Yousician
These days, people are
just as likely to pick up a tiny plastic guitar as a real
one. Yousician takes advantage of the gamification of
music, essentially spinning Guitar Hero 90 degrees and
having a proper guitar be your controller. You therefore
work your way through timing-based exercises that have you
strum chords and pick notes at precisely the right
moments.
The free version limits
how long you can play each day, but it’s a smart, fun way
to pick up the basics and also to stop your inner Johnny
Cash from getting rusty.
Snapseed
We’ve long had a bit of a soft spot for Snapseed. Its
intuitive interface was one of the most tactile on
Android; moreover, the huge range of filters and effects
made it perfect for all manner of photographic
manipulation and fine-tuning. With 2015’s major revamp,
Snapseed became further entrenched in must-have territory.
The star of the
upgrade was Stacks, which converts each filter you
apply into an editable layer. This means each
effect can later be tweaked, rather than being
burned into your image when applied, thereby
providing even more scope for experimentation.
SwiftKey + Emoji
The default
Android keyboard is perfectly decent, but
SwiftKey’s a popular alternative for good reason.
Along with boasting excellent predictive typing,
it enables you to more rapidly type by swiping
your fingers across the keys rather than
laboriously pecking away at them individually.
Initially, you might find yourself facing some
oddball typos, but with some practice, SwiftKey
can hugely speed up banging out some words on your
device.
There are so many
camera apps, social networks pretending to be camera
apps, and camera apps pretending to be social networks,
that it takes a lot to stand out. Retrica manages to do
so due to its straightforward interface, slew of live
filters and effects (so you can see what you’re going to
get at all times) and excellent multishot mode.
Use the last of those
when you’re zooming along in a car (er, as a passenger,
obviously) and you get some really amazing photo strips.
The free version burns Retrica’s name into whatever you
shoot, although this ‘advertising’ can be dealt with for
a piffling £0.63.
There are loads of free photo editors available for Android, but Pixlr Express goes above and beyond. First, it’s entirely ad-free, so whatever you’re editing is never suddenly half-covered by a banner for a rubbish game; secondly, it has an absurdly huge range of tools, enabling you to do anything from subtly adding radial focal blurs to wrecking your image with all kinds of grunge and crazy effects.
All the usual suspects are present and correct, too - crop,
rotate, and basic adjustments - and you can share your finished
masterpieces to social networks, save them to your device, or
combine them into collages.
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