When I think of the apps that I use on a daily basis, not including the ones that come standard with any ROM (messaging, phone, browser), there isn’t that many. Other than Twitter, there is really only one app that I use a lot. Everyday. I use it for all my new clocks, new themes, and widgets. I use it to find new apps, keep up on certain types of news, and whenever I’m feeling chatty, there’s always someone on. What app am I talking about? The official Tapatalk sponsored XDA Developers forum app.

Design

The XDA app is designed to show you just about anything you’d need to navigate to, as soon as you open it. There are 5 tabs that are always visible towards the top of the app titled Latest, Forums, PM, and More. You can switch back and forth between them at anytime, depending on what you want to do.

Latest

From the Latest tab, there are three sub-tabs titled Unread, All, and Participated. These three sub-tabs are pretty self explanatory – they show the latest posts within those categories. Considering the fact that there is always at least 10,000 active users at any given moment on XDA, the only really important sub-tab you’ll use is Participated. Nonetheless, everything else is fun to explore.

Forums

The Forums tab is where you’ll really get into the meat of the XDA Developers app. At this very moment, XDA Developers forums contains 569,789 threads, with 9,044,140 posts, from 3,141,349 members. That is a lot of content. Fortunately, it’s broken down in this order:

Category / Name >

Sub-forum >

Topics / Stickies / Announcement >

/Thread

At the end of this trail, throughout various threads, is where you’ll find user content – Content on hacking, modding, apps… just about everything Android you could imagine (and Windows too, but hey, that’s now why we’re there). If I were to go into it any further than that, this would turn into a 10,000 word essay. Instead I’ll continue on by saying that once you get a good feel for the forums, everything is well organized and downloads work incredibly well; The app will create it’s own folder where everything is stored nice and neat. This is one of my main purposes for using the XDA app – It’s incredibly easy to download apps and widgets then install them directly to your device. There is so much to download and look at, it can be over whelming at times. So what’s the best way to keep track of it all?

Favorites and PM

The next two tabs, Favorites and PM, are the simplest tabs to explain. Favorites contains a sub-tab for forums/topics (or threads) you’ve favorited, and PM contains sub-tabs for your inbox and outbox. Simple, right? Should you happen to be browsing and find something remotely interesting, be sure to favorite it as trying to find it later may prove to be a pain.

More

The final tab is the More tab. From there you’ll find your profile, a list of who’s online, the search function, and news; All self explanatory, all organized just as well as the rest of the app.

Wrap Up

When writing this review, I found it hard to stay away from discussing the content of XDA, and keep on track with discussing the features of the app. The main motivation behind this review is to show you a tool on how to research further customization of your Android device. I get asked questions all the time like “How do I root X device?” and “Where can I get this mod?” Well it’s all inside here. All you need is the search function and a little patience, and you’ll find what you’re looking for.

I’d also like to take this moment to ask you: What kind of hacks and mods interest you? Does rooting and ROMs interest you? Root only apps? Themes? Be sure to let me know through the comments or Twitter, @du57in. I look forward to hearing from you.