Essential Shopping Apps for Android

Smarter shopping can help you save by finding better bargains and products that give the best value for money. Here is a lineup of some of the best shopping apps for your Android phone to help you shop smarter.

Shopper by Google, is an excellent app to find information about a product you are interested in. You can scan the barcode or take a photograph of the product.  Locking in on barcodes using the barcode scanner or recognizing products from the images is quick and returns relevant results fast. The results include online and brick and mortar prices and reviews aggregated from many sites. Other features are search history, favorite products and sharing products via email. It also supports voice and text search. The app works best on CDs, DVDs, books and video games, cannot scan QR codes and may not offer very relevant local listings. ShopSavvy is another price comparison app worth checking out. Though it offers product recognition only via a barcode scanner, it has a richer database of deals and relevant local listings including mapped directions and other information on the stores. It also supports long-term price tracking of the products you are interested in with price alerts.

If you are one of those people who end up holding up the checkout line while fiddling through a thick stack of rewards and membership cards, Key Ring Rewards Card is the app for you. Scan in all your cards and recreate them on your phone using this app. When you are shopping, you can quickly locate the card on your phone and ask the cashier to scan it from the phone screen.

Out of Milk is a Shopping List, Pantry List and To-do list app. It supports multiple user-defined lists, so that you can organize your shopping. You can enter items manually, scan a barcode, or just speak your list into the app. It has a simple, intuitive interface and a lot of presets to help in entering items. It maintains the price totals of your list, and maintains shopping list and price history. You can move items between lists, and share lists by email or text message.

The Coupons App is one of the most downloaded coupon apps for Android. It saves time spent on searching for coupons as it brings the relevant deals and coupons to you, in real-time throughout the day. Browse through the list using filters and save the coupons you need. When you are out shopping, just show the phone to the cashier to redeem your coupon! Other features include comparison shopping using a barcode scanner and the ability to share coupons using Twitter, Facebook, text and email.