11 Essential Android Tablet Apps: The Ultimate Starter Kit

Apps are the meat of the Mechanical man tablet experience–simply for new tablet owners, it isn't always tardily to work out where to begin. While Google's Humanoid Market offers a small section of "featured" lozenge apps, it doesn't provide a comprehensive list of programs that are optimized for the larger screen.

And, while nigh Android apps will run connected a pad, those that are well-stacked expressly to trespass of the devices' larger screens be given to provide the best experiences. I've spent countless hours finding and examination Android pad of paper apps to uncover the best of the best.

Here are 11 essential apps every Android tablet owner should consider.

SwiftKey Tablet X

SwiftKey Pad of paper X

Google's standard tablet keyboard is fine, but trust me, you can do amended. Grab SwiftKey Tablet X, available for exactly $4.99 in the Android Food market. It gives you a pimped-dead keyboard that does all the hard exercise for you (well, most of IT): SwiftKey uses a special "prediction engine" to psychoanalyze your typewriting habits and thereby predict your language before you type them.

I never terminate to be amazed at how often SwiftKey's predictions are right (you bet much key-tapping that saves). SwiftKey is fully customizable, likewise, with two-fold color schemes and an optional split-screen mode for thumbs-only input. In all, this app is a essential-have add-on for any Humanoid tablet.

PicSay Pro

PicSay In favour of

Android tablets pack pot of multimedia potential, just what estimable is having photos if you can't delete them on the fly? PicSay Favoring, available for $3.99 in the Android Commercialise, gives you everything you require to make your images pop.

Its tablet-optimized interface has easily-to-use tools for resizing, rotating, cropping, and flipping photos. Aside from organism useful, I found the app fun to utilize: A couple of taps, for example, will let you key on your pictures operating theatre give a dizzying array of advanced effects, ranging from demarcation and colour in adjustments to red-eye fixes and funky filters. If you plan connected handling photos in any way from your tablet, you'll definitely privation this app in your armory.

File Manager HD

Lodge Manager HD

One and only of Humanoid's advantages over other tablet platforms is that IT allows you to browse your device like-minded a computer: You can drag and driblet files from your PC and access the tablet's full filing system, moving through directories and opening, copying, or sharing files as you wish.

In prescribe to do this, you need a good file management substitute. My pick is File Manager HD, available free in the Android Market (with an optional $2.49 in-app donation to excrete a small on-screen ad). File Manager HD makes full expend of your tablet's display area with its multipaned, self-generated user interface. It even boasts tightly knit funding for file compression and decompressing, as well as the ability to access remote systems via Local area network operating theatre SMB connections.

Movies (by Flixster)

Movies (aside Flixster)

Who doesn't love movies? The aptly named Movies app, offered free from Flixster, gives you everything you could peradventure want to get your Hollywood vallecula on.

When you open the app, you see a heel of all the current movies showing that mean solar day. Tapping on any moving picture brings upward a impanel with a detailed description, section showtimes, images, trailers, cast info, and reviews from critics and users alike. You can surf through coming theater releases and DVD releases, too, and search for whatsoever movie–gone, attendant, or prospective.

I like the app for its alleviate of use and the sea of information that it puts at your fingertips. The Movies app even features Netflix integration, allowing you to cope your streaming queue and to add any style with a single tap.

News360 for Tablets

When information technology comes to news and tablets, no nonpareil does it better than News360. The News360 for Tablets app acts as your have personal news aggregator: While other apps allow you to browse specific sources or access RSS subscriptions, News360 tracks all the ongoing hot news topics and gives you lists of sources to choose from, rather like Google News show. If you want, it can steady study your multi-ethnic media and Google Reader habits and use that information to mechanically find complacent that caters to your interests.

I found News360's interface to comprise perfect, crisp, and cautiously crafted to carry high advantage of Android's tablet-central features. Best of all, the app is free.

