What do you mean, not available?

The first month of my Android life was rather blissful. I mastered purchasing and downloading free apps from the Android Market (now Play Store)in less than a week (ok, a day but I don’t want to seem like a show off, it wasn’t so much my computer skills as my shopping skills, that made this so effortless).

My first search was simply for “Catholic,”and I was so excited with choices, until I read Sarah Reinhard’s Tech Talk post, 13 Essential Catholic Apps, and had my perfectly app-happy innocence shattered. As I read Sarah’s reviews, phone in hand, eager to add these essentials, it suddenly became clear that not all smartphone OS (operating systems) were created equal.

The biggest disappointment, for me, was that the Total Consecration app was not available for Android. Curious, I had to see if there was any buzz of that changing any time soon. For anyone else wondering, here is the latest from developer Matthew Sich regarding setting this up for Android:

February 25, 2012 at 9:24 pm

Don’t have the time to do it right now… and not for a while probably because I have jobs lined up up to this summer and then I may have a big internship this summer. I will do it eventually though.

Somewhat encouraging and nice to have this to look forward to, but I am not the most patient end-user. Happily, I was able to find another Total Consecration App, which I will review in my next column. I also continue to keep my eyes open for any new ones hitting the market, but presently a search for “Total Consecration” comes up with, “No Results Found.”

The other disappointment was the Scriptural Rosary, not being available on the Android Market. Developer Valent Richie’s website did not give any indication to whether we’d be seeing an alternative format for the app in the future. As Sarah mentions in her review, “[it’s] still the only scriptural rosary app out there”. While there are some really great rosary apps (another future column), I am still on the search for a Scriptural version for Android.