[Vibrant Themes and Apps] s15274n:
Below is the start to my article for CNET:

Top 20 Android Apps

Android apps are essential to the end-users experience. There are several categories of apps, but I am going to ignore some as they are limited in their scope (ie, apps that are games, or are only focused on those who root their phones).

I believe the average smartphone user is going to want to focus on improving the user interface (apps that are better than the stock apps that come on the phone), social apps (ie Twitter, texting, conferencing), and media apps (ie music, photos, news).

Below are those categories and the apps that I feel can improve the Android experience.

Disclaimer: There are hundreds of thousands of Android apps. This is in no way all inclusive and can change daily.

BETTER THAN THE STOCK ANDROID APPLICATIONS:

Text Messanging:

1 – Handcent SMS / Chomp SMS / Google Voice.

Okay, so I am starting off with THREE suggestions. Well, they are all better than the stock messenger, in their own regard. The average user can be complacent with the stock messaging app, it does send texts and MMS (ie pictures) just fine after all, but for the user who wants more, these are the apps to try.

Browser:

2 – Dolphin Browser HD / Skyfire / Miren

Wait, three more suggestions? Yeap. Why? Because their all awesome in their own regard. The stock browser I find fantastic, it does what you need and does it well. Again though, Android allows the user to do a lot more.

Dolphin is great because of tabbed browsing, gestures (finger swipes to open bookmarks for example) and multi-touch.

Skyfire emphasizes playing video – even those that are not compatible with Android.

Miren is extremely fast, minimalistic UI, and a lot of neat features (scrolling with the volume button, swipes to go forward/backward, etc).

Gallery:

3 – QuickPic

I hate the stock android gallery. It is a CPU hog, slow to load and limited in features. It is frankly my least favorite part of Android. QuickPic by Alensw (there are several apps with that name) is amazing. It is extremely fast to load, you can exclude certain albums from displaying, very high resolution/image quality, and built in editing tools (ie cropping, rotating, etc).

The Launcher (your home screen / desktop):

4 – ADW EX / LauncherPro / Go Launcher EX

There I go again, three suggestions. Most of these have similar features, but each have unique features. I prefer ADW EX because it allows me to use swipe gestures to open my notifications or to open a second hidden dock bar (a place to stash commonly opened apps). This allows my homescreen/desktop to be less cluttered. You can customize the layout a lot more as well (ie, instead of the standard 4x4 layout, you can make it as much as 10x10), overlap widgets, infinite scrolling, change animations, etc. The list of options go on and on. I strongly suggest trying a new launcher.

Camera:

5 – CameraZoom FX / Camera360 / Retro Camera

All of these apps have features above and beyond the stock camera. I prefer Retro Camera because it is free and it also has a very unique UI. I can take some pretty spectacular photos with it, with very little effort. I’m a sucker for black and white photos that have a vintage look though.

Music:

6 – PowerAMP / UberMusic / TuneIn Radio / Google Music

Again, each have unique qualities. PowerAMP is great in that it plays most anything and has an equalizer. UberMusic is just sexy. TuneIn Radio allows you to stream music from all over the world. Google Music is great for its cloud capabilities – I love having my music sync and not be stored on precious memory space.