44 best Android apps 2015: the apps you need on your Android phone

Want the best apps on your Android phone? Here's the go-to list you need.

If you have an Android smartphone then you can improve its capabilities in a matter of seconds by downloading some great - free and paid-for – apps. To help work out which ones are worth downloading we've rounded up 44 of the best Android apps, across seven different categories, available to download in 2015.

44 Best Android apps 2015

• Essential
• Games
• Entertainment
• Excercise
• Travel
• Miscellaneous
• Productivity

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Best Android apps - Essential

Facebook (Free)

Facebook, is possibly the most polished of all apps on Android. It’s incredibly reliable, rarely crashes and has few bugs.
Download this app and you will have the ability to share ego boosting updates about the more impressive moments of your live, such as eating in fancy places or posting snaps of colourful cocktails on your holiday.
Unfortunately the app also delivers equally nauseating updates from people you are connected to.
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Fenix (Free)

Twitter has become something of a phenomenon in the world of social media. For some it’s a useful way to share and track the news, for others it’s an obsession.
Whatever you use it for, it’s a shame the official Twitter app is just not built for much beyond light usage. This is where Fenix comes in.
Sporting a slick and customisable interface adhering to Google’s Material Design, Fenix streamlines your Twitter experience. Pictures and video are automatically expanded and fit the width of your phone, swiping left brings up all your ‘@’ mentions, and left again your Activity Feed. If that doesn’t suit, you can completely customise the order you swipe through streams in. A couple of days with Fenix and your Twitter productivity will go through the roof.
Fenix may not be free, priced at £2.99 currently, but it’s well worth the purchase as it completely outstrips alternative Twitter clients.
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Google Authenticator (Free)

Google Authenticator is your way of safeguarding almost all your online accounts through simple two-step authentication.
Once registered, whenever you need to log into a service like Dropbox, LastPass, or PayPal you’ll enter a time-sensitive code provided for you by GA to login.
It’s a dull app to have, but essential nonetheless.
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Avast - Mobile Security & Antivirus (Free, with in app upgrades)

Malware is rife on Android, and it pays to be protected. Thankfully Avast is a free and powerful antivirus app that you can trust.
On PC, Avast Free Antivirus 2015 seriously impressed us as a free antivirus solution, ranking as one of the best free antiviruses of 2015, and its Android release is just as impressive.
It scans all downloads and installations for hidden software and trojans, and protects you while you browse the web or use internet-enabled apps.
Not bad for free software.
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Whatsapp (Free for first year, £0.75p a year after)

Whatsapp is the smartphone world’s instant messenger of choice, giving users the ability to text, share images, videos and audio messages with other users.
This feature-rich messenger has over 500 million downloads from Google Play alone, which goes some way to explaining why Facebook recently bought Whatsapp for $19bn.
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Spotify (Free, or £9.99 a month with Premium membership)

Whether you want to pay £9.99 a month for unlimited access, or if you’re happy to listen to adverts every few songs, Spotify is an app that deserves a spot on your Android smartphone.
Why? Because it puts millions of songs from the biggest artists – apart from The Beatles and Garth Brooks (amazingly) – at your fingertips. Streaming music is the future, get on board sooner rather than later.
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Opera Max (Free)

Every smartphone makes use of mobile data and, unless you're lucky enough to have unlimited data, you want to get the most your phone has to offer without worrying about how much you're eating into your allocation.
This is where Opera Max comes in. It's a free service from the folks behind the Opera browser and it's fantastic. It crunches down the size of images and videos, can speed up website load time, and typically saves you around a third to nearly half of your general data usage.
The downside? You have to remember to 'top-up' your charge every week for free, and for some reason it seems to be a battery drain if you're using Lollipop.

