REVIEW: Top 10 Andriod Apps

Android can be beautiful. Even Techno Users can attest to it and it’s absolutely true. Admittedly, it’s far easier to find visually stunning apps for the iPhone and iPad; truth be told, there are just more of them in the App Store. But if you value incredible style and aesthetics, don’t dismiss Google’s mobile operating system. Look deep enough and there’s a

wealth of apps that’ll make your jaw hit the floor. Artistic, creative and imaginative designs that would cause any app designer or developer to turn green with envy.

Here, we bring to you 10 of what we consider to be some of the most beautiful and well-designed apps available on the Android platform.

*winks * to Techno Users too - 

 #nwplyng

#nwplyng is a novel Android app that promotes sharing and discovering new music with a badge-collecting gamification system similar to Foursquare.

Whenever you’re playing music through your smartphone or tablet, the app will pick up the track and give you the option to share it via Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Heck, it can even pick up the music around you by listening and analyzing the track just like Shazam.

The app’s design is clear and consistent, with a super smooth side menu that you can slide in from the left-hand side of the screen. Sharing tracks is effortless and there’s even shortcuts for listening to the track on Spotify’s music platform.

   

Circa 

Circa is one of the first apps to address and challenge how the news should be written and distributed for mobile consumption. By structuring the news as small, bite-sized segments, it’s far easier for readers to quickly absorb the latest headlines.

From a design standpoint, Circa is wonderful. It incorporates a mostly monochrome color scheme, increasing the impact of the photographs layered into each story. It’s polished and professional like a broadsheet newspaper, with clean, legible typefaces and small, discernible buttons.

Feedly

With Google Reader out of the picture, third-party apps such as Feedly and Digg have arrived to scoop up the huge number of RSS enthusiasts desperate for an equally impressive news reader service.

Feedly is stunning. With quick access to all of your favorite blogs, news sites and podcasts, it offers a very regimented, functional design. Headlines stand out with a bold, punchy sans-serif font, while the articles themselves have a refined layout with plenty of breathing space for the copy and imagery.

Digg

If Feedly just isn’t to your tastes, fear not. Digg is an equally impressive offering. In addition to acting as an RSS reader, you also get access to all of the popular and featured articles picked out by Digg’s in-house team.

The home feed prioritizes large, full-width photographs with smaller headlines and publication titles overhead. It’s a more visual take on Feedly, but again retains the professional design cues that have evolved over decades in the newspaper business. If you want to just kick back and read some premium, hand-picked content from across the web, this is a great option.

Flipboard

Flipboard wants to recreate luxury magazines for the Web. Unlike many other newsstand apps though, which simply regurgitate print publications as a digital PDF, Flipboard takes that content and repurposes it for your smartphone or tablet.

There’s nothing quite like it. Swiping vertically or horizontally to flip to the next page feels charming and intuitive; here it’s part of the core user experience, instead of a throwaway gimmick designed to replicate a physical book or magazine. The layouts are considered and the way it tinkers with screen real estate and text column widths is totally unique.

Vine

Vine was built on the simplest idea: to help people record and share creative, memorable or humorous moments with six-second videos. That alone would make it stand out from the crowd, but the design of the app itself has propelled Vine to become one of the most fascinating apps on the market.

On Android, videos stretch the entire width of the screen with small, functional icons for commenting, revining and liking individual posts. Content is front and center here, but Vine builds on that foundation with lovingly designed illustrations. Just head to the ‘Explore’ tab and you’ll see what we mean.

Hue

Hue isn’t afraid to splash some color around. The grey, drab menu settings listed in the side menu are contrasted with bright shades of either red or blue in the primary screen. They have a huge impact on the app’s design and makes monitoring the weather a beautiful, memorable experience.

Hue doesn’t skimp on information either. The current temperature is the app’s focal point, but look underneath and you’ll find the minimum and maximum temperature for that day, as well as the current wind speed and weather conditions.

Expedia

Travel apps are usually pretty dull, which is a shame given that you’re supposed to feel excited when you take time off, pack your bags and explore somewhere new. Expedia’s Android app breaks this trend.

Right from the home screen, all of your trip parameters are laid out in slightly different, but equally engaging ways. Maps are quick and responsive, with clear information about the price and quality of nearby hotels. As you ask for more details about a specific place, the app hides different parts of the map to allocate more space for reviews and photos.

 Evernote

Evernote is one of the best note-taking apps of all time. The service needs little introduction, but if you’ve managed to miss out on this cross-platform sensation, take my word for it. Evernote is astounding.

It’s feature-rich and supports text, audio, photographs and webpages, or a combination of all four if you’re that way inclined. The typeface resembles that of a beautiful hardback novel or notebook, with layered pages sliding in to show specific notebooks, tags or notes. If you want to spend hours curating the perfect scrapbook for your home renovation project, this is it.

Grand St.

Grand St. is a curated marketplace for technology and gadget enthusiasts like you and me. It’s a simple idea at its core: highlight creative, innovative hardware that users can then buy with just a couple of taps. It’s part magazine, part catalog, wrapped in a beautiful design that will suit any device.

Right from the outset, you’ll notice that all of the photography is fantastic, truly high-level stuff. Products look gorgeous and they’re backed up by articles that feel like they’ve been written by true fans, rather than a marketing expert. Top to bottom, this app is almost flawless.