Time just flies, and 2014 is nearing a close, but just before we draw the final line, it's time to take a look back at this year and the best apps that it brought to our iPhones and Androids. That's what our Awards section is all about - picking the finest works of the year, and filtering out all the mediocre ones.
Luckily, when it comes to the best apps for iPhone and Android, the competition is tremendous and we have a large selection of apps that should get mentioned and recognized. All of them share a few common traits - they do what they promise to do well, and they run fast and smooth. These are apps in different categories and genres, and we hope that you'd be able to find something useful for yourself among them.
With no further ado, here is our selection of the best Android and iPhone apps of 2014.
Litely is a camera app that adds subtle, film-inspired tones to your photos quickly.
ProCamera 8 is a surprisingly simple camera app at the surface, that also hides many advanced features in a way that is unobtrusive yet easy to access. You can set ISO, shutter speed, white balance, exposure compensation, and you also have independent focus and exposure controls as an alternative control and that gives you a much deeper hold over the looks of your photograph.
With Photo Sphere for iOS, you can finally create 360-degree images on the iPhone and iPad, like you can on Android, and publish them on Google Maps. With a detailed, up to 50-megapixel resolution, these photo spheres allow you to explain places to the tiniest of detail.
Timeful meetings, events, to-dos, and more, allowing you to manage everything in one place. It uses sophisticated algorithms to suggest the best times to schedule to-dos and habits throughout the day - based on your available time, location and most productive hours of the day.
Consumed by wanderlust? Minube is a great app to help you find the ideal destination for your travels with phone galleries made by real people with their comments and tips and tricks on places.
Horizon lets you record horizontal videos and photos no matter how you hold your device. Hold it upright, sideways or even keep rotating it while capturing, your captured moment will always stay horizontal.
Millions of people have to prove their control of the English language, but testing often requires long travels, huge expenses, and stressful conditions. The Duolingo Test Center does language testing without all those annoyances. It's also scientifically proven to have scores corresponding to scores on other English proficiency exams such as the TOEFL and the IELTS.
POLARIS Office has recently completely overhauled its popular PC-level Office suite for Android and iOS, introducing a clean and modern looking new interface and slashing its price to zero. Unlike Microsoft's official Office, POLARIS Office offers both viewing and editing documents for free. You are also not limited in any way when it comes to editing - all 500 editing features and over 170 shapes are available in the mobile version of POLARIS Office, so you have freedom of editing that was usually preserved only for desktop users.
Google has been offering a very good VoIP calling service, but surprisingly, it was only available on traditional Windows as well iOS via the Hangouts app, but not on Android. This finally changed with the arrival of the Hangouts Dialer application on Android - it allows you to make free calls to the United States and Canada, and it also offers competitive rates for calls to other destinations.
Carousel offers unlimited storage of your photos in the cloud, so you don't have to worry about going over limits. It also organizes your images in a pretty and straightforward way.
Uber has started a little revolution in taxi services with its private driver service that is more affordable and often more enjoyable than a usual taxi ride.
BuzzFeed, the source for all things vain where you can lose yourself for hours watching GIFs on all sorts of topics, brings its own app to iOS and Android that allows you to now get lost for hours browsing the articles on your mobile device.
The Google Camera app allows you to have the stock camera experience on every phone, and it brings all the nice options that some phone manufacturers sometimes choose not to include - 360-degree photospheres, the nice lens blur effect, and more.
With a simple idea to let you learn more about the way you use your smartphone, OFFTIME tracks the time you spend in various apps and summarizes it in nice reports. Wonder what's making you less productive and consuming all your time? This app will have you pin-point it exactly.
Lumosity is a set of different and entertaining memory tests that you can pass on a daily basis to improve your concentration.
2014 was the year of shocking revelations for the surveillance that we, the citizens, are being subjected to on a daily basis. Telegram Messenger comes with the simple promise of encrypting communication, keeping your texts private.
Star Walk 2 is a stunning visual work directed at the stars above us. It allows you to learn more about the stellar bodies around us, the constellations, and more.
Hyperlapse by Instagram brings a little revolution to stable videos. With state-of-the-art algorithms, it stabilizes the video you have recorded in a way similar to what is usually achieved with expensive stabilization rigs.
