Best apps of 2018
Back in the day not that long ago, mostly a decade or two ago people used to say there is a solution for everything.
Fast forward to 2018 where the smartphones are like a third hand for all of us we say there is an app for everything.
True, isn't it?
Today that's what this blog is about, Today I’m gonna be talking about best apps of 2018 in categories.
Social Network:
This Category is not necessary but still, I have to cover it.
So I'm not gonna state the obvious apps like Facebook, Twitter & Instagram that are already installed on your phones.
Instead, I Have a third party app for Twitter.
If you guys have been using Twitter from back in Symbian days you might have used this app.
I've been using this from back then, but when Symbian was dead and new era of iOS and Android have begun I missed this app. But a few months back I found out that this app was available for Android. This is a paid app even back in Symbian days. But It's worth it.
You might ask why? There is a native Twitter app why not use it? Why use third party app?
Well, To be frank, I use native twitter app too but It's not that intuitive, Third party apps are far better than the native app, In these past few years I've used many apps and none of them is as good as Gravity For Twitter. This app is intuitive and much smoother than the Native Twitter app, the one thing I love the most about this app is, you can get back to where you left off, for instance, you are scrolling the twitter feed and you have to do something else so you come out of twitter app, if your phone’s ram management is bad this is what happens. The moment you open your Twitter app again the timeline is refreshed and it goes all the way up to the recent tweets, but this app knows where you left off and it stays there, even if you refresh it by mistake there is this handy little button which takes you right back to the spot where you left off.
This is the one feature I loved the most.
Mail Apps:
This is straightforward I use the Gmail app that comes natively in every android phone you buy, It’s pretty good, I would have suggested inbox for Gmail, but I myself have stopped using it because Google has stopped supporting inbox for Gmail. And it will be gone by the end of March 2019. So there’s that.
If you are one of those guys like me who still use Microsoft email service, then you can use Microsoft Outlook App, But there is one good reason to use this app even if you’re not an outlook user.
You know?
If you want to be notified whenever there is a new email you have to keep your synchronization on, but there is a caveat, once you turn this thing on your battery starts draining.
I always want to get my emails so I had to keep the synchronization on, by compromising a little bit of battery.
Then I found out that you no longer have to keep your sync on if you use Microsoft outlook here’s how
Once you install this app all you have to do is add an email account, go to settings, and then go to notification settings, and there where it says focused inbox only, you have to change it to All emails.
Now you don’t have to keep your sync on and sacrifice your battery to get that important email from your boss.
Streaming Apps:
Gone are those days when you had to find that friend who has all the movies and TV show collections in his Computer. You had to take your flash drive or external hard disk to his home to copy all that or tell him to send those movies from SHAREit app when you guys meet.
Now the time has changed my friend.
After college life most if your friends lose interest in movies or move to other cities.
Downloading Pirated stuff is not an option,
So
Now with Streaming apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime video you can watch all your favorite movies and TV shows in any device you like.
Not just that, now there is a wide variety of original content on Netflix Like:
Stranger things
Narcos
Marvel’s Daredevil
Riverdale
Sacred Games
Little things
And more
.
Even Amazon Prime Video has started to invest in Original content, the library isn't as huge as Netflix but there is content where you can spend hours together Binge watching in the weekends.
Here are some Prime originals you can get hooked.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
Breathe
Homecoming
Inside Edge
The Remix
Lore
McMafia
And more
Cloud Apps:
There are many cloud services where you can upload files and backup your data, but I’ll be suggesting only two apps I use in this video.
I Use Dropbox because I've been using it for a long time and it's quite easy and handy the limit is very low when you sign up but as I said I’ve been using Dropbox service from a long time and to be frank Dropbox is very easy to use and secure. And there is a way to increase your 2GB limit.
All you have to do is invite your friends to join Dropbox by sending them invites.
You have to go to Settings
Invite friends to get free space
Once you’ve done that.
You’ll receive 500 MB of free space for each friend who installs dropbox.
Now I have 10 GB just by doing this.
Everyone who has a Gmail account gets 15 GB cloud storage by default.
If you want to increase that you’ll have to opt for a paid subscription plan from different plans offered by Google.
But the reason I use Google Drive is The suite of apps that are attached to it. It includes Google Docs, Google sheets, google slides, google photos, Gmail, Google calendar and google keep.
Since we're talking about cloud storage there is an added advantage if you use Google Photos.
