10 Most Essential Apps For Your Android Phone

The ever growing Android market is flooded with apps that number by the hundreds of thousands, well past the halfway mark towards a million. This can be extremely confusing, especially for users that are new to the Android world in terms of what applications are most essential to download.

This list does not necessarily state all the must haves and essentials because needs differ by individuals. However, with these basics you can get started.

1. Antivirus

The importance of an antivirus on your device can not be over emphasized. The AVG Antivirus is a free antivirus app for Android. It is free and gives you many features to secure your Android phone from viruses, malwares and threats.

By enabling the Find/Locate Option, it connects to Google Maps and shares the location of the phone, hence securing your phone from theft. Other features include killing running tasks to free up memory, lock and wipe data to protect privacy, and scheduled scans.

2. Go Backup

Go Backup is an app that backs up your data. It can backup your phone contacts, messages, call log, and also the applications installed with app data to your SD Card. You can either restore full backup or select what to restore manually.

3. Facebook

The Facebook app allows you to communicate with your friends, family and clients right from your phone. With Facebook, you can also send messages to anybody on your friends’ list anytime, as well as chat with them.

Facebook also gives you the option to update your status and photos. It also syncs your phone contacts with Facebook friends and shows Facebook data in your contact.

4. Opera Mini 

Opera Mini is one of the fastest, widely used browsers for Android phones. It helps you save your data bandwidth using Unique Compression Technology. Like Firefox and Chrome, it has the tab functionality to open multiple tabs at the same time.

5. Battery Defender – Battery Saver 

Battery Defender is the most effective app to extend your battery life. It is not as complex as other apps in the same category – apps like Juice Defender and Easy Battery Saver. It disables unnecessary processes and apps running in the background and stops Wi-Fi connectivity when not in use or when the screen is off.

6. Olive Office Premium

Olive Office Premium is a free Android App that lets you view and edit documents like Word, PPT, XLS files, and you can also read PDF files on it. Most other apps of this category are premium apps even though they offer generally the same features.

7. Music Paradise

Music Paradise is an app that enables you download free music right onto your Android device. All you have to do is Search for the Music or Album terms, then download the music of your choice. Music Paradise also has a built-in music player which lets you listen to downloaded music right from the same interface. You can listen to music while downloading other music on the same interface.

8. Mobile9

Mobile9 is a popular site to download phone stuff like Wallpapers, Ringtones, Notification sounds, Live Wallpapers, and so on for your Android Phone. Along with that, it also gives you the option of downloading apps, launches and themes into your phone. You need to register and sign in first before using the app.

Mobile9 also has a huge database of downloads for almost every phone. It automatically detects your phone and shows the stuff which is compatible for your phone. How cool is that!

9. Google Reader

Google Reader for Android allows you to read all the news and feeds in one place. You can read all the latest news and posts from the popular blogs by adding their RSS Feeds to your Google Reader. It also syncs the feeds, so you can read these feeds from other devices too.

10. Instagram 

Instagram is available on Android. This app allows you apply a variety of photo filters and effects after capturing photos within the app before you share it with other Instagram users.