Best Android apps - Games

Clash of Clans (free with In App Purchases)

Clash of Clans has taken the world by storm, so much so Supercell can afford to have Liam Neeson advertise it during the Superbowl. And there's a reason for why everyone the world over has become hooked on its brand of resource management and social gaming - it's so perfectly formed for dip-in play.
You know when a clash is going to go down against a rival clan, so you and your buddies can form up and build a solid defense whilst also forming a powerful offense. It's tactics, management, and a way to keep in touch with friends or make new ones in stranger-filled clans.
Supercell is certainly doing something right - it's probably why one of the PCPro team is addicted to it.
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Monument Valley (£2.49 - Forgotten Shores expansion £1.49)

Created by UsTwo Games, Monument Valley is like playing through M. C. Escher artwork. It's truly a beauty to behold, and the mind-bending platforming puzzles are just fantastic fun as you scratch your head wondering what to do until a eureka moment occurs and everything falls into place.
It may not be the longest game around, and you may find little reason to revisit once completed, but you won't ever come across a game as beautiful and pleasing as this again.
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Threes (£1.31)

Created by Asher Voller, Threes sees you matching up numbered tiles in pursuit of a high score.
The game ends when you fill up the 4 x 4 grid, but the catch is, you can only shift a row or column of tiles, so no moving individual pieces where you want them. And, with every movement, a new piece joins the board - requiring you to remove it as fast as possible.
You can only match together two identical numbers, or the blue "1" and red "2" tiles to create white "3" tiles.
It sounds confusing, but in reality it’s really quite simple. And, thanks to Threes’ charm and character, you’ll quickly get sucked in and won’t be able to put your phone down.
Free clones may exist, and be more popular, but they all lack the polish, charm, and character that Threes has in spades.
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Desert Golfing (£1.19)

A calmer take on the endless runner, Desert Golfing sees you flicking a golf ball into an endless run of procedurally-generated, single-screen holes.
It may not look like much, but Desert Golfing’s bleak environment is the perfect place to sink some golf balls, and presents a zen-like opportunity that just can’t be matched.
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99 Bricks: Wizard Academy (Free)

Imagine if Tetris involved physics. In Weird Beard’s 99 Bricks Wizard Academy that’s exactly what you have to deal with.
While there’s some vague story thrown in around having to go to a wizard school to learn spells and best foes, the real joy of 99 Bricks is in the building.
Using Tetrinomes that fall from the sky, you need to create a stable base and build yourself a tower reaching up to the heavens. You’ll have to be careful where you place bricks as every brick has weight and momentum to account for.
Some bricks are made of ice, others of wood and stone. Icy bricks are slide around and are a serious hazard to stable structures, whereas stone pieces lock everything around them in place.
If that wasn’t enough of a worry, the higher you build your tower, the stronger winds become, meaning a stable footing is essential if you want to build your own Tower of Babel.
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Crossy Road (Free with in-app purchases)

We live in a world where there are few truly original ideas come along, but even if Crossy Road is just a combination of Frogger and any number of endless runners, it's so much fun we honestly couldn't care.
With pleasingly colourful and chunky voxel visuals, Crossy Road just requires you to tap the screen to jump forward, swipe left to jump left, and swipe right to jump right. Your only goal is to progress your way through an innumerable amount of hazards. It's just so simple.
In app purchases exist to allow you to buy alternate characters from a huge roster, but if you don't fancy owning any extra characters you don't have to buy them - who knows, you may even win them through in-game rewards.

Best Android apps - Entertainment 

Aldiko (Free £2.49 premium)

Apart from having an amusing name, Aldiko is a slick and easy to use ebook reader app, best of all it’s completely free. It supports .epub and .pdf formats as well as Adobe DRM encrypted ebooks, all while not showing any adverts.
Aldiko lets you import files from your storage or SDcard and start reading almost instantly. The app enables you to conveniently search your library in a number of ways, including: genre, author, publisher, year released; failing that you can browse titles via the cool virtual bookshelf.
The reading experience is also fully customisable too, with the ability to toggle font size, font type, font and background colours, margin, alignment, line spacing as well as brightness. Finally it remembers what page you were up to in any given book so you can dip in and out of several different titles at once.
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Pocket (Free)

