The first 10 apps that you should install on your new phone
So, you got a new smartphone. So, you are excited to explore its full potential and show it off to your friends and family. But you know what makes these phones ‘smart’ in today’s times? The apps that they run. When Apple introduced the App Store and the concept of various apps running on the iPhone, they made the proverbial ‘ding’ in the smartphone universe and the world hasn’t been the same since. From apps to make getting through your day easier to apps to make to stand and walk regularly to ensure that you stay fit, if you need your smartphone to do anything for you, ‘there is an app for that’.
Below, is a list of apps that I feel should be the first that everyone installs on their shiny new smartphones. The list doesn’t include the no-brainers like Google Chrome, Google Maps, Facebook, WhatsApp or Candy Crush (!) that everyone will surely install. I bet that the apps listed here, if installed, will surely enhance your smartphone experience.
Google Photos
For everyone who got the latest phones with a measly 16 GB storage, Google Photos is a life-saver. It automatically backs up photos from your camera roll, gives you unlimited storage (as long as you are fine with Google reducing the size of your pictures a bit, lets you share photos with your friends and on social networks directly, lets you create shared albums to collaborate with friends and family and with the latest update, even deletes photos from your device if you are running low on storage.
Wunderlist/Any.DO/Todoist
The new year just began. That means new resolutions and new to-dos. Wunderlist, Todoist and Any.DO aim to help you out with your lists will all the bells and whistles that you can think of. All three apps are well designed, work on every device imaginable, let you edit every aspect of your lists to every level imaginable and let you share and collaborate on lists with friends and family. Though, both, Android and iOS have their lists and reminders apps, these three apps win because of their cross-platform availability, features and the fact that they are free.
Up By Jawbone
The new year means new fitness goals. And the beginning of February means that motivation has gone down in the last 30 days and goal achievement levels are low now. That is the worst attack on all your fitness related goals. But, fear not, your shiny new phone has come to your rescue. Just download the Up app by the makers of some of the best reviewed fitness trackers and it’ll track your movements and activity through the sensors in your phone. The app is very well designed, lets you set your fitness goals, gives you information about your progress during the day, tracks all the metrics that you can measure your fitness by, has a handy food-logging tool and to put it ahead of a similarly spec’d Fitibit app, also focuses on coaching by analyzing your data and comparing it to the data logged in by users similar to you in its community.
VLC
Every phone today comes with a gigantic screen packed to the brim with pixels. What better way to enjoy it the most than to watch your favourite videos and carry your library right in your pockets! VLC by VideoLAN has been the go-to video player for most of us on the computer and their apps for Android and iOS bring all that we love about VLC. With the ability to play subtitles, forward and rewind at your pace, changing brightness and volume without going out of the app and the nostalgia of using your favorite tool from your computer, VLC is the must-have video app for your new phone.
Truecaller
Well, it’s a phone that you got, so, you’ll use it to call and text other people and get calls and texts for them. While, these days, it is very easy to transfer your contacts and messages from one device to another, ensuring that you don’t lose an of them, there are times when you get calls and texts from unknown numbers and you’d want to know who they are before responding. You might also want to block a caller or text-sender if they are bugging or spamming you. That’s where Truecaller comes in. Boasting of a directory of more than a million users, you can find out who a phone number belongs to in almost all cases. You can save that number, respond to them of block them from the app itself. On android, with Truedialer, you just enter a number on the dial-pad and the app will tell you as to who it belongs to. Very useful indeed.
Pro tip: On your iPhone, don’t forget to set up a notification center widget for Truecaller. Then, you just need to copy a phone number and swipe your notification center down to see who it belongs. It saves you the step of having to open the app and search for the number.
Saavn
Gone are the days that people bought music CDs, purchased music on iTunes or downloaded pirated music through torrents. Music streaming was the big deal of 2015 with Apple and Google making big strides through Apple Music and Youtube Music, respectively. If it’s the lack of availability of the renowned music streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, the monthly subscription charges for Apple Music or Google Play Music or the lack of content on these services when it comes to Bollywood songs that jeeps you from going all-in on music streaming, Saavn is the answer for you. The app is ad-supported and free and boasts for any song, English, Hindi or in regional languages, that you can think of. You can create your playlists or just sit back and tune in to tens of radio stations based on your mood. You need to pay a monthly subscription to be able to save songs but for the number of features that you get for free, Saavn is the music streaming service to have.
An old favorite, Pocket is like a DVR for the internet. Though it has been around for a few years, the app has done a lot to ensure that it is the best when it comes to read-later services. Free, the app lets you save almost anything on the internet that you’d want to get back to, later. With tags and lists to help organize your links and a very handy ‘reader’ view, the app handles your content well. It, now, also recommends the most read and trending articles from both, your saved articles and the internet to ensure that you never miss catching up on the best content on the internet.
InShorts
Reading the news is important. But, seriously, who has the time? InShorts tries to address that issue through giving you news in short ‘shots’ so that it is easily consumable and doesn’t eat up too much of your time. They have News for each category that a normal newspaper would have but the deal-maker is the fact that every news item is just 60 words long. The service’s human editors, condense each important news from the day into summaries of less than or equal to 60 words and take the pain out of reading the news every day.
Inbox
You got a new smartphone. So, the first thing you’d do is set up your email. Email is all prevalent and still very much used at all points on the internet. But with our email ID linked to so many things, it becomes very tedious to manage incoming email and triage our inbox. Achieving ‘Inbox Zero’ is always an uphill battle these days. That’s Google’s smart-inbox ‘Inbox’ comes in. It organizes your emails contextually (so, all of those spam newsletters that you never subscribed to but still get are grouped together) and make it very easy to review and clear email. And, with its latest update, you can find relevant information from you email in the easiest possible manner (just type your query in the search field and Inbox will surface the required information in a Google Now styled card without you have to go through even one email). The email-monster that we have always been afraid of has truly been slayed!
Yahoo Weather
For an app that shows you just the weather, Yahoo Weather does it in the best way possible by making the weather beautiful. In one of the very few instances that Yahoo leverages the synergy of its various products, the app pulls up pictures of your city from Flickr and displays the weather with a contextually apt picture in the background (night time shots in the night, foggy shots during winter, etc.). And the cherries on the cake are the widgets that the app has for both, iOS and Android. They are both beautiful and make the app deserve a place on your home screen.
Have any apps that you feel are must-downloads? Do share in the comments. Together, let’s make the smartphone experience better for everyone.
