More Handy Android Apps

As you’ve probably already read in a few of my posts, my LG Optimus V has a tendency to have its memory eaten up in to time flat. As a result, I was often left to go into the Applications menu and clear out caches, uninstall updates, etc.

I did all of that until App2SD Pro was offered for free on Amazon’s Appstore, and the app’s widget did do the trick for a little while. The widget would refresh and display the amount of memory the cache was taking up and if you wanted to clear it, you would press the widget – but not before it asked you if you wanted to do that.

Well, of course I want to. It’s killing my space! So annoying message aside, all widgets only work when the app is installed on the phone’s internal memory which sort of defeats the purpose of having it.

So in an effort to avoid having an app kill my phone’s internal memory just for the sake of having a widget, I scoured the Android Market and came across two handy ones that have since become my replacements for App2SD’s cache widget.

SLW Cache Cleaner Widget (free): While it’s pretty obvious what this app does, what isn’t is how small it is. Like all SLW widgets – SLW is an acronym for Simple and LightWeight – it is extremely compact to save you space and still gets the job done. This one in particular is a whopping 17k. What I like about Cache Cleaner is that it efficiently monitors your cache and whenever you feel the need to dump it, one press of the widget will do it and you’re back in business. No frills, no bells or whistles. That’s exactly how it should be.

SLW Storage Widget (free): I use this one in conjunction with Cache Cleaner so that I have a constant tab on how much memory remains on both my internal memory and SD card. This takes the guesswork out it as well as waiting for that dreaded “low memory” message, a definite sign of how this phone can drive you nuts at the most inopportune times. And again, we see the benefit of good things coming in small packages: this one weighs in at 20k. Think your phone can handle that?

Best of all, these as well as all of this developer’s apps are free.

Give them a shot and see what you think.