As the school holidays lurch to an agonising conclusion, allow our Best Android Apps of the week run-down to take away those blues.
We’ve got some awesome games to sample, as well as a couple of cool applications that are sure to become ever-present features in your phone’s internal memory banks.
As ever, those trusty QR codes are on hand to make the process of downloading these digital delights as effortless as possible (just make sure you’ve got the Barcode Scanner app on your handset beforehand), but you can still click the handy link in the app title for old-school access, if you so wish.
Free
We’re big fans of David Mitchell here at Electric Pig. His brilliantly awkward performances in the sitcom Peep Show have earned him plenty of fans, and his satirical musings are wittily observed and side-splittingly amusing. Speaking of the latter, David Mitchell’s Soapbox (a collection of short clips featuring Mitchell talking about subjects as diverse as America, beer and nudism) is now available on Android, allowing you to watch his funny rants from the comfort of your own handset.
Free
Let’s face it, a lot of free Android games are complete and utter rubbish, so it’s nice to see a decent one confound your expectations every once in a while. Racing Moto definitely falls into that category, as it offers a high-score challenge that’s as addictive as a tube of Pringles as well as razor-sharp 3D visuals. The objective is to guide your bike up the screen whilst avoiding collisions with traffic. Acceleration is automatic, but holding down your finger on the display gives you a speed boost. There’s a risk and reward element here, as the boost multiples your score but also makes it harder to react on on-screen obstacles. Racing Moto is a fine addition to our best Android apps line-up, and the fact that it doesn’t cost a penny is the icing on the cake.
Approx £1.85
Google Music may be revolutionising the way in which Android users access their tunes across the pond, but at the time of writing it’s still US-only. While there are ways of cheating the system if you live outside of the United States, we’d recommend you check out SkyAmp and save yourself the bother. It’s essentially a third-party Android app that allows you to access Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage. All you need is a Hotmail, Windows Live or Messenger account. You get 25GB of free storage, which should be more than enough for most people. The player is a little basic and it only accepts MP3 files, but these are issues that are easily forgiven for Lady Gaga on-the-go.
Approx 60p
Since Angry Birds turned up and transformed everyone and their granny into rabid ‘casual’ gamers, rival developers have been falling over themselves to create The Next Big Thing. Greedy Spiders is probably the closest anyone has come to achieving this on Android, but it’s a very different proposition to Angry Birds. It’s a turn-based puzzle title where you’re tasked with freeing some hapless flies from the clutches of evil spiders. You do this by cutting the strands of a web one at a time. When you make a cut, the spider then takes its turn and moves towards its prey. By cutting the right strands in order, you can free the fly or cut off the spider. It’s a gloriously addictive experience and one that shouldn’t be missed.
Free
Arguably one of the greatest video games of all time, Tetris has been released on practically every format know to man, but it’s the handheld versions that have tended to find the most favour with gamers – the Game Boy edition practically sold the console back in the early ‘90s. EA’s Android version has been on offer for a while – and was even bundled with the Xperia Play – but the company has now graced us with an ad-supported free edition. The adverts appear at the top of the display and are fairly unobtrusive, allowing you to enjoy the block-busting gameplay that has made this game so beloved the world over.
