Communication and Social
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HANGOUTS
Google Talk is dead, long live Google Hangouts! This app can not only send instant messages to other Google users, but it can also do video chatting for free. Users lucky enough to have Android 4.4 can also use it manage their SMS messages, and Google+ users can enjoy video conference calls with up to 12 participants. |
 | Viber: Free Messages & Calls   Viber distinguishes itself from other free voice and texting apps by adding your computer as a communication device. From your Android, you can seamlessly transfer a voice call to the Viber PC app and keep talking, or pick up a text message conversation already in progress. With a growing list of fans, Viber is well positioned to make talking and texting a little easier (and cheaper). |
 | TextSecure :: Private SMS/MMS If you're worried about the NSA or anyone else peeking at your text messages, consider TextSecure. Messages sent to other TextSecure users are encrypted over the air, but the app will also encrypt all of your text messages when they're at rest on your phone to keep them away from prying eyes. We first reviewed the app when it was in Beta, but it's since had a full version release and is ready for prime time. |
 | RedPhone :: Secure Calls The companion to TextSecure, this handy app lets you make encrypted calls over the developer's secure VoIP network to other TextSecure users. I particularly like that it works with your existing dialer and phone number, alerting you when another RedPhone user is on the line and the call can be encrypted. If all those PRISM and NSA headlines have you worried, be sure to give this app a try. |
 | Wickr Sometimes the most secure message is one that simply doesn't exist. That's the thinking behind Wickr, a fully encrypted, secure messaging service that even handles media messages. The twist is that you set a lifespan for each message, ensuring that your private messages stay private. And, if you doubt their security chops, here's what the company's founder told the FBI when they asked for a backdoor. |
 | Facebook Those addicted to the big blue social network can now stay connected at all times thanks to the Facebook Android app. You can use it to browse the entirety of Facebook and chat with other users, and you can also access all the settings available on the website. It's a brilliant mobile adaptation of a sprawling service. |
 | Circle of 6 This unique app is for those dangerous situations when you need to quickly (and discreetly) get help from your friends. Two quick taps sends one of three pre-written text messages to as many as six of your contacts. One message sends your GPS location and a request to be picked up, while another asks your friends to quickly get in touch with you. The app also includes links to the RAINN and Love is Respect hotlines. |
 | Plume for Twitter Sure, there are plenty of ways to fire off a 140-character Tweet, but users looking for more control should consider Plume. This powerful Android Twitter client lets you change all sorts of settings, right down to the LED color used to alert you of a message. My favorite feature is muting, which lets you suppress users, and even specific words, from your timeline. |
 | Tumblr Tumblr has grown in leaps and bounds since it first came onto the scene, letting users quickly share their creations and discoveries and—most importantly—re-blog things they find on Tumblr. The blogging platform's slick new Android app shows just how far it's come with a great new interface. |
Security
 | avast! Mobile Security This completely free app packs in a ton of security features, like remote wipe, remote lock, app management, safe Web browsing, a battery manager, and as an added bonus, an anti-virus engine that received top marks from independent testing labs. It's incredibly lightweight, but it lacks a backup feature. |
 | Bitdefender Mobile Security & Antivirus Bitdefender has all the features you'd expect in a top-tier Android security app, and now it adds a new app-locking feature for additional security on your device. I'm looking forward to testing this particular feature soon. However, the additional feature hasn't changed Bitdefender's laser-focus on security, eschewing time-consuming scans and using a super-fast, cloud-based method. While the annual fee may be off-putting, it's a third of what other big name companies charge. |
 | Lookout Security & Antivirus Premium Lookout has been a mainstay of Android security for years, providing protection against malicious applications and, more recently, against aggressive mobile advertisers. The app now sports improved anti-theft tools that (in some cases) might notice that your phone is stolen before you do. |
 | LastPass Password Mgr Premium A major overhaul to this powerful password manager finally looks as good as it performs. With LastPass, you can access your saved passwords, secure notes, and filled forms from your Android, and you can also create new ones that will sync to all your devices. The new version of the app ingeniously melds the password manager with a built-in browser, putting the app's auto-login features at the forefront. Staying safe has never been easier. |
