The Hitchiker's Guide to the G1 Google Phone. Part 2: Core Applications

Following on from Part 1, these are your must-have applications to get the best use of your G1 Android phone. Some are entirely new applications, others replace the basic apps on your G1 to give you additional features and better functionality.

For more general applications, check out Part 3, and if you're looking to soup up your G1 with some nifty accessories (and you're based in the US), take a look at Part 4.

This excellent application gives you full control over most of the power-draining features on your g1 - wifi, gps and cell location, 3g, bluetooth, screen brightness and so on. You can manually turn features on and off via a handy dashboard, or turn the Monitor on and PM will automatically select a profile depending on whether your G1 is plugged in by USB or mains power, running on battery or running low.

Originally free, the developer of Power Manager has now begun charging $0.99 for the application - very reasonable, in my opinion, for an excellent and well-featured program. You can still obtain the free version from his website, but if you update Power Manager now it will switch to a 3-day trial - be warned!

Discover provides an elegant and powerful interface by which to transfer files between your computer and your G1 over a wireless network. With Discover running on the G1, you just direct your computer's browser to the designated IP address (you can find it under Discover's "Server Info" menu option) and you'll see a fast web-based interface through which to manage your files. It should work on any operating system, and you can assign passwords to protect your files from hostile action.

Developed by one man, SnapPhoto is a new Camera application for Android and adds many useful features - adjust the white balance, night mode, take multiple shots, etc. etc. Best of all, it uses the phone's accelerometer to judge when there's a stable moment to take the shot - you focus, push the button, then hold it as still as possible, and SnapPhoto will take the shot at the very moment the camera is most still, getting you the clearest possible picture.

It's updated steadily, and has become very stable and featureful. Bookmark the developer's FAQ Page to keep track of the latest changes, they're not listed in the Market entry.

There are a few applications to give you easy picture uploads to the web. These are, in my opinion, the two best. 

Picasa, which is the official release from Google, lets you upload any picture to your Picasa web albums. This is essentially a new addition to the core Google apps bundled with Android - the fact that it has to be downloaded from the market may mean development ran a bit behind, and this may be bundled with later Android phones, even newer G1s. 

PixelPipe is a remarkable service. With clients for pretty much every desktop and device under the sun, it provides quick photo upload to over 50 websites, including blogs, photo hosts and many others. You'll need to sign up for a free account to use it.

Because both these applications appear in the "share" menu, they'll let you upload photos from any app that supports it - new camera applications like SnapPhoto, for example. 

Out of the box the G1's Android operating system supports Google Chat, the Instant Messaging system which has grown out of Google's Gmail email service. You can view your Buddy List at any time, appear available whenever the phone is in network range and messages from your Buddies come up as notifications in the bar at the top of the screen. US users have support for other networks, although I am informed that they pay for use - the price of a text for every message.

eBuddy, available from the market, supports MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, Facebook chat, Google Talk, and ICQ, and has a nice clean interface - my current recommendation. It doesn't yet support Myspace or Jabber - for Myspace you will need to download Myspace Mobile, and for Jabber you will need to use Meebo or IM+. So there still isn't a single solution for all the networks, but you should be able to find one that meets your combination of chat networks.

Meebo connects to AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, its own Meebo protocol, and the MSN and Yahoo networks. However, it's still very buggy, and you have to log in to each service each time you load it - it doesn't even save your details.This may be improved soon.

IM+ supports AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Jabber, ICQ and Myspace. It's got a much better interface, automatically logs into all your networks when open and is more stable, but it's paid software, costing $19.95 after the 7-day trial. There is no word as yet on when it will support Facebook Chat.

This insanely featureful to-do list manager has a slick interface, the ability to sort your lists by all kinds of categories and create your own customized smartlists, and every option you could hope for. It also synchronizes with the web-based to-do list managers Remember The Milk and Toodledo, giving you both a backup of your tasks and a set of lists you can access from anywhere.

