When Google launched Keep a couple of months ago, everyone started comparing it with similar apps that have been around much longer. Although Evernote was the most talked about, there is no dearth of note-taking apps on the web or any of the popular mobile platforms. From plain text solutions to feature-packed mammoths, there is a ton of competition out there.
Having tried and endlessly switched between a whole bunch of apps over the years, I decided to give Keep a shot to check how it fared against some of the others that have come close to being a staple on my Galaxy Nexus.
Text messaging – or SMS – is one of the most fundamental functions on any mobile device. Over the last few years, it has arguably taken over voice calling as the single most used feature on a phone. Sure, there have been numerous threats from internet-based multimedia messaging apps like WhatsApp, Viber, Line and more, but the sheer ubiquity of good ol’ SMS text messages has been hard to beat and has kept the technology alive and kicking.
Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of good dedicated options when it comes to SMS apps on Android. A few stalwarts like Handcent SMS and Go SMS Pro aside, competition has been pretty scarce in this arena. That’s why it’s exciting to see a new contender in Sliding Messaging. I took the app for a spin to check how it fared against Go SMS Pro – which is what I’ve been using for years now. Here’s what I found.
It’s Customization Month on Android.Appstorm! Throughout March, we plan to share with you all our tips, tricks, apps and resources to help you improve your phone or tablet experience and make them suit your style.
What better way to celebrate the end of Customization Month than with some of the most insane examples of Android homescreens out there? The Android customization community is one of the most passionate bunch of smartphone geeks out there and they’re working dilligently every day to outdo themselves and their colleagues to explore possibilities of what you can do with a phone, a bunch of ingenious apps and some insane bursts of creativity.
And one of the best places to see this creativity at work is MyColorScreen, a site that encourages users to share their homescreen setups and discuss them with fellow modders. Without further ado then, here’s a list of some of the most awe-inspiring homescreen setups on Android, hand-picked from MyColorScreen.
It’s Customization Month on Android.Appstorm! Throughout March, we plan to share with you all our tips, tricks, apps and resources to help you improve your phone or tablet experience and make them suit your style.
Android as a mobile operating system has grown tremendously over the last few years and with the last couple of increments has arguably taken over the mantle of the most mature mobile platform over from iOS. One of the things that has made Android as popular as it is today is the extreme customizability. And what better demonstrates this capability than the huge array of launchers and home screen replacements that are available for the platform?
We have already covered launchers on a number of occasions in the past, but the playing field has changed incredibly fast in the last year or so, and so it is time we take another in-depth look at the currently available options for customizing the most intrinsic aspect of your Android experience. This time, we are splitting the list of apps into two sections – the traditional home screen replacements and a newer breed of apps that work on top of your launcher as helpers to give you quick access to your apps from wherever you are.
It’s Customization Month on Android.Appstorm! Throughout March, we plan to share with you all our tips, tricks, apps and resources to help you improve your phone or tablet experience and make them suit your style.
When it comes to customizing your Android home screen, choice is more than abundant. All you need to do is think of what you want, and there’s a good chance it already exists somewhere in the bylanes of the official Play store or in a developer forum somewhere. And for things that are too specific for a readymade solution, there are DIY apps that will let you build your home screen widget from scratch.
Ultimate Custom Clock Widget– or UCCW as it is popularly known — is one such app. With more options than you can shake a stick at, UCCW lets you build your own custom homescreen widgets pretty much the way you like. And although there is a whole community of enthusiastic modders who spend hours fine-tuning their UCCW creations and making them available to anyone to download, there is something to be said for the satisfaction of creating one of your own.
Task management is one of the most saturated app categories on most mobile devices. But in this era of seamless sync and multi-device access, just being a good mobile app doesn’t cut it anymore. Fortunately, the choice in that category is not too slim either.
For more than a few years now, I’ve been a fan of Remember The Milk as my go-to app for managing tasks. After waiting patiently for some meaningful updates, a half-decent web interface and a Windows client, I decided to look for options and came across Todoist, a very old favorite. It was a fledgling app when I had looked at it a few years ago, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it all grown up into a solid contender for the best multi-platform todo app solution.
