PureContact: Use Custom Gestures To Place Calls, Send SMS, IM, Emails & More On Android

Previously, we’ve covered a ton of contact management apps for Android including Go Contacts, Hoiio Live, and Contact Analyzer, just to name a few. The advantage of using third-party contact managers over the native solution is usually that they provide users with some additional features not found in the stock offering. PureContact is one such solution designed to let users easily send text messages and emails or make calls by accessing a multitude of apps including Whatsapp, Viber etc., under one roof, using simple speed dial gestures that are also programmable according to your liking. Details after the jump...

Capture, Edit & Annotate Screenshots On Android With Ashampoo Snap

People loves taking screenshots on their Android devices, be it to show off their home screen setup on DeviantART and MyColorScreen, seek tech support over at communities like XDA-Developers, or write app reviews like us. But there are times when you need to make a few modifications to the original image before sharing it online. If you don’t want to use any complex editing tools for the purpose, then Ashampoo has the right tool for you in their new Ashampoo Snap app for Android. Using this decently designed app, you can easily take screenshots and annotate them right away in the simplest fashion. The powerful built-in image editor lets you add shapes, emoticons, cliparts, texts, arrows etc. to the image, and share it via Android’s native sharing option...

Memotion Is A Voice Journal For Android With Emotion Analysis, Transcription & More

Have you ever wanted to preserve your favorite memories via simple voice recordings? That’s exactly this new Android app called Memotion is all about. Still in early beta and available for free at the Play Store, it is a wonderful, easy to use app that offers its users the ability to quickly save their best memories in a voice diary. And going one step beyond merely offering voice recording capabilities, it uses Beyond Verbal Communications’ analytics engine to analyze the emotional content of each recording you make, letting you embed these emotions in the recording form. Furthermore, its ‘quick analysis’ option can detect the true emotions in anyone’s voice, presenting you with an emotion analysis afterwards...

hello sms Is An Android Messaging App With A Neat, Tabbed Interface

If you search for SMS replacement apps for Android, you will find a ton of options available at the Play Store such as Disa, Now SMS and the recently covered EvolveSMS, just to name a few. And while no SMS app has seen as much popularity and acclaim as GO SMS Pro, a new kid on the block named hello sms might redefine a few rules. Carrying a minimal and simple UI, it offers a texting environment you may not have experienced before. Thanks to its barebones UI, hello sms aims to let you send text messages and photos as quickly as you can. The app sports an awesome tab-based UI that ensures quick and easy switching between different conversation when texting. Details after the jump...

Scroll To Top Or Bottom Of Any Screen On Android By Tapping The Status Bar

Many of us now find it more convenient to browse the internet on our smartphones or tablets than on PC. And that’s not only because mobile devices are easier to carry around, but also because you can use them with one hand. The smartphone experience of website navigation comprises of scrolling up and down the webpage via swipe gestures. Sometimes, when you’re scrolling through a huge web page or list and you constantly find the need to scroll straight to the top or bottom, the process can become pretty cumbersome. Enter OneClick Scroll, a new Android app for rooted devices that takes inspiration from the jump-to-top feature in iOS. It lets you scroll through huge pages or lists in a snap by just tapping the right or left corner of the status bar for moving to the bottom or returning to the top...

Record iTunes Radio On Android With doubleTwist AirPlay Recorder

iTunes Radio is pretty fantastic for listening to an endless stream of free music. The service carries countless radio stations that provide users with non-stop music access to a wide variety of genres, albums, artists etc. You cannot, however, stream on-demand music in a manner similar to Spotify, nor does iTunes allows recording the music on your PC, iPhone or iPad. doubleTwist AirPlay Recorder is a new app for Android that lets you record any music being played on iTunes via AirPlay . All it requires is a a device with iTunes (such as a PC, Mac or even a smartphone or tablet with AirPlay streaming capabilities) and an Android device, both connected to the same Wi-Fi network. The app is fairly easy to configure and use. Continue reading to learn more about how it works...

