Touiteur: Dumb Francophile name that you're bound to misspell looking for it in the market, but a really nice Twitter app for Android. Not quite as full-featured as Twidroid, but the interface might be the best yet on Android. Slickest move? The pulldown menu to tweet, which works just like Android's window shade for notifications. Free and pro versions.




Opera Mini 5 Beta: Remember all that Opera Mini hotness I showed you on the iPhone? Well, it's already on Android—if you tried version 4 and didn't think it was so hot, Mini 5's a totally different bag, and worth giving another spin. It's fast, smooth, and on the Droid or Nexus One, totally flies.




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TMZ: Oh dear god. It really is the full TMZ experience, formatted for your Android phone. The videos, the slideshows, the interstitial ads, they're all here. And of course, the delicious, delicious TMZ taste we all know and love. It's a little laggy though, even on the Droid.




Google Earth: Well, it's only available for that small, select group of people with Android 2.1 on their phones, but at least Google's finally brought Google Earth to its own smartphone platform. It's the Google Earth you know—zoomin' round the world is still awesome—but in some ways, Google Earth's even better on mobile, with voice search and multitouch.



Also for lucky bastards, but in this case, FiOS customers with Droids, Verizon's Mobile Remote lets you control your set-top box over Wi-Fi. It's a complete remote replacement, and it throws photos you've got on your phone up on your TV, so you can toss your actual remote. (Though I wouldn't, 'cause I bet Verizon will charge you.)




Google Gesture Search: Voice Search might be the future, but Google's Gesture Search is pret-tay damn spiffy. A universal search app that crawls your contacts, apps, bookmarks and music, you just draw the letters of the word you're looking for, and it starts pulling up results. Thoroughly accurate while I was messing around with it. I wish it had a homescreen widget, so I could start drawing without firing up the app.




. Pong Time: I'll let the video do the talking, since there's not much to add: It's a Pong Clock. Free.





Thick Buttons: A lot of people have tried to make Android's touch keyboard better, but Thick Buttons might've come the closest yet. Here's how Jason broke it down:

How it works is that ThickButtons visibly enlarges the keys that the phone predicts you'll type next, so if you're typing the word "Annoying" and you get to the "o", it'll enlarge the letter "Y" (among other letters it thinks you can possibly hit next). The iPhone actually does this invisibly, but ThickButtons does this…visibly.


The problem is that sometimes it predicts the wrong letters, and then you have to snipe out the one you actually want. Still, if you really hate the Android keyboard, this might help you get over it.



Replica Island: A must-buy retro Android platformer. Even Jesus says so:

Platform game. Retro look. 40 levels. The Android mascot as the main character.Free. If you're an Android fanboy or fangirl, you have to play Replica Island. Don't expect to buttsmash any iPhones, though.


Did we mention it's free and works on any Android 1.5 phone and above?




ZumoDrive: ZumoDrive gives you free gig of space in the cloud from which you can stream video, music, photos, Office docs, PDFs and share files using the ZumoDrive app. Hard to argue with that.



Google Shopper: Okay, I kinda crapped on Google Shopper for being another visual search app from Google, like Goggles—dedicated to buying things instead of searching the world—but Lifehacker's pretty taken with it. They're


Top 10 Android Apps Android's been around for more than a year, and in that time developers have whipped up some great… Read more

"amazed at both how accurately it picked up both barcodes and simple cover shots, and at how very fast it worked. Turns out, according to one developer who appeared on This Week in Google, Shopper is actually uploading image data to Google's servers as it captures it, and decodes barcodes right on the phone."


So even if you've clung to ShopSavvy, maybe it's time to give Google Shopper a whirl.




AIM for Android: That's right, there's an official AIM app for Android. It's surprisingly un-ugly and straightforward to use, in case you're not interested in a multi-protocol IM client like our current fave, Meebo. The change your status button in Android's notification window is a nice touch, actually.




Dial Zero: A potential lifesaver, Dial Zero puts the customer service numbers of 600 companies right at your fingertips, directing you straight to a person, not a robot. Free.




Doodle Jump: A most urgent addition to the list, Doodle Jump is addictive mobile gaming perfected, which is why it's perpetually one of the top 10 paid apps for iPhone. Exceptionally simple, and controlled almost entirely by your phone's accelerometer, you tilt the phone side to side, directing Doodle from one platform to the next as he continually makes his way upward. When you miss, you die. Then repeat. Though 99 cents on the iPhone, on Android, it'll run you $4, but you know what? It's almost worth it.