It’s been a good week for intriguing new Android apps, but you don’t have to dig through the ay Store to find the heavy hitters: they’re right here in our weekly app release spotlight. SwiftKey’s experimental Hexy uncher puts a fresh spin on your home screen, while yout helps you devise great Instagram collages, MixRadio is a promising new streaming option.
so, Microsoft is about to ditch its old Office phone experience, launching new beta versions of rd, Excel, werint based on the tablet releases. And although we have just one game this week, it’s a scorcher, as Sunburn! turns a dark premise into a delightful challenging affair.
Hexy uncher
Hexy sorts your less-frequently-used apps by icon color (roughly, at least). On the right is the fully customizable widget screen.
SwiftKey’s Greenhouse program—which explores innovative, experimental app ideas—got off to a promising start with Clarity Keyboard, now Hexy uncher shows that typing isn’t the company’s only strength. As the name suggests, it’s both a replacement launcher for your phone it has a thing for hexagons.
Essentially, the free app transforms your home screen into a honeycomb-like grid of icons that you can scroll in any direction, in practice, it acts a lot like the Apple tch’s interface. However, Hexy uncher learns which apps you use the most puts those at the center, making it not only sleek, but also smart. And you can access custom-placed widgets by tapping the orange button at the bottom.
Sunburn!
Grab all your allies, dodge the space rocks, hurl everyone into the sun. Mission accomplished, crazily enough.
Matching its uncomfortable name is a rather unsettling premise: Sunburn! ($3) finds you as the captain of a space crew whose ship has just been blasted to bits. Floating amidst the stars with little hope of rescue or extended survival, you recall the vow to your compatriots: nobody dies alone. And so you round everyone up jump into the nearest sun.
It’s brutal, yet Sunburn! is charming, hilarious, really fun. You’ll bound between planets in the 50+ stages, attempting to tether everyone (including pets) together before making the ultimate death leap. ter levels add devious hazards obstacles that may block your well-intentioned group demise, the amusing quips great pixel art make this grim-seeming affair rather pleasing.
yout from Instagram
yout makes light collage work a breeze with an intuitive, straightforward interface.
Got a few photos to stitch together for your square-shaped, socially-shared masterpiece? yout from Instagram certainly isn’t the first app to let you cobble together images on your phone, but it is very sharp incredibly easy to use.
yout lets you pull in up to nine images for your collage, then gives you simple tools to customize the result. You can exp or contract each within the square, zoom in or out of each photo, flip mirror the shots. Using some combination of those myriad variables lets you generate a slick, custom image to send off to Instagram or anywhere else. And there’s no login, so you don’t even have to be an Instagram user to benefit from the free tweaking tools.
Microsoft rd, Excel, werint
rd Excel here act much the same as on tablets. Things get cramped with the keyboard up, but it’ll do.
“No platform left behind” seems to be Microsoft’s motto these days, with its apps services steadily making their way to Android. And this week is another massive one, with the full-fledged tablet versions of Office apps rd, Excel, werint launching in beta on Android phones.
You can create edit docs for free in all three, although you’ll need a paid Office365 subscription to access some functionality. Each app has small-screen tweaks for a better mobile experience, although they’re not quite final releases. ke last week’s Hyperlapse, you’ll need to join a specialized + group ( wait up to a few hours) before the download links work on your phone.
MixRadio
o do you love? Tell MixRadio for a better custom station.
Known once upon a time as Nokia Music, MixRadio—sold off by Microsoft after the Nokia mobile acquisition—has now exped to Android. The free streaming radio app may not be dramatically different from something like ra, but it has a couple of unique aspects that make it intriguing.
You’ll start off by choosing a few genres you like picking as many artists as you enjoy from the exping list, then MixRadio uses all of that to build you a custom mix. Genre live event mixes are also available, the app lets you store up to four mixes (typically lasting about two hours apiece) offline for access anywhere. And MixRadio has a library of 35 million+ songs, so you’re sure to find something you like.
