LG V20 Review: Two Great Screens and One Lousy Speaker

About three weeks ago my phone that I'd had for a year and a half bit the dust. I was expecting to get a few more weeks' use out of it before I bought something different with my own money and got out from under the purchase plan with T-Mobile. Unfortunately it went into full bootloop, so I had to get a new one right away from the phone store. There weren't a whole lot of choices for a guy like me who doesn't want Apple or Samsung, so I went with the LG V20.

My LG V20. Note particularly the "second screen" at the top with various function controls.

First Impressions

This phone is advertised as a bigger diagonal screen size than both the Apple iPhone Plus line and the Samsung Galaxy Edge. But thanks to its very small top and bottom bezels it doesn't feel that big in the hand or the pocket. The back of the phone is just a solid sheet of slippery plastic. I nearly dropped it a couple of times in the week before I got a case. The back needs texture or a curve or something.

The back is dangerously
slippery. Also note
the dual rear cameras.

When I first powered up the phone, I was disappointed to see no app drawer. Thankfully with a quick Google search I was able to find out how to change the settings to bring it back where it belongs. This setting should be the default.

Typical for a carrier-store Android phone, there is some bloatware to deal with. Thankfully T-Mobile is not as heavy-handed with the useless apps as is Verizon, and it is worth noting some can actually be uninstalled rather than disabled, including manufacturer apps like LG Health and carrier apps like T-Mobile TV. Thanks, T-Mo and LG!

The swappable battery is not as important a selling point as it used to be. Few phones have them anymore, and if rumors are true this may be one of the last top-of-the-line Android phones to have one. It is handy to be able to swap out a dead battery for a fresh one, but that requires a lot of planning ahead, unless you spring for the additional charging station. The most important advantage to having a swappable battery is it provides a surefire way to reboot the phone if you ever run into serious trouble. I was able to rescue my data off my old phone because the swappable battery enabled me to forcibly turn off the phone.

Second Screen

When the phone is off, the second screen shows the time and
your notifications without having to fire up the whole phone.

The big selling point of this phone is the "second screen," a strip at the top of the phone separate from the rest of the screen. This screen is most useful when the phone is not in use. All you have to do is pick up the phone and the second screen shows the time and any notifications. How many times a day do we smartphone users fire up the whole phone just to check the time or to see if we missed a call or text? With the second screen,  this step is unnecessary. It saves lots of wear on the battery. A swipe on the second screen will reveal a small control panel, enabling you to turn on/off wifi, Bluetooth and the flashlight as well as turning off the sound. A third swipe gives you access to your media controls, meaning you can quickly skip that song you used to like before Pandora started playing it over and over again. This is all done without turning on the whole phone and without signing in. Every phone should have something similar.

When the phone is actually in use, the second screen is less useful, other than the quick access to the controls. It also provides recent apps, but this is just as easily reached from the square button at the bottom of the screen, so it's redundant at best. One interesting feature is that if you get a call while you are doing something in an app, the option to accept or decline the call appears in the second screen, enabling you to decline the call if you wish without switching apps.

Hardware

The sound is disappointing: one single speaker at the bottom. I found a hack that will allow you to set up stereo sound through the earpiece speaker, but I'm not so adventurous as to download software from murky sources onto my phone. With the earphone jack, I ran into an issue with the phone turning down the earphone volume by itself. Maybe that was because of the old jack on the adapter I use on the tape deck in my car. My next project is to install a new car radio with Bluetooth, but for now it's a concern.

I don't really use my phone camera all that much. If I know I'm going to need to take good pictures, I'm bringing along my digital SLR. This phone's camera is fine for what I need. The dual camera setup is pretty cool, actually. I like the dual setup on the selfie camera even better though. It's great for taking group pictures without having to obviously stretch your arm and mess up the picture.

The battery consistently provides a full day's use for me. That might be a little unfair because I can't use my phone at work, so that cuts 8 hours out of the day, but I do use it quite heavily when I'm not on the job. But even on weekends I haven't had to charge it before the end of the day yet. I have frequently got the phone to go a day and a half on a full charge during the week.

Software

The V20 ships with Android 7.0 Nougat. The most important new capability of Nougat is the ability to have two apps open and active at the same time. I haven't actually used it very much because I'm used to multi-tasking using the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen. The feature did come in handy once when I needed to dial a number I had taken a picture of. No back-and-forth or writing the number down necessary - just open the picture on the top half of the screen and dial the number with the dialer open on the bottom half.