 | Mr. Number-Block calls, texts Sometimes you just don't want people to bother you, and that's where Mr. Number comes in. With this app, you can block calls and SMS messages from specific people, code prefixes, and whole area codes. It can also help you fight back against intrusive calls and texts with an easy spam-reporting system. |
 | Orbot: Proxy with Tor Tor is probably more famous for providing access to the so-called "Dark Web," but it's also a useful way to connect to the Internet while keeping your movements private. Working with a special browser, Orbot connects you to Tor within seconds. However, I did find that it sometimes takes a few attempts to get online. |
 | Hotspot Shield VPN for Android The desktop version of this VPN service won an Editors' Choice award for VPN, and it also works great on Android. With just a few taps, your traffic is encrypted and routed through the developer's secure servers keeping your activities safe from snoopers. If you need to check your bank account or any other sensitive information over a public Wi-Fi network, this is the way to go. |
Health and Fitness
 | Noom Weight Loss Coach Noom is a comprehensive weight-loss app that bills itself as a weight-loss coach in your pocket. Every day, the app feeds you customized suggestions on how many calories you need to eat and burn to meet your goals. Premium users get more features and online communities to support one another's weight loss goals. |
 | WebMD for Android WebMD is much more than a diagnosis app, although you certainly can use it to input symptoms you are experiencing and find some clues as to what's ailing you. It also contains listings for healthcare professionals and pharmacies in your area, as well as first-aid guides—simple instructions for dealing with an emergency that everyone should have accessible at any time. This free reference app is one you hope you don't need, but, the moment you do, you'll be glad you downloaded it. |
 | Runtastic Pro Runtastic can do so much more than just track your favorite running routes. It keeps track of all sorts of useful data, and can return information-rich maps to plan future outings. It also features a fully integrated music player, to make for a seamless workout experience. Use it for cycling, hiking, and walking as well. |
 | Zombies, Run! If you find it hard to work up the motivation to exercise, try being chased by a rampaging zombie horde. Using either pedometer step tracking or (less accurate) GPS, Zombies, Run! gamifies exercise with a storyline played over your headphones. The voice acting and writing is top notch, and each "episode" can be infused with songs from your personal playlist. As you run, you'll find items and earn points which can be used to upgrade your base and, just maybe, help humanity survive the zombie apocalypse. |
 | SleepBot - Sleep Cycle Alarm If you're curious about what goes on while you're snoozing, SleepBot has all the answers. Leave your phone in bed with you, and SleepBot will track your movements and nocturnal noises using your Android's microphone and accelerometer. But SleepBot is more than a mere tracker; it is designed to wake you up during the lightest part of your sleep cycle, promising better sleep and more wakeful mornings. |
 | Period Tracker Deluxe If you're in possession of an active uterus, consider Period Tracker Deluxe (or P Tracker D). This app makes it easy to log the days of your menstruation, and does it with a friendly, customizable interface. You can also record personal details like moods and symptoms. If pregnancy is what you're after, or what you're trying to avoid, this app has your back as well. |
 | Calorie Counter – MyFitnessPal This calorie counter and exercise tracker aims to help you lose weight the old fashioned way: by expending more calories than you take in. With its smart design and an extensive library of foods, quickly logging the calories you take in and what you burn while exercising is a snap. It won't give you a whole work-out regiment, but it will certainly make you more aware of your habits. |
Cooking and Food
 | Yelp I'm always a little skeptical of crowd-sourced reviews, but Yelp can tell you a lot more than what people thought of a bar, restaurant, or just about any other place where you spend money. Many locations list their hours of operation, contact information, and menus, making it easy to find the perfect spot in your neighborhood or a new city. |
 | Seamless Food Delivery/Takeout Ordering food for delivery is a real pain: you need takeout menus, knowledge of the terrain ("will they even deliver out here?"), cash, and faith that the person jotting down your order gets it right. Seamless takes care of all that, even letting you pay via credit card from your Android. The downside? The app only supports restaurants in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Miami, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Sorry, everywhere else. |
