Top 5 android phones under Rs20000

http://in.news.yahoo.com/top-5-android-phones-under-rs-20-000.html

best-android-mobiles-under-below-rs-15000-august-2011-india

http://mobiletalks.in/top-5/best-android-mobiles-under-below-rs-15000-august-2011-india/

Five Best Smart phones to buy in 2011

http://in.lifestyle.yahoo.com/5-smartphones-buy-right-minute-084624364.html

Using Android phone cam as your computer webcam

In this post i am going to show the way we can use android phone's camera as your desktop or laptop's webcam if your system doesn't have one.
For this we need to install USB WebCam software from placaware on android phone. This is available on android market.
Corresponding windows PC host application software need to be installed on your windows box. This software is available for free download here.
Apart from above 2 softwares you need to install ADB driver from google for making your phone recognized by windows. By default it shows it as mass storage device, if u want your pc to recognize it as android device we need adb drivers. For this you need to install android SDK. Step by step procedure for the same can be found in my previous post on android development setup.
Once you have the SDK installed on your system , follow the instructions given in Adding SDK Components to launch the Android SDK and AVD Manager. From the Available Packages panel, select "Usb Driver Package" and download it to your computer. The driver files are downloaded into the <sdk>\google-usb_driver\ directory.
After instaling this driver you will see Android Phone Device listed under your Device Manager(i.e.  System Properties->Device Manager->Android Phone).

Now we are ready to use our phone as webcam of the desktop or laptop. For this we need to connect phone via USB cable. Run USB WebCam program on your phone as well as computer. Lauch skype or yahoo messenger and your phone will be detected as webcam.

I tried it and it is awesome, can use my HTC wildfire's 5 megapixel cam on my laptop with most of the video chat applications.

Android 2.2 froyo Sneak peek

Awesome video about android future and its upcoming 2.2 froyo version features from VP of engineering, Google.
It includes nice demonstrations of rich applications and monetization plan for apps. I liked their new features like ability to install apps on SD card and making phone as wifi hotspot.  With earlier versions tethering your phone is a pain, thanks that Google fixed it now.Waiting for HTC to push this update in INDIA.

Saving Android Battery

I recently observed my android phone battery getting drained even in half a day. After searching on net i found switching on 3G,GPS,frequent Sync are the main culprits in draining of battery. Once i started using them judiciously I now see my battery lasting 2 days without recharging.
Here is one of the best articles I found about saving your battery life on android phones.
http://www.wikihow.com/Save-Battery-Power-on-an-Android

My favourite android apps.

Its been 2 to 3 months since i started with my new android phone. Here are the list of top 10 apps in my phone.

1. Advanced Task Killer  Advanced Task Killer allows you to stop running background processes or apps in memory. Android supports lot of apps to run concurrently but this causes performance degradation if we keep more apps running. Default way of closing/killing apps in android is through android settings, which takes too much time to load apps list. With ATK you can select deselect multiple apps at once and kill them to free some memory on your phone.  This app can be downloaded from market for free.
2. Astro File Manager Astro helps you browse files on your android SD card. Apart from file browsing it has lot of cool tools which helps you backup applications,compressing files,attachment preperation and even tools for managing your applications. It can be freely downloaded from android market.
3. Talking Tomcat This I downloaded from appbrain. One of the app which people of every age likes. This cat is like your real pet which responds to your actions and repeats your words in funny way. There is a facility to record and upload the video to youtube. Definitely one of my favourite.
4. Bump  This app makes sharing photos, contacts, and apps with people as simple as bumping your phones together. It works with android as well as iPhone. I feel this is the most cool way to share apps with your friend. This can be downloaded free from market.
5. Gesture Search This is the most fancy way to search your phone for contacts,files etc. Gesture Search lets you quickly find a contact, an installed application, a bookmark or a music track on your Android phone by drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen. I generally search my contacts using this app by just writing on my phone's screen. Very useful app from googlelabs. Can be freely downloaded from market.
6. Google Goggles Google Goggles lets you search Google using pictures from your camera phones. They take an image as input, and using several image recognition backends (object recognition, place matching, OCR, etc), they return relevant search results. Another innovative app from google labs available for free.
7.  Barcode Scanner Scan barcodes on products then look up prices and reviews. You can also scan Data Matrix and QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, etc. I use it to download apps from my search pages on laptop. Just scan the QR code on ur computer screen using ur phone and download the app. 
8. My Tracks My Tracks is an application for your Android^TM phone that enables you to record GPS tracks and view live statistics – such as time, speed, distance, and elevation – while hiking, biking, running or participating in other outdoor activities. Once recorded, you can share your tracks, upload them to Google Spreadsheets and visualize them on Google My Maps. 
9. Amazon Kindle If you are a avid reader of books. This app is for you. lets you download books and read from your smart phone. Very convenient to use. 
10. Google Apps Download all google apps like gmail, google finance,calander,youtube etc.. which will enable to sync directly to your online google accounts.