Android apps: Great RV toolkit -- Swiss Army Knife

If you're an RVing gadget fan – and an Android user – here's the "must have app" for your phone or tablet: Swiss Army Knife. How many of us as kids dreamed of having that venerable red-on-stainless tool that could do just about anything? Swiss Army Knife for your droid is not just a drool-over app, its practical for those of us on the road.

Swiss Army Knife combines the functions of stand-alone apps into one (memory space saving), puts them easily at hand, and they all work well. Here's what you get for this FREE app, available at the Google Play Store:

Unit Converter: Convert length, weight, temperature, volume, pressure, area, speed, power, mileage, even data, from all sorts of conceivable formats to another. For example, Fahrenheit to Celsius to be sure, but how about to Kelvin or even Rankine? For most of us, we'd just be happy to be able to handle miles to kilometers and back.

Timer: This nice LOUD count-down timer allows you to set up to four different timers, all up to 999 hours, 99 minutes, 59 seconds. What to go down? Then,

Stopwatch: Tracks out to hundredths of a second, with so many "lap" stops allowed that we gave up counting them.

Compass: Shows a full compass rose with North nicely highlighted in red. Reads out to the full degree with cardinal points spelled out.

Bubble Level: Includes three different levels, including bulls-eye, and a two different straight levels. Lay your device down in your RV freezer compartment when you're leveling the rig and you'll know precisely how many degrees you're "off" and which way.

Calculator: The complete Geek suite here, not just your simple multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction, this is a full scientific calculator with a nice size readout, depending your device display. This aspect of the app is still in Beta testing, so users are asked for their comments and bugs.
Magnifying Glass: May be the cheezier of the functions. Using the camera function of your device, this feature crops the image for "magnification." The higher the resolution of your device's camera, presumably the better the image you'll get. If your hands aren't steady, the image is a bit wobbly, but you can "freeze" whatever you're looking at for a steadier view. Zoom in and out functions make the image tighter or "looser" as you desire.

Mirror: Is the fastidious member of your party away from the powder room, but needs a quick check of the hair and makeup? Mirror uses the "front" camera of your device to shoot a selfie – either moving or frozen, and shows a mirror image so you can touch up your mascara or pluck a stray bug out of your nostril. Warning! We don't recommend use of Mirror first thing in the morning – it's too scary!

Ruler: After having to run around in the hardware store to "borrow" a tape measure, here at least you can have a "tape" that reads metric or standard as long as your display. Inch on one side, centimeter on the other, now you can scope the size of smaller objects with accuracy.

Flashlight: Depending on your device's "whistles and bells," when you turn on "Flashlight," either your camera's "flash" function will provide a bright, steady light, or the screen of your device will turn white to give a full-screen glow. The latter isn't super-bright, but hey, if you're in the dark and need some light, this is a great function.

Overall, we're much impressed with this great "gadget." And we especially like the simplicity, freedom from advertisements, and no demands for "permissions" to access the network, write to your flash memory, or read your contacts.

Get Swiss Army Knife on the Google Play Store.