Good apps gone bad: QuickPic and ES File Explorer sold out

QuickPic sold its soul to the devil

QuickPic used to be a great gallery app. Fast, simple, no-nonsense, just your pics and movies.

But then Cheetah Mobile took over. This mob with the business ethics of an investment banking corporation guises as a bunch of different companies, all with the word "Cheetah" in them. It litters the Play Store with questionable apps. Whether file manager or launcher, they all have a "speed booster" and anti-virus app built in. Because that's what Cheetah's apps are for: a way to sell junk, usually in the form of notification bar ads and similar sneaky tactics. I doubt Cheetah's virus scanner ever managed to find a virus anywhere.

So now QuickPic is part of Cheetah's spam empire and the size of the app more than doubled. So far the damage is limited to some aggressive pushing of their cloud storage plan, because your pictures are worth a fortune to advertisers. I wonder what's next?

Fortunately, you can say no to spam. Just get the good old QuickPic without the bloatware from apkmirror.com and make sure to tell the Play Store not to update it.

• QuickPic at apkmirror.com (version 4.5.2 is still bloat-free)
Alternative:

• F-Stop (try with an ad blocker)


ES File Explorer adds "features," asks money to remove them

ES File Explorer was the gold standard of Android file managers. Unlimited tabs? Check. Root? Check. All the major cloud services? Check. Sharing files over your local WiFi? Check. USB On-The-Go? Check. Opening ZIPs and RARs and more? Check.

And all of that for free. No task killer, no fake virus scanner, no dirty Cheetah Mobile tricks.

But then its maker changed its name to "ES Global" and the app got infected with junk. A page full of "recommended apps," a storage cleaning feature that pops up on the startscreen to delete files that you don't want to lose, and spam in your notification bar to make sure you don't miss out on the other spam.

And no way to hide the bloatware. The old ES File Explorer let you set all default startup tabs yourself, exactly the way you wanted them to be. The new ES File Explorer shoves a homescreen in your face that you can't delete anymore.

Unless you're willing to pay to remove some of the added junk. Yep, that's the business model now. First fill your app with spam so nobody trusts you anymore, then ask money to remove what nobody wanted anyway. Those new "features" are just nagscreens to get your money. The possibility to add useful new features (like automatic cloud storage sync, full-blown encrytion, or deleted file recovery) that you can pay to use, rather than pay not to use, somehow escaped ES Global's mind.

And guess what? The "similar apps" section of ES's Play Store entry starts with "File Manager HD" from Cheetah Mobile. Oh, the irony!

The good news? Old versions of ES File Explorer version still let you set your tabs the way you want without startpage spam. Just keep in mind that one day DropBox, Gdrive, OneDrive etc. will update their APIs and the old versions will stop working, or Google will change Android's file permissions system and break things. Until then, get the good old ES File Explorer from apkmirror.com.

• ES File Explorer at apkmirror.com (get version 4.0.2.3 (237) or

To tame ES File Explorer, I used Lucky Patcher (MyAndroidTools works too) to switch off the "features" I don't want. Of course you need a rooted Android for this.
Activities: RecommActivity, RecommItemDetailActivity, RecommItemImageViewer, InstallMonitorActivity, UninstallMonitorActivity, AppCheckUpdateList, ESStatisticsActivity, SocialLoginActivity.
Receivers: CampaignReceiver, ShareReceiver, EnableOEMConfig, InstallMonitorReceiver, StartServiceReceiver.

Free alternative:

• X-plore (tons of useful features, but only two tabs and a horribly designed user interface)

ES File Explorer looks better, needs finishing touch

Ugly duck gets a facelift

The best file manager for Android? ES File Explorer! The best-looking file manager for Android? Definitely not ES File Explorer! It's a prime example of an app that favors function over form.

And it has functions aplenty. It browses the files and folders on your memory card and the internal memory of your phone or tablet. If you rooted your device, ES File Explorer lets you play with every file and folder in the bowels of your operating system. Add integration with all the popular cloud storage providers, an FTP client and an FTP server, access to Samba shares, a bluetooth file manager, and that's just the file management part of the app.

But the app was ugly! But that's gonna change, because its maker is busy giving the app a makeover. There are plenty of rough edges left and the paint is still wet, but if you want a preview you can take a sneak peak in the Google Play Store before the new ES File Explorer goes official.

