Hardware and software setup

The best apps for android rating. The most useful apps for Android: why you need to download it! Google Chrome: fast browser

A study was conducted on the Internet that made it possible to determine which applications people most often download on their gadgets. In our review of the 25 most popular applications. Perhaps someone will find something new and useful in this list.

1. Weather Channel


While there are thousands of weather apps out there, this one is the most recognizable and popular. Weather Channel, according to its developers, is the best radar maps, the most accurate local meteorological forecasts and current weather news.

2. Voice Search


Voice search allows users to use Google search engine Search by saying the desired phrase next to the smartphone. In August 2014, a new feature was added that allows voice search users to select up to five languages ​​that their app will understand.

3.Viber


If a dozen years ago someone had said that there is an application that allows you to call any place on earth absolutely free of charge, they would probably have laughed at him. Viber has made this dream of millions of people a reality.

4 Temple Run (and Temple Run 2)


This is a well-known gaming application that was originally intended only for Apple devices, and was later developed for Android. Temple Run literally captured the hearts of gamers around the world. This game (as well as its sequel) has been downloaded over a billion times since 2011.

5. Talking Tom and Friends


This app was named "Best iPad Game for Kids, Education & Family" in 2014. It's perfect for parents who want to keep their restless kids busy.

6. Shazam


Shazam is now history, but when it was released in 1999, it was considered a technological marvel. 16 years later, Shazam has over 100 million monthly active users worldwide and is used on over 500 million mobile devices. In October 2014, Shazam announced that its technology had been used to recognize fifteen billion songs.

7Pandora Internet Radio


Pandora Radio is the world's most popular music streaming and recommendation service, with 150 million users.

8.Netflix


Those who are ready to watch movies and series on their smartphone screen will fall in love with the Netflix app.

9.Instagram


Instagram was voted the best way to share photos in 2015, and judging by the fact that this application has been downloaded millions of times, this claim is not without merit.

10. Google Translate


Google Translate is an automated text translation service provided by Google Inc. The application supports 90 languages ​​and is used by almost 200 million people a day.

11. Fruit Ninja Free


Fruit Ninja is a video game developed by the Australian company Halfbrick Studios. It was released on April 21, 2010 for ipod touch and iPhone, and has since become Apple's second most popular video game behind Angry Birds.

12. Facebook Messenger


Facebook Messenger is a free, easy-to-use application that allows you to communicate on the Facebook platform using text messages becomes much easier.

13. eBay


Instead of shopping, you can shop right on the couch, enjoy coffee and breakfast with your smartphone in hand.

14. Dropbox

There is no other application that is so perfect to help you synchronize your smartphone with other computers or devices connected by a single account. Earlier in 2015, Dropbox acquired CloudOn, a leading document creation and editing company. Dropbox users now have the ability to create documents directly from the file sharing service.

15. Amazon Kindle


In June 2010, Amazon released a reading app e-books Amazon Kindle for Android, and a little later for Apple's iOS platform.

16. Google Street View


The Google Street View app is a technology that provides panoramic views of many streets around the world. It is included in two other major applications - Google Maps and Google Earth.

17. Angry Birds Free


Angry Birds Free is the most popular iPhone game ever and it's free!

18 Skype

skype- The best way organizing video chat with people around the world. It can be used on PC, laptop, iPad or smartphone.

19.Twitter

20. whatsapp messenger


WhatsApp is arguably the best-known and most downloaded instant messaging app for smartphones with over 800 million users worldwide.

21. YouTube

Even though YouTube got into App Store only in 2012 after Apple removed YouTube from the list of applications installed on the iPhone by default. And in just a couple of years, YouTube has become one of the top five most popular apps of all time.

22. Google Search


All you have to do is hit the "OK" button, and Google will find anything from nearby movie theaters and restaurants to the number of calories in a hamburger a person is about to eat. The app has been downloaded over a billion times.

23. Gmail

The Gmail app has nearly half a billion users worldwide, and is one of the most popular apps and best-known email services in the world.

24. Facebook


Google's Chrome browser for Android platforms is one of the fastest, simplest, and simply the best web browsers in the world. No wonder why it has been the most downloaded app in the last few years.

True, in the real world, applications alone are indispensable. , will definitely appeal to those who care about comfort.

One of the reasons smartphones have got huge widescreens is to watch videos. Processors today can consume almost no energy when the smartphone is in video player mode, and in terms of the number of formats that a typical Android smartphone “pulls”, it is even cooler than computers. In theory, it will handle both the ancient videos of the early 90s and the new 4K video.

