List of must haves apps

Nova launcher prime, Ruggon icon pack, my bank app, Google maps, Outlook, Textra for messaging, Newpipe, aCalendar +, F-stop gallery, Gmail, Google photos...

zedge, nova(prime), hearthstone(game), 1weather, lastpass, youmail (antispam), sirrius, totalwine app, stadia, disney+, youtube, google maps, chrome, google photos

those are my essentials.

WeChat, Alipay, QQ, Taobao, JingDong, Didi Chuxing, Meituan, China Merchant's Bank, Bank of China, Astrill VPN.

That's pretty much my must have apps.

I forgot Youmail.... Single most best call blocker, free version. Works great

Since no single calendar app does everything best I could probably fill this list just with calendars!
So let me twist the rules slightly and consider categories of apps that I require rather than individual apps:

* Launcher: Nova Prime is my default, though I occasionally play with others to investigate different layouts (currently only have ADW installed - works well but Nova has more sophisticated folder handling)
* Calendar: I have several installed, but recently aCalendar+ and DigiCal have been the most used
* Email: I use Nine for work email access (manual sync only, so used only when needed), FairEmail and ProtonMail for personal accounts
* Messaging: currently using QKSMS, as a result of shifting to greater open source usage, but have mainly used Textra and Chomp prior to that. But in reality WhatsApp is used much more than SMS these days (I have Signal and Telegram too, but not so many people use those which limits their usefulness).
* Calculator: the venerable RealCalc (paid version) is my primary, though I find NeoCal more usable for logical operations in hex/binary, and have a couple of others in case I need their specialist features
* Browser: again, I have half a dozen, but use Firefox beta as my primary. I also have different browsers set to use different search engines, e.g. Firefox Focus is used for Google search, while Duck is the default on my primary browser (lazy way of switching, and provides a degree of sandboxing).
* Phone: it is a phone, so it has to have a phone app . Likewise a Contacts app. This is the only category in which the pre-installed apps are my primaries, and one of the few in which the pre-installed app is used at all.
* Gallery: I use F-Stop as my primary, but have Photos pre-installed
* Audio: PowerAmp remains my primary music player, though I have USB Audio Player Pro for serious listening (i.e. with an external DAC/amp), and a few podcast apps (not settled on a single one yet, and probably if I can get it to 2 I'll consider that done).
* Travel: outside of lockdown my live train travel widget is probably the most used, but this is a category that cannot be boiled down to a single app: half a dozen airline apps are all pretty essential, as are a few train booking/ticket apps, and of course some mapping apps (I have 2 open source mapping apps plus Google's Maps as a backup).

Zombie Gunship. A game not an app but essential. Pay for Nova Launcher.

Gmail, Google photos, my Bank app, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google maps.

OT: Most of those apps are built-in @IanPayne

SuperSu, Xposed, ZArchiver, AdAway, Viper4Android, Double Atmos, BusyBox Pro, Touchwiz home mod V8, and Mobdro.