10 Apps all new Android owners should have (video)

So you’ve got a new Android device! Congratulations, and welcome to the Android world! Now you need some good apps to put on that bad boy, and we’ve got a list of the 10 ten best apps you should be installing on your Android device first. As per the norm, if you’d rather watch the video just head to the bottom of the article.

Feedly

If you’re big on keeping up with the news, whether it be technology, sports, or world news, you need a good news aggregator to keep up with the constant flood of information. Google Reader will soon be no more, so our staff picked Feedly as the number one alternative. There’s a reason for that too.

The first cool thing is that Feedly uses its own backend called Normandy, which all the geeks cheered at for the subtle Mass Effect 3 reference. Aside from that, you can make Feedly look similar to Flipboard, but act like Google Reader at the same time. It’s a really great way to customize your news experience and easily organize all of the information coming in.

Of course, Feedly isn’t going to please everyone. If you’re looking for something a tad more flashy, our runner up in this category is Flipboard.

Dropbox

While everyone may not be on the cloud storage train, in the future it’s going to become more and more popular as smartphones and web-based computers like the Chromebook continue to grow in popularity. So why not set yourself up with a good cloud storage app before the inevitable happens? For this category, or staff picked Dropbox.

Dropbox is one of the best cloud storage services out there, and it has some really handy features. Similar to Google+, you can set your device to auto upload files to Dropbox, such as photos. So if something goes wrong, your important files are stored safely on the web. The only person that will be able to see these files is you — and the NSA.

There’s an initial limit of how much storage you can have on Dropbox, but you can always expand that through occasional promotions and by inviting friends to the service. For our runner up, we chose one of the best cloud storage apps out there — Google Drive.

Spotify

Music streaming is all the rage these days, and as more companies begin to offer music streaming apps, the music streaming space is only going to get more competitive and more popular. Spotify is one of the best music streaming apps out there — its 20 million tracks and 24 million listeners is a testament to that.

Of course, not all of those listeners are subscribers, as you can use it free if you don’t mind suffering through ads. Spotify will let you download songs for listening in offline mode, listen to single tracks, or even create radio stations.

It has a fairly simple user interface, and comes with some cool social media integration if you use Facebook. Don’t worry though, you can still use the service if you’re one of the few that doesn’t have a Facebook account. However, we understand that some users want to keep their Android device as a pure Google experience. In that case, our runner up is Google’s Play Music service with All Access, a feature that intends to compete with Spotify and other music streaming apps.

Google Keep

Everyone takes notes, but storing them digitally tends to be the best way to keep track of them. So our staff chose Google Keep for one of the note taking apps that everyone should take for a spin. It’s dead simple, yet it has the colorful and fun Google style to it. To go along with the app, you can sign into drive.google.com/keep to access your notes from a computer.

We’ve reviewed and mentioned this app a handful of times in the past, so our long time fans may think we’re beating a dead horse here. However, we can’t rave enough about Keep. It’s simple, to the point, powerful, and syncs between all of your devices — what more could you ask for? If you’re looking for something a tad more complex, our runner up is Evernote.

Angry Birds

Mobile devices have become so powerful that casual gaming is no big deal. When we recommended casual or light gaming, all of the votes went straight to Angry Birds. It’s a fun, addicting game that most people have become very familiar with, maybe too familiar. There are six Angry Birds apps to choose from — seven if you count Bad Piggies.

You can’t argue with factual numbers — its billions of downloads is a testament to how popular this brand has become. Every game follows the same basic and simple principles, so it’s easy to pick up and play, though, there are hundreds of levels, so you could be playing for quite awhile before you beat them all. Especially if you’re set on going through all six Angry Birds apps.

If Angry Birds just isn’t your thing, our runner up is Temple Run and similar apps like One Epic Knight.

Dead Trigger 2

Consequently, mobile devices have become so powerful that heavy gaming isn’t a big deal either. There are a lot of big titles to choose from, so we went ahead and picked Dead Trigger 2, a free first-person shooter where you can mow down zombies. Call of Duty Zombies fans will love this game in particular.

The controls are typical touch-screen shooter and they do take a moment to get used to. The game is easy enough to fun, yet difficult enough to be a challenge. Not everyone is into zombies though, so if you’d like to try something different, our runner up is grabbing a PlayStation, Nintendo 64, SNES, or some other console emulator.

Snapseed

Everyone can take a good picture and throw a filter on it through Instagram to give it a makeshift professional style, but photography is more than that — it’s a widespread profession and hobby. If you want to do some decent photo editing on your Android, you’ll need a good photo editing app. For that, we chose Snapseed due to how powerful and easy it is — not to mention it’s free.

You can apply filters, but you can also manipulate a lot of different settings to make your photo really pop. I don’t think it has to be said, but this isn’t in any way as powerful as computer image editing, but it’s definitely one of the best if you’re on the run. If you’re looking for something more familiar, we chose Photoshop Touch as our runner up.

Google Drive

Creating, editing, and sharing documents on the go has become much more of an everyday thing since the smartphone was originally brought into existence. For this, our staff chose Google Drive. The reason is simple, it’s solid, it’s stable, it’s free, and it lets you easily share documents. Not to mention the fact that it pairs as a good cloud storage provider.

Unfortunately you can only create Spreadsheets and Documents within the mobile app, however, these can be shared with anyone and it can be editing in real time by anyone you’ve shared it with. Not only that, but Drive has all of the tools necessary to help you create a good document. If you need more features, such as a presentation, we recommend OfficeSuite Pro. Drive and OfficeSuite Pro are two of the better office apps out there.

Wunderlist

Much like note taking, more people are keeping the tasks that need to be accomplished during the day on their mobile devices. So instead of writing down those tasks on a note taking app, a good task management app can help you turn your hectic work day into something more efficient. For this, our staff recommended Wunderlist. It’s just about everything that you could ever need in a task management app.

You can create new tasks, sub tasks, and even sort them in various categories. For example, you can create a work folder, home folder, a vacation folder, and so on. If you’re looking for additional features, signing up for an account will give you an array of extras to play around with. If Wunderlist isn’t your style, we recommend Tasks by Team Tasks.

Shopping

Last up on our list is shopping. We buy things online all the time, so why not do it from your smartphone? For this, we recommend Amazon. It has a giant selection, above average reliability, and it has a solid mobile app to make shopping quick and enjoyable on your smartphone.

You can do pretty much anything you can on the web — place orders, track packages, browse, and search for products. If you’re not a fan of Amazon or your country doesn’t have it available, the official eBay app will do nicely.

Video and final thoughts

Here you can see all of these apps again. In most cases, we do a leaderboard to show you how they stack up against each other, but in this case, they all perform different tasks so it’d be like comparing apples to oranges.

Usually these lists are based on the popularity of the app and other factors, but this time it’s all us. All of these apps are recommended based on how our staff voted.

If you think there’s an app or a few apps that should have been mentioned, feel free to leave a comment and tell everyone all about it.