8 Ways to Further Enhance Your Smartphone

Is your smartphone being used to it's maximum potential? Chances are that it probably is not, which is the case with most smartphone owners who typically push their devices up to only about half of their full potential. Here are 8 fantastic smartphone apps to help your Android, BlackBerry, or iPhone become much more than you thought it possibly could. Thanks to PC World for the info!


Turn Apps Into a Social Activity

Want to show off all your apps to your friends? Interested in how other Android users rate the apps they have downloaded? AppBrain is the service for you. AppBrain creates a personal app catalog that you can share with other users, as well as peruse the apps of your AppBrain friends and other users. For Apple users, similar services exist for the iPhone, too. Download AppsFire or Appfinder from the iTunes App Store to start sharing your favorite apps.


Communicate With All Your Friends via Fring

A unifying social networking platform for your mobile phone, Fring allows you to use one single app to communicate across multiple social networking platforms, including AIM, GoogleTalk, ICQ, Skype, Twitter, and Yahoo Messenger. Fring eliminates the need to download specialized apps for each social network or communication tool; now you only have to worry about which friends you want to reach. Fring is available for iPhone, Android, and Nokia devices.


Make Your Android Powered Phone Location-Aware

The smartphone app Locale for Android lets you set automatic preferences for your phone based on your location. If, say, you tend to forget to turn your ringer off when you reach the office, just customize your phone using Locale to switch your ringer to vibrate whenever you get to work. Once you experience Locale's power and convenience, you'll never want to be without it.


Get Around Town With Ease

Hopstop is one of the best ways to plan bus and subway routes in cities with massive (and often confusing) transit systems. Hopstop is available in 16 U.S. cities, including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The Hopstop service is available as a mobile Web application compatible with any smartphone that has a browser. For Apple handset users, the Hopstop iPhone app includes phone numbers for taxi services. An SMS version is available for directions, as well.


Find Wi-Fi in Your Area

Apple may have cut Wi-Fi stumblers out of the App Store, but you can still turn to Wi-Fi directories such as JiWire's Wi-Fi Finder to discover over 280,000 hotspots in 140 countries worldwide. JiWire also has an app for Android. A similar service, WeFi, can also help you find a nearby Wi-Fi hotspot; in fact, Fring recently released a WeFi add-on.


Master Automated Menus

Dial Zero is a free application for Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone that promises to deliver the best phone number or strategy for getting a human being on the phone when you're calling a company's toll-free number. Just as Fonolo.com allows you to skip automated menu services for big companies, so does Dial Zero. The major difference is that Fonolo.com automates the process, limiting the number of companies it works with. Dial Zero, in contrast, offers instructions and tricks on how you can reach a real person.


Compare Prices With ShopSavvy

You can find many applications out there that turn your smartphone into a bar-code reader, but the best one out there is ShopSavvy. This app quickly scans any product bar code to do price-comparison shopping online and at local stores. You can also create wish lists or set up price alerts based on your scanned items. ShopSavvy is available for Android, iPhone, and Nokia smartphone devices.


Use Your iPhone as a Mouse

For iPhone users, Logitech offers a handy free app called TouchMouse that turns your iPhone into a wireless mouse by way of your Wi-Fi network. This could be great if you wanted to sit back on the couch and control a laptop hooked up to a TV, for instance. All you need is the iPhone app and the desktop software for Windows or Mac. If you find TouchMouse difficult to control, adjust the "Scrolling Speed" option under "Settings" on the iPhone app.