My top 10 Android apps

1. Angry Birds
Lives up to the hype. Very addictive. Beautifully simple game play.

2. Kindle for Android
It's easier reading books on your phone than you might think. I read the entire Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest ebook on my Desire and enjoyed even page. Very cheap books.

3. Aldiko
Brilliant for free books and a really nice library system for storing them. All of my Cory Doctrow reading is done here.

4. Engadget
The gadget kings have the quality app you would expect. Addictive.

5. Pulse
I've posted before about how good this app is. A truly beautiful way of browsing your RSS feeds. It also caches a lot of data, so works nicely on the tube.

6. TweetDeck
 Combines your Twitter, Facebook, Buzz and Foursquare accounts together brilliantly.

7. AppAware
How do you find new apps in the clunky Android Market? AppAware is how.

8. Robot13
Fantastic free comic reader. The comic itself isn't bad either.

9. Galcon
Practice your Adama moves in this old school space strategy game.

10. Watchdog
How do you know which apps are behaving badly on your phone and draining resources? The Watchdog will keep an eye on them for you.

HTC Desire HD Engadget review, oh no

  

I've been waiting for Engadget's review of the HTC Desire HD with dread, fearful of that horrible thought that eats away at all smartphone owners, "my phone is no longer the best, the fastest, the newest or the coolest". Today, it arrived...

But it turns out that I'm okay, the HTC Desire HD isn't the Robocop meets Terminator phone that I thought it was going to be. It sounds like the battery can't handle all of that power. Does that make the HD Roy Batty?

I'm glad in a way, because I totally love my HTC Desire. I always thought it was as close to perfection as a smartphone could be and now it turns out that I was right.

 

When open means exploited

Android's open platform makes it brilliant, but it's also starting to cause real problems. Personally, I'm tired of waiting for T-Mobile to update my HTC Desire to Froyo. It feels like lazy and cynical carriers have simply decided to exploit the open nature of Android for their own evil ends. Tech guru Michael Garten feels the same and has written a compelling article on the issue for Engadget.

"More and more devices I look at are coming installed with applications I don't want, often popping up messages to try and upsell me on services I have no interest in. Even worse, unlike PCs where offensive applications can be removed or the OS reinstalled cleanly, there's often nothing that can be done to get rid of unwanted mobile software without arduous work. It's not limited to Android devices, but it seems that increasingly Android more than other platforms is shipping with the worst mobile bloatware. It's a bad trend that's going to lead to consumer backlash and it's destroying the credibility of Google's Android vision."

The problem is that the carriers are going to end up killing the golden goose. And then we'll all be crying.

Read Entelligence: Will carriers destroy the Android vision?