EACH WEEK, WE highlight five apps that are worth downloading for your smartphone and tablet. There are a lot of apps released on a daily basis, but not all of them are worth paying attention to.
This week features a mysterious island, article sharing and an easy way to share photos with those who are near you.
Firefox
For: iOS, Android
Cost: Free
- Considering it’s been on Android for so long, it might seem strange that Firefox’s mobile browser has only made its way onto iOS, but it’s here. And it’s decent.
- Firefox iOS isn’t exactly a feature rich browser, but what’s there is already enough to warrant a look.
- Its biggest strength is managing multiple tabs. It’s much easier to jump between different pages than it is on the likes of Chrome or Safari.
- It has some nice design choices and animations to make things a little more pleasant. Even searching is just typing in the entry in the address bar and tapping the relevant search engine icon (which includes the likes of Google, DuckDuckGo, Twitter, Bing and Wikipedia) at the bottom is a nice touch.
- If you’ve already a Firefox user or have tired of the likes of Chrome and Safari, give this a go.
Point
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- When you share an article, it’s likely you go onto Facebook or Twitter to do just that, but there are other faster ways of doing the same thing, or maybe you want to share it with someone specific.
- Point is all about sharing articles with friends and commenting on them, just your own personal feed that you can chat away. It started out as a Chrome plugin, but is more at home on iOS.
- It works with practically all news apps. Just go into an article, click share and send it to any friends who are signed up (or yourself even).
- It has one of the easier to understand tutorials and set-up processes for an app (even if it is a tad long), but the ability to share articles and quotes is nicely done.
- Handy to have as an app for yourself but it really comes into play when you have friends using it too.
FotoSwipe
For: iOS, Android
Cost: Free
- Sharing photos between smartphones isn’t exactly easy. You either have to email them, put them on Dropbox or some other cloud-based service or upload them and share the link. For others, you can share via NFC but that takes a bit longer to transfer than others.
- FotoSwipe simplifies this process by allowing you to swipe photos to another phone when they’re close to each other.
- You don’t need to have them right beside each other although it’s handy for the first attempt as you’ll either need to have location on or enter a code for a transfer to be successful.
- Once you’ve that out of the way, using it is a cinch and it takes away much of the hassle with sharing photos with those beside you.
- If you’re regularly sharing private photos/videos with friends or family, this saves a lot of time.
Expense
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- We could always do with ways to track what we spend, and since we have our phones on us all the time, there’s no reason why we can’t use it to log in spending habits to help improve things.
- Expense is a simple app that’s all about logging in what you spend. Just enter in the category and amount and let the app do the rest of the work.
- There are 18 different categories to start you off, but there are another 47 categories to add in if you need them. All they use are simple icons to represent each category and it’s very easy to understand.
- The more you use it, the better it becomes at graphing your progress. You can export it as a CSV file (data file) so you can put it into a spreadsheet for further reference.
- If you want to take control of your spending a little more, this is a handy way of spotting patterns, but only if you put the work in.
The Room Three
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- Smartphones have been a great place for puzzle games to breathe and develop. The likes of Her Story and Minecraft: Story Mode are right at home on a portable screen and play to the format’s strengths.
- The Room Three is the sequel to one of the most popular puzzle games on smartphones where you must figure out how to get through each room.
- Those who have played the last two will know what the drill. You must solve numerous cryptic puzzles through a combination of swipes, taps, pinches and other actions as you try to escape a remote island.
- The unsettling nature of the game only adds to the atmosphere and the improvements to the second game, such as actions in one room will impact another, gives puzzles an extra layer of complexity. They are devilishly clever, and you will find yourself blurting out ‘ahhh’ once you stumble upon the right solution.
- Another engrossing entry in the series, and your new obsession.
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