What's on your phone?

[Mars]

Greetings humans,

I live and breathe all things electrical engineering (and dare I say mechanical too), but consumer gadgets and the like have never interested me much and by extension my new Samsung S20 (paid by my employer mind you) likewise does not make my heart race either. I basically use my phone to read the news, play chess and listen to the Amp Hour podcast.

What are some useful apps, podcasts or other things you have on or do with your phone that makes your life better, fun, more productive and so on?

[BravoV]

What are some useful apps, podcasts or other things you have on or do with your phone that makes your life better, fun, more productive and so on?

On the productivity side, as I don't trust too much on my personal stuffs in the cloud  ,installed OpenVPN to access home's stuffs, and also WakeOnLan to wake up my main desktop PC and home's server if I left home for quite long period. And Remote Ripple (TightVNC's Android client) for remote if needed, but I rarely used it nowadays.

[Muttley Snickers]

I was never one for keeping notes or a diary until I was taken to hospital with heart failure, from then on I have been keeping a thorough medical and general diary record so find my phone ideal for note taking. It can also communicate with other people which is sometimes handy.   

[olkipukki]

Browser, camera, instant messenger, thermal camera app, map, calculator, app store, office automation, music player, video player, shopping apps, file manager, online bank apps, cloud storage clients, and that's about it.

+ calendars & todos, offline navigation maps, 2FA auth apps, travel & airlines apps, strategy board games

[Black Phoenix]

Current app that I use mostly daily: Spark – Email App by Readdle

Since Google discontinued their own Inbox app last year (that I used extensively) this was the alternative that were on the macOS and iOS side of the fence. They released basically a day after Google announcing going away.

Supports most of the Inbox functionalities (specially the Smart Inbox, Sending emails at a specific time set and Team management for email reply) with a modern design. If someone want an app to aggregate all the email accounts you have in one simple place, this is the one to get.

Also I am a Curve member, and their app is also used a lot. Curve is a Financial institution on Europe where you have a credit card that aggregates all your credit/debit cards in one card only with financial control and set limits. Simply open the app, say which card you want your Curve to be and it will use that one to pay. Excellent if you don't want to use your own card to pay online or in retail in countries were the card skimming is rampant. It only works with cards issue by European banks and you have to prove that you are a European Citizen to use it and own a European SIM card.

[GlennSprigg]

Mine is just a PHONE haha... although a quite smart Samsung SmartPhone. (Yea, google maps etc etc).
Having to keep 'resetting' the Missuss' phone, to get rid of all the background crap, so it lasts for 12 hours
again instead of 2 hours!!!!

[SilverSolder]

There are all kinds of cool geeky apps that engineers can have fun with.

On my phone, I have:
*  Seek Thermal app, for thermal camera
*  Barcode scanner, to quickly nab bar codes off products etc.
*  Spectrum analyzer app, uses the phone's microphone to display a spectrum of the sound around you
*  OBD scan app, connects to the car so you can see status and trouble codes from the engine, transmission, hybrid battery etc.
*  Barometer...  great for tracking cabin pressure on board a plane too
*  Compass...  great for finding N and S poles of magnets as well, if you work with Hall sensors and the like

...And so on.

If you can think of it, someone's probably already written an app that does it!

[GlennSprigg]

There are all kinds of cool geeky apps that engineers can have fun with.

On my phone, I have:
*  Seek Thermal app, for thermal camera
*  Barcode scanner, to quickly nab bar codes off products etc.
*  Spectrum analyzer app, uses the phone's microphone to display a spectrum of the sound around you
*  OBD scan app, connects to the car so you can see status and trouble codes from the engine, transmission, hybrid battery etc.
*  Barometer...  great for tracking cabin pressure on board a plane too
*  Compass...  great for finding N and S poles of magnets as well, if you work with Hall sensors and the like

...And so on.

If you can think of it, someone's probably already written an app that does it!

Yea... Obviously I have more apps too, than Google Maps, but not uncontrolled like the 'Missus' has!! 
ONE BIG difference between a 'SmartPhone' and a PC/Laptop, is the vast myriad of internal SENSORS!. Because they have sensors such as not only GPS, but X,Y,Z orientation, (and accelerometers/altitude etc. useful elswhere), then the Astronomical Software that is available & that I use, simply allows you to point your 'phone' at the night sky, from where-ever, in REAL TIME!