Essential Droid Productivity Apps

Essential Droid (short for Android) productivity and business apps can help you conduct business while on-the-go, while also helping to keep your personal life organized. Mobile devices can help you stay in touch with clients and colleagues, family and friends. Business uses for smart devices include editing, writing and sharing documents; tracking time spent on your work projects, tracking mileage and expenses; giving presentations—there’s even more you can do. Communication is an important part of business. Smart devices allow you to stay in touch via email, Skype, and regular phone calls. Your mobile device’s built in camera can also be put to work in video conferences.

Today’s Android app developers are creating apps to help us with many of our daily tasks. Most of these essential Droid business apps are usable even if your mobile device isn’t used for work. Each business app listed in this article can help you with day-to-day tasks, as well as business tasks. Voice reminders can help you make notes you can put on the calendar, and create reminders to pick up the dry-cleaning. You can take pictures of products while out shopping to create a grocery list—send the pictures to your spouse or child so they can pick up the right can of soup on the way home. Use your imagination, and you’ll find a way to use these business apps to help make your life more organized. Business apps, for anyone, are like having an administrative assistant in your pocket, purse or backpack. 

Your mobile device’s camera not only takes great pictures, but it can also be used as a document scanner. Here are two of my favorite document scanner apps—both of which I’ve tried and found to be accurate when making a scan. 

Tip:  It’s important to stand as still as possible in order to get the best scan.

CamScanner lets your camera “scan” anything—documents, white boards, presentations, business cards, personals documents and more. Once you’ve saved the image on your Android mobile device, the CamScanner app allows you to crop, rotate and enhance the image. Once the image is to your liking, the app helps you to save the image as a PDF that you can save to your smartphone or tablet, upload to the cloud or Google Docs. CamScanner also allows for batch scanning. 

CamsScanner comes two versions:  free and licensed. The free version is for trial purposes, and will make a watermark on all images you scan, is ad-supported and allows you to only scan 50 documents (10 pages per document). The licensed version does everything described in previous paragraph, with no watermark or limitations. 

Document Scanner is another popular Droid scanner app that allows you to scan documents, receipts and more. This app’s paid version features include emailing of your PDF files, uploading files to the cloud, no page limit on documents, and even allows you to reorder your scanned pages. Document Scanner also sports features that allow you to enhance, crop and convert your file to gray scale. 

The free version of Document Scanner is for trial purposes only and comes with limitations, while the full version does everything described here. 

Evernote is away to keep your business and personal lives organized across all of your devices—mobile devices and computers. Access your notes anywhere you can access the Internet. You can save ideas, record voice notes, to-do lists and more. Your notes are all searchable, and can be shared with friends and colleagues on Facebook and Twitter. Evernote can even capture the GPS location, on a map, and attach this to the note you made in that spot. You can also “drop a pin” to add location notes—great for business meetings, vacations and sightseeing when you want to remember specific details.

The app allows you to share notes with family, friends and colleagues. You can also clip websites and other pieces of information from the web and save them as notes. All notes are searchable. Evernote ccurrently allows you to clip (upload) up to 60 MB per month, with their paid version offering more upload capability

Springpad is another way to organize your thoughts, to-lists, travel plans and more, all with unlimited storage. The app is user friendly and ad-free. Springpad is usable across all your mobile devices and via web from any computer that has Internet access. You can share your folder/notebooks with family and friends via email or social networks. You can save scanned barcodes, documents and photos to your Springpad account. Another nice feature is the Google Chrome browser extension to help you add websites directly to your Springpad account as you surf the web. You can also access your Springpad account from your desktop, via the web. Springpad on the web is free. 

Springpad, so far, offers unlimited storage of notes, photos, etc. for free. Evernote allows you to clip (upload) up to 60 MB per month, with their paid version offering more upload capability. 

Microsoft has released its popular app, OneNote Mobile, to the Android Market. OneNote Mobile is another note-taking app, similar to Evernote and Springpad, however, your notes will be synced with Microsoft’s free SkyDrive cloud storage service. Your SkyDrive free account will allow you up to 25GB to store text and picture notes. The app allows you to access your notes anywhere, anytime (as long as you have an Internet connection), and will work across all your mobile devices and desktop/laptop computers. The free version of OneNote Mobile allows you to create and edit up to 500 notes. After reaching this limit, you can still access your notes to review and edit them. If you need more space, the full version of OneNote Mobile costs $4.99 and offers unlimited notes. You can purchase the full version with an in-app purchase (meaning you can buy the full version of OneNote within the app, itself). 

Quickoffice Pro makes it easy to create, edit, and share Microsoft Office files on your Android smartphone or tablet. You can do it all—documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDF files. This app makes it easy to upload files to Google Docs, Dropbox, Box cloud storage. Quickoffice Pro even offers zipping of files and copying from zip folders to other directories. All files can be via email, SMS, and Bluetooth. Files are saved on your mobile device’s smart card. The HD version of QuickOffice Pro will work on tablets running the Honeycomb Android OS. 

