5 Android Apps You Shouldn’t Miss This Week
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Welcome to the 456th edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the big headlines from last week.
- India fined Google around $162 million for anti-competitive practices. It’s very similar to the EU fine back in 2018. Google uses its dominance to force OEMs to pre-install apps that prevent people from seeking alternatives. We love Android around these parts, but it’s hard to defend them when it comes to things like this. Click on the link for more details.
- Samsung’s phone cameras got a little better this week. The first is Samsung introducing a multi-exposure mode and an astrophotography mode. They were introduced in Samsung’s Expert RAW app. The second is a new Good Lock module, Camera Assistant, which lets you customize the default camera app. The two links will tell you more about each.
- In addition, Samsung also announced that they are bringing more emojis to the company’s smartphones. The Android 13 One UI 5 update coming to phones finally brings support for Unicode 14, which will add 138 new emojis to Samsung phones. Click on the link to learn more.
- An Apple executive talked about iMessage on Android this week. He referred to it as an attempt that would have hindered innovation. Essentially, he argued that Apple would not be able to deliver a good product if it had to support Android. We still think it’s because fewer people would be iPhones, but it is what it is.
- Material Du has been out for about a year now, and we looked to see how the developers were doing. It has been a bit slow, and much slower than when Material Design first came out. However, we are surprised to see some apps, like Spotify, adopting some features. You can click on the link to learn more.
Rent Please is a landlord simulator. You play the role of a landlord and do the kinds of things that homeowners do. That includes getting to know your tenants, improving your property and collecting rent. You keep this loop up until you get everything you want. There is some strategy involved. For example, you need to figure out how much to pay for utilities but still keep your tenants happy. It’s a decent simulator overall, even with the microtransactions.
Over there
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Yonder is a web series reader. You can download and read comics from a variety of genres. It even has some exclusives. In terms of ease of use, it feels like most comic readers. You download the comic, open it and read it. It has a system where you can unlock free stuff every now and then. However, you buy coins to unlock the things you want immediately. It has a few bugs, as most new apps do, but otherwise it’s not bad.
The road to nowhere
Price: Free to play
Path to Nowhere is a strategy RPG with some tower defense elements. You play through the game to unlock the story. Simply put, you play the role of a police officer in a city full of crime. There are gacha elements. You summon characters to help you defeat the bad guys. Combat is a mix between strategy RPG and tower defense. Enemies move along a certain path and you must defeat them before they leave. Fans of Arknights may also enjoy this one, as many of the basic elements are similar.
Google Family Link
Price: Free
Google continues its redesigns with a new version of Family Link. The first major difference is the user interface. It’s a bit more organized than the outgoing design. Three tab design. One tab shows the child’s usage, a second shows control limits, and the third for GPS location.
The redesign is mostly in the user interface, as most of the underlying functionality is the same as before. There are a few new features, like Today’s Limit, where parents can manually set a screen time limit without messing with daily routines. We think the redesign is good overall and should make Google Family Link easier to use.
Panilla Saga
Price: Free to play
Panilla Saga is a gacha RPG. It focuses heavily on the gacha elements, and new players get an absurd amount of moves just for logging in for the first time. The prices are quite reasonable. The rest of the game is pretty easy to play. Combat is nothing special. You send out five characters and they go to battle against the enemies to see who wins. We hit the grind wall earlier than expected, so put on grind-face because you’ll need it early. Otherwise, the game looks and feels pretty good. It should scratch the gacha itch, but there are better RPGs out there.
If we missed any great Android apps or gaming news, let us know in the comments section.
Thank you for reading. Try these too:
