20 best Android apps this week

It's time for our weekly roundup of brand new and notable apps for Android smartphones and tablets.

It covers apps and games, with the prices referring to the initial download: so (Free) may mean (Freemium) in some cases. The equivalent iOS roundup will be published later in the day. For now, read on for this week's Android selection.

The Room (£1.49)

Atmospheric puzzler The Room passed the 1m sales mark on iOS in mid-January, and after making its Android debut earlier this month as part of the Humble Bundle, it's now available on the Google Play store. As before, it sees you exploring a beautifully-crafted 3D room solving puzzles with tactile touchscreen controls.

Lions Official (Free)

As the next British and Irish Lions tour to Hong Kong and Australia hoves into view, there's an official app. It'll offer news, videos, fixture details, and competitions for rugby union fans, along with information on the tour's sponsor Microsoft.

I AM PLAYR (Free)

Social football game I AM PLAYR has a growing and devoted community of players online and on iOS. Now it's bringing its charms to Android as a "companion" game for the main web version. It includes mini-games to practise your skills, earning "match fitness" to be used online.

Cinemagram (Free)

Cinemagram is one of numerous apps aiming to be the Instagram of video, helping you share video clips to social networks including Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogging service Tumblr. It's a slick way to record a four-second video and turn it into an animated GIF for sharing.

Disney Fairies: Lost & Found (£0.65)

This latest children's app from Disney focuses on its fairy characters, from Tinker Bell downwards. It's a hidden-object game for children where they unlock parts of a story as they go along, working against the clock.

Tiny Legends: Heroes (Free)

Trinity Interactive's characterful fantasy-action game swings onto Android, sword in hand. It sees you battling monsters and looting dungeons, working your way through 70 floors with your party of heroes.

Everything.me Launcher Beta (Free)

Android launchers are all the rage, what with Facebook Home's imminent release. Everything.me Launcher is available in beta for now, promising to turn your Android phone into a device that's "constantly adapting to your interests, your location, your life". The idea being that you type in a phrase (a film, a band, a sports team etc) and it arranges your most relevant apps ready to launch. A neat idea with lots of potential.

Just Eat (Free)

British takeaway website Just Eat has launched its official Android app this week, providing menus and ordering capabilities for more than 15k takeaway outlets around the UK. You can browse, order and pay for your food within the app, filtering results by cuisine, customer reviews and location.

Rando (Free)

Here's a fun skew on photo-sharing: an app that gets you to snap a pic (using a circular frame) and then send it to... Well, you don't know who it's going to: Rando handles the job of pinging it "anonymously to somebody completely random" – somebody else using the Rando app, obviously. "You will never know who received the rando, they will never know who sent it," explains the Google Play listing.

Worms 2: Armageddon (£2.99)

After a limited initial release, Team 17's Worms 2: Armageddon has launched more widely on Google Play, including the UK. It brings the classic worm-on-worm action to Android, with 30 single-player missions and pass-and-play multiplayer modes.

Dr. Panda's Beauty Salon (£1.31)

The Dr. Panda apps are making a name for themselves among parents, particularly those with Android devices still waiting for Toca Boca to make the leap from iOS. This latest app sees children playing in a virtual beauty salon, painting faces and nails, dressing customers and (ouch!) plucking nose hairs.

Mr Frog The Neighbours Dog (£0.69)

Here's something else for children: a fun tale starring a frog who's pretending to be a dog, seemingly just to enrage the next-door neighbour. Aimed at 2-5 year-olds, it blends mini-games, animation and voice narration. And frogs.

Basemark X 1.0 (Free)

A serious tool for games developers, this, helping provide "objective cross platform comparisons of game graphics performance between Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 devices". Built on top of the Unity 4 game engine, it's the work of Rightware.

Hills of Glory 3D (Free)

This is the latest tower defence game on Android – a popular genre on Google Play. Here, your job is to win the Second World War, defending a bunker with all manner of military weaponry. Colourful 3D graphics and 21 missions to work through make it well worth a look.

Repulze (£1.99)

Repulze is the work of Pixelbite, the developers behind the Reckless Racing games. It's a future hovercraft-racing game that's clearly inspired by Wipeout, with seven craft and 24 tracks to work your way through.