Seen an article online, perhaps on PC Pro, that you’d love to read but just don’t have time? Pocket is the solution to your problem.
Allowing you to save articles and videos, viewing them across any of your devices, Pocket is perfect for bookmarking the things you've missed.
You don’t even need an internet connection, as it all works offline.
Perfect for the tube, flights, or long train journeys.
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Vevo (Free)

A sort of MTV-on-demand, Vevo is a vibrant and varied showcase of music videos, live performances and concerts.
You can browse through the smartly designed homescreen and simply click on a video to get going, and Vevo automatically creates a playlist of related material for you to leave running.
Alternatively, you can call up the search engine and hunt down individual artists or tracks, and start to build bespoke playlists of your own. Videos are occasionally interspersed with ads, but they’re not too intrusive.
If you're of a certain vintage, don't be put off if you don’t recognise any of the artists on the homescreen – delve a little deeper into the search engine and you'll find a repository of older material from artists ranging from Adam Ant to The Kinks.
Indeed, it's a treasure trove of long-forgotten live performances from many of the British acts from the '70s, '80s and '90s.
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VLC Player (Free)

VLC Player for Android is the only video player you'll ever need.
Playing practically any video file you can throw at it, and with Chromecast compatibility coming in the future, VLC Player for Android is indispensable.
It's easy to see why so many PC users have made it their media player of choice. And, thanks to its open-source development, updates are transparent and you always know what functionality your device can or can't support.
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DoggCatcher (£1.87)

Downloading podcasts has never been so customisable. Sure, this app comes in at a hefty £3.34, which does sound barking for an audio-playing app, but if you're a podcast junkie it is worth every penny.
DoggCatcher is very much in the spirit of Android - it's easy to use on the surface, but delve down a few menus and you'll find yourself in a world of customisation. Choose how many episodes of each podcast you keep, change when podcasts are downloaded, even store your podcasts in the cloud.
For those who want to get through the PC Pro Podcast in a hurry, you can also change the play speed inside the app. Perhaps its most important feature is its developer - it’s been updated over 100 times since launch and any technical queries are answered within hours.
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TuneIn Radio Pro (£7.06 - free version also available)

If you're serious about listening to radio on the move, TuneIn Radio Pro is all you need.
There is a free version, but the paid variant provides powerful features such as pausing and recording live radio, as well as creating wake-up alarms set to the sound of your favourite station.
If you’re looking for something new, the app will also provide you with a list of stations broadcasting in your local area, or you can search by genre.
It's a little to easy to get lost in the user interface, and for some reason the app likes to stay running in the background even when you’re not listening, but despite these quibbles, TuneIn Radio Pro is at the top of its class.
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Pushbullet (Free)

Seen something, anything, online whilst using your phone and decided that it would be better suited to read, watch, or just have on your computer? Pushbullet does just that, allowing you to push photos, screenshots, web links, and even notifications across to your computer via a browser plugin.
You can also push content to other Pushbullet users you know, easily sharing video, images and documents for editing or collaborating on with others.
If you decide to push notifications to your computer, you can reply to text messages without needing to use your phone. In fact, it’s so handy that you’ll only need to use your phone if something urgent comes up on your computer screen, thus saving you from stopping to check your phone continually.
You can even use Pushbullet like an RSS feed, having outlets push news directly to your Pushbullet feed or into your device’s notification centre.
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Google Play Music (Free)

Amazon's Cloud Player is good, but it wasn't alone for long.
Google's own offering launched last month, and performs a similar task - sending your music to the cloud - but this one does so at no cost. You can play back tracks using this app, or via any browser on a PC.

