Remember when I wrote an entire series about getting out of Google?
Yeah, me too.
Now I’m diving in. And I’m diving in deep.
I know quite a bit about Mac and iOS stuff, but barely anything about Android. So when Telus sent me a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 to review (which is coming shortly), I decided that now was as good a time as any to start getting familiar – and hopefully comfortable – with Android.
The first thing I did was to go to Google Play and download all of the apps I use that were on my iOS devices. As of this writing the following apps are now installed on my iPhone and Samsung Galaxy Note 3:
- Evernote (along with Evernote Hello, Evernote Food, and Skitch)
- AwayFind
- HootSuite
- Rdio
- Netflix
- Path
- Neat
- Buy Me a Pie
I also installed Todoist, Tappsana, and Any.do on the Samsung just so I could put Asana through the paces (I don’t use the official mobile app for Asana on any device at present) and give some of the other popular task management apps a go in this ecosystem.
I’ve also added Chrome as my backup browser on my MacBook Air, but will be using it as my primary browser for the next month or so. Most of the extensions I use on Safari are available for Chrome, but once AwayFind added its extension to the mix I was sold.
Why?
Well, the AwayFind extension will make it much easier for me to create alerts, know who/what I have alerts set for, and essentially manage AwayFind 100% from within the Gmail interface (if I decide to use it, which will be the case to put this extension through the paces). So I figured it was time to put Chrome to the test as my primary browser.
We’ll see how that goes.
Ultimately I’m doing all of this to better hone my productivityist skills on another platform — and my skills as whole. Android is a popular platform, and I’ve not been giving it much attention because I don’t know all that much about the apps or the ecosystem. That’s mainly because I haven’t had a device to explore them.
Now I have that device…so it’s time to start exploring. And I’m looking forward to it.
Photo credit: Faking News
