It’s a sad fact of life that not all of us in the world are 100% healthy. So many disabilities afflict so many people these days, and it makes it difficult to live as a normal human being. But something wonderful happened to disabled people years back — the invention of the smartphone and tablet. Now, disabled people no longer have to feel helpless for day to day stuff. If you are challenged yourself, are a parent or a carer, you might find a gem among these five. How, you may ask. Simply put, apps make it easier for a disabled person to communicate, listen to things they want to know about, remember to take their medication, and more. For some disabled people, a tablet or a smartphone is the best thing they have ever owned.
For Blind People — Learn Braille
When people become blind, the first thing they need to do is learn the Braille language. This is absolutely essential if they are going to make their way in the world. There are smartphone apps which can help with that. For iOS, a good one to try is Learn Braille Alphabet. The interface has more of a children’s feel to it, but it still teaches 26 Braille alphabets, with pronunciation. And lots of practice exercises.
For Android, a good one is Braille Guide. This is much the same as what iOS offers, except the Android one is free.
For Deaf People — Learn Sign Language
For deaf people, the language needing to be learned as quickly as possible is sign language. For iOS, there are a few possibilities but the one I liked the most was Marlee Signs. Marlee Matlin is an Oscar winning actress, who is perhaps most well known for her role as Joey Lucas in “The West Wing”. And now she has done a free sign language app.
Android users can use an app called “Spread The Sign“. It claims to be the “world’s largest sign language dictionary with over 200,000 signs”. And you are able to learn sign language in various languages.
For Dyslexic People
Dyslexia, in case you don’t know, is when a person has trouble understanding language (the structure of it), and therefore has trouble reading. Is there an app to help them with it? There sure is. For iOS, is an app called DyslexiaKey. It makes the font in every application on the phone with a heavy base line. It also inserts alternating stick/tail lengths and larger than normal openings. This overall makes using the phone much easier because you will see the letters clearly. It also works in WhatsApp, Facebook, iMessage, and Snapchat.
Android alternatives include one called Keyboard for Dyslexics. It simply rearranges the letters on the keyboard, so that they are in sequence. Easier for a dyslexic sufferer to comprehend.
For Autistic People
Autism is a brain disorder, which makes communicating and interacting with other people difficult. A good example of an autistic man is Dustin Hoffman’s brilliant portrayal in the movie “Rain Man”. I was actually quite disappointed about the lack of autism apps available. For iOS, the best I could find was an app which listed other apps. These apps help to teach an autistic person language skills and social skills.
For Android, I found something called Miracle Modus. It was made by an autistic person to “mitigate sensory overload”. It makes bright lights, hypnotic rainbows and soft bells. It is supposed to calm the person down, and it has glowing reviews. So it must be doing something right.
For Diabetic People
If you are diabetic, what is your number one priority? Yes, taking your insulin. Because if you forget, you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle. So how do we ensure that we don’t forget? Use a cross-platform app called Diabetes Logbook. It is a diabetes manager that focuses on making your diabetes data useful in everyday life. It adds an element of gamification, and you get immediate feedback through a “diabetes monster”, to help keep you motivated. Weird…but if it works!
Do Android phones finally have better apps than the iPhone? The iTunes App Store has historically been the first choice for developers, but things are changing. There is now a large number of Android-exclusive apps that will make any iPhone owner jealous. The Google Play Store and the Android developer community is growing faster than Apple’s ecosystem now, ending 2014 with 1.43 million apps compared to iOS’s 1.21 million, according to a recent report. And these aren’t just fluffy numbers full of unwanted apps. Android increasingly has quality software you won’t find on iOS.
If we had to nominate one app that makes Android superior to iOS, it would be AirDroid. The recent AirDroid 3 update made it easier than ever to manage your Android from your PC. It’s a web-based client for your phone, so anywhere you are, you can fire up AirDroid in a browser and access your phone’s contents, copy-paste files, reply to texts, and do almost everything you’d want to do. If you have a rooted phone (how to root any phone), you can even mirror your Android’s screen to your Windows or Mac. It’s just brilliant. Closest iOS Equivalent: Honestly, there’s nothing. Continuity, a set of features introduced in the most recent Mac OS X update, is somewhat comparable, but it’s not really in the same league.
To-do lists are a dime a dozen, but Google Keep sets itself apart by how smart it is and how easy it is to add items. Keep works with Google Now to let you add notes on the go by talking, and couples it with reminders based on time or location. Plus, you can colour-code these notes and lists to make them easy to identify. Closest iOS Equivalent:TurboNote is an unofficial iOS client for Google Keep, but it’s still not as good as the real thing.
In the simplest terms, Unclouded is a disk space analyzer for your cloud storage. Sign in with your Google Drive or Dropbox and it will figure out how much space you have used, whether you have duplicate files, where the space is getting filled (like Google Photos or Gmail), and so on. It’s a dashboard of how you are using your cloud storage, so that you can finally start cleaning it up. Closest iOS Equivalent: We didn’t find anything like this app on iOS, but if you know of any, drop a line in the comments!
