One of the key deciding points, when people buy Android OS based devices is the vast variety of apps available for it. As of Quarter 2, 2013, Google Play Store has accumulated over 50 billion app downloads, clearly showing us how much people like to customize their phones and tablets with various cool apps. But, the question still stands, which apps are worthy of being in your phones and tablets?
There are multiple sources for app downloads in Android, some of the popular ones are Google Play Store, Amazon App Store, 1MobileMarket etc. They contain a huge variety of apps, ranging from categories like Games, Business, Communication, Education, Entertainment, Lifestyle, News, Photography, Personalization, Tools, Sports, Weather and many more.
In this post, we go through the top must have apps for your Android phone or tablet, discussing their features, device support and price. All the apps listed here can be installed directly from Google Play Store on your Android phone or tablet.
1. WhatsApp Messenger
WhatsApp Messenger is a cross platform instant messenger. It is available for multiple platforms, including Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian etc. WhatsApp uses your phone number for your account, instead of a dedicated account like most other services. It can work over 2G, 3G, LTE, WiFi etc., and consumes very little data. You can also send audio clips, videos, images to your contacts too. There is also support for Group Messaging in WhatsApp Messenger.
WhatsApp Messenger is free for the first year, then it’s only 0.99 USD per year. This gives you unlimited WhatsApp usage, so it’s a killer deal overall. WhatsApp Messenger supports a wide array of Android phones and tablets, right from Android 2.1 Éclair, to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free (0.99 USD/year after 1st year)
Requires: Android 2.1 Eclair and above
Developer: WhatsApp Inc.
Rating: 4.4/5 by over 27,738,742 users
2. MX Player
MX Player is by far, the best video player available for Android phones and tablets. It truly lives up to its claim “The best way to enjoy your movies”. With MX Player, you get support for Hardware Video Decoding on a wide array of Android devices, multi-core decoding support for multi-core devices, Pinch zooming in videos, subtitle support and a nifty Kids Lock mode to prevent misuse of device while your kids are enjoying a video. MX Player has support for a huge list of video and audio codecs, including x264, h265, divx, xvid, ac3, mpeg4 among many others.
MX Player is available for free on the Play Store, supported by ads, and it is compatible with a vast majority of Android Devices, from Android 2.1 Eclair, up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. There is a paid ad-free version available too.
Price: Free (Paid version available for INR 370)
Requires: Android 2.1 Eclair and above
Developer: J2 Interactive
Rating: 4.4/5 by over 2,890,217 users
3. ES File Explorer File Manager
ES File Explorer is a fully free, fully featured file manager cum application manager for your Android phone or tablet. Most Android phones do not come with a file manager out of the box, so you always need a good one to manage your phone’s storage. ES File Explorer has a fully featured file browser, included system file access (for rooted users only), application manager, task killer, multi-threaded download manager, cloud storage client ( compatible with many services, including Dropbox, Google Drive and Skydrive ), full FTP Client, LAN Samba Client. Another thing to note is that ES File Explorer supports over 30 languages, so no matter which country you are from, ES File Explorer has you covered.
ES File Explorer is available for free on Google Play Store and supports Android 2.1 Éclair to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. There is a depreciated legacy version available for Android 1.5 Cupcake and 1.6 Donut users too, but that version isn’t updated anymore, so unless you have a really old device, it’s not recommended to use that version.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.1 Éclair and above
Developer: ES App Group
Rating: 4.5/5 by over 1,538,173 users
4. Facebook
Facebook for Android is pretty self-explanatory. Simply put, it’s the official Android app for the popular social network Facebook. The official Facebook for Android app allows you to stay in touch with your friends and family, share updates, photos, videos, get notifications when your friends try to contact you. You can also chat with your friends and play several social games with your friends. Facebook team has also created a separate Facebook Messenger app for those long chat sessions.
Facebook is available for free in Google Play Store and supports a wide array of Android devices from Android 2.2 Froyo up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.2 Froyo and above
Developer: Facebook
Rating: 4/5 by over 29,837,971 users
5. Airdroid
Airdroid allows you to manage your Android phones and tablets from any internet connected computer in the world. With Airdroid, you can transfer files to and fro from your device, send and receive SMS remotely, install Apps from your PC directly, play music and videos from your device directly on your PC, manage your contacts, manage your photos, and even remotely click pictures from your device. All this in a unique, neat, stylish looking web interface. No PC side app installation is required to use Airdroid, just a web browser will suffice.
Airdroid is available for free on the Play Store, and it is compatible with a vast majority of Android Devices, from Android 2.2 Froyo, up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.2 Froyo and above
Developer: SAND Studio
Rating: 4.5/5 by over 399,024 users
6. Polaris Office
Polaris Office is a no-nonsense app for creating and editing Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents, spreadsheets and presentations right on your Android phone.
Earlier, Polaris Office used to be a Samsung exclusive app, later it was announced and released for all Android devices and relaunched as a free app. This time around, it includes even more functionality and features than the older versions.
You can create and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents, open and view Adobe PDF Files, share your documents through Google Drive and other services, attach files directly to your email and much more. Overall, a must have productivity app for your Android phone or tablet.
