App Mate

Summary

There are a ton of different apps out there to help you sort and organize all the programs on your phone. The shear amount features some of these apps have can be overwhelming for those of you looking to add a little simplicity and order to your life. You can always try to organize your phone without a special app, but it can end up being an extremely time-consuming process. That’s where App Mate could come in handy. Find out if it’s any good in today’s test.

 App Mate lets you arrange your apps into neat little folders. Basically, App Mate is supposed to let you do things your regular Android folder organizer can’t accomplish. Using App Mate you can create folders, add icons to them, rename them and easily move apps to the designated folder.

You can access the apps in the folders directly using App Mate or place folders on your desktop. Additional App Mate features are:

• Uninstall apps
• Access app info
• Open apps in Market

A drawback would be the fact that you can’t place the same app into multiple folders. I mean, it’s perfectly probable that you may want to place an app into two different categories at once.
As I already mentioned, App Mate doesn’t offer nearly as many features as other comparable apps, but I find this to be a big advantage.

Bottom Line:

App Mate is a nice addition to the standard folder feature on Android. Besides my criticism about not being able to place one app into several folders, there’s another thing that made me give this app only a 3 star rating. The problem is that this app lacks a folder backup feature that has become a standard feature in most other applications of this kind.

Don’t get me wrong, App Mate isn’t a bad program. In fact, it’s great for anyone looking for a simple way to keep things organized on their phone.

 When you open up App Mate for the first time, the following default folders are displayed:

• Game
• Entertainment
• Tools
• Others

You’ll find all of your apps in “Others” at first.
With the menu button you have the following options:

• I like this app (Rate this app on the market)
• Not that great (Email a complaint to the developer)
• Add Folder
• Help

You can now create your own folders (Add Folder) or move apps to the default folders. Every time you create a new folder you can make a name and icon for it. Unfortunately, you can only select from the default icons meaning that you can’t use icons stored on your SD card.

In the apps list you can select the way these apps are displayed (A-Z, Z-A or according to date). The following options appear when you long-press an app:

• Move to another folder
• Add to Home
• Rate & Comment
• Show Details
• Uninstall

Simply select the destination folder and press Move to another folder to organize your apps. You can place a folder onto the desktop by pressing Add to home. That way you can have easy access to your folder directly from your desktop. You can select between the following when long-pressing a folder:

• Edit
• Move up
• Move down
• Delete

Bottom Line:

App Mate is simple and easy to use. No more complicated drag & drop features. What a relief!

App Mate ran smoothly during the test and the folders opened quickly and without delay. 

 App Mate can be downloaded for free from the Android Market.