There are some things Android users take for granted that iPhone users just can’t do. Customization is at the top of that list, especially in how your homescreen and your lock screen looks. More than just a lockscreen replacement for Android, DashClock is the best app for any lockscreen. It’s a widget that works with most lockscreens, serving up notifications from your phone in a beautiful, yet functional way. DashClock extensions let it hook up with most of the popular apps out there, letting you interact with them in meaningful ways without ever unlocking your phone. Closest iOS Equivalent: Nothing. You can’t customize the lockscreen in iOS.
SwipePad is probably the longest-lasting app on my phones. It’s the fastest way to multi-task and launch apps on Android. Mark any side of your phone as a trigger point, and when you swipe inwards from there, you’ll see a grid of your favourite apps. All of this is done without removing your thumb from the screen, which makes it quick and convenient. There are other such quick launchers, but nothing like SwipePad. Closest iOS Equivalent: You can only multitask in the default manner on iOS, i.e., by double-tapping the Home button.
Changing your home screen is one of the best Android tweaks without rooting, and Aviate Launcher is one of the best home screen replacements out there. Aviate intelligently recommends apps depending on your needs, and lets you categorize them for easy access. It takes a little getting used to, but about a week into it, you’ll fall in love. While Aviate is great, it might not be for everyone. The Google Play Store has such a wide variety of options, you should figure out which Android launcher is best for you. Closest iOS Equivalent: Nothing. You can’t customize the home screen in iOS
Yet another thing the iPhone can’t do, unless it is jailbroken, is let you browse around its file system. No such problems on Google’s OS, and ES File Explorer is the best file manager for Android. You can do almost anything that any file manager on Windows or other operating systems will let you. In fact, you can also link cloud-based drives like Dropbox, letting you run multiple Dropbox accounts on the same phone. Closest iOS Equivalent: There are plenty of apps for jailbroken iPhones, but there are compelling security reasons not to jailbreak in the first place.
You probably know someone who needs help with their phone. Zikk makes remote assistance easy. Just install the app on both phones and the expert can access the novice’s essential settings. You can control the other’s WiFi settings, display settings, location services, contacts, and even remotely remove or install apps. It’s a game-changer for those who are used to getting a tech-help call from family or friends. Closest iOS Equivalent: There is nothing like Zikk on iOS.
When you are scrolling through Twitter or Facebook, you probably see a lot of interesting links. But tapping usually means being taken away from your timeline to a browser. It’s a silly system, but Link Bubble makes it better. Tap a link and it will open in a floating browser, collapsed into a floating icon. This icon has a loading bar to let you know when you the page is done loading. This way, you can return to your timeline, keep scrolling, and go back to links when you’re done or when the pages are done loading. Closest iOS Equivalent: We couldn’t find any similar app on iOS, but if you know of any, drop a line in the comments!
Anyone who thinks the most beautiful apps are always on iOS needs to take a look at Press. This Android-exclusive app is the most beautiful RSS reader we have seen, and it has gotten better since we last reviewed it. It imports data from Feedly, Feedbin, Feed Wrangler and Fever, and puts it all in an interface that is easy on the eyes. The focus here is minimalism and readability, along with gestures for easy actions. There are plenty of other cool RSS readers on Android too, several of them also on iOS. Closest iOS Equivalent: There are some beautiful RSS readers on iOS too, like Unread. But Press still tops it.
Root access lets users do things on Android that are impossible on iOS. The best app to explore all the possibilities is Tasker, which lets you set up if-this-then-that rules for almost anything on your phone For example, triple-clicking your power button can activate Silent mode, or you can set your phone to start your calendar app as soon as it connects to your office WiFi. The possibilities are endless. In fact, you can pair it with IFTTT for the perfect automation duo. If Tasker isn’t your scene, there are other automation apps like Llama. The Play Store is full of such options. Closest iOS Equivalent:Workflow is a similar app for iOS, but it still doesn’t do half the things Tasker will let you.
What’s Your Android-Exclusive Favourite?
This is not a comprehensive list by any yardstick. So tell us, if there is one app that makes you choose Android over iPhone, which one is it?
One of the best Android wearables comes with a hefty $300 price-tag and an equally oversized name: LG’s G Watch R. LG’s second Android Wear smartwatch costs around $150-200 more than the original LG G Watch. While it improves on build quality and aesthetics, do the improvements justify the price tag? Read on to find out.
Aesthetics
The G Watch R – perhaps the most rugged of Android Wear devices – employs a P-OLED screen, circled by a traditional watch bezel. The brushed aluminum bezel displays a fixed watch-dial, with an etched-in, white-painted numbers. The design looks similar to an analog sports-watch. The screen’s surface received an unknown glass treatment, potentially Gorilla Glass. In terms of weight, size and heft, the watch feels heavier and more solid than any of its competitors.
