Looking for some of most notable new Android apps to hit Google Play in the past month? Here’s 10 of the best.
Meet Me Halfway
We’ve all been there – you and your buddy live on opposite sides of town, and you’re trying to find somewhere to meet up that minimizes both your travel times. Step forward Meet Me Halfway.
As its name suggests, Meet Me Halfway identifies the most suitable halfway point between two people, covering places of interest in unfamiliar areas, including cafes, restaurants, bars and more.
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Type Machine
Type Machine collects your entire text-input history, across almost every app. Spooked? Well, it won’t save any text entered into password fields, while you can set a PIN to lock your history. You can also configure a list of apps you don’t wish to track.
To enable Type Machine, you have to switch it on within the accessibility settings of your device, then all you have to do is type away as normal, then revisit Type Machine whenever you wish to search back through your typing history.
Polyfauna (Radiohead)
Out of nowhere, Radiohead released a bizarre but intriguing app called PolyFauna. Developed in collaboration with a UK-based digital art and design studio, it places you inside a 3D world which you can adjust by physically moving your smartphone or tablet.
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke says the visuals and sound effects are inspired by the song Bloom, which the band released in 2011 as part of its eighth studio album The King of Limbs.
Chaatz
Messaging apps may be ten-a-penny, but that didn’t stop Chaatz launching this month. It was actually developed by the same folks who were charged with creating a Facebook incarnation for feature phones, which at least made us take note.
Chaatz doesn’t seem particularly impressive at first glance, but one of its USPs is that it lets you separate your online chat profile into different roles. You get what is known as a ‘Chaatz Number’ so you can keep your real phone number entirely anonymous.
➤ Chaatz
Depop
DePop lets you sell pretty much anything you can snap a photo of, and covers everything from fashion and technology, to literature and old vinyl.
It basically mashes the peer-to-peer functionality of platforms such as Craiglist, Gumtree or Etsy, with the mobile-centric style of Instagram. It claims more than 5 million euros ($6.84m) worth of items have been sold to date since its launch on iOS
➤ Depop
Dormi
Dormi is an awesome baby monitor app for Android, one that’s been beautifully designed with users in mind.
You will, of course, require two Android devices to use Dormi – one for the child, and one for parents. The design, interaction and general look-and-feel is fantastic, and serves as a good back-up to your standard, dedicated monitor when you’re on holiday or staying at a relative’s house.
➤ Dormi
Uniiverse
Uniiverse automatically taps your location to surface events and activities that are listed in your locale, and it arrived for Android this month following its launch on iOS last year.
The description, price, date and location are all given in the event preview, and you can click through for more information and book tickets. This could be anything from yoga or fashion photo classes, to 5-a-side football. Unlike the iOS incarnation, you can’t manually filter down by category, which seems like an odd omission.
Still the idea’s good, and there’s room for development here.
Opera Max (Beta)
If you get frustrated exceeding your monthly data plan, Norway-based browser-maker Opera launched a new data-compression app in beta this month.
Opera is strongest in emerging markets due to its focus on compressing browser data through Opera Mini, but it’s revealing that Opera is introducing a standalone app for compressing data consumed by other apps – native apps are more popular than Web apps, right?
Opera Max shows you which of your applications are consuming all the data, and squeezes video, photos and images on many of the most popular apps.
RealPlayer Cloud
RealNetworks kicked off Mobile World Congress this year by announcing that its RealPlayer Cloud service was now available to users around the world.
RealPlayer Cloud is a storage locker optimized for video playback, with one of its main selling points being that it supports a wide range of platforms, including Android. It supports all the usual formats, including FLV, WMV, DIVX, XVID, MOV, AVI and MP4.
FullContact Card Reader
FullContact’s Android app lets you snap a photo of a business card, with humans adding the details to your iPhone contacts.
There are, of course, many card reader apps on the market already, but most of these rely on OCR technology. FullContact also integrates directly with Salesforce, and lets you export the scanned cards to your device’s address book.
If you’re on the hunt for more Android apps, check out some of the best ones from January, or put your feet up and peruse through the pick of the bunch from the whole of 2013.
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