When you've just bought yourself a brand-new Android device, finding the right apps can seem daunting and those algorithms don't always help you spot something new and interesting unless it's already sailing up the charts. Thankfully, we're here to help navigate you through the forest that is dodgy and questionable apps.We've listed the best Android apps any phone could want, sorted by type from social and entertainment to fitness and travel apps. You may notice that there are no games on the list. That's not an oversight, it's because we have the listed elsewhere. To be clear, we're not saying you should download every one of these – it's just that, if an app sounds appealing, it shouldn't disappoint.
The 70 best Android apps in 2018: Get the best from your phone; 2. While many are free, some of the best Android apps in this list require you to pay actual money. If you're a skinflint, that. Play Store Sales is another way to get paid Android apps for free and avail heavy discounts on some of them. You can bookmark this website and take a look at it regularly to find your favorite apps.
Gboard is the ultimate keyboard for Android. That's partly because its borrowed the best features from elsewhere – Glide Typing is remarkably similar to Swype for example – but it's more than that. Google search is built right into it, meaning that wherever you in Android you can quickly search for things. Someone wants to know where you're meeting? Get the address without leaving the chat window. Want to drop a GIF in to show your frustrating at Googling on their behalf? Google a GIF and send it right back.Voice typing and keyboard themes really round off the package.
It's hard to imagine using anything else, for me. (£1.50; with two-week free trial)A less painful way of managing your phone. Yes, it's dull, but have you ever found an Android phone to have a sensible way of navigating your files like you'd find on PC or Mac? I certainly haven't. This is where Solid File Explorer comes in. It uses Google's own Material Design style for an easy to use experience, which makes moving your files around and reclaiming space a doddle. What's more, it links up to cloud storage systems so you can easily move files to and fro, and the latest version lets you lock important files with a fingerprint, should you wish.It's £1.50 to unlock, but you can try it out free of charge for 14 days to see if you get the use from it.
For me, it was a total no-brainer. (free)Automatically manage your snaps. Let's face it: we all take a lot of photos, and not all of them are world beaters. The trouble is with limited storage, your phone can quickly become overrun with mediocre snaps.
Yes, you can manually delete and back them up, but with the help of Gallery Doctor, that process can be entirely automated.Gallery Doctor hunts down duplicate images and highlights them for deletion, but better still it knows what makes a good photo and can highlight your weaker efforts for deletion. Don't worry, you can check its working to make sure you're not deleting any classics – but it's a helpful extra critical eye when trying to reclaim precious space. (free; with in-app purchases)Keep malware from your handset with AV protection. We all know the rules about password security, but we also know it's really, really boring to be good. Fortunately, LastPass takes away the hard work, making it easy to be secure.
And it's free, to boot.You'll need to spend a little time setting it up, but once you're done on desktop, you're good to go on mobile. LastPass will generate long and hard to crack passwords unique to each site. The beauty is that you never need to memorise it. The app will detect a login screen, you sign in with your master password or thumbprint and it will automatically fill in your details.
Security for the lazy! (free)Make sure your battery isn't draining unnecessarily. If you really want to tinker with Android, Tasker is a brilliant way of automating many of the functions you'd normally do manually. It takes a little getting your head around, but the scope here is enormous – especially if you have root access on your phone.You can train your phone to open Spotify when you put your headphones in, for example, or automatically respond to texts with your street address. If you can feed it the instructions, Tasker can automate the rest.
(free)Supercharge your web browsing. Unless you’re lucky enough to have unlimited data on your phone, or a bottomless wallet, you’ll want to get the most out of your data package.This is where Opera Max comes in. It crunches down the size of images and videos, speeds up website load times, and typically saves you from around a third to almost half of your general data use. You can restrict some apps to only ever connect via Wi-Fi, and temporarily turn off connections if you want to save some data for the end of the month. (free)Track the best Wi-Fi spots in the world.