With over a million of apps now available both for Android and iOS users, apps have peaked, matured, and all the data shows that we're downloading less and less of the stuff. In fact, according to studies, app download activity has dropped to under 1 app per month per user. In fact, it's a relatively tiny proportion of users that actually make up the bulk of app downloads and skew that average. Most of us just don't download much else than the the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and a few others.
This sad state of affairs may lead some to believe that there aren't apps other than these worth downloading, which is, of course, absolutely false. If anything, the catalog has never been as high-quality. It's just getting harder and harder to separate the noise from the signal. So much so that we're increasingly coming across friends and family members that often pull a blank face when you mention an app that isn't part of the Elite club mentioned above. And yet, there are still apps beyond that sphere of influence that are very much worth the download.
We first heard of the 1 Second Everyday concept through a TED talk delivered by director Cesar Kuriyama, available HERE. Put simply, the idea is to capture a second worth of video from each day for a year, and then combine all these bits into a 365-seconds long video that serves as a sort of time capsule. Back then, an app wasn't available, but that has since changed.
Committing to capturing a second of video every day requires discipline, tenacity, and if these weren't qualities worth investing in, you'll at the very least start viewing your limited time on this planet as the precious resource it is. We've had the opportunity (but not the permission) to check out several such compilations through friends and family, and the end result is definitely worth it. Beats the hell out of the rather disposable photo, of which you have thousands!
At its core, News360 is nothing more and nothing less than yet another news aggregator app. You select your interests and the app delivers related stories and articles. Blink and you'll miss a real nifty feature of News360: enough smarts as to provide you with multiple viewpoints on the same topic.
In short, in today's busy world of online journalism, most stories out there are picked up by multiple sources, many of which differ in terms of their political leanings or very field. A story that makes it onto the New York Times can, conceivably, be covered by, for example, a comedy or tech outlet. This makes News360 an extremely handy tool in shielding yourself from bias, especially if you're an avid observer of politics. As at least some of you will know, what Fox News reports, it rarely does so in the same spirit as would Politico or The Times.
Are you the DIY your type? No? Neither are we, we thought. But then we came across Instructables and got hooked. Because, really, the thing that stops most people from diving into DIY projects is a mix between lack of know-how and/or the proper materials. Sure, you can secure the latter with a trip to the store, but in today's age of instant gratification who wants that?
The great thing about Instructables is that it offers a truly mind-boggling selection of user-generated, but well-done guides on essentially any topic, and for pretty much all skills level. As importantly, many of these projects push you to make use of stuff most households have in ready amounts, so you're not even expected to buy anything most of the time.
Alright, so on the list of kind of unpopular apps, Google Translator is kind of an odd addition, right? That's true enough, no contest. But with all the travelling we get to during events such as IFA (Germany) and Barcelona (Spain), we've found a neat feature of Google Translate to be pretty handy—much handier than trying to write down what you see in order to get translation.
As some of you might have guessed, this has to do with the camera. Google Translator allows you to use your smartphone's camera as the eyes of the app, allowing it to translate what's in front of you in real time. Again, this comes in handy when abroad, and is much superior to manually typing potentially non-typable words with accents and whatnot.
Alright, so this is an app with a ridiculous name. It's silly, we concede. But what it does is kind of useful, all the while technically labeling users as cheats.
You see, Spring is for those self-conscious, short (or big-headed, it turns out) people that hate being photographed in full height lest people "notice" that they have rather short legs. To fix that, Spring does some rather automatic image editing wizardry, spitting out the same image of you, but with your legs elongated, for example. As mentioned, if you're a particularly big-headed fellow (regardless if objectively true), you can fix that using Spring, too.
Neat, yeah?
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Chris Panayotov is a former mobile tech reviewer of phones, tablets and wearables at PhoneArena. However, his contribution to PhoneArena content includes not just reviews, but all kinds of regular and experimental features, such as news stories, buying guides, and an exclusive column on the most notable phones out of Asia.
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