And while Android didn’t start out being all that great for business users, there are now plenty of fantastic apps for the business user on the go.

Here are a few of our favorites and the ones we feel are the best Android Apps for business users.

1. Google Maps Navigation

When you’re traveling, you probably prefer to have as few of things you need and having a separate GPS is just another thing you can lose.  Fortunately, with Google Maps Navigation, you can find your way to wherever you need to go and all for free.

This app was actually the one that finally pushed me over the edge and made me decide I was going to give Android a try and I’m happy I did.

2. Google Voice + Google Voice Callback

When it comes to Voicemail, it’s hard to beat the unlimited storage of Google Voice and the free voicemail transcription is fantastic.  It sure beats checking a long backlog of messages just to see if there are any important ones.   And the price of FREE makes this one of the very best Android apps out there.

If you make a lot of calls but don’t have a lot of minutes, you can get an app called Google Voice Callback which will allow you to make unlimited phone calls using Google Voice.  The trick to making the whole thing work is to assign your Google Voice number to one of the phone numbers you’re allowed unlimited calling to with on a Friend and Family Plan.

3. Ringcentral

While this app is only useful if you’re a Ringcentral user, it sure is darn handy.  Since I run my own small business and have multiple different numbers and fax lines, this app allows me to manage all of them, including voicemail and faxes all from my cell phone.

4. It’s about Time

There are plenty of finance apps available on the Android platform, but if you’re a Quickbooks user, this is the one you’ll want as it is integrated with Quickbooks 2007 and later and allows you important and export information to Quickbooks.  If your business books are powered by Quickbooks, then you’ll want to have this app on your phone.

5. Dropbox

This is a fantastic little app for keeping files synced between multiple devices.  With Dropbox you don’t have to worry if a file is on your laptop, desktop, or cell phone.  All files put in your Dropbox folder are automatically synced between all of your devices.

6. Currency

For those traveling abroad frequently, having an app to do currency conversions for you is a handy thing to have.  There are plenty of good apps on the market that will do this task for you – we like the Currency app but get whichever one you like best.

7. Locale

Locale is a fantastic app that will prevent your phone’s ringer from going off when you don’t want it to – like in an important meeting.  You can set it to make sure you phone doesn’t ring when you’re in a certain location or during specific times.   You can even set up certain rules so that only certain people can call you at certain times while all others are sent straight to voicemail.

8. Google Calendar

This one is built into your phone so you shouldn’t need to download it, but I do recommend you use it as it allows you to see what’s on your agenda for the day a quick and easy task.  You can even setup a widget to see your appointments without even opening up the app.

9. Worldcard Mobile

If you’re sick of manually entering in contacts, this app makes it simple.  Just take a business card and take a picture of the card.  The app will then read the text on the card and all that information to your contacts – simple as that.

10. Cab4Me

Need to get a cab?  This app makes it easy to find cab companies wherever you are.

11. Google Translate

If you need real time translation, then Google Translate is the app to get.  If you just can’t understand someone, use this app to get your point across.  It also has text to speech capabilities so if you need to translate some text quickly, this app can do it for you.

12. TripIt

When it comes to organizing all of your travel information in one place, it’s hard to find an app that does it better than TripIt.

13. Basecamp

For project management, I love Basecamp.  While basecamp has it’s own mobile site, it doesn’t have it’s own official Android app.  There are plenty of third part apps out there to help you connect to your Basecamp account, though.   You can try Beacon, Proejct Schedule Free or Baby Milestones.  See which works best for you.

14. Gmote 2.0

I actually have an entire screen devoted to remote control apps but my favorite one is the Gmote 2.0 app.  While it has plenty of cool features, the one I find myself using is as a remote control for my Powerpoint presentations and since it operates over Wifi, I never have to worry about being out of range.

15. Documents ToGo

If you’re a Microsoft Office user and need to be able to use and modify files on the go, then ThinkFree Office Mobile is the app for you.  It works with Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files as well as PDFs and Google Docs.

One thing that’s still missing – A Call Recorder

The only reservation I have about making an Android Powered phone your business cell phone is the lack of a call recorder.  If a call recorder is something you need to have, then you’ll want to hold off on getting an Android Phone.  When or if this feature will ever come to the Android platform remains a mystery so don’t hold your breath.

One workaround that you can use is to record incoming calls through Google Voice – just press “4” on your number pad and the recording starts and when you’re done it’ll show up in your Google Voice account.  Unfrotunately, it doesn’t work with outgoing calls, but it’s better than nothing.

