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13 best new Android apps and games from April 2015
[Price: Free with Amazon Prime Subscription]
Amazon has officially added tablet support to Amazon Instant Video. It’s a little wonky to use because it’ll redirect you to the Instant Video website in your mobile browser where you then pick a video and then it’ll come back and stream in the app. It’s not the most ergonomic solution and there’s still no Chromecast support, but if you have Amazon Prime, it’s worth a shot.
[Price: Free]
Android for Work is a platform for companies to manage work flow. Earlier this month, Google released the platform on Android devices. Included is admin control support along with dedicated Android for Works apps such as Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Docs, and Chrome. You can also password lock it to prevent access and admins can remote wipe if need be. The only issue right now is a lack of supported devices.
[Price: $1.98]
Adventures of POCO Eco is an adventure puzzle game that revolves around looks and music. The premise is that you’re to help POCO and his tribe find the sounds that they lost. The design is pretty good and the music isn’t half bad for a mobile game. Some have lamented that the puzzles are a bit easy but the general consensus is that this is a pretty decent game. It costs just shy of two bucks and it has no in-app purchases.
[Price: Free]
Google Handwriting Input is a keyboard that allows you to actually write out your messages instead of typing them on a keyboard or speaking them out loud. It works pretty well even if your handwriting is pretty bad. It’s also totally free to use with no in-app purchases and could be a fun keyboard to use if your device has a stylus although finger writing does work too.
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
It’s true that Hearthstone was actually releases several months ago but back then it had one glaring issue: there was no support for mobile phones. Earlier this month, Blizzard updated the application to work on phones and all rejoiced. There were ways to surpass the prior 6-inch limit but it’s much nicer to have official support for smaller screens. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s available for download right now.
[Price: Free]
Hello is a new app from Facebook that acts as a dialer replacement app. It not only replaces your stock dialer and lets you make actual phone calls, but it integrates very closely with the Facebook Messenger service so you can make calls over that as well when you want to. It’ll also help organize your contacts based on their Facebook info. It’s very similar to Hangouts Dialer but for Facebook.
[Price: $2.86 with in-app purchases]
Joe Danger was a hit game on iOS before making its way to Android where it’s had limited success so far. It’s a stunt game where you must pull off tricks and navigate obstacle courses to get the highest score. It has okay graphics, easy-to-use controls, and around 20 hours of game play according to the developers. It’s a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously and it’s also relatively inexpensive.
[Price: Free]
KX Music Player is a music player with an equalizer. It supports a wide range of codecs and includes bass boost, virtualizer effects, reverb, presets, and more. In terms of UI, it’s a fairly simple and new users shouldn’t have any problems navigating the interface. There are a few bugs here and it is a bit simple compared to something like Poweramp or N7Player. However, it’s a solid option for those who don’t need a lot of flashy features.
[Price: $0.99 with in-app purchases]
Magica X Magica is a 2D infinite runner style game with an actual story line. You play as a girl who is looking for her kidnapped friends and you must defeat a bunch of bad guys in order to do it. The game features okay graphics and soundtrack and easy controls. The game also includes boss fights and some good artwork as well. It calls itself the saddest game in this genre although there are a few bugs here and there so beware.
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Mortal Kombat X has finally been released to the Play Store after months of leaks and announcements. Unfortunately it’s currently in the midst of a soft-launch so it’s not available for all markets yet. The classic fighting game features many of your old MK favorites, a familiar battle system, fatalities, and other odes to the franchise. When it’s released to everyone, it’ll be free with in-app purchases but until then, patience.
[Price: Free]
Riff is a new video platform released by Facebook (they’ve been busy this month). The idea is pretty simple. You upload a video of something you’re doing, then someone on your friends list can add some video of their own. Then their friends can add even more. It continues this way until the post dies. There are some bugs and compatibility issues early on but this is actually kind of a fun idea if you have friends that aren’t terrible people.
[Price: Free / $2.16]
Servicely is a root-only application that helps you manage the processes on your device. The idea is to keep processes from running when you don’t want them to run and to help save battery life by closing down apps that keep waking your device up. You can get all the pro features without paying for the pro version although we recommend that you do to support development. If you have root, you should try this out.
[Price: $0.99]
The original Tomb Raider has been remastered and re-released to Android by Square Enix. Those who enjoyed the good old days of Lara Croft can do it again. For those who have never played Tomb Raider, this is an action adventure game with some puzzle elements. The controls aren’t the best but you do get used to them after a while and there are a few device compatability issues. Otherwise, this is a classic and quite cheap for a Square Enix game.
Wrap up
If we missed any great Android apps and games that were releases this last month, let us know about them in the comments!