Best Android apps - Exercise

Strava Cycling (Free - £4 p/m subscription available)

Cycle to work, or just love to cycle everywhere you can? Well Strava Cycling is the best way to keep track of your performance.
Using GPS from your phone, Stava can tell how quickly you’re riding and the route you’re taking, allowing you to track your progress and even compete with yourself on future rides. It’s a great feature if you ride the same route regularly, such as a journey to work and back.
What makes Strava Cycling better than other cycling apps out there is how it pushes you to do better and compete with strangers too. Strava will break your journey up into segments and square you off against others who have ridden the same section, filing your time into a leaderboard for all who ride that route to see.
Snapping up the premium version gives you detailed stats, but for most cyclists the free version will suffice
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Zombies, Run! (£1.39)

Inspiring you to get fit and run further, Zombies Run uses your running route to drop you into a zombie apocalypse, where frenzied flesh-feeders chase you down.
You’ll be given instructions on where to run and find supplies, and using your phone’s GPS it determines if you’re running fast enough to survive the pursuing zombie horde.
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Runtastic (Free - £2.99 for Pro)

If you need a straightforward app to record your runs, walks, cycle rides or pretty much any activity, then Runtastic does the job simply and well.
Naturally, it will use your phone's GPS to track your route and your times, and you can set up audio cues for intervals (say, every five minutes) or distance run. Handily, it will also let you know what pace you’re running at.
When you're safely back home you upload the results to Runtastic’s server, with the option of sharing on Facebook and Twitter, which is great for encouraging remarks from friends and family.

Uber (Free)

Controversies aside, Uber is indispensable for anyone living in a big city where hailing a cab off the street could bankrupt you.
Connecting you with local drivers, Uber can get you a ride anywhere within minutes of making a request, and with five tiers of vehicle hire, you can travel like royalty if you so wish.
Even if you don’t agree with the fundamentals of the service, it’s worth installing the app to have the option of an Uber taxi for when you’re really stuck for a ride.
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Duolingo (Free)

Always said you’d learn a second language but just never got round to it? Perhaps it seemed to daunting to jump into learning German, or the thought of splashing out on lessons you might not even use wasn’t too appealing. Well, this is where Duolingo swoops in and saves the day.
Duolingo lets you learn Spanish, German, French, Italian and five other European languages, and uses the art of gamification to help motivate you to keep learning.
Through a mixture of photos, speech, audio, and typing, you’ll pick up the basics of any language rather quickly. And, thanks to the short lessons you never feel like you’re spending too much time on improving your linguistic skills.
You still have to persevere through tougher sections, but Duolingo helps you through with motivational reminders and the occasional prod to revisit past lessons.
The best part about Duolingo? It’s completely free.
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Live London Bus Tracker (Free)

Apologies if you live outside of The Big Smoke, but this is an app that is so valuable to Londoners it definitely warrants its place in this chart.
This little app does exactly what its title suggest and that is tell you when buses are due to arrive at specific stops. It uses data from TFL so the times are always as accurate as possible, and it is rich with features such a GPS, maps, favourites, which make getting the bus information you need painfully easy.
The only downside here is that the design of the app isn't the sharpest, but as the saying goes "content is king".
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Citymapper (Free)

Google Maps was so 2014, in 2015 everyone should be using Citymapper to get around - that is, if you live in a city deemed worthy enough of being mapped by it.
Providing you with an extensive list of public transport routes you can take to your destination, it also works out how much each journey will cost if you use cash, card or an Oyster.
Just fancy knowing what transport links are nearby? Citymapper can tell you, even letting you know how many hire bikes are stored in the cycle hire racks in your location.
If you’d rather take a cab than hop on public transport, you can book an Uber directly through the app, seeing how much it’ll cost to do so too.
While only London, Manchester are currently mapped in the UK, you can submit a city for consideration, so perhaps one day yours might make the list.
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SkyScanner (Free)

Thinking about planning a trip somewhere and want to get a quick price comparison from hundreds of airlines? Then Skyscanner is the app for you, as it does exactly that.
Using the app couldn't be easier: simply enter the city you want to fly to/from, select the dates and then let Skyscanner do the rest. Results can be sorted by price; flight duration; departure/arrival time; airline; and also filtered for direct flights only.
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Viewranger GPS Open (Free)

