Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.

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Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.

AccuBattery

Today's roundup is presented by AccuBattery from Digibites. Barring any accidents, the battery is the part of your phone that generally wears out the fastest, so it pays to keep an eye on its health. AccuBattery tests your battery's effective capacity in milliamp-hours to see if it's deteriorated, including tools for live reporting and battery life projections. The Battery Alarm feature tells users when to stop charging to make the usable life of your phone even longer.

AccuBattery protects battery health, displays battery usage information, and measures battery capacity (mAh) based on science. Batteries have a limited lifespan. Every time you charge your device, it wears out the battery, lowering its total capacity. Scientific research shows that battery lifespan can be extended up to 200%, when you charge your device to only 80%. AccuBattery measures the actual battery usage using information from the battery charge controller. Battery usage per app is determined by combining these measurements with information on which app is in the foreground. Android calculates battery usage using pre-baked profiles that device manufacturers provide, like how much power the CPU uses. In practice however, these numbers tend to be highly inaccurate.

- Measure real battery capacity (in mAh).

- Use the charge alarm to prolong battery lifespan.

- See how much wear your battery sustains with each charge session.

- Look up the discharge speed and battery consumption per app.

- Remaining charge time - know how long it takes before your battery is charged.

- Remaining use time - know when you will run out of battery.

- Screen on or screen off estimations.

- Check the percentage of deep sleep, when the device is in standby mode.

- Ongoing notification for real time battery statistics at a glance.

- Real time CPU and battery usage overlay for spotting battery draining processes.

- Access to historical data of more than 1 day.

- Detailed battery statistics in notification

Accu​Battery Developer: Digibites
Price: Free
4.7
Download

Apps

Shazam Lite - Discover Music

Android Police coverage: Shazam Lite weighs 1MB, uses little data, works offline, and is coming to select countries today

Facebook started the "lite" app fad a while back, offering a slimmer, more basic version of the app for users on low data connections. Now Shazam is at it with the company's trademark music detection tool. It weighs in at under 1MB - impressive, all things considered - and it works on 2G or even when there's no connection. If space and not speed is your worry, remember that the Google Search app already has something like Shazam built in.

Shazam is one of the world’s most popular apps, used by hundreds of millions of people to instantly identify and discover music - and now it comes in a Lite version. This version enables you to identify all the music that you want without ever having to worry about space again. Just tap once, and let us do the magic.

• Save space: our lightest app to date - under 1MB to download. Quick to download and easy to load

• Save data: Identify music even when you’re not connected*

• Works across networks: Our app is designed for 2G networks and areas with slow Internet connection

Messenger Lite

Android Police coverage: [Update: APK Download] Facebook releases Messenger Lite, a cut-down version of Messenger for emerging markets

And here's Facebook, with a Lite version of its annoying messenger service. Not so Lite that it can fit in the bloated Facebook app, but Lite enough that emerging markets can use Facebook's chat service with very little data. Unlike Facebook Lite, this app is available to all users on the Play Store.

Instantly reach the people in your life for free with Messenger Lite. This lightweight version of Messenger is faster, uses less data and works in all network conditions.

• Installs fast – The app is smaller, so it downloads quickly and uses less storage space.

• Loads quickly - You can send text, photos and links to anyone who uses Messenger, Messenger Lite or Facebook Lite.

• Uses less data - Be more efficient with your mobile data and save space for other apps. Using less data will save you more money.

• Works on all networks - It's designed for 2G networks and areas with slow or unstable internet connections. If you don't have a connection, your messages will be delivered when you have signal.

• Works on most Android phones - you can use it on almost any type of Android phone, new or old, including Gingerbread.

Flychat

Android Police coverage: Flychat adds chat head-like bubbles to Hangouts, Telegram, WhatsApp, and more

Chat heads, Facebook's once-really-cool floating communication feature, has made it to a few other apps. But those who really enjoy it wish it was more common. Flychat does just that, offering the floating messenger button with WhatsApp, Hangouts, Telegram, Skype, Facebook Messenger, and others. It doesn't look half bad, either. The premium version of the app unlocks custom themes and sizing and removes ads for just a dollar.

Flychat offers a revolutionary way to read messages of your favourite messengers. It overlays every other app and you can reply from anywhere you want. Sometimes you did not want to quit your current app but also need to read some important messages or reply to them. That's the point where Flychat will help you. By receiving a message Flychat will notify you with a small bubble. By clicking this a full chat window will appear.