In theory, because standard video players in smartphones are made on the principle of "if only something would be played somehow." If you happen to record a bunch of movies from your computer to your smartphone to watch them on the go, you run the risk of finding that half of the videos either won't open or play without picture and/or sound.

MX Player is an excellent omnivorous video player on Android

All this can be fixed by installing a truly omnivorous player. There are many of them, but MX is one of the most authoritative and sophisticated among its kind. It plays any video and music in a very economical mode even on old smartphones, can make the volume in videos twice as high as a standard player (in films with a quiet soundtrack, this is very useful), switch between several types of voice acting, scale the frame with a “pinch” ”, as in photos, and open videos from sites in a convenient Android player.

MX Player itself is free, but it is loaded with ads. The ad-free version is already worth the money. It's a bit of a hassle that, due to the greed of patent holders, support for the AC3 format ( multichannel audio in modern films) need to be downloaded and "fastened" separately. But take my word for it - the player is very good and deserves such trouble.

ES File Explorer - clean your smartphone from debris and transfer files over Wi-Fi

A long time ago, when Android was a semi-finished product, there were no smart file managers in it. In order to flaunt before the owners of iPhones the fact “look, I have everything laid out in folders, like on a computer!”, it was necessary to download a separate application for managing files.

Those days are long gone, and now there are commonplace programs for renaming, moving or copying files in every smartphone. But there are no quality ones among them.

ES File Explorer will help you transfer files over Wi-Fi and clean your system of junk

ES File Explorer was one of the first noteworthy file managers on Android, today it has grown in breadth and can do much more than the average user needs. But active user Android phone will definitely need the following "goodies":

  • Ability to open files from the local network. For example, from shared folder on your computer / laptop, or from a hard drive / flash drive that you plugged into the router.
  • Working with archives. Someday they will send you a pack of photos, a Word / Excel document inside a .zip, .rar or something even worse. ES Explorer will be able to open such archives without problems.
  • Drive Analysis. If the smartphone is full of files to the eyeballs, while it is not very clear why the place suddenly ended so abruptly, just press the "analysis" key in ES, after which it will show how much memory space is occupied by pictures / music / applications and games / documents, will arrange them from large to small and allow you to remove the "garbage" right in the same menu. An almost non-alternative function in terms of its convenience.
  • Transfer files between smartphones at Wi-Fi speed. It is unlikely that you send photos, music and videos to nearby mobile phones as often as in the era of polyphonic ringtones, but Bluetooth has been and has remained a dull and slow method of communication since then, and the normal universal way to transfer files over Wi-Fi is not came up with. More precisely, they came up with, but only between identical applications. If you and your friend have ES Explorer, you can send large files in two clicks at the highest possible speed between mobile phones - the file manager has a "sender" function for this case.

WPS Office - Word, Excel and all-all-all

During the existence of smartphones, Microsoft Office standards files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) were at first "unbearable" exotics, then a revelation with which everyone tried to edit texts on tiny screens. Today, there are no miracles in viewing and finely editing text in documents and presentations. Another thing is that such files (+ Adobe PDF documents) will be sent to you by e-mail from all sides, and there will be nothing to open them on a smartphone. You can, of course, keep the intrigue until you get to the desktop PC, but it is more reasonable to spend several tens of megabytes of memory on a ready-made set for opening and editing everything “office”.

WPS Office - Word, Excel and PowerPoint in your pocket

WPS Office (formerly Kingsoft Office, in case you're wondering) isn't the coolest office suite of its kind, but it's free, bug-free, fast, and doesn't lack features even when compared to expensive alternatives. Recommended.

Weather/news widgets - not to turn on the TV

As in the case of file managers, smartphones are not deprived of informers about the temperature outside the window and the latest news, but the quality of standard widgets almost always leaves much to be desired. Therefore, we advise you to decorate the desktop with informational details from other developers.

The appearance and functionality of widgets is always a matter of taste, but in our opinion, Yandex offers the least catchy and at the same time functional options for weather and news. A side effect is the constant “steaming” of search, the Taxi application and other company products.

Weather and news will make the smartphone desktop always an interesting sight

At first, looking at headlines and weather instead of “wallpaper” on your desktop will be unusual, but take my word for it - very soon you will begin to enjoy the fact that you will know all the main events in the world before TV viewers and news readers on the Internet. It is also not necessary to delve only into political conflicts - car lovers or electronic devices can only receive information on their favorite topics.