You can upload unlimited photos to google photos, but the caveat here is that you can't actually upload your image in actual quality instead google uploads it in the highest quality which isn't that bad if you want to upload your friend’s birthday party photos which aren't that important as your wedding photos.
But if you own a pixel device you can upload unlimited photos and videos In actual quality. For three years.
Music Apps;
It's 2018 I know most of y'all use streaming services to listen to music. I do that too.
But I still have a huge collection of Discographies of my favorite artists in High-quality MP3 or FLAC format. So I still copy gigabytes of songs to my phone to play those high-quality songs. The default music player in any android phone doesn't make my ears happy as this app does.
This is another one of my apps that I've been using from many years In all the android devices I’ve ever used.
PowerAmp: is a powerful music player for Android.
It plays all audio formats, Equalizer in this app is awesome, Bass and treble can be adjusted and one more thing I love about this app is the gesture-based interface. But you need to enroll as a beta tester I guess.
Overall this app is amazing, you can try out the trial version for 15 days and if you liked it you can purchase the unlocker.
If you’re a prime member this app lets you stream music, the library is decent. You almost get all songs and the main thing I love about this app is its ad-free unlike the next app in our list.
Wynk Music is the most popular music streaming app in India if you are an Airtel postpaid customer you can stream unlimited songs and download unlimited songs. But the thing I hate about this app is the ads. But it doesn’t bother that much since I use this app only when I wanna rarely listen to some Indian music, because the library of Indian music is vast, not just Bollywood, other regional languages like Tamil, Telugu is also huge.
But still, the ads here are really annoying.
You can remove the ads by monthly or annual subscription which is really cheap.
That's a good thing.
Password Manager:
Keeping the same password for all your online accounts is not secure, or keeping your own birthday or your spouse, children or your cat’s name is not secure either.
So what's the solution you ask?
That's what I’m gonna tell ya.
A Password Manager does all the heavy lifting and makes your life easy.
My choice of Password Manager is LastPass
.
LastPass is one of the top Password managers out there.
- You can store all your usernames and password of all your online accounts securely in an encrypted vault.
- You can autofill in all apps and websites without even typing your username and password.
- Syncs all your login credentials and its available to all your devices across the board.
- You can log in to your LastPass app with Fingerprint.
- Creating secure passwords in one click with the built-in password generator.
I’m currently using the free version of this app
But soon I’ll be upgrading to LastPass Premium for additional features like
- Unlimited sharing of passwords.
- 1GB encrypted file storage.
- Premium multi-factor authentication like YubiKey.
- Desktop fingerprint authentication.
LastPass Premium is pretty cheap at $24 a year.
For the security, you get the price you pay is pretty reasonable.
Podcasts & Audio Books:
People change as they grow. You still cannot enjoy the songs you used to love when you were a teenager. Eventually, you’ll grow. Things tend to change as you grow, in the pivotal moment of your life that is mid 20’s. You change, things you like will change. You’ll start reading Nonfiction, biographies and inspirational books instead of Action thrillers and science fiction books.
In this fast-paced world, you cannot read while you have to travel miles to work, in your vehicle or a public transport. But you still can feed yourself intellectually by listening.
Is my choice of Podcast application. It’s a paid app, very cheap.
And I've been using this app over a year now.
I find all my tech-related podcasts here that’s the category I listen to the most.
TWIT (This Week In Tech) is the channel I listen to keep myself updated on what’s new in the tech world.
Android central or android authority if I want to listen to android related stuff and tech shows.
iMore or iOS today if I wanna listen about apple events and apple things.
When I feel like I need a diversion and I listen to something science related stuff or TED Radio Hour
Science Vs or Cracked are the channels I listen to when I’m not listening to tech-related channels.
This is blissful, I love reading but I cannot read that often like before when I was in college.
So the number of books I read in past few years reduced drastically.
But from past one and a half year, because of audible, the number of books I read has increased.
Audible is my all-time favorite app, Amazon started their company selling books, so their book library is humongous. I bet you will find every book you’ve ever heard in Amazon audible.
This app is pretty simple and straightforward.
If you have Amazon account all you have to do is install Amazon audible app, log into your Amazon account, you will get a free book as a trial for the first month. If you are a book lover I am sure this trial period is gonna blow your mind. After that, there is a subscription of $14 per month. In that $14 you'll get a credit which is as good as one book. You can purchase any book with one credit.
