Showing posts with label FREE Android apps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FREE Android apps. Show all posts

Top 5: Free Android Texting Apps

If you're still paying for texting, you might want to sit down, because we have some news for you. Instant messaging apps are slowly taking over and replacing SMS messaging on smartphones. Free and usually easy to navigate, users are making the switch to save money on text messaging rates and text their friends overseas. Some of these apps are cross-platform, and others have a group-messaging feature, encryption, and much more. So we've decided to round up the top five texting apps available for Android.
Skype
5. Skype
Free Although it's not the best communication app for Android, Skype is definitely useful for keeping in touch with certain people like long-distance relatives or friends. Users can place free voice and video calls and also send instant messages to other Skype users on almost any device. When placing a video call, you can switch between your front and rear facing camera. Now with a revamped interface, Skype has a whole new look and a few new features, such as sending video messages to offline users.
Google Voice for Android
4. Google Voice
FreeGoogle Voice offers low-cost international voice calls and unlimited free text messages for your unique Google Voice number. The app also includes group messaging, offline voicemail, and conference calling. Users have the option to read transcripts of their voicemail (though this depends on the quality of the call, making it a far from perfect feature) and record their incoming calls. One thing to keep in mind is that when placing domestic or international calls, Google Voice for Android will use minutes from your cell phone plan, so watch out.

TextSecure
3.TextSecure
FreeAre you paranoid about your texts being seen or accessed by someone other than the recipient? If you are, then this is the app for you. TextSecure has you create a password upon startup and then proceeds to enter your existing SMS and MMS messages into an encrypted database. You can also send secure texts from the built-in messenger app or participate in a group chat. One downside is that the text is only encrypted when the recipient is also using TextSecure. On the up side, the settings on this app are pretty powerful, giving the user a range of options. The app itself isn't perfect, but it is certainly a viable option for someone who is looking for a decent secure texting app.

WhatsApp
2.WhatsApp
FreeOf all the texting applications available, WhatsApp probably has the largest user base. It supports Android, iOS, Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows Phone smartphones. Feature-wise, it has a few more customization options than your standard text-messaging service: multimedia messages, inserting emoticons, and changing the conversation's wallpaper are among its abilities. Another awesome feature is the group messaging with titles you can edit. What makes WhatsApp better than regular texting is the ability to leave the conversation to avoid pesky notifications after you've had your say. Unless you're satisfied with your existing instant messaging app, then you'll definitely want to try this one out.

Viber
1.Viber
Free This VoIP app aims to improve users' talk and text experience with some impressive features like OS integration, group chatting with up to 40 people, no ads, and push notifications even when the app is off. You can save money in the process when you send free calls and text messages to other people who use Viber (though it only applies when you're on a WiFi network). Users also have the ability to transfer their conversation (voice or text) to their desktop provided they have the Viber software installed. The app itself is well-designed and if you're looking to save money in voice calls (especially to other countries), Viber might be what you're looking for.

Source pcmag.com
Top 5: Free Android Texting Apps

Find, stream, and download MP3 tracks or entire albums with MP3Jam

MP3 Jam

Everybody know it: spend some time and effort on Google, and you’re likely to find a download link to any mp3 track that you are interested in. But you don’t really have to do this, because there are many free desktop programs that can find mp3 downloads for you from many sources across the internet, from a single interface. MP3Jam is such a program.
MP3Jam Screenshot


MP3Jam is a free app that can search, play and download MP3 tracks for you. Nothing too unusual there. But what is noteworthy about it is that it has the ability to download entire albums as well, which it does very well. MP3Jam will also let you instantly share what you are listening to over Facebook and Twitter.
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FREE vehicle simulator with accurate physics and sweet crashes

Rigs of Rods

Have you ever wanted to see what it would look like if you crashed your car into a telephone pole? Are you a student of physics, either professional or amateur? If you said yes to either of these questions, you may want to check out Rigs of Rods, a project that is part simulator, part game and part physics experiment.

