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The Market and AppsTable of contents
 Android Market Like the iPhone, Android phones have their own "store" to download both free and paid applications. Unlike the iPhone, that's not the only place to grab apps from, and the Market is a good bit more free and open. As app makers and users have discovered, there's definitely a drawback to all that wide open space. Great apps can sneak right by the average user, annoying and unworthy apps can clutter up search results, and the average user can feel like they've been dropped into the food court of an unfamiliar mall where everybody speaks Basque. With that bit of tempering out of the way, let's jump into the fire. Browsing the MarketAs of an early 2011 update, there are now two ways for most Android users to go about finding and installing apps: through the Market on their phone, or, in a far more convenient and accessible way, through an online Android Market (market.android.com). First up, the most convenient method. Finding and Installing Apps from Your (Larger) Computer The Web-Based Market Home Page First things first: head to market.android.com in a desktop or laptop browser. In the upper-right corner of the Market home page, click the "Sign in" link, and do so with the same Google username and password you set up on your phone. If all goes well, Google will know which Android devices you've already set up, and you'll just have to verify that it's your own phone your holding. With done, you're best off heading off in the market. Try searching from the box in the upper-right corner--simply type in an application you could use, like, say, a kitchen conversion tool.  Filtering Tools for Web Market Searches If you're not seeing what you're looking for, click the "Search options" button to the right of your query. You'll get a drop-down box with options to find only paid or free apps, to filter out apps that aren't compatible with your device, and to sort by relevance (keyword matching) and popularity (download amounts and ratings). See something you like? Click it to get the full scoop.  App Details in the Web Market Scan through the description, the reviews, the recent changes, and, by all means, click on the developer's link (just under the app name) to see what other apps they've made. In almost every case where apps have been pulled from the Market (very rare), it's been easy for anyone inquisitive to spot junk developers by noting the volume and apparent quality of their other wares. Ready to give it a go? If it's a paid app, you'll need to set up a Google Checkout account. If it's free, you'll simply have to pick which Android device you want to beam your app to.  Sending an App Directly to Your Android Device If you happen to have more than one phone, or perhaps a phone and a tablet, choose the device you want to install on. Check the permission the app is asking for, see if they make sense for the type of app it promises to be, then hit Install if you're comfortable. Your download will fly at very quick speeds to your device, and your app will be install soon after. Finding and Installing Apps Directly from Your PhoneOpen the Market app from your App Tray at the bottom center of your home screen—it might also be a shortcut pre-placed on your home screen. Every so often, the Market will take a good bit to load, relating to its syncing of the apps you have installed with what's available, so it can check for updates. Give it a minute, but don't be afraid, either, to hit the Home button and re-launch it a bit later. The Market has three main functions. From the Market, you can:
Examining an App An App's "About" Section Find an app you like? Give it a bit of a look-over before you hit that obvious "Install" (or, possibly, "Buy") button. Each app currently gets an "About" section, with limited text space for the developers to describe, promote, and explain their recent updates to their app. Scroll down a bit further, and you'll find links to more applications made by the developer, the developer's web page, an email link, and even a phone number to call. There's a "Flag as inappropriate" link for apps you truly can't understand the existence of.  User Comments Section There's also a "Comments" section, where your mileage will vary greatly. Good, helpful, insightful reviews have been found here, but the reviews generally suffer from the same kind of polarity as YouTube: most everything is either one-star-worst-ever, or five-stars-awesome-app-great-job. You can click the up/down arrows, or press and hold on a comment, to mark it as "Helpful," "Unhelpful," or "Spam." Like the app categories and search, you can scroll down endlessly as the Market loads more comments. Installing or Buying an App App Permissions Click the "Install" button on an app's Market screen, and you'll be presented with a screen listing everything that app will have access to on your phone. Like the Market itself, it's a combination of refreshing honesty and bewilderment. Apps must spell out exactly what they'll have access