Its replaceable band comes in two colors of leather – the exterior portion gleams in glossy black. The interior portion comes in white calfskin, which feels soft and pleasant on the wrist. But I guarantee you that a white, inner-band will get fouled with dirt in very short order.
Like most leather bands, the LG G Watch R’s strap requires a lot of breaking-in before it becomes pliant. Sizing it onto the wrist, out-the-box, requires a lot of tugging and pulling. After a few size adjustments, the leather began to wrinkle.
Hardware
The LG G Watch, unique among Android Wear smartwatches, uses a P-OLED screen – short for “polymer organic light emitting diode”. The display technology differs from AMOLED screens by offering shorter lifespan, along with higher battery drain. The tradeoff: P-OLED displays can curve for use with wearables. I’m not sure why LG went with P-OLED, instead of OLED, since the G Watch R’s screen doesn’t curve.
LG went with the standard, and now ubiquitous, Snapdragon 400. The Snapdragon 400 equips most of the Android Wear devices on today’s market (with the exception of the Moto 360). As on other watches, LG disabled three of the Snapdragon 400’s four cores. The 400 also includes a custom Hexagon Digital Signal Processor (DSP), which aids in language recognition. The 400 chipset, however, uses an older ARM architecture known as the Cortex A7. Despite its age, it offers solid performance, although the chipset isn’t really appropriate for a wearable device. Unfortunately, the only purpose-built system-on-a-chip currently in production comes from Apple. Another, from MediaTek, will release early this year.
Display: 320 x 320 1.3″ P-OLED display with tempered glass;
Chipset: Snapdragon 400 chipset with a single core 1.2GHz CPU;
Battery: 410 mAh battery;
Water/dustresistance: IP67 weather and dust-proofing rating;
Band: 22mm replaceable leather strap;
Cradlecharger: 0.85 mA charging cradle;
Living With the LG G Watch R
Like all other devices in the Android Wear stable, the G Watch R can switch on using the device’s accelerometers. Just swing the watch up to view and the screen turns on. After the screen turns on, users can input voice commands using Google Now personal assistant software. Like in other Wear smartwatches, Google Now offers the best voice recognition software available on any platform, smashing its competitors from Microsoft (Cortana), Apple (Siri) and Samsung (S-Voice). It boasts 80%+ accuracy in word recognition along with a sophisticated arsenal of commands. Users can call out for navigation directions on the fly, search Google with queries, set timers, reminders and a great deal more. To charge the G Watch R, just plug the magnetic cradle charger into a power source (a computer will do) and then drop the smartwatch onto the cradle. The cradle doesn’t feel as solid as the Moto 360’s, but compared to Samsung’s chargers, it’s a tank. However, the charger outputs at 0.85 amps, meaning it only trickle charges, so a full recharge takes around 2 hours.
Android Wear continues to evolve at a breakneck pace. Its latest iteration uses Lollipop as a base – many Android Wear watches have updated, or will update, to this latest standard. I can’t say with confidence that Lollipop increased battery life over previous models, but the G Watch R gets very good battery life. With heavy use, and all the settings maxed out, you can get a full day plus a bit more. With all its sensors switched off – including capacitive screen and accelerometer, LG’s watch gets at least four days of light use. In previous versions of Android Wear, you couldn’t switch features off, and battery life faltered after a day. In the 5.0 version of Wear, Theater mode allows for switching off the persistent touchscreen and accelerometer functions by double-clicking its button. Sunlight mode allows for a brighter display by triple-clicking the button.
Bear in mind that turning those features off robs a great deal of the utility of Android Wear. Even so, users will find these preset shortcuts ease the burden of digging through multiple sub-menus. Theater mode in particular offers users a quick way to extending battery life in a pinch.
Applications
The majority of Android apps don’t tie into Android Wear. However, we’ve compiled a list of six of the best Android Wear apps. I installed five of these for our tests. Wear Mini Launcher: Without a dedicated launcher, Android Wear fails as an app-oriented platform. Mini Launcher fixes this issue by introducing a swipe left gesture to open up a list of all available apps.
Alternative watch-faces: One of the default LG G Watch R watch-faces (or wallpapers) offers a sub-adequate color scheme for a P-OLED screen. The rest shouldn’t even be on your device. To get any reasonable color-scheme, users must install (which costs money) a third-party watch-face. Go with any color scheme which is predominantly black, with red highlights; avoid blue as it causes screen burn-in. Google Fit: This remains one of worst Google apps available for Android Wear. Although I assume the app will expand over time, as the hardware evolves to incorporate more sophisticated sensors, right now you get little more than a pedometer, which tracks daily step totals.
