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Best Android apps to wow your friends
When smartphones were still emerging in the tech scene, anyone with a smartphone was considered cool. People would crowd around that person, asking all sorts of questions about what you could do with it. Nowadays, almost everyone has a smartphone and unless you’ve got the newest one released, it’s pretty hard to impress people.
But, if you want to grab a little limelight and show off to your friends just what you’re doing with your Android device, we’ve put together a list of some of the best Android apps to wow them with. We’re not talking about apps that are just for show, but apps that are handy for you, too. Show off some of these apps, tell your friends about them, and watch them turn green with envy.
Oops, did you forget where you parked your car? Don’t be embarrassed if you do. When you’re tired from a long day at work or when you were too happy to be reunited with friends after ages, remembering where you parked your car can be a trivial thing. But, instead of combing every single corner of the parking block, take a deep breath and launch Carrr Matey. This app will never let you lose your car in a parking lot or a street again. It’ll guide you back using a compass or walking directions.
Keeping with its pirate theme, when you launch Carrr Matey, you’ll be given the option to Drop Anchor to pinpoint your location, use the swords to zoom in and zoom out, and tap Find Vessel to get back to your car. Never fear having to go and park your car at an airport, stadium, or shopping mall. Since Carrr Matey relies on GPS, it will work best in outdoor areas and may not be able to provide you accurate information when in a parking garage.
What better way to wow your friends than by telling them little factoids that they didn’t even know about? With Funny Facts Free 8000+, your friends will be in awe with how much you know. The app puts all the craziest and funniest facts out there in the palm of your hand. It’s a great way to break the ice with friends you haven’t seen in a while and it’ll certainly keep the conversation going.
You can learn and share all sorts of hilarious facts about the human body, science, nature, celebrities, world records, strange laws, and sex facts. Swipe left or right through facts, but if you feel like being random today, swipe down to get a random fact. If you’re still preparing to impress your friends at your next get-together, mark your favorite facts and easily access them through your favorites list. Tell your friends about Los Angeles’ full name, or about Johnny Depp’s weird eye. You can even tell them about the number of neurons the human brain has and just how fast a sneeze travels out of your mouth.
Don’t just settle for the same-old, same-old instant coffee and beer when you invite company over. The Mixology Drink Recipes app is the ultimate drink recipe and bartending guide. Whether you’re a seasoned mixologist or you’re an amateur bartender, your friends will surely be impressed with how you make them drinks. You can browse and search through more than 7,900 drink recipes and easily switch between metric and imperial units.
Want to find the closest liquor store to buy something you don’t have on hand? Mixology Drink Recipes lets you easily search and find liquor stores in your area.
If you’re too lazy or you’ve got no time to run to the store, simply enter all the liquor and mixer types you have in the Liquor Cabinet and you can search for the cocktails that you can make. Make sure you not only impress your friends with what you’re serving them–throw in some bartending terminology and techniques that you can learn through this app.
Prettying up your phone with a static wallpaper can get boring and not all live wallpapers fit your style, but for those of you who still want to find an interesting way of decorating your phone, this app may be for you. Light Grid Live Wallpaper displays a grid of light, fading in and out, and gives you the option to customize it to your heart’s desire. You can tweak the colors, size, and speed.
If you’re worried about the app consuming your battery, calm yourself; some users have reported that Light Grid Live Wallpaper runs light, so it doesn’t gobble up your battery life too quickly. The light grid also changes colors as your battery slowly discharges, which makes for a very interesting sight.
Go crazy with Light Grid Live Wallpaper’s settings. Customize it to match your outfit or your mood for the day. If you’re hankering for more shapes, theme management, and more effects, you can also get Light Grid Pro Live Wallpaper for a small fee at the Google Play Store.
Instead of spending so much time sorting through your contacts list or your apps, why don’t you use Gesture Search to find what you need? This app, developed by Google, lets you find a contact, a bookmark, an application, or a music track by drawing on your screen. Draw the letter “A” and everything that starts with and contains the letter A will be filtered for you.
Letters aren’t the only things that Gesture Search recognizes; you can also enter numbers, too. Search results are updated as you add each letter or digit and becomes better by learning from your search history. It’s perfect for those days when you don’t feel like typing things into the search box to find them and it’ll save you more time when you could be doing something else.
