Thinking of this, I’ve decided to comprise my personal selection of To Do applications that have either have a good reputation, rated highly on the Play Store or applications that I’ve found that I think could be potential contenders against the big-boys. These applications are all downloadable from the Google Play Store and in addition, all these applications are absolutely FREE.
I’ve chosen four applications that I feel stand out from the crowd. These four applications are: Agile, Any.Do, ToDoist and the great Wunderlist. The only tasks application you may not recognise from this list is Agile which is a new application that released in the last couple of weeks on the Play Store and has raised gains for its simple but eye-pleasing aesthetics and design style, but more on that one later.
How I shall be comparing these applications is by not comparing them at all really. To compare ToDo applications these days isn’t easy as they all have their very own unique selling point. What I shall be doing however is describing what the application can do, how the app could improve and what each application’s unique selling point is. I presume that a lot of you reading will jump straight to the USP as this is what will define which application is best for you. We’ll go in alphabetical order and so therefore shall begin with Agile.
Agile
This app is the one that I can imagine the most of you won’t recognise. It was released into the Google Play Store only a few weeks ago and therefore hasn’t gained enough traction yet to become as popular as the other contenders on this list. However saying that, it has accumulated 10,000+ downloads on Google Play with an overall 4.2 star review.
Agile comes with a very simplistic user interface that does suggest that it has just been released and was purely built to be fast and effective before it was built to have plenty of features. The two main pages to Agile are the Projects page that allows you to group your tasks into different Projects such as ‘Life’, ’School’ ‘Blog’ etc. Once you’ve selected a Project you are then brought to a page that shows “To-Do”, “Doing”, and “Done”. The idea of these is that you swipe your task in the correction direction depending on which stage your task is at. This I found to be an interesting concept and one that I don’t believe any other task management applications have yet implemented. It eliminates the process of currently doing the task, but it taking more than an instant so you don’t want to check it off completely. For example, I have chosen to put writing this article down in the “Doing” section currently and when I’m satisfied with the result, I shall swipe it into “Done”. Another example may be if you were to set to watch a film or do a University assignment or revise or to go do some shopping for someone’s birthday. These are prime examples of when this “Doing” section would come in handy. The application actually comes with no settings, purely a “Delete all tasks in list” option when the menu button is hit.
When creating tasks, you have the option to write a title, a description and set a reminder with date and time for when you want the task to produce a notification at the right time. As I mentioned earlier, this application is clearly new and right now lacks on any deep integrated features such as the ability to add an attachment to each task or even any setting such as themes, account sync or anything of the such.
Positives
Clean and simple UI
Fast and responsive
Interesting USP
Negatives
Lacks synchronisation across multiple devices
Incredibly light on features and settings
Unique Selling Point
The interesting concept of allowing a task’s progress to be set to “Doing” is what I believe will bring people to this application. As aforementioned in the mini review, this allows users the option to not have to set a task as “Done” and then potentially not complete it or click it accidentally and it never be available again.
You can probably guess the summary for Agile: it’s a simple and clean application with a unique take on the stages of tasks and with some more features and some clever progression on it’s USP, it could really stand out against the market.
Any.Do
Any.Do is arguably the most reputable application on this list with a great set of features and is many people’s first choice when it comes to a ToDo application that forces you to be productive. The application comes with an incredible record on the Google Play Store with 5,000,000+ downloads and an overall rating of 4.3 stars.
Any.Do comes with a user interface that a lot of people consider “beautiful” and don’t get me wrong, it’s not an ugly application, but I would never consider it a “beautiful” application. I wouldn’t even consider it the best looking out of the four applications that I’ve chosen to compare in this article. The layout of Any.Do is rather simple in that you have your text box at the top to enter your tasks, you can choose to do this by voice if you wish. Below that is your tasks categorised into “Today”, “Tomorrow”, “Upcoming”, and “Someday”. This for me is too many options, I don’t really need to know when everything is happening, I just want to know if it’s done, needs doing or in progress. However, some people may prefer this method who have a lot of tasks who also need to know which day each task is set for. To remove tasks, you simply swipe to the right and it crosses out the task.When you tap on a task it gives you a few options: the ability to highlight it’s importance; the ability to do a search; the ability to set a reminder, the ability to attach a description and the ability to tag other people via their email addresses.
