Best Apps: Our 14 favorite Android apps of 2011

2011 has been an amazing year for Android, with a tasty new flavor of the OS out for Christmas, some incredible phones, and some equally impressive tablets all getting worldwide attention.

The huge variety of the apps available in the Android Market can make it difficult to decide which are worthy of real estate on your phone or tablet. To help you make that decision, we've rounded up what Tecca's editors think are some of the best of the best for Android apps in 2011.

1. Amazon Kindle
Download: Amazon Kindle for Android
Price: Free

The software behind one of the world's best e-readers is also available as an app for Android devices, allowing you to download ebooks from Amazon directly to your phone or tablet. Read them there with all the zooming, note taking, and highlighting features that you know and love.

2. Price Check by Amazon
Download: Price Check by Amazon for Android
Price: Free

Use this handy app to scan product barcodes, take pictures, talk to your Android device, or browse Amazon to find the price of any item in its vast database. You can also make purchases within the app, add things to your wish list, and share prices to make sure you're getting the best deal possible.

3. Camera Zoom FX
Download: Camera Zoom FX for Android
Price: $4.99

This camera app is designed to replace the camera software that came preinstalled on your phone or tablet and boasts a huge range of features to tempt you away. With Camera Zoom FX, you'll have a ton more focusing, white balance, and composition options while you're snapping away. The biggest selling point, though, is the huge number of effects you can add to your shots once you've taken them and the ease with which you can upload your masterpieces to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

4. Color Note
Download: Color Note for Android
Price: Free

The best way to use your phone to stay organized — this handy app lets you make notes and checklists and adds cute Post-it widgets to your home screen to help track your to-dos. Notes can be searched, categorized by color, or password-protected. A must-have app!

5. Doodle Jump
Download: Doodle Jump for Android
Price: 89 cents

This cute (and insanely addictive) game made the jump this year from iOS to Android. Simple to explain and tricky to master, you guide a little rocket-powered alien up your screen as high as you can, bouncing off good things and avoiding or shooting any bad things that get in your way. The gentle humor and child-like drawing style make this popular with all ages.

6. Dropbox
Download: Dropbox for Android 
Price: Free

Dropbox is cloud storage at its finest. Sign up on the website and gain access to 2GB of free storage that syncs, backs itself up and can be accessed anywhere, anytime. You can make folders within Dropbox that allow you to share just what's in that folder with friends and family, or password protect a folder and keep all your secret files safe and sound. Check out Tecca's guide to getting started with Dropbox!

7. Go Launcher Ex
Download: Go Launcher Ex for Android
Price: Free

One of the top 20 free downloads from the Android Market, Go Launcher Ex is one of a group of brilliant apps known as launchers that allow you to change your home screens and customize them to suit your individual tastes. Most launchers also have theme packs that can be downloaded separately to give your whole phone a different look and feel.

8. Netflix
Download: Netflix for Android
Price: Free (Android 2.2+)

It's Netflix for your Android device, allowing you to watch your favorite shows when and where you want. The app is available to Netflix unlimited members; new users who sign up for the app are sometimes eligible for a free 30-day Netflix unlimited trial. The Android app can sync with your desktop app and your TV, allowing you to pick up shows seamlessly where you left off.

9. Plants vs. Zombies
Download: Plants vs. Zombies for Android
Price: $2.99 (United States only)

The zombies... are coming! Well, actually, they've been here for most of this year, and they've proven to be a very popular part of the Android gaming experience. Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game in which you grow different types of plants in your garden to fend off the angry horde of zombies climbing over your fence. They're absolutely desperate to eat your braaaaains... So what are you waiting for? Get planting!

10. Skype
Download: Skype for Android
Price: Free

Everyone's favorite free, internet-based phone and video calling software is also available as a full-featured app for Android devices. Skype for Android lets you IM, make voice calls, and place video calls (using either front- or rear-facing cameras). Even better, all of those features are free if you're chatting Skype-to-Skype, whether you're both using Android devices or a mixture of Mac OSX, Windows, iOS or Android devices.

11. SlideIT Keyboard
Download: SlideIT Keyboard for Android (free 15-day trial)
Price: $6

SlideIT Keyboard replaces the standard tap-to-enter keyboard on your Android device with a new, silky-smooth way to enter text: sliding your finger from one letter to the next to spell out words. Similar to Swype (which is no longer available in the Android Market), SlideIT feels like a revolution in text entry on touchscreen devices and boasts an impressively short learning curve. Try it out —you'll be sliding along in no time!

12. Spotify
Download: Spotify for Android
Price: Free (some features require a subscription account)

A library of 15 million songs at your fingertips, playlists, sharing, offline mode, personal collection syncing... sound good? Spotify does all this and more. Spotify lets you manage your personal music collection via the desktop application and the phone app, but its strength lies in its enormous catalog of music which you can listen to for free. Its huge catalog means just about anyone can find something they like and perhaps even discover new things to enjoy and share with friends.

13. The Adventures of Tintin
Download: The Adventures of Tintin for Android
Price: $8

Beautiful graphics, great writing, interesting puzzles, high-quality production — this is one of the most polished games for Android launched in 2011. The plot of the game loosely follows that of the movie but should be accessible to anyone. The simple touchscreen controls mean you don't have to be a hardcore gamer to have fun.

14. Words With Friends
Download: Words With Friends for Android
Price: Free

This vocabulary-expanding brain teaser allows you to challenge your friends in a sociable, Scrabble-like game. Words With Friends works cross-platform, so you can play with friends who have the app on their iPhones and iPads or with friends on Facebook. There's an IM feature built in as well, so you can chat to friends while you thrash them (polysyllabic trash-talking only, please!).

So do you have any of these apps installed already? Are you tempted to try out any new ones? Let us know what you're enjoying in the comments section below!

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