Changelogs is an Android app that monitors app updates and consolidates the changelogs for those updates in a single, easy to scan view. It’s an essential app to have if you have a lot of apps installed on your phone or other Android device.
Tag: Android
AppLock for Android
Every so often I have to show something on my cellphone to a colleague or friend, or let one of my kids use my phone. AppLock is an app for Android that lets users password protect specific applications. Works well, and includes advanced security options like the ability to prevent someone from uninstalling AppLock itself in order to access locked apps.
SMS Backup+ Android App
Recently the Android app I had been using to backup my SMS/MMS messages became unsupported, so I looked around for an alternative.
At the moment, it looks like SMS Backup+ is the best tool for the job.
It will backup SMS, MMS attachments, and the call log to Gmail and assign a label to them. It also has a range of other settings, like syncing the call log with Google Calendar.
And, on top of that, the app is free and ad-free (I did send a $5 donation as the app was easily worth that much to me).
Advanced Tally Counter for Android
I regularly need to count how often certain events or actions occur throughout the day. There are a number of counter apps for Android on the Google Play Store, but for my money Advanced Tally Counter is the best one available.
As can be seen in the screenshot below, like most counter apps the free version of the app allows you to set up multiple counters to track any number of user-definable things.
Where Advanced Tally Counter differentiates itself is in its additional features that do, however, come at a cost of $1.99.
There are a lot of features in this app, but the ones I needed were timestamps on increments/decrements, and the ability to export and share the counter data as a CSV file.
Well worth the $1.99 cost.
Android Device Doesn’t Show Up In Google Play
The other day I tried to buy a game on the Google Play Store but was prevented because “this app is incompatible with your device.” This made no sense, since my LG G4 was more than capable of running the game.
After a quick visit to the Google Play Store, I realized the issue was that my LG G4 was no longer listed as a device on Google Play at all. It apparently dropped of the list when I rooted the device in order to make some modifications.
Several attempts at trying to get Google Play to recognize my device failed, but a quick search turned up this post at Bill Blankenship’s BitJunkie Blog who had the same problem.
His solution worked perfectly for me:
- Clear Play Store data. Go to Settings->Apps and scroll down until you see Google Play Store and tap it. Tap Clear Cache and then Clear Data.
- Reboot device
- Wait a few minutes
- Check the Play store website
Android: Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder
There are a ton of voice recording apps available for Android on the Google Play store, but for my money Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder is easily the best of them.
Unlike a lot of audio recording software I’ve used on Android, Hi-Q has an extremely clean, intuitive interface that takes just a few minutes to figure out and configure.
The app will record in MP3, WAV, MP4A, OGG and even FLAC, and as you can see from the screenshot makes it easy to see at a glance what format, sample rate, and how much recording time (or disk space) you have left.
Recording can be initiated from the app itself, from a home screen widget, or from directly within the notification drawer. It integrates with Dropbox, so you can have recordings transferred to your Dropbox account. This is a one way sync, however–so after the audio file is transferred to Dropbox, changes to the file on Dropbox or on the local device are not synced further. This feature is useful for copying the file to Dropbox so it can then be deleted from the local device.
I’m not sure if this is just an improvement in recent Android phones (I’m using an LG G4) or specific to this app, but the battery usage while recording seems to be much less than I’ve seen from audio recording on Android in the past. I assume Android phones are just getting smarter about minimizing power usage.
There is a free version of the app that limits the recording clip size to 10 minutes. The Pro version with unlimited recording length is only $3.99.