Shazam - find out what song is playing

Every day you hear music, among which there are songs that seem to shock you. Because here, under this very song, you rushed under the Christmas tree as a child / were going on a first date / got a job / something else, but from the text in a foreign language it’s still not clear what it’s about, and you also don’t remember who He actually sings this song and what is the name of it.

With new smartphones, this is no longer a problem - you take out your “shovel” on Android from the wide legs, press the key. The smartphone listens to the song and calls the artist and the name of the song after a few seconds. That's what an app called Shazam is for.

Shazam: you will always know what music is playing nearby

Of course, Shazam, although it was one of the first, is far from the only one of its kind - Sony has similar applications, and even Google has recently begun to learn to recognize music. But Shazam has the largest knowledge base, so it's still the surest way to recognize music with a smartphone.

It seems to you now that such a function will not be needed regularly - when you begin to suffer after you heard a fragment of your favorite song, but did not find out who sings it, you will remember our words.

Currency converter - a tragedy with the dollar and the ruble in the lead roles

What are you laughing at? Have you already forgotten how you tore your hair on your head and rushed to stores for equipment in order to have time to buy it before the price tags are rewritten?

Of course, I would like to believe that the worst is behind us, and in the coming years we will not find sharp fluctuations of the ruble against the US dollar, but it will not be superfluous to keep an eye on how the national currency is doing so that later we will not learn the shocking truth last, from the evening news reports. And in general, handy tool conversion between the currencies of different states is useful on vacation and on business trips.

How is our long-suffering ruble doing there?

There are a lot of applications that can convert currencies, we will recommend one of the most obvious among them - Easy Currency Converter. Simple in appearance, with the ability to select "favorite" currencies and a chart with the dynamics of the exchange rate. That is, in addition to the current figures, you can always see how the ruble bounced / fell against the dollar over the next days, months or even years. Gourmets, by the way, can even glance at the so-called Russian Zen - the "holy trinity" of the dollar, euro and the price of a barrel of oil.

Messengers - VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and others

A very naive item in our selection, but if you just recently bought a smartphone, you should know - " smart phones» differ from simple ones by focusing on constant communication not only for calls and SMS in GSM networks, but also via the Internet. The ability to correspond in "ICQ" was in ancient times, but in new smartphones under Android control you have the opportunity to share huge amounts of information, video recordings, make video calls abroad for free!

A smartphone is an opportunity to communicate without regard to tariffs and distances

Because cellular operators have long transferred everyone to tariffs with a monthly fee, to which the serious shred of the Internet is “nailed”. This is enough to stop sending SMS and switch to communicating with friends and relatives online.

It is not necessary to install all instant messengers at once (although it is desirable) - select those in which you will keep in touch with someone. This will be enough.

Video on the network - "telly", online cinemas or short jokes

Of course, with a limited amount of traffic in the new cellular tariffs (Russian operators have removed the unlimited amount farther away in order to “milk” subscribers more efficiently) it does not allow to accelerate much, but the Internet package is enough for a certain amount of video entertainment. And with periodic WiFi at home or at work, you can get out even more efficiently.

If you didn't know, the "big three" (MTS, Beeline, MegaFon) mobile operators there is applications for watching TV via 3G/4G without spending traffic from the tariff. In MTS, for such a pleasure, they want a little money in excess of the tariff, Beeline has a small number of free channels + paid ones, MegaFon varies the number free tariffs depending on the amount of the subscription fee for your tariff. In any case, if you would like to watch TV away from the "box", pay attention to such services of cellular operators.

TV, movies or short videos - Android has it all

And if, on the contrary, you don’t want the TV to reach you from your mobile phone, install an online cinema for yourself to watch feature films or music videos. The most popular applications of this kind remain ivi.ru and Megogo, among unofficial (which are not in Google Play) and completely free customers can be noted video mix , HD VideoBox and LazyIPTV.

Each of us uses the capabilities of our smartphone in different ways: it depends on the type of activity, the range of tasks to be solved, interests and other factors. Some, in the old fashioned way, are content only with the telephone capabilities of the device, others combine voice communication with communication in social networks, web surfing and games, others use gadgets with might and main for taking photos and videos, navigating, banking, reading books. There are also many who use a smartphone or tablet in business activities: to work with electronic correspondence and documents, operational communication with colleagues and partners, and business development. The scope of mobile technology is huge, but few are aware of the existence of a store Google Apps Play products that allow you to look at familiar devices from a completely different perspective and fully reveal their potential. Interested? Then let's move on to an illustrated review of the twenty most unusual applications for Android!

