Android Communication Apps

Save MMS App for Android Review

Save MMS is a simple Android app that lets users save pictures that comes as attachment in multimedia messages. It comes as a welcome relief to users, especially youngsters, who certainly might have tried to save the pictures came in messages more than once, but failed to do so. Now, with Save MMS mobile application at your service, there is no compulsion whatsoever to keep multimedia messages with pictures in the inbox, only because it had their favorite picture.

The App

Android Save MMS app offers a way round the inability of most handsets to save pictures from multimedia messages. Yes, you can forward the message to your email and save as attachment. But those are more round about ways, which are time consuming as well, not to mention the additional KB/MB your internet plan takes up to send it to your email.

Save MMS app offers a simple option to save the pictures that comes with the MMS into your Google Android device. In order to save a picture that came with an MMS message, you only need to launch the Save MMS app, and the app will automatically find out the pictures that came as attachments and are still in the message inbox of your phone. Once the app finds the relevant text messages, you can select and save the picture (it is also possible to rename the file if the user wishes so) you want into the SD card. The pictures so chosen will be saved in a folder called SavedMMS. Unfortunately, there is no option whatsoever available with the Save MMS app that lets you save the pictures in a folder or location of your choice in the SD card or phone memory. Hopefully, this feature(s) will be incorporated in the coming versions of the Save MMS application for Android.

Conclusion

Taken together, Save MMS is a winner. There’ll be people out there who’ll love to have this little app in their Android handsets. The app presents a very user friendly interface to the users, and is also quite easy to use even for a first timer. Above all, Save MMS is downloadable from Android market place for free of cost. Final Verdict: It doesn’t hurt to have this app in your Android device. Try it out once and see how it appeals to you.

Nimbuzz App for Android Review

Now you can chat with your friends in different messengers from a single platform through the new Nimbuzz Android app. Nimbuzz is an integrated messaging app that combines all major instant messaging platforms into your Android device.

All-in-One IM Application

Nimbuzz is a complete chat and calling app that lets you stay online while on the go. The advanced app interconnects a lot if IM platforms as well as supports various VOIP services. The app will integrate all your IM contacts into a single list and provide easy access to all your friends.

The built-in IM client in Nimbuzz app supports a lot of instant messaging services such as Skype, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, Facebook, MySpace and many more. The app also supports many local communication platforms such as studiVZ (German student community), Hyves, Giovani (Italian social networking service) and so on. Before starting to use the app, you have to sign up for a Nimbuzz account. You can easily create account from the sign-in screen in the app.

Connect to Various IMs in Real Time

Nimbuzz app helps you to chat with your friends in different messengers from single interface without having to independently register for each one. The app interface is easy-to-use and provides time sensitive user interface options. Once you have created an account, you can add different contacts using Add Contacts option. You can choose contacts from list of IM clients. To add an IM client, simply choose the client and enter your username and password. All your contacts from the particular client will be added to your Nimbuzz contact list. The contact list includes your friends’ names, avatars and their online status messages.

Android Nimbuzz app is integrated with time-sensitive functions. A short press on a contact’s name displays the contact profile. A long press on a contact initiates a chat session. You can also send URLs to your friends and check URLs via app chat window. All web addresses will be opened via Android browser. Another major feature is the mainscreen notification function. It notifies every incoming chat to let you know you have a message and you will never miss any important chat.

Conclusion

Nimbuzz is a fine mobile app that helps to manage multiple accounts through a single interface. Nimbuzz app is free and you can download it from Android Market.

Handcent SMS app for Android Review

It is interesting to note that no matter whatever applications we have today, to communicate with friends/relatives, the old texting have not lost none of its charm yet. For texting addicts, here is an Android app that takes texting to a whole new level altogether. It has a new interface, plus a number of new features, that one may not find in the usual SMS messaging apps. Above all, Handcent SMS Android app is downloadable for free.

Features of Android Handcent SMS App

Handcent SMS app for Android lets its users customize the app to one’s tastes. One could choose skins, themes (light or dark), and conversation styles so that your SMS messages takes on the feel that you want. The app also lets users add wallpaper to their messaging screen, change the font style, add/remove contact pics, and even put a signature to your SMS.

Further, there is an option in the app by which incoming SMS’ will be displayed in a popup screen, thus eliminating the need to go to the SMS folder and read the text. From the popup, one could not only read the message, but also reply to it, view the sender’s contact information, and view other messages in the inbox. Also, the app lets one send group messages, and the app syncing with the phonebook makes this task a lot easier.

