School’s out, and here’s this week’s best Android apps! Well technically, the end of the school year depends largely on what part of the country you’re in, but you can surely forgive our youthful exuberance. If you happen to still be in full time education and you’re all done for another term, then our list of the very best Android downloads is obviously the best way to kick off your holiday in style.
As always, those lovely QR Codes are present and correct, so you use the brilliant Barcode Scanner app to quickly and effortlessly load them onto your handset. Should you want to get a little more hands-on, you can alternatively use the handy URL links that are contained in the title of each application.
Everywhere you turn people are screaming that print is dead, and when you look at slick apps like Zinio, it’s not too hard to see why that is slowly becoming the case. Zinio allows you to download and read magazines from the comfort of your Android phone or tablet, and features publications such as Maxim, PC Gamer, New Scientist and Esquire. It’s free to download, easy to use, works on all Android 2.2+ devices and offers a range of gratis magazines to get you started. The ideal way to kick off our Best Android apps rundown, then.
If you’re old enough to recall the original 2D Sonic and Super Mario titles then you’ll probably cry tears of rose-tinted joy when you load up Diversion for the first time. This slick platform adventure is easy to pick up, but incredibly challenging. You must negotiate 100 different levels avoiding obstacles, enemies and even end-of-level bosses. Along the way you need to collect various items to boost your score, which is tallied up at the conclusion of each stage. To add even more longevity, you’ve got a staggering 150 different avatars to unlock, as well as multiple routes through each course. You’ll need a pretty powerful phone to make the most of Diversion’s crisp 3D visuals, though.
Google’s Street View is incredibly helpful when you’re attempting to plan a long trip or trying to locate a specific landmark, but Historypin takes the concept in an entirely new direction. This app allows you to view historic photos of the location you’re currently in, and pulls together thousands upon thousands of vintage images from all over the world. It’s a truly staggering experience to stand on a familiar street and view what it looked like fifty or even a hundred years previously. If you’ve got a stack of old images in your own personal collection you can digitise them using your phone’s camera and add them to the Historypin database for others to appreciate and enjoy. If you’re keen to get a better and deeper understanding of the history of the world around you, then this is a must.
No doubt you’ve already seen the brilliance of the Nintendo 3DS’s augmented reality mini-games – to be honest, aside from the excellent Zelda 3D they’re one of the most valid reasons for owning the handheld. However, you don’t need to splash out another £200+ in order to enjoy this sort of zany camera-based gameplay – your humble Android phone is perfectly capable of replicating the experience. AR Blitz is a pretty simple proposition, requiring you to print out a paper target which is rendered as a wooden board on your phone’s display. You then have to shoot various shapes using the on-screen cross-hair. While it’s not likely to set the world alight in terms of gameplay, it’s nevertheless an interesting indication of where the genre could go on mobile phones. And it’s free – aside from the paper and ink you’ll need to expend in order to print out the aforementioned target, of course.
If you’re one of the lucky people who has a Virgin Media TiVo box then you’ll want to get this cunning little app on your Android phone, pronto. On the surface it’s a fairly straightforward TV guide which displays a schedule of all of the week’s programmes, but if you dig a little deeper you’ll realise it allows you to remotely record shows on your TiVo box without even being in the house. Just imagine – you’d need never miss an episode of Loose Women thanks to a mid-morning business meeting ever again. Isn’t technology great?
School’s out, and here’s this week’s best Android apps! Well technically, the end of the school year depends largely on what part of the country you’re in, but you can surely forgive our youthful exuberance. If you happen to still be in full time education and you’re all done for another term, then our list of the very best Android downloads is obviously the best way to kick off your holiday in style.
