Monday, September 12, 2011

Standard Calculator, and some great replacements

The Samsung Galaxy S2 obviously (like all phones) comes with a calculator app. I had a quick look at it, and it is very basic (I think the only advanced feature it contains is the ability to use parentheses, or round brackets if you will).


The only option it includes is to change the text size, and to clear the history. As you go along, it keeps everything in the display part about the keypad (you can swipe down the keypad section to see everything a bit more clearly).

EDIT: It turns out there's a bit more to the standard calculator app that what I first noticed. If you turn the phone horizontally, you get access to a full scientific calculator. *sheepish grin* - Thanks Martin for pointing that out!


Anyway, a short while ago I need a scientific calculator (EDIT: see above if you want to use the normal calculator app for that...), because I had to work with Sin Cos and Tan (uggh...). I did a quick search on the App Market and got myself RealCalc, which even looks like the same Sharp calculators we had at school:


Ahh that's a lot better :) Get it here

It even includes some nice features like a unit converter, and constant values:




Pretty neat!

I showed off my new snazzy scientific calculator app to my father-in-law, who is a mechanical engineer, and he asked me if there's an app like his old HP-48, which is a graphic calculator using the Reverse Polish Notation (big words!) - of course I quickly had a look, and downloaded Droid48, which is basically an exact copy of the HP one:


It works way different than a normal, human calculator :) - but if you're an engineer and will be needing one of these, luckily there is one available! Get it here

There you have it, some info on the basic calculator app, and 2 great replacements if you need just a little bit more!

Till next time!