Must-have android apps for rooted phones

Q

quadnad

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 24, 2005
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Hi everybody, just a followup to my thread about the cyanogenmod:

I'm wondering what everyone considers to be must-have apps for a rooted android phone (in my case the Nexus One). I just installed the cyanogenmod along with the wifi/usb tethering application and am quite enjoying it. I wonder though if there are other applications that are must-have?

SetCPU seems to be the one I typically hear, but are there others?
 
I'm running Cyanogenmod on my Droid. Besides what you've already mentioned I also use Root Explorer, Metamorph, Rom Manager, and Adfree.
 
I've been using Astro up until now for file management, but I'll take a look at Root Explorer. MetaMorph isn't something I've heard of, I'm interested to see what it's all about..
 
quadnad said:
I've been using Astro up until now for file management, but I'll take a look at Root Explorer. MetaMorph isn't something I've heard of, I'm interested to see what it's all about..
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MM is the ability to theme your phone. Smoked glass, high res stuff. Much better looking then the default stuff. :) Lots of nice themes floating around.
 
quadnad said:
Sounds good -- is there a performance hit?
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Not that I've ever seen. All it does is swap out the default PNG files for other PNG files and they're all relatively very small. Like 1-6KB small. Biggest I've seen on my Droid is part of the Launcher window and that's a whole 12KB.

EDIT: Make sure that you backup the current theme via Nandroid or find the "stock" theme download. With MM it's best to go from stock to new theme to stock to new theme if you want to change, because some themes skin different things so you end up with funky colors. :)
 
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Wired tether sucks as it only allows one client to connect to your android device. Wireless tether allows at least for concurrent wireless connections at once. I've used it with two laptops and a desktop at the same time and done speedtests of 2200 kbps for at least an hour of browsing and emailing. take that, omega!
 
SeismicWorm said:
Wired tether sucks as it only allows one client to connect to your android device. Wireless tether allows at least for concurrent wireless connections at once. I've used it with two laptops and a desktop at the same time and done speedtests of 2200 kbps for at least an hour of browsing and emailing. take that, omega!
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Yeah, I can get 3.2mbps in my sleep from my dream in my basement.

I can also get those same 3.2mbps in a car moving at 60mph down the highway, while playing an MMO and not getting a SINGLE disconnect.

Rogers has the best network i've ever had the pleasure of using.

But wireless tether still kills my battery stupidly fast.
 
Rooted or not Estrongs file explorer is a must have. The only one i have found yet that has lan browsing. Rooted file explorer is only useful to do something in the data folder otherwise estrongs is better in every way.
 
0mega said:
I can also get those same 3.2mbps in a car moving at 60mph down the highway, while playing an MMO and not getting a SINGLE disconnect.


But wireless tether still kills my battery stupidly fast.
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Good for you! I just hope you mmo and drive responsibly enough that your android device lives a long and productive life. :)

Seriously, though, I have no idea how much wireless tether sucks battery life out of our devices because I'm always connected to a power source in my car and while at home
I never needed to, and I'm not arguing with you about which one its better. I happened to provide a suggestion to the OP about apps and you crapped on my post. Lets get this thread back on topic.
 
SeismicWorm said:
Good for you! I just hope you mmo and drive responsibly enough that your android device lives a long and productive life. :)

Seriously, though, I have no idea how much wireless tether sucks battery life out of our devices because I'm always connected to a power source in my car and while at home
I never needed to, and I'm not arguing with you about which one its better. I happened to provide a suggestion to the OP about apps and you crapped on my post. Lets get this thread back on topic.
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Oh don't mistake me for trying to crap, Just having a discussion :p Been trying to cut down on the emoticons lately, but it takes some of the feeling away from my posting apparently hahah

Maybe it's just my dream that burns through battery life. The thing draws so much power that even when plugged in to my laptop and wirelessly tethering, the battery STILL goes down, it's scary. Oh, it also gets hot enough to keep me warm ;) Things an awesome little device.

I wasn't driving, I was in the back seat, promise :p
 
0mega said:
Must have android app for ALLLLL android phones

Swype

That is all.
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qft! Swype has essentially saved the virtual keyboard, in my eyes at least. It lets me pound out emails/texts really quickly, and without having to try to maintain the same level of accuracy I needed for the standard hunt-n-pack soft keyboard. It's well worth getting through the brief learning curve.
 
+1 for swype. I even prefer swype to the physical keyboard of my old blackberry curve and bold phones. I just hope I'll be able to use it after the beta time limit is over. I definitely will pay for it, if it becomes available on the android market; it's that good!
 
quadnad said:
qft! Swype has essentially saved the virtual keyboard, in my eyes at least. It lets me pound out emails/texts really quickly, and without having to try to maintain the same level of accuracy I needed for the standard hunt-n-pack soft keyboard. It's well worth getting through the brief learning curve.
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Agreed 100% I find myself quicker and nearly as accurate with this (Accuracy is only a tap to fix anyway! suggestions are usually spot on. ) as with the hard keyboard on my dream. I haven't used the physical keyboard much since.