 | Pepperplate Recipe, Menu & Cooking Planner Pepperplate makes it easy to access your recipes from any Android device so you can cook up a storm. On the desktop side, the service connects to websites like Allrecipes and Epicurious so you can import recipes (and sync them to your phone) with just one click. You can also easily build shopping lists and keep your recipes handy wherever you are. |
 | Allthecooks Recipes If Pepperplate isn't your style, Allthecooks connects you with a vibrant array of over 150,000 recipes. Easily add favorite recipes, manage shopping lists, and a handy meal calendar all from within the app. Once you start using it, you'll have one less excuse to eat out. |
 | Untappd - Discover Beer This handy app lets you record each brew your try along with a rating and tasting notes. Think of it like Foursquare for beer! No more staring at a tap list, wondering which you've had before. The app also has a vibrant community of beer drinkers that can point you toward new discoveries, and an extensive list of beers. While it's not perfect, it can change the way you think of that sweet amber ambrosia. |
Travel
 | iOnRoad Augmented Driving Don't have one of those fancy new cars with collision warning features? This handy Android app can do that and more from your windshield. It alerts you when a car in front of you looms too close, and even detects road markings to warn you if you start to drift out of your lane. It's not perfect, and some might find it even more distracting than regular driving, but it's one more amazing thing to do with your Android. |
 | Google Goggles Use your Android's camera to take a snapshot of anything from a painting in a museum to a placard that's written in a language you don't understand, and Google Goggles will do the searching for you. It even handles QR codes and barcodes for easy comparison shopping. It's not an immersive alternate-reality experience, but it's faster and easier than trying to find the right search term. |
 | Field Trip Part amateur historian, bargain hunter, and gourmet, Field Trip alerts you to articles, deals, and factoids relating to the world around you. Once activated, it keeps tabs on your location and displays cards drawing from sources like Zagat, Scoutmob, Arcadia, and others. Perfect for tooling around a strange city or learning more about your hometown, but Field Trip struggles outside the U.S. |
 | Google Maps This may seem like a no-brainer, but Google Maps is kind of fantastic. With just a few taps, this app will tell you exactly how to get to your destination. It even supports walking, bicycle, and mass transit directions, and now you can use it call an Uber cab as well. Recent updates also include greatly improved offline maps and driving directions that even tell you which lane you want. |
 | Uber It's pretty easy to get a cab from the PCMag Labs in New York, but it can be more challenging in other cities—even parts of this city. With Uber, calling a cab takes just a couple of taps. You can also select between yellow cabs, pricier sedans, SUVs, or private individuals who act as drivers through UberX. All payments are handled through the app, so no cash is necessary. |
 | Google Translate Probably my biggest fear as a traveler is being unable to communicate with other people. Google Translate takes a bit of the edge off, quickly translating either written text or spoken words. You can even use the app to do the speaking for you, and input text through your camera or handwriting. Unfortunately, you'll need a data connection to perform the translation, but it's the next best thing to actually learning another language. |
 | Duolingo And if you want to learn another language, have we got the app for you! Duolingo gamifies language learning with bite-sized lessons, and a friendly interface. The more you use the app, the more you unlock and—with practice—the more you learn. This free app currently supports Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. |
Reading and News
 | Comics Comics is already your one-stop shop for comic books from just about all the major publishers (except Dark Horse). What could make it better? A shopping cart. Now you can impulse buy dozens of titles with just one tap. Readers new to comics might enjoy the guided view mode, which takes you through each book panel by panel. |
 | Flipboard Even the best news sites don't always look great on your mobile device, and that's where Flipboard comes in. This handy app lets you flip through articles reformatted into a magazine style, with very readable text and large images. The unique "flip" interface is perfect for idly paging through the news in search of something interesting. |
 | Google Play Newsstand Google's recently launched Newsstand app is quite ambitious. It rolls up the magazine-like reading experience of Currents along with easy access to your digital magazine subscriptions. You can also discover news stories by browsing the Read Now or Explore sections. Of course, it includes sharing features for when you find something really interesting. |
