncr for Mac, iSyncr Lite for Mac, iSyncr WiFi Add-On and iSyncr WiFi Lite Add-On… Simply use the lite version for mac or pc. If you’d like to use Wifi, use the Lite Add-On. If you are satisfied, use the non-lite version.
An alternative would be DoubleTwist – which features a nice player app also, but currently the Mac client is nearly unusable: It’s extremely slow and hangs often. According to their forums many people have these problems and until yet there’s no solution. As soon as the Mac client is improved, I’ll review it again.
- Did not once crash or do something strange, extremely stable (Mac version)
- Support for PlayerPro
- Fast and efficient syncing
Free and paid | Market link (Mac) » Market link (PC) »