Find My Phone: This emulates a similar function available to Tizen (What’s Tizen?) equipped wearables. If you can’t find your phone, just fire the app up and it causes your phone to ring. Google Hangouts: This comes installed by default (on most devices). Along with Google Maps, Hangouts remains the key selling point of the Android Wear platform. Users can carry on Hangouts conversations using Google Now’s voice-recognition. Overall, the operating system remains in its infancy and the available apps just don’t justify the cost of the platform. While Google Maps and Hangouts offer considerable value, these already inhabit your phone. The mini launcher is a must-have on all Android Wear devices. Alternative watch-faces, likewise, should be installed on every OLED-screened Android Wear smartwatch, to reduce the symptoms of screen burn-in.
Battery Life
After making sure Theatre Mode functioned and installing a full suite of apps, the battery life clocked in at around 4 days of light use – and actually several hours longer than that. As mentioned, with default settings and heavy use, a full day is to be expected.
The Taste of Lemon
Despite the G Watch R’s superlative build quality, it suffers from serious issues. First, its accelerometer stops working – on occasion– after several days of continuous operation. This requires a soft reset, which fixes the issue. I’m not sure if LG will push out a bugfix, since the G Watch R released in the Fall and users reported this issue immediately following release. Second, the P-OLED screen will be prone to damage from burnt-in images. Because of the nature of OLED screens – and P-OLED’s even worse durability – the screen may suffer from burn-in, which is when the individual light emitting cells of an OLED screen degrade. Screen suffering from burn-in retain an afterimage of frequently displayed images (like watch-faces). OLED screens on smartwatches and smartphones already suffer from this issue to a lesser extent. LG should not even offer ambient display as an option on the Watch R because of its notoriety stemming from screen damage. Note, though, that after leaving ambient display on for a week, no burn-in was detected. Third, the lowest brightness setting is still too high. Like most of today’s smartphones and smartwatches, setting brightness to its minimum level still emits frustratingly bright light at night or indoors. Most users trying to squeeze every last bit of battery life out of your devices may find this infuriating. On a P-OLED display, this exaserbates screen burn-in. Last, the G Watch R sometimes experiences Bluetooth disconnects. Because the Android Wear platform loses all functionality when unpaired, users will find themselves with a $300 timepiece strapped to their wrist for brief moments.
Conclusion
Android Wear remains in its infancy. While it offers an array of novel, perhaps even game-changing features, the various builds I’ve seen don’t justify the price tags. The current stable of devices – even the G Watch R – suffer from design flaws which will shorten its life expectancy. The small batteries, combined with poor battery life, will cause high rates of battery failure through more frequent discharge cycles. Prospective buyers should wait until Wear receives custom chipsets and day-light readable screen technology, such as transflective (Pixel Qi) or interferometric modulator display (Mirasol) screens. Despite the limitations inherent in smartwatch design, the G Watch R manages to claw its way into the best Android Wear smartwatches available at the beginning of 2015. Of the three best devices so far, each comes with its own advantages: The Asus ZenWatch looks less rugged, has a smaller battery and its charging cradle fares poorly in comparison. The Moto 360 uses a high drain LCD screen, a much smaller battery and a weaker chipset. The G Watch R uses an untested and burn-in susceptible P-OLED screen and its cradle charger falls short of the Moto 360’s wireless Qi cradle. Early adopters should consider the Moto 360. Those who want an AMOLED screen should check out the Asus ZenWatch. That leaves LG G Watch R catering for those who want a more rugged, traditional watch face.
Don’t buy it. The LG G Watch R might offer a uniform improvement over the G Watch, but it fails to justify the substantial price markup. It just doesn’t offer much more than the original G Watch. If you have $300 burning a hole in your pocket and are just dying to try out Android Wear, go with the Moto 360 and save $60.
The winner will be selected at random and informed via email. View the list of winners here.
Don’t have a webcam, but need to make an urgent video call on Skype or some other video conferencing service? Perhaps you already have a webcam and want to add a second camera to your setup? All you need is your Android phone and a suitable app.
Why Use Your Phone As A Webcam?
You’re caught short. Your children want to chat with their grandparents over Skype. Or perhaps it’s your boss, wanting a teleconference to discuss that report you submitted. But you don’t have a webcam. Although they come built into many monitors and all-in-one PCs, not everyone has a webcam. Peripheral webcams are popular, but they can prove tricky to install and temperamental even when they’re set up correctly. The solution is something we’ve covered previously on MakeUseOf, but time has moved on. Arguably the best — perhaps really, the only — choice you should make is to install DroidCam, an Android app that turns your smartphone (and if you have a good device for grabbing it, your tablet) into a handy, portable webcam.
DroidCam comes in two parts, an Android app that is free from Google Play (premium $4.00 version also available), and the desktop client component, which is available from www.dev47apps.com/droidcam for Windows and Linux. Begin by installing the Android app. With this done, switch your attention to your desktop PC. After downloading, unzip and run, following any on-screen instructions.
