Most popular new apps for Android

It’s been ten years since Android launched on to the scene. And it’s been quite a ride. Now is as good a time as any to hop on board, thanks to the explosion of the Google Play Store in recent years and its proliferation of apps.

The problem with Android

The one big problem with Android apps is that there are just too many to choose from. There are apps to improve your writing skills, count how many steps you walk in a day, and even one which calculates how high you’ve just thrown your phone in the air. Of course, there are ways that you can filter those you may be interested in, allowing you to ignore those you would rather leave well alone. Google compiles a number of recommended apps based on those you’ve previously downloaded so that’s not a bad place to look as a first port of call.

You can also look at the latest releases if you want to see what’s recently made the store. If you want something similar to a particular app already in your collection, you could search for it and see what similar apps are recommended.

The mobile gaming revolution

One area which Android has seen incredible growth in is online gaming. There are sites that have taken the time to research which games – from any industry – work best with Android. They’ve taken into account such factors as graphics, usability and level of entertainment. Mobile gaming opened up numerous opportunities such as playing on the move without suffering restrictions in speed or graphics.

Ratings and reviews

Of course, there’s no shortage of user ratings and reviews, which are an essential part of choosing high-quality apps. The easiest way is to take a look at a list that somebody has compiled for you and that’s exactly what we’ve done for you here with three of our favourite apps to get you started. We’ve included apps that we feel will truly revolutionise functionality, or at least, provide something that is so phenomenal that it becomes one of those apps that you must download at all cost whenever you purchase a new Android device.

There are some free apps in this list and some paid ones. What’s more, they’re all new. If you do put your hands in your pocket for the paid ones, you can rest assured that you’ll be purchasing some quality apps.

Curio (£5.99 p/m)

There are a wealth of intriguing articles on the Web, with new content published on a daily basis. While many are available online for free, the issue is finding enough time to get through them all. Curio doesn’t create that time for you per se but it does read them to you.

That means that you can get the information from them while getting on with those all-important activities on your to-do list. It isn’t a robot synthesised voice, either. They’re read by actual real people (pro voice actors, in fact) so they’re easy to listen to.

There are more than 2,000 articles covering a range of subject matter and from numerous sources including Aeon, Salon, The Financial Times, and The Guardian.

Inware (free)

While simple, Inware has a lot of potential uses that provide an in-depth look at your phone’s specs.

In addition to the basics like camera megapixel, screen resolution, screen size, battery capacity, and the current Android version, it also goes into more advanced stuff.

It can show you each CPU cluster’s minimum and maximum frequency, the version of Android on the phone when it was shipped, each camera lens’ aperture, the screens pixel density and aspect ratio, whether Vulkan and Treble are supported, the battery’s health, and more.

Basically, if there’s anything at all that you’ve ever wanted to know about your phone’s specs, the odds are high that Inware will be able to tell you.

Insect identifier (£4.79)

There are countless apps to help us identify plants but this is the first that lets us identify insects. You either take or import an image of an insect, and Insect Identifier will analyse it before telling you what it is.

It even provides you with a percentage for how certain it is of what it’s telling you, and the results it gives are very detailed, including information on such things as where the insect is typically found and its biology, along with a gallery of images.

Your results can be saved if you wish to view them later. You do have to save them manually or they’re gone forever (or until you see the same kind of insect again).

The editorial unit