So we all use our Android phones to call friends, send text messages, log on to Facebook and check our e-mail. But the Android mobile device is capable of far more. With features like GPS, accelerometer, and compass, your phone can be used for things you would not have imagined. Here I have assembled the list of five such things which would make you look at your Android device in a whole new light.
1. Heart rate monitor – Yes it’s true- you can actually measure your heart rate using your phone. There are a number of apps in Google Play (an Android app store) which can measure your heart rate; one of the popular ones you can check out is Instant Heart Rate by Azumio Inc. What these apps essentially do is start the camera flash in your phone to maximum intensity and then ask you to put your finger on the camera lens (which is just below the flash bulb). The lens sees the colour of your finger changing due to the constant blood flow. Then a (very complex) formula computes the beats per minute of your heart based on the change of red colour in your finger. This of course will not give the most accurate measurement of your heart rate, but the value is an approximate enough indicator for you to know when you are stressing out.
2. Mosquito Repellant – The speaker in your Android is not just to play your favorite song, but it also has the capability to produce ultrasound (high frequency sound). Though these high frequency sounds are not audible to human ears, they can be heard by mosquitoes that confuse the sound emitted with convergence of a predatory insect like a dragonfly. This causes them to flee the area, resulting in a mosquito free environment. Again there are tons of apps on Google play which provide this functionality. On a warning note though, cats and dogs also have the ability to hear ultrasounds and these apps can cause them irritation, so make sure your pet is not around when you use them.
3. WiFi Kill – Now this one is a little geeky and would require you to root the Android device. We (well, most of us) know that our Android phone can be used as a WiFi hotspot thus enabling Internet sharing or even ad-hoc communication with other mobile devices. But this app takes this feature one step further. WiFi Kill makes all other devices in the LAN (local area network) believe that your device is the WiFi access point, thus making them connect to your phone rather than the actual WiFi access point. It then drops all the packets it receives from these connections. To the other devices, it still seems that they are connected to the access point with an unbelievably slow connection. This app can be used to stop your friends from hogging bandwidth, but it can also be used for not-so-angelic purposes and thus it has been banned from Google play. If you really are an angel, though, you can get this app on the XDA developers forum.
4. Sky Map – Ever stared at the night sky and wished you knew what the bright glowing thing you were looking at was? Well, stop wishing and install Google’s Sky Map. It’s an application, which identifies constellations, planets, grids, and deep sky objects by simply pointing your Android at them. It uses Android’s built-in compass, GPS, and clock (though not the phone camera) to display an annotated Sky Map of the area it is facing. The map adjusts as the user moves the device. Users can also determine the locations of planets and stars relative to their own current locations with the search function. Inputting the name of a planet or star will direct users towards the object.
5. Call Recorder – How many times have you forgotten the name of a YouTube video your friend told you about, or a recipe your mom gave you, or a task your boss asked you to do? Many times, I bet. To-do lists are good, but they require you to manually write reminders for yourself. If we could just record the conversations we had on our phones and use them as audio notes for later reference. As it turns out, we can record incoming and outgoing calls on our Android phones and store them as audio files in the phone’s memory card. Check this out for a trial.
Worthy Mentions – Apart from the 5 mentioned above, there are few other apps which deserved to be on the list, but were excluded for one reason or another.
Busybox – A package stuffed with most of the Linux utilities. It can be used for shell scripting in Android.
Ubuntu – You can install an Ubuntu desktop environment on your Android phone to retain the desktop experience.
Tasker – It can be used to automate tasks on Android; it works similarly to Automator in Mac or task scheduler in Windows.
With the advent of hardware technology and the increasingly unique imaginations of Android developers, the sky is the limit for what an Android phone could do.