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Applications


Emulators[]

Just install and play the games of yesteryear directly on your phone! Also, did I mention that there's no rooting required for these apps to work?

Free emulators[]

Icon Title System Description
Retroarch Android icon Retroarch Multiple A single app to emulate a fuckton of systems: arcades, 3DO, PS1, PSP, NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, GameBoy, GBA, DS, Virtual Boy, Neo Geo, NG Pocket, SG-1000, Master System, Game Gear, Mega Drive, Mega CD, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast, TurboGrafx, SuperGrafx, PC-FX, PC-98, Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar, Lynx, ST, CPC, VIC-20, C64, Amiga, WonderSwan, Intellivision, ColecoVision, Vectrex, Odyssey2, MSX, MS-DOS, X68000, ZX Spectrum; it also has ports of ScummVM, Quake, Doom, Flashback, Minecraft, Rick Dangerous, Cave Story, RPG Maker, and Tomb Raider. If you can handle its atrocious interface, this will be the only emulator you will need.
Gameboid Android icon Gameboid GBA GameBoy Advance emulator.
Mupen64plusAE Android icon Mupen64+AE FREE N64 Nintendo 64 emulator.
MyBoy Android icon MyBoy GBA GameBoy Advance emulator.
PPSSPP Android icon PPSSPP PSP PlayStation Portable emulator. While still a work in progress, it runs decently to really well on mid to high end devices respectively though it can only run a handful of games. Check it out.
Reicast Android icon Reicast Dreamcast Dreamcast emulator. Still in an early stage, glitchy, but can run many games pretty well.
Snes9x EX plus Android icon Snes9x EX+ SNES Super Nintendo emulator.
Yaba Sanshiro Android icon Yaba Sanshiro Saturn Port of Yabause. The only dedicated Saturn emulator for Android at this point.

Commercial emulators[]

Icon Title System Description
Android icon Robert Broglia's emulators Multiple Broglia's emulators are fast, reliable, and very authentic to the original systems. He is a fast developer, and likes talking to customers first hand if you throw him an e-mail.
DraStic Android icon DraStic Nintendo DS Runs at full speed and with multiple screen layout options. Definitely worth checking out, especially for touch-based games such as Animal Crossing.
Real3DOPlayer Android icon Real3DOPlayer 3DO If you love the 3DO and hate RetroArch enough to pay for an emulator... compatibility is pretty much perfect.

Useful apps and software[]

Browsers[]

Icon Title Type Description
Chrome Chrome Web Google is pushing for Chrome to now be the default browser for Android. Supposedly this means they're improving it. Extra features if you use Chrome on PC, like syncing your bookmarks and sending pages from one to the other.
Kiwi Browser Web Chrome but with the ability to run desktop extensions. Has a built-in adblocker, but you can disable it and install uBlock Origin instead.
Dolphin Dolphin HD Web Dolphin HD is a great browser, Opera Mobile is pretty cool too. I find the default browser perfectly acceptable though. Find what suits your taste.
Dukto Android icon Dukto File Transfer Run this on your phone and another phone or PC to simply transfer files over wifi.
Firefox Android icon Firefox Web Still the only mobile browser with extensions. This means it's still the only complete, non-deprecated mobile browser. Supports many larger firefox extensions including uBlock Origin(even the element hiding tool!), Stylish, Greasemonkey... Chome for android deliberately refused to include this crucial, non-optional functionality.
Opera Mini icon Opera
Opera Mini
Web Newbs won't know this, but Opera is the most renowned mobile web browser from ye olden days. If you've unfortunate enough to be on a network that limits your data, try the Mini version, which relies on Opera's servers to compress webpages, saving you data and long loading times.

Opera was recently sold to a Chinese company, and launched a "free" VPN service (read: your data going through Chinese servers).

Chant Android icon Chant 4chan Even if 4chan has a mobile site now, a 4chan browser can be a lot more handy than relying on your web browser. Chant is a good free option, but sadly no longer available on Google Play because Google threw a fit about the adult boards. Grab the APK from the dev's Bitbucket (linked) instead.
Mimi Mimi 4chan An excellent 4chan browser. View GIFs and images in the app, scroll to read through more pages, favorite threads, save images to a folder, and the keyboard doesn't block the Captcha if you've got a longphone.
Clover Android icon Clover 4chan The best 4chan browser right now. Smooth UI, lets you post, view webms, change color theme and watch threads in background.

