Android App of the Day: Better Terminal Emulator Pro

This app won't be for everyone, but I like it a lot.

"Better Terminal Emulator Pro" (paid app -US$3.99) gives you a full Linux terminal, with "Almquist" (ash) shell on your Android phone. There are free versions, but they don't include all the functionality of the Pro version and they aren't always the latest releases.

You don't need root access to your phone to install and use this app as a user on the phone's system. There will be files and directories that are read-only to you unless you do "root" your phone to gain read-write access to them as the root (Administrator) user.

Better Terminal Emulator Pro has a lot great features. You can define special keys to perform tasks otherwise not possible on a phone keyboard, like Cntl+anything or ESC. You can define shortcuts to perform commands using the various buttons on your phone that aren't part of the keyboard, like volume, back and camera. You can email the contents of the screen buffer to email address (or addresses).

Preferences lets you choose font size, colour and column format. You can enable full screen mode and decide whether or not the screen will sleep or not. You can turn the shell off and on, set the shell's command line, or specify an initial command to be executed when the shell starts. you may want to run "top" each time you open the emulator, so you can quickly see what's eating your processor. You can define the height of the soft keyboard in both portrait and landscape modes. You can define a "control" key - separate from the special keys functions already mentioned. You can set the phone to vibrate on arrow keys.

It also serves as a quick file manager for those adapt at using the command line to perform routine file management jobs like copying, renaming and deleting. For deleting groups of unwanted files (rm -ir unwanted.txt, for example - wiping out all files, intereactively and recursively, called "unwanted.txt", in a directory tree), there is no better alternative

If you're a command line person, then turning your phone into a real linux box with Better Terminal Emulator Pro will be irresistible. If you want to root your phone, then this app will be indispensible.