The Droid 2, like all Android phones, takes a different approach to the use of apps than some other phones: There’s absolutely no limitation on what you can download. Android’s developer, Google, doesn’t step in to say what you can and can’t download, and neither does the Droid 2’s manufacturer, Motorola, or its carrier, Verizon.

That means you’re free to choose from tens of thousands of apps, with thousands more being written every month. There are apps for tracking expenses, chatting with people, playing games, using social networks like Twitter, finding new friends, making your Droid 2 work better, tuning your guitar, viewing maps of the night sky, and much more.

These apps tie into the Droid 2’s unique hardware and software. One even automatically detects potholes as you drive, using the Droid 2’s various sensors to measure sudden movements. The app then uses the Droid 2’s positioning software to locate exactly where the pothole is, and creates a text file with all the relevant information so you can send it to your local Department of Public Works. (Unfortunately, no app has yet been developed that will get your local Department of Public Works to actually fix the pothole.)

The Droid 2 is great at multitasking—running more than one app at a time. For example, you can browse the Web while you listen to music, receive email, and have Facebook updates delivered to you, all without breaking a sweat.

You usually don’t know that Android is multitasking, though, because unlike in operating systems like Windows or Mac OS X, you can’t see all running apps simultaneously or switch between them with just a keystroke (like Alt+Tab in Windows). Instead, you tap the app’s icon.

When you’re in an app and want to do something else on the Droid 2, you typically press the Home key. From there, you can tap to run an app such as the web browser, or open the Application Tray to run more apps. When you do that, though, that first app is still running in the background. If it’s a music-playing app or a radio app, it keeps playing until you close it. With many other apps, though, at some point the Droid 2 will notice that you haven’t used it in a while and close it down. You won’t even notice that the Droid 2 has closed it.

There is a way to make sure that you close an app when you switch away from it, though. Rather than pressing the Home key to run another app, press the Menu key and look for a menu choice that closes the app. Not all apps offer this choice, but that’s okay; the Droid 2 will close the app when it’s no longer needed. If for some reason, though, you want to close an app and it doesn’t have a menu choice for that, you can still do it—see Managing, Sharing, and Uninstalling Apps.

The Droid 2 offers you not just one, not just two, but three different ways to download and install apps:

Tap the Market icon, and you get sent to the Android Market, which has tens of thousands of apps you can download, with more added every month. The apps are either free or very low cost—typically under $4, although some business-related apps can cost up to $30.

At the very top of the screen, at the upper right, is a search button. Tap it to search for an app.

Browsing by Library Divisions and Categories

Tap one of the major library divisions across the top of the Market—Apps, Games, or Verizon—and you come to a list of categories in that major division. So, for example, in Apps you’ll find many categories, including Comics, Communications, Finance, Health, Sports, and more.

Tap any category, and you come to a list of all the apps in that category. Each listing shows the name of the app, its maker, its price, and an average user rating.

Near the top of the screen you see “Top paid”, “Top free”, and “Just in” buttons. Tap any to see the list reordered according to what you tapped.

Searching the Market for Apps

Browsing is well and good when you’ve got the time and want to scroll leisurely through lists looking for an app. But often you’re on a mission: You know the type of app you want, and you want to find it fast.

In that case, you want to search. You can search by the type of app, the name of the program, or the name of the software company that created it. Tap the Search button, and a keyboard and a search box appear. As you type letters, you see apps that match those letters, regardless of where the letters are found in the app name—for example, type “Wi” and the search term “Task Switcher” appears on the list, as does the term “Wine.” As you type more letters, the results list shortens, since it shows you only letters or terms that match your search.

Complete typing your search or select a term from the list, and you see a list of programs that match what you’re looking for.

Note

When you view a list of apps, you may notice that some of them, instead of showing a price, will instead show the word “Installed.” Yup, it’s what you think—that means you’ve already installed the app on your Droid 2.