Super Unlimited MBlaze Plans: Now 40GB at Rs 999; Intros Blaze 4.0 Smartphone with 1 Lakh MB Data

Country’s only pure-play CDMA operator MTS India, the telecom brand of Sistema Shyam Teleservices has taken plenty of steps to keep afloat in the competitive data market. The data market which is the company’s main focus has become very competitive for MTS as the 3G operators now offer better speed, more coverage (thanks to the investments they put) and in some cases cheaper tariffs. However this time MTS brings the most exciting data plans for the high ARPU dongle users to beat every single operator in the town...

300% More Data

Udemy Brings Its Huge Library Of Video Courses To Android

Internet is a powerful resource that can help you learn new skills. All you have to do is look in the right places. There are various popular online destinations, like Wiki-how, eHow or About.com, that cover a variety of popular subjects that help us enhance our skills on our own. Udemy is one such renowned name among the bunch that aims to unlock your learning potential via hundreds of video courses taught by the experts, covering nearly 10,000 courses for a wide array of categories including Technology, Photography, Yoga etc. Udemy has been a critical and commercial success since it’s been around, and just last year, the company released an iOS app for letting you learn on the go on tablet and mobile platforms. This month marks the launch of Udemy on the Android platform bringing all of Udemy’s fantastic offerings to your Android phone or tablet...

EvolveSMS Is An Andriod SMS App With A Customizable Hangouts-Like Interface

With the release of Android 4.4 KitKat on the Nexus 5, Google introduced an update to the Hangouts app with support for SMS, and later pushed out the update to Play Store for everyone. What I personally like best about the interface of Hangouts is the ability to quickly switch between the conversation list and the currently open conversation itself using a simple gesture. If you don’t want to switch to Hangouts for your SMS and MMS needs, but would like to have a similar interface in your messaging app, try EvolveSMS. In addition to a Hangouts-like interface, the free app also boasts some customization options, along with a theming support and a bunch of more powerful features unlockable via in-app purchases. Join us as we take a closer look at this new messaging app for Android...

Studio Design For iPhone & Android Is Like Instagram For Designers

Instagram’s success didn’t just happen in a day, but it’s no secret that the photography app has captured a lot of attention since its inception. Many apps and services have tried to mimic Instagram’s success through similar features for photography fans, though not a lot of them have succeeded. Studio Design, however, aims to bring an interesting proposition to the table, offering something that would appeal to designers who would like to create ravishing designs out of their favorite stills, remix designs shared by others by adding their own touch, and share the results with others. In other words, it’s the Instagram equivalent for designers. Available for iOS and Android, the app is fun, beautiful and just works!!!

Sing-N-Share Is A Karaoke Assistant For iPhone & Android With A Library Of 12,000+ Songs

Love to sing, but end up getting embarrassed because of not being able to remember the full lyrics of your favorite song? What you need is a karaoke app! For those unfamiliar with karaoke apps, they provide you with backing vocals and instrumental tracks or record performances of your favorite songs, letting you hear and sing songs from the artists you adore. We are going to take a look at one such new app for iOS and Android called Sing-N-Share, which is a brilliantly executed karaoke assistant sporting an awesome and highly intuitive user-interface, along with access to a collection of over 12,000 fully-licensed popular karaoke songs from various genres...

ScanWritr Is A Robust Document Scanner For Android With Annotation Features

Do you often find the need to scan your documents and send the digital copies to others, but don’t want to spend your money buying an actual scanner? Fret not! ScanWritr for Android is here to help by letting you scan any document you wish via your Android device’s built-in camera and providing professional results that would leave you amazed. The app also carries additional features such as the ability to convert documents to PDFs, a powerful edge enhancement feature that enhances scan quality, annotation tools that let you write on and add signatures to documents, and more. Details just after the jump!!!