Rigs-ScreenShot00013


While it doesn’t fit perfectly into any of these categories, blurring the lines between them, it does stand out as one of the most interesting free and open source programs I’ve seen in any of those genres. The physics engine that powers ‘Rigs of Rods’ is one of the best you’ll find anywhere. (Rigs of Rods is multiplatform: WIndows, Linux, MacOSX.)

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Best free iPhone games of all time

Not all iPhone games require you to pay 99 cents or more to download them. So what are the best free games for the iPhone? These selections are worth paying for even though they won’t cost you a dime.

Words with Friends Free

Who would have though that Apple’s iOS platform was the perfect platform for extended games of Scrabble-like board games? Words With Friends Free is exactly that -- a brand of Scrabble that you can play against your friends by taking turns, over the Internet, at your own pace. Each player places a word and submits it to Words With Friends, which vets it to make sure it really is a word, and keeps score. You can play up to 20 games at a time, with as much time as you want between turns -- it’s all up to you. And best of all (yes, better than free), you can play Words With Friends cross-platform, against players on Android phones as well as iPhones or iPads.

Angry Birds Free

Mentioning Angry Birds here feels like paying homage to the king, but the free version of Rovio Mobile’s inescapable and iconic casual bird-flinging masterpiece is actually a really solid game. First off, it features 15 levels that aren’t available in any other version of the game, which is at least something of an incentive to check it out. Secondly, it features the same very solid gameplay mechanics that make the paid version of Angry Birds work so well. Angry Birds Free is ad-supported and not nearly as cool as the full version of the game -- that sometimes gets updates with additional levels -- but it is a free version of Angry Birds that rewards your frugality with unique stages to play through.

Sudoku 2

Anyone who’s given Sudoku a try in the puzzles section of a newspaper knows how addictive it can be. The logic game has a simple premise, yet can be incredibly difficult. You have a grid of 81 squares, and that grid is divided into larger blocks that each contain nine squares. The key to the game is to make each column, row and block contain all numbers 1 through 9 without repeating. Once you understand the rules (for example, when you fill in a blank square with a 6, there can’t be another 6 in the same line either horizontally or vertically), the game becomes interesting as you start to use logic to fill in blank squares and eliminate numbers that could potentially fill them. Sudoku 2 is a beautiful, free way to play Sudoku on your iPhone, and it’s as addictive as it is elegant. The game provides all the features you would get if you were playing with a pen and paper, including the ability to mark squares with hypothetical numbers that could occupy them as you continue to eliminate options. It’s packed full of puzzles of varying difficulties and seems to go on forever.

Unblock Me Free

There are tons of puzzle levels in Unblock Me Free, even though it’s a demo game for its paid counterpart. The premise is simple, even though the game is challenging: in each square level, you have a series of wooden rectangles that are placed together in the grid. One of the pieces is colored, and this one you’re trying to slide off the screen. The blocks can move horizontally or vertically, but only in the direction that they’re smallest side is facing – in other words, you can’t move the blocks sideways. Even the beginner puzzles are a decent challenge. Unblock Me has an addictive nature that will draw you into its free puzzle-solving charms for a good long time.

Hanging With Friends Free

After the hugely successful Words With Friends, Zynga’s new take on the traditional hangman game is another winner. With the same drop-in-and-play vibe as Words, it’s a game that players can dip in to at their own pace. Create words for your opponents and see if they can solve them. There are lifelines and hints available if you get stuck (plus an in-app store where you can buy more coins), but get five words wrong in a game and you’ll lose. This word game doesn’t pack the same strategic punch as Words With Friends, but it’s still fun to pick up and play now and again.

Paper Toss 2.0

The follow up to mega-hit Paper Toss offers even more time-wasting fun for free. The original game was downloaded more than 100 million times, but the sequel takes things to a new level. More than just paper, you get to throw bananas, grenades, tomatoes and more, all in new, improved settings with crisper, cleaner graphics. The game’s dynamics remain similar, but the gameplay has been refreshed and improved to increase replayability. Factor in more power-ups, more people to throw things at, more unlockable items and Game Center leaderboards and Paper Toss 2.0 adds up to a heap of fun.

