In this chapter we would like to show those applications we should have in our smartphone. We have selected a few ones from thousands of them according to the success and the added value for daily use.
Application Store
A specific operating system could be better or worst but it has no benefit without applications. Quantity and quality of applications in application store it is the main success factor for an operating system. Each one have its own applications store: Apple App Store, Android Google Play and Microsoft Windows Store. One application designed for an operating system is not valid for any other one. Developers use to develop versions for the different operating systems. Applications shown below are available for the main applications stores (operating systems) mentioned above.
It is the most successful messaging application and the one making all operators losing the profitable SMS and MMS business. It is not a free application but the price is only 1 USD per year only. For this price we will have a free messaging application at global level. Any internet connection (Wifi or mobile data plan) is enough. One of the main advantage is it use our telephone number as identifier and registration is really simple to do. WhatsApp revise our agenda identifying which of our contacts are registered in WhatsApp network. Recently WhatsApp has included voice calls using VoIP technology.
Initially developed for computers and fixed networks for doing free voice calls through internet. Skype users have increased heavily thanks to the huge increase of internet capacity. Nowadays Skype is the biggest operator managing the biggest number of voice calls in the world. Thanks to the improvement of mobile technologies now it is possible to be used in mobile phones. Its use is acceptable with good 3G coverage and it works really well using LTE networks.
It is another application initially developed for computers and fixed networks moving to mobile devices. Mobile client is adapted to the smaller screen and it downloads videos with a lower resolution using a lower bandwidth. It works really well with 3G networks and, of course, in 4G ones.
Have you ever try to know the name and singer of a song in the radio or TV? Shazam does it by ourselves. With the phone next to the speaker, in some seconds, we will have information about the singer, the song and the album. It fails sometimes but, most of the times, it is simply amazing.
Spotify have a huge song database we could listen to all the times we want. Spotify needs an Internet connection (Wifi or mobile) and the songs are downloaded but not stored. There are two modes for using it: free or premium. In free mode the application insert some advertises every 4 or 5 songs. These advertises disappear in premium mode allowing to store the songs we want for using when disconnected. Premium mode has a flat monthly fee valid for all the songs in Spotify database.
The best help for preparing a travel to anyplace in the world. Hotels, restaurants, maps, tourist trips, etc. Additionally it includes comments and score from other users providing us enough information to do some plans in the places we want to visit. A really useful tool for our travels.
GPS is needed for this application. Sportstracker is the perfect assistant for doing sports. It registers and tracks the way, speed, altitude, etc. This track is sent to our computer for a detailed analysis of our performance. Additionally it could be sent to other people for sharing our favourites routes.