Benchmark & Calibrate Your Android Device’s Battery With Battery Kit

Most smartphones are notorious for their rather inadequate battery life. Although manufacturers are trying to overcome this nuisance by making bigger and long lasting batteries, heavy mobile users who stream media, browse the web and use social media services on their smartphones a lot have a hard time going through the whole day on a single charge. This is where battery saving apps come handy and let users get the most out of their phone’s batteries by analyzing their performance and turning off unused mobile features. Battery Kit is one such Android app that carries many advanced features such as the ability to detect wake locks, calibrate the battery, view various useful stats, perform benchmark testing and more...

DriveSync Brings Two-Way Google Drive Sync To Android

Google Drive is Google’s widely used cloud storage and synchronization service that’s available on all major mobile and desktop platforms. When it comes to the mobile apps, however, one feature that’s missing is two-way synchronization for your folders to keep their content in sync across your computers, smartphones and tablets. However, a new third-party app named DriveSync aims to rectify this by bring the missing two-way synchronization feature to the table. And to keep things simple, the app focuses just on synchronization rather than aiming to be a full third-party replacement for the official Drive app. Let’s learn more about this handy Google Drive syncing solution after the jump...

Shush Automatically Silences Your Android Phone While You’re Using It

Have you ever wanted to put your phone in silent mode when you’re using it, and revert back to your normal sound settings when you put it away? Just think of how convenient it would be if that process could be easily automated. If your mobile platform is Android, we’ve got a very handy solution for you in the form of an app aptly dubbed Shush. This simple, free to use app mutes your phone’s volume whenever you unlock its screen, thus silencing any upcoming text and call notifications. But the story doesn’t just end here; it also restores your previous volume settings when you put it back in your pocket or when it is no longer in use. The app is also very lightweight and not resource hungry at all, so you don’t have to worry about quirky battery drains either. Read past the jump for more details...

CM (Cleanmaster) Security Is A Combined Anti-Malware, Junk Files Cleaner & Call Blocker For Android

To what extent is Android susceptible to viruses, malware and other malicious threats from the internet has always been a topic of debate. And although the world’s most popular mobile operating system comes with some built-in security measures in place, there’s no shortage of third-party anti-malware apps on Google Play Store either to enhance security, with some offering really advanced features that usually come at a cost. Similarly, there are apps out there that help you clean up your device’s storage to get rid of some useless files that are just taking up space. CM (Cleanmaster) Security however, aims to provide you with a simple-to-use solution for both malware and junk file cleanup at a price tag of free. In addition, it also throws in a handy call blocking feature...

Agent Offers Easy Automation For Saving Battery, Managing Calls, Texts & More On Android

Smartphones these days are becoming more and more powerful, but what makes them truly smart are all the great apps being created for them. You might have heard of Tasker and Condi, handy apps that allow you to automate certain tasks on your Android device, such as automatically switching off Wi-Fi when you reach work, stopping music playback after a certain time, and much much more. Agent is another similar option that lets you automate five different functionalities of your phone without any input from your side. It’s an amalgamation of multiple utilities, each called an agent, which run in the background to save your phone’s battery by toggling off features like Bluetooth & auto sync when the battery is low, silence the phone during meetings, remember the location where you parked you car, automatically respond to messages when you’re on the road, and only allow important calls or text messages to get through while you sleep...

Ask Questions & Get Answers From Your Facebook & Twitter Friends On iOS & Android With Jelly

After months of speculations, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has finally taken the wraps off his new venture, a social question-and-answer service for iOS and Android dubbed Jelly. The eight person startup lets users asks questions through uploading pictures and in turn receive answers from their friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Users can answer the questions via links, drawing on the image itself, or text. Biz Stone has been working on the project for more than a year and with Jelly, he aims to help people help each other via simple visual questions and answers, which Biz simply refers to as ‘an act of kindness’ in his blog post...

Solo Weather For Android Shows You Just The Right Amount Of Info In A Minimal Interface

We’ve covered a ton of weather apps in the past for our readers here at AddictiveTips. Just a few days back, we featured Solar: Weather - a recent release for Android that was initially released on iOS a year go. Likewise, people who fancy simple and minimal app designs may prefer Nice Weather instead. Speaking of minimalism, the weather app we have at your disposal today is a prime example of it. Labeled Solo Weather, the app sports a gorgeous design and is free from any intrusive UI elements, ads, and other annoying bits that many apps usually ship with these days. The app focuses on presenting you with just the right weather information and statistics while skipping on all the fancy background and animations that do look pretty but make an app more resource-hungry. Details to follow...