Getting Info About an App

No matter what type of list you look through—whether as a result of a search or by browsing—you’ll eventually want to get more details about an app and possibly download it. In that case, tap the name of the app, and you come to a page with a great deal of information about it, including the number of downloads, the total number of ratings on which the star rating is based, the price, a description of the app, screenshots, and individual user reviews.

Tip

Be careful when using the star ratings as a guide to download and pay for an app. In some instances that star rating may be based on just a rating or two. Any star rating based on a few ratings may not be particularly accurate, especially because the ratings may come from the developer and the developer’s friends. If there are a dozen or more user ratings, they’re more trustworthy. So read the actual reviews, and see how many ratings each app has gotten.

Scroll down toward the bottom of the page, and you come to a particularly useful section that’s often overlooked—information about the developer. It lists other apps the developer has written, links to the developer’s home page, and lets you send email to the developer.

Note

If you come across an app that you believe has inappropriate content, such as pornography or gratuitous violence, scroll to the bottom of the page and tap the “Flag as inappropriate” button.

Downloading and Installing Apps

Let’s say you’ve read all about an app, and you’ve decided to take the plunge. You’re ready to download. What’s next? Depending on whether the app is free or paid, you do things slightly differently.

If the app is free, you see an Install button at the bottom of the screen. Tap it. A screen appears, telling you what kind of information and features the application has access to, such as your location, your Droid 2’s storage, and so on. Typically, the application needs this kind of access—a GPS app can’t do its job without access to your phone’s GPS features, after all. Still, it’s a good idea to take a look, and if you’re concerned about anything, don’t download.

Next, click OK. The app immediately starts downloading in the background. A small green arrow appears in the Notification bar, showing you that the application is downloading. While the download goes on, you can use your phone in any way you want; the download won’t interfere. Soon a checkbox appears, indicating that the download is complete.

Pull down the Notification bar, and you see a notification that the app has downloaded. Tap the notification to run the app. You can also run the app by heading to the Application Tray and tapping the icon there.

If the app is a for-pay one, you need a Google Checkout account, so set one up ahead of time on the Web at https://checkout.google.com. It’s simple and free.

With that done, you can buy the app. At the bottom of the app screen, instead of an Install button, a Buy button appears. Tap it. As when you’re downloading a free app, a screen tells you what kind of features and information the app will use. Tap OK. Now it’s time to pay. On the next screen, you see the payment details, including how much the app costs, and which credit card in Google Checkout you’re using to pay. (If you want to use a different credit card than the one showing up on the screen, tap the down arrow next to the credit card. You’ll be able to pay with a different card in your Google Checkout account, or pay with a new one.)

Tap the “Buy now” button at the bottom of the screen, and the download proceeds in the exact same way as for free ones.

Note

When you install an app, it goes to your Droid 2’s main memory. However, if you’re running out of room there, or for some other reason want the app to run from your SD card, there’s a way to move the app from the Droid 2’s main memory to the SD card. For details, see Using the Droid 2 Files Application.

You’re not limited to getting apps from the Android Market—you can download them from the Web as well. You can either visit the app developer’s website to download the app, or instead head to one of the many web libraries that house and rate hundreds or thousands of apps.

Downloading from the Web takes a bit more work than from the Android Market. It’s a several-step process, rather than being straightforward and all-in-one as from the Android Market:

Unless you know a specific app you want to download and the URL of the developer’s website, your best place to start is one of the many Android download libraries. The Android Freeware site—www.freewarelovers.com/android—is one good place, as is the Android download library run by PC World. To get to the PC World Android library, go to www.pcworld.com/downloads/downloads.html, follow the Smart Phone link, and then follow the Android link. You can find other good download libraries as well. The download library www.download.com also has an Android area. Find it in the Mobile area of the site. And www.appbrain.com is good, too.

Once you find a file you want to download, tap the link to download it. A file will then start downloading to your SD card, and you’ll see the progress on a downloads screen. You’ll notice an odd file name—Astro_File_Manager_2.5.2.apk, for example. (Android apps end in the extension .apk.)