I love Amazon audible but the price is pretty steep isn't it?
This is where the next app kicks in.
The app is designed especially for playing audiobooks.
Assumed that you have audiobooks and already copied them to your phone.
First 30 days Full version. Later - Basic version.
Assumed that you have audiobooks and already copied them to your phone.
First 30 days Full version. Later - Basic version.
This app does the basic stuff what every other audiobook player does.
But There are some features that made me love this app
- Boosting volume if your MP3 file has low volume levels.
- Classification of books and downloading book covers from the internet
- Playback speed control
- Specifying a root folder containing all the audiobooks. This is really easy because whenever you get a new audiobook file all you have to do is copy it in that specific folder & your audiobook automatically shows up in this app.
After one month trial period I bought this app for $2.
File Explorer:
Right now there is a discount going on for the holiday season.
I’ve used a lot of file explorers in Android devices and none of them is as good as this one.
This app is full of features for power users like me. That's why I freaking love this app!
- This App’s got an awesome material design
- I think this is the only app that has two independent panels, this is handy because you can drag and drop files between panels like a PC.
- Cloud file manager is available so you can access all your cloud services like Dropbox. Box, Onedrive, google drive and more.
Keyboard:
This keyboard app comes default with most of the android phones. But I never used it.
I used Swiftkey like most of them, It's a good app with the awesome and fully customizable interface.
But the moment I saw the hidden and extraordinary features in Gboard I ditched Swiftkey and started using Gbaord.
Gboard is customizable too, to some extent.
But as I said the hidden handy features like.
Gestures on this keyboard are so handy, for instance.
- Holding the backspace key and swiping left erases the entire word or a sentence as long as you drag.
- You can navigate easily by holding the spacebar key and dragging left or right,
- Holding the shift key and dragging to any letter will make it caps.
- Double space acts as a period.
- Adding shortcuts. Like you can add HT for hey there, SY for see ya.
How Awesome is that!?!
There are other amazing features like Inbuilt google search and google translate.
Gboard also has cool themes & customization options.
You can change the background color or set a custom image or select from wide range of themes available. My favorite is black.
Notes:
You can’t remember everything that's going on your day to day life.
You think you can remember but at the end of the day you end up trying to remember what your boss said about that project. Or worst case scenario you forget something your new acquaintance said and you can't even contact him because you won't be having his number or address.
So the best way to remember everything is by taking notes. You don't even have to carry a notepad and pen like you're in the 80s.
Like I said before, THERE IS AN APP FOR EVERYTHING.
There are many apps to take down notes, but these are the apps I’ve been using for many years and it has been working fine, so far.
This is the first ever app I’ve heard and have been using ever since android phones sizes were 3 inches.
Yeah for a long long time this was the only app I've been using for taking notes. Even on a computer, because it syncs across the board. I tale down a note and BOOM, Its right there in your computer. This might not seem a big deal but back in the day when I first witnessed it was like magic.
Anyway, speaking of the functions of this app. This app is pretty straightforward.
- Taking notes is very simple and it works like charm.
- You can directly click a picture from the app and save it as a note or take an audio note, attach a file, scribble something in your own handwriting if you're in a hurry.
- Making todo lists to keep you organized
- Set reminders to keep on yourself ahead of the game.
- Keeping this handy little widget will help you take notes in no time. Or if you yous nova launcher premium like I do you can do this.
This is the Secondary app that I which is made by Google.
This app does almost all the things the previous app does.
But the reason I use this app is simple.
Its made by Google and the integration is amazing,
If I'm writing something in my google docs and if I want to access my google keep or google calendar, its right there.
And moreover, I need two different apps for two different things,
I work a day job for that I use Google keep and I use Evernote to organize my youtube and social media posts.
For which the links can be found down below in the description.
This is not much of a notes app.
This is a documents app with default templates and stuff for your ease.
But for the most part, I use Docs to script my videos and I use it as a replacement for Microsoft Word.
Because this is much easier because of accessibility I get here.
I can write or edit anything anywhere on the go all I need is a web browser and an internet connection. I don't have to go through the hassle of downloading a separate application to all my device. ANd the best part is I can save or download it any format I want (documents, PDF or even EPUB)
That's great, isn't it?
Sumup:
This are the apps you should be using if you use an Android device I've mentioned apps categorized in different categories.