Clutter to the menu

The first improvement shows right when you launch the app. It used to be a slow starter, but now it launches much faster.

The main screen is a lot less cluttered than before. This comes at a price, though, because what's cleaned out of the main screen now sits in the menu. And the menu doesn't make things easy to reach, because everything is buried in submenus and some entries have rather counterintuitive names.

Windows!

The old tabs are gone, but not really. There used to be five predefined tabs (local files, ftp, bluetooth, Samba, cloud storage), but now ES File Explorer has windows.

No, not the windows that the Evil Empire ditched for tiles, but a set of up to eight tabs with the content of your choice. You can have a window for the files on your SD card, another for internal memory, a third window for Dropbox, another for Google Drive, one more for your favourite FTP server, whatever you want. This is incredibly useful if you want to move files from one cloud storage account to another, or if you need to copy stuff from SD to internal memory without tapping all the way through your folder structure and back again.

Too bad those windows are hard to identify. They're labeled with tiny little icons so you don't know what's inside until you open them. A Dropbox windows and a Skydrive window have the same icon and there's no text in the tab bar to help you out. The only tab with a name next to the icon is for the currently open window, which is the very window that doesn't really need a name because its contents already stare in your face.

ES File Explorer lets you decide which set of windows it should open at launch (good), but you can't choose which one is selected by default (bad). The app always launches into the leftmost window and you can't reorder them. Maybe that will happen soon, because drag'n'drop sorting should be easy to add.

Making new windows requires a trip to the menu. It would be nice if you could just long-tap a folder, cloud account, or FTP server, and select "create new window" so you don't need to make a top level window and then tap all the way down to where you want to go.

View to forget

Another oversight is the way ES File Explorer remembers your display settings, or rather how easy it forgets them. If I set the view to "small details," then exit the app from one of the "managers" in the tools submenu (more on that later), it switches to "large icons" all by itself. This is probably because the view is not stored per window. Instead, changing the view applies to all windows, but you only notice how everything changes when you relaunch the app.

OK, one more user interface issue. You can toggle the toolbars out of sight by pinch-to-zoom, but you can no longer hide the Android status bar. I wonder if "full screen" will make a comeback someday?

Root browser

ES File Explorer comes with a root browser, but it's not easy to find. Tapping the button labeled "root explorer" doesn't open "/" (the root folder). Instead, it pulls you into a menu full of options, many of them unrelated to exploring the root of your file system. The option that really gets you into the root browser is somewhere near the bottom of the list.

When I finally tapped into the root browser I caught it going online for no apparent reason. When you browse local folders and you have auto-update switched off, ES File Explorer has no business online, but for some reason it generates network traffic anyway. The old version of the app does the same thing. Maybe the developer of the app should explain what's going on here.

Cloud, FTP, hotspot

ES File Explorer talks with eight different cloud storage services, which is more than any other file manager. And you can store multiple accounts per service, so nothing can stop you from pingponging files between your sixteen different Dropbox accounts.

There's an FTP client as well. And an FTP server, but this is confusingly called "remote manager" instead of simply "FTP server."

More weird names: the built-in WiFi hotspot is called "net manager." But crazy name or not, the big news here is of course that tethering now comes built into your file manager. But...

...if you have WiFi switched on, start the hotspot, and then close it, you're left with WiFi switched off. ES File Explorer doesn't return your phone to its pre-tethering WiFi state.

And the hotspot doesn't work without a mobile data connection. You might say "duh!, how else are you gonna tie mobile data to WiFi?" but there's a good reason for running a hotspot without mobile data, or even without a SIM card. Run a hotspot and launch the FTP server and you could share files over your ad hoc network, but only if ES File Explorer learns to play hotspot without data.

Want a shortcut to the hotspot feature? Can't have it. Not yet, anyway. ES File Explorer can put a direct shortcut to its built-in FTP server on your homescreen, but if you want to switch the hotspot on you have to launch the file manager and tap all through the menu to the entry called "net manager."