Accuweather for Honeycomb

Puzzle out the weather in style with Accuweather's free Accuweather for Honeycomb Humanoid app. The app gives you a gorgeous graphical display of current conditions in your expanse, using your tablet's GPS to solve where you are. You can put that info right on your tablet's abode screen, too, thanks to the app's attractive multicity gimmick.

Within the program itself, you behind ascertain the forecast hour by hr or switch to a 15-day perspective to plan ahead. You backside even get detailed information some how the brave out looks for a specified factor like denounce growing, bicycling, or asthma risk. The Accuweather app has interactive radar and satellite maps; IT too offers a selection of national and regional forecast videos likewise as the latest weather headlines from around the world.

Next: Apps for fashioning lists, docs and spreadsheets, remote accessing, tweeting, and Facebooking.

Springpad

Take an awesome way to take notes, make lists, and save all sorts of info? Springpad is just the thing for you. The free app lives in the same neighborhood as note-taking services comparable Evernote and Catch, but its outstanding Android tablet port puts it miles ahead in my book.

Springpad lets you stimulant text notes, audio notes, trope notes, or mathematical product notes (via scanned barcodes) into any number of "notebooks," or categories, that you create. You can smooth input the name of a movie or book that catches your centre, and Springpad testament automatically attach a full profile of the product to your note. Springpad unendingly syncs your data, so all of your gormandize is always accessible on the Web or via the company's free Chrome extension.

Quickoffice Pro HD

Tablets are great for government note-taking, but sometimes you need to do more. That's where Quickoffice Affirmative HD comes in. Quickoffice Pro HD, available for $20, is a full-featured productivity suite ready-made specifically for Android tablets. It gives you beefy word-processing, spreadsheet, and PowerPoint editing capabilities, bushed a tablet-optimized port that's a delight to use.

Quickoffice Pro HD can integrate with a number of opposite cloud storage services, too–Google Docs, DropBox, and SugarSync, among others–allowing you to save files straightaway to the Web in addition to your device. For my money, no other Android tablet office app even comes close to comparing.

Wyse PocketCloud In favor

Wyse PocketCloud In favor of

These days, you don't have to be in your house to get along with your home Microcomputer. Mechanical man tablets are the perfect tools to run specialized software that lets you remotely access and control your computer. I'd urge Wyse PocketCloud Pro, available for $14.99 (operating room free in a limited-functionality version).

Setting up PocketCloud In favor of is simple, and once you've installed the PC or Mac client, it takes fitting seconds to amaze your desktop up and running on your pill's screen. You can purloin around the screen background with your feel and practice black eye or keyboard tools to interact. PocketCloud Pro supports RDP (Remote Background Protocol) and VNC (Virtual Network Protocol) connections; IT as wel offers TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption and the ability to associate to multiple computers.

Plume for Chirrup

Plume for Twitter

Tablets and tweets team triumphantly with LevelUp Studio's Rob for Twitter application. Plume, available free with an optional $2.99 ad-eliminating upgrade, gives you three customizable columns of Chirrup-filled goodness. Any tower give notice be set to show your main Twitter timeline, @mentions, upfront messages, favorites, lists, or searches.

Tapping on a twinge causes IT to open in a side control panel on the screen. Plume has its own inherent browser, too, meaning that you rump view joined pages without ever having to exit the program. Add in multiple account support and a completely customizable interface, and you've pretty much got the total software program.

Friendcaster Tab for Facebook

In mid-September, Facebook finally updated its official Android app to pass over on tablets, but the program is still anything but optimized for the big screen. Fear not, though, as Friendcaster for Facebook is here to save the day.

Friendcaster does what Facebook's own app should do on Android tablets: It gives you a multipaneled view of your news feed, with numerous filtering options and split sections to zoom in on specified content. In increase, the app has elliptic tools for posting new mental object, whether it's a text update, a photo, or a video, and whether you want to partake in it with everyone OR just with certain friends. Friendcaster has full funding for tab-ins, messages, groups, events, and pages as well.

JR Raffaello Santi is a PCWorld causative editor and the generator of the Android Power blog. You can find him on Facebook, Chitter, or Google+.

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