Top 25 Essential Android Business Apps

Mobile devices handle business tasks that go far beyond e-mail. Here's a selection covering communications, presentations, number-crunching, and other office apps.

as Android devices continue to invade the enterprise, workers are beginning to rely on them as much as, if not more than, than laptops and desktops. In addition to basic email, plenty of other business-related tasks are moving to smartphones, including expense tracking, social media updates and even on-the-go invoicing.

It can be tough finding the right app for the right task, but here are 25 essential business apps for Android (note: the last five require an enterprise component).

1. PocketCloud

Developer: Wyse

Cost: Basic version for one computer, free; premium version, which provides connections to multiple computers, $5/month.

Available on iOS too? Yes

Pocket Cloud provides secure remote access to a Mac or Windows desktop from your Android phone or tablet. You can access your files, photos, and applications, like PowerPoint and Photoshop. Recently added features include an “explore” capability that provides a streamlined view of desktop file systems, so you can actually find what you’re looking for from that small smartphone screen. This feature also helps facilitate file sharing, especially when files are too large to email or download to your phone. A cloud storage component is still in beta.

2. Mr. Number

Developer: Mr. Number

Cost: Free; however, the call ID feature is only free if you let Mr. Number look through your contacts to help it identify unknown numbers. If you block it from doing this, you can get the Caller ID features for $1.99/month.

Available on iOS too? No

This app serves as a spam/nuisance filter for both your texts and calls. Mr. Number consolidates features that you used to have to cobble together through separate apps. It provides advanced Caller ID, so you know who’s calling, even from cell phones. Call blocking lets you block and even report annoying numbers that you used to have to go through your carrier to block, while text blocking allows you to banish spammy or just annoying SMSers.

3. Auto Memory Manager

Developer: Mad Squirrel

Cost: The free version is ad supported. To get rid of ads, pay $1.59 for the premium version.

Available on iOS too? No

Is your smartphone starting to get slow and sluggish? You could have memory issues. On PCs, it’s easy enough to add more RAM. On your phone? Not the easiest chore. However, you can better manage memory with this app to help free up resources and boost performance.

4. Brainshark

Developer: Brainshark

Cost: Free

Available on iOS too? Yes

At first glance, Brainshark is simply an easy way to view PowerPoints on your Android. Dig deeper, though, and it offers tools to create, share and track mobile presentations. The app also helps you transform static content, such as text-heavy PowerPoints, into voice-enriched video presentations that can be accessed on-demand.

5. Google Drive

Developer: Google

Cost: Free

Available on iOS too? Not yet, but soon.

One of Android’s advantages has always been the tight integration with popular Google Apps, such as Gmail and Google Docs. However, raw storage has been lacking. Drive integrates Google’s office suite (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations), along with up to 5GB of free storage. Drive also includes features that enable sharing and collaboration. Users can set policies to control who can access various files and what collaborators are able to do to them. You are also able to track all changes that have been made on a document.

6. Quickoffice

Developer: Quickoffice

Cost: $14.99 for smartphones; $19.99 for tablets.

Available on iOS too? Yes

Quickoffice gives mobile workers on-the-go access to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Mobile editors provide a mobile-optimized way to create, edit and share various documents. Features recently added include connections to cloud storage providers, a PDF annotation tool, spellcheck (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish) and external keyboard shortcuts for tablets.


7. Evernote

Developer: Evernote

Cost: Free for the basic version; $5/month for the premium version, which shuts off ads, includes a PIN lock, boosts the monthly upload limit and enables PDF searching.

Available on iOS too? Yes

Evernote helps you stay organized across your various devices, from desktops to smartphones. Evernote lets you take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, and record voice reminders, and it makes all of these things completely searchable. This app helps you sync all of your notes across devices. The search feature even lets you search for text inside images. The Web Clipper add-on lets you save anything you see online, including links, text and video, into Evernote with one click.

8. Recall

Developer: Meshin

Cost: Free

Available on iOS too? Not yet, but it should be soon.

Recall is an Evernote companion that adds context to your calendar. With this app, you can sync your calendar events with notes, images and audio on Evernote. You’re able to create and share an agenda, capture and read notes, and organize and tag notes for easy searching.

9. OfficeDrop

Developer: OfficeDrop

Cost: Free for the basic version, while the paid versions (staring at $9.95/month) provide larger file uploads, better search capabilities, and more storage.

Available on iOS too? Yes

OfficeDrop turns your smartphone into a portable scanner. While any file type can be uploaded into OfficeDrop’s cloud filing cabinet, anything scanned by your phone is immediately converted into text-searchable PDFs. With this app, you can access and search any documents that you’ve scanned into the cloud, and you can share the document with select team members.

 10. Expensify

Developer: Expensify

Cost: Free for individual users; for business users, $5 per month per person who submits an expense report.

Available on iOS too? Yes

This app helps you track work expenses as you travel. It lets you use your phone’s camera to scan in receipts, and it’s smart enough to capture the date and amount charged for each receipt you upload. You are also able to track mileage and import expenses from bank and credit card accounts. While the app connects to QuickBooks, you can also file an expense report directly from the app itself.                                
Via: pcworld