Reviews by Team: F-droid reviews
Reviews for apps on f-droid
This game, recently released on F-Droid, is the adaptation of the beloved SuperTuxKart that has been available for a long time for PC users. This racing game mimics the popular SuperMarioKart and works very well, with many different game modes, including Singleplayer, Multiplayer and Campaign mode.
However, as of version 0.9.3, it’s clear that the adaptation from PC to mobile still isn’t great. Buttons are way too small and thin to correctly tap on them on a touchscreen, and the game occasionally asks users to press keys such as the “Fire” key, which is never explained and doesn’t even appear in the keyboard shortcuts config area. It’s not an amazing PC-to-Android port, but it is very fun and probably considerably above average, comparing with other F-Droid games. Absolutely recommended!
This is a fork of the popular Maps.me Android app, which removes the nonfree bits and the ads, and is released on F-Droid. To me it looks and works better than OsmAnd, but it currently has a broken log in in OpenStreetMap, which is big problem for me as an editor, and it’s what keeps this from getting a perfect score.
Edit for clarification: it seems the aforementioned bug is not exclusive to this fork, happening also on Maps.me.
OsmAnd is a free and open source(FOSS) maps and navigation app. It uses OpenStreetMap(OSM) for map data, several different routing engines are available ranging from fully offline to partially online and maps can use local data(offline) or online tiles. It’s best feature is that it can be used fully offline once map data has been downloaded.
Routing
The built in routing engine that works offline can be very slow depending on length of your route and your phones cpu. When used with older phones, it can take several minutes to calculate a 10-20 mile route. It is the default routing engine when you install the app.
Online routing engines were removed in one of the 3.x releases.
The OSRM routing engine works very fast, taking ~15 seconds to calculate a 10-20 mile route, but requires a data connection. It has to be enabled in the settings menu to work. This engine doesn’t seem to support announcing street names or avoiding tolls, use the default routing engine for the best experience.
Search
Search is not as good as commercial competitors. One drawback is that OSM’s data is missing many businesses and addresses compared to commercial competitors. The other is that the search function often requires exact substing matches to find things and is compounded by the fact OSM is crowdsourced data so there can be inconsistencies in tagging.
Map Updates
Map updates come monthly by default and include any updates that have been made to the OSM data.
OsmAnd live is a feature that allows downloads of new map data every hour if you want. This feature comes free with the F Droid version. This feature is great for OSM contributors. OsmAnd Live updates approx. every 15 minutes so you can make changes on OSM, wait 15 minutes and download your changes so you can immediately use your changes and know what’s already been mapped.
Updates
Since the app is FOSS, the app updates and map updates can be free if you download from F Droid . You can also get a free version from the Play store that comes with limits on the amount of offline maps you can download, but you can purchase an expanded version that takes aways those limits.
Battery and Data Usage
App uses very little data when using local data, even with online route calculation enabled. Map downloads are large, I highly recommend downloading over wifi only.
Battery usage seems to be much lower than commercial competitors, but a direct comparison has not been done.
Map Rendering
Map rendering will be slightly slower than commercial ones if using local map data. If you want the fastest experience, enable online map tiles in the configure map section.
##Long Term Update
Search is a pain and doesn’t become less frustrating over time. Rendering can be odd sometimes, showing the backgound as water instead of land at certain zoom levels. Routing is almost always good.
Verdict
The app is usable for day to day navigation, but will take some getting used to if coming from always online apps. The amount of options the app gives you is impressive. At any time, you can choose to go offline only to save data or online for a faster experience or something in between. OsmAnd Live is highly recommended if you are an OSM contributor.
If you want a free navigation app that doesn’t track you, this is a great choice.
AnkiDroid is the best spaced repetition flashcard software for mobile. Period.
It’s more customizable than others out there, free as in freedom and as in cash (at least the Android version), and, most importantly, it works wonders for learning and memorization.
One thing that could be improved is allowing plug-ins to extend functionality of the app, like the desktop version does. Also, some actions can only be done via the desktop program, which makes it a second-class citizen for me. The fact that it can sync seamlessly across devices makes it a smaller problem, however.
Easy xkcd is a free software xkcd and what if? viewer for android devices.
You can share and favorite xkcd comics and what if? articles, and also view the explain xkcd explanation of every comic.
It supports viewing the alt text by long pressing the comic. You can also view a random comic by pressing the random icon in the bottom right corner. You can search for a comic with its number or title as well.
Pros:
- Clean look with material design.
- Night theme included.
- Adding a comic to favorites saves it on the device and it can be viewed offline as well.
Cons:
- Big download and binary size (11 MB) given its feature set. This is not much of an issue but I feel it could be cut down.
Slide for reddit is an open source, modern application for Android for accessing reddit. In my opinion it is the best reddit app available and nicer than the other reddit apps available such as reddit is fun, redreader and relay.
Pros
- Modern material deign UI
- Offline viewing
- Customizable UI
- Open Source
- Rapidly improving feature set
Cons
- None that I can think of