Muzei Live Wallpaper was released just a few days ago, but it has quickly become one of our favorite Android live wallpaper apps. Developed by Google's Roman Nurik, the same person who created the popular DashClock widget, Muzei is different from all other wallpaper apps in that it does not ship with a preset of images or animations, but instead brings a public API allowing developers to use its modern, blur-styled interface with all sorts of third-party services like Flickr, 500px and Tumblr.
Beats Music stands out with its model where the 20-million song collection is not automatically categorized, but instead it is hand-picked by music experts and arranged in playlists and catalogs to help you explore it in a meaningful way.
Nokia HERE might be a step behind Google Maps in terms of interface, speed, and presentation, but it offers one key feature - full offline maps. This invaluable asset for travelers abroad and in rural places where signal is non-existant makes Nokia HERE a life-saver in many situations. You can just download a map of the country where you want to go, and enjoy your drive / cycling without worrying about getting lost.
The daily Yahoo News Digest is another well-though app by the new team over at Yahoo, and with some great minds behind news curation and app development, it all comes together nicely in this app. It is informative, fast, and well-designed - one of the best places to get your place on a mobile device.
Windows Phone is not mentioned.
For a reason, duh ! MS needs to realize dev aren't taking WP seriously. Let alone the best apps of year on WP even the ones which are there aren't updated for months if not a year. Popular apps like twitter, Vine and instagram haven't received update for ages. Its a dying platform. The only reason it is still alive is because its by MS and their deep pockets.
My friend has a Metrotube on his Lumia. Can't understand the hype really, for me it's just a basic (though ugly) Youtube client that costs money.
LOL.....That's not actually replying to my comment. I am talking about dev and not Microsoft being not interested. Anyway, first of all, hardly anyone does video editing on a phone anyway so that's very specific and completely irrelevant to this topic. features like 'fast photo capture' are really phone's function then an app's. Irrespective of that almost all android phone offer 0 shutter capture. So still the mighty lumias are far behind. I can link you the article in which Lumia takes 10 secs to capture a photo slowest amongst competitors. I can give you atleast 100 apps which allow downloading, change of quality and plays audio in background for YT for android. So that argument is really irrelevant again. BTW, ever heard of TubeMate ? 1toolkit, you mean the app which hasn't been updated for past 3 months ? Yeah I can provide you link of hundreds on android with similar function or better then toolkit that are given more attention by developers and not just neglected. Anyways a quick search got me this:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.aboy.tools&hl=en_GB Anyway, you are clearly talking about very specific apps which are hardly used by people. Apps like Vine, TWitter and Instagram have much much more users then the ones you mentioned.
why wp is not dead yet? wp is niche people who like camera and the like prefer wp. if someone like to take pictures there is high possibility to use video editor to create movee. for me video editor is very important to the platform. movie creator by microsoft is full featured video editor and not some mobile app like other apps. lumia camera use to be slow but new lumia camera which came with lumia denim red is fast, very very fast and has a lot of features. show me video of denim with lumia camera then i will believe you. lol tubemate vs metrotube?? are you joking? i use android too and i know tubemate very well, you can not compare them because tubemate is youtube mobile website with download features. tubemate cant play audio playlist in background, prove me wrong. mnhh week ago igot update of #1toolkit. and the link you provide that app is paid application and miss many features which 1toolkit has like -currency converter -protractor -level(skew) rud hyun is there for us there is -6sec -6tag -6snap -6tin i use 6tag and i havent download official instagram though it is there in store.
Um... Shouldn't some of the controversy surrounding Uber be at least passingly mentioned?
Thanks for pointing this out, I've fixed the link now.
Maybe cause no site takes seriously a declining OS that has around 2% and mediocre app store at best?
Don't bluff without using WP. You trolls convince others that WP doesn't have apps. But the fact is i did not miss any apps in my WP. I agree that WP market place for games is not good. I like WP more than my Android. First have a hands with a WP and then comment. Don't bluff..
Is this article strictly related to Android and iOS, or the author is lame? Here is definitely on Windows Phone, too. Same applies to Telegram. Same applies to Beats Music. Same applies to Uber.
Apps like PhotoMath, Project Tripod, and Preview for Developers should be WP mention.
PA is more biased towards Android / iOS. In Particular, Samsung and Apple. If Samsung Introduce Tizen, PA will promote tizen too.