Flychat Developer: Flyperinc
Price: Free
3.8
Download

Trip Tracker

Android Police coverage: Trip Tracker from Microsoft Garage works like Google Maps' Timeline feature

Microsoft Garage is back with another seemingly random Android app - I wonder if even they have given up on Windows Phone at this point. Anyway, Trip Tracker does exactly what it says, keeping tabs on your movement when you tell it to. It supports driving, biking, or using your meaty human legs. In fact the whole thing is pretty similar to the Timeline feature in Google Maps, but here it supports a more battery efficient tracking option. Check it out if you want this kind of tracking in a dedicated app.

Trip Tracker, a Microsoft Garage project, is a free app that automatically records your drives, runs, walks, and bike rides. The app works in the background, and will auto detect when your activity has started. Download Trip Tracker and make to easier to remember the trips you’ve taken.

  • Automatic trip tracking
  • Start and end time, duration, and path for each trip
  • Battery efficient location tracking
  • Support for multiple activities including drives, walks, runs, and bike rides.

Stash

Stash is a bookmarking app that pops up over any other Android app, allowing you to quickly input articles, links, videos, or whatever else you want for perusal later. The interface is appreciably Spartan, and bookmarks can be saved, shared, stored for later, sent to a desktop, or tagged for easier organization.

Stash is an intelligent bookmarking tool that will automatically analyze and organize links that you save, allowing you to find them when you need them.

Tiles

Android 7.0 allows apps to put a new shortcut in the Quick Settings menu (up in the notification bar). We've seen a few apps that have existed just to put a handy new tile in there, but this app is probably the most extensive yet. It features dozens of shortcuts and links to some of the most-used tools (that aren't already available by default). Some of the cooler ones, like the power button, require root for full functionality.

Tiles makes use of the new Quick Settings Tile API (https://developer.android.com/preview/api-overview.html#tile_api) to provide new tiles that can be added to Quick Settings to change system settings and take quick actions without leaving the context of the current app. Tiles also uses the new Awareness API (https://developers.google.com/awareness/overview) to get the weather conditions for the current location.

Tandem: Language Exchange

Here's an interesting approach to language learning: a social network that's all about connecting native speakers with each other so they can practice their respective tongues with an expert. Tandem connects people live with video or audio (or text, but that seems less effective), and it's free for all users. There are also at least some professional teachers available, and since everything is user-powered, there's a pretty good selection of languages to learn already.

The best way to learn languages is to practice speaking as much as you can. Tandem makes language exchange easy. With our language learning app you can practice talking with native speakers who can help you learn and get fluent in no time. With more than 3m users already, become part of a buzzing language learning community. Tandem lets you practice and learn foreign languages including English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, German, Portuguese, French, Japanese and many more...

Luna Launcher - Kid Launcher

Kids have an innate ability to learn new things, and they generally don't need help with stuff like device launchers. But Luna Launcher is more about safety than ease of access: parents can select only the apps and contacts that they want their kids to use. On top of that there are history and usage reports, a weather widget, and a collection of themes. If you insist on letting your tyke have a smartphone, this is probably the way to go.

Luna Launcher is designed by a farther for kids. Kids are using smartphone to learn and play at younger ages then ever before. Some of them are very susceptible to developing an addiction to their smartphones and/or social media. Luna Launcher is purposely designed for:

  • Easy for kids and toddlers to learn how to use smartphone,
  • Control which apps that kids can use and how long he or she can spend on the device,
  • Prevent smartphone addiction.

CobbleCord

CobbleCord is the latest player to try and unite all the streaming services and rule them all. Well, not "rule" per se - the website curates all of the subscription and paid services you have access to, quizzes you about your choices in TV and movies, and then suggests a lineup for all of your various gadgets. There's an interesting focus on saving money (which is what cord-cutting is all about, right?) that's absent from other, similar tools.

CobbleCord (www.cobblecord.com) is the first of its kind -- a free website and App that will help you cobble together your perfect combination of online streaming video services. CobbleCord holds your hand through the sometimes daunting process of cord-cutting – a.k.a. cancelling your expensive cable package filled with unwanted channels. Today’s media landscape is a treasure trove of content and choices. It’s exciting, but can also be overwhelming.

Battery Stats & Alerts Reborn

Developer Tomas Hubalek has made a name for himself with useful and good-looking battery widgets and stat applications. The latest is a bit more intense than others, complete with elaborate battery history (which is much more expansive than Android's default view). At the moment the app is in an alpha state, so don't use it if you need any of this information for critical applications.