Fruit Ninja Lite

Here’s a prediction. A few minutes with the free, trial version of Fruit Ninja, and you’ll probably want to fork out the 99 cents for the full experience. Fruit Ninja Lite lets you sample just the classic mode, but omits the excellent arcade, Zen and multiplayer modes avaiable in the paid-for version. Still, what you get for free is a lot of fun: as fruit flies across the screen you must slash it with your finger like a samurai, but watch out for bombs or it’s game over. It’s a dynamic that’s perfectly suited to the iPhone’s touchscreen and furiously addictive.

Six-Guns

There’s an awful lot to explore in Six-Guns, and what’s more, it’s all free. Sure, you can use in-app purchases to speed things up a bit, but developers Gameloft make it clear in their description that you can play through the entire game without spending a dime. Set in an old West environment, Six-Guns is an open-world cowboy adventure with plenty of varied missions to enjoy, usually involving gun-totin' and horseback ridin'. Though the storyline and plot isn’t the greatest, play often and your character will gain access to better weapons and you can hone your cowboy skills no end.

Poker by Zynga

Developer Zynga hit the jackpot with this one — it’s the most popular Texas Hold’em poker game in the App Store and on Facebook with an an estimated 6 million people playing their hands every day. If you’re just a beginner, it’s easy to pick up and learn, but if you’re a more seasoned card shark, there are also plenty of competitive tables available. It’s easy to chat with your fellow players and various tournaments could see you winning thousands of chips to keep you playing that little bit longer.

Amazing Breaker Free

This free, trial version of Amazing Breaker, is an excellent physics-based puzzler with plenty of ice-smashing action. There’s 16 levels to try here, and you’re pretty likely to get hooked and want to upgrade to the full game. With universally positive reviews, this challenging puzzle game sees you blasting ice sculptures with bombs. You need to destroy at least 90 percent of each sculpture to move on, so the trick is to demolish every little fragment of ice, and therein lies the challenge. It’s easy to learn, but hard to master like the best and most addictive games.

Best free iPhone apps of all time

What are the best free iPhone apps worth downloading right now? Although there are a lot of great free iPhone apps to choose from, time is money and here we are recommending the best free iPhone apps of all time.

Skype

Used to be that Skype was cool but not particularly useful. It allowed users to make phone calls to computers for free, which was nice, but in many ways it was a replacement phone service, with users buying minutes to make calls to other phones. No more, however -- Skype received a massive update in early 2011 that added free Skype-to-Skype video calling that has totally changed the game. Users can use their iPhones to video conference with users who are on their computers, or even other iOS and Skype-enabled TVs. In fact, all Skype-to-Skype calls are now free, and calls work over a Wi-Fi connection or using your phone’s 3G Internet connection. Instead of being stuck finding a Wi-Fi connection to have a video conference call, Skype lets you do it no matter where you are.

Pandora Radio

Free, streaming Internet radio is Pandora’s bag, but it’s set apart from other services, such as AOL Radio, because Pandora generates “stations” based on your specifications and preferences. The more time spent with Pandora, rating songs and making stations, the better the service gets at predicting songs you’ll like and playing them. It’s a good way to get turned on to new music and an alternative to eating up iPhone hard drive space with music files.

Dropbox

There are services with a Dropbox account you can pay for, but the bare bones – an online space in which you can drop files from your computer and retrieve them on your phone – is all free and works great. It’s an especially handy way to upload items that get saved on your phone (like photos) to free up memory space. Add music and movie files to your online Dropbox account and you can retrieve them, and play them, on your phone too.

NPR News

If you only choose one news app, make it NPR’s well-rounded, overflowing offering. Not only does it include standard text stories like you’d find in other apps, you can stream the radio network’s broadcasts. The app also links up to various NPR programs and blogs, and lets you save your favorite local NPR stations so you can listen to them anywhere and stay up-to-date on national and world events.

Amazon Mobile

Speaking of shopping, Amazon’s app easily condenses everything cool about the online marketplace into one handheld, easily navigable place. The app’s search feature is especially handy when you see something in the real world and want to order it immediately, but you can also save items for later consideration. A home page that links you up to daily Gold Box deals is a thoughtful touch, and it’s all blessedly simple.

