It's hard to find anyone without a smart phone today. And any person with smart phone, is always in search of best apps freely available on play store.
Today, I'll be sharing some of my favorite android apps that I categorize as "Must Have".
I won't be talking about the generic mainstream apps that we install first thing after buying a phone. Neither I'll talk about iOS apps because I find android OS giving more freedom to install apps easily and choose from variety available.
here are my favorite five:
1. SMS Backup+
One thing we fear the most, chances of losing mobile data especially the important messages (SMS) that we get from Banks, services used, OTPs, transaction details, credit card / loan messages etc.
Need not worry anymore, now you have the power to backup all your messages from phone in your Gmail account using this app "SMS Backup+". Trust me it's a life saver. Even in an unforeseen event of losing your phone, the app gives you freedom to restore data from your Gmail account on to your phone without any glitch.
Some of the salient features:
- "SMS backup plus" automatically backups your SMS, MMS and call log entries once you connect it with your Gmail account. It creates a separate label in Gmail for better visibility and avoid missing the data with your emails.
- User can restore SMS and call log (but not MMS) back on to phone easily through the app.
- it can be installed either on phone memory or SD Card. I recommend you to install in on phone because there are technical glitches on taking backup and data restoration from SD card.
- It's free to download. This has inbuilt app updates from Google play store.
- it does not occupy much of your mobile's RAM.
- The app performs data backup in background as long as your phone is connected to internet. No manual backups needed if you are using this app.
There are other apps available to backup mobile messages (SMS). I have tried few (airdroid, mightytext) and I found this to be the ultimate winner. So this tops my list of 5 must have android apps on your mobile.
I would love to hear from you if you know of or have been using any app better than this to backup your SMS data.
2. MSN Money
This app is for all those interested in stocks, markets and investments. it's an easy way to keep track of your stocks and simplify life.
if you are an investor / stock freak and wants to track your investments on daily, weekly or monthly basis, this is a must have app on your mobile. it works very similar to moneycontrol. The only drawback is you need to have an MSN account to access this app. But that's not a difficult task if you really wants to track your stocks at any cost.
The best thing about this app is that it does not throw ads on your screen while your accessing it unlike moneycontrol and other apps.
- This app provides in-depth analysis, statistics, recommendations, price movements, news about the stocks, market movers etc.
- You can create your own watchlist to have a quick look at your stocks and check on their performance.
- You can study indices as per your area of interest.
- it gives you news about the latest happening in markets today.
- it always shares links to blogs / posts about Personal finance.
There are tools available within the app which allows you to:
- Convert Currency
- Calculate monthly mortgage
- Tip calculator
- Wealth Estimator
- Retirement Planner
Search for a stock on BSE / NSE and it gives you an Overview of the stock, news about it, recommendations, Statistics, Trends, Competitor stocks working in the same sector & the Stock profile.
If you are already using any popular apps like moneycontrol etc. to track your watchlist, try this app as well. I guarantee, you will not regret it.
3. Cam Scanner
Gone are the days when you have to go to the nearest cafe to get your docs scanned and send it in email. Who would have thought one fine day users will have an app to scan docs as smoothly as a real scanner and print them. Cam Scanner is the app for these tasks.
Life just got better for all those always in want of scanning documents to fax / send or print them.
Now you can easily scan your documents, edit it and send fax or take print outs.
Some of the salient features:
- Scanned documents can be either saved as pdfs or JPEG images
- you can either create individual pdfs of scanned docs or club them together under one pdf
- you can crop the scanned doc, enhance its text to make it more readable.
- you can easily print docs through this app once your printer and mobile is in the same network.
- you can also add watermarks on your scanned docs and set pass codes to protect them
Connect your Gmail account and send the scanned doc in your email for backup.
This app also has a paid version providing you up to 10G of cloud space and auto upload feature. I believe the free version has enough features to lasts for a lifetime. So I would really not recommend to buy the app unless you need some service which is only available in paid version.
4. SMS Notifier (SMS Popup)
How many of you are fascinated with the way iOS show any incoming message by directly opening a popup with message details.
This feature is not available in android (at least in the version I am using 4.1.2).
So I thought of having it installed on my android mobile using "SMS Notifier" app. This app works just the same way as on iOS. Any new incoming message is notified to the user through a popup without the need of user manually reading the message through the message box. Isn't that convenient.
It's easy to read your incoming messages even when your mobile is locked. Once you install it, the app works in background and performs the task.
5. Inshorts
Short on watching news on television or reading a newspaper because of time crunch. How about having an online app to read news. "News in Shorts" app (now Inshots) allows you to read news at any time and keeps you updated with the latest happening around the globe.
Catch all the news, local & global, from around the world, presented to you in not more than 60 words.
You can set filters as to what type of news you want to read about. Sports / Political / Business / Movies, national / international, you get it all here in 60 words.
This app has this cool feature to swipe left / right to read news in detail. Swipe up / down allows you to move between the news on the app. it's fun to read news here. The news presented here are not cluttered on one screen like flipboard.
You can also set the theme as you want to view the app in day / night mode.
This app will definitely give you a new news reading experience. A must try.
If you know apps that you think deserves to be on "must have" list, let me know, I would love to check them out. Thanks
Great post.
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