5 Android apps you shouldn't miss this week! - Google Play Weekly

It was quite the exciting week in the world of Android apps! A PC emulator was launched that lets you play classic PC games. Facebook has announced that they’ll be splitting off their messaging service to a second app permanently in the near future. Google has re-purposed the Google I/O 2014 app to be a template for Material Design. Google Now has been updated and now it knows what hotel you’re at and can deliver contextual suggestions based on that. There could be an open source port of Morrowind on Android coming sometime in the future. Now, here are five Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week!

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SwiftKey

[Price: Free with in app purchases]
The venerable SwiftKey got a huge update this last week that includes a bug fixes and a bunch of much needed performance improvements for translations, typing, loading times, and Flow performance. It doesn’t introduce any new features but the list of things that improve with this release is simply impressive and don’t forget that SwiftKey is free now so if you haven’t tried it yet, climb out from under that rock and join the rest of us.

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Journal (by Journey)

[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Journal is a fun new application that allows you to keep a diary or journal on your smartphone. It comes with some standard writing features along with some more unique ones like syncing your journal across devices using Google Drive. There are in app purchases but unless you plan on printing any journal entries out or backing up your journal to local storage, you should be able to use this unique journal app entirely free.

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MIRAGE – Camera Messaging

[Price: Free]
MIRAGE is a new application that has similar functionality to Snapchat as well as Facebook’s version, called Slingshot. The claim to fame for this camera messaging service is that everything is completely unrecorded. You send stuff but it never gets recorded on a server anywhere. You can also interact with all of your contacts and not just ones that are signed up for a specific social media service. It’s free to use with no in app purchases so why not give a try?

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Link Bubble

[Price: Free / $2.49]
Link Bubble got a pretty substantial update this last week. Included is Android Wear support, Android L support, and improved functionality for notifications and incognito mode. For those who may not know, Link Bubble is a unique web browser that uses floating notifications to let you browse instead of the usual full screen mode. It’s a pretty awesome app and you should try it.

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Peek

[Price: $4.00]
Last up this week is Peek. The fun lock screen app allows people to interact with their notifications on their lock screens in a more efficient manner received a pretty big update this last week. It now includes support for Android 4.3 devices, an improved set up process, and the boilerplate bug fixes and performance improvements. If you’re running Android 4.3, you should check this out because it’s a pretty nifty app.