Since most of you don’t have an Android G1 phone, we are featuring some video reviews from the AppVee crew to show you what you are missing (or not, depending on your point of view). You can watch the first ten video reviews in an earlier post. Below are five more, two of which are on my top ten (ShopSavvy and iSkoot for Skype).
One of the most potentially useful set of apps on Android turn the phone into a barcode scanner and let you compare prices on the go. In fact, there are two apps that do this, ShopSavvy and CompareEverywhere. They are currently the No. 2 and No. 4 apps on the Android Market, respectively. Both look through the phone’s camera lens to scan a product’s barcode and look it up in a database to retrieve price comparisons from both the Web and local stores.
I tried both with half a dozen packaged foods in my pantry (a can of tomato sauce, a jar of salsa, chicken stock, Nutella, some English muffins, a jar of baby food). This is far from a scientific sample, but CompareEverywhere did a much better job identifying the products. It identified 4 out of 6, whereas Shop Savvy was only able to identify two. CompareEverywhere, however, sometimes got stuck and was not able to capture the barcode, especially for products where the label was not completely flat. I found ShopSavvy to sometimes be to quick on the trigger tryin to capture the barcode beoire it was really in focus.
Both services obviously need to improve their underlying product databases, but they are still worth downloading and will no doubt improve over time. Here are AppVee’s reviews of each:
CompareEverywhere
ShopSavvy
iSkoot for Skype is a mobile Skype client that turns your Android into a Skype phone. It lets you make Internet phone calls over Skype and IM your Skype contacts. Skype calls go over the data network (WiFi or 3G, whichever is available). It is a must-download for anyone who uses Skype frequently.
iSkoot For Skype
Bluebrush is a drawing app that lets you make doodles on your Android. The screen is too small to make anything other than squiggles, in my experience, but the app includes a fun social component that lets you draw with others using the Bluebrush on their Android phones.
Bluebrush
For people who want to make their own shortcuts to their favorite apps, Any Cut goes beyond the customization options that come with the phone itself.
Skype App looks great! I need a G1
yes, (point of view) ’cause the Nokia N95 has had these apps available to them for a LONG time now. In fact, just about any S60 device.
lol, the G1 (and therefore Android) has just been out for less than a week in the consumer space; I don’t get why people expect it to have all the apps that phones from more than a year ago and platforms from 7 years (3 years for S60v3) in that short time.
Also the store isn’t even officially open to developers until next Monday, the current apps are Google vetted apps. I say give it a year or at least half a year and see where it gets to.
The N95 doesn’t have a 3.2 inch screen, a touch screen or a keyboard, and has an OS that has been more or less stagnant for 5 years.
It’s simply not in the same class of internet devices as GI or iPhone, which represent a new direction for phones as ‘more usable’ internet devices.
Nokia is not a player in this space more oriented towards hi-res camera phone with small screens and keypads. For those who value 5x camera it makes sense.
Symbian ain’t just stagnant. It dropped its pants and it’s just plain stanky. It’s open source, but jeez – put it away! No one wants to look at that.
appvee i like what they are doing with the reviews but can we please have someone else do the voice over. the guy doing them voice is too harsh .please get a smoother voice moreso one of a woman and you guys will have a winner.
Nokia is in a different league than Android/iPhone/Blackberry. Nokia simply does telephones with a dialpad, equipped with a mediocre web browser and media player. The others do mobile devices that are much more than phones.
http://disrupti...a-less-is-more/
shop savy and compare everywhere = GODLY
im still waiting on a twitter app tho >.<
Twitroid goes live Monday
they give people things to dream about! looks like crazy!
can’t wait to get mine
TuneWiki is giving a demo of their software on Android at 5pm. It is part of the Pitch Series at the RockStar Fair (www.rockstarfair.com).
If you are coming, make sure you check it out.
Web prices are always cheaper because they often don’t include shipping costs. So, comparisons aren’t valid. I also wonder how updated is their database, does it include weekly sales? The barcode scanner is just a gimmick because with a full qwerty keyword search is probably easier. There are many mobile shopping apps out there. Great revenue potential, user adoption is a great challenge.
3 Things Android needs:
1. A2DP
2. FileSystem browser
3. Garmin app (they’ve got the best turn by turn app out there)
The barcode stuff is pretty cool.
Does this Skype ap mean that you can just sign up for a data plan and still be able to make phone calls, without a voice plan?
Lol. It is not really new the comparaison shopping through the scanning of a 1D/UPC code…
Check out Scanbuy, Inc. and their Scanbuy Shopper which launched a couple of years ago…
I really love the way the web is being put at your finger tips in an interactive way with real life.
Where can you download iSkoot for the G1? It’s not on Skype’s site or on iSkoots and isn’t in the Android Marketplace (unless I am going blind!).
There are seemingly a bunch of apps that the marketplace is flashing that aren’t available (at least to the potentially dim) like PacMan…
Is the Google/Tmobile marketing machine getting ahead of itself???
You have got to get a Geocache Navigator software that works for the G1. It is the reason I miss my blackberry.