 | Umano There's plenty of ways to read popular news stories, but few apps can claim to let you listen to breaking news. Umano is different, employing professional voice actors to read long-form articles from sources like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and others. The only downside is that you can't listen to just one news source, but variety is the spice of life. |
 | Pocket Your Bag of Holding for the Internet, pocket lets you save articles, images, and videos for later. I especially like how it reformats articles for more comfortable reading, and how it syncs between all my devices. A new version of Pocket added improved sharing features making it even easier to pocket stuff no matter what app you're working in. |
 | ESPN ScoreCenter What impresses me most about ESPN ScoreCenter is the sheer number of sports it covers. Everything from American football to Brazilian soccer to INDY 500 is available. For those unmissable games, you can set alerts and follow specific matches as they unfold. It also connects you to videos and news headlines, courtesy of ESPN. |
 | Calibre Companion Calibre is the 800-pound gorilla of eBook management, and this app is the perfect (ahem) companion for it. With just a few clicks, you can add any book from your computer to your device over USB or Wi-Fi. What's so surprising is how well it works, and how easy it is to use. If you've got a lot of eBooks, this is the app for you. |
 | OverDrive Media Console The library is an oft-overlooked public resource, but OverDrive brings it back into the fold with its app. Supported by 27,000 libraries worldwide, the app lets you access your local library's array of available eBooks. Use it to download titles, place holds on titles not yet available, and read your borrowed eBooks. The only requirement? A library card (or its digital equivalent). |
 | Kindle This app puts all of your existing Amazon eBook purchases at the tips of your fingers, and gives you mobile access to the Kindle eBook store for impulse purchasing. Best of all, it syncs your notes, bookmarks, and where you left off between all your devices. |
 | Stitcher Radio - News & Talk Though its interface is a bit tricky, Stitcher connects you with just about every podcast out there. Podcasts are organized by subject, or you can just search for a familiar title. Once you've subscribed to a few shows, you can organize them into playlists for a continuous stream. Once you've exhausted all your favorites, let Stitcher recommend something new. |
Utilities
 | viaProtect When it comes to Android threats, we mostly talk about theft and malware. But viaProtect is targeted at so-called "leaky apps" which transmit your personal information without encryption. Once it's installed, you'll be able to see where your information is going, who it's going to, and whether it was encrypted. The company has big plans for this service, but it's already a provocative look at what your apps do behind your back. |
 | Nova Launcher Prime There are many launchers available in Google Play that replace your stock phone homescreen interface with something more customizable. Nova Launcher Prime not only gives you settings to play with, but it's super-fast and smooth. It also gives you access to numerous custom-made themes and icon sets available on Google Play. If you're not willing to part with four bucks, try the free version, called Nova Launcher. |
 | SwiftKey Keyboard An impressive keyboard replacement, Swiftkey suggests what it thinks is the most likely next word as you type. A pioneer of this technology, you can speed up your typing by inserting whole words with a tap. The app also supports Swype-like input, and a recent update condensed the tablet and phone versions into a single mega-app. |
 | Swype Keyboard Swype was the first to introduce dragging your finger between letters to input text, which has since appeared in SwiftKey and even Google Keyboard. The developers are not resting on their laurels, however: Their app has numerous input options, including the powerful Dragon Dictation, gestures, handwriting recognition, and SwiftKey-like predictive text. Swype is a sprawling app that makes mobile typing a breeze. |
 | Tasker I'm going to be honest here: I haven't completely mastered Tasker. But I recognize that this is perhaps the most powerful app available in Google Play. With it, you can script basic actions for your Android to perform when specific conditions are met—like flash the LED when you receive a text message. Now I just need to learn how to get the most from it. |
 | Netgear Wifi Analytics Netgear's free app lets you get the lay of the Wi-Fi landscape. With a few taps, you can see the strength of networks in the area and what channels have the most interference. |
 | SnapPea Android devices can often feel like islands unto themselves, but SnapPea lets you access to your phone's files from your computer via USB or Wi-Fi connection. Recently refreshed, the service can also back up your device and let you send texts from your computer via your phone, among other things. SnapPea has a minimal presence on your Android, but it will change how you use your phone. |
