5 Android apps you shouldn't miss this week - Android Apps Weekly

Welcome to the 491st edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the big headlines from the last week:

• Third-party Reddit apps started shutting down this week as the API changes took effect. That’s bad news, but it’s not all bad. Some Reddit apps switched to a subscription model and intend to continue forward from there. Additionally, there are some Reddit apps that aren’t being shut down thanks to their accessibility. This should be the end of the Reddit controversy for the year, but it doesn’t mean people are happy about it.
• YouTube is testing out a new Premium feature this week. It’s an accidental tap protection feature that keeps your video from acting funky because you accidentally touch the screen. It’s not terribly annoying for typical users, but it’s a nice quality-of-life improvement. Of course, YouTube will need to do more than that. We ran a poll this last week that showed that a lot of folks aren’t happy with YouTube Premium right now.
• Google updated its privacy policy this week. The new privacy policy implies heavily that Google will use its access to your data to train its AI models. While it is nice that Google is upfront about it, it’s also mildly concerning that they’re doing it, to begin with. You should read the article to learn more, but the verbiage in the new privacy policy is a little offputting.
• Twitter did something strange this week. It became the first social media site to limit how many posts a user can see. That’s not a great thing to be first at. Twitter clarified its move later in the week, stating that it was to keep bots off of the site and to help clean things up. We’ll let you decide if you believe that or not, as many have posited that it was a cost-cutting measure.
• Instagram launched Threads by Instagram this week. We’ll talk more about it in the new apps and games section below. However, one of the immediate pain points is that it won’t launch in the EU due to regulatory concerns. We’re sure they’ll fix it and get around it eventually, but 100 other countries get to enjoy a brand-new app this week and Europeans may have to wait a little longer.

Tales of Dragon

Price: Free to play

Tales of Dragon bills itself as a mobile MMORPG. It takes place in a medieval setting. It plays like most modern mobile MMORPGs. You control a character, defeat enemies, complete side quests, and progress the story. Like most MMORPGs, this one has an auto mode, but separates itself by actually letting you turn it off sometimes. The graphics are colorful and the gameplay was smooth on our test device. It’s a little janky at times, but most MMORPGs are at these early stages. It has potential, so we’ll see how it turns out.

CoinSnap

Price: Free / $2.99 per month / $29.99 per year

CoinSnap is a niche app. It helps coin collectors identify coins using a phone camera. It works pretty easily. You put the coin in front of the camera as seen in the screenshot above. Once you take the picture, the app will attempt to identify the coin and give you some additional details about it. That’s all it does, and we don’t anticipate that this will be the most popular app on the Play Store. That said, it does work, so folks that do need something like this have an option now.

Tales of Yokai

Price: Free to play

Tales of Yokai is an idle RPG. Most of the mechanics are fairly typical for a JRPG on mobile. There are gacha elements where you summon various Yokai, level them up, and use them to fight off bad guys. The idle part comes in during combat where the game essentially plays itself. The enjoyment comes from essentially managing your team and summoning new Yokai, of which there are many. Obviously, some folks are going to like and others aren’t, but it’s not bad for its genre.

Threads, an Instagram app

Price: Free

Threads is one of the biggest Android app releases in 2023 so far. This is Instagram’s attempt at a Twitter clone. With how bad Twitter has been lately, Instagram may very well succeed here. The service isn’t much up front. You join using your existing Instagram account, follow people on the app, and then it’s like almost any other social media. The site does away with the 240-character limit on Twitter, so posts can be much longer. There are some early hiccups. For example, I couldn’t get a feed to load for quite a long time after first signing up. This is Twitter’s battle to lose, but Instagram comes in with the advantage of being able to add its entire userbase to this app. We’ll see how it goes.

MLB 9 Innings Rivals

Price: Free to play

MLB 9 Innings Rivals is a new baseball game separate from the already popular MLB 9 Innings franchise. This game features multiple game modes, a replay system, and some other features. The portrait mode orientation is a little jarring at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly. There is a much larger focus on shorter play times over full games. However, you still collect players using packs that you can buy in the game, just like in the main game. There are some bugs here and there, and it’ll never really be more than an arcade game, but we’ve seen worse.

If we missed any big Android apps or games news or releases, tell us about them in the comments.