Our TOP 20 opens with a couple of applications that have the same name Smart Tools and are available for download at this and this links on Google Play. With their help, it will not be difficult to turn a smartphone into a “Swiss army knife” and use it as a sound level meter, range finder, vibration meter, metal detector, light meter, thermometer, radar for measuring the speed of moving objects, level, magnifying glass, metronome, tuning fork, cardiograph and a dozen other useful household tools. For the full operation of both programs, support is needed in mobile device a whole bunch of sensors: illumination, proximity, accelerometer / gyroscope, magnetometer (digital compass), barometer and others. Of course, you should not count on the accuracy of measurements made by Smart Tools, but in some cases such a set of software assistants can do a good job. For example, it can be useful for searching on hastily flush wiring in wall or leveling washing machine along the horizontal plane.

Since we are talking about measuring tools, Planimeter can be an excellent addition to the applications mentioned above - a tool for determining distance, area, perimeter, angles on the ground using Google Maps and a GPS / GLONASS receiver built into a smartphone. Such a program can be used in various fields: field and agricultural work, planning, construction, travel and entertainment. It can also be useful for real estate agents. To calculate the perimeter or area of ​​any object (for example, a land plot), it is enough to set the starting point on the map, enable route tracking, and then walk around the object. Planimeter will automatically perform all calculations and give you the measurement result. Similarly, you can measure the distance between two points on the map and the angles between lines.

More progressive in terms of measurements is the Radioactivity Counter program, which allows you to seriously use your smartphone as ... the simplest radiation dosimeter! To monitor the radiation situation, a photosensitive matrix of a mobile phone camera is used, the lens of which must first be covered with a dark film - for example, from a floppy disk or an x-ray. After that, you will need to calibrate the application according to the instructions on the developers' website, and you can start measuring the background radiation. The link also presents various research materials, results of experiments using professional equipment and demonstration videos confirming the practical value and performance of the Radioactivity Counter.

High school students and students of technical universities will definitely be pleased with the PhotoMath application for solving mathematical problems using a smartphone camera and technology optical recognition Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tests. The principle of working with the program is simple, like everything ingenious: just point the camera at a mathematical problem, and PhotoMath will immediately give an answer and provide detailed information. step by step solution. The capabilities of the application allow you to recognize not only printed, but also handwritten text, as well as make edits to scanned formulas and equations. In fairness, we note that such a mobile assistant can be useful not only to students, but also to parents - to check the correctness of children's homework.

The review would be incomplete without mentioning Im2Calories, Google's experimental application that allows you to determine the calorie content of food from a photo. developers involved in the technology program artificial intelligence and machine learning allow her with high precision determine the type of food, its ingredients and serving size, and then, based on the information received, make a conclusion about the number of calories contained in the dish. At the same time, it is absolutely not necessary that the picture be of high resolution - even a photo from Instagram is enough. Unfortunately, not yet known, when exactly will the full release of Im2Calories take place. As soon as the application sees the light, we will definitely tell you more about it.

Another noteworthy creation Google Teams- PhotoScan application for creating digital copies of memorable and dear paper photos. According to the creators of the program, it does not just take a snapshot of the image, but transfers it to digital media with high quality. Using artificial intelligence technologies, PhotoScan independently determines the boundaries, aligns the image, changes its orientation, and removes unnecessary glare. As a result of scanning, copies of the correct rectangular shape with corrected perspective are obtained, which can be saved in the smartphone’s memory or in the cloud. Google service photos.

Do not lag behind and domestic organizations, including state. One of them is federal Service for the regulation of the alcohol market (Rosalkogolregulirovanie), which created the anti-counterfeit Alco application, which is relevant for lovers of "take on the chest", which is designed to determine the authenticity of alcoholic products. Using the phone camera, the program reads the excise stamp (or the barcode on the check), checks with the Unified State Automated information system(EGAIS) and displays the results of the check on the screen. You can immediately report a violation found to Rosalkogolregulirovanie and notify the department about an illegal point of sale of alcohol. Also in the application there is a map of stores that have a license to sell alcohol. In the light of cases of mass poisoning of the population with methyl alcohol and counterfeit alcoholic products, widely discussed in the media, it is definitely not worth writing off AntiCounterfeit Alco.