 | ASTRO File Manager with Clouds Unlike iOS, Android actually lets you plumb the depths of its innards—provided you have the right app to do it. Let Astro be your guide as you explore your Android's files. In addition to the basics (copying files, moving files, etc.) Astro connects with cloud services (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive), backs up your apps, and doubles as an application manager. |
 | Usemon (Cpu Usage Monitor) This simple, lightweight app gives you a handy graphical representation of your Android's RAM usage, CPU performance, network traffic, and a host of other options. It's particularly useful for keeping tabs on apps or processes that might be slowing down your device, or just to see some pretty graphs. |
 | Dropbox Dropbox pioneered the idea of a personal cloud service, where all your stuff would be available no matter what device you were using. On Android, it holds its own—even against the highly integrated Google Drive. Dropbox can also act as a seamless backup for your images, automatically uploading every photo to the cloud. If you're a heavy Dropbox user, this app is a must-have. |
Browsers and Reference
 | Firefox What's incredible about the Android version of Firefox is that it feels as mature, if not more so, than its desktop counterpart. It's lickity-split fast, and its clean design is a joy on mobile. Mozilla makes a big point about how they don't collect your data, and I was pleased to see that the app comes with a full compliment of security settings—including an option to protect your information from advertisers. |
 | Opera browser for Android Not to be confused with its Mini cousin, Opera is a full-fledged browser for Android. With a slick design, it aims to be your gateway to web content with features like a built-in news portal and the Opera mobile apps store. It also includes an "off-road" mode to quickly load webpages while taking it easy on your data plan. |
 | Opera Mini browser for Android Don't let its old-style appearance fool you: Opera Mini is a clever little browser designed to thrive where network conditions are not their best. And it doesn't skimp on features, giving you access to special Opera web apps; a handy homepage complete with news and social media updates; and a surprising array of powerful security settings. |
 | Dolphin Browser A clean, tabbed browser, Dolphin delivers a very nice user experience on Android almost making you forget that you're on a mobile device. Dolphin also supports tight integration with services like Evernote and LastPass, as well as robust settings. My favorite feature is gestures, which might not always be efficient but are definitely cool to use. |
 | Weather Underground Weather Underground combines a slick design with a focus on really useful weather information. I particularly like the ability to report weather conditions in your area and the extremely useful comparative forecasts that deftly shows how conditions have changed since yesterday. With an accompanying set of useful widgets, it's the best weather app on Android. |
 | Wikipedia While its interface is in bad need of a refresh, the Wikipedia Android app brings one critical feature: offline viewing. Just two taps and any page on Wikipedia is stored in its entirety for whenever you need it. Plus the app gives you access to over 20 million articles in 280 languages and is basically a for-real Hitchhiker's Guide. |
Productivity and Finance
 | Mint Mint is a fantastic online service to keep track of all your finances, and it really shines on Android. Once you've entered all your information, you can easily see where your money is going. I really like Mint's budgets, which help me make spending decisions on the fly. Mint can be a bit overwhelming at first, but well worth the effort to learn. |
 | Check Check (formally Pageonce) is focused on one thing: paying your bills. Enter your bills into the app, along with your payment options, and Check does the rest. You can also use Check to send money to anyone with an email address or a mobile number—like your landlord or that guy you owe money too. It's not a broad financial tool like Mint, but it will help you stay on top of your bills. |
 | RescueTime—Work Smart It can be hard to buckle down and get work done on your Android, especially when there are so many great games just begging for your attention. Enter RescueTime, which tracks everything you do on your Android and delivers reports about how much time you spent productively and how much time you spent on Candy Crush. The design is a bit wonky, but it's a powerful tool. |
 | OfficeSuite Pro Creating and editing documents on your mobile device still isn't as easy as on your desktop or laptop, but OfficeSuite Pro comes close. It supports most Microsoft Office files and PDFs, so you can quickly create and edit PowerPoint, Excel, and Word documents wherever you are. It also integrates with cloud services, putting all your documents at your fingertips. |
 | Quickoffice Creating and editing documents in Google Drive is easy, unless they happen to be Microsoft Office documents. Enter QuickOffice, which serves as a highly capable bridge between Office and Google Drive. It supports Word and Excel and is perhaps the best mobile editor for PowerPoint I've yet seen. It's got a limited scope, but it's great at what it does. |