Unshared download manager

More connectivity: ES File Manager now comes with a download manager. You can paste URLs into it, but for some inexplicable reason it doesn't appear in Androids share menu. That's too bad, because otherwise you could send links straight from your web browser to the download manager. Give Advanced Download Manager a try. It can be summoned straight from the share menu. Maybe ES File Explorer can replace it one day?

The verdict

This story may look like a long list of complaints. That's not because ES File Explorer is a bad app, but because this is a test version with plenty of room for improvement before it replaces the old app. The official release is planned for the 20th of April, so it's reasonable to expect that most issues will be painted over by then. Even with the rough edges of the current beta version it's clear that the new ES File Explorer is a big improvement over the previous version.

• ES File Explorer public test version (may disappear when testing's done)
• ES File Explorer (finished product)

ES File Explorer adds Google Drive

Android file managers are getting more and more cloudy. X-plore and ES File Explorer recently added SkyDrive, and X-plore has Google Drive too. It looks like these two apps are in a sort of "I have more cloud storage servers than you" contest. That's a good thing for anyone who uses those apps. ES and X-plore, keep fighting!

ES File Explorer took the lead again, so now it has Google Drive too. This in addition to Dropbox, box, SugarSync, and SkyDrive.

ES File Explorer also has an FTP server in addition to its FTP client. The FTP server is still burried deep down in the settings menu, but now you can send an FTP server shortcut to your homescreen to get in there a little faster. It's better than nothing, but a future update would improve things a lot if it adds an FTP server toggle to the FTP tab.

Not that I want to complain too much, because ES File Explorer is the best file manager for Android and X-plore has a long way to go before it can compete. ES File Manager makes and extracts zip archives, opens rar files, backs up apps like Titanium (which won't back up itself), talks with Samba servers, and sends shortcuts to files and folders to your homescreens. And in true Android spirit (does anyone pay for apps?) ES File Explorer doesn't cost a penny.

• ES File Explorer

The competition:

• X-plore

X-plore adds SkyDrive

X-plore for Android started as an unusable app, got fixed, and is now fully functional. Swiping between two explorer screens makes moving files a lot easier than with the classic single screen setup of most file managers. X-plore is still ugly as hell and things like FTP servers deserve their own screen, but maybe the next few updates will do something about that.

The latest update expanded its cloud support. X-plore already talked to Dropbox, box.net, SugarSync, and Google Drive, and now it connects to SkyDrive too. Good stuff, because SkyDrive comes with more free storage space than the competition.

The back button still takes you to your homescreen instead of to the previous folder, which is completely useless. We already have the home button to go to our homescreen.

While X-plore is cleaning up their app you may want to give ES File Explorer a shot.

• X-plore
• ES File Explorer

ES File Explorer adds SkyDrive and an FTP server

ES File Explorer is an excellent file manager to handle files and folders on your phone and in the cloud, and to pingpong them back and forth to your computer. It creates and extracts zip archives too, and it opens rar files. It comes with a couple of optional plugins. The app manager can back up apps like Titanium (which won't back up itself), and the bookmark manager is very good at sending shortcuts to files and folders to your homescreens.

ES File Explorer already connected to Dropbox, SugarSync, and box, and now it lets you into SkyDrive too. That's good news, because SkyDrive gives you more free storage space than its competitors.

Of course it still supports Samba servers, and it still works as an FTP client. The FTP client now does FTPS too, which helps keep your files safe from eavesdroppers.

Great new feature: ES File Explorer now comes with a built-in FTP server! This makes it a lot easier to transfer files from your phone to your computer and the other way 'round. Unfortunately the new FTP server is very well hidden. You have to open the settings, then go into the remote settings screen, and only then you'll find the on/off switch for the FTP server which is counterintuitively called "remote manage."

Urgently needed in the next update: an on/off switch for the FTP server right in the main menu. Even better: just give the FTP server its own tab next to the local file manager, the FTP client, and the cloud storage tab. That tab could have an on/off switch with plenty of room left for the IP address, port number, etc.

Keep in mind that if you enter system folders with root access enabled ES File Explorer will generate a bit of network traffic. The amount of data is barely enough to send out some usage statistics, but unfortunately the developer of ES File Explorer leaves us guessing what's inside those bytes. If all of you ask about it in your Google Play Store comments or email the developer (contact@estrongs.com) maybe we'll find out?

