top 10 andriod apps

Apps

BBC Music (Free)
Currently a UK-only app, this brings together live performances and interviews with musicians from the BBC’s TV and radio output, as well as playlists curated by its DJs. The app learns your tastes as you use it to refine its recommendations, with songs available as 30-second clips or – via Spotify or Deezer – in full.

Glow Baby: Feeding Tracker (Free)
Glow’s previous apps have focused on helping women track their periods and pregnancies, so it makes sense to follow them with one for babies. This isn’t just about tracking breast or bottle feeds: you can also use it to log sleep, nappy changes, weight and other milestones.

BuzzFeed Video (Free)
There’s already a good app for watching BuzzFeed’s fast-growing video output: YouTube. But now the news site has launched a standalone app for its video division, including alerts when shows you’ve subscribed to have a new episode, and a trending feed to spot popular videos.

Reuters TV: Video News (Free)
More mobile video courtesy of news service Reuters, with the inventive idea of creating a news bulletin tuned to your interests. You tell the app how long you want to watch for – between five and 30 minutes – and it draws together video reports from its correspondents around the world.

TapTapSee (Free + IAP)
This is a truly intriguing use of smartphones for blind and visually-impaired people: using their device’s camera to take pictures of objects in the real world, and identify what they are. The app uses Android’s TalkBack feature to read out the details, with photos snapped by double-tapping the screen.

Peach (Free)
When it launched for iPhone in January, social app Peach surfed a wave of hype from tech sites that has since died down. Can its Android release revive the buzz? Peach is certainly fun: a quick way to post photos, doodles, gifs, songs and other stuff to your network. Inventive, but it relies on your friends being on it.

Sleepfulness (Free + IAP)
With a Google Play blurb like “Better sleep. Better days. Powered by mindfulness” this app will raise your hackles if you’re sceptical about the mindfulness boom. If you’re curious, though, Sleepfulness is worth a look: made by the developer of popular app Buddhify, it promises soundtracks to help you get better shut-eye.

Everalbum: Organise Photos (Free + IAP)
This app has a firm fanbase on iOS, so its appearance on Android is welcome news for non-iPhone mobile photographers. It backs up your photos (and videos); can import from Facebook and Instagram among other sources; and most usefully helps you free up space for more stuff on your device.

MyShake (Free)
If you’re in the UK, hopefully MyShake will never be an app you need: designed, as it is, to measure the tremors before and during earthquakes. But this is a really interesting idea for people who do live in quake-affected parts of the world: an app from Berkeley Seismological Laboratory that aims to “create a dense network that could one day provide warnings prior to shaking”.

VHS Camcorder (£2.47)
Any self-respecting hipster wanting to share videos on social networks that look like they’re filmed with a 1980s VHS camcorder will, of course, go out and buy a 1980s VHS camcorder. But this is an app shortcut to creating retro videos. And yes, if there’s a demand for this it’s probably as an Instagram filter, but the app is well put together with good attention to period details.
There’s already a good app for watching BuzzFeed’s fast-growing video output: YouTube. But now the news site has launched a standalone app for its video division, including alerts when shows you’ve subscribed to have a new episode, and a trending feed to spot popular videos.