 | SugarSync Not just another cloud service, SugarSynccan automatically backup all your photos and videos from your Android to a free 5GB online account. In addition to the standard sharing, syncing between devices, and very nice interface it's one of the best cloud storage services out there. You need to try this one. |
 | eFax While the rest of the world may have moved on from fax machines long ago, the business sector still stubbornly clings to this tool. Enter eFax, the service that lets you send and receive faxes without the hassle of a fax machine or a dedicated phone line. All from your Android. Slip on your Members Only jacket and send faxes just like in the good old days. |
 | Adobe Reader Many apps will open PDFs, but Adobe Reader lets you markup documents and even make changes. If you find yourself having to fill out a lot of electronic forms, or reading long academic texts, this app is for you. With a $9.99 per month subscription, you can convert any file to a PDF through the app. |
Organization
 | Pushbullet If you've ever had to email a link to your computer from your phone, Pushbullet is for you. This handy service lets you send notes, links, files, addresses, and even lists between your computer and your Android. You can even push all these between friends. |
 | Google Drive If you use Android, you have a Google Account, and that means you have access to the excellent Google Drive cloud storage service. With Drive, you can easily access synced files across all your devices no matter where you are. Previously, Google rolled the document creation and editing powers of the now departed Google Docs into Drive, but recently it split them out into separate apps called Docs and Sheets. Be sure to pick these up for the full Google Drive experience. |
 | Evernote Once you start using it, this note taking app becomes a powerful tool for organizing just about everything. Notes can be anything—text, images, audio, or a mix—and are organized into notebooks. One of its killer features is optical character recognition, which makes the text in images searchable. I use it to keep track of the different beers I try and my comic book collection. |
 | Any.do To-do List & Task List At its core, Any.do is a list manager. You can quickly create a shopping list, and have it sync between devices and even share it with others. The app also doubles as a task manager, keeping you on top of what needs to be done. A new feature, called the Any.do Moment, encourages you to take a second and review your plans for the day. |
 | EasilyDo If you're the forgetful type, EasilyDo is your savior. Once you hook the app up to a slew of supported social and calendar services, it suggests simple actions from a unified dashboard. Did you know it's Susie's birthday? EasilyDo will suggest you send her a message or a gift. It makes the little things easier, and proves its worth with saved time. |
 | Mailbox Gmail changed email when it rolled out over a decade ago, but Mailbox might be the next step for electronic mail. This app focuses on keeping your inbox manageable with handy swipe gestures to archive or delete messages. You can also opt to hide messages until you're ready to deal with them later. Mailbox isn't without its quirks, but it might just help you achieve email serenity. |
 | Trello - Organize Anything Trello is a free service that aims to help you organize any project—everything from novels, to home improvement, to dinner parties. Its card-based interface is very mobile friendly, letting you easily add to-do items, pictures, and tags. All your changes swiftly sync between all your devices, and the Trello website. |
 | Asana Trello and Any.Do work great for personal to-do lists and small projects, but Asana is the 800 pound gorilla of task management for teams. While other project management tools focus on collaboration, Asana is all about workflows using check-box tasks that can be assigned to individuals. In truth, the app pales in comparison to the web interface, but it's a fantastically powerful tool. |
Entertainment
 | DeaDBeeF Player If you're an audio nerd or just prefer to have a lot more control over your music collection, take a look at DeaDBeeF. This sprawling app supports mp3, ogg, aac/mp4, alac/mp4, flac, ape, wv, wav, tta, mpc, sid, mod, s3m, nsf and more. There's also a 10-band equalizer so you can get your tunes sounding just so. Perfect for all of those live recordings of Steely Dan concerts you've been hoarding. |
 | Bandcamp Filled with both up-and-coming and established acts, Bandcamp is one of the most exciting music marketplaces today. Their app is still a bit disappointing, shirking music discovery and purchasing but recently adding a weird social network-ish feature. But it does one cool thing—instant streaming of your Bandcamp purchases. That alone makes this app a keeper. |
 | Netflix Netflix streaming has quickly become a staple of modern existence, and the premiere movie and TV watching service looks great on Android. Though the stable of content isn't always, ah, stable, the selection is enormous. You can also stream video from the app to your TV throughGoogle Chromecast. |
