There are a very few essential apps around that absolutely everyone should own, there are hundreds of superb Apps which are can make your life easier or more productive, and possibly thousands of apps perfect for wasting half an hour between meetings/lessons/chores… and then there are those apps which make you think “er…what?” This feature is devoted to those apps!

Note: Before we get angry app developers baying for blood, we are not looking at apps which don’t work or have bad design. We aren’t picking on development skills and we certainly aren’t saying we could make a better app (we couldn’t…)  Most, if not all, of the apps listed here work perfectly, and in a few cases are a delight to behold. We just aren’t sure how useful they are…

And so, in no particular order: The 10 Most Useless Apps:

Lighter Free

No. of Installs (according to Android Market) = Between 1 and 5 million!

The Flashlight app which appeared with the Froyo update of Android is, although not essential, pretty useful. Drop your car keys late at night in a pitch black pub carpark and it is a godsend. We are not quite so sure, however, just how useful it is to have a virtual lighter on your phone.

It isn’t particularly bright, you can’t light a cigar with it and, unless you are a non-smoker at a Wings concert or an arsonist in rehab, we can’t imagine it would ever be used more than once. “Look at my cool new app, it is a lighter that doesn’t really light things!” “Er..cool”.

Simple Fire Size Up

No. of Intalls = 1000 – 5000

Yep, we were a bit baffled too… According to the developer website this app is a “Easy to use scene size up checklists for a variety of incident types. Customize the size up considerations to your department’s protocol or your personal preference with the handy edit feature.”

Basically, that means that if you are a fireman, you can use this app to tell you what you need to do at the scene of a fire or accident. Are there really enough badly trained firemen and women out there, who need to be told what to do at the scene of a fire, to warrant a android app? Lets hops not…

Shake It

No. of Installs = 1000 – 5000

Answer or hang up a call by shaking the phone… hmmmm. We are really struggling to think of one situation where the ability to answer your phone by shaking it would be useful. Is sliding your finger down the screen (or across the screen, depending on the handset) really that difficult? Oh, this app also silences the ringer when you turn the phone upside down. An option which is already built into Android…

Police Light Pro

No. of Installs = 500 – 1000

Police Light Pro is an app which, wait for it, simulates the lights of a police car. The app developer suggests activating this app, putting it in the back of the car you are in and make the person driving think they are being followed by the police. That’s a bad idea right? Also, isn’t it illegal to impersonate the police? This app might be fun, for a very short time and only if the driver doesn’t panic and take you on a high speed pursuit through your town, but it certainly isn’t useful.

Jacket on? Jacket off?

No. of Installs = 1 – 5

“Do you wonder if you need to wear your jacket outside? This app gives you advice…” If, however, you are one of the 99.9999999999% of normal people who can look out of the window or open the front door, and who don’t let apps tell you what to wear, this is probably not that app for you. Going by the number of installs, we don’t think we are the only ones who think this app is pointless.

Car Locator

No. of Installs = 10,000 – 50,000

“Never again lose your car or anything else with Car Locator!” It’s not that hard to remember where you parked your car is it? You know, your car! Probably the second most expensive thing you own after your house! That big, shiny metal thing you drive around in? Before this app came along, was the world filled with mindless fools wandering around car-parks, scratching their heads and looking confused? No, probably not. And if you can lose a car so often that you need an app to help find it, what are the chances of you not losing your comparatively tiny phone?

Train Sleeper UK

No. of Intalls = Unknown (we’re guessing not many…)

This actually sounds like a good idea when you first think about it. Never risk missing your stop when travelling home from work after a busy and tiring day. But then you have to stop and think that to turn this app on, you have to be either planning to fall asleep on a train or you suspect you might fall asleep. In either case, would it not easier to just set your alarm to go off in ten minutes? Personally, I don’t want to be asleep in a public place AT ALL, let alone for the whole of the journey. Not very useful (unless you suffer from Narcolepsy).

Baby Timer

No. of Installs = 100 – 500

“Easy-to-use app to keep track of an infant’s diapers, feedings, naps, and more! See at a glance the time since last wet and poopy diaper, time since last feeding, and how long baby has been awake or asleep” Ok, someone tell me why you would need to know when your baby last had a wet and poopy diaper?

It’s not as if you are going to say “sorry kid, you only did a s**t 11 minutes ago, you are going to have to sit in that one for a while” is it? In my experience, babies are pretty good at telling you when they want something, the harder bit is working out WHAT they want. “Hmmm, he can’t need his diaper changed dear, my app says he only had it changed 30 minutes ago. No no, don’t bother checking, it says so right here on my phone”.

Mini Nurse

No. of Installs = 1000 – 5000

Mini Nurse should, perhaps, be in a list of the scariest apps rather than useless ones. Mini Nurse apparently contains lots of information on “medication dosages, IV rates, nursing skills, and much more!” The fact that there are student nurses being let loose on patients with only a mobile phone app to tell them how much morphine to pump into them is, quite frankly, terrifying. Perhaps this is purely a study guide for student nurses, in which case I have to say “get off your damn phone and have a look at your text books instead!”

Dream Buster

No. of Installs = 500 – 1000

According to the description on Android Market “DreamBuster is an application that lets you record your dreams!” Er…actually, no it isn’t! All it seems to do is record what you say in your sleep using a noise activated audio recorder (if the comments on Android Market are anything to go by, it doesn’t even do that…) Making a recording of the random things you might or might not shout as you dream, is not the same as recording your dreams. Knowing that you shouted “sex” and “Aardvark” during the night could mean that you were dreaming about having sex with an aardvark, watching aardvarks having sex, having sex with an aardvark watching or maybe something much less disturbing than any of those options. Not only useless, but pointless too…