Unleash your inner artist with these applications for music, photography, painting and video making
Camera 360 Ultimate
Feature-filled, but rather awkwardly designed and disappointingly crash-happy camera app.
£2.46/$3.99 Crash-prone cam
Camera 360 is one of the many camera effects apps for Android and doesn't do much that hasn't been seen before. Rather, it consolidates all the effects and of various average photo effects apps into a single nicely stuffed one.
Filter wise, we can add a fish eye lens, stylise photos into various types of painting, and turn our Android into a thermal imaging camera. Our favourite is the 'ghost' effect, which randomly places a faint spectre in your photo.This app may not offer an option that mirrors the coveted Hipstamatic app for iPhone, but it does include a lot of fun extras that will take you a while to explore.
Camera 360's not got the cleanest navigation design.The viewfinder is bordered by buttons which leave the screen looking crowded. At the same time this means there are a lot of options to experiment with, which is not entirely a bad thing.
The biggest problem though, is that it is prone to crashing. It also doesn't allow you to edit existing photos and paid customers could be left feeling short-changed. Our recommendation is stick with the free version, which has more than enough FX to play with.
QuickPic
Free No-nonsense picture gallery
More substance than style, QuickPic is simply a picture gallery. There aren't any camera or frivolous effects, just a handy way to scroll through your existing picture albums.
It's great for quickly sorting images (there's an option to shuffle files in alphabetical order, for those that name their snaps). It's also useful for easily moving pictures between folders and save locations. There's also a delightfully effortless touchscreen image viewer and slideshow option.
Combining a simple layout with few menus, this
app should slot neatly into your existing Android interface.
Apparently many swear by it, using this as their go-to picture viewer. But this is where the app becomes divisive: others, like us, will find QuickPic completely irrelevant. Why? Well it depends on your Android version. We tested this on an HTC Desire Z, running Android 2.2.1, and QuickPic picture viewer is near identical to the Gallery that comes as standard. In fact the original gallery allows you to sync photos with Facebook and Flickr - a feature not available with QuickPic.
So it comes down to how usable your existing gallery is. If you are already running an Android 2.2.1 gallery, don't bother with this snappy chappy. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a responsive, quick image viewer, you nay well end up using this everyday.
Fretter -Chords
£2.53/$4.12 Strummers' delight
Fretter won't turn you into Jimi Hendrix but it will help you understand a bit more about some of the many chords at the guitarist's disposal. This advanced database utilises an algorithm that will offer up chords that you're likely to be able to play, rather than every plausible variation.
The best thing about the app is that you can hear every chord played as it is meant to sound.This gives those with a lesser ear for music some help in figuring out if what they are strumming is right. Fretter offers a good number cf functions for its size and price and is an app that guitarists should seriously consider.
AudioManager Pro
£1.22/$1.99 Level up your sounds
If you always end up with your alerts at sonic boom level and your alarm just on vibrate, then AudioManager Pro is for you.
Once you're in the app you're presented with the option to alter the levels for all of these settings, save your selections as pre-sets and even set a time and date for them to kick in. You can keep track of what's going on with a handy widget on the home screen or by placing an icon in the shortcuts bar.
This is a decent app for the forgetful, but it's important to remember you can do this manually without much trouble. We'd expect a little more from an app labelled 'Pro' - like a graphic equaliser - though.
Sketchbook Mobile
Highly impressive app that enables you to go beyond mere doodles to truly sophisticated art.
you get the feeling that with talent and time you could create something artistically awesome with Sketchbook Mobile.
Whereas other draw-on-the-touchscreen apps like Kids Paint Free are just for fun, this cheap-as-chipsapp is a veritable touchscreen Etch-a-Sketch with the ability to craft pretty much anything you desire.
The Ul isn't straightforward and it's a little like mastering a complex program like Photoshop, but on a touchscreen. A target icon at the bottom of your virtual canvas brings up a cartwheel of different drawing utensils. You can alter the thickness or opacity of the pen or pencil by dragging vertically or horizontally. The cartwheel also enables you to fill in the canvas with a colour of your choosing or indeed wipe your page clean.