• ES File Explorer (Google Play Store)

File manager X-plore learns about touchscreens

X-plore was the best file manager for my Nokia back when Symbian was the best mobile operating system.

Times changed, Symbian died, touchscreens grew up and became useful, and X-plore failed to catch up. Its first Android attempt was a disaster.

But a few updates later X-plore got the hang of it. Their lineup of cloud storage services is growing (it's got Dropbox, box.net, SugarSync, and Google Drive), and they figured out that what works for keypads doesn't work for touchscreens.

The user interface still looks like a construction site after a hurricane, but at least it's usable now. The useless on-screen menu button is gone, you can select multiple files and folders (it only took some checkboxes), and X-plore will use your own media apps if you don't like its built-in player.

Swiping between two explorer windows is a great feature too.

There's still a lot to fix, though. Making the app look less ugly shouldn't be too hard, and it would really help if the back button of my phone would take me back to the previous folder instead of duplicating the function of my home button.

Keep the updates coming in. And if you uninstalled X-plore upon first sight, you might want to give it a second chance. X-plore is no match for ES File Explorer, but I'm sure they're working on it.

• X-plore (Google Play)
• X-plore (Lonely Cat Games)

• ES File Explorer

ROM Toolbox doubles as a fully functional free autostart manager

There are plenty of custom ROMs for Android phones out there, and plenty of apps to manage all these ROMs.

ROM Toolbox is one of them. Its latest update kills some bugs and adds some features. Obviously ROM Toolbox manages ROMs, but is does much more than that. So much more that it's a useful app even if your phone runs a stock ROM.

Its ROM manager installs ROMs and other zips, and lets you back up your current ROM. It can also reboot your phone into recovery mode so you don't have to keep power and volume down pressed on boot or whatever key combo sends your phone to the recovery console. ROM Toolbox is not as good as ROM Manager by ClockworkMod, but it's got the basics covered.

And not just the basics. ROM Toolbox is a kind of swiss army knive to tinker with your Android system. It does eye candy like themes, custom boot logos, fonts and status bar icons, and more. There's a bare bones CPU tweaker, a build.prop file editor (might be useful if you want to impersonate another phone), a file browser and a terminal emulator, an app manager (too bad that its best features are only available in the paid version), and ROM Toolbox can block ads too.

There are plenty of dedicated apps that do all these things better, but ROM Toolbox puts it all in one package. And it has one killer feature that makes the app a useful addition to your phone no matter what ROM you use, stock ROMs included.

That killer feature is its autostart manager.

There are plenty of apps that stop other apps from autostarting when your phone boots up, but ROM Toolbox goes further. It can prevent autostarting on boot, it can stop apps from autostarting on connectivity change (mobile data to WiFi, etc.), it stops Google Maps from snooping online whenever you charge your phone, it keeps pushy apps like JaxtrSMS asleep when your WiFi wakes up, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of other events that can trigger apps to launch, and ROM Toolbox lets you control all of them.

Autostarts only does it for money, Autorun Manager limits most of its useful features to its paid version, but ROM Toolbox does all its autostart management for free.

My swiss army knive is a useful tool even though I only use its corkscrew. ROM Toolbox is a useful tool even though I only use its autostart manager.

• ROM Toolbox on the Android Market Google play

Update: Gemini is another great free autostart manager. It doesn't have all the extra bells and whistles that ROM Toolbox has, but Gemini lets you control some extra autostart receivers that are ignored by other autostart managers.

• Gemini App Manager (Google play)

Another update: Autostarts is available for free from F-Droid.

• Autostarts (F-Droid)

File manager ES File Explorer adds more cloud: now talks with box.net too

ES File Explorer is an excellent app to manage the files on your SD card, and if your phone is rooted it lets you into your system files too.

It doesn't stop at your phone. ES File Explorer doubles as an FTP client (not as an FTP server, though), receives files over bluetooth, talks to Samba servers, and it connects to your Dropbox and SugarSync cloud storage as if they were standard FTP servers. The latest update got even more cloudy: now it does box.net too.

Something that didn't change: the plugins. The most useful are the app manager to back up your apk installers, and the bookmark manager to send shortcuts to your files to your home screens.

It still makes and breaks ZIP archives, and it unpacks RARs.