If you're planning to go off the beaten track this winter, Viewranger GPS is an outdoor navigation app that'll keep you on the not-so-straight and narrow.
In its free incarnation, global open source map data is streamed over a data connection or cached for off-line use, and paid-for upgrades add the ability to download Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 maps.
It's possible to plot routes and record your progress, with speed, distance and elevation data, as well as a dynamic ETA and support for Android Wear devices. The BuddyBeacon feature, which tracks friends' GPS locations in real time, is a potential lifesaver, too.
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FlightTrack 5 (From £3.20)

For a slightly less full-on alternative to TripIt, FlightTrack jettisons all the other gubbins to focus purely on the flights themselves.
Track the live status of any flight, see how late it left its departure gate and how much time it’s made up in the air, or just watch the live departure boards on your phone so you can finish your pre-flight pint.
It's as useful for those in arrivals as it is for the fliers.

Best Android apps - Miscellaneous

Clean Master (Free)

Nobody likes a slow device, and Android phones seem to generate an awful lot of clutter on them once you've had them a little while. Thankfully, Clean Master is the mop and bucket you need to scrub your phone or tablet clean.
Using a feature known as Junk File Cleaning, Clean Master scans your Android device and chucks out the unwanted cache and residual files. It's an easy way to free up a couple of gigabytes without losing anything important in the process.
Clean Master also contains features for helping your device run cooler, boosting available RAM, and for squeezing more power out of your device's CPU.
As Clean Master actually allows you to tweak what it does to suit your preferences, it's an incredibly adaptable optimisation app that lets you take control see exactly what's running on your device.
Indispensable for anyone wanting to eek as much out of their phone or tablet as possible.
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Prey (Free - With In App Purchases)

Open source app Prey promises to protect your phone or tablet (or laptop) in the event of theft, and it's loaded with features: it can use a device’s GPS to provide a precise location, deactivate it via text message, and notify you if the SIM card’s replaced.
A camouflage mode hides Prey from savvy thieves, and the app's online control panel features more options, including the ability to set off alarms and alerts remotely.
These options are all available in the free version, but pro accounts – which cost between $5 and $399 monthly, depending on how many devices are registered – enable features such as constant hardware tracking, more reporting options and real-time device management.
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Crime Map (Free)

Yes, the police have an app.
To be honest, there’s nothing particularly new here – it's the same fascinating crime-mapping system that's been available in browsers for some time – but using GPS on a smartphone makes it easier than ever to see the recent crime levels wherever you may be house hunting.
We're just pleased to see our public services embracing technology.
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Weather Signal (Free)

This app uses your phone's environmental sensors to deliver in-depth weather reports. The main screen’s cute weather graphic is bolstered by tiles that display temperature, pressure, light levels and even magnetic flux – and the more sensors your phone has, the more information Weather Signal will display.
The map view plots your data – as well as data from other Weather Signal users – onto a map of your local area, and filters specify which data is displayed. The settings menu allows for different units of measurement, and frequency and GPS options offer greater customisation than Android’s stock apps can provide.
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Saga (Free)

Don’t let the name fool you – this isn't an app about coach trips and pension plans. It’s a tool that uses personal information and your phone's GPS to generate a chronological record of your life. Tell the app where you live and work, and it'll make a note every time you visit – as well as giving you the chance to add your own annotations and pictures. Other important locations can be added and, if you choose, check-ins can be shared publicly.
Saga's "Me" tab generates graphs that show how much time you've spent at work or at home, how far you've travelled, and how many unique places you've visited. The app uses its location logging, pictures and notes to create an interactive timeline of your life – and it’s a private record, too, unless you choose otherwise.
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Fixya (Free)

