Gone are the days of the Apple ruling the Smartphone application market, with its App Store. Google ensures it’s foothold in the competitive market with its own Android Market, churning out one great application after the other. With a massive range from useful utilities, addons, games, entertainment and serious business niches, the Android application range is absolutely outstanding. What makes these apps so great? One word: Simplicity. Let’s have a look at some of the most widely used Android applications out there.

1.    Ringdroid – Make Your Own Ringtones

Any doubts that HTC might be bringing the Legend to Mobile World Congress 2010 next week look to be fast vanishing, as the smartphone – expected to be the successor to the HTC Hero – makes a (brief) appearance on the website of Dutch operator KPN.  The carrier prematurely posted a reservation form for the Legend, complete with some basic specifications.

Hard cases for the Motorola Droid are few and far between. Case-Mate intends to end your search with their latest offering. This case is designed to protect your entire phone including the screen without taking from the functionality.

Nexus One owners have been griping about the device’s 3G connectivity issue since its release, and Google felt your pain and came to the rescue (even though they did sorta blame T-Mobile’s small 3G footprint for this). Or so we thought. After releasing an over-the-air update which was intended to resolve this problem, users are still reporting bugs.

Now that the “buzz” is dying down for the Google’s new Buzz service, its reality checks time. Currently only 2.0 and higher devices can take full advantage of the new features.

Currently there is only an estimated 28% of Android devices in use that are capable of taking full advantage of these services. This is due to the fact that lower Android versions browser does not support HTML5, although the gears requirement is meet.

Earlier this week we reported that Motorola would be gearing up for an Android 2.1 update for the DROID. Oops! It turns out that it might not be coming that soon after all. And here we were etching notches into the wall as we counted down the days.

Opera is expected to make an announcement at MWC introducing a new version of their Android App. There should be a lot of new features added that aims to enhance your mobile web browsing experience.

In the press conference Opera states:

HTC has added a new feature to the Sense UI home screen. It will now have multi touch support on the home screen as well. Soon you will be able to zoom in and out on the main screen by utilizing the pinch zoom feature.

Earlier this week Motorola made an announcement stating that it would start to roll out 2.1 to all Droid users. They even went as far as saying that all Droid users will have the update by the end of this week. Looks like someone made a mistake and jumped the gun a bit.

Garmin-ASUS have outed their latest smartphone, and the nuvifone A50 is the first to be based on Android.  The A50 has a 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen, custom Garmin-ASUS UI and preloaded turn-by-turn navigation with voice prompts.  The company also provides real-time weather, traffic, fuel prices, safety cameras and flight status information.

Motorola recently updated what’s going to be included in their 2.1 update. Some of the highlights are listed after the break.

Google is testing a new fiber optic network in a select few locations. There was a rumor floating around that the Nexus One would have the ability to use VOIP to make calls without the need for a wireless carrier. Looks like Google has bigger plans in the making.

Here’s a statement from Google on this matter.