Mumble! For Android Adjusts Phone Vibration Based On Content Of Incoming SMS Messages

In addition to making and receiving phone calls and checking email, smartphones are fast becoming our primary devices for surfing the web, playing music, accessing social networks, streaming YouTube videos and a lot more. But lets not forget, they also allow us to send and receive text messages, which is of course one of their core functionalities. Speaking of messages, we all know that Android allows us to set custom notification tones for our SMS alerts, but an often overlooked feature is assigning custom vibration patterns to these notifications. While Android doesn’t boast this feature natively, that shouldn’t be an issue when we have apps like Mumble! for the purpose. It offers a great way to know about the type of text messages you receive without even having to check the notification, all by the vibration pattern. Details after the jump...

Popular Minimal Weather App Solar Now Available For Android

Besides using our smartphones and tablets for the essentials - texting and calling, accessing the internet, reading emails and capturing photos – we find use for them in viewing daily weather forecasts. Almost over a year after it rolled out on the iPhone and iPad, the popular Solar : Weather app by Hollr, Inc. has made its way to the Android platform. And while its iOS counterpart was launched as a paid app on the App Store, the Play Store version is available for free and boasts the same gorgeous design that made it one of the best looking weather apps on iOS. Details and screenshots after the jump...

Most weather apps are usually loaded with a ton of features, intrusive UI elements and complex settings. Solar, on the other hand, aims to remain as simple and minimal as possible; it’s a pretty straight-forward weather app with no complicated options. The UI looks absolutely stunning thanks to the gradient background that changes with the weather condition. The top portion of the gradient represents the weather while the bottom part indicates the temperature.

 

Apart from the fascinating user interface, Solar offers gesture-based navigation that make it all the more snappy. For instance, swiping up brings in 24-hour forecasts, while swiping down extends the same to up to 3 days. Similarly, swiping left and right lets you navigate between different locations that you’ve added to the app.

Another way to interact with Solar is double tapping the screen, which gives you a bird’s eye-view of all the locations you’ve added to it. From within the same screen, you can tap the (+) button in the top-right corner to add more locations and the gear button to access the preferences screen. Solar doesn’t have a very packed settings menu; it just lets you toggle ‘Feels like’, vibration, change temperature units and station ID. You can also share the current weather through the stock in-app sharing menu.

 

In a nutshell, Solar : Weather is one of the simplest and most gorgeous weather apps available on either platform. Download it to your Android device for free from the link provided below.

Install Solar : Weather from Play Store

8 Best Music Players For Android

With the current size that the Google Play Store has grown to in sheer number of apps available, it’s more than just a tough call to pick a definitive best in any category. Still, there are always contenders that outshine all others. This especially holds true for those app genres that are more sought after, and that have a higher user base. One classic example is music players, which, although by definition, should serve only one purpose, but have so much more to offer that one could easily get puzzled as to what would suit their needs best...

A few days back, I went on a crusade to hunt down the best music player alternatives that Google Play Store carries for Android devices. Without declaring a decisive winner (which is almost impossible, to be honest), the following is the list of the top contenders that might suffice for all your music playback and library management needs, while getting extra info/lyrics on your favorite artists, tracks and albums. Enjoy!

Loopr Offers A Faster, More Fluid Alternative To The Default Android App Switcher

Task switching is an interesting aspect of smartphone usage, though it is not something that makes or breaks platforms, it certainly adds to the experience. On Android versions prior to Jelly Bean, task switching was more of a UI specific operation; but it did exist in one form or another. Lately, all platforms are reaching singularity (even iOS) and the task switching function is no exception. It takes a unique creation to look at this facet and figure out how it can be improved. Enter Loopr, a task switching app for Android, available for free at the Play Store...

