Living the Android mobile lifestyle - PART 3

If you need to recap, you can check out PART 1 & 2. Let's slowly wrap our heads around what will be needed for software to work efficiently. Will need to start with the basic apps; Communication, Calendar, Office suite, all the extra that adds flavor to our world.

When it comes to staying in touch with work, colleague or anyone else for that matter, we tend to use email in our day to day work. Most corporate environments will run on Microsoft Exchange and most of you are familiar with Outlook.

You'll be happy to know that Outlook is available on Android and it does work with exchange, unfortunately this isn't the tool I'll be talking about it. When it comes to communication, I tend to use 2 email apps on my Tablet.

1. - Nine for Exchange ($9,99 on the Play store)
2. - CloudMagic for everything else (Free)
3. - WeMail as I tend to flip between it and CloudMagic.

This is pretty simple. I've tried and tested many email apps and these are the 2 that are at the top of my list. There's plenty of other choices and ultimately it's going to be up to you to find out what works.

We all need to be able to schedule elements in our daily lives when working, what better way to accomplish this if not by using a Calendar application? By default, you'll be pre-loaded with one on the device. I've taken steps to replace it with something that I like, love, praise... You get the idea. I'm using Sunrise Calendar.

Excellent integration into the Android OS and the various email accounts I have. It's also able to add events base on emails I get. This allows me to be more productive. I also use the agenda widget way more than I should, but this gives me a full glance of what's happening for the week right there on the home screen.

When it comes to office applications, there's plenty to choose from and I mean plenty, but not all of them are good or great. Since I'm in the business of doing day to day business, I like to use something that will keep me in-line such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. In the event that I need to work on other documents I also make use of Kingsoft WPS. The outlined software is more than enough for someone that works in an office, you'd be compatible with everyone.

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When it comes to PDF's you might wonder what's the best approach? I personally would recommend the Adobe Reader for Android. You can find other tools that will work just as well. The problem you may be faced with, is in the editing of PDF files that may be sent your way. I haven't been able to find something that's descent. I have to rarely edit PDF's, but it is something I'd like to do more often. If you guys have any suggestion when it comes to doing editing of PDF's I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Everyone needs a good image gallery application and for the most part the one that's pre-loaded on most Android devices should be quite enough. If you do make use of cloud storage, you may be used to using Photos from Google, this also allows you to browse the content of your pictures online and offline.

The above is perfect for almost everyone, but what if you have need to create images for marketing, banners, ads and obviously the first go to app Adobe Photoshop isn't available (Yeah Adobe I glaring at you), then I may have some alternative that are just as equally powerful.

You may be wondering why I haven't mentioned the use of a file manager like Solid Explorer, File Commander, ES File Explorer, that's just because I'm not there yet, but since you've insisted, I'll opt for Solid Explorer. It's been my go to app from its early life and I think it will stay like that until I see something better. As the name would imply, it allows you the freedom to browse the content of your storage, cloud, network drive etc.

Next comes the talk about IM clients. There's so many out there that in the end, it's up to you to decide what works. Most of the people I will interact with are based on Facebook or Google. I use Hangouts and Messenger a lot which I'd say would be about 85% of the time. Sure, I could use something else, but I won't because it's not what's being used by most of the people I deal with on a regular basis.

Mind you if you try to use an IM client while being on the corporate network, there's a big chance you won't be able to due to the nature of the filtering or proxy in place in your work environment.

This should cover most the applications I use for work and for home. There's a bunch of others, but in the end you don't need everything that I have.

Like many of you, I use YouTube for entertainment purpose and follow some trendy groups for tech stuff, but among that I also use TVMC which is a Kodi base app that allows me to configure shows I want to watch or movies.

I also enjoy a few interesting games as well, among them, I have Tears Revolude, Siegefall, Répulique and ToramOnline. They keep me busy on down times. If you're looking for something a bit more hardcore, there's always the choice of playing Implosion which is also an awesome game.

The hardest part of switching entirely to a mobile lifestyle was to stop myself from running back to the desktop to use Photoshop. The lack of a good PDF editor is also something I wish I could see on Android. If you guys have a good tool for editing PDF's what would be an excellent bonus.

There was initially the ability to have a decent image editor that supported layers and could have some complex design to, but I found that PhotoSuite 4 PRO (PAID) was able to accomplish this very well. A bit on the rough side for some elements, but it did what I'd run to for Photoshop.