 | Spotify With its huge inventory of music, Spotify has become a mainstay for free, legal music streaming. A recent pricing shuffle brings free mobile Pandora-esque streaming, and a paid subscription will nab you on-demand service and Led Zepplin. My favorite feature is close ties with artists who release new albums on the service the same day they hit the shelves in record shops. Those still exist, right? |
 | Slacker Radio Slacker takes a unique twist on the mobile streaming format by offering much more than just music and music discovery. It'll connect you with your favorite tracks, but you can also browse its enormous collection of human-curated playlists for every occasion—like Yacht Rock. It also has an extensive catalog of radio talk shows, sports, and comedy series. Whatever you want to listen to, Slacker probably has it. |
 | OnLive If you're tired of mobile games, try some titles like Assassins Creed or L.A. Noire streamed to your Android through OnLive. The account is free, but games will probably cost you money—though many include timed free trials. Also, you may want to invest in some kind of controller as many of these games were simply not made for touch screens. It's a tricky, but unique, service. |
 | Hulu Plus If you can't wait for a TV show to end up on Netflix, Hulu Plus is the way to go. Search or browse through the available shows, or subscribe to on-air shows to see them right away. Many of the shows, like The Simpsons, are available online exclusively through Hulu. The service also features high-quality movies, like the entire Criterion Collection. |
 | Songkick Concerts Songkick is the bridge between the music in your digital collection and concerts in your area. Once installed, Songkick scans your device and lets you see when and where your favorite artists are playing. If you see a show you're interested in, you can also purchase tickets all from within the app. Add multiple locations to Songkick to catch concerts when you're on the road. |
Creativity
 | Instagram It seems like just yesterday that Instagram was adding video. Then direct messaging. And now the image sharing service that made us all fall in love with filters brings enhanced photo editing features that let it compete with the likes of Snapseed. What hasn't changed is the passionate userbase sharing incredible photos from around the world. |
 | Pixlr Express If you've ever browsed through image-sharing services and wondered where the picture collages came from, it's probably Pixlr Express. This photo editor can do more, though: it has a host of effects and adjustments that run the gamut from subtly artistic to ridiculously bombastic—perfect for giving your images a touch more pizzazz. |
 | Snapseed If you want more control than Instagram affords, try Snapseed. This app straddles the line between full-fledged image editor and filter app, but it brings a lot of useful tools to the table. Best of all is the amount of control it gives you over how filters and effects are applied to your images. Run a photo through Snapseed before Instagramming it. |
 | Vine It took Vine a good long while to get its Android app running as smoothly as the iOS version, but it was worth the wait. The app has always let you make and share looping 6-second videos, but improved editing and filming tools make it easier than ever. Finally, Android gets the Vine app it deserves. |
 | Flickr Flickr surprised everyone when the venerable photo hosting service announced that every user would receive a free terabyte of storage. That bombshell was followed by a total overhaul to its Android app, which combines handy photo and video tools with a lovely interface. Best of all? It can automatically back up photos from your phone. |
 | Writing Challenge Writers looking for inspiration should investigate this app, which spits out different writing prompts at set intervals. The idea is to write quickly, and incorporate the ideas from the app as they come. It probably won't help you write the great American novel, but it's a fun way to practice. |
 | Flava - Note/Journal Some things aren't for sharing, and those personal thoughts or photos can be stored safely in the Flava journal app. The app's clean interface invites quick additions to your continuous flow of entries, and a unique tagging system makes it easy to find entries based on note type, your mood, or even the weather. |
 | SketchBook Mobile Express While it sports a lot of advanced features like layers that artists will appreciate, SketchBook Mobile Express is great for compulsive doodlers, too. Use your finger as a brush, pen, or pencil to create your masterpiece. The developers have also created a tablet version, and Note 3 users can finally put their styli to good use. |
 | Adobe Photoshop Express 2.0 While a bit of a beast on the desktop, Photoshop Express is svelte app, with powerful tools to make the most of your mobile snapshots. Sure, it'll do the Instagram-ish filters, but it also lets you make fine-grain adjustments to images with a beautiful, simple interface. It even seamlessly connects to various other services for sharing. |