If you can live without the call recorder, then an Android phone could serve you well and we’d highly recommend one.

What Do You Think?

Did I miss any apps that you feel are worthy of being on this list?  Got a bone to pick with one of our selections?  Let me hear about it in the comments below.

Today, I thought I’d change things up a little and do a post on apps that aren’t necessarily essential to any Android owner, but these are some of the coolest Android apps out there that really show you what your phone can do.   There aren’t any games, but these 10 apps sure nifty.

Tasker – Tasker is the only app on this list that isn’t free, but the $6 or so you’ll have to spend on it is well worth it.  Tasker is pretty much the Swiss Army Knife of the app world – it can do pretty much whatever you want it to.   Read more extensive reviews here and here.  To sum it up, this app will allow you access to 160 built-in actions to help you automate frequently performed tasks on the phone.   For example, this app will put your phone into airplane mode at night to save batteries but will turn the antennas back on every 15 minutes to check for email, text messages, and voicemail.   You can also use it to launch your music player (whichever one you choose) when you plug headphones into your phone.  There are thousands of different uses for this app and plenty of profiles pre-made for you so you don’t need to know how to program at all to get a ton of use out of this app.  Note: If you have a Droid Razr, you probably don’t need this app as the Smart Actions functionality built into the phone is very similar to what Tasker does – Tasker is a bit more powerful while Smart Actions are a bit more user friendly.

Soundhound – This is a music identification app which really isn’t anything new.  Shazam has been identifying songs playing on the radio for a couple years on Android now and even longer on the iPhone.  However, Soundhound can identify songs much faster, sometimes in as little as four seconds.  Of course, my favorite feature is that if you have a song stuck in your head and just can’t think of the name of it, just load up Soundhound and sing a few lines or hum a few bars.  It’s not perfect, but it can get you the song in most cases if you can remember 10 seconds or more of the song.

Google Maps – While I’m still waiting for a speedometer in my Google Maps Navigation, there is plenty to like about Google Maps on Android.  First and foremost – free GPS navigation which saves you a bundle over similar apps on the iPhone.   While every GPS navigation system can do driving directions, Google Maps Navigation also does walking directions, bicycling directions (using bike trails whenever possible), and can even help you take the bus by telling you which bus to take to get where you want to go as quickly as possible.  If you ever leave the house, make sure you’ve got this app installed on your phone.

Google Googles – Google Goggles is an app that has been around for a while now, but they keep adding in new features that really make you say wow.   Google Goggles has a built in barcode scanner for finding information about products (came in handy at Sears a couple weeks ago – we found out the item we were thinking of buying didn’t work as advertised), can translate street signs and restaurant menus, tell you what a product is by taking a picture of it and can help you identify art, locations, landmarks, and products just by taking their picture.  Oh yeah, and if that’s not enough, just for fun they threw in the ability to solve Sudoku puzzles and it works great on those extra hard puzzles you just can’t solve.

Google Translate – While there are plenty of other good translating apps out there, the new Google Translate app for Android takes the cake with its new real time translations by voice.  It’s not perfect yet, and it only does English and Spanish, but real time voice translation on your phone is certainly could certainly come in handy in a pinch and it sure is gosh darn cool to play with.

Google Skymap – This is the last Google made app on the list, but it does go to show you that Google has gone through great pains to make sure some of the best apps available are available on Android.   Google Skymap is one of those gee-wiz apps that you never knew you wanted, but once you’ve tried it out, you want to show it off to everyone else too.  Google Skymap will tell you where the constellations are and what their names are.  If you’re looking for the planets, it’ll tell you where they are as well.

Glympse – This app is actually pretty simple.  It allows you to be tracked.  Of course, you get to say who and when someone can track you and how often it updates.  For example, let’s say you’re planning on meeting a group of people for lunch but you’re coming from out of town.  Well, now you can let those contacts track your location so your friends can see how far away you are so they know if they’ll be waiting for you or if you’re running late.  This app would have been helpful a few months ago when I had to go help out a friend who got stranded on the interstate.  It was dark and I wasn’t exactly sure where he was (he didn’t know what mile maker he was near either) so  I had to drive along until I could find him.  Had we had this app at the time it would have told me exactly where he was.

Gmote – There are plenty of remote control apps for Android.  Heck, I’ve devoted one of my screens just to various remote controls for different devices.   This neat little app allows you to use your phone as a remote control for your computer (you’ll have to install a program on your computer too).  For example, you can launch and control a movie remotely or launch and stream music or control a Powerpoint presentation.