SeismicWorm said:
+1 for swype. I even prefer swype to the physical keyboard of my old blackberry curve and bold phones. I just hope I'll be able to use it after the beta time limit is over. I definitely will pay for it, if it becomes available on the android market; it's that good!
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I will be paying for it the day it hits the market. It's totally worth it.
 
RemoteVNC to connect to my server running TightVNC.

I also use Wake on LAN to wake up remote machines.

I use Wireless Tether for Root Users. Its cool because it'll turn your phone into a Wireless Access Point so multiple users can connect or you can use Bluetooth instead. When operating in Wifi mode the phone gets hot and it drains batt life like crazy, be aware. Good for short term, if I'm planning on using the net for a long time I'll use wired, but that too drains the notebook battery.
 
This is not an app. As far as I know its not even a proven concept but when I get the time I want to see if I can get it to work.

My idea is to use the console to initiate a tunnel to my home network running OpenVPN. With this connection established I would mount my music directory as a subdirectory of the SD card so that music apps can play my music as if it were stored locally. Again I don't even have proof of concept on this yet but I think it should work.

No reason to stop at music either. Having instant access to my photo and video library would be totally awesome.
 
Would Bluetooth tethering put less of a strain on the phone battery than WiFi? Either would suffice in most cases, speed-wise (at 'least until we all have 4G), but I'm wondering if there's a difference in power usage... Also, most people usually leave the BT on anyway for handsfree devices, whereas you don't necessarily need to leave the WiFi on.

Right now I tether my feature phone to my netbook over BT and it doesn't seem to consume much more power than it does when I browse on the phone itself... Probably less actually (since the screen isn't on). Obviously WiFi tethering has the convenience factor of being able to share the connection w/more than one user...
 
Sorry to not offer an insight op, but did you use a guide to root your N1? I got an N1 on release, and have been thinking about rooting it since. I've looked at multiple guides, but am still afraid of bricking. Mind posting a link of the materials you used? Thanks.

My favorite app has got to be Juice Defender. It fixed my reconnection to wifi after sleep issues, and battery saving rocks face ;)
 
A couple must have apps for me that haven't been listed (I think.. I just skimmed), is Titanium Backup for when you change ROMS and you don't want to risk instability by restoring data from a different ROM. Also, its good to back up old versions of an app in case the dev breaks it with an update (notorious for Screen Mode Widget).

Also, LED hacks for when I use my phone as a clock with the Bedside app (in the market, awesome night clock app!) so I can disable the phones LEDs (the four home keys at the bottom) so they're not blinding me right next to my face, heh. I have no idea why you should have to be rooted to do that, though. That should be a stock phone option.
 
lodingi said:
Hi 0mega. I am wwondering if I can get a copy of Swype? I watched some YouTube vids and it looks great. Is it as accurate as it seems? Thanks.
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It's disturbingly accurate even when I'm not. They pulled some serious voodoo shit with it ;)

If you've got windows live messenger, PM me your email and I'll send the file over.

lodingi, you disallowed PM's so I have to respond here ;)
 
PnkPwrRngr said:
Sorry to not offer an insight op, but did you use a guide to root your N1? I got an N1 on release, and have been thinking about rooting it since. I've looked at multiple guides, but am still afraid of bricking. Mind posting a link of the materials you used? Thanks.

My favorite app has got to be Juice Defender. It fixed my reconnection to wifi after sleep issues, and battery saving rocks face ;)
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I just used the guides listed on the Cyanogenmod wiki, which worked OK, but I do have to admit that they aren't exactly the most comprehensive (if you're at all nervous though, there are a few guides to be found on youtube that should put it within your comfort zone). To be honest though, with these android devices you effectively have a BIOS that lets you flash a recovery image should everything go pearshaped. It gives you a fairly wide berth for error. While I did run into problems almost every point of the instructions, they were always minor issues that didn't take more than a quick google to resolve.

As for whether you SHOULD/SHOULDN'T root, I can't definitely tell you that there's no reason not to. Overall things are just that much snappier, and all the fundamental applications have customization options they didn't previously. It has also opened up my device to things like tethering and other root-specific applications. I'm looking forward to the next release already :)

Finally, and this isn't scientific, my battery life has definitely increased. Whereas previously my battery would last for the best part of a day, it is now going for ~2. Not exactly a miracle, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.
 
0mega said:
It's disturbingly accurate even when I'm not. They pulled some serious voodoo shit with it ;)

If you've got windows live messenger, PM me your email and I'll send the file over.

lodingi, you disallowed PM's so I have to respond here ;)
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I can give you a +1 here too -- I was skeptical but gave it a shot a few months ago. It's fabulous and has completely replaced the standard keyboard. I'm just surprised they haven't released a pay release of it yet (I'm gladly going to buy a copy when it comes out!).
 
quadnad said:
I just used the guides listed on the Cyanogenmod wiki, which worked OK, but I do have to admit that they aren't exactly the most comprehensive (if you're at all nervous though, there are a few guides to be found on youtube that should put it within your comfort zone). To be honest though, with these android devices you effectively have a BIOS that lets you flash a recovery image should everything go pearshaped. It gives you a fairly wide berth for error. While I did run into problems almost every point of the instructions, they were always minor issues that didn't take more than a quick google to resolve.

