Tushar Mehta / Android Authority The Android we know today has a rich legacy, built on a foundation of apps that have endowed it with its powers of customization and extended its utility beyond what was natively offered. Over the last decade, many of these services have either become obsolete or been integrated into core features in Android. But they continue to remain in our hearts. Today, we’re recounting legendary apps that helped shape Android and made it more meaningful than the barebones stock version of yesteryears. Here are my top picks for Android apps that had a fundamental — almost irreplaceable — role on Android phones in the past. Most of these apps no longer exist, haven’t been updated in a while, or have undergone radical changes — for the worse — in recent years, but their contributions remain unmatched. Before we begin, please let us know which ones you have used and miss the most. Which of these legendary Android apps have you used? 146 votes Inbox 22 % Google Play Music 31 % Swype Keyboard 10 % SuperSU 5 % Titanium Backup 8 % MX Player 7 % ES File Explorer 10 % Google Plus 8 % Inbox by Google Inbox, to me, was one of the most iconic apps Google ever made. In case you never got around to using it, it was a Gmail alternative with superior sorting features and better looks. I found it to be designed in a more palatable way, somewhat futuristic for the time, than the original Gmail app, and its use of cheerful and electrifying shades of blue made it feel more engaging. Of course, clearing the inbox like a clean slate and seeing the toony sun shine through was one of the biggest highlights of the day for many users, including my colleague Mitja Rutnik and me. Inbox was also the testing ground for features that we see on Gmail today, including the swipe to snooze or archive feature and the ability to view reminders and tasks directly from the email app. Of course, as I progressed through my career, and my overload of PR pitches fluffed up my email inbox, I found it increasingly difficult to stay on top of every email and went back to using Gmail so that I could mark all emails as read with a single click by skimming through the subject lines and scanning for familiar names. Google also gave up on the app in 2019, as it does with many products that spark initial excitement, but I wish it had invested more effort into evolving Inbox over time. Google Play Music Back in the early 2010s, Google Play Music was one of the apps I spent the most time using. What inspired that wasn’t truly free will, but the lack of any prominent music streaming apps — or even the (non-existence) prevalence of streaming in the age of expensive and battery-hungry 3G. It was also backed by the fact that Google placed Play Music as the default music player for Android devices, and I, as a Nexus 4 user back in the day, relied on it hugely. More to like about Play Music was its simplistic interface that sorted music based on genres, artists, albums, and individual tracks. Of course, a lot of this might have felt unruly if you, like me, had been torrenting music instead of actually buying it (which I no longer recommend, not for ethical reasons, but because torrents are increasingly unreliable). But if you could spend a few hours filling up the track information correctly and adding album art, your local music files appeared far more appealing, mainly because Play Music hugely emphasized graphics. Swype Keyboard Bogdan Petrovan / Android Authority Typing by gliding your finger over letter combinations is pretty standard and largely taken for granted. But more than a decade and a half ago, it was fairly novel, exciting, and surprisingly more efficient than it is today. Swype was THE OG swipe-typing experience, even before it was integrated into the official Google Keyboard, which is what it was called before it evolved into Gboard. I was a proud early adopter of Swype and used it on the Nokia N8, running the Symbian operating system, before I used it on Android. Besides allowing me to type faster — it even held a Guinness World Record for the fastest typing, Swype made it easier to type more efficiently on smaller phone screens — minuscule by today’s standards — back in the day, instead of twiddling my thumbs to reach the right character. It was like the T9 equivalent for touch screens, and I eventually developed a knack for typing while not having to stare at the screen constantly. I use the functionality on Gboard to date, though I feel that the convolution of personal vocabulary data has made it far less accurate at predicting the right word. Still, typing by tapping individual characters feels like an exercise full of friction, and I’m glad I chose to swipe that worry away. It was discontinued in 2018. SuperSU Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority Back in the day, rooting your Android phone was useful for more than maxing your aura — though it certainly fulfilled that purpose. Rooting allowed prosumers to install apps that would enhance their device’s performance, maximize battery life, and even enable extensive customization, especially when Android lacked those features inherently. SuperSU was the app that I largely relied on to root my Nexus 4, and subsequently the OnePlus One and 2. Its ease of use, which involved just installing a package from the custom recovery, and support for virtually any popular Android phone made it immensely popular. Since I experimented with custom ROMs extensively, which needed supplementing from apps like Greenify, rooting became a vital exercise. Over time, platforms such as Magisk have replaced SuperSU due to its extensive library of extensions, following the latter’s sunset in 2018. However, it