Once launched, you’ll be invited to input the IP address for your DroidCam. This should be easy to find, just run the app on your Android and it will be displayed, as well as the port number. Back on the desktop client, you’ll notice that it is possible to stream audio from your phone as well, and choose video quality — low, normal, and high are available. Should you opt to connect via USB, all you’ll need is the USB cable that came with your phone. When you’re ready to proceed, click Start to begin streaming. The mobile app will then send the image from your phone’s camera to your computer. For devices with two cameras, tap the Settings button on the mobile app and check the appropriate box to switch to the camera you want to use.
Although the free version of DroidCam offers some good options, it isn’t perfect. For instance, you can only use the webcam in landscape mode, zooming is limited as is resolution, brightness, and various other controls that are found in the menu across the bottom of the DroidCam desktop client. To activate these, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version of DroidCam. Naturally, we would only recommend that you do this if you feel you’ll use these features, otherwise remain with the free DroidCam release.
A strong alternative to DroidCam, IP Webcam is also available as a free app from Google Play, with a premium upgrade available ($3.99). The PC viewer can be downloaded from ip-webcam.appspot.com.
Setup is largely the same as with DroidCam. However, although there is a configuration tool that you will need to fill in, IP Webcam requires you to view the output through your web browser. Only Chrome or Firefox are accepted here, so Windows users can’t use Internet Explorer as it doesn’t stream correctly. You’ll need to use the http://[IP ADDRESS]:8080/videofeed URL to view the feed. Various image resolutions are available for video and stills, and rear smartphone cameras are supported, although front-facing cameras aren’t yet fully supported. Once you’re up and running, tap the Actions… button on your Android device to check the app is running correctly, to stop and start the camera, and more. Want to know more? Check our previous assessment of IP Webcam, or just start using it…
Another free app with a pro option ($7.00), EpocCam requires the Windows or Mac OS X Drivers from www.kinoni.com to be installed on your computer before it will work.
Once installed (make sure you have no messenger apps running), you’ll need to run EpocCam Viewer to see the output on your desktop. On Android, tap the menu button to open the app settings, and add the IP address for the computer you’re using. Streaming should then begin automatically, and EpocCam can be used as a webcam in your usual chat programs.
Sharing Your Webcam With Skype
You’ve setup a webcam and it is streaming images from your phone’s camera to your computer. But how do you use it within an application like Skype? Simple. The client, once installed, is recognised by your operating system as a new webcam. All you need to do is use the appropriate menu option in your chosen video chat app to select the camera.
In Skype, this would be Tools > Options > Video settings, where you’ll find the Select webcam dropdown menu. Select your Android webcam from the menu, click Save and you’re done. This will work with DroidCam and EpocCam, but not IP Webcam. You’re not limited to Skype, incidentally, as other chat services supporting video should accept video from your smartphone camera, including Hangouts, which, as we know, is cooler than Skype. Remember when using any webcam for video chats to make sure you follow our steps for looking presentable and professional.
Who Wins?
We’ve been looking at the free options for each of these apps, and there is a good reason for this. If the free version works and is competent, then there’s a strong chance that the full version will be equally — if not more — impressive. Assessing these three Android webcam apps, I’ve noticed two key things: one, the variation in the number of features available in each, and two, how easy they are to setup. So, the winner is DroidCam, for being very easy to setup and providing good support for messenger apps. While the features on offer are limited, it gets the job done.
But what do you think? Have we missed an Android webcam app that you rely on? Tell us in the comments.
Smartphones are improving all the time. The current models make the early attempts look ancient, despite it being less than a decade since the original iPhone was introduced to an awestruck world. However, the perfect smartphone doesn’t yet exist. Which is a problem we’re seeking to remedy.
Smarter Smartphone Features
As much as you may love your current smartphone, there are bound to be things about it with which you’re unsatisfied. If not, then you’re either easily pleased or lying through your teeth to make yourself feel better about having paid a small fortune for your pocket-dwelling gadget of choice. Either way, you, like everybody else reading this, will have pondered how the smartphone of the future may look. We recently asked our readers exactly what they would include on their perfect smartphone. There were some clear trends present in the discussion, which we have broken down for you below…
Unbreakable Hardware
The perfect smartphone would have unbreakable hardware, or, at the very least, components that are a lot more able to stand up to the abuse meted out by the average user. This goes for the case, which should be both rugged and strong, and the screen, which should remain scratch-free no matter what you use as a stylus. The other option would be to use bendable, flexible materials which would keep the smartphone safe no matter what height it’s dropped from. Apple has recently patented such a design, so we may well see a bendable iPhone in the not-too-distant future. And where Apple leads, others will follow. Specifically, Samsung and Huawei.
Customization Options
The perfect smartphone would have more customization options than you could ever fully explore. This is unlikely to happen on the iPhone, as Apple likes to control the user experience as much as possible, but there is definitely scope for more customization on open source operating systems. Selling smartphones with unlocked bootloaders would allow more experienced users to extensively change the user experience with custom ROMs and the like. On a smaller scale, the ability to delete default apps and upgrade certain parts without buying a whole new phone would be essential. Which is a gap in the market Google is hoping to fill with Project Ara.
