I'm sure your all familiar with this but I'm going to take some time to talk about app stores. I'm sure your all familiar with the Google Market and have sampled a few of its delectable (and some not so) wares but are you aware of at least 3 others?
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| Android Market |
Shown above is of course the Android Market in all its new Honeycomb glory, I must admit to being a fan of the new layout on the tablet. It neatly shows the Top Paid ones and the Top Free ones much better than previously on the phone edition of the Market. The only thing is that the Featured for Tablets section needs to be much bigger as really this is what you are looking for, tablet specific apps. Unfortunately there aren't that many of them at the moment but the list is growing day by day (check out the Xoom Forums link on the right hand side of this page for a list of Honeycomb specific apps). Another bug bear with the Android Market is the fact that you cannot filter the apps, the whole market is set-up to use the search option, which is unsurprising when you think about who made it, but sometimes what you really want is a filter. Particularly for a certain version of Android! One of the ways round this I have found is either to use the web version of the Android Market or to try and just search for HD as a lot of the app developers seem to think that HD can mean for the bigger tablet screens. You do still of course get a lot of apps which aren't relevant and not designed for tablets but on the whole standard Android apps seem to scale ok. There are only a few which won't work with Honeycomb and they just won't let you install them which protects you and your device
There are also other app stores available which you may not be aware of. One of these comes pre-installed on the Samsung Galaxy Tab and is called Samsung Apps. Now this is supposed to be Samsung's own hand picked app store to give you the best and brightest apps to showcase your new gadget. The only problem is that its crap!
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| Samsung Apps |
It has a very limited selection of apps within the store and at least 3 of those are versions of Angry Birds. There are some useful ones in there like Evernote or the London Evening Standard but these are all available from the Android Market anyway. What's even more worrying about it is that when I was browsing through it I found that the Top Featured category contained an app which was just pictures of Women's Feet for those into such things. Surely this can't be the best and brightest that's available for the Galaxy Tab? I would avoid this one until Samsung do some serious pruning and also sort out the interface which is quite poor.
The other app store that I have installed on my Galaxy Tab is the NVIDIA Tegrazone which itself is an app you download from the Android Market. This is designed to show of the technology inside your Android tablet and push the Tegra 2 processor with some nice graphical effects.
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| NVIDIA Tegrazone |
There are some good games in here but i'm still working my way through them and am yet to find any that I would seriously recommend but they have tried to cover most bases. Most seem to be paid for games/apps from big developers with the budget to take advantage of all the power in your hands but there are a few free ones in there. Again most of these apps are easy enough to find in the Android Market so why do you need yet another app store?
Just a quick and final mention for one other app store and that is from Amazon. This seems to be a web-based app store but with a nice little feature where they give away a paid for app every day and it changes daily too. This is a real winner in my opinion but unfortunately its only for those Android users in the United States at the moment and as I'm not one of them I can't really test it. I will be looking forward to it making it to good old Blighty though. Amazon does do a specific Android based MP3 store but that's not really within the scope of this blog post.
I will be doing some more on apps in the coming days with a few that I think are really useful and want to share with you all.
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