As for whether you SHOULD/SHOULDN'T root, I can't definitely tell you that there's no reason not to. Overall things are just that much snappier, and all the fundamental applications have customization options they didn't previously. It has also opened up my device to things like tethering and other root-specific applications. I'm looking forward to the next release already :)

Finally, and this isn't scientific, my battery life has definitely increased. Whereas previously my battery would last for the best part of a day, it is now going for ~2. Not exactly a miracle, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.
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Rooting was a giant pain in the ass for my phone. First there was a guide that was sort-of root. Didn't full root the machine and did NOT enable new roms to be loaded (Don't ask me what they did wrong, I'll never know. ) so that left all sorts of problem, then a new radio/SPL combo popped up and it's been awesome since.

And by awesome since, I mean after I memorized a very LONG string of DOS commands. I could root my phone fucking blind. Seriously. In DOS. I HATE IT.
 
0mega said:
Rooting was a giant pain in the ass for my phone. First there was a guide that was sort-of root. Didn't full root the machine and did NOT enable new roms to be loaded (Don't ask me what they did wrong, I'll never know. ) so that left all sorts of problem, then a new radio/SPL combo popped up and it's been awesome since.

And by awesome since, I mean after I memorized a very LONG string of DOS commands. I could root my phone fucking blind. Seriously. In DOS. I HATE IT.
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What dos commands?

The issue with rooting phones is the overwhelming amount of information on the internet with most being old, outdated, irrelevant or just plain bad. Finding the right guide or forum can be a pain in the ass if you dont know where to look.
 
Disposed said:
The issue with rooting phones is the overwhelming amount of information on the internet with most being old, outdated, irrelevant or just plain bad. Finding the right guide or forum can be a pain in the ass if you dont know where to look.
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QFT -- and unfortunately even the instructions in the cyanogenmod wiki are antiquated.
 
Disposed said:
What dos commands?

The issue with rooting phones is the overwhelming amount of information on the internet with most being old, outdated, irrelevant or just plain bad. Finding the right guide or forum can be a pain in the ass if you dont know where to look.
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having an htc dream and being on rogers, none of the traditional methods worked. had to use ADB and the SDK under windows/dos to tell the phone wtf to do and when to do it to flash the original recovery, radio, and spl <_< navigation to the SDK directory, adb prompts... All in memory now haha

adb fastboot recovery recovery

adb erase system -w

are just two of them. and of course the guide took forever to explain when the hell to put that crap in.
 
0mega said:
having an htc dream and being on rogers, none of the traditional methods worked. had to use ADB and the SDK under windows/dos to tell the phone wtf to do and when to do it to flash the original recovery, radio, and spl <_< navigation to the SDK directory, adb prompts... All in memory now haha

adb fastboot recovery recovery

adb erase system -w

are just two of them. and of course the guide took forever to explain when the hell to put that crap in.
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Ouch, i had to use a similar method to root the hero.

For furture reference not sure where you got your guide but if you have an HTC phone your first stop should be XDA-Developers forum.
 
Disposed said:
Ouch, i had to use a similar method to root the hero.

For furture reference not sure where you got your guide but if you have an HTC phone your first stop should be XDA-Developers forum.
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Oh I for sure used XDA. I picked up the phone the 2nd week it was out in Canada and the US methods weren't working so I spent most of the time trying to get it to work with what they had available. I was following every damn dev thread. It was brutal :p

And then when rogers locked out data for non-rogers 911-fix roms, I had to relearn what I thought was right, find kernel ports for the EBI1 modified radio and all that other happy shit and get it working again.

I now keep a Fail-Safe nandroid backup, and all rom files I need on the phone at all times.
 
0mega said:
Oh I for sure used XDA. I picked up the phone the 2nd week it was out in Canada and the US methods weren't working so I spent most of the time trying to get it to work with what they had available. I was following every damn dev thread. It was brutal :p

And then when rogers locked out data for non-rogers 911-fix roms, I had to relearn what I thought was right, find kernel ports for the EBI1 modified radio and all that other happy shit and get it working again.

I now keep a Fail-Safe nandroid backup, and all rom files I need on the phone at all times.
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That sucks, but at least you got it done. :p
 
Disposed said:
That sucks, but at least you got it done. :p
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Yeah, now I can wipe and restore my shitty 1.6 rom when it crashes once a week!

Wish I didn't need this damn EBI1 rom <_< No one ports the 2.1 roms to it -_-

Also, does anyone actually care about sense UI anymore?
 
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