10 Best Paid Apps for Android Phones

10 Best Paid Apps For Android Phones

There are hundreds of thousands of free apps available for Android phones so with all the wonderful free apps that will never cost you a penny, why would you want to pay for an app?

Because they’re worth it.

I don’t purchase a lot of apps, but there are a handful of great paid apps available for Android that I think are well worth the little bit of extra cash they cost. Most of them are really reasonably priced, often costing less than a drink from Starbucks.

Here are what I feel are the 10 best paid apps for Android Phones – all are available directly from the Android Market.

One last thing, I decided not to feature any games (like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja) since games depend so much on personal preference and I don’t play many games though I do have a weakness for Airport Mania.

Tasker – If you’ve seen the Smart Actions commercial for the Motorola Droid Razr then you probably have some idea what this app can do. Smart Actions basically duplicates Tasker’s functionality but offers less features and makes it a bit more user friendly.

Tasker is an automation app. For example, it can launch your music player (whichever you use) when you plug-in headphones. If can go into airplane mode at night to conserve battery life. It can turn Wi-Fi on when you’re at home but turn it off when you’re not and with thousands of pre-made profiles, you don’t need programming expertise to use it.

Bottom line, if you’re only willing to pay for one app, this is the app to get.

WaveSecure – McAfee bought this company a couple years back and surprisingly they didn’t ruin it. It’s still great. This is a security app for your phone so if your phone is ever lost or stolen, you can remotely lock down your device if it’s missing so that nobody starts accessing your personal data or calling and harassing your friends (that actually happened to my sister once). If you’ve decided it’s unlikely that you’ll ever get your phone back, you can wipe your personal data off the phone remotely as well. It does backups and device locating as well. It’s the most expensive app on this last and will run $19.99 a year but I think it’s $20 well spent for keeping your personal information safe.

SlideIT / Flex T9 / SwiftKey X Keyboard – There are a lot of things I love about Android. The stock keyboard isn’t one of them. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but there are much better keyboards out there. Personally, I think Swype is the best keyboard app out there, but unless your phone comes with it preinstalled, it’s a pain to get it working. The Flex T9 and SlideIT keyboards are the closest thing to Swype that you can download from the Android Market.  I personally used Flex T9 for about a year and it works great.  I haven’t played with SlideIT much but it has earned an Editor’s Choice from the Android Market and has been voted the best keyboard replacement app for Android and you can even try it out for 15 days for free before you have to pay for it to make sure you like it. If you prefer a keyboard that’s a bit more familiar, try the SwiftKey X Keyboard. It works a lot like a regular keyboard but with excellent memory of words you use frequently.

Camera Zoom FX – This has been voted the best camera app for Android and it’s easy to see why. It adds a lot of “real” camera features like burst mode and a timer. It also has voice activated, collage, stable shot, and time lapse shooting modes. With a ton of post processing features for editing your photos on your phone, it’ll make your smartphone camera seem like the only phone you really need and when combined with the camera improvements made in Ice Cream Sandwich, it’s amazing.

Gentle Alarm – I’ll just say this, I hate alarm clocks with a passion – hate them. I do my best to avoid using an alarm clock whenever possible. However, like you, I don’t always have a choice – I have to be awake by a certain time.

A few years ago I got my favorite alarm clock of all time – a SleepTracker watch. It works by monitoring your sleep cycles and waking you up when you’re not in a deep sleep so you can wake up feeling rested. Research has shown that if you’re jolted out of a deep sleep, you’re more likely to be tired and cranky and feeling “like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” It sounds a little gimmicky, but it works… as long as you don’t mind wearing a watch when you sleep or spending $150 on the thing. I found wearing a watch to bed kind of weird, but it’s still my favorite as you can set it so it only vibrates in the morning. When it’s attached to your arm, that’s plenty to wake you up.

Now your cell phone doesn’t have that capability since you’re not going to wear it to bed, but Gentle Alarm uses the same principle of gently easing your out of sleep.

It starts with a pre alarm phase and very quiet music. If you wake up at this point, you’re in a light sleep cycle and it’s a good time to get up. I find myself waking up during this period about 1/3 of the time. If you don’t wake up during the pre-alarm, then the regular alarm goes off and it plays music that slowly gets louder. If you still don’t wake up, it has an extremely loud white noise siren

And if you are the kind of person who will mindless tap the snooze button, you can have it make you solve a math problem or solve a pattern challenge.

This app has a few neat features that I really like and it’s all very customizable. My favorite alarm clock app (if there can be such a thing for a person who hates alarm clocks).

AirSync by doubleTwist – doubleTwist is an iTunes like app for managing music on your Android phone. It can read your iTunes playlists and sync them to your phone when you plug it in via the USB cable. The AirSync allows you to do all of this via WiFi, without wires!

Locale with Astrid – One neat feature that Apple built into their iPhone is a location aware reminders app. However, Android users have had that capability for a while by using two apps – Locale and the accompanying Astrid Locale Add-On. If you have milk on your list and you drive by a grocery store, it’ll remind you to get some milk.

Business Calendar – Since I’m a boring business guy, this app is greatly preferred over the standard Calendar app built into Android since it allows me to sync not only with Google Calendar, but also Basecamp. I can see everything in one nice little widget.

PocketCasts – I’ve become a bit of a podcasting junkie in the car these days. I rarely listen to radio because I’ve got so many fantastic (and commercial free) podcasts that I can listen to instead. Google Listen is a free alternative if you want to listen to podcasts (nearly all podcasts are free, btw), but I think PocketCasts is just way better and it’s super easy to use. Well worth the $3 it’ll cost you.

Read It Later – There is a free version of this app, but the pro version is better since it doesn’t limit you. If you’ve ever been reading an article on your phone but don’t have time to finish it, this app allows you to save it for later. It makes the article available offline and syncs it to your computer as well as your phone.

Best Paid Apps For Rooted Phones

And while I won’t to into a lot of detail about these four apps below, here are my favorite apps for people with rooted phones.

Titanium Backup Pro ($6.58)

ROM Manager ($5.99)

Root Explorer ($3.99)

Absolute System Root Tools ($1.99)


 

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