FXCamera – While the standard camera app on Android is a little lacking, you can dress it up by installing the FXCamera app on your phone.  This app gives you several different settings for taking pictures.  For example, there is a Polaroid mode that you can use for vintage film, faded, aged, and mono effects.  Stop taking boring photos and install FXCamera and then share them on Facebook using the button within the App.

Easy Metal Detector Lite – Does just what it says.  It turns your phone into a metal detector.  Your phone does have the equipment inside it to do the task, but it doesn’t have a very strong magnet so you do have to get pretty close to metal for it to detect it, but it’s still a cool way to show off some of the lesser known capabilities of your phone.

You know how in 24 Jack is always getting stuff sent to his phone?

Now you can do the same thing.  If you’ve ever been doing something on your computer and wanted to send it to your phone (this seems to happen to me daily), now you can with Chrome to Phone.

If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of this app before, it’s because it only works on Android 2.2 – which is still only available (as of this writing) on the Nexus One or to those of you who have rooted your Android phone and installed the custom ROM (if you’re going to do it, I’d recommend Bugless Beast, Titanium, or Chevy).

I see myself using this app mostly for maps and for sending files to my phone (like non Android Market Apps), but it comes in handy for a whole lot of things, especially long, complicated links I don’t want to painstakingly type in via my Droid keyboard.

If you have Android 2.2, just go install this extension for Chrome and then install the Chrome to Phone Android App on your phone and you’re all set.

For those who wonder how all this magic works, it uses Gmail synching to do it.

Learn all about it with this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oyCWEUqNvY

Now you can use Google Maps on your computer, laptop, or even smartphone, and have Google send those directions to your vehicle and when you get in the vehicle, the directions will be there waiting for you.

And that means you get to use one of my favorite parts of Google Maps – the extreme ease of customizing your route (you simply drag the blue line on the route to the road you want to take and it adjust the route for you so if you know a shortcut,  you can take it and still be following your voice prompts).

This video explains it all pretty well – if you’re interested, it’s definitely worth the 2:15 of your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3EhHr7lbkk

Updated 1/9/12

So I got one of those fancy Droids a couple weeks ago and when you go from a Razr (the original one, not the slick new Droid Razr) to a Droid, everything is cool and fancy.  I honestly don’t know how a lot of the features that are “gee whiz” cool compare to other smartphones like the iPhone.  They’re all cool to me, but wow is the Facebook and Google Voice integration slick.

Google Maps Navigation Beta brings free turn by turn navigation to your Android powered device.

Anyway, instead of posting my thoughts about the phone side of things, I figured I’d post about the thing I am qualified to review – the GPS, specifically Google Maps Navigation Beta.

I’m on my fourth GPS device and have extensively researched others.  In fact, I decided to get the phone with its built in navigation instead of one of the new high end TomToms.

So I have fairly high standards for what I want in a GPS device, and I have to say that Google has managed to include cool features I would never have thought to ask for… unfortunately they also neglected to include some fairly important industry standard features.

I like it, I love it

As you’d probably expect, Google Navigation uses their Google Maps data for all the routes.  The maps are up to date (I hated buying updates to my old ones) and since it accesses their online database, they’re about as up to date as you can get.  Up to date maps doesn’t sound like a big deal until your GPS device tries to convice you to take an impassible snowmobile trail in the middle of nowhere Colorado – then you’ll appreciate having accurate maps.

The voice search is also awesome.  It knows where businesses are (even local ones, not just chains) and can find them with a simple search.  My car broke down a week ago and I was able to find a towing service close to me (I didn’t want to be stuck there any longer than I had to), and call them using the same device… and I was able to read reviews before I made any calls.

It can find landmarks, categories of businesses, schools, pretty much whatever you want.  And if you decide to type in the information, it’s not all that picky and can even figure out what you meant to spell if you spell something wrong (just like their search engine can).

It will also find places along your route.  For example, if you’re on a road trip and need to find a Starbucks, instead of Navigating you to the closest Starbucks, it’ll find one that’s along your route so you don’t need to take an extensive detour or turn around.

However, one thing it can’t do is navigate to someone in your contacts list even if their address is in your phone.  My guess is that feature is coming, but so far it doesn’t do that.  Sadly, even Siri can do this but Google Maps Navigation doesn’t just yet.