For motorists, our selection includes three programs at once: Auto Acceleration, Car Alarm and MeteoMoyka. The first allows you to turn your smartphone into a device for measuring the acceleration time of a car up to 100 km/h, the second into a simple alarm to protect against theft, damage or evacuation of the car, the third into an assistant that suggests the most successful day for car washing and automatically builds a route to the nearest car washes. The fundamental difference between the Auto Acceleration application and its competitors is the use of information from two sensors: a GPS receiver and an accelerometer. They are also involved in Car Alarm, which controls the location of the vehicle and, in case of an alarm, notifies the owner by a call or SMS. A feature of MeteoMoyka is a system for analyzing meteorological data and evaluating the weather forecast for several days in advance. It is she who determines the most suitable time for washing vehicles.

A good addition to the set of mentioned programs for motorists is the Nexar application - AI Dashcam, which turns a smartphone into an advanced DVR that can simultaneously record video from the front and rear cameras, analyze the traffic situation on the fly and inform the driver about emerging dangers.

Thanks to the ABBYY FineScanner app, your smartphone can Android based can cope with the role of a pocket scanner for documents and books. The product created by a Russian developer allows you to create PDF or JPG files from any printed documents (invoices, certificates, contracts, personal documents). The program has built-in OCR technology that recognizes texts in 193 languages ​​and uploads results in 12 popular formats, including DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, while maintaining formatting. Ready documents can be transferred to any of eight cloud storages, printed, sent by e-mail, opened in another PDF application. To scan book and magazine publications, ABBYY FineScanner provides the BookScan function, which automatically splits a photographed spread of a book into two pages, straightens line bends, removes defects, and makes a scanner copy that can be recognized and an edited file can be obtained.

IT system administrators should bookmark the aptly named Web Monitor for monitoring and diagnosing servers on TCP/IP networks. The program periodically, with a specified time interval, sends requests to the sites set in the settings, captures the responses received from them and generates detailed statistics on the operation of network nodes. When using such a mobile tool, it will not be difficult to find out if the server is functioning, whether it “hangs” and when it was unavailable, as well as analyze the quality and load of the communication channel. In fact, Web Monitor is an advanced version of diagnostic utility Ping, included in the delivery of all modern operating systems and designed to test connections in networks based on TCP / IP.

A more perfect and technologically advanced analogue of Web Monitor is Pulseway - software package for comprehensive monitoring of workstations and servers running Windows, macOS and Linux platforms, as well as Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware and XenServer virtual environments, MS database management systems SQL Server, IIS servers, Exchange, Active Directory and other enterprise level services. With it, you can remotely monitor the operation of devices and tasks performed, view screenshots, analyze equipment performance, receive information about the status of services and services, as well as errors and failures in the systems. Pulseway allows you to send commands remote machines: reboot them, suspend processes, send messages to authorized users and perform other operations with complete list which can be found on the pulseway.com product site. The collection of necessary information and management of computers is carried out through special software clients installed on workstations and servers.

Well, closes our selection mobile tool WiFi Analyzer, which allows you to use your smartphone as network scanner. The program scans the air for a subject wifi signals, determines the signal level of each of the detected networks, as well as their characteristics (SSID, channel, encryption method, MAC address of the router, etc.) and, based on the information collected, draws visual graphs that reflect a clear picture wireless networks. WiFi Analyzer supports work with different frequency ranges and can be used to determine the optimal settings and location of Wi-Fi devices in order to improve the quality of signal reception and the correct construction of wireless local networks In the organisation. The application can serve well when conducting a network security audit and troubleshooting network equipment.

This application removes unused files from your smartphone - this way you keep order and get rid of the garbage that devours the memory of your Android device. The Clean Master Lite utility will remove the cache of applications, as well as free up memory from unused running applications. Also, there is a function to analyze the performance of the device and files on the SD card and an antivirus to check downloaded files. The AppLock function allows you to block access to Facebook, SMS, contacts, photo gallery, as well as to any other applications.

29th place: AirDroid


With AirDroid, you can sync your Android device with your PC wirelessly. The only thing you need for this is the appropriate version of the program on your PC. You can download it from the official website of the program. At the same time, it is worth noting that many useful options, for example, copying not only files, but also entire folders, are available only for Premium accounts, which means that the manufacturer deliberately cuts down on the functions of the free version.

28th place: RIA Novosti


It is worth always having an idea of ​​the picture of events in the world. With the free RIA Novosti app you will always be up to date latest news. But even here it was not without the features of a free news feed, in which it is not very convenient to adjust the font.

27th place: Adobe Acrobat Reader

With the Android version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, documents in PDF format you can now open and view on any phone and tablet PC with an operating Android system.