left a lasting imprint on my heart — and I’m sure it did for other Android lovers. Titanium Backup Like SuperSU, Titanium Backup was another vital tool for anyone chronically dabbling with custom ROMs. As the name suggests, it allowed you to take a backup of your phone, store it in a single compressed package, and then restore the backup. What is even more special is that Titanium Backup allowed restoring data from apps and games, which remains a challenge even in modern-day Android devices. That was truly a lifesaver for me in times when the only way to back up data from chat apps, such as WhatsApp, was to copy text log files and store them on a microSD card or transfer them to a PC. Beyond its basic backup and restore functions, Titanium Backup could also scan for newly installed apps or detect if they were missing app data. It could then restore this data without an extensive set of steps, which is what made Titanium Backup an excellent aid for crusaders like me. Eventually, as microSD cards became rare, the developer also added support for Google Drive backup. Unfortunately, its popularity fizzled as custom ROMs became less rampant and native tools in Android matured to acceptable levels. While it’s still available for downloading on the Play Store, Titanium Backup hasn’t been updated in several years, which is why we can’t recommend it now. MX Player MX Player is probably the most popular app in this list, and for good reasons. In an era where traditional media players on Android felt clunky and unusable, MX Player provided a fluid and intuitive interface for watching video files stored locally. It can be compared to the VLC media player, not just for its utility, but also for its swipe gestures for brightness and volume, which video streaming apps, including Netflix, have now adopted. Imagine having that functionality over a decade ago. Another feature that made MX Player extensively popular was customization options for captions, where you could change font size, style, or even color. It was also among the earliest video players on Android to support hardware-based encoding, which allowed larger media files to play without any jitters. I used MX Player extensively for watching downloaded video content during subway rides before the availability of cheap or high-speed mobile data. But to my disappointment, and that of other users, MX Player’s popularity declined as online streaming surged. Amazon subsequently acquired it and now operates it as a separate platform to run mini (read: low production cost) TV series, effectively replacing the glorious app with another platform for half-hearted video slop. You can still use it to play local files, though be prepared to deal with an onslaught of too many ads. ES File Explorer Long before Google launched Files as Android’s default file browser, third-party Android manufacturers, such as Samsung, used to offer their own solution. But for stock Android, which did not come with a file manager, ES File Explorer was one of the best file explorers to fill the gap. As a Nexus user who also used early Motorola G series phones briefly, I found myself relying solely on ES File Explorer, even though there were — and still are — some useful alternatives. I was fond of the ES File Explorer’s simplistic interface, which could be further customized with different views. The Explorer also offered excellent options to sort files or view them in a library format based on file type, similar to the current Files app on Android. Besides these options, ES File Explorer also allowed a convenient Recycle Bin feature, but what I liked the most was the ability to hide files, such as images, from the Gallery simply by changing the name of a particular folder in ES File Explorer. Since many of the features eventually became redundant, with built-in file explorers improving significantly, ES File Explorer lost its appeal, which was further compromised by a severe vulnerability. It was subsequently removed from the Play Store — along with other apps by its developer, DO Global — for shady practices. You may still be able to download it from third-party app stores, but we don’t recommend it. However, if I were to list apps that played a pivotal role in my early days with Android, ES File Explorer would be at the top of the list. Google Plus When Internet 2.0 started to explode with the surge of social apps, such as Facebook and Twitter (now X), and user-generated content, Google threw its hat in the ring with Google Plus. But being a Google product, it enjoyed the privilege of being a hub where other Google services, such as Hangouts or Photos, could meet. And because of Google’s dominance in search, Plus also became a popular platform for brands to post and gain visibility. Eventually, Google Plus became a significant hub for discussion and a more reliable alternative to forums like Quora, as you could verify the poster’s identity and potentially gain insights from friends (who were added to your “circle”), without limiting your post to a private audience. Communities, especially in their later years, became more approachable niches for topical discussions and connecting with like-minded people. However, Google’s lack of direction with Google Plus, which also seeped through unwanted social features in Photos and YouTube, combined with the popularity of media-driven platforms like Instagram, eventually led to its demise. However, it cannot be discredited for features that spun off into separate apps that are now indispensable to the Android experience, such as Google Photos. Do you feel any other early apps influenced and shaped Android into what it is today? Make sure you tell us in the comments below! Follow