DJ Space (Free)

DJ with decks? Why, when you can DJ with planets? That's the idea behind this app, at least: a "virtual mixer on a spacial plane". The idea being that you create music by placing planets on an orbit around a star. More than 1,000 audio samples are included.

DJ Funkmaster Flex (Free)

Talking of DJs, how about Funkmaster Flex? He's a genuine hip-hop legend, and now he has an official mobile app. It provides news, daily mixes and instrumentals from the man himself, with the promise of "exclusive content" to treat fans.

Knock²+ (£1.35)

This is an interesting new app trying to do something different around notifications on Android – already one of the areas Google has done pretty well in itself. It supports apps including WhatsApp, Facebook and Google+, as well as text messages, promising to make them look "stylish on the lockscreen".

Epic Pirates Story (£1.01)

If you're a fan of Japanese simulation developer Kairosoft... Well, you'll probably recognise that the developer of this game, Epic Devs, is also inspired by them. Epic Pirate Story takes many of the same ingredients, and puts them into a game where you build a pirate town and army. Derivative, but potentially fun.

Colourform (HD Widgets Theme) (£0.69)

Finally, how about some widgets? More than 50 for the Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean variants of Android here, with the twist being that you can change all the colours. It works with the HD Widgets app, which you'll need to use these.

That's this week's selection, but what do you think? Make your own recommendations, or give your views on the apps above, by posting a comment.


It's time for our weekly roundup of brand new and notable apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

It covers apps and games, with the prices referring to the initial download: so (Free) may mean (Freemium) in some cases.

Looking for Android apps? Check this week's 30 best Android apps roundup, which was published earlier in the day. Here's this week's comparable iOS selection:

Drawnimal (Free)

This is a wonderful, creative app for children that gets them drawing on real paper rather than on the screen. The idea: diagrams showing kids how to draw ears, whiskers, legs, tails and other animal parts around the iPhone or iPad, which sits on top of the paper. The screen then becomes the animal's animated face. There's an animal for every letter of the alphabet, with letters D to Z unlocked with a single £1.49 in-app purchase.
iPhone / iPad

Ninja Jamm (Free)

This nifty music-remixing app comes from Ninja Tune, which has long been one of the more innovative music labels when it comes to digital. Ninja Jamm gets you remixing and jamming with samples from various Ninja Tune artists, from Coldcut to Mr Scruff, using touch, tilt and shaking controls to make music. The results can be shared on SoundCloud, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Individual "Tunepacks" are sold in-app, most for 69p.
iPhone

Dungeon Hunter 4 (Free)

Gameloft's dungeon-crawling adventure is back for its fourth iteration on the App Store, and like the third instalment, this is freemium. Buying gems in-app beefs up your prospects as you wander through sprawling environments laying waste to enemies. Like Real Racing 3, it may peeve gamers who don't like the free-to-play model, but there's plenty of fun here for others.
iPhone / iPad

Documents by Readdle (Free)

Documents has been available for iPad for some time, but it's now made the transition to Apple's smaller-screened devices too. It's a productivity app for writing and viewing documents, as well as annotating other kinds of files, and even listening to music or viewing photos.
iPhone

Zeds – Play Your Dreams (Free)

This is an intriguing game from Channel 4: its levels are based on your real-life sleeping patterns. The app records movement and sound in the night, and transforms that into levels for the swipe-based action game. So it's part serious sleep-recorder, and part quirky game. An interesting idea.
iPhone

LookAway Player (Free)

This is as much a technical demo as a standalone app – not a criticism. It's a player for YouTube videos that pauses them if you look away from the screen, and mutes or unmutes the volume when you put your finger to your lips. A hint at possible user interfaces for future entertainment apps.
iPhone / iPad

Homestyler (Free)

This is Autodesk's latest iPad app, aimed at homeowners who are planning a spot of home improvement. The idea: "Watch your home design ideas come to life within a photograph of your own space." You take a photo of a room, then can change the wall colours, insert 3D models of furniture, and browse the app's "Design Stream" for more inspiration.
iPad

Status Board (£6.99)