26th place: Yandex.Maps


The popular mobile application Yandex.Maps has a high accuracy of positioning on the ground, a unique system for plotting and guiding along the route, and also has a convenient search for objects on the map. The program needs the Internet to plot and guide the route, but you can download the map in advance desired area to use it offline. The map has all the infrastructure facilities, including gas stations, workshops, banks, shops, cafes, theaters, etc. In addition, the traffic congestion display function is very useful - Traffic jams. In the 3D mode of the map, when following a route, there is information about lane markers.

25th place: WPS Office Lite


Free office suite WPS Office Lite will help you to view documents sent to you via e-mail, as well as typing new text and table files. This is perhaps the best replacement for Office from Microsoft.

24th place: Evernote

Those who attach great importance to being well organized can enjoy the free app . It allows you to create, edit and retrieve notes for offline use, as well as compose voice memos. In addition, you can import the resulting images into the application and then process them using Skitch.

23rd place: Snapseed

is a versatile image optimization application suitable for beginners and advanced photographers alike.

22nd place: SoundCloud


From the SoundCloud streaming service, you can legally and free of charge listen to several million songs, and the service automatically downloads content to your smartphone, and when the Internet is unavailable, you can play tracks offline.

21st place: TripAdvisor

In order not to end up in a hotel that will disappoint you, just check the numerous user ratings of the application in advance. At the same time, you can choose not only hotels. Here you will find ratings of restaurants and other leisure activities.

20th place: Instagram

This is a social service based on photos that people share not only in a narrow circle of friends, but also create entire communities. And although the format of published images is painfully disappointing with a “square” proportion (the second eye is not needed for viewing), people are forced to put up with this, because. it has become the de facto standard in this social network. Here you can upgrade your photos: there are 20 effects available to give your images a style like Gotham. During the test, it worked seamlessly and quickly. Then the photo is given a short name, the current GPS location is assigned, and friends can already see the photo news in your Instagram app.

19th place: Google Translate


Free Google Translate scores first of all with a very powerful online engine that allows you to translate text into photos and videos, as well as recognize voice in real mode time. It is noteworthy that the application can also work offline. It is perhaps impossible to find a better universal translator.

18th place: Gismeteo lite

With the free Android application, you will be aware of the weather in your area and the forecast for 10 days. With the GPS positioning function, you are immediately informed where you are.

17th place: FBReader


Electronic reader Books FBReader- one of the best applications in the segment of digital reading. Here you will find a convenient cataloging of books by authors, titles and topics, and a wide range of accepted formats, and even a search for books on the open spaces of Internet storages. And also in this application you can synchronize with the selected cloud storage to read books on all your devices - smartphones and tablets, from the place where you stopped reading.

16th place: AliExpress


In the mobile version of AliExpress, every day you can choose for yourself profitable purchases not only from China, but also from Russia.

15th place: Netflix

Even if there is no huge Smart TV nearby, it works on both smartphones and tablets.

14th place: barcode scanner QR and barcode scanner


Take pictures and compare: thanks to the company's barcode scanner QR and Barcode Scanner, you will quickly get independent product information directly to your Android smartphone. Using the integrated scanner, you can take a picture of the code that is located on almost every product. This can be a European Barcode (EAN), a 2D Barcode (QR) or an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). The product and all available information about it, such as price and customer reviews, will quickly appear on your smartphone.

13th place: OneFootball

The application will not be useful for everyone, but on a football fan's mobile phone it will be very useful: with its help you will receive information about individual matches and much more.

Here you can also get detailed reports on all major European championships, Champions League, Europa League and cup competitions. With this application you will never miss a game.

12th place: Google Chrome

Everyone knows the desktop version of Google Chrome. Google itself released and mobile version a popular browser for Android smartphones, which, however, only works on devices with Android 4.0 (“Ice Cream Sandwich”) and later.

11th place: VLC for Android

VLC for Android - like the original, stands out for its support for many audio and video formats.

10th place: Snapchat

Through you send photos to your friends. The trick is that all the pictures you sent will appear only for a few seconds, and after that they will be automatically deleted. So, through Snapchat, you can seamlessly send the most daring selfies, and then not worry about the consequences.

9th place: WhatsApp messenger

The application, surprisingly, is probably used by many of your friends and acquaintances. And all because during installation it scans your entire phone book and automatically enters it into a database located in distant America on some CIA server. necessary, if only because all friends have it. And since you have someone in phone book, then your number is in this extensive file cabinet. That is, by installing this application, you will surely be able to find your friends there and chat with them, organizing, for example, a family or friendly chat.