Common Sensors
The perfect smartphone would feature more sensors than the current generation of devices. We all know smartphones have already replaced the need to carry several other gadgets, but there are still more to be explored. The most obvious sensor to add would be a thermometer or barometer, either of which would be more useful than even the best weather apps. Other possibilities include a breathalyzer, a carbon monoxide detector, and even a perfunctory smoke alarm.
Camera Capabilities
The perfect smartphone would feature a camera that’s at least on a par with an expensive point-and-shoot. Some would argue that this is already the case, but that’s only for the select few who have made the sensible decision to buy a Windows Phone device boasting a PureView sensor. The point is that while most people are more than happy to use their smartphone to take random snapshots when the need arises, many would still want a dedicated camera for big events. If the quality of smartphone cameras increased by a big margin we could all finally ditch our cameras.
Power Hungry
The perfect smartphone would feature a battery which can last for several days without needing to be charged. This was by far the most requested feature amongst our readers, suggesting people are getting sick and tired of rushing home to charge their phone after much less than a full day of medium use. This is a rather tricky problem to overcome, as increasing the life of a battery using the current technology means upping the capacity, which in turn means upping the bulkiness. While everybody would appreciate a longer battery life, we suspect few would be happy to accept a larger, heavier device as a result.
Continue The Conversation
If we’re honest we don’t expect any of the big smartphone manufacturers to read this and start working our ideas into their designs for the next generation of mobile devices. However, at least we know what features the MakeUseOf readership would like to see on the iPhone, Android, Windows, or BlackBerry device they’re planning to buy in the years to come. Please continue the conversation in the comments section below, as, although a good number of our readers took part in the original discussion, there is always room for more opinions and more suggestions. Whether you agree with what has been said so far or not, be sure to get in touch and let us know what components or features you would include on your perfect smartphone.
A Debt Of Gratitude
In order to build the perfect smartphone, at least in the confines of our own heads, we received help from the MakeUseOf community. As always, our readers proved to be an invaluable part of the site you’re reading right now.
The readers we need to thank took the time to answer the question, What Would You Include In The Perfect Smartphone?, and their responses helped us compile this article. Noteworthy comments include those from KT, John, dragonmouth, and likefunbutnot.
When you need to get things done, there are a few basic principles to keep in mind: You need to prioritise your to-do list, you need to know how much time each task takes, and you need to account for breaks to keep concentration levels high. Do Now automates these processes to help you tackle your action items. Do Now is special because it recognises the link between these principles and marries them into a cohesive interface. Over time, you will be able to use this free Android app to get better at time management and set up routines to tackle tasks.
Break Down And Manage Your To-Do List
Do Now starts with setting an agenda. Like with any to-do list app, you have to list all the tasks that you want to do. These can basically be categorised in two sections: Planned and Unplanned. Planned actions are the things you want to do today, while unplanned actions are more of a “mind dump” for those tasks that you want to do some day. The app connects with your Google account so you can import and sync your Google Tasks list (Read: Five killer ways to use your Google Tasks). One user has also set up a way to sync your Todoist list. It’s a small but nice feature so that you aren’t starting from scratch. Do Now also has a section for routines, where you store a series of actions that you do regularly. This section’s true impact can be seen in time-tracking, but even otherwise, it’s nice to have a set to-do list of multiple actions that you can start in one tap.
Setting Up Do Now For Success
Take a few minutes and line up a series of actions you want to start doing, and set the estimated amount of time for each. Tap the “Play” icon to start the timer on the first task. At any point, you can add more time to the task, in increments of five minutes. When time is up, an alarm will notify you and you can choose to finish the task and move to the next or hit Snooze and keep working on it till you are done. Following the principle of the Pomodoro technique, Do Now lets you set breaks between tasks. You can customise the time increment for both the break and the snooze features. The idea here is to track the amount of time you think a task takes, and see how much time it really took you. As you gather more data, Do Now will tell you how much time you actually need to allocate for tasks that you repeat often. As mentioned earlier, this really helps when you are checking how much time a routine takes. The app has charts and graphics to present all this data, as well as pure statistical representation too. It’s as good as using Excel to create self-updating charts. You’ll be surprised how often you are wrong, and once you have actual data, you can go about applying better time management techniques.
Making Time For Your Passion Project
Personally, Do Now’s biggest impact for me was in the “Unplanned” section. Everyone has passion projects, be it writing a novel or finally building an iOS app from scratch. But the problem is scheduling your passion projects. We don’t really know how much time each task will take. And then there are other unplanned activities like cleaning the garage or making a meal plan, which infringe on your time. The “Unplanned” section lets you add these tasks and set an estimated time. For example’s sake, let’s say you’re writing a book and set “Write 1000 words” and assigned 30 minutes to it. Similarly, you have assigned 30 minutes to cleaning the garage, and another 30 for making a meal plan. The next time you have 30 minutes of free time, you browse the Unplanned section to pick a task you want to tackle. Once you time the task, you will know how long it actually takes. So you might find out that 1000 words in 30 minutes is not what you can manage, and you can thus change the time requirement to 45 minutes. Similarly, if a meal plan takes only 15 minutes, you can set the time accordingly. The big benefit is that your unplanned and unscheduled tasks finally become manageable because you know how much time they will take, and you can start tackling them accordingly.