 

Russia Today (RT) Hacked, "Russian" replaced with "Nazi" in News Headlines

'Russia Today', Moscow based Russia's biggest news channel website (RT.com) has been hacked and defaced by an unknown group of hackers. Hackers have replaced “Russia” or “Russians” with “Nazi” or “Nazis” word from the headlines, as shown...

Floating Draw Lets You Annotate Anywhere On Your Android Screen

If you often find to the need draw over your Android screen in real-time, be it via a stylus or touch gestures, you’d probably have used BaroMemo at some point. It’s a small tool using which users can freely draw and annotate over their screen using geometric shapes and a pen tool, and then take screenshot of that if required. If you’re looking for an alternative to BaroMemo, or a similar app that could easily let you draw anything over your Android screen for any purpose, Floating Draw is worth giving a shot. This highly barebones app provides you with on-screen drawing tools accessible on the fly from the Notification drawer. Something like this can come especially handy if you need to highlight certain areas of your screen or add some notes to it to explain things further, before sharing the screenshot with others directly or over social media, and don’t want to go through the tedious process of first capturing a screenshot and then opening it up in another photo editor for the purpose. More details on the app, along with screenshots and usage info right after the jump...

Yahoo vulnerability allows Hacker to delete 1.5 million records from Database

Yahoo! The 4th most visited website on the Internet has been found vulnerable multiple times, and this time a hacker has claimed to spot a critical vulnerability in the Yahoo! sub-domain 'suggestions.yahoo.com', which could allow an attacker to delete the all the posted thread and comments on Yahoo's Suggestion Board website...

5 Best Apps To Design Greeting Cards For The Holidays

Holidays are upon us, and it’s that time of the year when it’s all about sharing the joy and spreading the happiness. It’s, however, also a time to keep traditions alive, and whilst gifts are an essential element of the holiday season, for most of us, sending out greeting cards is equally important. Thanks to the advents of technology, post cards and paper cards sent through email are not as common as digital versions are now, and what’s better than to be able to send a card of your choosing to your loved ones through the comfort of your smartphone?

As the saying goes, “there’s an app for that”, and so, it turns out, there are hundreds of apps that will help you do exactly that. Without much ado, what follows is a list of our best picks for digital card apps, encompassing both iOS and Android devices. Spread the holiday season joys to your friends and family!!!

Tor Instant Messaging Bundle - A New Anonymous and Encrypted messaging Software

We are living in an era of Mass Surveillance, conducted by the Government Agencies like the NSA and GCHQ, and we ourselves gave them an open invitation as we all have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go i.e. Smartphone. Encryption and security are more important today than any other time in our history. So, the best proactive way to keep your tracks clear is - Always use only trusted privacy tools and services...

Dolphin Zero Is MoboTap’s New, Privacy-Focused Browser For Android

The recent revelations of NSA spying over our internet activities has caused quite a hullabaloo among the masses. If you’re online reading this article, chances are that your online activity is being monitored by the NSA or some other government agency. However, you may now avoid this altogether by using MoboTap’s new app dubbed Dolphin Zero, which aims to provide James Bond-level super secure web browsing. Released by the same company that has brought us the popular Dolphin Browser for Android and iOS, and being described as the ‘Snapchat of browsers’ , Dolphin Zero automatically keeps websites that you browse from tracking you, and deletes any data and information about your browsing session as soon as you exit it...

'Optic Nerve' - Dirty NSA hacked into Webcam of millions of Yahoo users for Private Images

Once again, a new revelation showed the ugly side of the Government who are conducting Global Mass surveillance and previous documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden have defaced the US Intelligence Agency NSA, who were taking care of a number of projects like PRISM, XKeyscore, DROPOUTJEEP, and various others to carry out surveillance of millions of people...