Evernote

You’ve got your iPhone with you pretty much all the time, right? So if you have an idea or need to remember something, what better item to use to document it? Evernote makes taking and keeping notes ludicrously easy, and in several forms: as lone text, as voice recording, or even coupled with a photo. Notes can be saved and searched, as well as synced online with a web-based Evernote account.

Facebook

Users of the social media website will find everything necessary to stay connected with this app. Its home page is your Facebook news feed, but posting status updates or searching for friends’ profiles each require touching only one button. This app offers a ton of social connectivity and continues to get regularly updated to include new Facebook features like the Timelines, integration with Places so you can check-in when you're out and about, plus better photo sharing capabilities.

Yelp

You’ll find yourself jumping into the Yelp app every time you’re considering a new restaurant or wondering if a service or store is worth your time. Especially in larger cities, this database of reviews for businesses is enormous and will save time and energy determining things like where to take your car for a tune-up or where to get a delicious and cheap meal. There are also lots of ways to interact with other users to find and keep track of the best businesses in your area.

Kindle

Amazon’s e-book business doesn’t require the use of the company’s Kindle e-reader if you’ve got an iPhone -- it just requires the free Kindle app. With it, users can purchase books straight from Amazon’s book store and read them right in the app. Even better, all the books you purchase are downloaded from Amazon’s digital locker stored online, so you can use the same Kindle account on multiple devices, including an actual Kindle reader, an iPad or an Android device. The app also keeps track of your progress through your books over all your Kindle apps.

Instagram

The winner of Apple's coveted "best app of 2011" award, Instagram is a huge hit which has revolutionized sharing photos via iPhone and iPad. While the regular camera on your iPhone does a decent job, Instagram helps spruce-up your images by applying lots of cool filters and lens effects to give your images a unique look and feel. But what makes Instagram a success is its sharing capabilities. Once you're happy with your retro-looking shot, it's easy to upload it and it share it quickly with friends. Instagram makes the whole process simple and seamless, offering unlimited uploads for iPhone users who love to document their day with pictures.

New Android apps worth downloading: Amazon Cloud Drive Photos, Air Patriots


Amazon’s Cloud Drive service is now available for your Android device, allowing you to save and share your photos. Air Patriots changes the tower defense formula by adding the option to move your defensive units to respond to threats.

Amazon Cloud Drive Photos (Free)

 
What’s it about? Amazon expanded its cloud drive service, making it available to users for music and e-books to include photos. That means you can save photos from your Android device to a cloud space and never worry about storing them on your device.

What’s cool? First up, you get 5 gigabytes of free storage space when you use Amazon Cloud Drive Photos. You can upload your shots in either one album or as individuals, and the app applies a cool UI for viewing your shots as well. When you create Cloud Drive albums, you can share them through Facebook and Twitter.

Who’s it for? With a full Android device hard drive or SD card, Amazon Cloud Drive can be a lifesaver, especially if you like to shoot a lot of photos. It’s even better if you use a lot of Amazon’s other services.

What’s it like? You can get similar functionality with cloud saves and photo uploads out of Dropbox, and you can use Amazon’s cloud drive features for music with Amazon MP3.

Air Patriots (Free)

What’s it about? Another app from Amazon, Air Patriots is a sort of mobile tower-defense title in which players draw the path of their planes across maps in order to attack targets.
 
What’s cool? Mixing tower defense with line-drawing games such as Flight Control, Air Patriots gives you the ability to move your defenses in order to respond to changing threats as the game progresses. What that means is that it mixes the strategy of the tower defense genre, in which you put down your towers in order to take down attacking forces, and mixes it up quite a bit. There are also a number of modes and more maps you can snag with in-app purchases.

Who’s it for? Tower defense fans should give Air Patriots a look, as it’ll give them a different take on the genre and allow them to try working on new strategies.

What’s it like? Flight Control is an obvious parallel, but for another different take on tower defense, try Anomaly: Warzone Earth.

