The Top Android Apps of 2013
1. Duolingo
Duolingo works to add interactivity and customized lesson
planning to the language learning experience by rewarding users when they
achieve goals, giving incentive to return for more lessons -- something your
high school's Intermediate Spanish course never did.
Duolingo gives users the opportunity to learn English,
Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. You don't have to worry about
being charged for the service any time soon, either. Co-creator Luis von Ahn
told USA Today, "We're fundamentalists on the belief that we should not charge
for language education."
Price: Free
2. Pocket Casts
A one-stop shop for organizing your podcasts, Pocket Casts
allows you to listen to, download and sync your podcasts all from one device.
Audio playback is customizable, allowing you to adjust playback speed to
whatever you're comfortable with. The "featured" and
"popular" menus also help with podcast discovery.
Price: $3.99
3. Evernote
Evernote, which has become more of a leviathan of
productivity than just an app, received several updates in 2013, including a
customizable home screen and image and PDF markup. With Evernote, you can take
notes or photos, keep reminders, record audio and tag all of it to make it
easily searchable. It's so vast, getting started may seem too daunting to some.
We recommend our beginner's guide.
4. Pixlr Express
A powerful, customizable photo editor that's more than just filters,
Pixlr Express comes packed with the ability to color-correct, blur or layer
images and stickers on top of one another. Just taking up 7.2 M of memory,
Pixlr Express is more than worth the small amount of space it'll take up on
your SD card.
Price: Free
5. Nova Launcher
With the release of iOS 7, Apple raised the bar for home
screen design in 2013. For Android, Nova Launcher reaches the same bar. Fully
customizable, performance-oriented and with a prime version at just $4, Nova
Launcher is a great download for any android user.
Price: $4
6. doubleTwist
Aside from being a great tool to sync your music between
your Mac or PC and your Android device, doubleTwist is a powerful media player,
enabling you to play multiple audio files, watch videos, stream radio and
listen to podcasts. It certainly doesn't hurt that doubleTwist's album
cover-centric design is beautiful to look at as well.
7. Reddit is fun
Reddit is fun is our preferred way of browsing and using
Reddit on our Android devices. Easy to navigate, the app more closely resembles
the web experience of Reddit than other popular apps -- which seem to be more
focused on browsing rather than posting or commenting. Frequently updated with
bug fixes and small updates, you can count on Reddit is fun to continue
improving with time.
Price: Free
8. Feedly
Now that our dear Google Reader has moved on from this
world, we require a new RSS curation tool to fill our article-consuming needs
-- and Feedly fits the bill. The app's design is heavily image focused, giving
a reading experience closer to how we use the web than most news aggregation
tools. Offering easy sharing tools and integration with Evernote, Instapaper
and Pocket, Feedly is a fluid, fast moving hulk of a news app.
9. Sleepbot
Whether you choose to use Sleepbot as a simple time log or a
dedicated and powerful sleep tracker is up to you, but both options offer a
rewarding experience for anyone looking to improve his or her sleeping habits.
Sleepbot tracks your movement and noise levels, greeting you with a quiet alarm
in the morning at your lightest level of sleep.
Price: Free
10. Aereo
Straight out of The Jetsons, the Aereo app -- currently in
public beta -- allows you to access your cloud DVR on your Android device,
meaning you can watch your favorite television shows on your morning commute
(assuming you use public transportation, of course-- Mashable does not condone
driving under the influence of Breaking Bad). You can tune into your local
channels and save up to 20 hours of television in the cloud.
Price: Free app; after free trial, subscription is $8 per
month.
Note: Aereo is currently available only in select
metropolitan areas.
With the release of new operating system KitKat and the
announcement that it hit both one billion activations and 50 billion app
downloads, it's clear that 2013 has been a year of great news for Android. – MAX KNOBLAUCH | Mashable
No comments
Comment