The settings button bring downs options to decide which view you want: date or folder. It also gives you the option to do something that Any.do called an Any Do Moment, this option basically gives you a run down of your tasks allowing you to put them in the right state. There’s also an option to sync which is something that I think a lot of people will like about Any.Do; you can get a Chrome extension and other apps on other platforms which will synchronise with your Android version. Within the actual settings you have plenty of options to customise your experience within Any.Do which already sets it wide apart from Agile. You can choose which folders there are which is the same ideas as ‘Projects’ within Agile; you can choose to do the ‘Any.Do Moment’ action again; pick a theme from dark or light; choose whether to show or hide the status bar when viewing the app; there’s an option to have Any.Do pop a reminder when you have a Missed Call which is an incredibly cool feature; ‘Shake’ allows you to shake your phone to get rid of any completed tasks and ‘First day’ allows you to pick which day you want to be the first day of the week. The other settings are simple ones such as: language, done tasks, sound, backups, kliip rewards and Google Glass options.
Positives
Plenty of features
Three unique features that no other apps include
Any.Do Moments is a useful feature for those who need reminding to be productive
Negatives
Not the best looking application
Doesn’t feel native to Android
Hasn’t been updated properly in a while due to developers working on other apps
Unique Selling Points
Any.Do comes with what I believe to be three very key selling's points. These three points are: Any.Do moments, Missed Call notifications and Kliip Rewards. Kliip Rewards are simply rewards such as a free month of Netflix/Amazon Prime and other services when you complete a sufficient amount of tasks in a day. Missed Call Notifications pop up when you open your phone after a missed call, there are the options to Dismiss it (if you purposefully meant to ignore the person); Call Later option which will add a reminder to call the person back at a time you choose; Send Text which is a good option if you can’t call them back now but want to know what they wanted; then the final option to Call Now which obviously just redials them. The final USP is Any.Do Moment which is bar far the neatest feature that Any.Do offers and is an option that I’m shocked hasn’t been replicated in any way by any other ToDo application. This feature basically allows you to set a time of day to remind you to do all of your tasks. It will pop up with the reminder which will then take you through your tasks allowing you to choose which you want to do, which you want to delay, which you don’t know when you will do them and which you have already done or don’t want/need to do anymore.
What we have here is an application that is opposite from Agile in almost every way possible. It offers lots of features for customisation, it offers three interesting USPs and comes with arguably an ugly design compared to Agile’s simple and clean UI.
ToDoist
Any.Do may be the biggest seller on the Google Play Store, but ToDoist is a fast grower due to it’s Android design ethic and ability to synchronise across multiple device. The application has 500,000+ downloads on the Play Store so a 50x what Agile has to offer, but only 10% of the downloads that Any.Do has accumulated. The application comes with a an average star rating of 4.3 stars which is the exact same as Any.Do and only a .1 higher than Agile averages. This suggests that all three applications are of high quality in the ToDo application market.
I’m a big fan of ToDoist’s UI as it sticks closely to the latest Android Holo guidelines with a slide out menu bar and modern fonts. To guide you through the layout; to the left we have the menu slide-out navigation. Within this we have: Inbox which allows you to view all of your tasks; Today which shows you tasks purely set for today; Next 7 Days which is obvious; Projects which works the same as Agile’s do with the ability to categorise your tasks into categories; Labels which shows you the labels you’ve used and then once chosen, which tasks relate to these articles and finally Filters which has a set amount of filters to define your tasks if you have many.
Within the top bar you have a simple button to add a task and your menu button which allows you to refresh, search, see your notifications and go to the settings. There are plenty of options which mainly include notification settings, account settings and to ability to Upgrade to Premium which is something I’ll touch on later.
When creating a task you are given the option to title it, choose where the task should be held (which project or just in your Inbox), the due date, labels, priority of the task and any sub-tasks within the task to complete. As you can see, you’re given plenty of options with ToDoist which is why a lot of people are starting to like it.
However, let me reveal why this is not currently my tasks application. ToDoist requires a Premium account to use some quite necessary features such as: Notifications, synchronisation across multiple devices, attach files to tasks or even add notes to a task. All these things I’ve mentioned are available in Any.Do which is a 100% free and subscription free alternative to ToDoist. Agile which is a brand new application offers push notifications to your device for when a task needs completing. The subscription is 18.99/year which isn’t a large amount to ask for, but in my opinion is a fee that needs to be eradicated if the application is ever to blow up in success. However, I do believe that ToDoist is aimed more at business and people who are managing tasks within groups.
Positives
Arguably the best looking app in our list/most Android-like
Offers plenty of feature such as Projects, filters and labels
If subscription IS paid for there are apps for almost every platform, native and otherwise
Allows you to write a reminder in phonetical form such as “tomorrow at 12”
Negatives
Unnecessary yearly fee for features that other applications allow for free
Unique Selling Point
I think ToDoist's USP is it's look and feel. It offers quite a lot in terms of features but doesn't really offer anything outside the box in terms of features. But it does offer up the cleanest and fastest experience from any of the applications on the list.
