The Best Android Applications

6. Locale

This is one of those clever uses for a location-aware phone that we’re amazed nobody thought of earlier. It allows you to set your phone to behave differently in different places. Not at work? Stop taking calls from the boss. At home with a battery under 30 percent charged? Set a reminder to plug it in. If only we could get a universal version of this that will shut everybody’s phone off at movie theaters. (link)

5. ShopSavvy

We’ve seen many different versions of phone-based services that allow you to price check items in a store before, but ShopSavvy’s use of the G1’s built-in camera as a barcode reader and GPS makes it one of the most refined yet. Just snap a photo of the UPC on the item you’re considering and ShopSavvy will not only give you the best price on the Web, it will give you prices at nearby stores too, letting you know when a 5-minute walk down the street will save you $50. Regretful impulse buys? Banished! (link)

4. ShapeWriter

Sure, we’re psyched about the G1’s QWERTY keyboard because it will allow us to ditch lame touchscreen keyboards… but ShapeWriter’s new method for typing with a screen still has us intrigued. The premise: rather than tapping all the letters you need to make a word, why not string them all together with a single finger drag, then let software figure out which ones you wanted to use? It’s gesture-based typing, and we think it looks much easier than the older alternative. We’ll wait until we get to try it on the real deal to chalk this one up to a success, but there’s no question it holds promise. (link)