Happy 10th Anniversary, Android!
As we celebrate 10 years of having Android in smartphones things have changed a lot since the G1 arrived back in 2008. Now you can find Android on smartwatches, smart speakers, gaming consoles, streaming devices, and smart TVs.
Android’s biggest strength is its app quality. A ton of apps is already available in the Play store. Some come as free apps, some come in paid versions. Usually, most apps would cost you a few bucks to get the best of those apps. However, there are apps that you get to use free because they are supported by ads.
As you know, there are millions of apps available at the Google Play store. Moreover, there are multiple apps with the same functionalities. We have handpicked some of the apps for you from the free and paid list so that you could save your time trying out them all. These are also some of the essential Android apps, which you should be having on your gadgets in 2018.
Alarmy is a must-have Android app for your device if you are one among those who keep snoozing your morning alarm. This app has a unique way of helping you to get rid of your morning laziness. It lays out different types of challenges and puzzles for you to solve before you could put off that ringing alarm.
While setting the alarm, it lets you choose the level of difficulty, for the puzzle or math challenge you prefer to take for snoozing that alarm. This app also features a photo mode where you need to take the snapshot from your camera or upload a picture from the phone gallery to snooze the alarm. Alarmy, also known as “World’s Most Annoying alarm clock app” is a must have app for all those lazy heads.
- AppLock
Applock app is a simple yet powerful tool that helps you to lock your apps with passwords to protect them from snooping eyes. This app proves to be of great help in times when your phone is shared, and used by many others, apart from you. Applock is a free app with in-app purchase facility.
- AppLock can lock Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Messenger, Gmail, SMS, Contacts, Gallery, Settings, incoming calls and any app you choose. Prevent unauthorized access and guard privacy. Ensure security.
- AppLock can hide pictures and videos. Hidden pictures and videos vanish from Gallery and are visible only in the photo and video vault. Protect private memories easily.
- AppLock has a random keyboard and invisible pattern lock. No need to worry about people peeping the pin or pattern anymore.
Bluemail is the perfect replacement for your older email apps. Bluemail, a beautifully designed, free universal email app is capable of managing an unlimited number of emails from various providers, allows group emailing and smart push notifications for enabling personalization across multiple accounts.
Bluemail provides a top-notch email service with a powerfully unified account. It helps to keep your mails in line, provides color-coding for organizations, Android Wear support, app themes, and widgets. Some of the enhanced features include Group mail, Rich Text signature, Mobile printing, Configurable menus, Unread badge Icon etc. Bluemail has certain useful features that help to schedule a mail reminder that is to be sent later, mark all the read emails as done rather than manually deleting them, and also, easy filters to filter emails as unread/starred.
4. Feedly
Feedly is your one-stop place to read, organize and share information. Feedly is used by millions of passionate learners and professionals to follow magazines, blogs, and other sources they find interesting to read. Because Feedly contains more than 40 million feeds, one can really go deep and find the niche content that is specific to your work or passion – a big difference from alternatives that feel very shallow and random in the content available.
Since it’s powered by RSS, Feedly is an open system: you can add any RSS feed and read it wherever you go. It can easily be integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Buffer, OneNote, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Zapier so that you can easily share stories with your networks and teammates. The app loads faster and offers a clean reading experience.
Gboard is Google’s official keyboard. Gboard has everything you love about a smooth gliding keyboard-speed and reliability, glide typing, voice typing using recognition, along with a Google search built in. This reduces the time in app switching- just search and type right from your app screen.
Gboard is intuitively easy to use, fluid flow and supportive app. It also offers features like GIF support, emoji search, multilingual typing, Google translate and many more. Gboards outstanding feature is its inbuilt search option, which allows performing searches while typing. No more app switchings need to be made; it can synchronize easily between devices so our works are always at reach.
Google duo is the best video calling app available in Android today. Its simple and reliable features have already made it the first choice among the users. Google duo has a simple user interface where you can start up a video call with just a tap. It enables to make high-quality video calls on Wi-Fi or on the go.
Google duo is available as a free application on the play store. One outstanding feature of Google duo is the Knock-Knock feature, which gives you a live video preview of the caller before you pick up a call to see who is calling. In case your friend does not take your call, Google duo lets you record a video message and sends them the same. At times when video calls are not possible, you could also make voice-only calls through Google Duo.
Groupon is one of the most famous coupon apps available on Android. It has an appealing interface as well as great deals. All you have to do is just browse for coupons corresponding to the products you wish to buy and then use these coupons while you shop out to redeem the discount.
Though it does not have a coupon for every item you wish for, every coupon gained is a deal. It maintains a personal record of your choices, coupons grabbed until date, their status. You need not print vouchers or clasp coupons; your app takes care of everything.
Imgur and Giphy are both image databases and libraries. Almost every gif you see shared on social media comes from these apps. Imgur is the simplest way to discover the magic of the internet, from images to gifs, videos to movies etc. Giphy, on the other hand, is the fastest, much simpler way to search and share gifs across various social channels such as Facebook, Snapchats, Pinterest, and more.
You can also search and explore for gifs from a wide collection of available items, text, share it in social media or even save them for future use. Animated stickers are the latest trend that has gained popularity among youngsters.
