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ReviewsThere’s no shortage of camera apps on Android, with multiple options covering almost every niche imaginable. But sometimes one breaks through the noise with impressive filters or awesome features to wow you.
Pencil Camera HD is one such app. Similar to the popular Paper Camera, it applies sketch-like, painting-style, or texture-overlay filters to your photos and videos, to sometimes-incredible results. Let’s take a look.
Let’s face it: we can do pretty much anything with our phones these days — get our location and see what’s in the area, find people nearby, track packages, get traffic updates and flight updates. And that’s just the stuff we can do with Google Now! If we move beyond the scope of “built-in Android functionality,” there’s a whole other world of things we can do, including complete banking. Online. From our phones.
I found out about Simple, a completely online bank, a little over a year ago and could not wait to try it. In January, my wait was over when I got an invite to try their brand new Android app. Since this isn’t a review of the web app, I won’t go into too much detail about the sign-up process, but I will say that since this is completely online banking — there are no brick and mortar locations — it’s incredibly important that the mobile app works in conjuction with the web service to give you a comparable experience. So how does it stack up? Let’s take a look!
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.
In Android 4.2 there were many new updates such as gesture typing and multiple users. These were the features which took the headlines as they were the most beneficial to Android users. However, one feature which was probably overlooked by the majority of us, including me at first, was Daydream.
Daydream is one additional aspect that users can customise in their Android device and there are apps which enhance it even more. Read on to find out what Daydream actually is and the best ways to use it!
Just like most PCs, Android devices tend to become sluggish with use and need a little maintenance to keep them running like new. I’ve thought about getting my hands dirty and trashing all the junk hiding in my beloved gadgets, but never found a simple way to go about it without potentially ruining them or just losing interest halfway through. That’s why I was glad to hear about Advanced Mobile Care.
A veritable Swiss Army knife of Android tuning tools, Advanced Mobile Care can clean out unwanted files, kill unwanted tasks, sniff out viruses and apps with ads, save battery life, back-up contacts and even password-protect your sensitive files! I’ve been using it for the past couple of weeks and am pleased to report that it is well worth everyone’s time.
To people of a certain age, point-and-click adventure games hold enormous nostalgic appeal. Millions of people fondly remember the quirky blend of comedy, puzzles, and absurd fun from the likes of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, King’s Quest, and their ilk.
The Great Fusion draws its inspiration from the classics of the genre. But it somehow manages to pull the worst that the point-and-click adventure has to offer, with thin dialogue, illogical puzzles, and a need to read the designer’s mind to get anywhere.
It’s hard to recommend, but the low barrier to entry and copious referencing of graphic adventures gone by make the game at least worthy of consideration.
The wonderful thing about playing guitar is that you don’t need sheet music — or even know how to read sheet music — in order to learn your favorite songs. Tablature’s clear one-to-one translation to the strings and finger positions democratizes the instrument that has dominated popular music for much of the past century.
Even better, hundreds of thousands of other guitarists worldwide write and share their interpretations online, providing vast repositories of tabs that give you a head start on just about any published song — popular or obscure.
If you want to tap into this hive mind on your phone or tablet, you could make do with a web browser or text editor…or you could grab an app like GuitarTapp Pro.
With the recent mushrooming of Twitter apps like Falcon, Carbon and Tweetings, it is becoming hard for developers to differentiate their apps and offer unique features. Many focus on power users and implement advanced functions, such as multi-account support and Tweet Marker compatibility.
TweetLine, however, takes a very different approach and emphasizes simplicity and customization: no more complicated screens, overcrowded timelines and hard-to read tweets. It’s all numbed down to an easy-to-use interface that requires very few taps to get something done. The interface is also designed to fit your personal needs, as columns and colors are fully customizable.
I’m terrible at crosswords. I just can’t seem to handle their particular brand of guessing words from cryptic clues. But I’m great at the kind of pattern matching found in word jumbles. Which is why I was delighted to discover that 7 Little Words introduces word finding to the crossword formula — and in a sleek minimalist package, too.
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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.

