I can’t get enough of the new smartphones coming out these days. Cameras are all upgraded with superb performance, even from the most underrated phones around. After unboxing a phone and getting it up and running, there are the first steps of installing your favorite apps like Facebook, Instagram or any games. Before that, let us suggest a few apps that will make your mobile experience richer and more functional. Here’s the list of 7 must have Android apps for new phones.
Snapseed
With more than enough photo editing apps around, it’s harder to select a good one. For us, Snapseed is one of the best. Straight from Google, the Snapseed is simple to use with beautiful and functional controls. You can use basic effects to give your photos different looks or go to more advanced adjustments like sharpness, contrast, saturation, and others. If you aren’t familiar with these terms, better stick with the default effects/filters. For a smooth look, just adjust basic exposure scales and pump up the brightness in Snapseed and you got yourself a decent photo for your Instagram.
English Dictionary
Oh, yes. Get this one right away. Having English as a second language, most don’t understand all the literary words/ phrases that easily. Either you are a bookworm or a casual English reader, having access to an online app to search for English jargon is a blessing. The app itself is very popular at Play Store with over 10 million downloads.
ES File Explorer
This explorer is the best one in the Play store. Most phones these days come with custom UIs and thus different file explorer apps. Most of these custom explorer apps look good but less functional. ES File explorer isn’t the best in aesthetics but makes up with its useful features like Net Manager that allows file transfer between phones over WiFi. It definitely isn’t as flashy as other file explorers but gets the job done.
VLC
VLC is the default media player on my PC. This software is a must-have for any phone, laptop or PC. The Android app of VLC is good for watching videos and can be used as a music player. It has all the major features required in a video/music player like fast forward, loading subtitle files, sleep timer and even a pop-up option that lets you hover the videos in VLC over other apps, quite useful for multitasking. And the great thing about VLC is that it’s open-source, not just free, so there are no annoying ads. TOTAL RELIEF.
Keep & Color Notes
Note-taking apps are all over the Play Store, so we have two options for you here.
Keep
This one is also from Google. It has a Google sync option, i.e. all your notes are stored in the cloud, so even when you delete the app or switch to a new phone and re-install the app, it will download all the notes from cloud/internet to your phone. Moreover, the phone has one of the best note management interface. Smaller notes are stored with bigger fonts so short notes aren’t overshadowed by longer notes in the app. You can take written notes, audio notes, doodles or even images as notes in Keep. Thus, we love Keep here at E-nepsters.
Color Notes
The minimal note taking app pick for your notes. Color Notes is our old favorite. The app has a basic interface with colored lists of notes taken over time. you can backup the notes in your local storage, or try the online backup option in this app. This app takes less storage space and uses fewer data from your phone. Take a look at this app if you don’t want Keep.
Twilight
Phone screens suck the life out of your eyeballs. To put it gently, research has shown that the long exposure to phone screens disturb our eyes. Twilight filters blue light from our phone screens that reduce the torture on eyes. Twilight is, therefore, an important app to have. Twilight also lets you adjust the intensity and color temperature if you want to customize how the screen looks. Recently, more and more phones come with the functionalities of Twilight by default. But, for those not blessed with software updates or new phones, Twilight serves the need very well.
Xender
Obviously, this list can’t be complete without a file sharing app. Bluetooth file sharing is a thing of the past. Xender shares files over wifi much faster and easily. Another good alternative is Shareit, but we prefer Xender for file sharing. The phone transfers file by creating a wifi hotspot and then letting the other phone join in.
Recently, the app allows transferring between a phone and a PC, so a data cable isn’t needed for quick PC to phone transfers. The files can be transferred with a speed range of roughly 30mbps- 60mbps depending on the wifi strength and phone hardware specs.
There are a lot of useful apps in the Play Store, some even better than the above apps. However, these basic apps must be enough for general users to make the most out of their phones. What do you think about the aforementioned apps? Have we missed any? Let us know in the comment box below.