8th place: Dropbox

The online service provides you with 2 GB of free disk space on the Internet, which you can use from anywhere. Including, of course, from your mobile phone. Is there any reason to refuse such an offer?

7th place: File Manager


What programs should be present on every smartphone? Read the article about the most useful applications for Android and why you should download them.

No smartphone or tablet comes with a completely bare operating system. No, you can immediately use at least a couple of dozen applications. However, pre-installed options are often limited in their functionality. And for some tasks, none of them can cope at all preinstalled programs. For example, with a smartphone running by default, you most likely won't be able to open a PDF document. In a word, let's find out which ones are worth downloading for Android useful programs. At the same time, do not forget that this is a strictly reduced list - on our website you will find much more detailed collections of Android applications dedicated to a specific topic.

Navigation and maps for Android

Who among us still uses paper cards? It seems that none of the readers of "Smart Beaver" is definitely engaged in such a thing. All of us have a smartphone in our pocket that is equipped with a GPS chip. And by default, Google Maps is installed on it. But is it the best app for navigation? Probably not. Although the product of an American company is close to this status. We recommend installing 2GIS. Especially if you live in a large Russian city. With this program you will get the most detailed map. Here you will visually determine the height of the houses, and you will see almost all the paths, and learn about all the organizations present in each building.

With 2GIS it is easy to find a cafe, restaurant, sports ground, cinema and other establishments. The construction of the route can also surprise - the program will take you to the very door! In total, the application is able to work with maps of approximately 300 cities in 9 countries. Of course, the whole of Russia is not yet covered by the project - sparsely populated areas are left out. This is the only serious drawback of the application.

Alternative: you can also look in the direction of the Yandex.Maps program. It contains navigation maps of a huge number of settlements, including very small ones. Some of the maps are allowed to be downloaded to the device so that they can be viewed without being connected to the network. But if you are interested in this particular function, then it is better to pay attention to OSMAnd+. This application uses the OpenStreetMap service, which is developed by the users themselves. But for the most comfortable work with the program, you will have to pay a small amount - after that, absolutely all restrictions will be removed from you.

News

The most useful applications for Android in 2017 should be able to provide a person with information, among other things. You can read the news now on various sites. They are provided by Google Now. They are also shown by some branded shells. But sometimes even this is not enough. In this case, we recommend that you download RIA Novosti. This application is from the eponymous information resource. Here all the news are sorted into categories. But most importantly, the program has a "Photo Gallery" section. It must be visited by everyone who wants to see the agenda, but does not want to read the text. In addition, RIA Novosti creates excellent infographics that absolutely everyone will like.

Alternative: There are hundreds of news aggregators on Google Play. For example, respect is Flipboard. It's kind of digital magazine with the appropriate layout and animation, compiled by the users themselves. An equally interesting option is Meduza. It contains not only text notes, but also tests with mini-games.

Video players for Android

Smartphones and tablets are often used to watch movies. In this case, you need a video player. By default, a low-functional application is usually installed on the device, which is not even capable of displaying subtitles. Therefore, we recommend downloading VLC to your device. This is a great player with a lot of features. It understands subtitles of different formats, while it is possible to customize their display. Among the supported video formats, there is almost everything, up to DVD ISO! Now it is a real hit, which has been downloaded by more than 100 million people.

Alternative: many video players have similar functionality. For example, MX Player shows itself well. And someone will like the paid nPlayer, which officially supports DTS Headphone X and DTS HD. It also allows you to work with streaming services and cloud storage.

Internet browsers

By default, many smartphones are equipped with a relatively good Internet browser. But for many people, its capabilities are not enough. In this case, it is better to download Google Chrome to your device. And certainly they need to be acquired if you have a similar browser on your computer! This is one of best products by Google - it has full synchronization (even passwords are transferred from the computer), and Internet pages open to them as quickly as possible. The application also has a traffic saving mode, when the pages are first compressed on the developer's server. In a word, you can talk about this program for a long time - you'd better get acquainted with it yourself.

Alternative: Free useful Android apps include many browsers. Some of them differ from Google development by supporting plugins that extend the application's capabilities. For example, the Firefox browser can boast of such a function. And some people also like UC Browser, which makes it much easier to find videos and adequately blocks ads.

Messengers

Applications for correspondence were used even in the days of push-button mobile phones. Well, now such programs have reached a whole new level. One of the most popular applications of this kind is WhatsApp. Surely many of your friends have it - you only need to install it for this reason. It also makes it much easier to transfer media files to another person. You should also like the interface of the application, made in a very nice manner.

