Android™ applications « for the lock-down » in 2020

The list of applications given here corresponds to the applications I have installed on my (two) Android™ smartphones in 2020, and that I opened and used every day during the « coronavirus lock-down » (at least one month).

I list them by categories, following the categories already used on my phones.

Note

This page is about applications for Android™. For more details, it may be useful to go elsewhere for more information:

• for example at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android,

• or at www.cnetfrance.fr/Android/.

À faire

Add link to Google Play Store for each application! I should define a role :apken:`apken`.

Messages

• 📧 🐕 K-9 Mail: the best mail client I know #dog #mail ;

• 📧 Messenger lite (lite version which is more than enough) #messenger ;

• 📧 Facebook lite (lite version which is more than enough) #fb ;

• 📧 WhatsApp #WhatsApp ;

• 💿 🎮 Discord : my colleagues and I use Discord to continue our teaching activities learning (during the coronavirus epidemic) #discord #gaming #geek ;

• 🇨🇭 ProtonMail: best encrypted mail (free, Swiss, reliable) #suisse (my ProtonMail address is firstname.lastname@ProtonMail.com).

Meeting people

• 🛋 🏄 CouchSurfing: I use it to lodge people in my home, and to get people to lodge me in other people’s homes, when I travel #couch #canape #surf;

• 👻 SnapChat: to play « spies » with your friends #ghost #snap;

Might be out of date!

I wrote this list in April 2020, so it might be obsolete…

Audio

• FM radio: to listen (with headphones);

• YouTube of course;

• YouTube Music: to listen to unlimited music in streaming (with a subscription, at 10€ per month, and free one to four months);

• Tape recorder: to record sound with your phone in one click. Very handy to record a bird and try to find its name after (e.g., a chicken) ;

• Duolingo : to learn another language! In confinement, nothing like 20 minutes every day to learn Portuguese, for example!

• CM (Classic Music) : hundreds of free classical music pieces that can be listened to in one click (in streaming).

Useful apps

To use websites easily on mobile (registered account, easy to use) :

• WordPress : to manage a blog under WordPress, e.g., Actuel Moyen-Âge ;

• LeMonde for current events (in France). I think it is essential to read the news quickly in the morning on AT LEAST ONE digital newspaper.

Other languages?

I also read The Times, The NY Times, The Guardian and El Pais in Spanish.

• Doctolib to make an appointment with one’s health practitioners (doctor, dentist, etc);

Three tiny applications, just to access a phone sensor:

• Barometer: with the help of the Internet, and the possible internal sensor, gives the current pressure (useful for predicting the weather);

• Sonometer: current volume, very well done!

• Pedometer: any good application will do it. If you have a « connected watch » it can talk to the application!

I like to use a software which allows to automatically reduce the lightness of my screen, and its blue light. I use « Bluelight Filter for Eye Care - Auto screen filter » on Android since many years, and I’m happy about it. Sadly the free version does not allow to change the lightness automatically at a chosen time in the night (like Redshift does on Linux), but it’s not so bad.

And finally:

• Your favorite app that offers a VPN (e.g., NordVPN);

• Your favorite weather app;

• Your favorite application to edit text files, I have been using since 2012 Jota Text Editor (to which I had contributed a little by proposing syntax highlighting for OCaml and a few other languages) ;

• Language: online dictionary.

What is an application?

An application (app) is a program for a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone powered by the Android™ OS.

These programs are distributed as compressed archives, with the apk format, which means « Application PacKage », as the EXEcutable program for Windows™ with the .exe format, or the Disk iMaGe for Mac OS X™ with the .dmg format.

To (not) travel

To use websites easily on mobile (registered account, easy to use) :

• Trainline EU to book and pay (and keep) train tickets. Now works in the (western) half of Europe!

• (Google) Maps to calculate routes and locate yourself. I also suggest Waze for car routes.

An open-source, free alternative to Google Maps ?

In addition to being free and open source, OpenStreetMap is created and managed by the community. With OSM And you can download maps in advance and access them easily without an internet connection.

• Rome2rio to calculate routes that mix train, car, plane, etc.. Very reliable, very efficient everywhere in Europe, I don’t know about the rest of the world. In France, it knows bus and train timetables better than Google Maps!

• BlaBlaCar to book and manage his carpool trips with the most popular platform in France (several million users) ;

• Booking.com to book accommodation, whether rental apartments (like AirBNB), hotels, etc.

Online stores

To use websites easily on mobile (registered account, easy to use) :

• LeBonCoin that I use a little, to resell and buy video games, books, and also flats or bikes ;

• Fnac that I use when needed to buy university books in particular ;

• GitHub which now works very well !

• your bank’s app (e.g., Boursorama, La Banque Postale, BNP PariBas, etc).

Avertissement

I am actively against Amazon!

Inquire! Amazon destroys jobs… Amazon’s hegemony has almost killed independent booksellers. Excessive delivery is toxic to the planet. Amazon hardly pays taxes in Europe. Amazon employees cannot unionize (in the US) and are paid the minimum hourly rate in almost all countries. If the boss of Amazon is one of the richest men in the world, it’s probably for the wrong reasons … I share some of these arguments against Microsoft, but at least they’re less guilty of tax evasion and exploitation of their employees. Google, Apple and others are just as bad and evil as Amazon. Just ban them from your life, don’t give them money!

To relax

• Petit Bamboo : to initiate yourself to meditation;

• Daily Yoga: to learn yoga;

• Calm: to help daily meditation, and offers free ambient sounds like forest or birds;

• Forest: to help disconnect from your phone;

• Drink Water Reminder: super simple but effective;

• Sleep Monitor: suggests to go to sleep in the evening, effective alarm (soft but persistent) in the morning… The app also offers very precise statistics, if you think about indicating the beginning and end of sleep ;

• Bonus: the website Generative.fm offers dozens of pieces of background music, random, composed by… programs (neural networks and everything)! It’s ideal for work, I love it !

For food

Two very similar applications, which propose in large cities to recover lunch baskets or other that will be thrown away:

• Phoenix App;

• TooGoodToGo.

Other apps :

• OpenFoodFacts gives a lot of curious information about all kinds of food products;

• Season to know the fruits and vegetables in season;

• Pumpkin to pay his friends, I use it because it was used by the association at the ENS in Rennes which manages the AMAP.

Soundboxes to have fun

• Instant Kaamelott;

• Kaamelott replicas & GIF;

• Soundbox Kaamelott;

• We got a lot of them;

• The Soundbox is by far the best, because it contains a lot of cult movies!

• Instant Louis de Funès;

• Naheulbeuk Chiantos Box;

• Naheulbeuk MP3 is great, download the episodes on the fly from the Naheulbeuk website (penofchaos.fr/donjon).

To study and write programs and code on an Android phone

• PyDroid 3 (or QPython 3L) to code in Python 3 on your smartphone or tablet;

• OCaml Toplevel for Android to code in OCaml 3.12 on your smartphone or tablet. It was written in 2011 by a friend of mine, when we were in L3 (3rd year of bachelor) at ENS Cachan! See this app for iOS or Mac OS?

• Coding C to develop tiny programs in the C language, from your smartphone or tablet (offline, doesn’t require Internet, the compiler is integrated);

• Banque Exo (MP CCP) and ExoSupSpé for maths problems and solutions (should not be available anymore).

• There are others like it, but this one looks well done: JDoodle allows you to access from your phone to JDoodle.com an online multi-language IDE (Internet request).

Voir aussi

My old list of apps.