Gesture Search requires Android 1.6 and up to run, which should be no problem for most Android devices out there. You can download Gesture Search for free from the Google Play Store.
The next time you’re getting together with your friends, try something new like stargazing. If you think stargazing is only for people with telescopes, think again. Though you can use SkEye Planetarium | ASTROnomy as a PUSHTO guide for telescopes, this app can be used as an advanced planetarium to help you identify stars, constellations, and deep sky objects from the Messier and NGC catalogs. Jump into any date in the past or future with SkEye’s Time Machine and get real time Alt-Azimuth and Equatorial coordinates.
You can also look up Messier objects and the mini-NGC catalog with a subset of about 180 bright objects. You can also view the solar system, including all 8 planets and 5 Galilean moons. SkEye also comes with Night Mode and allows you to search with a guiding arrow. This app is fantastic for amateur and beginning astronomers, allowing them to get a better idea of those heavenly bodies. Get SkEye Planetarium | ASTROnomy today from the Google Play Store.
If your friends haven’t been impressed yet, explore the world around you using Google Goggles. Another app developed by Google, it lets you Google the world around you with the use of your phone’s camera. Instead of typing something into the Google search bar, take a picture! It could be of a book or of a landmark and Google will use image recognition technology to recognize the subject and return relevant search results.
Learn more about places through the links that Google gives you and surprise your friends. You can easily identify products, famous landmarks, storefronts, artwork and popular images found online. Scan a product’s barcode to find out more about it. Google Goggles also easily lets you add contacts by scanning their business card.
If you and your friends are at a restaurant with a menu that isn’t in English, no problem. Let Google Goggles translate it for you. At the moment, Google Goggles can only translate words in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
Whenever you’re listening to the radio, you’re bound to hear a song that you just can’t name. You might have heard it the other day, or on a commute, and you can certainly sing it but you just can’t put a name to it. The urge to find out its name is gnawing at you and by the time you get to a computer to Google whatever bits of lyrics you could remember, you’re already overwhelmed with other things to do.
With Shazam on your Android device, you won’t have to worry about not knowing a song’s name. Simply hold it up to the speakers and Shazam will give you the song’s title in seconds. When you’re at a party with your friends or when you’re watching a TV show and someone asks the magical question, “Does anyone know what song this is?” simply whip out Shazam.
To make your song experience even better, Shazam can show you streamed lyrics in time to the music. If you’re gaga over the song, you can share it with your Twitter and Facebook friends. But if that isn’t enough for you, you can purchase the song from Amazon MP3.
Maybe you’re secretly a musician but you haven’t got the tools to let your talents shine. Instead of waiting around and saving for instruments, there’s an app out there that’ll get you jumpstarted on your rise to music stardom, even if it is in your dreams. Introducing Chordbot Lite, a songwriting tool and electric accompaniment for the musician on the go.
With just your phone, you can create and play advanced chord progressions as accompaniment for your guitar, saxophone, and theremin solos or just as a backing band for when you’re unleashing your inner singer in the shower. The app features 60 chord types in all keys and inversions, slash chords, transpositions, automatic inversion selection and an automatic song generator.
If you’re itching for even more features, you can purchase Chordbot Pro for a small fee and get access to more than 50 comping styles and MIDI/WAV file export. Impress your friends by making your own song and letting them hear it the next time you have a get-together.
Okay, so maybe your music skills aren’t really that awesome, but there’s hope for you yet. If you’re looking for that one last shot at impressing your friends, show off your singing skills with Songify. Don’t worry if you don’t actually have any singing skills because Songify lets you turn your spoken words into song. Speak into your Android device and pick a tune. Voila! You’ve now got your very own song.
You don’t have to limit yourself to reading lyrics of existing songs. In fact, burst out that speech you made for a class and recite it into the app. Surprise yourself and your friends with what you can do with the Songify app. Get your friends to join in, too, and churn out the Internet’s next big viral hit. Or, at the very least, have yourselves a great time fooling around with Songify. Get Songify from the Google Play Store today and create your own songs with just speech.
With all those apps, surely your friends will be impressed. If they aren’t, at the very least, you’ll have had a great time using your Android device. What about you? Have you ever bragged about your Android phone and what it can do? What apps help you in getting that “Wow!” out of your friends mouths?