Best Bitcoin Android apps and widgets

[01BTC10]

Trading:
MtGox

Mt.Gox Mobile hasn't updated for over year now and constantly crashes on my Nexus4. I don't think this app qualifies for the "best" Android app...

My bad. I installed the app but did not really try it. Removed.

[daybyter]

Is anyone actually using those apps? I started a project for a simple phonegap app and looked for a collab, but it seems noone is interested in such kinda apps... 

[01BTC10]

I use Bitcoinium widget everyday to monitor MtGox and Virtex exchange rate.

[Spekulatius]

According to the comments, Bitcoin Wallet Balance is pretty useless. Thoughts?

That's only an address watcher. Great if you don't want to import the private key on your phone I guess...

The comments say that the app doesnt show incoming transactions, only outgoing ones, which makes it pretty lacky in my eyes. Havent tried it yet, though.

That's what I use it for, but now I'm using the blockchain app which you can import a watch only address.

Nice feature. Unfortunately the playstore tells me that my htc Wildfire is not supported. I took a glimpse at it during my last Bitcoin tx in Argentina though. It looked a bid dull and didnt show how many confimations any given tx had (Bitcoin Spinner doesnt either though).

BitcoinSpinner does not show the number of confirmations as a number, but it displays transactions with less than 6 confirmations in grey, and unconfirmed transactions as "(unconfirmed)". Also, the front page shows "Coins on the way to you: XXX BTC" and "Coins you are sending: XXX BTC" if you have unconfirmed coins to/from your wallet.
My goal with BitcoinSpinner is not to make a tool for the tech savvy, but for average end users, so I try to distill the information into something more user friendly.

I understand that. But recently while taking my phone to a face to face exchange of BTC for fiat, I found it quite bugging, that you couldnt tell how many confirmations have actually been done to your transaction. That way usability is largely reduced for daily exchanges and trades if both parties dont have time to wait for 6 confirms (like only a lunch break to spend), but dont want to jeopardize their money with 0-confirms either. A simple display of the number of confirms would alleviate such concerns a lot (maybe greyed out out or in advanced mode only,..)

To make it fool proof, you could also display the number of confirms with traffic lights (text displayed in brackets):

0 Confirm: Questionmark (unconfirmed, please wait)
1-2 Confs: Red light (1 confirmation save to spend if small amount of money) or (2 confirmations save to spend if small amount of money)
3-4 Confs: Yellow light (3 confirmations save to spend if medium amount of money) or (4 confirmations save to spend if medium amount of money)
5-6+ Confs: Green light (5 or more confirmations, Save to spend!)

[giszmo]

According to the comments, Bitcoin Wallet Balance is pretty useless. Thoughts?

That's only an address watcher. Great if you don't want to import the private key on your phone I guess...

The comments say that the app doesnt show incoming transactions, only outgoing ones, which makes it pretty lacky in my eyes. Havent tried it yet, though.

That's what I use it for, but now I'm using the blockchain app which you can import a watch only address.

Nice feature. Unfortunately the playstore tells me that my htc Wildfire is not supported. I took a glimpse at it during my last Bitcoin tx in Argentina though. It looked a bid dull and didnt show how many confimations any given tx had (Bitcoin Spinner doesnt either though).

BitcoinSpinner does not show the number of confirmations as a number, but it displays transactions with less than 6 confirmations in grey, and unconfirmed transactions as "(unconfirmed)". Also, the front page shows "Coins on the way to you: XXX BTC" and "Coins you are sending: XXX BTC" if you have unconfirmed coins to/from your wallet.
My goal with BitcoinSpinner is not to make a tool for the tech savvy, but for average end users, so I try to distill the information into something more user friendly.

I understand that. But recently while taking my phone to a face to face exchange of BTC for fiat, I found it quite bugging, that you couldnt tell how many confirmations have actually been done to your transaction. That way usability is largely reduced for daily exchanges and trades if both parties dont have time to wait for 6 confirms (like only a lunch break to spend), but dont want to jeopardize their money with 0-confirms either. A simple display of the number of confirms would alleviate such concerns a lot (maybe greyed out out or in advanced mode only,..)

To make it fool proof, you could also display the number of confirms with traffic lights (text displayed in brackets):

0 Confirm: Questionmark (unconfirmed, please wait)
1-2 Confs: Red light (1 confirmation save to spend if small amount of money) or (2 confirmations save to spend if small amount of money)
3-4 Confs: Yellow light (3 confirmations save to spend if medium amount of money) or (4 confirmations save to spend if medium amount of money)
5-6+ Confs: Green light (5 or more confirmations, Save to spend!)

