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 gesture-based screen launcher, a game that only requires you to tap very quickly and a way to customise your own GIFs.
Z Launcher
For: Android (beta)
Cost: Free
- Nokia might be better known for producing Windows Phone devices, but the part of the company that wasn’t purchased by Microsoft has entered the Android launcher market.
- Z Launcher is pretty much a home screen replacement that prioritises frequently used apps, contacts and sites so you can access them quickly.
- The screen is gesture based. Instead of scrolling through shortcuts, you draw letters to get the corresponding app.
- The interface is pretty basic (although that’s kind of the point), but over time, it learns what apps you use at what time of day, so your most frequently used apps appear when you’re most likely to need them.
- It’s not an official app though so you have to go through the mobile site to download it. To install it you will need to go into Settings > Security and untick the Unknown Sources box before it will let you download it. Just remember to tick them again after the download is successful.
Nokia Z Launcher / Vimeo
Super Tap Ultra
For: Windows Phone
Cost: Free
- Most smartphone games are pretty basic, normally requiring one tap or two to play properly, but Super Tap Ultra takes this to the extreme.
- The aim of the game is to tap as many buttons as fast as you can, create combos and get the highest score.
- Each screen has buttons with numbers from 1 to 3. Whatever number is displayed means you have to tap the box that many times. The more combos you string together, the faster the buttons appear.
- The screen fills up fast and is weirdly addictive, while the pixel style visuals suits a game like this.
- Just make sure your fingers are in prime condition before you play. That’s all we’re saying.
Fly – edit videos quickly
For: iOS
Cost: Free (contains in-app purchases)
- Video editing apps on smartphones aren’t the best, they’re either too technical or designed for longer videos instead of short, snappy clips.
- Fly lets you edit and splice videos using only gestures. Combining four videos together using touch gestures is surprisingly easy and you can put together a decent video using it.
- Also, it requires you to rotate the phone first so you record in landscape mode, which always a good sign.
- In-app purchases allow you to add extra features like music, voiceover extra gestures and multicam. They’re not necessary, but if you want to take things up a notch, they can come in useful.
- If you shoot videos even semi-regularly, you’re going to get a lot of joy out of this.
Echo Notification Lockscreen
For: Android
Cost: Free
- Getting notifications on Android can be a little overwhelming. If you turn on your phone, chances are you will end up being bombarded by notifications, automatic updates and other information.
- Echo Notification Lockscreen aims to simplify notifications on Android by filtering them. It’s in alpha mode, but don’t let that put you off.
- The screen organises them into different categories. The likes of social, work, and calls are grouped together and given their own dropdown menu.
- Priority notifications will be shown on your screen, allowing you to interact with them like setting a reminder for them to appear later later in the day.
- Essential for those who are bombarded by notifications every day and would like an easier way to manage them.
Sparks
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- Considering how in vogue GIFs are at the moment, Twitter just recently added them in, it’s perhaps an opportune moment for an app based around this to arrive.
- Sparks takes that concept and lets you combine pictures and GIFs with text. Admittedly, it doesn’t sound the most revolutionary concept from first glance, but bear with us.
- You can choose GIFs from across the web or upload your own photos which you can share through the app, on Facebook or Twitter, or embedding them on your site.
- Includes are the traditional filters, which also changes the font used, which is quite nice.
- For those who want to make their tweets and Facebook posts to be more expressive.
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