This app is currently in alpha stage of development and not available for public. We are using Play Store to distribute proof-of-concept to our friends to get feedback. Everything can chance (including name, icon and feature graphics). There is a lot of work ahead of us. Please provide feedback as soon as possible. You have good chance to make this app better.

TalkType Voice Keyboard

Voice input keyboards aren't anything particularly new or notable, but this one comes from Chinese retailer Baidu. It doesn't offer anything outrageous, though there's baked-in support for GIFs and more themes than the default Google keyboard. Oddly, it's restricted to the US and English at the moment.

TalkType is the first voice-centric keyboard (currently only available in US and supports English only). Speech to text - fast and simple. Type faster and easier using your voice. Browse, search and share GIFs, restaurants, and current location. Navigate and select text quickly with trackpad. Just swipe to type on text keyboard. Have quick access to alphabet keyboard, symbols keyboard and emoji keyboard. Make your keyboard shine with beautiful themes.

Uptime Robot

Uptime Robot is a tool that allows web managers to check the uptime of their websites. Pretty standard stuff. This app is the official tie-in for the service, allowing easy access to all of the functions in the full version, plus push notifications.

The official app for Uptime Robot which is a free uptime monitoring service that supports multiple monitoring types (HTTP, keyword, ping and port). It can notify you once a monitor is down via e-mail, SMS, Twitter, Slack, HipChat, push and more. The mobile app supports all the major functionality and comes with "push support".

Sprayscape

Here's an interesting little photo experiment: take a bunch of photos, connected or not, and the app will stitch them together into a photosphere-style VR image. It's not useful for much of anything, but it could be fun for traveling and other unfamiliar places. The app has some basic sharing tools built in and it's compatible with Google Cardboard.

Sprayscape is a quick hack using the phone’s gyroscope to take pictures on the inside of a 360-degree sphere. Just point your phone and tap the screen to spray faces, places, or anything else onto your canvas. Like what you’ve captured? Share your creations via a link and your friends can jump into your scapes and have a look around using their phones or even Google Cardboard.

PixelCam

PixelCam is the latest attempt to bring Instagram-style filters to video. These seem to be considerably more aggressive than most of the others available on the Play Store, but otherwise it's the same old song. Sharing to the usual suspects of social networks is built in.

Use built in effects to record awesome videos and impress your friends. Pixel allows you to record videos with awesome effects and directly share them to facebook, instagram, twitter, snapchat, and many many more social media platforms. MORE THAN 20 AWESOME FILTERS for you to use.

• ASCII art

• Blue/Orange

• Chromatic Aberration

• EDGE detection

• EM Interference

• Tile mosaic

• Triangle mosaic

• TV snow

Sky VR

The Sky network in the UK wants to offer some VR content for Google Cardboard and, presumably, the upcoming Daydream. This app features a few select 360-degree video segments for various sports and entertainment events. Like most of these "VR" video apps, users without a headset can also watch it in fullscreen with a gyroscopic view.

Sky's new Virtual Reality app puts you at the heart of the action like never before. Enjoy fully immersive Virtual Reality content that makes you feel like you are actually there. Join Leicester City in their day of celebrations as champions of the Premier League, walk down the red carpet with the cast from Star Wars or train with Anthony Joshua as he prepares for a world title fight.

DraftMaster

DraftMaster claims that its particular flavor of fantasy sports (including the inescapable daily fantasy variety) is built from the ground up for phones. Aside from the admittedly slick mobile interface, it doesn't appear to have any notable offerings on top of the major sports networks and outliers like FanDuel. Give it a shot if you and all your fantasy friends want a phone-only season.

DraftMaster is a new, phone-first take on fantasy football that delivers the best parts of daily and season-long fantasy, without the headaches. The gameplay is simple: draft your weekly lineup, compete against your friends, select your keepers, and repeat. What sets DraftMaster apart? Draft anytime, anywhere. Extended drafts allow you to build your roster at your pace and on the go. You’ll never miss another pick. Rest easy Sunday morning. Best ball scoring removes the impossible start/sit conundrums. You can sit back and enjoy the games.

Disney Story Central

Disney sells a lot of early reader books based on its various kid-friendly properties, and they'd like to sell a few more in digital form. Enter Disney Story Central, a sort of branded bookstore with (I'm just guessing here) approximately 1000 Frozen stories and at least a few others. Everything is organized by franchise or character, and some stories with audio narration can be had for free, but you'll need to spend money on tokens or a monthly subscription for most of it.