Launchers[]

Icon Title Description
Google Now Launcher icon Google Now Launcher Google's official "fuck manufacturer customizations" launcher: it restores Android's interface (mostly) to a "stock" state, like what you'd see on a Nexus.
Google Pixel Launcher icon Google Pixel Launcher An unofficial port of Google's new launcher that's supposed to be for Pixel devices only.
Launcher pro ADW
Launcher GO
LauncherPro
ADW launcher or Launcher GO are both good homescreen replacements, or LauncherPro if you have a low end device. These allow for tons of customization, such as resizing widgets, icon packs, dock background, gestures to do certain things, and so on.
Zeam launcher Zeam Launcher If you're getting bored with rice shit or your default home screen just isn't that great, this could be a great launcher for you. Unlike 3 other launchers mentioned here, this app follows the KISS principle and so it's resource usage is the best out of the lot.
Apex lawnchair Apex Launcher
Nova Launcher
Holo Launcher
ICS style launchers with lots of customization. Nova Launcher has certain features removed from the free version (resizing widgets etc).
Smart Launcher Android icon Smart Launcher A vastly different approach from every other launcher. This is a minimalistic launcher that cleans up your home screen, leaving only the most essential apps always available, and automatically organizes everything else into category drawers. The kind of thing you'd not imagine, but after using it for five minutes, you think: damn, this makes perfect sense.
ZenUI Launcher Android icon ZenUI Launcher What you'd get if you had an Asus phone. Quite fine-looking, customizable without getting overwhelming.

Media players[]

Icon Title Type Description
Mx player MX Player Video Great video player that suports hardware decoding, subtitles and whatnot.
Poweramp music player Poweramp Music Player Music Hands down the best music player on the market. Buy it and never look back.

v3 beta has many improvements.

Neutron Music Player Android icon Neutron Music Player Music Poweramp competitor. Geared towards audiophiles. Commercial.
Droidsound DroidsoundE Music Excellent music player that runs just about every major game system's emulated music format (NSF, SPC, GBS, VGM, PSF, so on). Small tip: If your music's on an SD card, you may need to add its directory to DroidsoundE manually as a FileBrowser.

Widgets[]

Icon Title Type Description
Beautiful widgets Beautiful Widgets Clock / Weather widget Paid app. Lets you download tons of skins to customize your widget all you want.
Simi clock SiMi Clock Widget Clock widget A pretty and minimalist clock widget, and somewhat customizable too.
UCCW Android icon UCCW Widget Amazingly customizable widget with a nice WYSIWYG editor. Can be used for clocks, battery, weather etc, sky's the limit. Lets you import/export skins so you don't have to do all the dirty work yourself.
DashClock Android icon DashClock Widget Highly customizable weather/news/alerts widget creator.

Other utilities[]

Icon Title Type Description
Google apps Google apps All of them Get everything that's applicable to you. They all pretty much work great. Besides, these are probably pre-installed anyway.
Tubemate2 TubeMate Downloader (YouTube) If you want to download YouTube videos to your phone, try this app out. Since YouTube's terms and conditions forbid saving videos on their site, TubeMate is not available on Google Play.
Solid explorer Solid Explorer File manager Probably the best file manager currently on the market, but recently switched from free beta to a trial with a $2 paid version.
Amaze Android icon Amaze File manager Open source Android file manager.
Dropbox Dropbox File storage Dropbox. Who doesn't use Dropbox? Save a file on your PC, get it on your phone seconds after. They kinda fucked it up recently when they made it so fucking difficult to save files to the SD card, but it still works.
Gboard Android icon Gboard Keyboard Keyboard by Google. Supports many languages, has Google Search built in GIF integration.
Google drive Google Drive File storage / Google Docs If you don't use Dropbox, maybe you use Google Drive. Comes with the extra bonus of Google Docs, as long as you're hooked up to the internet.
Quickpic QuickPic

4.5.2

Gallery I cannot stress this enough, if you have the 3D gallery and hate it as much as I did, go get this app. It runs great, no gimmicks, good overview of your photos, it just works.