LG has certainly dialed back the customization of its user interface. I remember reading recently that Google was cracking down on the wildly different UIs on various companies' phones with Nougat. It certainly seems to be true with this one, and that's a good thing. LG still has the Apple-esque red notification dots on certain app icons, but that's really the only thing I noticed that differentiated the UI from stock Android - well, once you fix the app drawer.

The 64 GB of storage is plenty for my needs. But if that's not enough, memory is easily expandable with the SD card slot, which reportedly can handle up to 2 TB(!!). I've never seen an SD card bigger than 256 GB, but I guess bigger ones are out there. Like the swappable battery, an SD card may not be necessary with this much standard storage, but I'm not going to complain that it's available.

Conclusion

The chintzy speaker is the one thing keeping me from giving the V20 a fully positive review. Three weeks may be a little early to tell, but so far this seems to be the best phone I've ever used. Definitely a keeper. So far I love the second screen. LG deserves credit for developing a unique idea for a smartphone that's actually useful and enhances the overall experience.

All of us use our smartphones in different ways. If the single speaker is a problem for you, you might want to pass on this one. It also might be troublesome if you really don't want a big phone. But if neither of those are an issue, I would definitely recommend you consider the LG V20. It is blazing fast, has a great camera, expandable storage galore, and is unique enough thanks to its second screen to stand out in a world of slabs that all look about the same.

The Mutineer's Tech Tips: Cloud Services

We live in an interconnected world. This interconnectivity has nearly made physical, portable computer storage obsolete. I can barely remember the 5 ½” floppy disks. I certainly remember 3 ½” floppy disks. Even up through my college years, if you wanted to take any type of file with you, you had to have some. I say “some” because the most those things would hold was 1.5 MB. That seems kind of ridiculous now, but that was the world I and most people over the age of 30 lived in. Then some folks for a short period tried to use CDs for portable storage. Yes, it worked, but the CDs weren’t reusable (unless you got the expensive disks and you had an expensive CD+RW drive) and it got to be cost-prohibitive really fast. The most recent iteration of portable storage is the USB stick – thumb drive, jump drive, whatever you wanted to call it. Those are still around, of course, but they’re not exactly flying off the shelves because more and more people are using cloud storage services.

With cloud storage, a provider allows you to store your files on their Internet-connected servers. The files are available whenever you need them through a Web portal, through a connected folder on your computer, or through a phone or tablet app. Very convenient, although there is the risk that files stored in a cloud service may be vulnerable to hackers and to government intrusion. If you keep that in mind, you probably won’t store your tax returns and other important electronic documents in the cloud. Beyond that though, storing casual photos and basic documents in the cloud is perfectly safe.

I’m going to list the services my wife and I use and describe the advantages and disadvantages of each, in my experience. Keep in mind these are all free services.

DropBox

DropBox has been around for a long time, “long time” being relative, of course. It offers 2 GB of free storage. It’s very easy to use, and it’s the most flexible. You can store practically any kind of file and access it easily. DropBox is ideal for pictures, PDFs, and other files that work in multiple formats. My main issues with it have to do with the way I use cloud computing. I use cloud storage a lot through a web browser. The other services I use allow you to access and edit files directly through the browser. This isn’t possible with DropBox because it’s not tied to one of the main computer services companies – Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. The other issue I have with Drop Box is the simple fact that 2 GB is not all that much storage. Yes, you can upgrade for a relatively low price, but I’ll admit to being a cheapskate when it comes to computer services. If there’s a workable, free (or less expensive) alternative I’m going to take advantage of it.

iCloud

If you’ve read some of my previous posts you might be surprised to see this here. My wife does have an iPhone, and we have iCloud installed on her Windows 8 computer. It works pretty well, much better than iTunes works on Windows. I’m sure it works much better between Apple devices. Apple does offer a web version of iWork (Apple’s suite of office programs) that you can access through the iCloud web portal, but I didn’t really care for it. However if you are an Apple user, I understand that iWork on the web offers a great solution for opening Microsoft Office documents and easily converting them to iWork format. I don’t know any specifics of how much storage iCloud offers for free.

Google Drive

Google Drive offers 15 GB of free storage to anyone with an Android device or a Gmail, Google + or Chrome account. At this point, that includes almost everyone who uses the Internet. Google Drive is great for collaboration with documents. Lots of businesses and individuals use Google Drive this way. You can share a document with multiple people, they can make changes, and those changes show up on everyone’s version of the document instantaneously.