Alternative: Gradually more and more people prefer to download Telegram to their smartphone. The smartest encryption is implemented here - an unauthorized person will definitely not be able to get access to your correspondence. And in terms of the rest of the functionality, this application does not disappoint at all. Viber is also very popular now, but most often this program is used to make video calls.

File managers

A very ambiguous type of application. No one argues that useful Android programs should include utilities of this kind. But in fact, the vast majority of smartphones come with a pre-installed “explorer”, the capabilities of which are more than enough for many people. But if you are one of the select users who are trying to maximize the functionality of their device, then pay attention to ES Explorer. It is distributed free of charge, providing access to almost all files contained on the device or memory card. Moreover, the application can be connected to cloud storage- A variety of services are supported. There is also support for FTP, which should appeal to site owners. Other features of the utility include support for working with archives in ZIP and RAR formats.

Alternative: You can also download and install X-Plore. This file manager first appeared on operating system Symbian. Its main difference lies in the special display file system- it is displayed in the form of a tree.

translators

Quite often we refer to a text written in a foreign language. For example, this can happen when visiting a foreign site. In this case, we need a translation of a note or an entire article. And certainly useful travel apps for Android should have such a function. The best way to solve this problem is Google Translator. As they say, the search giant ate the dog on automated text translation. For some time now, his creation has been able to translate even signs and road signs - you just need to launch the application and point the camera at them (or open a previously taken photo). And it is not necessary to connect to the Internet - 52 languages ​​are translated offline. It is curious that even handwriting is recognized by the application.

Alternative: Strange as it may seem, Google's product simply has no competitors. Almost all applications of this kind are very far behind in their development. But you can try Yandex.Translate - its developers are mainly busy improving the translation function into Russian, without spraying their efforts on other languages.

weather forecasts

Now many people use their smartphone to check the weather forecast. We recommend installing Gismeteo Lite for this purpose. This is a program from the well-known weather service. It has installed hundreds, maybe thousands of meteorological stations throughout Russia. In this regard, the forecasts of this service often come true. At the same time, in the application you can see the weather forecast not only for the next couple of days, but also for the whole week. And you will also get a set of widgets that display the current weather.

Alternative: if you decide to download useful applications for Android by visiting Google Play, you will find dozens of all kinds of weather widgets. by the most the best program this kind is eWeather HD. Why didn't we mention it in the first place? Everything is very simple: for its use they ask for about 200 rubles. But if you are not stingy, you will get the most visual weather forecast from two weather agencies. There is a barometer, forecast of geomagnetic storms, information about earthquakes, surface temperatures of the oceans and seas, tide indications, moon phases and much more.

Music players

Almost every smartphone owner uses their device to listen to music. And extremely rarely, a pre-installed player is used for these purposes. Usually, a third-party creation is put in its place. For example, good choice could become PowerAMP. Yes, after 14 days of using the application, you will have to pay. But on the other hand, you will get a music player with very wide functionality. There is a competent sorting of tracks, cutting sections with silence, a well-thought-out equalizer and many other useful features. Covers can be downloaded manually or rely on automation - it will download them from the Internet. And the program has excellent widgets.

Alternative: if you need a free audio player, we recommend downloading AIMP. Many people use this application both on a computer and on a smartphone. There is support for playlists and many audio formats. In general, the program is only slightly inferior to paid counterparts.

Useful Android Apps for Dessert

It's hard to classify Shazam into a single category. This is the most amazing app. It allows you to understand what exactly is coming from nearby speakers - you just need to turn your smartphone towards the sound source. Some songs are determined literally in a split second! Others take a little longer to figure out. There are almost no misses. The only thing that can upset you is that the program will not allow you to download MP3 - it will only give you a link to a track available for purchase on Google Music.

And also: a smartphone can even help in finding cheaper food. To do this, you just need to install Edadil or some other similar application(there are more and more of them lately). In fact, the program is an aggregator of discounts in large supermarkets. Convenient sorting is implemented here, the products you like can be added to "Favorites". By the way, the application contains not only food, but also cosmetics, children's products and many other everyday things. After all, supermarkets have been selling not only food for a long time.

Summarizing

In this article, we tried to consider many useful applications for smartphones and tablets. But believe me, there are actually many more. We have not touched upon the topic of readers, alarm clocks, calculators, calendars, fitness apps and other global topics. However, stay tuned for more articles! Have your say in the comments: what apps do you find most useful?


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