A great app indeed, but it has one bad habit: mystery network traffic when you enable root access. Does it collect usage statistics or what? If all of you ask about it in your Android Market comments or email to the developer (contact@estrongs.com) maybe we'll find out?

• ES File Explorer (Android Market)
• ES File Explorer (EStrongs)

FileSlick: Android file manager with an eye on looks

There are a couple of good file managers for Android, and a few bad ones too. ES File Explorer is a good file manager, X-plore is pretty good but has a horrible user interface.

Looks and roots

FileSlick is a new file manager which cares a lot about its looks. The first entry in its settings screen is a theme browser, which should give you an idea of its vanity. You can give it a makeover with those themes, and you should because the default theme (text on an image of stones) is a bit of a distraction when you're out to play with your files and folders.

The last entry on the settings screen lets you disable FileSlicks ads without paying. A nice touch, but if you run an app like AdAway or AdFree it doesn't really matter. When you switch off the ads FileSlick pops up a screen asking for a donation (and again everytime you open the settings screen). Whether you put some coins in the tip jar or not is up to you.

Speaking of tip jars: there used to be a time when playing with your system files and folders required paying for Root Explorer. Those days are long gone, because now there are plenty of free file managers with root access. FileSlick is no exception. Tap "root access" in the "Places" menu and you go straight into the guts of your phone. Unfortunately the method to mount files and folders to do something with them is quite counterintuitive, and it doesn't always work. When I tried to rename the files in system/media/audio FileSlick claimed success in a but didn't do anything. You'd expect better from the maker of z4root.

Files and swipes

FileSlick couldn't find any apps to play my mp3s and movies, even though my phone has media players aplenty. As for other file formats, it couldn't find an app to open PDFs (even though I've got Adobe Reader and OfficeSuite Pro on my phone). DOC and XLS worked, PPT did not. Finding out which app can open what format is a hit and miss affair.

FileSlick is not all about looks. Feel counts too, with an emphasis on swiping. Tapping files and folders selects them, opening them requires a swipe, long-tapping doesn't do anything. You'll probably find yourself tapping files and folders and then find them highlighted instead of opened, at least until you get used to the FileSlick way. There's no way to customise the behaviour of taps, long-taps and swipes. I would set swipe to select, tap to open, long-tap to launch the actions menu. You would probably choose something different, so a bit more choice in the settings would be welcome. Maybe in a next version?

In addition to managing files on your phone, FileSlick talks to FTP servers and Samba shares. It also lets you share files over bluetooth, but receiving them is another story. FileSlick is not as full featured as ES File Explorer or FileExpert, but it looks a lot better. Looks are not everything, though. Especially when it's your job to manage files. For all practical purposes FileSlick is still a beta test version with rough edges, but with some extra features and more ways to customise the behaviour of the app it might mature into something useful.

• FileSlick (Android Market)
• FileSlick (xda forum)

The competition:
• ES File Explorer
• X-plore
• File Expert (Android Market)

File manager X-plore needs to explore touchscreens

Blast from the past

Update: X-plore improved a lot. Most of the issues that plagued the first versions are fixed now. If you ditched X-plore before, give it a second chance.
Back when I used Symbian, X-plore was the best file manager for my Nokia. And now the Android version is totally free, without delays and nag screens.

But X-plore got stuck in the past. Back when Symbian was big phones had small screens and big keypads, and the Android version of X-plore is not adapted to touchscreens at all.

Big menu

X-plore has an on-screen menu button that just replicates what the hardware menu button does. You really need to dig into that menu to select multiple files or folders, because X-plore won't let you do that from the main screen. You have to open the menu, navigate into a submenu to select more than one file, and then again and again for each and every file and folder that you want to select.

Selecting a file or folder takes one tap, opening it takes a second tap. Checkboxes on the edge of the screen for selecting files and folders would really make a difference, but X-plore for Android doesn't have them.

Speaking of folders, X-plore shows your SD card as a subfolder of the phone memory. There's no option to show the card only unless you tell it to hide all system folders. A button to toggle between internal memory and memory card would make the folder list way less cluttered.

View and read

X-plore comes with a built-in text and image viewer, and a player for some audio formats (mp3 and ogg, but not aac). It insists on opening supported files in its own player. There's no option to set your own preferred player.