Unfortunately the final product of that collaboration has to be converted to a regular document before it can be shared with the world, and that’s the main issue I have with Google Drive: it is completely web-based. Even when you download the folder to your computer, when you open the document it opens up your web browser instead of taking you to an office program. There are some workarounds, but they require a lot of extra work. Yes, you can e-mail Google Docs, but all it sends is a link instead of an actual file attachment. If you’re sending a prospective employer a resume, you don’t want to take a chance and hope they understand Google Drive. You want to send a document attached that the person can open with their regular office program.

I use Google Drive for my Sunday School lessons every week. It is great for simple documents like that: they are accessible anywhere, storage is simple and everything saves automatically. But it’s limited in what it can do. And Google is changing the way mobile devices access Google Drive, so it’s probably going to be worse in the future.

OneDrive

OneDrive is Microsoft’s answer to iCloud and Google Drive, and it is spectacular. Over the past few years Microsoft hasn’t done a lot of things right, but OneDrive is a welcome exception. It offers 7 GB of free storage, which you can bump up to 10 if you connect your phone (doesn’t matter if it’s iPhone, Android or BlackBerry) and allow OneDrive to automatically store your pictures. You access OneDrive with the same e-mail and password that you log in to a Windows 8 PC, tablet or phone or your Xbox Live or Skype account. If you don’t have any of these, you can set up a free account.

OneDrive allows you to create documents in docx, xlsx and pptx formats right from your web browser. You can share them via e-mail or link on the web like Google Docs, or you can download the folder to your computer (the folder downloads to any computer, not just Windows 8) and they show up as regular documents in your directory, which you can attach to any e-mail or edit with Microsoft Office or a competitor like Kingsoft Office that saves files in the “x” format. All you have to do it hit “save” in Office and the changes are automatically saved to your OneDrive. OneDrive also offers mobile apps for all platforms. You can e-mail documents from the app, but you must have either Microsoft Office or a third-party office app to edit files.

Microsoft Office – Word, Excel, PowerPoint – remains the world standard for documents. Office is a huge money maker for Microsoft, and with OneDrive it looks like they’re giving away the store. But one has to assume that OneDrive is a big part of Microsoft’s strategy to remain the undisputed leader in documents. Over the past few years Google Docs, iWork and the open-source alternatives Libre Office and Open Office have chipped away at Office’s dominance. People started figuring out that, at least on their home computers, they didn’t need the expense of Office to produce high-quality documents. OneDrive is a solution to at least keep more people using Office’s formats. When more people out there are using Office’s formats, the more entrenched Office remains in the long term. Seems like a sound strategy to me. Certainly more sound than limiting access for non-Windows devices and/or forcing people to buy expensive software.

The Mutineer's Tech Tips: Browsers, Part 2: Maxthon

In this mobile era of browsing, you need a suite of browsers. It's not enough to work well on the device in front of you. It needs to communicate and interact with the browsers on your other devices. Yesterday I wrote about a browser suite that has great functionality but poor connectivity. This article is about a browser with amazing connectivity but poor design:

Maxthon

The best thing about Maxthon is its amazing interoperability. Maxthon is a Chinese company that only in the last 5 years or so began offering web browsers in the Western market. They are way down the list in terms of market share, but they are on the cutting edge of browser technology.

To access most of these cutting-edge features, you need to create a free “Maxthon Passport” account. You are prompted to do this when you download the browser. I’m a big believer in cloud computing, whether it be DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive or the endless list available out there. I understand the security risks, but I guess I prefer the convenience of the cloud over the fear of exposing my resume, Sunday School lessons and pictures of my dog and random stuff I find funny to Uncle Sam.

Maxthon offers the capability for two active pages open at one time on your computer.

With the account set up, you can do all sorts of cool things. Lots of browsers, including Firefox and Chrome, allow you to share your browser history from one platform to another or open your last open tab from one to another. Maxthon is light years beyond that. It offers what it calls “Cloud Push,” which allows you to push the web page from one browser to another. It opens automatically on a different device with a linked Maxthon account. Just a couple of weeks ago I was wanting to show my wife something on my computer. I was in my office, she was sitting in the bedroom. I didn’t want to drag the laptop into the bedroom, so I just “cloud pushed” the page I was looking at to my Nook. All I had to do was pick up the Nook, turn it on and open up Maxthon on my way to the bedroom. Boom, there it was, by the time I walked through the door into the bedroom. No searching through a menu, no waiting for it to sync. It was all instantaneous. I use this feature between my laptop and my phone all the time.