There's also a bunch of cool settings where you can draw symmetrically on both sides of the canvas or paint on existing photos loaded from your gallery All of your creations can be easily exported or shared with friends on Facebook or Twitter. The app will rinse a little bit of memory and battery life, but it's impressively smart and is overflowing with features,.
While the sketch of Luke Skywalker in a TlE-Fighter on the title screen (opposite) might be pushing it, depending or how good your touchscreen is, you could achieve artistic brilliance with Sketchbook Mobile.
MusicGrid
Free Superb tune tool 
This is one of those ingenious apps that is just simple, clever and fun to use all at the same time. The
step sequencer, inspired by online programs like Tone Matrix, presents users with a grid of dots which can be touched to turn white to create a repeating pattern of sounds.The top row represents the low notes and the bottom row represents the highest ones.
Drawing a pattern sends out a ripple effect to surrounding notes and plays a repeating sequence you can add more and more layers to; each extra note noticeably changes the tune. You can also select slightly different tones and tempos.
Novices will be able to draw any pattern and still come up with a decent tune, but if you spend a little time on this you can create some really complex, if a little 8-bit console -sounding, sequences.
We'd love to be able to save and export our creations to share with the world (or even use as tones on the phone) but perhaps that'll come in a later version. Other than that, there's really nothing bad to say. It epitomises the simple, fun app that takes your phone places you never imagined.
Magic Marker
Free Pointless scrawl enabler
Ever wanted to write messages all over your touchscreen in a series of bright neon colours? No, neither have we really, which makes Magic Marker rather difficult to judge in any meaningful way.
Is it good at what it's supposed to do? Yes. Can we think of any need for it whatsoever? No.
Judging it just on its merits, the white writings give of a nice coloured hue that make your
creations look like neon bar signs, so there's one plus. You can adjust the size of the pen and the colour of the ink and also save and send out your creations to your pals or create a custom wallpaper for your smartphone's home screen.
We can imagine this app would be useful if you'd like to send out a message of love to your sweetheart cr perhaps to hand over to the kids to keep them busy for five minutes if, by some miracle, they get bored of Angry Birds, but other than that we're really reaching for a reason to expend the kinetic energy necessary to download this simple application.
Chord bot Pro
£3.07/$5 Praise the chord
If, in another dimension, you were one of the greatest musicians in the word, you would still find an app like Chord bot useful. Dubbed as an 'electronic accompanist for the mobile musician' Chord bot provides massive help in the creation of a song.
A very user friendly and genuinely useful musician's tool that is easily worth the asking price.
It may not seem that organic to allow Chordbot Pro to make some musical decisions for you but that is what the app is for.
You can use it as a tool to help you ceate and play advanced chord progressions easily on your phone. This is apparently useful for song-writing experiments, or as an accompaniment for your guitar solos. Although if you are not a guitarist, then it works equally well with saxophones and theremins, apparently.
The app works very well as a companion to musicians. The chords it churns out will help anyone to create a song and it is brilliantly used as backing for when you do want to go a bit freestyle on your guitar.
With 57 chord types in all keys/ inversions and 30 plus comping styles, Chord bot Pro is a lovely app to use. And there is also a limited Lite version for those that don't want to spend the cash.
Kids Paint Free
Nicely designed and fun to use, this finger- painting app will take you back to primary school.
Free Finger-paintin' good
Finger painting is cool. There's absolutely no denying it, whether you're an adult or an infant.The only problem sometimes is the God-awful mess it can make of your kitchen, so let's have a big round of applause for Kids Paint Free for Android.
This app makes great use of your marvellous touchscreen to occupy your little ones or indulge in the occasional acid flashback, whatever tickles your fancy.
It gives you the option of a blank canvas or a coloured background to paint on, or to take a picture or load one from your gallery to annotate; perfect if you want to add a giant member (for example) to your best friend's head.
Every time you lift your finger from the screen the colour of your virtual paint will change colour, which is both a good and a bad thing in many cases, and once you're done you can save your masterpiece to your Android phone (we had to restart our phone to get this to work) and share it with your buddies.
If you mess up, then your mistakes are easily corrected by hitting the back button, you can also use your Android phone's trackball in order to change the background mid-paint and the whole app is only 169k, so it won't kill your battery or sap your memory. Definitely worth having in your locker if only for the friend altering japes.