Download the Appolicious Android app

Analytics App for Android by Google

Attention Android fans, Google has just launched a Google Analytics App for Android-enabled mobile phones.
The Google Analytics App for Android is a mobile app that delivers essential analytics data to you anytime, anywhere. In a meeting and need traffic or sales figures quickly? No more having to wait until you can access your desktop PC to see important stats – with the Analytics App, they are all now at your fingertips.

You can see real time statistics, customizable dashboards and intelligence reports directly on your phone with the Google Analytics App. It allows you to access the same accounts and profiles you see when you open Analytics from a desktop browser, but the reports are delivered in an optimized format for your phone.

The following *swipe through* reports are available:

Real-Time: See the number of visitors you currently have and a list of the pages (for websites) or screens (for apps) that are currently popular.

Dashboard: Monitor the KPIs and user metrics you care about the most. By default, you’ll see your Daily Unique Visitors and your Goal Conversion Rate, but you can customize the dashboard to change which reports, metrics, or segments you see.

Automatic and Customized Alerts: Google Analytics detects statistical anomalies in your data and can send you an alert when something unusual happens. See automatic alerts, or customize your settings to send alerts based on your own benchmarks.

The Google Analytics app is available from here and currently has an average user rating of 4 stars, based on over 400 reviews to date.

10 FREE Android apps

Good news for Android users: this is the first sequel to our recently published article entitled “10 FREE Android apps”. This one will showcase 10 terrific Android apps that will rock your world, or, if not, will at least make you a very happy Android user!

1. MyPhoneExplorer: manage your contacts, messages, SMS’s etc. and back them up to your PC

MyPhoneExplorer Screenshot1MyPhoneExplorer Screenshot2
Now that we share our data with so many services, all of them are suddenly converging onto our smartphones and trying to populate our contacts list, from Outlook to Skype to your Facebook and Google account(s), to those contacts that may be saved on your phone’ SIM card, etc. If you’ve ever wished that you could manage all of my contacts in one place,  then this app is for you.
MyPhoneExplorer connects your Android with your PC, via a cable connection or wirelessly. It lets you sync, backup and manage your contacts, your calendars and tasks, your SMS messages, your call-lists, your files,
Note that you need to download and install the local PC client as well, which you can get from this page. [Thanks go to Chris, Alex, and other readers of our first article for letting me me know about this software].

2. Listen: a stylish, powerful podcasting client

Listen Screenshot1Listen Screenshot2
[UPDATE: it seems that this app is not available in every country; I can tell you that it is downloadable in the US]
One of the things I love the most about having a smartphone is being able to plug it into a speaker (at home or in the car) and to listen to my favorite podcasts. My search for the best free podcasting app has lead me to this app, which is not perfect by any means, but is stylish, ad-free, and powerful.
What I like about ‘Listen’ is that it gives you a lot of options for what, when and how many episodes to download. For example, in the screenshot above/right I set the app to download new podcasts once a day, only when connected to WIFI, only when charging, and to keep 20 podcasts as a maximum.
Listen is a powerful and flexible program, but it’s interface can be made better and simpler, and takes some getting used to. I can see myself replacing it with another program that comes along, although I have so far found it preferable to many that I tested (I also like that is is ad-free, unlike many others). If you know of a good podcasting client, please let me know in the comments section.

3. CloudPipes: sync Dropbox folders with your Android automatically (or any folder on your PC, for that matter)

CloudPipes11-run-manuallyCloudPipes10-WIFI-and-plugged-in-settings
I’m assuming that you already have Dropbox installed on your Android as a given. Cloudpipes, a free and ad-free Android app is different from Dropbox in that it provides automatic, scheduled, two way syncing with your Android. For example, you could add or download music or video files to a folder on your PC overnight and find that they’ve been downloaded on your device the next morning when you want to watch them on the bus (as opposed having to download manually them on the bus, as with Dropbox).

4. Dashlane: store your passwords securely in the cloud, and access them from anywhere (including your Android, your PC, etc.)

