Too hard to decide? Can you come up with just one? And we are ruling out Gmail, Google Maps, the Market, or any other app that is or was at one time native. If the game was on the line and you had one app that was guaranteed to give you victory, what would it be? Can there be just one? When you reach into your pocket, grab your phone and unlock it, what is the app that you almost instantly gravitate towards? An alternate keyboard? A cloud storage service? A 3rd party dialer? Twitter app?

Since we are not allowing you to choose native apps or ones that were once native, you can’t choose the text message app, but you could go with something like ChompSMS for example or another app that powers something native.

Have something in mind? Drop it in the comments below.

The DL choices: Tim went with Swype. Eric went with DropBox. Dan with Pandora. I went with Google Voice because there are far too many phone numbers and phones to keep track of these days.

With bootloaders continuing to be a popular topic these days, we started asking ourselves questions like, “Does a locked bootloader matter as much anymore?” And of the topics that were brought up, one was whether or not people are using custom ROMs and kernels like they once did back in early 2010. As someone that lives and breathes Android, I’ve got to admit that I get the feeling that as phones become more powerful and have more polished software, that custom ROMs and kernels may be less popular in the future than they once were (I’m sure the CM team will do their best to crush that prediction though).

Rooting on the other hand will always top everyone’s list of things to do as it allows you to take screenshots, wireless tether, etc. But, is Android as a mobile platform becoming optimized enough that less and less needs to be done to your phone out of the box to make it live up to your standards? We once tossed in custom kernels and ROMs with new features to help out our under-spec’d phones. With dual-core processors, loads of RAM and things like native screenshots, what does the state of the ROM world look like today? Going forward?  We ask you just a simple question below to get a feel for it.

And if you would, feel free to sound off on your thoughts on custom ROMs, whether or not you still use them, and if so, which you continue to use. Should be interesting to see if folks with newer phones are still opting to use a ROM rather than stock software.

Update:  Changed the poll slightly. Please re-vote if you will.

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Now that Tuesday night’s Ice Cream Sandwich event has had time to settle on your brains, we want to know what impressed you the most from it. Not only was a brand new UI introduced, but we also saw a brand new outlook on the experience from Google. Everything has been cleaned up, made more efficient, and really gave us the impression that the end user was their focus for the first time.  

Google+ has had an up and down couple of days this week. First, there was the Google engineer who mistakenly published a massive rant to the public about the failures of the service. And then just yesterday, we heard that it has been nothing but a success from CEO Larry Page and has more than 40 million users. We tweeted out that number and heard back from readers who all seemed to share a similar message:  ”They may have 40 million users, but a small percentage actually use the service.” Is that true? Were people initially turned on by G+, but have now returned to their other social networks? Or is it really the next big thing in social partying?

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With the announcement of the iPhone 4S and its Siri voice-integration followed by a couple of rumors that Google with introduce a similar service with Ice Cream Sandwich, we got to wondering how many people are actually interested in this type of software. Android has had Voice Actions for over a year now, but there have been other more advanced options on the market for just as long that don’t seem to get all that much love. With the unveiling of Siri, it seems like now this is the new cool thing because, well, Apple announced it. I personally have used Voice Actions or speech-to-text only when reviewing a service that has them and never in a real life situation other than to show it off as a cool feature to friends or family. I sort of get the feeling that I’m the minority.

Do I need to get with the times? Are highly-advanced voice-integrated services and apps the way of the future? Or are they the next gimmick like 3D on smartphones? Do we really have to watch the world walk around our streets talking to their phones as if they were a personal assistant? Maybe.

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If CTIA had gone as planned, we probably would have had more Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus talk today than any normal human being could handle. But since things did not go as originally scheduled, we were left this morning with an empty 11:00AM slot to think about what could have been. And during that time, we found ourselves looking at the significance of this device. Not only will it be Verizon’s first Nexus (assuming it does end up as the Galaxy Nexus), but it’s the first to launch with Android 4.0. Two incredible things to think about.

Long time VZW Android enthusiasts have longed to finally get a Nexus – a device that receives updates directly from Google and is as unlocked and bare as you can find. It’s really a dream phone for any uber-geek. Throw in the fact that it will run on Big Red’s 4G LTE network and you’ve got history in the making.

But then there is the fact that we finally get to see ICS – the version of Android that would merge both tablet and phone operating systems into one. Most of us expect this to be a massive upgrade over Gingerbread in UI, polish and features.

Which one is more important though? The biggest network finally getting its first Nexus or a phone finally running Ice Cream Sandwich? I personally would lean towards the option of this being the first Nexus on Verizon, but then again, ICS is a real game changer.  Thoughts?

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This has quickly turned into Samsung Galaxy Nexus hypebeast week as we lead up to the CTIA event that should answer all of our questions.  So far though, we have a set of specs that match up to what our sources have told us, a beautiful render, a potential release date of 10/27, and a couple of teaser videos to make your mouth water.  Things around the Android world are getting incredibly exciting – new Nexus on Verizon for the first time that’s running the newest and mostly unleaked version of Android.

There is nothing quite like a Nexus device if you are an Android enthusiast, so even though this is not official just yet, we want to know if any of you have already made up your mind on it.  Is the G-Nex your next phone?

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