to—location data, cameras, settings, conrols, and the like—but you won't know exactly what that access looks like until you've seen the app in action. Some users may have no idea what some of the permissions ("Change Wi-Fi 'state'?") mean at all. Scroll down a bit, and by clicking the "Show all" drop-down button, you can see permissions that nobody is likely to get too worked up about (view the state of Wi-Fi and cause a vibration, in ShopSavvy's case). If you're okay with what the app says it will have access to, hit OK. Not sure? I'd recommend entering the app name, plus "Android," into Google and seeing what comes up, along with checking out the developer's web site. If Android blogs or other sites have given notice to the developer's apps, and if the developer's site doesn't look like the company was making Ultimate Gaming Collection knock-off CD-ROMs just last year, you're likely in the clear. If you see no notice of the app, and the development site can't be found or tells little, hold off. Otherwise, hit "Install," and after a short download, your app will appear in the App Tray. Buying an App Buying an App with Google Checkout There are just one or two screens' difference between downloading a free app and buying an app. In general, most app developers offer a free or lighter version of their app—usually named with "free" or "lite" at the end—that's missing a few features that fans of the app will definitely want. When you buy a full, paid app, you're shown a tiny little web page, where you can pay with a major credit card (usually Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover are accepted) or, in some situations, have the purchase billed to your wireless carrier account (including T-Mobile in the U.S.). No credit card in Google's system? You can add one at a desktop computer through Google Checkout, the backend used for Market purchases. You can also add one through your phone, but consider how you're connected to the internet first—don't send a credit card over unknown Wi-Fi, in other words. After the purchase goes through, you'll get a receipt mailed to you by Google, and, after a short delay, your phone should start downloading the app, just as with a free download. If you buy the wrong app, or find the app entirely not what you were hoping, you have 24 hours from the time of purchase to "return" a purchased app. The option should show up in the Market list of Downloads. It's also worth noting that once you purchase an app from the Market, you'll have purchased that app in perpetuity for use on any Android phone you own. Whether you upgrade, or replace the phone you dropped in the pool, you can always re-download any app you've paid for, unless the developer has released a version so new and different that they've cut off access. Then again, a kind email can often rectify that kind of oops-too-late hang-up. Alternate App Finding: QR Codes QR Code Because searching is so non-specific in the Market, and because apps can share common names and descriptions, many developers have taken to providing direct Market links to their apps through QR codes. They're like bar codes with another dimension thrown in, and you'll need an app to scan them from a web page or paper document. Search for Barcode Scanner in the Market, find the one made by ZXing Team, and install it (it's one of the 10 things we suggest new Android owners should do right away). Open it up whenever you see the funky, square, four-cornered codes on a web page or elsewhere, and you'll head right to the app you were looking at. Managing and Troubleshooting Installed AppsIf you simply want to uninstall an application you've downloaded, you can do that pretty easily by heading to the Market app, clicking the Downloads header, then picking out the app and choosing "Uninstall." To do more advanced app management—clear out its data, change what it opens by default, and force it to stop when it goes awry—you'll need to head into the Settings. Finding Your AppFrom your home screen, hit the Menu key, choose Settings, select "Applications," then pick "Manage applications."  Manage Applications Screen Note:The screens shown here are from the application manager in Android 2.2, which is much improved since the 1.6 builds. Your screens may be slightly different, but most of the functionality is still there. The categories at the top show you the apps you can access: apps you've downloaded, apps currently running, every app on your system, and apps you've moved to your SD card (a feature exclusive to Android 2.2 and later). Generally, you'll want the "All" view, as it contains everything in the first two categories to its left. In the "All" view, find the app you're looking into:  All View Fixing Buggy Apps and Clearing Up MemoryIf the app is running, you'll see a "Force stop" button—good for troubleshooting apps that seem to be going haywire or not responding. "Uninstall," to the right, does just what it seems. The Storage section shows what kind of space the application is taking up in your internal memory—though a little extra is taken up by system files the app installs elsewhere. On most modern phones, that's not much of a concern, as apps take up just a few megabytes of space, and most newer phones offer at least 512 megabytes of internal storage. Some of that is taken up by system software and built-in apps, but only heavy downloaders will ever reach a memory limit. If you do, you may be able to move some applications to your removable microSD card with the "Move to SD Card" button (see the nearby box item for more on that).  