Maxthon also offers free cloud storage. I honestly don’t know how much storage they offer for free, but I do know I downloaded some free mp3’s the other day on my laptop to my Maxthon cloud account, and from there I downloaded them to my phone where I will use them for some new ringtones. All together the songs were about 25 MB, so it has to be more than that. Any time you download anything on your computer or mobile device, it offers to save it to the cloud. This comes in handy for sharing things between devices, or if you downloaded, for example, a document template and something happens and you need to revert to the original. If you saved it to your cloud, it will be right there instead of you having to find the web site again to re-download it.

Maxthon for the desktop (this includes Mac OS X and Linux) has a couple of other unique features. First, it offers unique tools to instantly download pictures, videos and other media from web pages. For example, any time you see an embedded video in a web page, a box automatically pops up that offers you the option to download it. No right-clicking, no clicking through to the host page. Second, pun intended, Maxthon also offers the unique option of two-pane browsing. You can have two active web pages open at the same time inside the same window. No switching between tabs or windows. This comes in handy when I’m looking at my online banking account in one pane and our budget spreadsheet saved in an online cloud account in another pane.

Maxthon's mobile start page leaves a lot to be desired.

A couple of things really annoy me about Maxthon, though, that keep me from using it exclusively. One is its klunky interface. If you look at the screenshot, it looks like something out of 2002. Just about the only thing that’s missing is those cool comet tails shooting by the Netscape “N.” The mobile version isn’t any better. Look at the ugly boxes on the speed dial page. You can’t even pick the colors. Everybody knows Yahoo should be purple, but not Maxthon Mobile, which assigns colors to the boxes based on some internal, random formula. Sometimes it will inexplicably download an icon, which looks a little better, but not much. The mobile browser also does not allow you to press down on the back arrow and give you the history of all the open pages in that tab. This has been basic browser design for years. They have fixed the phone version, but the tablet version has a teeny-tiny "x" button to close a tab. It's almost impossible to do. I usually end up reopening the tab I don't want to see or accidentally opening a new tab, which is not what I want to do either.

Another problem with Maxthon is rooted in the fact that it is primarily a Chinese company and new in the Western market with a small market share. It has very few extensions for the desktop version, and many of those are targeted for a Chinese audience. In fact, if you look at my desktop screenshot above, you will see one of the little boxes on the left side has a Chinese icon. That’s the only extension I could find that allows me to share pages to Facebook. I don’t know what the symbol means in Chinese, but it works.

Maxthon is now where the future of computing is headed. It has great features not found in the more popular browsers. No doubt the developers at Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (does Microsoft even have developers working on Internet Explorer? Maybe in a closet somewhere) are working on many of the same options, like downloading to a cloud or sharing web pages instantaneously across devices, that Maxthon offers right now.  But unless you really need or want to try out its unique capabilities, I really can’t recommend Maxthon to you. If you’re happy with the way your browser looks and feels when you use it, switching to Maxthon will be a jarring experience. I definitely recommend Maxthon to power users, but for light browsing the extra stuff is not worth giving up a simple, familiar user experience.

The Mutineer's Tech Tips: Browsers, Part 1: Opera

Most of us spend a good deal of our computer time in an Internet browser. Sure, we have documents and spreadsheets and such at work or school that take up a lot of our time, but when we are on our own time, most of us open up the web browser, start with Facebook or Reddit or Yahoo and then see where we go from there. Your web browser is one of the most important tools on your computer. You have a wide variety of choices for web browsing, but most people use the one that came with their computer or they download a favorite like Firefox or Chrome.

Of course the web is everywhere now with mobile devices. And while apps certainly take up a lot of our screen time on those, there is still nothing like a simple, fast web browser when you need to search or if a friend on Facebook posts an article you want to read. In this post and the one to follow I want to introduce you to a couple of browsers I use every day that you may or may not have heard of but that might improve your online experience.

Opera

Opera is the number 5 browser among conventional computers worldwide, so it’s not exactly unknown. But given that the top 4 have 95% or more of the market, it’s not exactly a household name either. Opera took a big step last year when it dropped its unique web-rendering engine, the software that properly interprets and displays web sites, and went with the engine found in Chrome. This move eliminates the issues Opera used to have with some web sites. I experienced this myself with earlier editions of Opera. If you used Opera in the past and were frustrated by these problems, it might be time to try it again.

This is my Speed Dial start page on Opera on my wife's computer.