Handcent SMS mobile app also comes with a ‘Speak SMS’ feature, wherein you could write your messages through voice recognition. Android’s proprietary voice recognition software (yes.. the one behind Google Voice Search) is been used for this job. This feature works pretty well, if you speak slow enough and enunciate the words clearly and properly. The Speak SMS feature is also accessible from the SMS popup window.

Further, with the Handcent SMS app, users could customize the color of LED, its blinking frequency when it notifies something, vibrate alert pattern etc. The app comes preloaded with ten language packs, for different countries, with its own T9 keypad.

Final Thoughts

There are still many features to the Android Handcent SMS mobile application, such as customizing the way the device’s accelerometer works in the messaging interface, which is worth mentioning. Perhaps, the user himself must download this app, and see its features one by one, before choosing what all they want to activate in their Android devices. Certainly, this app is useful, and there are not any solid reasons as to why one should not download this app either. After all, Handcent SMS comes free of cost. Verdict: Must have in your handsets!

The jChat App for Android Review

The JADE agent framework has become one of the more popular online chat and text networks for smart phone use and that is why jChat has become such a popular free communication app for the Google Android platform.

Real time contact list tracking

The jChat app for Android has a lot of contact-related features that you should definitely appreciate. For starters, it can read contact information directly from the list already in your phone and that means that if your friends are also on jChat, you can know automatically just by getting jChat to automatically add contacts to your list.

Then, once you have those contacts, you can use the jChat “real time localization” feature to find out where those people are in terms of their relative location and distance from your current position. With pseudo-GPS usage, the jChat mobile application can give you a handle on exactly what is going on downtown. At the same time that you are tracking them spatially, you can also see their online/offline status in real time on your application’s front screen.

Chatting revisited

Although the contact features are impressive, chatting is really the bread and butter of this software package. You essentially have two choices when it comes to chatting over the jChat software package. The first is to do standard pseudo-SMS texting and the second is to actually do a real chat along the lines of what you would see in an instant messaging or online chat room situation.

You also have a heavy amount of choice when it comes to how you want to structure the chat sessions that you enter. You can choose to go with the standard of opening multiple chat windows and keeping them going at the same time with individual people. Alternatively, you can combine chat windows and create a big internet-style chat room with all of your contacts available to chat with everyone else at the same time. The choice is entirely yours when you use Android jChat app.

Final Score

This excellent free communications app for the Android receives 8 out of 10 for all of the above features. It is a little rough around the edges and could become more user friendly over time in order to receive better marks. As of right now however, you can download and install this software package and have top notch chat software ready to go whenever you decide that you need it.

Speaking Pad Mobile App for Android

One of the great advances to be made in recent years on smart phone devices has to be the text to speech (TTS) functionality that has been introduced into many of them. This functionality was around before smart phones were created, but it has really seemed to come into its own on them as TTS apps like Speaking Pad for Android have really allowed people to get something out of life that they may never have thought possible.

Give Deaf People the Gift of Gab

Do you have a deaf friend or relative that has been hampered by an inability to speak as a result of their hearing impairment?  Many people have this affliction, but a lot have been able to find their way around it with a great deal of willpower and determination. For those people that have the hearing impairment but lack the superhuman qualities necessary to overcome it on their own, Speaking Pad is a great way to give them the help that they deserve. Speaking Pad will allow your loved one to type something in and have that something read out in a voice that you can hear. This will actually allow your deaf family members to start talking. Speaking Pad Android app is a free mobile application that gives you something of infinite value.

People without a voice can speak again

Speaking Pad app for Android comes in handy in any situation that a person would have lost their voice. This does not necessarily need to be a person that is deaf. Car accidents and other serious traumas can involve a lost voice and in the case of those people, Speaking Pad can once again bring to life the voice and the gift of gab that they previously had.

Children can learn how to speak

At the same time that Speaking Pad is a great way to overcome impairment for some people, it is also a great teaching tool for others. If you have a child that is just learning to talk, you can type phrases for them and let them play with the sounds that those phrases create when they are run through TTS. Some children will learn much better that way than they will even with their own parents speaking the words and those children will definitely get a kick out of using Speaking Pad Android app to learn their words.

Final Score

This great software program has received a final score of 10 out of 10 from us.

