Last year I posted a roundup of light-weight Android apps that can replace hardware you’d normally find in a toolbox. But now there’s one light-weight app that can replace all of those apps. It’s called Swiss Army Knife, and the only thing it doesn’t do is cut… or hammer nails. OK, it’s not a complete toolbelt replacement, but it does offer quite a few functions for an app that only uses 392kb of disk space.

Swiss Army Knife offers a flash light, ruler, stop watch, timer, compass, and level.

The stop watch and timer are simple software tools for counting down or up. But the other tools rely on your phone’s hardware to get things done — some more successfully than others.

For instance, the compass uses the digital compass in many Android phones to show actual directions. The flash light uses the LED flash for your camera — assuming your phone has one. And the level app uses the g-sensor in your phone to show a bubble that you can use to hang pictures or shelves striaght.

The ruler app, on the other hand, isn’t the best I’ve seen. While some other ruler apps detect the make and model of your phone to determine the screen size and accurately depict inches and centimeters, the Swiss Army Knife ruler allows users to calibrate the  ruler manually — which means it’s up to you to make sure your measurements are accurate.

Swiss Army Knife is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...