Best new Android apps from August 2014

Phandroid

Best new Android apps from August 2014

Womp womp. The last “summer month” is coming to an end. The beaches are getting less crowded. RV’s are being put back in storage. Back-to-school sales can be found in every store. It’s a sad time of year. The good news is we had a bunch of great new Android apps launch in August. Everything from image editors to homescreen replacements to Android Wear apps. If you were busy enjoying the warm weather you may have missed some of these apps. Enjoy!

Afterlight

There is no shortage of image editing apps for Android. If you’re into that sort of thing you will be interested in a new one called Afterlight. This app uses a simple design, paired with powerful tools, to give you the look you want in no time. It offers 15 tools, 59 filters, 77 frames, and 66 textures. Afterlight is available in Google Play for $.99.

Amazon Seller

Use the Amazon Seller app for Android to help grow and manage your selling business on Amazon. The app makes it easier than ever for you to quickly identify new selling opportunities on Amazon, list your items for sale, respond to customer questions, manage inventory, search for new things to sell, and estimate profitability. Amazon seller is available for free.

Blur Launcher

One of the cool features about the Google Now Launcher is the ability to open Google Now by swiping to the left on the homescreen. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could launch other apps like this? Blur Launcher aims to be that app.  Any developer can create a “page” to be accessed from the homepage. Right now just a few apps work, but more are on the way. Download Blur for free.

Football Schedule ’14

We’re less than a week away from the first official regular season NFL game. You’re going to want to keep up with your favorite team, see who is playing who, and get reminder for games. Our very own Football Schedule app is a quick and easy way to check the weekly NFL schedule. Download it now from free from Google Play.

Fragment

As we mentioned above, image editing apps are a dime a dozen on Android. However, Fragment is a completely new way to edit images on your phone. This app gives you the power to transform any image into totally unique, one-of-a-kind prismatic art you’ll want to share with everyone. The only limit is your imagination. Fragment is available for free.

Google News & Weather

Remember that random News & Weather app that was always included on Nexus devices? It still exists. Yeah, we were surprised too. This month it finally got an update, and now it’s a really nice looking app. We’re not sure how it fits into Google’s current line-up of news reading apps, but at least it looks modern. Protip: the weather widget is awesome.

HTC Zoe

HTC released Zoe for non-HTC devices this month. Zoe is a simple way to create, share and remix professional quality highlight videos—and it’s even better when your friends pitch in. Choose the photos and videos you’d like to share, add a filter to give your highlight video a unique look, and choose the perfect soundtrack. If that sounds cool you can grab it for free.

LAS: Last App Switcher

Multitasking on Android is pretty great, but it’s not perfect. Sometimes switching between apps can be bumpy. The back button behaves differently in all apps, and sometimes the multitasking button is laggy. Last App Switcher utilizes the swipe gesture on the home button to allow quick flipping between your last used app. It’s super fast and fluid. Download LAS for free from the Play Store.

Metromile

The Metromile app helps make car ownership easier, less expensive, and more enjoyable. Review your driving stats, get insights into your car’s running condition, and even find your car if it’s missing. After you sign up for an account the folks at Metromile will send you their “Metronome” device which plugs into your car’s OBD-II port (if you live in California, Oregon, Washington and Illinois.)

Over

What’s this? Another image editing app from August? Apparently the summer is a hot time for editing images. Over is an editor that focuses on adding text to images. They offer a bunch of exclusive fonts and artwork along with some simple image manipulation tools. It’s nice to see an app that just does one thing, but does it really well. Over is available for $1.99.

Snapshot

Launching you camera quickly is an important task for every smartphone. Many manufacturers allow the camera to be launched directly from the lockscreen, but sometimes that’s not fast enough either. Snapshot is a new app that launches the camera when you unlock your device in landscape mode. I love this app because it’s also a good reminder to use landscape mode when taking videos. Download Snapshot for free from the Play Store.

SpinMe Alarm Clock

Suck at waking up? Are you the type of person to set multiple alarms a few minutes apart from each other just to make sure you wake up on time? If so, say hello to SpinMe. This alarm clock is a super clever app designed to get you out of bed on time. The only way to turn off the alarm is by getting out of bed and physically spinning yourself around until the alarm stops! There is no escape!

TapPath

TapPath allows you to customize how clicking a web link in a 3rd party app behaves. A single click on a link will load it in your favorite browser, but multiple clicks is where things get interesting. You could set up double-click to open Pocket, or a triple click could load Pushbullet. TapPath can save you a lot of time when trying to share links across commonly used apps. It’s available for $0.99.

Unclouded

Unclouded is a tool to help you analyze and clean your cloud storage (Dropbox and Google Drive). You can see which files or folders are using up storage, see which types of files are using the most space, search files, and more. Unclouded can also be used as a very attractive file manager and cloud file explorer. BOX and OneDrive support are coming soon. You can download it right now for free.

WeTransfer

Sharing big files across the internet can be tough. There are many services out there to help, but most cost money, or at minimum require you to sign up. WeTransfer is different. Simply select your photos or videos (or use the share button), add your friends email address, and upload up to 10GB! Enjoy inspiring backgrounds during the transfer. Your friends will receive an email with a download link. Easy peasy, and all for free.

ANDROID WEAR APPS

I’m Here

Are you one of those people who constantly “checks-in” everywhere on Facebook? It’s okay, I am too. I’m Here is a simple Android Wear app that allows you to check-in to  Facebook directly from your watch. Checking-in to places can be one of those tasks that distracts you from the moment, which makes this app handy. You can also dictate status updates. I’m Here is available for $0.99.

Showear

A common complaint among Android Wear device owners is mistaken touches while showering. Since the displays are always on they can mistake water drops as finger touches. This is annoying. If you really must wear your smartwatch into the shower you need Showear, an Android Wear pattern lockscreen. Now your shower will have a much harder time pressing buttons and messing things up.

TickTick Wear

TickTick for Android Wear lets you access to-dos on wrist without taking phone out of your pocket. This is especially handy when doing things like grocery shopping. You don’t want to be constantly pulling out your phone while walking down the isles. Just quickly check your watch and go find the milk. TickTick Wear works best with TickTick for Android.

Wear Quick SMS

Currently you can only reply to SMS on Android Wear if you use the Hangouts app. Wear Quick SMS is a way you can send quick SMS messages to select contacts. First go into the phone app and choose contacts and create custom messages. You will be able to choose a contact and shot message to send right from your wrist. This is the type of thing we want to see for Android Wear. Download Wear Quick SMS for free.

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