Floating Image
Some decent features, but the general indifference to picture quality is a rather glaring drawback.
Free Clever, sadly flawed pic app
With the megapixel count on mobile phones ever increasing, flicking through images on a handset is becoming that little bit more prevalent. The ways to view your pictures have always been a touch uninspiring, though. Floating Image looks to add a little spice to your image collection by taking all the photos you have on your mobile phone and displaying them as a floating image screen saver - as the name suggests.
The idea of adding creativity to your Android phone's photo album is a great one and, at first glance, it seems as if Floating Image is a smart and creative app. Dig a little deeper, however, and cracks start to appear in the app's glossy facade.The main problem we have with Floating
Image is that, while the images look great floating around, as soon as you click on a specific image to view it, the photo is shown in a really low resolution. This is a real bugbear, given the main reason you would use this app is to show off your images in an imaginative way. If you can't view your images as they are mean: to be intended then it's a bit of a problem. There are some decent features, however, including the ability to nab images from Flickr, Picasa and Facebook. And when you move your handset the floating images move with you - that is rather clever.
It's just a shame that this rather interesting application has a single, massive flaw. It doesn't care about picture quality, which is, of course, what matters most of all in picture galleries.
Retro Camera Plus
£1.84/52.99 A pic down memory lane
There are some gadgets which work better when you turn back the clock. Cameras are a perfect example. You can throw all the megapixels at a digital camera you want, but it won't give you the nostalgic warmth of images taken with a Polaroid.
This is where the Retro Camera app brings bock old school shooting with a vengeance. While it is a touch hefty in size - it's 6.3MB - the app does wonders for your photography.
Load up the application and within mere seconds you are able to take some pleasingly retro pictures. There are five cameras to chose from. These are:The Barbl, Little Orange Box, Xolaroid, Pinhole Camera and the FudgeCam.
Whichever camera you use, the app makes it so that it looks like you are looking through the camera's viewfinder - it's a nice touch, even if it limits the size of the image taken. Once done, you can view your images in the 'darkroom'.
There's a lot of love in the Retro Camera app and it will make taking pictures with your phone - which is always a bit of a nightmare - a whole lot more enjoyable. If you don't mind a few ads here and there, then there is also a Lite version available.
Tuner -gStrings
£0.84/$1.36 Top axe tuner
GStrings turns your Android handset into a fully fledged guitar tuning device. The Ul may well be basic - you can change the colour of the screen but that's about it -but it does its job well.
We used an acoustic guitar to try the app, one which we purposefully detuned (which wasn't hard, given how badly we play guitar) and it worked exceptionally well.
To work it, all you have to do is press on whichever note you want to tune to at the top of the screen and click Tune. If you want to tune by ear, then you can click Sound which offers up the pitch of the note. And if you just want to ad-lib with the tuning, then pick Tune Auto and it will change automatically to whichever note you are trying to hit.
The sound is measured to the nearest hertz and is unbelievably accurate. Considering you would pay around £20 for a standalone electronic tuner, spending less than a £1/$2 on this app is an absolute bargain.
The paid-for version has adjustable range, non-linear scales and double the processing power, but if you do want the app for free, there is an ad-funded Lite version available.
Camera Zoom FX
Nicely laid out and manages to bridge the gap between phone and camera fairly convincingly.
£2.99/$4.85 Neat cam app
Android users used feel superior to the iPhone 3G with its punitive camera and the poor images it took. Then came along the iPhone A with its improved lens,flash and megapixels and suddenly we didn't feel quite so smug any more. Camera Zoom FX is designed to improve things even more and enhance the picture-taking possibilities on your Android device.
You'll be surprised at just how many features are on offer. Despite the rather lame title, it's not about just about adding effects to your images - although there are 40 on offer - but creating a better camera setup.
For starters, there are several features here designed to help you take better pictures. These include improved zooming, pro burst, dedicated camera buttons
- something which will make HTC Legend users happy - and a timer option.
The layout of the app is great, slicing the screen up into areas, so that you can practice the rule of thirds whenever you take a new picture. Phone cameras will never win awards for image quality due to the puny lenses, but Camera Zoom FX does well to paper over the divide between your Android handset and a proper compact camera. Other add-on packs are also available on the Android Market.
