With the holiday season fully under way, there's a good chance many of you are planning to pick up a new
Android phone or
tablet. Heck, you might even be looking into one of these new "phablet"
thingies that people are talking about. Whatever the case may be, if
you're rocking a new Android device, there's no question you're going to
want to some killer apps to test its limits. Lucky for you, we've put
together a list of some of the hottest ones.
Amazon Cloud Drive Photos (free)
Relatively new to the Android platform is the Amazon Cloud Drive Photos
app, which links to your Amazon account and lets you store photos
directly from your mobile device to the cloud. For existing users of
Amazon Cloud Drive, it provides a more streamlined way of getting your
photos from your mobile device to your cloud account. For new users, it
provides a nice, simple way to free some storage space on your phone or
tablet. While the relatively young app is far from perfect (it doesn't
let you rename files or move items between folders), it is easy to use,
and it syncs to the cloud reliably. Plus, Amazon offers new users 5GB of
free storage space, which is reason enough to give it a try.
(Credit: CNET)
Crackle (free)
Crackle is one of the few legit apps on the market that provides
completely free streaming of television shows, movies, and other video
content. Similar to Netflix or HBO Go on Android, the app offers
featured content up front and some simple navigation buttons leading to
pages with Movies, Shows, and a personal Watchlist to which you can save
your favorite programs. While you probably won't find all of your
favorite shows and movies on Crackle, the app does offer some classic
shows like "Seinfeld," and "The Three Stooges," plus a few newer hits
like "Homeland," "Dexter," and "The Walking Dead." Content is not
available in HD, but video and audio quality are still high.
(Credit: CNET)
Air Patriots (free)
If you just got yourself a new Android device, then I'm sure you'd love
to test drive it with a game or two. If that's the case, I suggest
starting with Air Patriots, the very first mobile game developed and
released by retail giant Amazon. Available for free download, Air
Patriots puts a new twist on the popular tower defense game genre, by
incorporating only mobile units instead of the stationary towers and
turrets that you might be used to. Rather than simply buying a unit and
plopping it down next to an enemy's route of travel, you have to tap and
swipe patrol routes for your units, which might be a little jarring at
first. The difficult part, of course, is creating an efficient network
of patrolling aircraft that keep raining down the pain at every point
along your enemies' path. That's also the fun part.
(Credit: CNET)
Fotodanz (free)
A cinemagraphs is a mostly static image with one or more isolated areas
looping in animation. Essentially it's the artsy cousin of the animated
GIF. Manually, a cinemagraph is difficult to create, but with the
Fotodanz app for Android, you can actually create one in seconds, using
only your mobile device's camera. While Fotodanz is not quite as popular
(or as powerful) as the iOS hit Cinemagram, it certainly serves as an
adequate alternative. It lets you isolate up to six different areas to
animate and can capture up to 5 seconds of video to loop.
(Credit: CNET)
TuneIn Radio Pro (99 cents)
If you're looking to use your new device as a music source, then I
suggest checking out TuneIn Radio. Different from an algorithm-driven
"radio" app like Pandora or Slacker, TuneIn Radio actually taps into
more than 70,000 AM/FM and Internet radio stations from around the
world. This means you can use it to listen to your favorite local
stations, talk radio, foreign language offerings, sports stations like
ESPN, and even podcasts. What's more, with the paid Pro version of the
app (99 cents), you get DVR-like functionality that lets you pause,
rewind, and record radio for later playback.
(Credit: CNET)
Google+ (free)
OK, this one is pretty well known, and it's not exactly new, but there
are still a lot of Android users out there who are ignoring it. Yes, we
all know that right now all of the action is on Twitter and Facebook,
but the fact is that the Google+ mobile app still has a lot to offer.
For instance, you can fire up a group video chat via Google+ Hangout
(perfect for sending holiday greetings to faraway family members). You
can create a circle of family members with whom you can share holiday
photos privately. And you can even use Google+ to automatically back up
your photos to the cloud, as soon as you take them. So, even if you're
not interested in sharing your daily musings with yet another social
network, there's still a lot to like about the Google+ app.