Opera’s key feature is its “Speed Dial” page. Lots of browsers have a page that shows your recently-viewed or most-viewed pages when you open a new tab. Opera goes way beyond this. You can customize what web sites you want to feature and order them how you want them. Be warned, Opera wants you to use the speed dial feature so badly that it does not use an ordinary bookmark menu. You can add one with extensions, and you can see the bookmark bar under the address line.

What makes Opera’s Speed Dial unique is that you can download extensions that work exclusively in the speed dial page. For example, I have a Facebook extension that allows me to see my notifications without actually going to Facebook. There are literally dozens of these that let you look at your e-mail, check stock prices and sports scores, and more all from your start page. It’s a cool feature that no other browser has. The speed dial comes loaded with a Google search bar on this page as well, but as you can see I eliminated that. You can choose any search engine you want as your default in the main address bar.

Opera’s mobile offerings are fantastic as well. I have an Android phone and a Google Play-enabled Nook. Opera is my main browser on both. The tablet version is particularly fantastic. I have other browsers on my Nook (including the one I will mention in tomorrow's post) but I rarely use them because Opera is so good. Opera’s browser for iPhone and iPad is called Coast. It’s gotten rave reviews, but you must remember that Apple downgrades access for third-party browsers on its mobile devices, so I wouldn’t blame you if you stuck with Safari. I also wouldn’t blame you if you took a leap out of Apple’s “walled garden,” but that’s another issue for another time.

Opera's disappointing attempt at cross-platform interoperability.

The one problem I have with Opera is its complete lack of interoperability between platforms. I’m sorry, but a page with links to your stored favorites from your desktop browser doesn’t cut it in 2014. That message in the yellow box has been the same for nearly a year. And it wasn’t any better before. In a day when all of the most popular browsers operate together quite well, this is terrible. I don’t know how well Coast interacts with the desktop Windows or Mac versions of Opera, but I doubt it’s much better.

In summary, if you like the speed and simplicity of Chrome but don’t want your whole online life to revolve around Google, you should definitely consider Opera. Yes, it lacks some really basic options on the cross-platform front, but if you mainly use one device or if you don’t really care about interoperability and you want something that works well on the device in front of you, Opera would be a great choice.  

Check back tomorrow for my other recommendation!

The Mutineer's Tech Tips: Browser Extensions

I guess I’m what’s considered a dinosaur in this age of the mobile web: I’m still a web browser guy. Even on my phone I’d rather use a web browser for basic info and searches rather than an app. My next tech tip will have to do with a couple of my choices for browsers, but today I’m writing about browser extensions.

What are browser extensions? Most people don’t know what they are. Unfortunately the most common extensions are those awful “toolbars.” Those were (and are) a drag on your computer and a security risk. If you have them in your browser, take steps to get rid of them. Now. 

This may be extreme, but one toolbar is one too many in my book.

A browser extension is basically a mini-program that you add to your browser that offers a unique feature or service. It can be anything from a link to your e-mail to an app that lets you expand pictures or text in a Web page. Practically all of them are free, which is a bonus. Here are a couple of basic extensions that I won’t go without now that I’ve gotten used to them:

Ad Block
Ad Block Plus

These two basically do the same thing: in my experience, one is just about as good as the other. These programs block ads everywhere on the Internet. And not just box ads at the top and bottom of pages either. They block ads on Facebook, they shut down those annoying autoplaying videos and even block the ads at the beginning of YouTube videos. Either of these are great products, well worth your time.

One of the most important things these programs offer, ironically, is the option to not block ads on certain pages. If you have a particular web site you like to visit that you want to support by clicking on the ads on their page, you can do that. If somebody is offering you great content, you should take advantage of the opportunity to support them by clicking on their ads, especially if you are interested in the ad. Both of these extensions place a stop sign icon next to the address bar where you can change the settings.

Add This

Most of us are active with more than one platform that allows us to share information: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Google+, Pocket (you really need to try Pocket), etc. Plus some of the old-timers among us still use e-mail to share stuff. It’s annoying to copy and paste a link, especially when the address is a really long and random combination of numbers and letters. Add This fixes that. It lets you customize the services you use to share web pages, videos, etc., and you can post them with just one click. Very handy. I use it a lot.

Will these work with my browser?

If you click on the links, there should be a download button. You can click further into the page to find if there are issues with your browser. Here is a rundown of the top four browsers and links to their extensions page:

Internet Explorer

IE doesn’t have a lot of extensions. Most of the extensions for IE are either from Microsoft itself or from other corporate entities. Or they are malware/adware/bloatware and will actually hurt your computer in the long run. Microsoft is very protective of its IE code. Unfortunately that mindset actually works against IE users in the long run. They discourage legitimate innovation while at the same time encouraging hackers, thieves and worse to try to exploit it because of its large market share.