Perfect for tinkerers, Fixya collates home-made videos of repairs to all manner of items, from household appliances and games consoles, to smartphones and satnavs. Videos are usually accompanied by in-depth explanations, and a full comments and voting system allows the most informative content to shine.
Fixya isn't just about watching videos. You can film and upload your own repair tutorials, and a list of unsolved problems encourages users to get involved. There’s no way to browse videos by category – you’ll have to find solutions by searching – but it’s a useful utility if you enjoy fiddling with technology.
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Adobe Photoshop Touch for phones (£2.99)

Adobe’s latest smartphone app is the most complete mobile photo editing suite we've seen. As well as an extensive range of filters and effects, it’s crammed with options that we don’t normally expect to see in smartphones. It’s possible to control levels, curves and layers, and selection tools include magic wand, marquee and clone stamp options.
Images can be uploaded and imported using Adobe’s Creative Cloud, and the interface is consistently excellent: basic selection, adjustment and effects tools at the top, and advanced selection and layer options in the bottom left and right corners. Considering the power on offer, the £2.99 price tag is a bargain.
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Evernote Food (Free)

Evernote has adapted its note-taking app for foodies, adding clever functions to let you find recipes and keep an eye on what you eat.
The app offers four different elements – storing recipes, building a cookbook, finding local restaurants and tracking what you've eaten. Each is carefully designed to let you build up a personal trove of information and is synced to Evernote’s existing services – so if you already use Evernote Web Clipper to take recipes for example, you’ll find them already listed in your cookbook.
The local restaurants feature is handy even without the other bells and whistles, using Foursquare to provide local listings and ratings, and letting you track what you've eaten while out. And for those who like to Instagram their food, the "my meals" function lets you snap your fare and tag the location and cuisine.
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ProCapture – camera + (£2.60)

This app provides a selection of manual camera controls for Android tablet or phone users.
The app provides exposure compensation and white balance controls, as well as an optional in-viewfinder histogram so photographers can check their levels.
Wonky or plain dull compositions can also be avoided by switching on the viewfinder grid or Fibonacci Spiral, helping you to line-up horizons or place subjects in areas of maximum interest.
Tools to help you take wide shots and panoramas are also thrown in, although the latter is too finicky for our liking.

Best Android apps - Productivity

Light Flow (Free - £1.75 for full version)

This app is best used with devices that have RGB notification lights, such as the Nexus 4, 5, or Sony Xperia Z etc., and serves up plenty of options for customising your phone’s notifications.
Text messages, missed calls, new emails and calendar reminders can all be given their own custom colours, and the duration and frequency of each notification can also be edited. Notifications can be ranked in order of importance, and Light Flow will only show high-priority notifications if your battery is running out of juice.
The free version is restricted to notifications baked into Android, but the full version is much more versatile thanks to support for more than 550 popular Android apps.
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SwiftKey (£2.99)

SwiftKey is one of Android’s most popular third-party keyboards, and it’s easy to see why.
As well as providing a sensible, versatile layout, it’ll analyse what you type – whether it’s in emails, or on social networks like Facebook or Twitter – to help correct common mistakes and compensate for individual typing styles.
If you don’t like your phone’s default keyboard, this is a superb alternative.
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Estar Battery Saver (Free)

Phones still have one big problem: battery life. But with Estar Battery Saver, you can squeeze every watt out of your phone.
It informs you of apps you've left running, how much power each one consumes when in standby, and suggests alternative power-friendly apps you could use instead.
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IF (Free)

Formerly known as IFTTT, IF allows you to create “recipes” that connect various devices and services together, helping you squeeze that little bit more out of them.
Work remotely often? You can use IF to automatically email someone when you upload a file to Google Drive or Dropbox. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be an email, you could ping them on WhatsApp, or reach them on Slack.
You could create a recipe to automatically add YouTube videos you mark as “watch later” directly into your Pocket account. Perhaps you’d rather use it to schedule tweets or Facebook posts for when you need to put something up, but you know you’ll be away from your computer to do so.
IF is an incredibly powerful productivity tool that’s linked to an inordinate amount of apps. If you want to automate an action, IF will do it, and it’ll do it completely for free.
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