X-plore reads your IMEI whenever you launch it, and it asks for full internet permission. It's probably only to send crash logs, but you may want to tame X-plore with apps like DroidWall and LBE Privacy Guard anyway.

The promised root access didn't work on my rooted Motorola Defy. X-plore showed all the system folders and their contents, but it never bothered to ask Superuser for root permission so I could only watch, not touch my system files. Maybe you have better luck.

There's one good thing about X-plore for Android: it has the same folder tree view mode of its Symbian parent. But that's not enough to compete with ES File Explorer or File Expert. What worked on the keypads of yesterday doesn't work on todays touchscreens.

Update: X-plore improved a lot. Most of the issues that plagued the first versions are fixed now. If you ditched X-plore before, give it a second chance.
• X-plore (Android Market)
• X-plore (Lonely Cat games)

The competition:
• ES File Explorer
• File Expert (Android Market)

ArchiDroid unpacks zips, rars, and many other formats

Most built-in file managers can unpack zip files, but you'll need non-stock apps to extract other formats like rar, 7zip, etc.

File manager ES File Explorer unwraps zips and rars, File Expert opens zip, rar, tar, gzip and a few other formats. AndroZip extracts zip, rar, tar, gzip, bzip, and 7zip. All of them can create zips too.

New kid on the block ArchiDroid unpacks zip, rar, tar, gzip, bzip2, and 7zip. It also opens password protected zips and rars. What really makes it stand out is that it knows how to deal with split rar archives. Of course it can make zips, including encrypted zip archives.

ArchiDroid is free, it doesn't have ads, and it doesn't ask for permission to go online.

• ArchiDroid (Android Market)

ES File Explorer phones home if you give it root access

ES File Explorer is one of the best file managers for Android. In addition to managing your local files and folders it has a built-in ftp client (but no ftp server), does bluetooth file transfers, connects to Samba servers, talks with Dropbox (and lets you transfer entire folders, which the official Dropbox app won't do), unpacks zip and rar archives, can put shortcuts to files on your home screens, and...

...it works as a root explorer too.

The root explorer function of ES File Explorer means that you don't need apps like Root Explorer (which is not free) or File Expert (which has an inferior user interface).

The root explorer function of ES File Explorer used to work on a few ROMs only, but a recent update makes it work on all Android phones.

So far, so good. But there's a catch. ES File Explorer used to be a very well-behaved app that only went online when you told it to go online, e.g. when connecting to an ftp server or a Dropbox account. But when you enable root access ES File Explorer goes online everytime it runs, and it doesn't tell you why it goes online, what data it sends out, and how you can switch this suspicious behaviour off.

I'll give the app the benefit of the doubt for now. It probably sends out statistics to tell the developer if the root explorer code works. But maybe it does something else? More info from the developer would be appreciated, and an off switch for non-essential online activity is a must. Especially for an app with root access that can read all your files.

Of course you can stop ES File Explorer from phoning home with DroidWall, but then you miss out on its ftp and Dropbox features. You can also disable root acces for ES File Explorer (it doesn't go online then, unless you connect to a remote file server) and use File Expert when you need root access to play with your system folders.

• ES File Explorer (Android Market)
• ES File Explorer (EStrongs)
• File Expert (Android Market)

ES File Explorer now has Dropbox and unpacks RAR files

ES File Explorer is a great file manager for Android. It has a built in ftp client, connects with Samba servers, does bluetooth ftp, lets you put shortcuts to files on your home screens, and much more.

And now it comes with Dropbox built in.

The official Dropbox app for Android sucks, and Awesome Drop is not much better. Both apps are good enough if you want to copy files to or from Dropbox, but they won't let you move entire folders.

ES File Explorer will let you do that. You can move files and folders to and from your Dropbox account, or delete them from the Dropbox server. It's like having ftp access to Dropbox!

Other new stuff in the latest update: extract rar archives, make and open zip files with passwords, and an app organiser. Now if it would only come with an ftp and http server and make its root explorer work with all ROMs...
Update: the root explorer works with all ROMs, but think twice before you enable it.


• ES File Explorer (Android Market)
• ES File Explorer (EStrongs)
• Dropbox