Five Ridiculously Useful Android Apps To Save Your Battery, Get Screenshots Without Rooting, Wireless Sync, Go 3D And More

With my new Droid Bionic device, I’ve been on a mission to find the best apps to further enhance this already brilliant device. I like to take a good look at ratings, but ratings on the Android Market tend to be a bit inflated in my opinion. Of the 100+ apps I’ve downloaded recently and all the others I’ve explored in the past, I wanted to highlight five in particular that have made my device better.

SPB Shell 3D - Launcher that redesigns your home screen, adding 3D effects, customizable widgets and useful features

***Update: Since publishing this post, I’ve began having some issues with SPB Shell 3D. It’s crashing pretty frequently and I have yet to find a conflicting app or been able to successfully troubleshoot it. With the steep price, you may want to use caution prior to purchasing. Through my research, I’ve seen many other users with the same issues***

($14.95 from the Android App Store) This app is expensive, but after researching it and checking out some of the videos and reviews, I took a chance and spent $15. While it may not be for everyone, it’s been the purchase I’ve been most satisfied with. It’s provided me the ability to add different sized folders/windows on my device, a nice weather and clock widget, a 3D world clock, a very cool 3-dimensional SMS conversation bubble, a 3D birthday countdown widget and some ridiculously cool eye candy for customizing, rearranging and managing your screen panels. A screen cap alone won’t do it justice, so take a look at the video below.

JuiceDefender Ultimate - Extends your battery life

($7.13 from the Android App Store) Works by managing the aspects of your device that drains your battery. Uses five profiles to select ranging from balanced, aggressive to extreme along with the ability to customize or choose more advanced options. While balanced will make only minor settings adjustments to provide as much normal operation as possible, extreme will completely disable connectivity and shut down Wifi, GPS, etc to save the most juice.While the app automates these processes based on the profile you select, it’s easy to turn on some of the stuff it flips off. You can also add apps to shutdown for the given profile, schedule when to automatically start JD, etc.

The app offers a widget to toggle JuiceDefender on or off. Based on my stats so far, which I typically choose balanced, JuiceDefender has increased my battery life x1.61 in the last 48 hours. Yep, you can see the stats too.

No Root Screenshot It – Lets you capture screenshots of your device without having to root it

($5.29 in the Android App Store) It’s kind of a pain to set it up as you’ll need to connect it to your PC or Mac, download the free desktop application and follow a few simple steps, but once it’s setup it’s simple to get screen shots (otherwise known as printscreens or screenshots) without having to bother with rooting your device.

Add a widget that takes a screen cap after the amount of seconds you select (default is 5) or even better, enable the screenshot to be taken when you shake your device. The video illustrates how it works and I’ve used this app to take all the screen shots used in this post.

doubleTwist AirSync - Wirelessly import your photos and videos from your Android to your PC and wirelessly sync your iTunes music, playlists, ratings and play counts to your device.

($4.99 from the Android Market) The free doubleTwist Player app is a very nice app as well, just doesn’t provided the wireless sync. The app itself is nice and comes with a music playlist Android Shortcut and either a small or large doubleTwist widget to add to your home screen. My favorite aspect is the desktop software, which gives me an iTunes-like desktop tool to make syncing and adding media a littler nicer experience. It’s not perfect and could use some enhancements, but it provides some nice features I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Dropbox – Free service to add photos, docs, music, videos to your web-based Dropbox account so you can add to and access files from your phone, computer, etc.

(FREE on the Android Market) I love Dropbox. It’s a nice central online location that lets me add anything I want from any computer or device I want. I have the free Dropbox app set up on my Droid Bionic, my iPad, my PC and my Mac. It automatically syncs all the stuff you add to the folder that’s set up on all your devices. For example, I can add some spreadsheets to my Android DropBox app, then pick up my iPad or Computer and now be able to access the spreadsheets or whatever I add from those devices. You get 2GBs of storage for free, 50GBs for $9.99 per month or 100GBs for $19.99 per month.

Another thing I love about using Dropbox on the Android is the Android Shortcut that lets you add a shortcut to a specific Dropbox folder onto your home screen. For example, I have a work folder setup within Dropbox that I have on my home screen for one-click access to this folder. I have another shortcut on my home screen for my Dropbox music folder.

I don’t typically pay for many apps, but the apps within this list have made me enjoy my amazing device even more. Did I miss any app that you believe is worthy of a mention?