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, 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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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 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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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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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