Polaris Office is available for free on Google Play Store and is compatible with all Android devices running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above
Developer: INFRAWARE. Inc
Rating: 4.2/5 by over 254,021 users
7. Google Keep – notes and lists
Google Keep is a simplistic application to take rich notes, along with snipping, photos, videos embedded within the note.
Google Keep has several options to keep you organized, including color-coded notes, list reminders, location aware reminders, rich notes with photos and videos etc.
It integrates with your Google Account, and you can access your notes easily on any Android phone or tablet, any PC with internet connection, any Chromebook, any iOS phone or tablet and lastly, any device with a web browser. This means that you can keep yourself reminded on a huge variety of devices. Definitely a must have if you ask us.
Google Keep is available for free on the Google Play Store. It supports a ton of Android phones and tablets, as long as they are running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and upwards.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above
Developer: Google Inc.
Rating: 4.4/5 by over 391,385 users
8. Dropbox
Dropbox is a renounced, free cloud storage service, which lets you upload your photos, documents, videos, music on its servers, and in turn, access them and share them anywhere in the world. You can also use your synced files from multiple devices. Dropbox also has a feature, which allows you to save email attachments directly to Dropbox instead of downloading them on your device. It also has a built-in editor to do small edits to your documents without having to download anything to your device. Dropbox also has a camera upload feature, which uploads all your clicked pics to the cloud, and make it accessible to all your devices, and to others too, in case you want to share an album or two.
Dropbox is available for free on the Google Play Store, and the relevant apps for Windows are available on their official website. Dropbox supports all Android phones and tablets running Android 2.3 Gingerbread up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.3 Gingerbread and above
Developer: Dropbox Inc.
Rating: 4.4/5 by over 1,138,031 users
9. Opera Mini
Opera Mini is easy to use, light on resources Android web browser application. Opera Mini uses its own cloud servers to compress the web pages and pictures before pushing it to your phone, which in turn, not only saves data up to 90%, but also makes pages load faster, even on slow 2G connections. Opera Mini takes a simplistic, no-nonsense approach to its user interface, with a lucid, clean layout, big buttons, and auto hiding panels to emphasize the web page more than the app. Opera Mini also integrates your social network within itself, allowing you to check your social networks while you browse the internet.
Opera Mini is available for free on the Google Play Store and supports a wide array of Android phones and tablets, right from Android 1.5 Cupcake to the latest Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. It works great on old, lower end hardware too, making it useful for people with lower end and/or older devices.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 1.5 Cupcake and above
Developer: Opera Software ASA
Rating: 4.4/5 by over 421,971 users
10. Pocket
Pocket is a cross platform read it later app. It’s great for productivity, allowing you to save articles and pages for reading later. You can save any web page, any article, any video for reading/watching later, and Pocket even allows you to sync these content offline, and email links to yourself to catch up later. Pocket also adapts content to extract just the necessary information out of the web page saved, so that you can read the article in its entirety, without having to view the rest of the web page. Pocket also integrates into several apps, so you can store their content for reading later. Pocket has clients available for all major OS, and browsers, so you have your reading lists synced across devices always. A must have productivity app for smartphone and tablet users.
Pocket is available for free on the Google Play Store. Pocket runs on a wide list of Android phones and tablets, ranging from Android 2.3 Gingerbread up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.3 Gingerbread and above
Developer: Read It Later
Rating: 4.6/5 by over 213,775 users
11. Tapatalk
Tapatalk is a platform for navigating through online discussion forums on your mobile phone or tablet. Tapatalk allows you to reply on threads, create new threads, post photos, and upload files to various online discussion forums. It also supports the personal message feature in certain forums. Tapatalk supports over 50,000 online discussion forums, and can aggregate subscribed threads from all in a single list. Tapatalk should have most forum browsers covered well.
Tapatalk is available for free on the Play Store, and it is compatible with a vast number of Android Devices, from Android 2.3 Gingerbread, up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.3 Gingerbread and above
Developer: Tapatalk Inc.
Rating: 4.1/5 by over 223,048 users
12. SwiftKey Keyboard + Emoji
SwiftKey Keyboard is an intelligent, self-learning keyboard app for Android smartphones and tablets, making it faster and easier to type. SwiftKey Keyboard has support for over 60 languages, swipe text input, a wide array of themes to customize it to your viewing pleasure, different layout for different screen sizes, full emoji support with over 800 different emoji’s to play with. SwiftKey Keyboard learns as you type, so it can save frequently used words, and give you better word predictions, which in the end, makes it much easier and faster to type. SwiftKey Keyboard can save these data to the cloud so that they are perfectly synced across your devices.
SwiftKey Keyboard is available for free on the Google Play Store, but some of its themes are available as in app purchases. SwiftKey supports all Android phones and tablets from Android 2.2 Froyo to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.2 Froyo and above
Developer: SwiftKey
Rating: 4.5/5 by over 1,504,615 users
Worthy Mentions
Not all apps could be added to our must have list, but here goes a few more, excellent apps that might or might not be relevant to all users, but in the end, these are great apps, catering to a different clientele.
1. Youtube for Android
2. Pushbullet
3. Light Flow
4. Zomato
5. Nokia Mix Radio
So, there goes the list of the top, must have Android apps to enhance your smartphone experience. Everyone might not need all these, but we are sure that everyone will find something they like, something which serves their purposes in this comprehensive list.
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