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 sleep patterns, a charged up keyboard and Snake for the modern age.
Pzizz
For: iOS, Android
Cost: Free
- We could all do with a good night’s sleep. And one that will happen again and again over the next few months.
- Pzizz has a few tricks to help you nod off to sleep. For one, it helps you get to sleep with a special soundtrack that changes every time you use it.
- It also focuses on power naps as well and the level of customisation you can have with the app is great. You can settle for the default settings that works just as well.
- The drawback is the amount of space you need for it is pretty significant (279MB for iOS, 139MB for Android) so make sure you have enough free.
- Worth getting if you’re having problems getting some much-needed shuteye.
Arts & Culture
For: Android
Cost: Free
- Google is adding another app to the list on Android, this time focusing on education.
- Arts & Culture is Google’s Cultural Institute site but customised for the smaller screen. That doesn’t make it any less useful though.
- As the name might suggest, it presents artwork and sights together in the one place. You can take 360-degree tours of museums, landmarks and heritage sites.
- You can zoom in on objects, thanks to the detail of images used, and learn about the history of each piece. They’re all grouped using different terms like time period, colour and others. It can be a bit slow at times, however.
- If you’re interested in learning about the past while on the go, it’s not a bad app to have.
Slash Keyboard
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- It’s been more than a year since Apple allowed third-party keyboards on iOS and there are quite a number to choose from.
- Slash isn’t just a normal keyboard. It also includes a built-in search engine so you don’t have to move away from your normal screen.
- While it offers easy access to a few immediate features, it offers a vast number of services to search from like Spotify, YouTube, GIFs, apps, and Wikipedia articles.
- It’s easy to use and you don’t have to make any real compromises to your normal typing experience. You can even add your own text shortcuts as well.
- For those who share or post links regularly, this is a handy keyboard to have at your disposal.
Rayman Adventures
For: iOS, Android
Cost: Free
- Ubisoft has had a good run of form with its limbless character. Both Jungle Run and Fiesta Run were great games in their own right.
- Now Adventures expands on this formula a little by adding new characters and adopting a free-to-play model.
- It’s still an automatic running game, but this time you can change directions. Handy if you missed something in the first run-through or want to find those hidden secrets.
- If there is a criticism, it’s that things can get a bit repetitive. If you haven’t already played Jungle Run or Fiesta Run, this won’t bother you as much.
- A fun experience, but if you’ve played the originals, don’t expect too much different from this.
Square Rave
For: iOS
Cost: €2.99
- Square Rave is like you combined Snake with touch controls, some retro trippiness and electronic dance tracks.
- Your aim is to drag your square, much like Snake, and collect the blue squares that appear. The more you collect, the higher your score.
- The catch is the trail you leave behind when collecting the last blue square becomes solid, and a white line acts as a timer for you to collect them.
- This results in a frantic experience where you rush to collect each square. The harder difficulty levels ramp up the speed only to make it harder.
- It’s tough but those who enjoyed Snake on the 3210 will get a kick out of this.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say