Project Schedule Free is a mobile project management and task scheduling app. The app schedules tasks in a Gantt chart, supports read/write for MSPDI-XML files that work with Microsoft Project. You can assign task groups, export the Gantt chart as an image file (png), and be notified of when tasks start and end. The app allows you to choose several different notifications:  text, sound, text-to-speech and vibration. The free version is ad-supported, while the paid version is ad-free.

Astrid is an open-source to-do list and task manager to help you stay organized and keep your projects on target. This app has reminders, task sharing, programmable instant notifications and more. This little app will help you stay organized—personal and work projects will be on time. Astrid can also sync with web-based Google Tasks. It’s a versatile app that can work for anyone—couples and families (to coordinate events and tasks, student’s school work and projects), work teams and friends. All information is stored directly on your phone’s internal storage, rather than on the external SD card. 

Taskos is another free, easy Droid business app to stay organized in your work and/or personal life. You can share tasks via email or SMS, and the app syncs with Google Tasks. You can customize your to-list categories, edit, sort your tasks and more. Taskos will even let you shake your mobile device to remove tasks. This app also offers a home screen widget for quick and easy access of your to-do lists. 

Gtasks is another to-do app that sync with your Google tasks, while offering checklists and a notepad tool. You can sync across several Google accounts automatically, and order to-do items by due date and name. Your appointments and events will show up in Google Calendar, making it easy to stay on schedule and avoid schedule problems.

Jorte creates the look of a “real” paper personal organizer that’s easy to use. The Jorte calendar app allows you to customize the style you choose, and it displays in monthly or weekly views. This Droid app allows you to even customize the beginning day of the week, add in public holidays and events. Important to-do lists can be done in different colors, and imported to a CSV file. This app will sync with Google Calendar, too. 

The Biz Calendar Droid business app supports a zoomable and scrollable multi-day view, from1to 14 days. You’ll find a month, agenda and day view, along with a search function to find that important meeting or appointment. The free version of Biz Calendar has unobtrusive ads, however there the paid version is ad-free. 

Skype’s been around for a while, and has proven itself to be a useful and cost-effective way to stay in touch. You can use Skype on your Android mobile devices, and on your work and home computers. Skype-to-Skype calls are free (data charges may apply). However, Skype also gives you the option to buy Skype Credit; you can use this credit to call landlines and mobile phones. Skype recommends using an unlimited data plan or using a WiFi network in order to make sure you avoid costly calls. You can also use this app for SMS and IM and file sharing (such as documents and photos). Along with Skype calls, you can also have video calls with your colleagues, family and friends. There is no extra charge for video conference calls. I use Skype almost every day to have video talks with my adult kids, and have also used it for work calls. Skype is versatile and easy to use, making it one of the best options to stay in touch with everyone on your contact list.

IMO is an instant messenger service that works across many IM platforms, such as Skype, Facebook, Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ/AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and more. You can stay in touch with everyone on these services, and you don’t need to create yet another account to use IMO. This app will allow you to do group chats, group chat photo sharing, and allows you to share audio, video and other types of files. Your chat history is also searchable, so you can remember what you said when! 

Seesmic is allows you to access Facebook and Twitter—from one app. You can share photos, search and get notifications of new messages. You’ll be able to see all timelines, view private conversations and receive IMs directly to your Android smartphone or tablet. You can even geotag your tweets. Seesmic also lets you work with Salesforce Chatter—to help you stay in contact with your social business connections and your office colleagues. 

Facebook for Android works with your Facebook account, and allows you to share photos and updates directly from your mobile device. Stay up to date with your timeline, and business pages on Facebook—respond to questions and comments on the go. 

LinkedIn is one of the most popular business social network places online. Here, you can connect with colleagues, update your status, connect and network with others in your field, and send email within the system platform. You can also keep up with your industry's news and more!

The Cashbook-Expense tracker is one of the best expense tracker Droid apps for business. The app is quick and easy to use, and will track expenses in such a way your bookkeeper will be happy with you. This expense tracker tracks expense, income, mileage, sales and receipts, and can be used for tax, reimbursement and bookkeeping. The Cashbook-Expense Tracker is also helpful to track your personal finances. The feature list for this app is quite extensive, but here are some highlights: 

• Password protection
• Select from 33 different currencies
• Add, delete and rename categories, accounts and vehicle information
• Charts and diagrams
• Backup to the cloud or SD card
• Export and send reports in CSV (for use by Google  Docs and Microsoft Excel)

The free version of aCar Droid app tracks your car maintenance (across multiple vehicles), business trips and vehicle expenses, along with gas costs and mileage. The app is makes it easy to search and filter your information, and even provides time and mileage service reminders for when it’s time to change the oil, etc. You can move all information to the SD card of your Android mobile device. 

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