Tons of apps...not one useful.

[X0LARIUM]

Hey all,

This thread is more of an introspection. I have a RaZr right now. One of those many "Flagship" phones. One of the prime reason for ditching my HTC HD7 was the lack of apps, the nearly desolated marketstore and the third world approach by devs.

But, last night, as I was lay awake in my bed, I had a thought. "Sure I have a high-end phone. Sure I have an app store that is brimming with apps. Sure I can download one anytime of the day. Games? Yeah, I downloaded all the best and the coolest ones, but apart from Dead Space, haven't even bothered to open the .zip. So how many of those apps are actually useful?"

This is what made me sit upright. Today morning I went through the list of apps I have downloaded for the last six-7 months.
Wallpapers/soundboards/games and tweaks and mods. That's about it. All of them. Not one useful app. Not one app that I can use in some way that could perhaps bring about a minute change in my life, that could help me in the remotest way possible.

Yes there are apps that I absolutely love, Flipboard, Twitter, iReader and that's about it.

So, my reason to post this here is actually this question - is a bloated marketplace USP for an OS? Was I wrong in ditching my HTC HD7 for an app store that was just a bait somewhere?

How many of you actually feel that WP's app store isn't as strong as its competitors?

Let's be fair and share what you think.

Thanks for your time.

Sent from my RaZr Nexus.

 

[smoledman]

Amazing Weather, Rowi, Connectivity Shortcuts, Local Scout, Me & Personal hubs, XBox Live, Music + Videos hub, Nokia Maps and so much more.

 

[jimski]

The OS already works pretty well by itself. But I wouldn't know what to do without some essentials: CleverToDo to remind me of pending tasks (no has a Cloud based sync function), ProSports Scores to track Yankee baseball, pitch by pitch, when I can't watch the game, Sports Scores contract my 4 favorite teams, Sports Calendar to be reminded of events and check the schedule of any sort, Parcel Tracker to keep track of my packages, Weave to keep up to date with all kinds of tech and other news, Weather to see weather at a glance, RAD Now to get a quick view of fast moving storms here in Florida, Mehdoh for my Twitter fix, Handyscan to shoot an document and sent it anywhere, Board Express to read and reply to there forums..... I could keep going. Plenty to see in the Marketplace. You just have to look. Almost 200 apps, and another 40 games. No wallpaper, and a few utility apps. Most of the rest is news and prodictivity

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[X0LARIUM]

The OS already works pretty well by itself. But I wouldn't know what to do without some essentials: CleverToDo to remind me of pending tasks (no has a Cloud based sync function), ProSports Scores to track Yankee baseball, pitch by pitch, when I can't watch the game, Sports Scores contract my 4 favorite teams, Sports Calendar to be reminded of events and check the schedule of any sort, Parcel Tracker to keep track of my packages, Weave to keep up to date with all kinds of tech and other news, Weather to see weather at a glance, RAD Now to get a quick view of fast moving storms here in Florida, Mehdoh for my Twitter fix, Handyscan to shoot an document and sent it anywhere, Board Express to read and reply to there forums..... I could keep going. Plenty to see in the Marketplace. You just have to look. Almost 200 apps, and another 40 games. No wallpaper, and a few utility apps. Most of the rest is news and prodictivity

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

I actually agree. The phone is capable of most of the things on its own...but again, having a few basics app around always helps...doesn't it?

Sent from my RaZr Nexus.

 

[eric12341]

Absolutely false post, I have plenty of useful apps on my HD7. But I mainly use the built in functionality.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Weave to keep up to date with all kinds of tech and other news
Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

Thanks for mentioning Weave. I had not heard of it, but it's a great app.

 

[X0LARIUM]

Absolutely false post, I have plenty of useful apps on my HD7. But I mainly use the built in functionality.

Then I clearly couldn't make optimum use of my phone and its my bad. I know and that's perhaps the reason I'm again gonna go for WP8.
Thanx!

Sent from my RaZr Nexus.

 

[freestaterocker]

I never found a need for an app I couldn't get on my HD7 that was available on a competing platform.

 

[smoledman]

What are the major missing holes? Hulu, Instagram, Draw Something, Infinity Blade?

 

[rockstarzzz]

reminds me of an interesting tweet I came across the other day by someone.


https://twitter.com/drupad_t/status/232517708674121728


I read the whole article and it is amazing how we think more apps = more quality apps.

In smartphone app world, size does not matter. It's the quality. It's not about how much any more, it is about "how".

 

[drg]

I use most days the following:

Tasks, Ebay, Nokia Drive, iSilo, freda, Skype, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, Guitar Tuner, Turbo Camera, Trapster, Weatherflow, Goal.com, Thumba Photo Editor, Flashlight, Twitter, Facebook, Office and Skydrive.

Games I currently love are iStunt2, Wordament, Matchy, Dr Pickaxe, Farm Frenzy 2, NFS Undercover and Bouncey Mouse.

 

[scottcraft]

I've found pretty much all of the apps I need on WP. The only thing I dislike is many apps that are cross platform such as instagram aren't available on WP yet, but that will come in time. WP has done pretty well in the app department for having such a small marketshare.