In the settings I would just want a a checkbox "show confirmation count" that may be off by default, but in the end it's open source, so I'm sure a beautiful patch will get pulled happily

[Jan]

According to the comments, Bitcoin Wallet Balance is pretty useless. Thoughts?

That's only an address watcher. Great if you don't want to import the private key on your phone I guess...

The comments say that the app doesnt show incoming transactions, only outgoing ones, which makes it pretty lacky in my eyes. Havent tried it yet, though.

That's what I use it for, but now I'm using the blockchain app which you can import a watch only address.

Nice feature. Unfortunately the playstore tells me that my htc Wildfire is not supported. I took a glimpse at it during my last Bitcoin tx in Argentina though. It looked a bid dull and didnt show how many confimations any given tx had (Bitcoin Spinner doesnt either though).

BitcoinSpinner does not show the number of confirmations as a number, but it displays transactions with less than 6 confirmations in grey, and unconfirmed transactions as "(unconfirmed)". Also, the front page shows "Coins on the way to you: XXX BTC" and "Coins you are sending: XXX BTC" if you have unconfirmed coins to/from your wallet.
My goal with BitcoinSpinner is not to make a tool for the tech savvy, but for average end users, so I try to distill the information into something more user friendly.

I understand that. But recently while taking my phone to a face to face exchange of BTC for fiat, I found it quite bugging, that you couldnt tell how many confirmations have actually been done to your transaction. That way usability is largely reduced for daily exchanges and trades if both parties dont have time to wait for 6 confirms (like only a lunch break to spend), but dont want to jeopardize their money with 0-confirms either. A simple display of the number of confirms would alleviate such concerns a lot (maybe greyed out out or in advanced mode only,..)

To make it fool proof, you could also display the number of confirms with traffic lights (text displayed in brackets):

0 Confirm: Questionmark (unconfirmed, please wait)
1-2 Confs: Red light (1 confirmation save to spend if small amount of money) or (2 confirmations save to spend if small amount of money)
3-4 Confs: Yellow light (3 confirmations save to spend if medium amount of money) or (4 confirmations save to spend if medium amount of money)
5-6+ Confs: Green light (5 or more confirmations, Save to spend!)

In the settings I would just want a a checkbox "show confirmation count" that may be off by default, but in the end it's open source, so I'm sure a beautiful patch will get pulled happily

Be my guest 

[giszmo]

In the settings I would just want a a checkbox "show confirmation count" that may be off by default, but in the end it's open source, so I'm sure a beautiful patch will get pulled happily

Be my guest 

I guess I mentioned it before … I'm very surprised to see SVN. How do you do a pull request with SVN? Would you want a patch file and a revision number? Makes things more complicated, don't you think so?

[Jan]

In the settings I would just want a a checkbox "show confirmation count" that may be off by default, but in the end it's open source, so I'm sure a beautiful patch will get pulled happily

Be my guest 

I guess I mentioned it before … I'm very surprised to see SVN. How do you do a pull request with SVN? Would you want a patch file and a revision number? Makes things more complicated, don't you think so?

It's not that complicated:
Get a copy of the code.
Make your change.
Send me a patch.

[giszmo]

In the settings I would just want a a checkbox "show confirmation count" that may be off by default, but in the end it's open source, so I'm sure a beautiful patch will get pulled happily

Be my guest  

I guess I mentioned it before … I'm very surprised to see SVN. How do you do a pull request with SVN? Would you want a patch file and a revision number? Makes things more complicated, don't you think so?

It's not that complicated:
Get a copy of the code.
Make your change.
Send me a patch.

pätsch. As we like to say in Germany.

I didn't understand what you did with the preferences and would appreciate if you could explain it. Else I was happy it ran immediately after importing into my eclipse

(preferences)

[giszmo]

If there are any bounties for BitcoinSpinner improvements (new preferences icons , more intuitive UI (did you know there is an actually working address book? It's very well hidden and once you know how it works, it works, although very very slow), … I would look into it again

[Jan]

If there are any bounties for BitcoinSpinner improvements (new preferences icons , more intuitive UI (did you know there is an actually working address book? It's very well hidden and once you know how it works, it works, although very very slow), … I would look into it again

Hey Gizmo,

Thanks for the patch. I haven't looked into it in detail, but the screen shots look good. I'll dedicate some cycles to it tomorrow.

