As a stunt, red had its CES reporter crew cover the monster Consumer Electronics Show this year with their smartphones alone. No laptops, no tablets, not even a st-alone camera. Better them than me!

But wait a minute. s this really just a stunt?

Thanks to a lot of business-friendly smartphone apps, it’s becoming quite possible to make your primary computing device a smartphone. You’re not going to want to write a novel, reconcile your 2013 books, or design your next marketing campaign on one, but you can do a lot of other stuff. l you need are the right apps.

Head to ay pick up these 10 apps, you’ll turn your phone into a powerful mobile office. 

Quickoffice

Docs has one big shortcoming if your office is locked in to Microsoft Office: It doesn’t do a great job of hling Office document formats. That’s where Quickoffice comes in. It not only lets you create edit rd, Excel, werint files, but it also lets you view Fs save files to your Drive. If Microsoft Office is part of your normal work routine, then you want Quickoffice.

That said, if you’re an Office 365 user, you can also use Office Mobile for Office 365. I prefer Quickoffice myself, Office Mobile doesn’t work with all Android devices. For example, you can’t use it with either the 2012 or 2013 Nexus 7 tablet.

Square Register

I’m not on the retail side of life, but I have many craft artist friends who live die by their point-of-sale software hardware, they swear by Square Register. th one device that can attach to their smartphone or tablet, they’re ready to make sales. Another worthwhile alternative to Square Register is Intuit Goyment Card Reader.

Uber

If you do a lot of business travel, you know what a pain it can be to find a taxi when you need one. Ease that pain with Uber, which lets you summon a car with your smartphone. You can pick between yellow cabs, black towncars, private individuals. Better still, all payments are hled through the app via llet, yl, or a credit card locked to your secure account.

The downside is that it’s only available in 32 North American cities just about that many others around the world. But if most of your business is in the cities it does cover, you’ll love this app.

Splashtop Remote Desktop

Android its apps are fine dy, but sometimes you can’t settle for anything less than access to your ndows or Mac. That’s exactly what this app gives you. Splashtop mirrors your full desktop to your device. oblem: The app won’t work with all smartphones, it works better by far on a tablet. There are several variants of the Splashtop app, targeted at tablets, gaming, personal use, or enterprise deployment. If you find a version works for you, it can come in incredibly hy.

ScanBizCards

As the years come go, technology advances by leaps bounds. But for some reason, we’re still using little paper business cards!

But there is technology to help you hle those cardboard artifacts. ScanBizCards (available in a free te version  $4 emium version) scanner lets you scan in business cards, add notes to them, then— this is the good part—export them into such customer relationship management platforms as Salesforce, SugarCRM Zoho CRM.

SwiftKey

I don’t don’t like on-screen keyboards myself, so I use a Droid 4, which has a small, but real, QRTY keyboard. But those are going the way of the dodo, for on-screen keyboards, SwiftKey is a godsend. It seems as if everyone I know who doesn’t use a physical keyboard uses SwiftKey. Because it predicts (with great accuracy) not just the word you’re typing but the word after that, its users are far faster more productive with their on-screen typing than are those who use the “biblical” method of on-screen keyboarding, a. (Phentermine) k.a. “Seek, ye shall find.”

Evernote

Is there anyone who doesn’t use this do-everything, record-everything, note-taking program on his smartphone? I guess anything is possible. “Note-taking” sounds so simple, but Evernote lets you co-ordinate, organize, access your notes data like no other program.

A program that I’ve found to be quite hy in conjunction with Evernote is Genius Scan+. It turns your phone into a smart scanner that can straighten out your images, detect page frames, save them as color or black–white images in F or EG. th Evernote integration, you can save them in your ever-growing Evernote notebooks stacks.

TripIt Travel Organizer

If you’re like me your travel plans are scattered hither yon, TripIt is the personal travel organizer you’ve always needed. I may still wait too long to make my plans, but at least now, when I finally make my reservations, all I have to do is forward my hotel, airline, car rental restaurant confirmation emails to [email protected] to create an instant itinerary. And if you use Gmail or Apps, that happens automatically. It’s the kind of brainless, easy-to-use travel app I’d been waiting for all my life.

okout Security & Antivirus emium

Here’s the simple truth. For all the hype about Android malware, if you just practice safe Android usage, such as avoiding dodgy websites never, ever downloading programs from third-party Android stores, you’ll be safe 364 days of the year.

Oh. it. There are 365 days in the year. For that one extra day, you want okout to protect you. There are plenty of other good Android antivirus programs, but I keep coming back to okout like an old trusted friend.

stss ssword Manager

Speaking of security matters, have you ever considered how many passwords are sitting unprotected on your Android phone? Or worse, sites services you have set to automatically log in? Think about it for a moment. Then consider how easy it is to lose your smartphone. Now, run, do not walk, to the ay Store get stss.

There are dozens of other worthwhile Android business programs, but these are the ones that work best for me, my friends, my co-workers. Are these useful enough that you’ll want to replace your notebook with your phone? I doubt it, but, they’re useful enough that if all you have at h is a charged-up Android phone, you’ll still be in business. And that’s what it’s all about.