Apps to Make Your Android Smartphone More Productive, Fun

by Don Reisinger

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock is designed to improve sleep and ultimately make its users healthier. Users who buy the app for 99 cents place their smartphone under their sheets on the mattress. From there, the app measures movement and automatically wakes people up at the opportune time in the sleep cycle. Best of all, the app traces sleep quality over time to give users a visual representation of when they sleep best.

With its recently launched second version, HotSchedules comes with a new design. However, the app, which costs $2.99, provides the same solid user experience, including the ability for users to manage work schedules. Managers can keep employees informed of their shifts and approve requests from within the app. It’s a full-featured system for companies in need of tracking time.

The Fleksy Keyboard is designed to improve the functionality of Android’s built-in keyboard. Fleksy is a little expensive at $3.99, but includes the ability for users to create different skins for their keyboards, see an enhanced auto-correct feature and choose from over 600 emojis. Best of all, the keyboard app works with a wide range of applications, including Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat.

Afterlight is designed for amateur photographers who want to improve the quality and design of their creations. The app, which costs 99 cents, comes with 15 adjustment tools and 59 filters. The app also lets users add textures and frames and modify resolution. It’s arguably one of the most useful apps in this roundup.

Sync iTunes to Android–Pro is what folks would expect from the app: a tool that helps users get songs, podcasts and videos off of iTunes and onto the Android-based device. The app connects to iTunes over WiFi and syncs the content across devices. It works with both Windows and Mac versions of iTunes, too, which makes it useful for all users. Not bad for an app that costs $2.99.

The free Clean Master is designed to optimize the performance of an Android smartphone. The app sorts through the operating system files and culls files and folders that might be hurting the device’s performance. Cheetah Mobile, which makes Clean Master, claims to have cleaned more than 400 million phones and “cleaned 547,500TB of junk in one year” from user smartphones. Not bad.

It’s hard to pick a single messenger app, since there are so many that are popular, but Kik gets the nod this time around. The app, which is growing rapidly, includes the ability to create unique usernames; send text, video and photos to others; and even share games and music. It’s a wildly popular, free app.

Another free app, Skype is one of the more useful tools for those who commonly communicate with others out of town. The app allows users to place voice and video calls and includes full messaging support. Skype works quite well on Android.

Twitter isn’t the most popular social networking app on the Android platform, but the free program is still a must for anyone who wants to stay connected to friends and keep abreast of what’s happening in the world. Twitter for Android brings the full social experience to the smartphone and works extremely well on just about any recently released device.

It’s hard to find much fault with the popular (and free) Shazam. While the app has added some features over the last couple of years to stay fresh, its chief function is to “listen” to songs that are playing and deliver a result to users telling them what’s on. From there, users can buy songs. It’s a great app.