Welcome to version 475 of the Android Apps Weekly. Here are the top headlines from the past week:
- The second Android 14 developer preview dropped this week. It includes some better stability, improved performance, photo picker limiter in Android 14, better support for third-party app stores, and more. Google is moving along with these updates as we also learned that Android 15 will be codenamed Vanilla sundae.
- Google I/O 2023 takes place on May 10th, 2023. This is a huge event every year. Google will likely announce a range of software updates and changes. Additionally, we usually see hardware launches as well. Save the date because we sure did.
- Google One makes VPN by Google One Available to all subscribers, not just those on a 2TB or higher plan. Additionally, Google offers dark web monitoring as part of its plan, and it will tell you if your usernames and passwords are on the dark web for sale. Both are excellent security features.
- Facebook allows you to access Messenger within Facebook again. This feature has been in beta for months, and a lot of people already have it. However, Facebook officially announced it this week. Facebook says the move is to boost its discovery and sharing features. This mirrors the company’s decision to make Messenger a separate app nine years ago.
- Scammers use AI voices to steal money By impersonating their loved ones. Research indicates that AI voice generation software has deprived people of more than $11 million in 2022 alone, and everyone expects this number to increase over time. You can read more at the link, but it’s not a great use of AI software.
paranormal
price: $14.99
Paranormasight is a mystery and horror visual novel from Square Enix. The story revolves around a group of curse-bearers who can kill anyone they want under certain circumstances. The hero aims to find other curse-bearers to bring his friend back to life. Story branches continually depend on the player’s choices, and those choices can kill some characters, or change what happens to them. It’s a surprisingly captivating story, and Square Enix might have a sleeper punch on their hands with this one. It’s pricey at $14.99, but that’s also discounted from its $17.99 base price.
Weather by Globin.dev
price: Free / $0.99 per month / $3.49 per 6 months
Weather by Globin.dev is a simple weather app that gets the job done. The user interface is mostly clean and lightly customizable by letting you change icons. It includes basic information such as the current temperature, hourly forecasts, daily forecasts, and weekly forecasts. There are also things like barometric pressure, UV index, and other things as well. Base units are metric, but you can change it to imperial in the settings. There is a subscription to remove ads, but it’s not very expensive.
Doctor Who: Lost in time
price: Free to play
Doctor Who: Lost in Time is an idle game featuring characters from the popular TV show. Collect resources to upgrade things in different iconic locations from the show. In terms of the story, you help memorize the timeline of events, which is pretty typical of tie-in TV shows in mobile games. It allows you to relive previous stories and benefit from the nostalgia factor. The game is reasonably well laid out, although the mechanics aren’t something we’ve seen before. We think Doctor Who fans who are also into idle games will love it.
troshot
price: Free / $0.49 per month / $4.99 one time
TrueShot is an app to beautify your screenshots. You start by importing a screenshot, then using the sliders and settings to make it look more fancy. There isn’t much to it, and most of it just adds a background hue for some extra flair. However, some people may like it, so it can be useful. The app is free with a single purchase of $4.99. You can optionally subscribe for $0.49, but we have no idea why anyone would do that.
The origin of the unknown waters
price: Free to play
Uncharted Waters Origin is a rather unique game. It’s an open world game where you sail the high seas, take on bad guys, trade goods, and do other things like that. The game uses the real world as a map, and even uses historical data for things like weather patterns. The world is beautifully rendered, though we wish the characters were too. Anyway, this is a deep game with a lot to do and, aside from a few early bugs, looks pretty good.
If we missed any big Android apps or games released this week, tell us about it in the comments.
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