In summary, I think that ToDoist would be my jump-to application if the yearly subscription fee was gotten rid of as it’s unnecessary and just a money-making scheme because they know they’ve created a brilliant and reliable service and applications that people may genuinely want to pay £20 a year to get the full features of. If I were not a student and had real reasons for the additional features that a premium account uses then this would potentially be my first choice application.
Wunderlist
Finally on our rundown of the top four ToDo applications on the Google Play Store in my opinion is Wunderlist. The reason I’ve brought Wunderlist into the equation is due to it’s continuing popularity within business users and mobile users and it’s ability to synchronise across nearly every device and platform. In terms of popularity, it’s the second most downloaded application on our list with 1,000,000+ downloads in the Play Store. However, this application has averaged the highest score for users with a rating of 4.4. Let’s try and show you the reasons why.
Let’s begin how we have with the past four applications with a review of the UI of the application to allow you a view on how it works. In my personal opinion, Wunderlist is laid out well but is is nowhere near the prettiest application on this list using 3d graphics and attempting replications of the likes of paper and allowing backgrounds behind your notes. In a world where everyone is navigation towards very minimlastic and simplistic white background with text and think navigation buttons, Wunderlist’s take just doesn’t do it for me. Wunderlist uses a swipe-out navigational bar which shows the shortcuts to all the different views for your notes. You have Inbox, Today, Week and then any additional groups you can create to narrow down where your tasks belong.
On the main page you have the option to add an item along the top by typing in the task. Once the task is created, you can tap on it to do the following: Set a due date, set a reminder, add a subtask, add notes, attach a file or even add a comment. The last option is the most interesting here as it suggests highly a group co-operation element to the application that would appeal to businesses whom seek to work on tasks together.
Within Wunderlist’s settings you have the option to sign in with an account which will allow you to synchronise your taks across multiple platforms. You can aldo change some aesthetic options such as changing the background, choosing where new items are added to, changing length of snooze and the sound a notification makes. Wunderlist also gives you the option to Import tasks from Astrid or Any.Do. The support for Astrid is where Wunderlist begins to show it’s age when it comes to the fact it hasn’t been properly updated since 29th November 2013 and even then that was an incremental update of bug fixes and such.
Positives
Plenty of features to satisfy your needs
Has an application on nearly every platform
Account support for synchronisation across multiple OS’
Negatives
Ugly UI
Not been updated properly in a while and doesn’t look like it will receive one anytime soon
Unique Selling Point
Wunderlist's unique selling point for me is the ability to comment on a task. This allows for people to either converse about the task or to make a comment or suggestion that they feel might help or quicken the task. This for me is what I feel sets Wunderlist apart from the other ToDo applications on this list.
In summary, I believe that Wunderlist is the tasks application of choice for those who don’t care about aesthetics and are content with everything that the app currently supports. It also is a great application for those that like to be able to add/remove tasks whatever platform or OS they’re working on. However, for those who care about aesthetics and want next-gen features like a reminder to sort out your tasks or progressional stages for your task should deter from this application and look elsewhere.
Now, you’re probably wondering if there’s a perfect note-taking application and unfortunately I’m yet to find one that I’m completely content with. Agile comes with the perfect look and great features, but lacks any support on other platforms or any customisation. Any.Do DOES come with support for synchronisation across multiple platforms and plenty of features but lacks what I would call a modern UI. ToDoist comes with a beautiful UI that would look amazing in any Android application, it also supports synchronisation across multiple devices, but only when you pay a silly amount of money a year to do so. Wunderlist has free synchronisation and lots of features but similar to Any.Do, it lacks a UI that I would deem modern and acceptable on Android.
Want to know which of these applications I use? Currently it is Agile. Want to know why? Because I find myself often doing tasks that are simpler than a one minute job and so the ability to choose “Doing” is brilliant as it doesn’t remove it from my notification shade, but within myself I feel like I am still being productive and I won’t forget to complete the task. However, Any.Do was my application of choice for a long time, the features, synchronisation and platform support were what kept me with it. I also highly appreciated the Any.Do moment as it reminded me to set myself tasks and reminded me what I needed to complete that day.
POST EDIT:
Since writing this article, the developer of Agile has got back to me and has told me that after his next update which is the support of a widget, he shall be working on a desktop-able client that will synchronise with the application.
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