My Perfect Egg Timer
Manages to be rather more than just a simple timer; you need never suffer a duff egg again.
Free Hard or runny, as you like
An egg should really be the easiest thing to cook. If you drop it,you can make scrambled egg, cook it too long and it becomes an omelette, drop it in boiling water and you can either boil or poach.
However, cooking a boiled egg to exactly how you want it is one of life's biggest problems. So this app times it for you exactly. However, just how 'exactly' you want it depends on a few factors. My Perfect Egg Timer enables you to key in the properties of
your egg to help you cook, well, the perfect egg.
You need to tell the app a few things to get it used to your individual style, like what size the egg's diameter is, the temperature it currently is (has it come from the fridge?) and even the altitude of where you are - it affects the boiling point of the water, you know.
And if you don't know how high you are, your phone can, amazingly, try and tell by using your handset's GPS. And then, when you're ready, click Start. Yes, it is just a fancy egg timer. But if it gives us an excuse to use our Android handset in the kitchen,then it gets the thumbs up from us.
QIK VIDEO
Anyone who shoots a lot of video will find this sharing tool useful and the live streaming is a big plus.
Free Useful video sharing
You might have never heard of Qik, but it's now been bought by Skype.
Not that surprising a purchase, since Qik enables you to send video to social networking sites as well as live streaming to Qik's own site. That's right, live video, shared online on-the-fly. If you don't have a Qik account (who has?) then you need to take a few minutes to sign up for one. Once done, you are ready to use Qik.
You can't send videos you have already shot as you need to record your footage while using the Qik app - it's recorded live. Once you've finished your recording, give the footage a title, then set up where you would like it to be sent. The options are: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and People. Choose People and you can send the video to one of your contacts. You can even live-stream to the Qik site if you want but the results aren't as good as sharing on social networks and you do need reasonable bandwidth to do so.
Qik Is great for those who shoot and share lots of videos. By the way, there's a separate Qik app for the HTC Evo 4G.
Album Art Wizard
A small app that matches artwork to your albums; music aficionados won't regret spending the cash.
£1.54/$2.49 Cover yourself up
There's nothing worse than uploading a batch of music to your Android phone, only to find that, while the music has copied over, none of the album artwork has made the transition from computer to phone. You could individually add in images for each tune but that's not the easiest thing to do. and besides, who has either the time or the inclination to go through this lengthy process?
Lucky then, there is an app to find the artwork for you - and it's called Album Art Wizard.This is one area where our iPhone-owning cousins are better off, since the iTunes store has a one-click process for this.
But unfortunately Android lags behind when it comes to music management. So it's a good thing that Album Art Wizard takes the sting out of this mundane task completely. Run the small 114kb app and it will automatically search online for the correct artwork for your music.
And if it should turn up a blank, you can take an image stored on your SD card to plug the gap.
In our tests, the app worked like a dream - offering up most of the visuals for our music. When we couldn't find the thing we wanted, rooting around in the Internet Extended search helped out.
A word of warning: if you have a heap of music, the search for images does take Album Art Wizard a while but you can multi-task while this is being done.
For a measly £1.54 or $2.50 our laziness says that this is money very well spent.
Voice Recorder
Solid, user-friendly app that does everything you expect of it: a reliable Dictaphone alternative.
Free Straightforward recording tool
Going to a meeting with a battered old Dictaphone has had its day. There are several voice recording apps for Android and this one is not only free, it even enables you to send the recording as an attached file via email.
The app is pretty simple to use and enables you to record interviews or conferences with the press of a button. When you want to finish recording, press the button again to end.You can record up to 180 minutes of audio - plenty for several interviews or meeting recordings.
Once you're done you can give the audio file a name and, if there are a number of audio files that you've created on your phone, you can search through them either by name or date. There aren't many extra functions, but some will find the timer recording feature rather useful, though unless you want to catch someone out we can't actually think of a useful reason why. Here you can simply set the time you want the app to start recording and the duration of the recording.
This is a typical Android app - it isn't going to set the world alight, but it's reliable and easy to use. And, most importantly, you feel you can rely on it.
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