Move heavy downloader apps to SD card if you're nearing an internal storage limit. If you're wondering just how much space is left on your phone, head back to the main Settings screen, select "SD card & phone storage" (or a similar storage-related entry), and scroll down to find the "Internal phone storage" section, where your available space is listed. Back on the application management screen, notice two buttons with confusingly similar titles: "Clear data," up in the Storage section, and "Clear cache," under its own heading. Put simply, "Clear cache" wipes away all the convenient files kept for speeding up the app, while "Clear data" wipes out passwords, settings, and other data, to return the app to how it was when you first installed. Between these two buttons and the "Force stop" button up top, you've got a four-step app triage checklist for when an app just won't respond:
If nothing seems to work, you can certainly email the developer of an application and let them know about your issue. Be as concise as possible: "I get regular 'Force close' prompts when launching App X, even after restarting, on my HTC EVO 4G" is much more helpful than "Your app doesn't work." Changing App Defaults App Info Further down on the app management screen, you'll see a button for "Clear defaults," though you can only push it if you've made a decision to always use this particular app for certain actions.  App Management Default Settings PDF and other document readers and editors, Google Voice, and certain other apps can do the same functions as your phone's built-in tools, so after installing or activating such apps, your phone will ask you to pick an app to handle what you're about to do (pictured at left for sending an SMS text), along with a checkbox to set your pick as the default. Hitting "Clear defaults" on an app like Google Voice makes your phone prompt you to pick an app again, where you can choose a new default or just pick on a per-case basis. Just a bit further down on your app management screen is a list of all the permissions an app has to operate and affect your phone. You saw this list when you installed the phone, but here it is again, for reference. Alternatives to the Market: AppBrain and Unofficial Apps AppBrain The Android Market has improved since this book first published, offering an instant means of searching and installing apps from a web Market, which then instantly download to your phone. But AppBrain, a service that can maintain a list of your installed apps ,is still pretty handy, and better at actually finding new apps, sharing them with friends, and also installing them instantly. Instant AppBrain InstallationsThe process and details are spelled out by AppBrain, but here's the gist:
Installing Apps from "Unknown Sources" Unofficial Apps Unlike the iPhone, the official Market isn't the only place you can install applications from. With a single switch in Settings, you can try out early versions of popular applications "in beta," check out the work of diligent coders in their early stages, and grab apps that don't quite meet Google's Market standards. Dangerous? A little bit, if you installed the wrong kind of app. But grabbing non-Market apps can also be very useful. But Android app makers, even major software firms, sometimes release very useful software in beta form first, for free, that you might want to try out. To install a non-official app, you need to download the installer, or grab it using a QR code, and have your phone set to allow non-Market installations. I've also installed a little-known application, Chrome to Phone, that can instantly beam web URLs, Maps locations, and even text I've selected in my laptop browser right to my Android phone.  Enabling Non-Market App Installation To unlock a non-Market app installation, head to your Settings, into the "Applications" menu, check the box next to "Unknown sources," and confirm in the pop-up warning dialogue that you're aware of what you're doing. From now on out, you can install any application any which way you want—through QR codes on unofficial app sites, by loading .apk files onto your SD card and installing them from there (using the help of a file manager like Astro), or some other fancy means we've yet to come across. Now that you're up on how to install, manage, and uninstall apps, both the official way and through more clever methods, you can check out the section on our 20 Favorite Android Apps. Or, heck, save it for later, as there's more cool stuff coming up next. Files26
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