New phone + favorite apps

The other month, my already tight budget has been hit by a catastrophe. I lost my phone by dropping it on the shotgun seat of a van on my way back from an event I was covering, never to be found again. And although "catastrophe" may be a great exaggeration, losing my phone which I openly have a love-hate relationship with, was nowhere near the list of things I'd willingly spend on this year. But what's done is done, and I really do need a better phone. So after weeks of research, I finally get this little monster.

Starmobile Diamond: 8k quad-core goodness. :)

Naturally, like any person with a shiny new toy, I spent the first few days playing around with it, installing all sorts of apps and games, and draining the battery faster than it normally takes to charge it. It already came loaded with things I find necessary like twitter, instagram, gmail, and facebook. It also had a bunch of games I found uninteresting so I quickly deleted it and replaced with with pa-artsy minimalist games like gyro and dots. Over a month of having it with me, I decided to compile a little list of apps that I couldn't live without.

1. SOUNDCLOUD + INDIE SHUFFLE 

Music is a major part of my life. Now, more than ever, as you may notice with my recent blog posts. Since I rarely listen to the radio, I have soundcloud play tracks from my favorite artists, and indie shuffle to introduce me to some new artists. This is very handy for me on weekends, when I'm away from my work computer.

2. DROPBOX + GOOGLE DRIVE

Accessing my files anywhere and everywhere is very important to me. Also, after losing your phone exactly when you needed it by your side, I've learned to make sure every important note, photo, and what have you, are automatically uploaded to my cloud drives. When I lost my phone, I had some important notes stored in it, and had to rebuild everything from memory. I've also set my phone to automatically upload all photos to my dropbox account so I won't have to do things manually. I know at some point this will be useful.

3. VIGNETTE DEMO

I loooooooooove photography apps. I've installed and uninstalled quite a few of those, and Vignette Demo is one I'd call a keeper. It's got nice filters you can play around with that I find much better than the already existing ones on instagram. I love the normal film, and leaky filters in it. And you can also do double exposures!

4. HOOTSUITE

Managing social media accounts can be quite a chore. I'm currently managing four, I think. Two of those, I have to keep close track of. I used to not be able to do that on weekends because my old phone can't seem to handle it. Now, I can update them from anywhere, even on weekends!

5. LOOKOUT

When you drop your phone at a stranger's car and they tell you they can't find it, it's easy to call bs. Being one who hates making the same mistake twice, I've installed this little app that will make my phone blare sirens to make it easy for me, or anyone to know where it's off to. And you can do this remotely! You can track your phone, and for a few extra bucks, lock and wipe out data in it remotely. Not that my phones ever have anything worth hiding, but it is fun to give people running off with your beloved gadget some trouble. It also comes with an anti-virus so you can go on browsing and downloading worry-free.

I've only had these for a month, so I'm sure I've missed a few golden ones. What android apps can you not live without?