DoubleTwist: iTunes for Android

This past week, I made a major life decision - to drop the iPhone for good and pick up a Samsung Captivate which runs on the Android operating system.

It’s important to understand that both the iPhone OS - iOS X - and the Android OS are very similar, relying on apps as a form of device customization.

However, when I first got my hands on the Captivate, one question had to be answered for both my iPhone friends and I - how could I get my iTunes data onto my non-Apple device. The answer is DoubleTwist.

DoubleTwist = iTunes
DoubleTwist runs exactly like iTunes. The desktop manager is compatible with both Mac and PC and syncs with iTunes so that users don't have to upload music to both media managers separately. Users connect their mobile device to a computer and sync the device to the DoubleTwist Library.

Flies can be dragged and dropped directly to a device, playlists can be created and even Most Played, Recently Added and Top Rated playlists come standard (just like in iTunes) with the desktop application.

iTunes and App Stores
In terms of the App Store and the iTunes Store, there’s a feature for that, too. DoubleTwist connects to the Android Market and the Amazon MP3 store.

Widget
DoubleTwist is obviously an app, but the download also includes a widget. Widgets don’t exist on iPhones but on an Android phone, they can be anything from a newsfeed to a status update bar on a device's home screen.

In DoubleTwist’s case, it’s widget is a basic media player which plays whatever file the user selected when they last accessed the DoubleTwist app. For instance, if the user was listening to “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead, that song would show up in the DT widget with a play and skip button.

Do you know of another Android app that works like iTunes? Let me know in the comments section.