Enable KitKat’s Full-Screen Immersive Mode For All Apps On Android

Google introduced the new Immersive Mode in Android 4.4 KitKat that automatically hides the status bar and the navigation bar for certain apps, letting you view the app in full screen mode while still being able to bring up either of the system bars by swiping down from the top edge or swiping up from the bottom one. However, this mode works only in apps that have it enabled by their developers, giving users no control over the apps for which it gets enabled. Though thanks to Immerse Me Xposed Module by XDA Senior Member MohammadAG, you can now enable the full screen Immersive Mode for all your apps, as long as you have a rooted Android 4.4+ KitKat device with the Xposed framework installed...

Outernet - Free Global Wi-Fi Service from Outer Space

If you are reading this THN Article, then you are the one of those lucky guys who has access to the Internet, but everyone is not as lucky as you. On this planet, about 40% of the population is still not having an access to the Internet services...

News+ Is A Powerful Google News & RSS Feed Reader For Android

If you like to stay up to date with the latest news stories from your favorite online sources right on your Android phone or tablet via RSS feeds, chances are you’ve come across gReader at some point in time. gReader was perhaps the popular third-party Google Reader client available for Android, which later started supporting Feedly and a few other popular RSS services after the demise of Google’s Reader earlier this year. The developers of gReaders have recently decided to release the app’s successor by the name of News+ that builds on the same awesome interface and feature-set of gReader, while adding the possibility of having several news and RSS services as your news sources, thanks to its great extensions-based architecture that makes it possible for any developer to create extensions for more sources, and make them available to the app’s users. Let’s take a look at this promising app in detail...

Boeing launches Ultra-Secure 'Black' Smartphone that has Self-Destruct Feature

Looking for a Secure Smartphone? World's biggest Aerospace company - Boeing is finally close to the launch of its high-security Android Smartphone, called "Boeing Black (H8V-BLK1)", primarily designed for secure communication between Governmental agencies and their contractors...

Install Motiongraph For Xperia On Any Android Device

Since Sony completely took over its mobile phone business that was previously a joint venture with Ericsson, the Japanese electronics giant has been reworking many of its strategies. Besides launching their new Android tablets early this year, the creator of the Xperia lineup of smartphones has been augmenting them with many engaging features to get to the top of the very competitive market. One such feature is the Motiongraph For Xperia app built in-house by Sony exclusively for their Xperia devices that allows users to create 2-second stop-motion shots consisting of dynamically moving object within a static image, similar to the Drama Shot mode found in the Galaxy S4’s camera app. XDA-Developers forum member xperiaz2 has now ported Motiongraph’s APK to work on any Android device, as long as it’s running Jelly Bean or KitKat...

Hide NavBar & Replace Status Bar Icons In Android Screenshots With ScreenshotCleaner

The ability to capture screenshots of any on-screen activity is one of the most handy features of any operating system including Android. I still remember the days when you had to use a third-party app to capture and save screenshots on Android, but since the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Google incorporated the feature natively into its open-source mobile OS. Screenshots can prove to be extremely useful in many situations. For instance, showing off a homescreen that you’ve industriously put together, helping out your friend with an app, or from a developer’s perspective, publishing an app’s images to Google Play Store. At times, we need to edit screenshots before using them and many of us use a third-party photo editor for the purpose but if you just want to clean up some basic things from an Android screenshot, ScreenshotCleaner can help. It is a new Android app that allows you to hide unwanted status bar icons or the navbar from a stock Android screenshot....

Polkast Is A Personal Cloud For Remotely Accessing Desktop Files From iOS, Android & Kindle

So you don’t like keeping your private files on a cloud storage? Neither do we – especially after all the hullabaloo the National Security Agency’s PRISM project has managed to cause. Though that doesn’t mean you have to completely sacrifice the ability to remotely access your important information. Cloud services aren’t the not the only definitive answer to remotely accessing files stored on your PC on your mobile devices. After using Polkast for a few hours, I immediately knew there was something good about it. Poklast basically acts as your personal cloud to let you access files stored on your Windows PC, Mac, Linux or NAS Storage device (such as ZyXel or Synology) from iOS, Android and Kindle Fire over Wi-Fi or the internet...