25 Free Android Apps to Get You Started

All of them are free, but several have premium versions if you’re willing to pay. Get them directly through your phone or download them remotely over the Web from the Google Play Store.

Pocket

Let’s say you find a long article on the Web — something you need at least 10 minutes to read — but you’re at work or otherwise too busy to read it all right away. Just install the Pocket extension or bookmarklet in your browser, and you can save the story for your lunch break. Pocket’s Android app formats Web pages in a clean, booklike view, and it stores content off-line so you can still catch up on reading in a dead zone.

Flipboard

Flipboard is like a personalized miniature magazine for Internet content. It takes stories from around the Web and reformats them into little pages of text and images, so you can flip through by swiping up and down. You can also plug in your Twitter or Facebook profiles, and Flipboard will pull the links that people share into the mix — along with the occasional tweet or timeline post.

Chrome

If you bought a new Android phone this year, chances are it runs Android 4.0 or higher. Do yourself a favor and replace your phone’s stock browser with Google Chrome. It’s smooth, it has a neat way of showing all your open tabs, and it automatically syncs bookmarks and open tabs if you’re using Chrome on a PC or Mac. Chrome will soon be the default browser on all new Android devices, so you might as well join the party now. (If your phone has an older version of Android, I recommend Firefox as an alternative browser.)

MightyText

Want to make iPhone owners jealous? Tell them about how you can send and receive all your text messages right from your laptop or desktop Web browser. To make it happen, install the MightyText app on your phone, then set up the Web app on your computer.

Pulse News

Pulse News is a great way to scan through the headlines and find the stories you want to read. Just pick the news sources you want — or use the built-in suggestions — and you’ll get a scrolling view of thumbnail images and story snippets. The app also has a widget, so you can glance at your favorite news sources from your phone’s home screen.

Stitcher Radio

Why settle for one talk-radio source when you can choose from thousands? Stitcher brings together live stations, recorded talk-radio shows and podcasts from around the Web into a single app and lets you create custom stations based on your favorites. Plus, it doesn’t get all weird around power lines the way AM radio does.

Pandora

Still one of the all-time classics, Pandora generates Internet radio stations based on artists and genres. As you give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to each song, the app personalizes your stations by remembering what musical qualities you like. Here’s a tip for the Android app: hold your phone’s search button from the home screen and say, “Listen to (artist),” and you’ll be able to create a new Pandora station based on that artist, no typing required.

AndExplorer

Most of the time, you don’t need a file browser on a smart phone. But one day you may want to bundle some photos into a .zip file and send them by e-mail, or download a file from the Web and then upload it to your cloud storage service of choice. Should the need for PC-like file management ever strike you, AndExplorer is free and has no ads.

Fandango Movies

Fandango is one of a few apps for movie listings, trailers and ticket purchases, but its simple interface and clean design leave it a cut above the rest.

Catch Notes

Catch has an interesting take on the multimedia note-taking app. Notes are organized into “spaces,” which you can keep private or share with other people, and each space can contain reminders, photos, text, audio and checklists. But most of all, the app just looks kind of cool.

SugarSync

SugarSync isn’t the only free cloud storage service available, but it offers something unique: when installed on your PC or Mac, it can make an online copy of any existing folder on your computer. That way, you can always open a copy of your documents using the mobile app.

Weather Eye

Weather Eye isn’t too fancy — it’s basically a single page with the current temperature and the forecast for the next few days — but that’s the appeal of it. The included home-screen widget is equally clean and customizable with lots of icon styles and colors.

Songkick Concerts

Songkick helps you find concerts with minimal effort. The first time you open the app, it scans your music library, Google Play Music account and Last.fm account (if you have one), and then lists nearby shows for the bands in your catalog. You can also get alerts for new concerts and add a widget to the home screen to keep an eye on upcoming shows. It’s perfect for people who aspire to see more music but always forget to look things up.

Pattrn

Pattrn upholds the time-honored tradition of looking for cool wallpapers. It gives you endless lists of patterns to scroll through, put together by the users at Colourlovers, and if you find a favorite color, you can search for more patterns that use it. Just don’t pick one that’s so loud, it drowns out your app icons.

ConvertPad

ConvertPad isn’t the prettiest unit-conversion app around, but it’s free, and it’s loaded with pretty much everything, from weight and distance to energy flux and radiation absorbed dose. It does currency conversions as well and keeps itself up to date on exchange rates. You can also customize which categories you want to see, just in case viscosity and capacitance aren’t things you’ll be converting anytime soon.

Tripit

With a little extra effort up front, Tripit spares you from digging for your travel details later. Just forward your flight, hotel, car rental and restaurant reservations to plans@tripit.com, and the app pulls them into separate itineraries. And if you use Gmail, Tripit gathers those details automatically.

Astrid

Astrid is a free task-manager app with a clean design and lots of features. You can create lists and reminders with three levels of urgency, delegate tasks to other users and add a widget to your home screen. The app also syncs your tasks to other phones, tablets and the Web.

IntoNow

Just by listening to the audio from a television, IntoNow can identify movies and shows. It’s perfect for when you’re stuck in a hotel room watching some random movie whose name escapes you, or when you want to impress people at parties. And even when you’re at home with a channel guide at hand, the app can still provide details about the show and connect you with other folks who are watching.

Onavo Extend

If you regularly run into overages or speed limits with your monthly data use, Onavo Extend can help out. The free app reroutes your mobile Internet traffic through its servers and compresses data when possible so you don’t use as much of it. (Here’s a tip, though: if you don’t want the app to pester you when it’s turned off, go into its settings and turn “Savings Alert” off.)

Shazam

You hear a song you like. You don’t know who plays it. You open Shazam and press the big button, and a few seconds later, the app tells you the title, the artist, the album and even the lyrics. It’s basically the embodiment of what mobile apps are all about.

ESPN ScoreCenter

Fiddle with other sports-score apps if you like, but ESPN’s ScoreCenter has the most polished interface of them all, along with a home screen widget to keep you updated on your favorite teams. The app also has convenient links to online Gamecasts if you want to keep up with every play.

Yelp

With all due respect to Google+ Local, there’s still nothing better than Yelp when you want to find a nearby restaurant, barber shop, auto mechanic, dry cleaner and so on. Peruse the user reviews or swipe to the bottom of each listing for helpful information about ambiance, suggested attire and the parking situation. You can even use filters to see only what’s open right now.

Google+

Don’t have time for another social network? That’s fine. You should still get Google+ (or open the app if it’s pre-installed on your phone). Go to Settings and turn on “Instant Upload.” The app will automatically back up your phone’s photos online, so you can access them from any Web browser. There are no storage limits on this service, and don’t worry, your photos stay private unless you decide to share them.

Price Rhythm

Before you buy whatever you’re looking at in a brick-and-mortar store, run the barcode through Price Rhythm. It’ll tell you whether a better deal can be had in other stores nearby or online, and it provides a few other features such as local and online deals.

Carat

Now that you’ve got a new phone, and you’ve binged on strange and exotic apps, you might want to make sure they’re not sapping the phone’s battery life. After about a week of use, Carat generates a personalized report about which apps are draining battery and should be shut down (or removed). The app itself promises not to drain the battery either, so there’s no harm in keeping it around to help find battery-killing culprits.