Android – Choosing apps

Like the iPhone and its app store, Android offers a market for download and purchase of apps for the Android phones. They’ve cleverly called this market the Android Market. It is directly accessible from the phones, and you can find it on the main menu.
 
The only problem with the Android Market, as I see it, is that navigating it tends to get tedious. Luckily, there is a website from which you can browse apps and see what rating they’ve got. The first is called Cyrket, and you can find it here. Unfortunately, Cyrket has a spotty record as far as uptime goes. An alternative to Cyrket is Androlib, which can be found here
 
There are basically speaking two ways of installing apps. The obvious one is using the Android Market to download and install them automagically. You can also get the installable package (Android uses .apk-files for installable packages) and install it directly from the file manager.
 
To do this, you first need to Allow installation of non-Market apps. In the main view, click the “Menu” button, then click “Settings”. In settings, choose “Applications”, then activate “Unknown sources”.