A few months ago, a nice gent named Jason Calhoun had a prize drawing and I won two of his apps.  I chose the System Info Widget and the Quick Apps Launcher.

I’ve had the System Info Widget running on the last 4 Android phones I’ve owned.  I wouldn’t imagine having any Android phone without it.  You have several home screen widget options available with it, including 1-5 blocks of icons that tell you everything you need to know about your phone’s status, including the temperature of your phone in Fahrenheit or Celsius or both (I had an Apple iPhone employee on their dev team once tell me the iPhone had to be operated within a certain temperature range or it just wouldn’t work), the amount of hard drive space, available RAM, battery life, ringer profiles, a reboot button, system uptime, Android version, signal strength, and turning on/off wireless/Bluetooth/Airplane/2G & 3 toggle/GPS.  There are also a whole host of other configuration and display options.  To activate it, you need only to press and hold on a blank area on your home screen and select “Widgets”. Then scroll down to find one of the four System Info Widget options in horizontal or vertical configuration (1×1, 1×4, 3×1, 4×1).  You could even place 2 rows or columns of these widgets to get the most amount of info or quick functions on your Android at any given time.  This app is a solid 10/10 to me and I plan on having it on every future Android phone I’ll own (I’m certain there’ll be more ;-).

Next up is Quick Apps.  Please note that what I’m going to be saying here is not at all negative.  Again, this app gets a 10/10 for doing exactly what it is intended for with no complaints or hassles, and it doesn’t take much system memory to do its job.  Although I can’t say I’ve used the Quick Apps much since upgrading from Android version 2.1 to 2.2 and now 2.3, it certainly isn’t the fault of Mr. Calhoun’s talent at app development.  I just have been using the stock options (I also have a pretty weak spec’ed Android phone until Virgin Mobile comes out with something more substantial than low-end or decides to allow non-VM branded phones on their network).  I ran it on my rooted Nook Color tablet just fine as well.  I think it would work fantastic if you were one of those demented people who likes a clean, minimalist desktop (or in this case, home screen), and if you only wanted access to a couple apps by quick touch.  I run about 15 different apps every day, so I have just resorted to loading my home screen with 5 pages of app shortcuts and widgets, and yes, my desktop, although organized, is quite busy.  This app loads widgets with or without an analog clock, offers two theme options, and of course, app shortcuts.

Drop by Jason’s website and see these apps and more for yourself at http://www.jasoncalhoun.com/