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 includes a way to keep all your instant message notifications in the one place, a quick way to filter through your camera roll, and a keyboard that translates what you write.
Snowball
For: Android
Cost: Free
- Considering just how many instant messaging apps are out there, it can be a little annoying having to find and cycle between them all when replying.
- Snowball creates a central hub for all the major messaging services on your phone, allowing you to view them all in the one place. FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Snapchat, Twitter DM and others are covered here.
- If you’re familiar with how Facebook messages used to appear via Chatheads, the same principle works here. A bubble will appear on your screen, which you can hide if it gets in the way.
- It’s in beta though so don’t expect it to be perfect the first time round. Also, it’s better to think of it as a place to keep all message notifications together, if that helps.
- A genuinely useful app that’s going to save you a lot of time if you’re regularly jumping between apps.
Flic
For: iOS
Cost: €0.99
- Ever since Tinder came out, there have been numerous apps which copied the swipe right to accept formula in the hope that it would stick. In most cases, it didn’t.
- However, Flic is one of the rare exceptions where this idea works, simply because it deals with photos.
- Once it accesses your camera roll, you will go through each photo you have with two options: swipe right to keep or swipe left to delete.
- As expected, the format is intuitive and lends itself well to images. It’s unlikely you will spend too long considering which ones to keep or get rid of.
- One for those who have hundreds of photos saved onto their phone and need to filter through them somehow.
Wave Master
For: Windows Phone
Cost: €1.99
- Practically all smartphones come with an audio recorder of some sort, but when they don’t, the majority of third-party apps leave a lot to be desired.
- If you want to take things a step further when recording something, Wave Master will allow you to do just that.
- It’s a versatile tool. You can record and modify audio files (or import them from OneDrive or your music library), and despite being on the small screen, it manages to fit in a plethora of effects and editing tools.
- On top of that, you can import your tracks to SoundCloud or your phone as a MP3, WAV or ACC file.
- It only works with Windows 8.1 mind, but if you’re regularly recording notes or work on the go, it’s a handy tool to use.
Camera51
For: Android
Cost: Free
- Considering how flooded the photo and camera apps market is, it’s not enough to just have a camera with a few editing tools. Some are looking for other ways to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.
- So here is Camera51, which describes itself as the ‘first real smart camera’. Instead of waiting for you to take a picture, it tries to find the best shots before you snap.
- In its most basic form, it looks for the best angle or lighting for a shot by directing you to the best frame via a aim-box (it works better in practice).
- It does this by analysing faces, frames, scenes, objects, lines and guides to help achieve this.
- If you want to take some of the work out of getting better photos, this is a good way to bridge the gap in skill, just make sure you have a decent phone to run it.
Translator Keyboard
For: iOS
Cost: €1.79
- It’s less than a month since iOS 8 arrived but with it, a wave of third-party keyboards have quickly followed it from traditional swipe gesture versions to GIF keyboards.
- Translator Keyboard is a little bit different. As the name suggests, it’s able to translate what you type into another language automatically.
- Likewise it can translate to 40 different languages and from 30 different languages, type in your message and then ask it to translate.
- That said, it is a little rough around the edges. Typing and editing can feel slow and there’s no voice to text function, which isn’t the end of the world, but stops you from writing out longer messages.
- Still, it has a lot of potential and for what it is, it’s a handy way to writing short messages without having to leave iMessage or any other app.
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