Best New Android Apps for the week of 13th July, 2014

Howdy, Android folks! Here’s your weekly dose of best new Android apps from the Android veterans here at The Android Soul. We cover new and less popular cool Android apps in this weekly series. You’ll be finding great new apps to try, plus cool apps from the past that haven’t been much popular but are definitely worth checking out. Hope you enjoy this!

Also, stay tuned with us on Google+, Twitter or Facebook for more next week and so forth.

LokLok: Connected Lock Screen

lock lock main

First up in the list is the LokLok connected messenger. We recently covered this app, however if you haven’t been following, LokLok is a loocksreen messenger that lets you draw and doodle on your friend’s lockscreen! When installed, LokLok asks you to select a group of friends, whom you’d like to use LokLok with. You could also set up multiple groups for messaging to different social circles, just like WhatsApp groups. Once you have done the editing and doodling, the image will be shown in the lock screen of all group members. And anyone involved in the group can edit and make changes to the picture.

Read our coverage here

• Grab your phone and it’s there, start drawing without unlocking your phone

• Leave a note for others, it’s the first thing they’ll see when they reach for their phone

• Use it with your significant other or a group of close friends and stay in touch throughout the day

• Works like a white board, erase what’s there or draw over it

• Take a photo to put on your friend’s screen and draw over the photos they take

• Share your images on social media

• Groups are completely private, nobody can see you or search for you

• No history is saved, once you erase it it’s gone

Video
LokLok - Connected lock screen for Android

LokLok has been on private beta for some time, but now it has entered public beta and is available for download for Free from Play Store.

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Commandr for Google Now

commandr

Love to use Google Now? How about adding your own commands to it? Commandr now lets you do just that. Commandr makes Google Now more useful than Google itself by adding custom commands to it! Google Now natively doesn’t support custom commands, but Commandr uses a clever workaround to accomplish that.

→ Read our coverage here

Google Now Just Got Better
Now you can use Google Now to control your flashlight, toggle settings, control music playback, and much more!

Google Now Just Got Personal
Add your own custom commands through Tasker to make sure your device fits your lifestyle.

Listening to You
Vote on new commands or suggest new ones so that we are working on adding the commands you want.

Improving Quickly
Don’t wait for Google! Updates will be quick and support request responses quicker.

Unify Your Smartphone
Access all the features of your device through Google Now so you don’t have to remember what app does what.

Video
Commandr for Google Now [depreciated]

Commandr is available for all Android phones and tablets (Wear is not supported). Get it for free from Play Store.

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Notific

notific https://nerdschalk.com

Notific is a new approach to lockscreen notifications. Lockscreen notifications apps gained more popularity when the Moto X launched with its Active notification system. Many developers since then have tried to bring similar functionality to other Android devices, and Notific is one great app for that, with even more nifty features, and no gimmicks. It shows your notifications for a short period of time, until the user clicks or dismisses it.

The app shows notification in heads up style on lockscreen. It also includes pocket mode, which makes your phone turn on automatically when you pull your phone out of the pocket, if you have any pending notifications. To learn more about notific, watch the video and head over to the XDA thread to get the app for free.

Notific is lockscreen notification app that displays your notification in an intuitive manner when you need it.
It will automatically turn the screen on and display your notification in an easily accessible tabbed dialogue. It will also show notification quick action buttons if expansion is enabled.

If the phone is in pocket, don’t worry. Notific is intelligent enough to understand that and will not turn on the screen. But if you take out the phone from your pocket within 10secs (customizable) it will turn on the screen for you.

Video
Notifications on Your Lock Screen -- Android App Review

Notific XDA Thread

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Notific is available for a pice on the Play Store, buy it to support the dev. However, if you can’t buy the app, get it for free on the XDA developer’s thread linked above.

Etched Material Icons (Free)

etched material icon

Material design lovers rejoice! This one is for you. Etched Material is an icon pack for launchers. It takes cues from the material design of Android L. The icons are rounded and follows modern material flat design. This icon pack contains more than 400 icons. It supports all launchers which support icon packs such as Action, Nova, Apex, Go launcher, etc.

Etched Material is a beautiful, modern theme that draws on Android L’s Action Buttons to bring simplicity to your homescreen. Flat colors, clean lines and gentle shadows bring the future of Android design to your launcher.Etched Material complies stringently with the color palette of Google’s Material guidelines. Consequently, it will look great on Android L or on any theme that takes cues from it.

Etched Material icons are the best if you want the Material design look, and moreover it’s free. There is also a paid version on Play Store, please consider purchasing the paid one to support the Dev and his works.

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Just Currency

just currency

This one is for you, if you are the type of person who travels a lot. Just Currency is one of the most beautifully designed currency converter apps available on the Play store. It follows the flat design aesthetics and follows iOS style design. You can see a list of all the currencies with the exchange rates. It supports 168 currencies of the world. Also, the exchange rates are updated in real-time.

Just Currency, The APP provides currency converter function, used in the exchange rate, and add to my favorites quickly see, in addition to providing a reverse exchange, simple and easy to understand the operating environment, allowing you to quickly grasp the real-time exchange rates information.

