So I'm now a smartphone owner -- a Droid Bionic to be specific, more or less carrying over my Verizon plan from before (except obviously things like data plan). Until now, I've never used a smartphone much, and before some of you tech-heads go off the deep-end, yes, I've had my very knowledgeable roommate root my phone, and I intend to do what I can to rid myself of as much bloatware that came with the phone as I can.

Beyond that, though, I'm curious what apps and other things you all suggest to use. Keep in mind that I was perfectly happy with a phone that just made calls and received texts up until this point, so I have no real interest in grabbing a equivalent of the latest shiny toy -- I want reasons for these suggestions beyond "it's cool" or [insert tech-head ramblings that I will never understand or appreciate as a simpleton].

I jailbroke my ipod to pirate apps, but that just ended up making me buy the ones I liked :c

Oh I also do not own a smart phone because I am old

The things I use my phone for most (outside the obvious)

1. Screening my emails (if it's urgent, I can reply, if not I'll do it later when I have time at my desk)
2. Checking twitter
3. Managing my calendar (google calendar, but synced with my phone's built-in calendar app)
4. Quick google searches
5. Accessing files in my dropbox
6. Checking my RSS feeds
7. A few games

i pay almost all my bills through my iphone (may not be the wisest idea security wise...)
facebook(blegh) and twitter
a couple of games
list and sell art on my Etsy account.
any scheduling of anything i do with my phone.

I use mine as a music player and calendar. Its pretty sweet when paired with a Motorola SD09 headset.

fixed

tweetdeck (less bloated and better overall than the official apps for twitter and facebook)
google+ (for now it's this or the mobile site)
barcode scanner
amazon appstore (free paid app every day)
amazon (is it cheaper on amazon? find out)
ebay (is it cheaper on ebay? find out)
paypal
checkbook
ES file explorer (best free file manager for android IMO)
you're rooted so you want titanium backup
easy calculator (better than the stock android calculator)
3G watchdog (lets you keep track of your data usage)
end scenes (if you watch a lot of movies in the theater this will let you know if there is something after the credits)
imdb (i've used this more than i ever thought i would)
dropbox
photobucket (if you use photobucket it's very useful to quickly upload straight from the phone)
handcent sms (way more configurable and much better than stock messaging app)

also find out if the bank you use has an app

i might get the god damned imdb app just so i don't always get that 'hey download our app' splash screen every time i visit the god damned site.

god damned.

ditto on bank app, that ****'s the bee's pajamas

redditisfun
Moon+Reader if you want a good .txt reader for ebooks
Winamp
Wellsfargo/bankofyourchoiceapp
Dropbox
GoodReads <-ISBN barcode scanner for book collection list making/reviews/otherstuff

I forgot to mention that this on my to-do list, pretty much the top of the list at that.

Right now, it looks like I'll need to overall my contacts (importing from Google made me realize I have a billion contacts I never care to have and the ones I do are often named pretty funky-like). I may need a new alarm app too, since the default one apparently didn't work (though I'm re-testing that now).

As for the rest of what people posted -- thanks! Keep them coming please.

for contacts... go to the gmail website and put the ones you want to see on your phone in a specific group then on your phone go to contacts then hit menu select display options and use the checkboxes for which groups you want

otherwise everyone you've ever emailed with your gmail account and everyone in your google+ circles will be in the contacts list

sadly there is no way i know of to manage contact groups from the phone

Good advice, thank you!

Y ou should be able to add people to groups by editing the contact on your phone.

no option for groups exists in the "edit contact" screen or in the options you get when pressing the menu button

Maybe it's a sense thing? Go Contacts has it as well.

I just went ahead and stuck the ones I cared about under "Favorites" which is good enough for me.

Shazam/Soundhound for identifying songs you hear.
Compass, because it's just a compass instead of a full map.
Chrome To Phone, works with Firefox/Chrome extension that lets you send URLs, Maps, plain text, and more to your phone. Great for saving a lot of typing as you leave your PC.

Swiftkey, which is an amazing keyboard that is far superior to the Android stock one, and IMO better than Swype as well.
Netflix, because Netflix.

Finally, Metal Detector, just because of the "cool" factor. It's free, just screw around with it and amaze your friends.

must be... i'm using the stock dialer/contacts app i tried go contacts but didn't really care for it... the only real complaint about the stock dialer i have is it's just so damn plain and ugly and the theme i use doesn't theme the dialer... i found one that themes the dialer and i like the way it looks but it doesn't theme half the **** the one i use does

Sense dialer has it so you can have it exclude to only phone numbers in a tucked away menu.

1) Gmail, for emails (duh)
2) Moneywise Pro for budgeting
3) Navigation for not getting lost
4) CNN for "news"
5) Opera Mini for web
6) Netflix for Netflix
7) Bible for Bible-ing
8) oh yea, the Android calendar is really useful too

Oh God horrendous disagreement. Do not do this to yourself. It's not just a crappy browser with a terrible UI in the first place, but it's actually much slower than the stock browser in the first place. It does all this processing on the sites before sending it to your browser, which is supposed to speed it up. This actually works maybe 1/10 times, and even when it does, it results in a page that looks awful. It has lots of rendering errors. It has trouble with javascript or any fancy sites. It fakes fast loading by not actually loading the whole website (this would be fine if it loaded the rest of the site QUICKLY as you scroll. This is not how it happens). Opera's small browsers are only any good on really, really low power (aka not Android) phones and devices.

Is Chrome any better on a smartphone than on a normal computer? Because I found the last time I used Chrome, it took up way too much processing and such, which is odd considering I presume something like that to use less.

Chrome should actually be incredibly fast both on a normal computer and on the phone. Webkit (which is what Chrome and most Android browsers run on, as well as iOS and Safari) is one of the fastest rendering engines out there, period. I'm not sure why you had that experience, but it may have been a weird bug or a Flash issue. Chrome is usually a great recommendation for slower computers just because of how lightweight and fast it is (my aunt runs it on her god-awful slow netbook for instance). Hell, even Blackberry (latest version) and WebOS use webkit.

I still prefer Firefox myself on the desktop, but it's just way, way too bloated still (not to mention a few annoying bugs) to use the Android version.

i agree... firefox on android is a bloated bug filled turd

i've been using miren primarily because of the whole caching to sd thing but since rooting and using link2sd (or now a rom that uses darktremor apps2sd) space isn't as big an issue as it once was so i'll probably just go back to stock

I used Mint a lot when I was in the states. Unfortunately, they don't yet support many European banks. StumbleUpon is great for those moments when you're just too drunk (I use it at the bar when there's no decent conversation) or lazy to do anything else. If you're active, something like RunKeeper can be quite fun. I also tend to use mine as a flashlight (there are several freeware apps for this) quite often.

Everything else that I do comes stock with my iPhone or one or more persons have already mentioned it.

I liked Mint for a while until it decided it was just going to utterly fail and never be able to grab my banking information. They never did fix it either.