Do Now Vs. The Rest
Do Now’s biggest shortcoming right now is that it is restricted to Android, which means you can’t use it on any other platform like Wunderlist nor share tasks with others like Any.Do. Still, that doesn’t stop the app from being useful, since it does other things well, so if you primarily use an Android smartphone, it’s worth getting Do Now. Without a doubt, this is one of the best Android apps to manage your to-do list. Download:Do Now for Android (Free)
How Do You Manage Your To-Do List?
There is no one right way to handle your to-do list. Some productivity experts think it’s about prioritisation, some reckon it’s about time management, and some say it’s about setting your list by mood. How do you prefer to tackle your to-do list? How important is time-tracking?
Bad habits come in a multitude of forms. From smoking and drinking to biting your finger nails and needing to be more productive, most people have some practices that they aren’t proud of – practices that they would rather leave in their past. It’s not easy to break habits – it requires dedication, commitment, and sometimes painful introspection. Luckily, the digital age is here. It means that although you’ll still need all those things, there are now gadgets and programs that can make it just that little bit easier to get those demons off your back. Here are ten start-ups that have the sole aim of helping you kill your bad habits:
HabitClock tries to help you develop morning routines that both improve your mood and increase your productivity. The app syncs with the alarm clock on your phone and is designed so that it starts to work as soon as you hit snooze. You can program it with any number of habits that you would like to integrate into your morning routine, from something as simple as brushing your teeth to more complicated tasks such as ‘do yoga’, ‘draw a picture’, or ‘practice a foreign language for thirty minutes’. After you’ve used the app for a reasonable length of time, you can produce detailed graphs and reports that track how often you skipped a routine, the long-term effects of various routines on your health, and which habits are the best fit for your personal preferences.
It is possible to quit smoking, and smoking rates are falling. In 1974 in the UK, 51 percent of men and 41 percent of women smoked cigarettes, whereas today, research suggests that only 22 percent of adult men and 19 percent of adult women are smokers. Of these people, at least two-thirds of them want to quit.
Smokio aims to help those two-thirds of people by offering an electronic cigarette that wirelessly connects to an iOS app so they can monitor their smoke consumption. After being founded in August 2013 and with their first product becoming available in March 2014, the company has already become a world leader in ‘smart cigarettes’. Additional features include the ability to alter the density of vapour in your e-cigarette, and a life expectancy counter based on quitting versus not quitting.
Although processed food and fast food often equate to tasty food and cheap food, unfortunately they also equate to unhealthy food. One of the hardest habits to break is a reliance on microwaved meals and other unhealthy options. After a long day at the office, most people simply don’t want a war with their oven to try and make something complicated. Fooducate aims to shed some light on the ingredient lists, nutrition labels, and health claims that often mislead us, thus proving that fast food can be both tasty and healthy. With 200,000 items in its database, it highlights factors such as excessive sugars, high-fat content, additives and preservative, high levels of fructose corn syrup, and dangerous food colourings.
Rely on this company’s directions for one month and you’ll start feeling more alert and looking healthier. Soon your bad cuisine habits will vanish!
Instead of using a fact-based, shock and scare approach, Coach.me is designed around support. Formerly known as Lift, the “life coaching” app uses three pillars – community, data, and coaching – to help all its users achieve their aims. Their website boasts countless expert-led plans that cover everything from learning to be less stressed at work to extreme boot camps for rapid weight loss. The data feeds into their app, which aims to let you build a habit around any goal. It records and celebrates your progress with a check-in system and uses peer coaching, social groups, and optional reminders to keep you motivated.
Are you a parent with a kid who refuses to tidy their room or feed their pet? This app could be the answer to your prayers! ChoreMonster’s core aim is to allow parents to assign chores and tasks to their children, while also incentivising them for completing them.
Parents can create chores and rewards through their portal, assigning a points value for each task based on its importance and complexity. Children can see this list and notify their parents when a task has been completed — once the parent approves the task the child gets the points. The child saves up their points to spend on the rewards they want most — this can range from going out for a pizza or a trip to a local sports game to more extravagant things like a shopping spree or a camping trip. Your kids will be begging to do chores in no time!
Millions of people around the world spend too long procrastinating. It’s a difficult habit to break, especially in the age of the Internet where innumerable distractions are a mere click away. The app was created by a team that included former MIT Media Lab professor Dan Ariely, a man who spent ten years researching procrastination and came up with the concept of structured procrastination — a philosophy around which the app is built. It shows you everything that competes for your time and makes smart suggestions about when to schedule tasks to use your time most wisely. It helps you find time for the ‘good habits’ and even syncs with your calendar to assist you in effectively planning your day.
