Hi, its TheAnonymouseJoker! I am a veteran Android user besides being a privacy advocate and data archivist.
Generally, its said that if something is not free, you are the product. But there are less than 50 exceptions to this rule of thumb. Some great, irreplaceable closed source apps are:
- Snapseed
- Glasswire
- most third party reddit apps
- 1DM+ downloader
- Accubattery
- AppOps by Rikka Apps
- modded QuickPic on XDA
- Bouncer
- ACR Call Recorder
- CamScanner 5.6.8.20180625 (last version before malware incident)
- Clipboard Pro
- DiskUsage (old Google app, still works, blazing fast)
- many reputed emulators in r/emulation community like Snes9x, DrasticDS, AetherSX2 et al
- modded GCam and GCam Go for budget and old phones
- HiBy Music Player (no music player is close)
- MiXplorer (on XDA, best file explorer for power user, Solid Explorer is less function more form, maybe FX works for some)
- MX Player old versions, nothing does video playlists and UX like playback speed overlay as well to this day, VLC is a compromise
- Nova Launcher (all versions including and before 7.0.20)
- OfficeSuite Pro (only decent document editor 100% compatible with MS Office), WPS is ok and Collabora is garbage
- RAR (official WinRAR for Android, no better compression tool exists, only MiXplorer’s archive plugin based on mcmilk’s 7-Zip ZS 22.01 comes close)
- ScreenMaster (on the fly screenshot cropping and horizontal/vertical stacking with adjustable image compression)
- SD Maid
- Wavelet (non-root system wide equaliser on XDA, preset for almost any headphone or earphone)
Misunderstanding is now cleared.