32. Cycle Hire Widget
Price: Free
Whether you are need to get around on two
wheels in London, or looking for the nearest cycle stand in Washington, the
Cycle Hire Widget app aims to get you on your bike as soon as possible.
Choosing the cycle hire scheme nearest to
your current location, the simple color-coded information indicates if there
are bikes still available and how many storage slots are left to put your bike
back when you are done.
Cycle
Hire Widget
Once you’ve selected a location, you can
view it swiftly on Google Maps and, with a single long press, get further
options such as walking directions, driving directions and navigation. Live
data taken from local transport governing bodies means information about free bikes
at each location is updated every three minutes.
There is also a widget to put on your home screen,
which you can tap to power up your GPS and find the nearest cycle banks. With
the ability to work in cities across Europe and the US, this is the perfect app
to avoid the car and stretch your legs instead.
33. Opera Mini 6
Price: Free
Opera
Mini 6
The Opera Mini web browser is so quick and
slick, it has to be seen to be believed. In fact, in our tests, the only thing
holding it back was a shoddy 3G signal. Whack it on while you are using Wi-Fi
and the results are electric.
The interface is plain but easy to use. It
comes with default bookmarks but these are easily swapped for your own. Just
hold your thumb down on a bookmark and follow the instructions.
Once you are on a page, you zoom to any
part by touching your thumb on the specified section. Great when you need to
input passwords and the like.
For those who want to browse the web
properly and not via bookmarks, a Google search bar is integrated.
34. Retro Camera
Price: Free.
Retro
Camera
It’s not often the technologically Savvy
pine for older times, but there are some gadgets that work better when you turn
back the I clock. Cameras are one example. You can throw all the megapixels i
you want at a Digicam, but it won’t give you the nostalgic warmth of images
taken with a Polaroid. Lucky, then, the Retro Camera app brings back old-school
shooting with a vengeance.
Load the app up and within seconds you can
take some age-old images. There are five cameras to choose from: the Barbl,
Little Orange Box, Xolaroid, Pinhole Camera and the FudgeCam.
Each takes remarkably different pictures.
For a full frame image with low saturation and medium contrast, the FudgeCam
works well. If you want a Polaroid look, the Xolaroid offers this. Whichever
camera you use, the app makes it so that it looks as though you are looking
through the camera’s viewfinder.
Once done, you can view your images in the
‘darkroom! Another nice touch is that it takes a few seconds for the images to
develop.
There’s a lot of love in the Retro Camera
app and it will make taking pictures with your phone a whole lot more
enjoyable.
35. Mixzing
Price: Free
Mixzing
Apple’s Genius function for iTunes is
something that should be awesome but isn’t. Maybe it’s the way that Genius has
to rifle through all of your songs every time you use it, making it slower than
Stephen Hawking reciting The Iliad while trying to explain the notion of
time travel to a five-year-old.
Maybe it’s because it’s made by Apple, who
treats Android users with the sort of contempt usually kept for reality TV
stars in pantomime.
Mixzing makes the bold claim that it is
better at iTunes for matching music to mood and creating playlists that can be
used as soundtracks to your puny and rather average life.
It works and it works well, creating
playlists based on individual songs and allowing you the ability to chop and
change songs in the lists.
There’s even the inclusion of artist bios
and information, which is a decent addition to any music player.
Other features include the option to find
artwork for albums, fix tags on songs and some neat desktop syncing.
In some ways, the fact that Apple keeps
iTunes for the iPhone and iPod is a good thing - because it means that apps
such as Mixzing can come in and give it a kicking.
36. Mabilo Ringtones
Price: Free
Find
the perfect tune to annoy everyone with by using the Mabilo Ringtones app
Choosing the right ringtone can have a
dramatic effect. Download something too chirpy and that chirpiness will be the
subject of hatred in the office by the end of the day. But have a ringtone
that’s too sombre and you may end up looking all emo - no one wants that.
Mabilo Ringtones offers thousands of songs
to choose from. Whether it’s what’s in the Top 40 or a comedy song from Family
Guy, it’s all there.
We are not sure quite how Mabilo is allowed
to offer all these songs for free as ringtones but it’s on Google Play and we
won’t tell if you won’t.
If your conscience gets the better of you,
and you want to raise the alarm, there is a report button to press if you feel
a copyrighted song is being used.
If you want to listen to a song, click on
‘Preview’. If you like it, downloading takes only a few seconds.
37. Lookout Mobile Security
Price: Free
Lookout
Mobile Security
Lookout Mobile Security is broken into
three components: Security, Backup, and Missing device. In the Security section
you can automatically scan every app you install, with the option to perform a
scan every week. The Backup section provides an automatic backup of data on a
weekly or daily basis, while the Missing device mode enables you to locate your
phone on a map, send a loud siren to your phone, even if the sound is off, and
enable GPS satellite location to help hunt the handset down. This element of
the app requires setting up a password and an account on myLookout.com.
Antivirus apps that run all the time are
likely to be a drain on your phone battery, but Lookout claims that it only
consumes as much power in one day as a 33-second phone call.
It may not look or feel as intuitive as the
AVG Virus Scan app, but it does an efficient and effective job protecting you
from attacks in real time and is handy if you lose your phone.
38. Mirren Browser App
Price: Free
Mirren
Browser App
This browser takes seconds to load and is
one of the most intuitive we’ve used. Create bookmarks on the front page, and
you’ll also find links to top sites and search functionality here.
Load any site up and the speed of the thing
is immense. It took seconds for us to load up a graphically-intensive website
and even less time for those that are optimized for the mobile web.
But it’s the little touches that make the
difference. Such as the ability to browse using the full screen of your
smartphone (and it’s just one touch to get back to normal) and that it allows
Flash, and you can even pinch to zoom on the page - although this did crash the
browser a number of times for us.