I would encourage you to stop using IE altogether, but that’s another discussion for another time.

Firefox

Chrome

Both Chrome and Firefox have a wide variety of extensions. You can find extensions for things you never knew a web browser could do. It’s honestly fun to just go browsing through these pages and see what they offer. Both Chrome and Firefox encourage creativity among users, and their openness is rewarded by a flock of helpful apps. It’s still safest to stick to the official “app stores” for extensions, but if you find one from a service or Web site you trust, I would be less afraid to download one in either of these  than in IE.

Safari

I’ve used it some, but I don’t know as much about Safari as I do about Windows browsers. Apple used to offer a fine version of Safari for Windows, which I used a lot, but they dropped it a couple of years ago. It appears they have quite a few extensions as well. Worth checking out for sure, or you can download Chrome or Firefox for your Mac, as practically all of the extensions work on both Mac and Windows, and there are some Mac-specific extensions. Safari is certainly a much better browser than IE, but that doesn’t mean you have to stick with it exclusively.

One word of caution: too many extensions will bog down your browser’s performance. Chrome and Firefox have hundreds of extensions. My advice is to find a few that really do improve your web browsing and stick with those. The ones that turn your Facebook different colors or give your browser a cool skin might be fun for a kid, but if you’re like me you want to get things done online, not look at interesting gewgaws in your browser.

The Mutineer's Tech Tips: Three Apps You Should Try

I don't claim to be an expert, but I do have a lot of amateur experience. I'm not a latest-and-greatest tech person. I'm more of a tinkerer, someone who makes the best of what he has. For example, I'm writing this on a Windows Vista laptop. My phone is a two-year-old middle-of-the-road Android running Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0x. Not exactly high-powered stuff.

But I seem to have a knack for making stuff work. And when I find stuff that works I enjoy telling other people about it, so I'm going to share a few things with you here on my blog. Please understand that anything I recommend is genuine: I'm not getting anything for mentioning these services.

1. Pocket

Have you ever found something online you really liked, but when you wanted to show a friend you did a Google search and couldn't find it? Or maybe you bookmarked something, but when you came back to it the page had been moved? Pocket solves this problem. Pocket is available through any web browser and on both Android and Apple phones and tablets. All you have to do is sign up for a free account on the web site or when you download the free app. It works best on your computer when you download the extension (my next article in this series will probably be about browser extensions.)

When you save a web page to Pocket, it downloads the text and keeps it for you permanently. It is possible to save videos, pictures, etc., to Pocket as well. You can set the phone or tablet app to download the info you save directly to your device so you can view it offline. It's wonderfully easy to use, it provides a valuable resource, and it's free!

2. Key Ring

Seems like every store you go to has a loyalty card. I understand that some people don't want to use them, and I totally respect that. But if you do choose to use them, they can be overwhelming. They can fill up your key chain or your wallet in a hurry. Then you have to dig through your cards when you get to the check out line.

Key Ring is the solution. It's a free app that stores all your cards in one app. All you have to do is snap a picture of your card and it will create an image of the bar code on your phone that you can call up instantly on your phone. Some stores' scanners won't scan bar codes that display on a phone screen, and that can be a problem. But at the very least the number is there on the screen and the cashier can enter the number. That might take a little bit of time, but they're taking advantage of our information anyway, so a couple of seconds to enter a number is not too bad a trade-off.

3. Snap Pea

The first two were available for all phone platforms. This one is exclusively for Android. If you have an Android phone and a Windows computer, you need this free app. When you download both the Android app and the Windows app, you can connect them either by USB or over the same Wi-Fi connection. So yeah, you have to have the phone nearby when you use it on your computer, but when are you not nearby your phone?

With Snap Pea you can instantly swap any files between your devices. If you're like me and you have lots of music on your computer, all you have to do is drag and drop your mp3s from your computer to your phone. Transfer is as fast as your Wi-Fi or USB cable will allow. And Snap Pea does so much more. You don't need to install a special app just to manage your files on your phone. You can easily take care of it with your computer. The Windows app will save your contacts, text messages and pictures on your computer for easy, simple backup. With Snap Pea open on your computer you can also send and receive text messages on your computer.

Hope these are some help. If you have any suggestions, mention them below.