"You've got data. Status Board makes it beautiful," explains the App Store listing for this stylish productivity app. It pulls in emails, diary dates, tweets, weather forecasts, news and other information and displays it on a customisable homescreen: useful if you tend to work at a desk with your iPad somewhere nearby – particularly in a dock.
iPad

Mail Pilot (£10.49)

There is no shortage of apps trying to help people solve email overload, and while this one's expensive (for now) it has some good ideas. The key principle is turning your inbox into a to-do list, complete with due dates for dealing with specific emails. Lists, gesture controls and an ability to work with all IMAP providers rather than just Gmail make it worth a look.
iPhone / iPad

Lions Official (Free)

As the next British and Irish Lions tour to Hong Kong and Australia hoves into view, there's an official app. It'll offer news, videos, fixture details, and competitions for rugby union fans, along with information on the tour's sponsor Microsoft.
iPhone / iPad

Pocket Village (Free)

Social games publisher Wooga has been making waves on Facebook for some time, but it's also ambitious on mobile. Pocket Village is its latest game, and as the name implies, involves building a village full of "Pocketeers" characters. In-app purchases of diamonds and coins fuel the action.
iPhone / iPad

Lingualia – Language Courses (Free)

Remember the days when a good way to learn a new language was with cassettes? In 2013, there are a fair few apps for that. Lingualia is the latest, offering a choice of Spanish and English courses for now, teaching key vocabulary, expressions and grammatical rules, while promising to learn from your usage and adapt its courses accordingly.
iPhone

Ship & Duck (Free)

Magazines and online shopping are merging in all sorts of interesting ways in the app world, from Grazia's shoppable digital issues to the app-mags released by the likes of ASOS and Harrods. Ship & Duck is the latest innovative example, launched in the UK and combining editorial and shopping across categories including music, art, films and sports.
iPad

Blue Toad Murder Files: A Touch of Mystery (£1.99)

Fans of traditional whodunnit murder-mysteries will love Blue Toad Murder Files: the latest iOS game from Relentless Software (which made its name with the PlayStation Buzz! quiz games). This game sees you trying to solve a murder in the village of Little Riddle, with animation, 36 puzzles, and AirPlay support to play on a bigger-screen TV with friends or family.
iPhone / iPad

Da Vinci's Demons: Citizens of Florence (Free)

While at the MIPTV conference last week, I caught a session with David S. Goyer talking about his new TV drama Da Vinci's Demons, which looks very good indeed. And Americans have a just-as-good looking app for that on the iPad: a companion app that synchronises with the show as you watch it, unlocking artefacts and video clips.
iPad

Dr. Seuss Short Story Collection (£5.49)

App publisher Oceanhouse Media has spent the last three years busily bringing pretty much everything Dr. Seuss ever wrote to iOS (and Android). This new app includes eight stories in one, taken from various other Seussian collections that are available on the App Store. Kids will be meeting tiger-licking cats, boastful rabbits and multiple sons named Dave among others.
iPhone / iPad

The Coldest Journey (Free)

The Coldest Journey is an expedition launched in March to cross the Antarctic continent in Winter and raise $10m for charity, co-led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Anton Bowring. This official iPhone app provides blog posts and news from the expedition as it goes.
iPhone

Donna, Meeting Assistant (Free)

This app's US-only for now in private beta, and is the latest exploration of Siri-style personal assistant technology for iOS. Incredible Labs' app promises to take "care of the little things to you can stop worrying", telling you when you need to leave for an appointment, notifying you about meetings in advance, and even pulling in the weather.
iPhone

GolfStar (Free)

Just in time for The Masters golf tournament comes this free-to-play golf game from Com2uS, making grand claims about being "the most realistic golf game of all time". That means whizzy 3D graphics, lots of physics and five different game modes – as well as social tournaments to compare your skills against friends.
iPhone / iPad

Piki

Licensing reasons mean we're not seeing Piki outside the US for now, but it's one to watch. It's a music discovery app from one of the co-founders of Turntable.fm – the avatar-based music site that made a splash in 2012, again in the US only. Promising "music powered by people, not algorithms", it's a way to follow friends, find new music and stream it for free.
iPhone

That's this week's selection, but what do you think? Make your own recommendations, or give your views on the apps above, by posting a comment.