Oristats are the makers of the increasingly popular Stop Drinking Alcohol app. Launched in December 2013, their app boasts an interactive calendar for logging progress, more than 800 inspiring quotes about giving up alcohol, a way to track your ‘sober streaks’, and an ability to export all your data to your own spreadsheets. The app is now recommended by various anti-alcohol organisations for use when following professional plans such as the ’12 steps Alcoholics Anonymous’ program and the ‘Self-Management And Recovery Training’ (SMART) recovery.
It’s not easy to track your diet. This Chicago-based start-up promises 24-hour access to text, talk and video consultations with dieticians across a broad range of specialisms – including weight loss, eating disorders, and weight management. By providing around-the-clock service, it’s their goal to try and help people break the habit of unhealthy fridge binges at 4am, or filling up their shopping cart with poor selections when doing a weekly trip around the grocery shop. The service is only available in the US.
Do you suffer from road rage? Instead of gesticulating furiously and trying your best to provoke the driver who aggravated you, why not pull over to the side of the road and vent your fury via a new social network for road users? Bump.com works like an email address for your car, using license plates to connect drivers of cars that would otherwise have no way to communicate with each other. Of course, the benefits of this extend beyond preventing road rage. You can easily contact another driver if you see something wrong with their car or if there is a hazard on the road ahead. The apps and website are both still in beta, but the idea is a good one.
Having good manners is an important part of a person’s social etiquette. Although society is now more accommodating of a slovenly approach to a formal situation than it was fifty years ago, habits such as talking with your mouth full, putting your elbows on the dinner table, and not saying please and thank you are still widely frowned upon. As with all habits, the best time to start learning is when you’re a child. You can make sure you child doesn’t grow up to be bad mannered by instilling good habits at an early age with the Good Manners for Kids app – released in early 2014. The app teaches them how to politely meet and greet, how to be a good guest, what are the best table manners, and to care-for and share-with their peers.
What Did We Miss?
Do you know any startups that have produced awesome tools for either breaking bad habits or forming good habits? Are there any new apps that should be included in our list? What about books or websites that can help snap you out of your old behaviours? Perhaps you’re ready to start making some new habits for your New Year’s resolutions?
If there is one thing about the Internet that remains constant, it’s that there is always a trend, a fad, going on. Whether it’s the latest meme, or filtering your photographs through various Instagram-like filters, there’s always something happening, which either annoys you or amuses you. So where do you stand on the latest fad? That would be the selfie. Yes, the selfie. God’s gift to all vain and self-absorbed people everywhere. There’s nothing wrong with making the odd snap here and there, but some people take it to extreme levels. And Justin Bieber loves it, which definitely makes it worse! Ellen did it at the Oscars though which was kind of cool. If you count yourself as a selfie junkie, here are 5 apps which will help you feed your drug habit enjoy your hobby.
Frontback
When you view a photo, do you ever wonder what is on the other side? If you do, Frontback exists to give you a glimpse behind, and in front, of the camera. I managed to get a rather handsome Scottish fellow to pose for me, to test the app. It worked flawlessly, as the app just walked me through the stages. A must for any selfie fan. Download: iTunes (Free) | Android (Free)
Perfect365
Once you’ve taken the selfie, do you instantly whoosh it off to Instagram, Flickr, or Facebook? Don’t be silly! No, first we need to get rid of the pimples, remove the second chin, and the third eye…and the hair has to change colour. Blonde is so…yesterday. This is why Perfect365 belongs on your phone. Once you have snapped your selfie, you can run the picture through Perfect365 and get a “magazine-worthy digital makeover” (their words). Download: iTunes Link (Free) | Android (Free)
MomentCam
If you fancy something different, then why not make a caricature selfie? This is when you make a funny image of yourself, based on a photo you take with the app, or that you upload. Here’s me. They are all GIF images so prepare to see yourself dancing around. It’s worth a few laughs at least. Download: iTunes (Free) | Android (Free)
Shots
Shots is actually a fledgling social network on the rise, a kind of rival to Instagram, except this one is dedicated to selfies. This is the one that Justin Bieber endorsed, in case there are any Bieberites (or whatever you call yourselves) are out there reading this. You can contact the person who made the selfie, via the app. But what is nice about Shots is that it doesn’t have a public commenting feature, in order to stop cyber-bullying. Download: iTunes (Free) | Android (Free)
Selfie Cam App
This one is only for iOS, and allows you to use iOS7 face detection technology to take your selfie. Just smile at the camera and the picture is taken. Or use your thumb to rotate a rotary dial to snap a picture, which may be more comfortable for some. Plus there arealso the usual stickers that all selfies need. You can export the finished photos to Instagram, and you can share to Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Download: iTunes (Free)
So there you go, 5 apps for selfie lovers the world over. Do you count yourself as a selfie fanatic? If so, what apps do you use, and why do you do it?