SMS Pop-Up App for Android Review

You might not get to see this handy Android app in the ‘must-have’ list of most websites and magazines. But, if you are an avid texter, who also receives lots of incoming messages as well, you should try out SMS Pop-Up app in your Android smartphone. It eases the pain of having to open/close the inbox with every beep sound indicating the arrival of an SMS. SMS Pop-Up app gives a visual notification of an incoming message, in the form of a pop up, on top of most applications running at the moment in your smartphone. Also, the SMS Pop-Up app can be downloaded free of cost from the Android website.

Enter SMS Pop-Up

The best feature of SMS Pop-Up app for Android is clearly the notification window (with the full message view) that pops up with the arrival of each new message, and sits right at the centre of the mobile phone screen. The user can then choose between either of the options – ‘close’ or ‘reply’ – according to what they wish to do with the message. In the earlier versions of the app, clicking on ‘close’ would have hidden the notification, leaving the notification icon at the top of the window. But, in the latest version, doing so will not only leave the SMS marked read, but also removes the notification on the top altogether.

The new version also provides to the users an option to pick the color of the blinking light, or the vibration alert you want when a new message/email arrives in the inbox.

Further, there is the privacy setting that enables a user to let the message show only after the screen is unlocked. Users can even customize to let the background screen blur, to give a more visual effect when you receive an incoming message, or set reminders, especially if you belong to the elite group of forgetful types.

Regarding the app size, it won’t take up much memory space of the phone post installation, nor would it strain the processor resources while operating.

Final Thoughts

To sum it up, SMS Pop-Up Android app is a simple, yet powerful, mobile application one should consider having in their Google Android smartphones, especially those who text a lot daily. The user interface of the app is simple, yet not great, such that even a novice could run through the settings with ease. Further, the app won’t put undue strain on the phone resources either.

Definitely, SMS Pop-Up Android app is worth trying out!

Caller ID App for Google Android

Caller ID App for Google Android

Summary

Generally speaking, if you order caller ID on a mobile device, what you are going to end up getting is the number flashing across your screen. You won’t get a name with it because phonebook listings are not programmed into the caller ID screens for cell phones. The only time you will see an actual name on the cell phone screen is if you actually have that person in your cell phone contact list so that the phone can match the number to the name. With Caller ID App for Google Android however, there is another way to get caller ID working on your Google Android device.

User Interaction

Interacting with Caller ID application for Google Android is a breeze. All you have to do is take a look at the call when it comes in and then decide what you want to do about the call when you know for sure who is calling. It could not be easier to use any app than it is to use Caller ID for Google Android.

User Interface

The graphical user interface for the Google Android Caller ID app is fantastic. On one side of the screen you have information regarding the person that is calling that has been matched to their phone number and on the other side of the screen you have the options that are available to you at the moment that the phone rings. All you have to do is cross-reference one screen with the other and you are getting the most out of that particular application. Doing so is easy with text colours, sizes and fonts used liberally to denote a hierarchy of information. The design is absolutely perfect for an application of this kind.

Utility and Productivity

Becoming productive with Caller ID for Google Android is very easy to do. In fact, this particular app is one of the few that does not require active use on your part for increased productivity. It is a passive application, which means that you only have to set it up on your Android once and then let it do its thing.

Whenever someone calls your phone, the Caller ID app will kick into gear. It will cross-reference the number that is calling with the database of numbers supplied by the White Pages and then return a name, address, phone number and other available contact information based on what you have available in the White Pages database. All of this is completely automatic and kick starts when someone calls you. All you need to do in the end is decide which calls you want to answer and which calls you would prefer to let the machine get.

Rating

In the end, the only real criticism of Caller ID for Google Android is that it does require the caller ID to be present in your plan so that the phone number can be used as a lookup point. If you don’t have that then this app is useless. For that reason, we have to give it a slightly lower score of 8.0 out of 10.

Android iSkoot App – Professor Appy Review

This useful app lets me connect and chat with my girlfriend LuLu, for free, which is really cool, as we have a long-distance relationship. I’m in Boston and she’s in Oxford, England. iSkoot lets you log onto your Skye account, so you can make mobile calls for free. It sure beats using calling cards or racking up exorbitant roaming charges, especially when the calls are International.

Why this App makes me Happy:

1)    Really simple to use.

2)    Saves me coins, which we all need in this lousy economy.

3)    The Echo/Sound Test Service is good to check for sound quality before making that special call.

One feature I’d like to see on this app: Voice Command Control, so I can just say “LuLu”, and my smartphone will automatically connect me to my sweetheart.

I give the iSkoot app 4 Hoots ; ; ; ; = which is Super!