Google Street View is pretty cool especially as it can display a picture of the intersection and a picture of the business you’re navigating to.  However, I’d like to more advanced instructions for complicated interchanges.  For example, my last GPS would tell me to take and exit and which lane I needed to be in when necessary.  It isn’t necessary all that often where I live but let me tell you, it’s immensely helpful when it does come up.

You have the option to use Satellite view just like with Google Maps on your computer and you can even overlay the terrain if you’re out hiking.

And one feature I really like was the ability to navigate “nearest” whatever.  For example, you can tell Google Maps Navigation to “navigate to nearest movie theatre” using voice commands and it will.

Fail!

Night mode

While there are some excusable omissions, one that is just a complete brain fart is the lack of a night mode.  Honestly, I was expected that the phone would not only have a night mode, I figured it’d automatically kick in when the sun set based on its location – the phone has a lot of location aware features like that and I figured Google Maps Navigation would have that… it didn’t.

I learned this on a trip from Nebraska to Wisconsin.  Fortunately, I don’t need directions for the trip, so when it got dark and night mode didn’t kick in and I couldn’t find it in the menus, it wasn’t a problem for me just to turn the program off and finish the drive sans navigation.

But seriously, no night mode?  I’m assuming this oversight will be fixed in the near future, but as far as I’m concerned, the program should never have left alpha testing without that feature.

Update (Feb 2010) – Night mode exists now (came as part of Google Maps 4 app update) and yeah, it works like I expected it would – location aware and based on sunset and sunrise.   Glad to see they added it.

Speedometer

Another industry standard is how fast you’re going.  And TomTom and Garmin devices also happen to know the speed limits where you’re driving and can tell you when they change.  Google doesn’t even display how fast you’re going.  I know, I know, that’s what the speedometer on your car is for.  Well, I find the one on cars is frequently off by 1-3 mph.  On a long trip, a 3mph difference is half an hour I could have saved and the GPS speedometer is always extremely accurate.

Update (Jan 2012)

No, no built in speedometer yet.  But you can get one via a third party app called Ulysse Speedometer.  You can set it up so that it will startup whenever your phone is connected to the car dock and it will display your current speed in the status bar at the top.  It’s the perfect add-on for getting a speedometer on your Android phone while still being able to use Google Maps Navigation.  Oh, and it’s a free app so it’s a no brainer.

To set it up so it runs in the status bar, click the “menu” button, then click preferences.  Make sure the “Work in Background” box ix checked.  Then click “Background notifications” and make sure the “show current speed” box is checked.  Then scroll down and make sure the “start on car dock” box is checked.  Now anytime you put your phone in the car dock, this application will start right up and will display your current speed no matter what application you’re using.  For example, most of the time when I’m driving I don’t need navigation, but instead have my podcasting app up and running and I still have a speedometer on my phone.

Data Connection Required

Here’s another real head scratcher.  The need to have a data connection for navigation.  I can totally understand the need to have a data connection for things like Street View, Satellite View, and some of the more advanced features – it’d just be too much to store on the phones memory and updating would be a pain.  However, needing a data connection for even basic navigation is bad design.   Google needs to offer an option to download the maps to your phones memory card and to use those maps when data is lost.  GPS and navigation needs to work in the middle of nowhere.

Those are my biggest complaints.   But here’s why I’m still happy about getting Google Maps Navigation vs TomTom.  I know that Google will continue to update it and that it’s likely to be a true rival to TomTom and Garmin within a year and those complaints I have will likely be addressed soon.  If I had a Garmin or TomTom, I’d be waiting a lot longer and I’d probably have to pay for the upgrade.

Google Maps Navigation may not be quite ready to challenge the big boys for navigation supremacy just yet, but for the price (FREE), you could certainly do a lot worse.

Update (Nov 2010)  Google Maps Navigation now has an offline mode so that even if you lose data connectivity, you will still get navigation along your route.  It still requires an initial data connection as it needs to download a vector map of your route but once you’re on the road and moving, it won’t require a constant connection.

More cool features they’ve added over the years:

• Walking Navigation – You can get direction if you plan on walking to your destination.  It will also work if you plan on going via bike and will take bike paths in your city for navigation instead of streets.
• Transit Navigation – This is a cool feature!  If you need to use public transit (bus, subway) to get to your location, this feature will tell you where to get on and off and what route number to look for.  This is so helpful when I’m in a big city as just trying to reed all the transit routes makes my head spin.  (I grew up in a small town and am used to simply taking a car wherever I need to go).