Dive into hundreds of Disney adventures, starring all of your favorite characters with Disney Story Central. Everyone in the family can build their own collection of stories, themed with the characters they love and get personal recommendations selected just for them. With rewards to motivate and new stories every week, you won't believe how easy it is for your child's imagination to come to life.

Prisma Beta

We covered the initial Android release of Prisma back in July. This is the beta version, which should get fixes and enhanced features before the other listing on the Play Store, and offers a developer feedback button built in.

This is a beta version of Prisma. It may include unreleased features as well as some bugs. To submit your feedback just simply click the floating button in the app.

Manufacturer And Tie-In Apps

Daydream Keyboard

Android Police coverage: Google releases Daydream Keyboard in the Play Store for VR typing

Daydream VR is going to be big (or at least Google really hopes so). So of course it needs a way to input text while your thumbs are otherwise occupied. This keyboard is basically exactly the same as the one on Android and Android TV, but it works in Daydream-compatible apps for Daydream-compatible phones.

Daydream Keyboard is an on-screen virtual reality keyboard for text entry in Daydream applications. Some Daydream apps will not work if you uninstall Daydream Keyboard. Daydream Keyboard is only compatible with Daydream-ready phones. By using this app you agree to be bound by our Google Terms of Service (Google ToS, http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS) and Google’s general Privacy Policy (http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/).

Synology Chat

Android Police coverage: Synology Chat is an instant messaging application that runs off your private server

If the last few years have taught us anything it's that basically zero web and cloud-based services are 100% safe from governmental snooping. Synology's Chat service, hosted entirely on your home server, isn't necessarily hack-proof either... but odds are pretty good that the FBI/CIA/NSA/WWF won't be grabbing your home-hosted chats the next time they ask Google or AT&T for warrantless records. It's free, but you need a Synology server to use it.

Chat is a web-based application that allows you to create a safe and secure place where conversations can be held in real-time.

Synology Chat Developer: Synology Inc.
Price: Free
3.3
Download

uGrow healthy baby development

Philips sells a bunch of gadgets to enable new parents to obsess about their children, and this app lets them obsess even more. Basically uGrow is a place to stick all of that quantitative data about your shiny new infant human. Aside from a weight and size tracker there's a sleep pattern analysis tool, which might be really helpful when you're trying to get a few winks yourself.

Download the world’s first medical baby app with connected devices giving you personal advice that matters. Thank you for supporting and joining our ugrow community. You’re part of our first release of our uGrow platform and we’d love your help to continuously improve. We welcome any feedback on how you’re finding the app, additional features, and improvement.

Azure App Service Companion

Microsoft's latest corporate app is for developers on the Azure platform. The App Service Companion allows users to keep an eye on all the activity of their compatible apps, sites, and usage patterns, complete with remote access and alerts where applicable.

If you're building cloud applications with Microsoft Azure, things just got a whole lot better. Now, no matter where you are, you can monitor all of your web, mobile, and API apps running on Azure App Service. It's all possible with Azure App Service Companion (Preview).

Azure App Service Companion allows you to:

• Monitor your App Service instances

• View custom alerts based on site status

• Troubleshoot sites from anywhere

Live Wallpapers

ChronoSpin: Playable Wallpaper

What's a ChronoSpin you ask? Why, I'll tell you. ChronoSpin is an interactive wallpaper that displays time via an analog clock...that is until you swipe up and BLAMO. Now its a mind bending action puzzle game based off the IndieGameMag-featured hit arcade game 'PipSpin'. When ya lose, it immediately goes back to being a clock. If ya win, you level up like a boss. SHAPLOOIE.

TWITCHY BRAIN GAME STUFF:

● Fast Puzzle Action

● Faster Game Loops

● Your brain will hurt in the best way possible

WEIRDLY SMART CLOCK STUFF:

● It tells time

● It tells date

● It does some sweet animation stuff when two hands touch because I gave the watch hands ridiculous amounts of artificial intelligence.

Know A Worthy New App? Let Us Know!

If you have an application in mind for the next issue of the roundup, feel free to send us an email and let us know.

Important: there are 2 requirements in order for the app to be considered, listed below.

  • the app's launch date has to be no longer than 2 weeks ago
  • it has to be original, ground-breaking, well-reviewed, interesting, fun, etc - the cream of the crop

Now, if and only if the above requirements have been satisfied, fire up an email to this address: oh.no.its.the@androidpolice.com.

1 sponsored placement per week is available (your app would be featured at the top and marked as sponsored) - please contact us for details.