 

[derek533]

After coming from a Droid OG and Droid X, I can honestly say that any app I've actually needed and used, has been available on WP and if not, a suitable replacement as well.

To me, I don't care about the number of apps as that's completely meaningless. What I care about is quality of apps. WP owns that distinction as having the most quality apps in my book. Not one app I've downloaded and used thus far, has left me wanting.

 

[bruceleer0y]

There was a point where I felt the same, I felt as if I needed the apps that all my friends have access to on their android/ios devices. I quickly got over that feeling, however i recently was given an old iPhone 4 and while i'm only using it as an itouch, I do have access to those apps again.

So I went ahead and downloaded those apps that I thought I would use if I didn't own a windows phone and of course I only messed around with them that first day.

Those essential few apps are the ones that are important to me. Banking, my news (NYT, USA Today), flashlight, notepad, WPcentral:happy:.

Think about the apps that you use when you're on the toilet

 

[DaiaX]

Please note, i don't have credit card and live in your so called 3rd world.
Lumia 710.

I use this app almost in daily basis:
Whatsapp -> for obvious reasons.
Weave -> i know your site from here, please thank them.
Evernote / Office -> should i ditch evernote?
UC Browser -> thunder mode is a WIN.
Turbo camera -> Thank you, i got it for free, thank you Venetasoft for free promo. This is a WIN.
Aviary Photo Genius -> the drawback of 5MP and monstrous noise made me use it often, and of course i use a lot of filter apps.
MikuLiveTile -> change the IE icon, et Voila!
Manga Reader -> impressive live tile, downloadable content, very nice navigation.
LolCats -> from crazy hot solution, because onion7 will be too absurd and most likely hard to understand for 3rd world.
AppDeals -> I'm a cheapskate, thank you.
Box, Boxfiles for Dropbox and Skydrive -> obviously.
eyeEm -> great photos, too bad too many nudist, just glad they disabled live tiles.
HardFox(all of them) -> i have no complain.
SimpiRSS -> can pin and fast RSS reader, that is all i need.
TED -> i use it more than youtube, too bad you can't download and no subs.
Translator -> from Microsoft, useful.
Tube Pro -> Change background and icon, downloadable content.
Crackle -> yay ..
AUPEO Radio -> i like out of Africa. Oh and very good at poor connection, BRAVO!
Tune in Radio, Soundtracker -> ugh.. not really often but good.
BBC News Mobile ->top notch Live Tile and toast notification and great insight of outsider view.
trending now-> solely for nice live tile
Nokia Weather or Microsoft Weather -> Nokia will be for cool factor, but most of the time my eyes just skip Nokia Weather live tiles maybe because it's too busy/crowded. Microsoft one has simple Live tile for eyecatching.

Alarm, Nokia Camera extras, Nokia Drive/Maps, Counters(nokiabetalabs), creative studio -> this is great.

for games this is what i REALLY PLAY ALOT, but maybe most of you won't find it interesting, anyway:
Breeze
Contract Killer
Gun Bros
Minesweeper
Shuffle party
Sudoku
Wordament

Astral Battles -> too bad must pay for online ver.
Dalton the awesome
BBB: App-ocalypse
Bomberman vs Zombie
Brutal Chase
Cabals
Cradle to the grave
Dragon's blade
Gaston 1
Jewel 3
Kungfu Stonie
Lemonade Stand
Lumia Snake 3D
Metrognome
lildemonsSplatter
minicraft
NyanCatGame
Pirate Cat-> got it while it's free
Rizing
TextTextRevolution
Trine's hangman Pro -> again, from free promo
Wizard Choice(complete)
Zombie Squish

Last word, i hope there's more free promo, especially EA and XBLA.

 

[Kredrian]

WP has all the apps I seem to need, I am not much into games but I love Final Fantasy, I also use Office, Rowi, Weave, Board Express, Medicine Manager, and I just found Livescape, its really helped me with my health goals a lot more than I thought it would. And I also love fhotoroom and Thumba photo editor.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express

 

[Nataku4ca]

holy moses u guys use a lot of apps... i was just going through my app list the other day too and found myself only using Nokia Drive the most and sometimes photo editing tools... (and only play Wordament and geoDefense most of the time)

the rest like Office, People hub, photo hub are all built in lol, I guess I'm not that into apps after all, and last count I only have like 30 apps installed, most of them rarely opened within any given month

 

[Laura Knotek]

I'm an ex-BlackBerry user, so I have found many more good apps for Windows Phone than I ever had for BlackBerry.

I have the wpcentral app and always check the app reviews on the main page.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express

 

[suvastallions]

People should just use apps they need and stop whining about how many apps are available to them. I'm pretty sure many apps get downloaded and are hardly used, gathering dust and eating up space in people's phones.

 

[jmshub]

I have never felt that our marketplace was inferior. The only times that it seems I am lacking is when my iPhone using sister calls wanting to play the latest game: Draw Something, SongPop, etc.

I have never lacked a solution when I searched the WP Marketplace.