I've tried several to-do list programs for Android and I think this is the best by a significant margin. Personally I use Toodo for keeping track of my tasks when I'm out of the house, Remember The Milk for managing the details and the RTM plugin for my Google Homepage to give me a quick overview of what I have to do.

You can check out the Toodo Development Plan to see all the features they're planning to implement. This is a textbook open source project - hardworking team, total transparency, keep their users up to date.

Between them, these programs give you full control of your G1's ringtones. Rings Extended allows you to use any audio file on your G1 as a ringtone, and Ringdroid allows you to edit any audio file, via a very easy to use drag-and-click interface, cutting it to whatever length you want - so you can clip out your favourite sections of a track and use them as ringtones or notification tones.

Note: Ringdroid also allows you to convert any audio file into Android ringtone format, but you won't need this feature if you have Rings Extended installed.

This program's been causing a storm on the iPhone for some time, so it's got a fair amount of development work behind it, as well as having gathered a slew of awards.

TuneWiki works as a featureful audio player, indexing and playing all the audio files on your G1 and letting you build playlists on the fly. But it's also a social network in its own right, allowing any user to create and edit lyrics, gathering the community's favourite tracks, and incorporating geographical data to show you when your favourite bands are playing nearby. It also has a built-in Youtube search which allows you to save your favourite music videos to a library.

As a jukebox application, TuneWiki is rock-solid, and the ability to build playlists on the fly is very neat indeed. I hate to admit, but with a bigger SD card and better battery life, the G1 and TuneWiki could easily replace my 80Gb iPod.

There are two good contenders for access to Last.fm's streaming music. The third-party application known just as Last.fm has a good feature set, with the ability to search for artist information, manage playlists and select between several recommended tracks from each radio station. Unfortunately it's still very unstable, in fact I can rarely get it to play a track without failing. Definitely one to watch as it becomes more reliable, though.

Last.fm have now released their own Android client, listed in the Market as "Last.fm - Personal Radio". It has a more basic feature set, but includes good solid Notification area integration, and it is rock-solid stable in my experience.

PureRSS keeps you up to date with your favourite RSS newsfeeds.

One of the most exciting possibilities for the G1 would be a VoIP client, allowing you to make free calls whenever you have a data connection, as you currently can on your desktop via Skype and other applications.

Skype Lite has just been released in the Android Market this week, but it's really not what most people are looking for. For some bizarre reason (presumably to avoid ticking off T-Mobile) it makes a local call to connect you to Skype instead of using your data connection for free, and requires Skype Credits to receive calls. That makes it barely more cost-effective than just using the phone. This may be remedied in a later release, but business reasons seem to be driving the decision.

iSkoot is a third-party client for the Skype network, which does make free calls over a data connection although it still (according to their website) uses Skype credit to pay for incoming calls. So far it has only been released in the US, so it's unavailable to me in the UK - this may change soon.

Truphone have now released a client in the Android Market, which uses their own network for free calls already (as well as several IM networks), and will be adding Google chat voice and Skype shortly. But again, it uses a local call to make the connection.

What's missing is a real Android port or third-party version of Skype, or a client for one of the other VoIP networks (Google's own VoIP feature in Google Talk would be an obvious choice). There is no reason this can't be developed under Android, so there's every reason to believe it'll be along soon. Watch this space.

This may not be a necessity for everyone, but I have a sizeable library of simple text files - ebooks and note files. Compact Reader does the job nicely.

This mobile Twitter application is currently head and shoulders above the competition in speed, reliability and interace. Neil Gaiman uses it, you should too!

WeFi Connect runs in the background, making your Android phone connect automatically to any available unlocked wifi networks and giving you a number of other wifi options. It's got a zany, friendly interface and it's stable as a rock.

Mark Hewitt is an English writer, foodie, cook, psychologist, techie and shaman. At the start of 2007 he sold or gave away almost all his possessions and hitch-hiked across North America for a year and a quarter, the purpose being (at least in part) to figure out why he would want to do such a thing. You can find more of his work at Silverknife.co.uk