Recently sold to CM of Clean Master infamy. Get the 4.5.2 version instead of the one on PlayStore.

Imo IMO Messenger Instant messaging Client that works with pretty much any service imaginable, msn, facebook, skype, even steam.
Swiftkey SwiftKey Keyboard SwiftKey X is a downright amazing keyboard replacement with astounding prediction accuracy. The only two (immediately) noticeable downsides are the pricetag ($5) and that the "learn from your messages/etc" menu is set to automagically post bullshit to your Facebook and Twitter pages.

It is now free.

Thumb Keyboard Android icon Thumb Keyboard Keyboard Simple keyboard with a good amount of customization, and CURSOR KEYS which if your keyboard doesn't have you will wonder how you ever lived without.
Swype Logo Swype Keyboard Slide your finger across all the letters of a word to spell the word. Uses a good error-correction method, so you don't have to be super accurate. Will sometimes auto-correct you in odd ways. TouchPal works with a similar method, and so does the default keyboard in Android 4.2.
Widgetlocker WidgetLocker Lockscreen For ricers that absolutely must customize EVERYTHING, WidgetLocker lets you add widgets, apps and custom unlocking mechanics to your lockscreen. Not free though. If your device is going to get 4.2 and you can wait for it, 4.2 lets you put widgets on your lockscreen without any extra program.
Gmote Gmote Media control Control your PC's media software from your phone.
Handcent sms Handcent SMS Messaging Replace your default messaging app with Handcent, it's pretty neat. Looks pretty iPhone-ish. Think other messaging apps have been catching up to it lately, so maybe your default is just as good.
Barcode scanner Barcode Scanner Scanner QR codes, yeah? This scans them. Now you'll know what all those barcode squares are secretly saying.
Screen filter Screen filter Utility This applies an overlay which darkens the screen, if you need to make it really dark for whatever reason. (Like being an asshole and texting during a movie.)

Root required[]

1337 hackers only

Icon Title Type Description
Kingo Root Android icon Kingo Root Rooting The easiest way to root your phone. Almost automatic, just follow the on-screen instructions. (Note, you will need a PC too.)

Known to install a Chinese superuser manager. Since root tools have complete access to your device, choose one you would trust.

Adaway Android icon AdAway Ad blocker Simple and effective system-wide ad blocker.
Titanium Backup Android icon Titanium Backup Apps and settings backup Lets you backup all your apps, along with app settings, phone settings and so on. It's a must have for any root user.
SetCPU Android icon SetCPU Overclocking Paid app. Get some more juice out out of your shitty wildfire by overclocking it! Or alternatively underclock for less battery consumption. SetCPU lets you make profiles for when the screen is off, when the phone is charging, low battery etc.
Kernel Adiutor Android icon Kernel Adiutor System tweaks Basically makes the app above obsolete. Visit the PlayStore page for full feature list.

Some custom kernels will let you change more settings.

Root Explorer Android icon Root Explorer File browser Paid app, and not for the average user. Lets you mess around in the system files. Can be used to remove THE FUCKING 3D GALLERY or other useless system apps, change the boot animation (download one from deviantART you pony-loving faggot), or just completely break your phone if you don't know what you're doing.
GameCIH Android icon GameCIH Cheat Engine Allows you to mess with game values, set 9001 p2p coins, get max everything, and shit like that, also can speed up\slow down games. Don't bother with the play store version, it had memory hacking removed to comply with the terms.
GameKiller Android icon GameKiller Cheat Engine Almost same as GameCIH but sometimes works better. Don't bother with the play store version, it had memory hacking removed to comply with the terms.
GameGuardian Android icon GameGuardian Cheat Engine Another cheat tool. Has a nice static overlay button to bring it up from in-game.
Lucky Patcher Android icon Lucky Patcher License Remover Allows you to block ads and remove license verification on apps that use it. Can also spoof the Play store's payment intent to get many in-app purchases for free, disable permissions in apps(can break them) and many, many more things. Works well most of the time.
Android icon Freedom IAP spoof Lets you perform In-App Purchases for free. Does not always work. Requires Internet to be disconnected.
V4Aicon Viper4Android Audio Enhancer Remember DSP Manager? This is basically an audiophile's dream. Lots of Audio-FX, Dual-Core device recommended.