Regarding address book:
There is a huge Address Book button on the "Send" page, but it is disabled until you have addresses in it. I was under the impression that clicking the option button on the main page (and reveal the address book) was one of the first things a user would do on Android. Maybe I am wrong.
You mention that the address book is slow. What do you mean exactly? I have tested it on a pretty old Android 2.1 device, and to me it seems ultra fast.

[giszmo]

Thanks for the patch. I haven't looked into it in detail, but the screen shots look good. I'll dedicate some cycles to it tomorrow.

Ok, cool. Translations missing of course but else I guess I will use my version from now on.

Regarding address book:
There is a huge Address Book button on the "Send" page, but it is disabled until you have addresses in it. I was under the impression that clicking the option button on the main page (and reveal the address book) was one of the first things a user would do on Android. Maybe I am wrong.

Well, usage statistics (with opt in) could be one way to go. I would bet that not even half of those with more than 10 transactions have used this feature. The options button is kind of dying out. On later Androids, people are not used to press the options button that much. Maybe some options button on the main screen would get them to use it.

You mention that the address book is slow. What do you mean exactly? I have tested it on a pretty old Android 2.1 device, and to me it seems ultra fast.

When I start Spinner -> options -> address book -> add address -> 10s the list of recent receivers is empty. Later this list populates almost instantly.

[Jan]

When I start Spinner -> options -> address book -> add address -> 10s the list of recent receivers is empty. Later this list populates almost instantly.

I see.
This is however only when you want to add someone to the address book by looking at your recent transactions, which is an uncommon operation. Opening the address book and sending coins should be much more frequent and also very fast.
The reason why adding someone from your recent transactions is slow initially is because BS has to fetch the list of recent transactions from the server side. The second time you do a lookup the server has the result handy in a cache.

[giszmo]

This is however only when you want to add someone to the address book by looking at your recent transactions, which is an uncommon operation. Opening the address book and sending coins should be much more frequent and also very fast.

Still the first experience for the user is that he can't do anything with the address book. I could change it such that the list of (unlabeled) recent transactions gets displayed under the known addresses with loading visualized with a spinner. At least the spinner should be integrated in the "recent transactions" activity.

The reason why adding someone from your recent transactions is slow initially is because BS has to fetch the list of recent transactions from the server side. The second time you do a lookup the server has the result handy in a cache.

That's what I thought. No reason to not cache these permanently so they can be loaded from the device (and updated from the server if this is necessary at all).

[Portnoy]

If it hasn't been mentioned already aCurrency supports BTC now.
For those interested in tracking currency pairs and historical charts.

Phone version:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a0soft.gphone.aCurrency

Tablet version:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a0soft.gphone.aCurrencyPad

[01BTC10]

Updated.

[deadserious]

I will add SealWithClubs once they are done.

App is in public beta at https://sealswithclubs.eu/android-app

[giszmo]

When I start Spinner -> options -> address book -> add address -> 10s the list of recent receivers is empty. Later this list populates almost instantly.

I see.
This is however only when you want to add someone to the address book by looking at your recent transactions, which is an uncommon operation. Opening the address book and sending coins should be much more frequent and also very fast.
The reason why adding someone from your recent transactions is slow initially is because BS has to fetch the list of recent transactions from the server side. The second time you do a lookup the server has the result handy in a cache.

How are the cycles doing?

Hmm, … I want others working on spinner to at least have a chance to find this so as you can't do pull requests in SVN (or can you?), I will put the patch into an issue.

[Primosz]

App to monitor miners (Bitcoin.cz and PolMine.pl - BtcGuild in next update (also with new look, and support of Android <3.0))

Mine Watcher
Screenshots:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/2721/screenshot2013051615512.jpg  http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/7665/screenshot2013051621432.jpg http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/3262/screenshot2013051615521.jpg

Google Play - Downloadhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tajchert.polminewatcher

It allows to:

• See current balance, speed of all and each miner.
• Notify if speed drops below some threshold (custom interval of checking in background).
• Present data in form of nice charts.

[WiW]

I had offered a bounty for a couple of features to be added to BitcoinSpinner. Namely, the ability to manually set transaction fees (even under "advanced options"). But most importantly, the ability to nominate in mBTC and uBTC.

BitcoinSpinner is by far the best bitcoin android app right now. It's the first thing I install on people's phones when talking about bitcoin. And Bitcoin Paranoid is also an excellent ticker right in your notifications. Also, I have a shortcut to preev.com, a very simple and useful exchange rate calculator.