Dashlane Screenshot1Dashlane Screenshot2
The two most well known services for syncing your passwords safely in the cloud are LastPass and Dashlane. The two are very similar in many respects except one: Dashlane provides FREE and ad-free mobile apps to access your passwords, including an Android app (free at the time of this writing at least), while LastPass doesn’t.
I like both but the fact that Dashlane offers a free, ad-free Android app has got me thinking about finally making the switch from LastPass to Dashlane. I also like that it uses your default browser to log you into websites, as opposed to LastPass, which simply provides its own browser altogether. The one thing that Dashlane does that I do not like is that it asks for too many questions about me and wants to fill out a detailed profile – which you can skip and not fill out, btw.

5. FreeNote: convert on-screen scribbles into tidy, practical notes

FreeNote Screenshot1FreeNote Screenshot2 - on Galaxy Note
Sometimes, when I want to jot down some notes, I just want to scribble them down on the touchscreen and not worry about using a keyboard. FreeNote does this but does it in an interesting way, whereby your scribbles are resized, made smaller, and sorted next to each other.
FreeNote lets you mix and match, combining ‘painted’ elements and illustrations with text. But the one thing that it does that gave it a spot on this list is the way it incorporates handwritten/handpainted elements with the other elements and snapping it into the page. I like this app because I use a stylus-equipped Galaxy note (screenshot to the right, top), and find it very practical.
Ironically, the one flaw that this program has is that it may be a little too complicated, partly because the interface is not as intuitive as it could be, and partly because it may be offering way too many options and functions (e.g. layers, hyperlinks). FreeNote is ad free, but there is a souped up paid version with more functions.

6. ES File Explorer: manage your files and your apps quickly and easily, and in batch

ES File Explorer Screenshot1ES File Explorer Screenshot2
One of the things I actually LIKE about Android is that you can access the file system fairly easily, move things around within folders, etc. ES File Explorer is a file management app that makes it easy to dig in, move files from the SD card and back, and do what you need to do. It also looks and feels good.
But what I like most about this program is that it enables you to select a whole bunch of apps and uninstall them in batch, all at once. Add to this that the app is ad-free and you will see that this is a must have app.

7. Vault: encrypt and everything on your Android, from pictures to videos to files, contacts to SMS messages.

Vault Screenshot1Vault Screenshot2
I tried a number of these, and liked Vault the most, for 3 reasons. (1) it is ad-free, (2) it encrypts anything, including SMS messages and contacts not just media files, and (3) it encrypts large files fairly quickly and decrypts them very quickly. Once decrypted, your files play on the default media player(s) on your Android, and disappear once you exit Vault.
The paid version has a number of interesting features, such as stealth mode where the app icon itself is hidden, and a break-in monitor where anyone trying to get access is stealthily photographer by the front camera, and other features.

8. TuneIn Radio: search and listen to just about any radio station

TuneIn Screenshot1TuneIn Screenshot2
I believe every smartphone should have a radio app, and you can’t go wrong with TuneIn Radio. I know this one from my days as an iPhone owner, and was happy to see it available for Android. It has a nice interface and is generally nicely laid out and user friendly.
With 70,000 radio station and over 2,000,000 on-demand programs, TuneIn Radio is a must have. It does feature ads for the free version, unlike all the other apps in this article, but they are generally unobtrusive, and I highly recommend it.

9. FoxFi: turn your unrooted Android into a WIFI hotspot

FoxFi ScreenshotI couldn’t resist adding this app to this list. FoxFi will transform your Android into a WIFI hotspot at the click of a button, without having to have a rooted phone, simply and easily.
A fantastic app, which I discovered after learning that a couple of other apps that I had previously installed for the purpose required rooting.
Needless to say I was pretty thrilled when it worked as intended.

 

 

10. MortRing: assign custom ringtones to specific contacts easily

MortRing Screenshot1MortRing Screenshot2
You already know that you can specify a distinct ringtone for each one of your contacts. You like this in theory but let’s face it: you will never go in and edit individual contacts because you have a feeling it is too labor intensive and probably don’t care much to figure it out.
Well, good news. MortRing makes it extremely easy to take any contact and assign a custom ringtone. Simple and straightforward.