KeePassDroid is a password management app that branches from the KeePass open source project. It is a locker app wherein you can save all your sensitive pieces of information. The information you store can be of any type; your company’s login credentials, important serial numbers and so on.
You can also export your data to proprietary files so that you can transfer the data to new devices. KeePassDroid is a free app with no in-app purchases, simple to use and works well. There are few other password management apps based on KeePass if this doesn’t suit your choices
LastPass is also a password management application. It is one of those must-have apps for your android device. It lets you save and store important credentials securely. One of the main features of LastPass is that it helps to generate nearly impossible passwords that can be used for your accounts to keep them secured.
LastPass is controlled by a master password to manage all these activities. It’s a cross-platform application, so it can be used across computers, mobile devices or tabs. The premium version of LastPass is comparatively cheap. For an added security, you can also go for LastPass Authenticator.
Nova Launcher is a standout amongst other Android launchers around. It is a rich smooth launcher. It is quick, effective and lightweight. Icon packs are accessible in the Play Store to change the look and feel.
It supports dock customizations, notification badges; an alternative to show frequently utilized apps as- a top row in the app drawer, folder and icon customizations, dozens of gestures and numerous others. It additionally has support for application easy routes found in Android Nougat. Its prime version opens a considerable measure of useful features and is definitely worth a try.
Quik is a free video editor for photos, clips, and music. It is a great app for quick video making on the go. With just a few taps, awesome videos are ready. All you have to do is just choose the photos or clips you need to make the video and let Quik do its magic.
Within a few seconds, Quik transforms the pictures and clips to a wonderful video, fills in beautiful transitions, effects and synchronizes everything perfectly to the beat of the music. You can customize your stories, save and share videos with your friends. Editing has never been so much fun.
Tiny Scanner is a scanning application that can scan any type of the document and save them in image format or as PDF. Saved files can be named, organized, shared through emails, and stored in Dropbox or Drives. Tiny Scanner app is lightning fast and gorgeously designed for both phone and tablet.
It comes with a variety of features such as color, grayscale and black & white scan, page size adjustments, page edge automatic detection, Sort scanned items on terms of date, size, type, time etc. Tiny Scanner is an optimized scanner that runs fast and provides protection to documents with a passcode.
Shazam is a famous music recognition application that can instantly identify any song that is played. Music lovers are loving it. All you have to do is just bring your Android device in close proximity to the source where the music is playing and that is it. Within seconds, Shazam will detect the song correctly.
Besides this, you can also play the music on the app and add them to your playlist. All your Shazam searches would be saved in your account so that you can come back to look for your searches at any time.
Swiftkey is a keyboard app, trusted and used by millions. It uses artificial intelligence to learn user intentions and predict what the user intends to type. Its main features include autocorrect and gesture typing along with others, which include inbuilt GIF search engine, an excellent keyboard for bilingual folks, and a wide range of themes.
Swiftkey app values customer privacy. Hence it does not store information from billing and password fields. It is a must-have app on your android device and has been featured among the top android apps.
TickTick is one of the best to-do list apps with most of its important features for free. It handles various organizational features, reminders, recurring tasks, push notifications, and categories. The app lets to share tasks and other features with other people helping it make a family app, small office works or groups app.
TickTick app is full of excellent choices, like To do list, gTasks, along with more professional options like Asana, Trello, and others. It is a great app to list your grocery items before you go shopping. A perfect balance seems to strike between the functionalities and the ease of use.
Unified Remote is one of the go-to applications for controlling your PC from an Android device. It utilizes Bluetooth or Wifi to remotely control your PC and comes preloaded with support for in excess of 90 well-known projects. It supports Windows, Linux, and Mac, and requires a server program to be installed.
Utilizing Unified Remote, you can remotely wake your PC from rest utilizing its “Wake on LAN” feature. All the essential highlights like screen mirroring, keyboard and mouse, media player controls, and so forth are accessible inside this application. You can even utilize it to control a Raspberry Pi or Arduino Yun. Its paid versions open a huge number of helpful features including custom remotes and functions for Android wear.
WPS Office was once known as Kingsoft Office. With the name change, it stays a standout amongst the most prominent office applications on Android. A portion of the feature incorporate viewing and changing over PDFs, doing the essential stuff (documents, spreadsheets, presentations), and more.
It additionally supports wireless printing, support for Microsoft file types, and support for 46 languages. WPS used to be among the best free office applications.
Xender is one of those essential android apps used widely by users these days. You no more need a USB cable to exchange files between mobile device and PC; as particular PC software is not required. It has proven to be much faster than Bluetooth transfers and is a cross-platform app.
It has already been a favorite among millions. It lets you send any type of files without any size restrictions. Various apps from your friend’s phone can be introduced to your own phone when connected successfully and can be shared by one click.
Files Go is a storage management app that helps you to free up space on your phone, find files faster, and share them easily offline with others. With just a few taps, you can free up space more quickly and easily than ever: Delete old photos and memes from chat apps, remove duplicate files, erase unused apps, and clear your cache and more.
It helps to transfer files from Phone to SD card right from the app, to help clear up phone storage space. Before erasing, suggestions would be shown for storage cleanup.
Note: This list has been made considering user ratings, app features, and popularity. You are free to choose any alternatives that suit your need.