What followed was a couple months of consistent use on the web, desktop and mobile, a growing respect for how seamless the app works across platforms and a perfectly justified yearly subscription to their premium plan. With a super-snappy web interface that works seamlessly when online or offline, a fully functional Windows app and an actively in-development Android version, the app takes care of all my accessibility needs. But how does the Android app stack up against the seriously tough competition? Let’s find out.
Originally an iOS app, Snapseed garnered quite a following for its powerful photo editing capabilities and also won a few “App of the Year” awards from Apple. In September 2012, Google bought Nik Software, the developer company behind the app and a mere three months later, we have an Android version of the app available to us for free. On a side note, Google also made the iOS version of the app free along with the Android release.
But before I delve into this review, let me get one obvious explanation out of the way – Snapseed is not an Instagram competitor from Google. Instagram, if you didn’t know, is a photo sharing app that lets you apply color effects to your photos and share them directly from your mobile devices. It thrives on its social sharing and community feature, while Snapseed does not have any social features of its own. It is also a more extensive photo editing app than a way to apply readymade filters to your photos.
So with that out of the way, let’s dig into what this latest offering from Google that everyone is talking about really is.
When it comes to media playback on the desktop, few media players enjoy the kind of ubiquitous love that VLC media player from VideoLan does. Over the last few years, VLC has become *the* app of choice for playing all kinds of video and audio files without the hassle of worrying about comapatibility and downloading codecs. The app has been available on a whole host of platforms including Mac, Windows and Linux, but has taken a while to arrive on mobile operating systems — barring a short unofficial stint on iOS before being pulled from the App Store.
All that is about to change now, with the release of the public beta of VLC Media Player for Android on the Play Store. Although it wasn’t the most full featured of apps when it was announced a few months back, the development team has been hard at work adding features at a steady pace along with UI and compatibility enhancements. We will take a look at the current version of the app to try and see how well it stacks up against the host of very capable alternatives that have already established themselves on Android.
“Music” is quite the cluttered category these days on mobile devices – there are the old school music players, radio apps, editing apps and then some creation apps. On the gaming front, the competition is pretty light with a few variations of Guitar Hero style gameplay and not much else. I’m not into the whole guitar-chord-busting genre, but one game that brought back memories of my childhood piano lessons is Smule’s Magic Piano.
If the developer’s name sounds somewhat familiar, you’ve probably heard of their Ocarina app on iPhone a few years back that caused quite a stir with its unique approach to creating music by blowing into the iPhone’s microphone. After a spate of ground breaking and successful apps on iOS and the excellent Songify on Android, they finally decided to bring Magic Piano over to Android. Having craved to see something like the Ocarina on Android, I decided to give Magic Piano a go and here’s what I came back thinking.
It’s National Novel Writing Month once again, time to challenge yourself to write 50000 words in 30 days, no easy feat! But with your Android device by your side, you can keep working on your novel or non-fiction book anywhere and anytime. Throughout this week, we’ll share our best apps, thoughts, and tips to help you achieve that writing goal.
One of the most important aspects of writing – especially long form writing like reports, stories, novels, etc. – is the organization and structuring of content. A lot of people use long lists and sub-lists but unfortunately, for a lot of visually inclined people like myself, this gets ugly and out of control very quickly. I can’t get myself to make any sense of content until I can spatially organize everything for an at-a-glance overview.
One of the best ways to do this is to create mind maps. To quote Wikipedia, “A mind map is a diagram used to visually outline information”. I’ve been creating mind maps for years now, for everything from organizing my financial details to preparing project plans and even content outlines for blog posts like this one. The excellent open source app Freemind was my weapon of choice and has stuck with me, not the least for lack of alternatives. Many online and offline mind mapping apps were available, but none seemed to do the job well enough. So when Mindjet, one of the better commercial desktop mind mapping apps out there, released their Android version for free, I was excited.
