App Focus: Best Apps Aug '15 Edition

Go through any best apps list, you are bound to find the following: Evernote, Spotify, Pocket, Pocket Casts, Feedly, Pushbullet, Dropbox, Citymapper, IFTTT, Microsoft Office, Duolingo, Sunrise Calendar, WhatsApp, Yahoo! Weather, not to mention Google apps like Gmail/Inbox, Drive, Keep, Translate, Maps, Now and so on. Here's some more of them...

Phonograph
(Images: Google Play)
Google Photos: Android/iOS/web - Except for the scroll bar that feels a little out of place, Photos, now stripped of its social connections (read Google+), is yet another worthy addition to Google's arsenal.

Kitchen Stories: Android/iOS - Whether you are looking at improving your cooking skills or just need some cooking inspiration, the well-designed recipe-guide app Kitchen Stories covers it all.

Phonograph: Android only - I love Google Play Music, it's probably my most used app, followed by Chrome, Play Books and Play Newsstand. But this app Phonograph, a stunner of a music player developed by Karim Abou Zeid, is giving me some serious designgasm!

Solid Explorer: Android only (paid) - Like the name goes, a solid file manager, and a beautifully designed one at that.

Journey: Android only - Popular journaling app Day One hasn't landed on Android yet, but if you are looking for a similar experience, look no further than 2 App Studio's Journey, the same developers who brought you the minimalist text-editor JotterPad.

Monospace: Android only - While on the subject of minimal, distraction-free text-editors, it's also worth checking out Monospace. What's more, it even doubles up as a notes app and offers Dropbox support for cross-platform sync.

Office Lens: Android/iOS - That Microsoft has been steadily investing in Android and iOS as part of its mobile-first, cloud-first strategy is well-known. It acquired a host of popular productivity apps like Acompli, Sunrise and Wunderlist, and its own Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote) went free for personal use last year. Office Lens, the latest offering from the tech giant, is more of a handy document scanner, letting you digitise notes on whiteboards and convert images to PDF.

Hound: Android only - With contextual personal assistants becoming the craze these days, thanks to Google Now, it's no surprise that there's a new kid on the block. Called Hound, from the makers of SoundHound, the app can provide weather, pull up directions, translate words, and also search for news, photos and videos. To throw in a bit of context, you can even ask questions like - "What's the weather like in New York City?", followed by "Show me some Thai restaurants there."

Twitter: Android/iOS/Windows/web - Twitter is where news breaks, goes viral, and is also perhaps the best RSS reader you will ever get!

Robinhood: Android/iOS - Makes trading in stocks dead easy and accessible to all, while ensuring your personal information is fully encrypted and securely stored.

PocketRocket: web only - One of the reasons why I ditched Pocket (and Instapaper) was the simple fact that it became an 'unmanageable' place where I saved a ton of things, but never actually got around reading them, a place to save content that you won't read later. But PocketRocket, born out of a similar frustration, is here to slim down your Pocket account by emailing you one article per day and then archiving it. Happy reading!

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