● Real-time exchange rates
● 168 currency converter
● Support reverse rate
● Add to Favorites
● Currency calculation

Just Currency is available for free on the Play Store and has In-app purchases

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Wonder Calendar

wonder calendar

Does the pre-installed Calendar on your phone bore the hell out of you? Wonder Calendar is the app for you. Wonder Calendar is aptly named because it can do wonders and can make you wonder! The app has a very rich UI, which promises to be different every time you open the app. It syncs with Google calendar and shows you events from your Google account. It also has Facebook integration feature, which includes a pretty neat style of reminding you of friends’ birthdays.

Wonder Calendar will show you events from all your Google Accounts that are synchronized with your Android device.Choose different events with various categories, Get Event Notifications, Birthday reminders and more, All of this just an install away (Wonder Calendar !).
+ works with google calendar.
+ Add events of different types.
+ Rich UI with notifications
+ Real Time Sync
+ A visual treat – experience a calendar which looks different each time of the day.
+ View Birthdays on facebook and even get daily birthday reminders.

The app is free on Play Store and is ad-supported. It offers in-app purchase for donating to the developer and to remove ads.

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Callistics – Call statistics

callistics

Here’s an advanced good looking calls and message tracking app for you — Callistics. It keeps track of all your call logs more efficiently than your phone’s in-built call log with advanced functions like specific day chart, number of incoming and outgoing calls and messages for day, metrics provided per contact, and many more.

Application features:
– Android statistics on calls and messages
– Chart of calls and messages for actual period
– Chart for calls and messages for specific days
– List of contacts ordered by number of call minutes or messages
– Metrics provided per contact
– Metrics on contacts number of incoming and outgoing calls and messages per day
– Number of incoming and outgoing calls and messages for day
– Not running on the background all the time – battery friendly and many more features!

It is available for free on Play Store and has in-app purchases.

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SLIDE MOVIES -Easily create!

slide movies

Slide movies lets you convert your sweet memorable photos into a full movie with background music. It has face recognition feature, which zooms and focuses automatically to the faces in the photo. Slide movies also include instagram like filters which can be applied to your photos. Using Slide Movies to create beautiful short movies is actually very simple. Just select the images, apply the filter and select the BGM (background music) you want to play along with your awesome photos. It’s that simple.

 SLIDE MOVIES is a video application showing your beautiful memories that focuses into the face with its automatic face recognition feature.

Slide Movies is free of charge, it can convert images into a single video and let’s you set the BGM by selecting your favorite song from iTunes.

By using the image processing filter,
It is a magical application that lets you turn any pictures into a stylish movie.

Slide Movies is available on Play Store for Free and contains no ads. There are no in-app purchases either.

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PerSOS Lite

persos

PerSOS app allows you to send personal emergency messages with location to pre-selected contacts. The alert SOS can be triggered by 3 methods: Manual, Deffered and Geofencing. Once triggered, the alerts are sent continuously and can only be stopped by entering the correct PIN. PerSOS can send the location, battery level and even moving speed via SMS, Facebook, Twitter or email.

PerSOS Lite is a free application for Smart Phones (Android and IOS) that allows to send geolocated SOS messages to a set of select contacts. It also allows for sending enriched context information to help improve the assessment of the emergency situation, to promote a quicker and smarter incident response from your acquaintances or from law enforcement agents.

The alert SOS can be triggered with three different stealth mechanisms: manual, deferred and geofencing. The three of them can be used, without the offender ever knowing that a SOS is being activated.

PerSOS lite is Free on play store and is only an evaluation copy, it has some restrictions and expires after 30 days. You can get the Pro version of PerSOS to have full functionality.

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ShortPaste

shortpaste

Are you a blogger or use twitter so much? If yes, then URL shortening must be your everyday thing. And so you must download the ShortPaste app. It is developed by recognized developer Mohammed Adib (developer of Switcher, Roundr, etc.) It shortens the URLs you copy automatically. Major URL shortening services such as bit.ly and goo.gl are supported.

Autoshorten copied URLs with ShortPaste
Tired of sharing long, nasty URLs? ShortPaste immediately shortens URLs after copying them (from an app such as Chrome, YouTube, Newsstand, etc) in the blink of an eye. Like magic, your long URL will appear in its shortened form when pasted. Supports bit.ly and goo.gl.

It is available for free on the Play Store, and offers in-app purchases.

Video
ShortPaste - Autoshorten copied URLs
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Reality Check

reality check

Reality check is a new app that allows you to check what your friends think about you. You may think “Why should I use this app when I can ask them directly?” This is where the usefulness of Reality Check app comes in. You can ask your friends questions, but their identity will not be revealed  to you. This means that they can answer about anything you ask including things they won’t tell you on your face. The app integrates with your Facebook account to make it easier for you to approach your friends.

Reality Check is a new way to ask friends to tell you the truth about yourself anonymously.
Whether it is personality traits, secrets, gossip or anything else you might want to know,
this app will let your friends tell you anonymously.

Reality Check offers you the opportunity to invite five or more of your Facebook friends to answer questions about you anonymously (even we won’t know who wrote the answer); anonymity will allow your friends to say what they really think.

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