After the file downloads, tap it. A screen appears, like the one you’ve seen in the Android Market, that tells you what kinds of features and information the app will need access to. Tap Install to install the app, or Cancel to cancel the installation. When the app is installed, you can immediately run it by tapping Open, or tap Done and run it later. You’ll be able to run the app anytime from the Application Tray.

When you’re done installing the app, you won’t need the original download file any longer.

Here’s an even niftier way to download apps from the Web: Use a bar code scanner. You browse the Web using your PC or Mac, and when you come across a file you want to download, install a free app for scanning bar codes, point your camera at the onscreen bar code, and the app downloads to your PC. It’s a special piece of download magic that non-Android smartphones can’t duplicate.

First you need to get one of the many bar code scanner apps. One highly rated, popular app is called Barcode Scanner, from Zxing Team—and it’s free, as well.

After you install the scanner app on your Droid 2, you’re ready to go. Many web-based Android libraries and developer websites have bar codes next to the app descriptions, so you can easily download them.

When you come across a bar code for downloading an app, run Barcode Scanner, and then point the Droid 2’s camera at the bar code, centering it in the window in the middle of the viewfinder. The app quickly recognizes the bar code and shows you information about it, including the web page’s URL. At the bottom of the screen, tap “Open browser”, and the file downloads just as if you had tapped a download link. You can then install the app in the usual way.

Apps are often updated, and the nice thing about the Droid 2 is that it tells you when any are ready for updating—and then updates them with a single tap. When an update is available, you see this icon in the Notification bar. Drag down the bar, tap the notification icon, and you see a list of all the apps that have updates available, as well as all your downloaded apps.

Tap any update you want to download, and you see the description page you normally see before downloading an app, except that the buttons at the bottom have changed. Tap Update to update the app, and Uninstall to uninstall it. When you tap Update, you get a warning that the new, updated app will replace the existing app. Tap OK, and you see the features and information the app will use. Tap OK again, and the Droid 2 downloads the app in the background. You see its progress as it downloads, but you don’t have to watch it unless you really want to.

After awhile, you may suffer from app overload: You’ve downloaded so many apps you don’t know what to do with them. It’s time to get them under control.

There’s a single location for doing that. From the Home screen or a pane, press the Menu key and select Settings→Applications→“Manage applications”. You see a list of your apps, including their names and file sizes, categorized in four tabs:

Tap any app and you come to a screen chock-full of information about it—its version number, its total size, the size of any data associated with it, the size of the program itself, and toward the bottom of the screen, information about what kinds of features and data the app uses.

You can also uninstall the app—tap the Uninstall button. And you can also share the app with others via email or text messaging, although you won’t actually send the app itself. Instead, you send information about the app including its description, size, and where it can be downloaded. Just tap the Share button to do it. If a friend expresses curiosity about an app you use, this is the way to clue him in.

If you see that an app is running and you want to close it, tap the “Force stop” button. That button is grayed out if the app isn’t currently running.

From this screen, you can also move an app from the Droid 2’s main memory to its SD card. Tap “Move to SD card”, and the Droid 2 moves it. If an app is already on the SD card, the button instead reads “Move to phone”, and you can move it from the SD card to the phone by tapping it. (Not all apps can be moved to the SD card—its developer must have programmed that capability into it.)

There may be an app you use so frequently that you get tired of the constant dance of having to open the Application Tray, scroll down to the app’s icon, and then tap it. There’s a much easier way: You can put its icon right on your Home screen or any pane, so it’s always there at your command:

What if you want to delete the icon but still keep the app? Put your finger on the app’s shortcut icon and hold it there until a trash can appears at the bottom of the screen. Drag the icon to the trash. The icon disappears, but the app remains, and is accessible from the Application Tray.

In a perfect world, apps would never misbehave. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world. An app may quit the moment you launch it, or cause your Droid 2 to restart, or do any number of odd things. If that happens, try these steps:

If none of this works, it’s time to uninstall the app. Don’t fret; there are plenty more where it came from.

There are tens of thousands of great apps, and a whole world of them to discover. To give you a head start, here are five favorites—and they’re all free. You can find them all in the Android Market: