Android apps that aren't on the iPhone (yet)

Ecorio
This green program uses the GPS chip in the phone to monitor where you go and how fast you’re moving in a car or a bus, and will give you a daily tally of the trips you make.

The program is also a resource for users who want to know about public transit and carpools in their area.

Five Canadian engineering students came up with the idea and were awarded $275,000 from Google in its “Android Developers Challenge” earlier this year.

On their site, the students say they created the program because “people care about climate change, but don’t understand how to connect their daily actions to the bigger picture.”

BreadCrumbz
If you don’t mind doing a lot of data entry on the go, and want to leave a detailed trail for others, BreadCrumbz is an intriguing way to do it.

The program relies on photos you take, then “geo-tags” with the location, to guide others. You can also add information about stops along the way.

“Picture-based navigation enables creating routes that are simply not possible using maps or satellite images,” says the developer on one Android forum. With BreadCrumbz, “you can create routes leading to a specific door, a shop inside a shopping center or an object that's hard to find.”

LifeAware, LLC LifeAware, so far an Android-only program, can set up a phone notification so you know when your child has arrived at or left the schoolgrounds.

ShopSavvy uses the phone’s camera as a barcode scanner, then finds the best prices of the same product on the Web, as well as at stores in your area. CompareEverywhere is another barcode scanner program that will tell you if “that ‘sale price’ really is a good deal,” according to the developers, and provide you with reviews of what other shoppers think.

Cab4Me Light lets you get a cab when and where you need one. You choose your pickup location on the phone’s map, and the program gives you a list of cab companies that serve the area; you choose which one to call.

Locale can manage your phone’s settings based on location or situation. For example, if you’re at work and you don’t want your phone to ring, but forget to put it on vibrate, that’s not a worry with Locale in place. If you’ve set the phone to “work,” and include the address, every day the phone automatically goes to vibrate once you’re at that location.

LifeAware lets you locate friends and family and vice-versa by sending your current location to others. You can also set up geographical zones and notifications for when a child arrives or leaves school, for example, or even when a friend on a trip arrives at their destination.

MyCloset is what it says for those who love their closets and can spend hours organizing it, studying it and figuring out wardrobe functions or malfunctions. The program manages information about your clothes, and even checks the weather to let you know what in your wardrobe would work best.

Cooking Capsules Taster is a fresh take for Rachael Ray-wannabes, or those who just wanna try something different in the kitchen. It’s eight little episodes, or “capsules,” about mainly Indian and some French cuisine. Each capsule has three steps: watch, shop and make. You watch the demo on your phone, use the built-in shopping list at the grocery store, and then try your hand at the meal, with the recipe in front of you on the phone. Unfortunately, Android can’t actually cook the meal — at least for now.

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