Can’t leave home without your smartphone? We’ll take it to the next level and say that we can’t have a smartphone without some of our favourite apps. Whether it’s for play (read: music), for work (read: reading), or for time management (read: alarm), we’ve narrowed down some of our top 10 best/favourite free apps for Android phones. We’ve left out the usual social networking ones (read: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Bolt, etc.), of course, because we’re pretty sure that those are already staples in most people’s smartphones.
Here they are:
1. Kindle App
Source: pocket-lint.com
Amazon’s Kindle app is a one-stop marketplace and ebook reader app that seamlessly ties to your Amazon account and lets you access your digital library across all your mobile devices. The app opens up to the Home screen which displays the lists of best sellers, editors’ picks, and popular sample books. You can either tap a book to go inside or long-press to do other things such as going to the beginning of the book, going to the last page read, or removing it from your device altogether. The highly configurable viewer lets you set font size, background and other features to your liking, making for a pretty good overall mobile reading experience. Extra features include a built-in dictionary, as well as Google and Wikipedia searches.
Who needs a Kindle device when you’ve got the app, eh?
Price of app: Free. Download here.
2. Tiny Flashlight + LED
Source: technospot.net
Sure, this sounds like something you don’t need because what, a flashlight? Too simply! But wait, the Tiny Flashlight + LED app is greater than most other flashlight apps out there because not only can it turn your Android smartphone or tablet into a portable torch that lights your way, it also lets you go for solid colours, police-like blinking patterns, and even Morse code messages. No clue why any ordinary person would need to send Morse-coded messages. No clue if we even know anyone who can read Morse-coded messages.
But one thing’s for sure, the strongest pulling point of this app is its powerful widget, which allows light activation with a single tap.
Price of app: Free. Download here.
3. Comics
A fan of comics and in dire need of an app that’ll make it easier for you to fangirl/fanboy all over your favourite comics? The Comics app by Comixology is a great place to start! It serves as an all-in-one comics viewer as well as a digital marketplace. Yup! The app allows you read your favourite titles and to buy and read comics from DC, Marvel, and a bunch of other publishers. That, on top of allowing you to sync your content across multiple devices. There are also specific DC and Marvel versions of the app available for the hardcore fangirl/fanboy in you.
Price of app: Free. Download here.
4. Nova Launcher
Source: technobuzz.net
Looking for a way to truly personalise your phone just the way you want it to look? Try Nova Launcher. The app is fast, sleek, and highly customisable, allowing you to design your home screen (with some very minor limitations) to your liking. Nova Launcher allows for options such as colour themes to icon packs, to icon grids and icon sizes, and scrollable docks to app drawer customisations, plus folder settings and even infinite scrolling. The app’s newer updates allows users to access KitKat UI features such as transparent system bars. By the time you’re done with this app, your home screen won’t even look like the standard Android home screen anymore!
Price of app: Free. Download here.
5. Timely Alarm Clock
Source: droid-life.com
While we’re still on the topic of customising, here, have another app that’ll make your smartphone’s theme complete. The gorgeous Timely Alarm Clock app is both an alarm and a clock. It replicates the functionality of the native Android clock app but boasts a cool resizable widget and customisable themes e.g. animated backgrounds, sounds. On top of that, we especially love how easy the app has made it for us to set alarms and snooze by turning the smartphone on its face. Big plus here too is of course its stylish and elegant night clock design that, yes, you can also customise for yourself. Love it!
Price of app: Free.
6. Spotify
With its 20 million odd track catalogue and major labels from around the globe on board, Spotify is the envy of most major music streaming players. Maybe it’s branding, maybe it’s the selection, but Spotify has long since won over music fans as well as some techies. Truly a star in the music streaming space, the app brings free listening options to its app’s users albeit with an ad-supported shuffle mode. But if you subscribe to Spotify’s USD9.99 premium service (like we have), you get an on-demand playback, ad-free listening pleasure, unlimited skips, and even the ability to download your songs or playlists.
Honestly, USD9.99 for Spotify’s premium service is super value for money. Do it and you might just put your iPod out of business.
Price of app: Free. Download here.
7. Google Drive
Much like Apple’s iCloud, Google’s cloud storage aka Google Drive has lots of perks to offer. For starters, you get up to 15GB storage for free, and once you’ve exceeded that (though we must say that 15GB is a lot so we’re not sure what exactly you’re storing to hit that limit) you can rent 100GB of additional storage for USD1.99 per month. Google Drive has a host platform that’s accessible via web but it also has a smartphone app which looks pretty minimalistic and super easy to navigate, as well as fast and intuitive. With the app, you can store your files and access them wherever you go/are and whenever you need to, thanks to the sync function. So if you’re trying to save/clear up some space on your Android smartphone (or tablet), upload your files to Google Drive!
Price of app: Free. Download here.
8. Copy Bubble
Why scramble to paste the text you’ve just copied on your smartphone into a virtual smartphone memo pad or an empty chat window somewhere to save for later so that you can copy another chunk of text when you can have a handy app to do it for you? The Copy Bubble app lets you to copy multiple elements to a clipboard and then allows you to access them quickly from a, get this, floating bubble widget. All have you do is long-press copy to copy a text or image, after which it’ll be automatically sent to Copy Bubble. After which, you may tap the floating bubble to access your copy history.
It doesn’t sound like that big of a deal now but trust us, it’s one of those apps that will make you ask, “Where have you been all my life?!” because we sure as heck did.
Price of app: Free. Download here.
9. Android Device Manager
Source: opensourceupdates.net
Don’t you hate it when you misplace your smartphone somewhere and just so happens that when you do, it’s on silent? It could have just been accidentally left in your car or at your workplace but for the first few minutes before you remember the last time you saw it, you panic. And panic madly! Luckily, Google’s official phone tracking service helps you locate your phone and it works with any device (smartphone, tablet) linked to your Google account. You just need to access the Android Device Manager through the web interface, which shows your device’s current location on Google Maps. An inset window displays information about your device as well as allowing you to change the device’s name, refresh the location information, remotely wipe your device, activate an alarm, and remotely lock your device.
Price of app: Free. Download here.
10. SwiftKey
They say that this is the best Android keyboard app that Android smartphones have ever seen and it’s hard to disagree. If you’re not familiar with it yet, allow us to introduce you. SwiftKey is an Android keyboard replacement which has previously won the Most Innovative App award at the Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona, Spain. Not only does it understand the patterns in your typing, it’s also good at predicting the next few words that you need to type. SwiftKey also learns from you e-mails, SMS, and social media accounts if you allow it to, in order to make their predictive text feature better. The app also has Android’s Swype-like Flow feature that lets you type by dragging your finger across letters in a single continuous motion.
Oh, you can also customise the look and feel of the keyboard to suit your phone’s theme, if you want. And that’s important because customisation.
Price of app: Free. Download here.
Got any interesting Android apps that you’d like us to check out? Do you have any suggestions for Android apps that you’re currently using and would love to promote? Let us know in the comments box below!