Apps
Invent an emoji to rival the aubergine
1 Kaspar
£19.99 / ipad One synth not enough to express your songwriting genius? How about eight – playing at the same time? That’s Kaspar, an ipad noisemaker where hitting one key is enough to make a chart-topper.
2 Motion Stills
£free / Android On IOS, Motion Stills made Live Photos useful. On Android, there are no Live Photos… so the app requires you shoot using its camera. But it’s fab for turning animated snaps into mini-movies.
3 Workoutdoors
£2.99 / Apple Watch Exercise is all very well until you take a wrong turn and end up in a canal. Unlike other Apple Watch fare, Workoutdoors sensibly displays an auto-rotating map alongside your workout statistics.
4 Songbirds
£1.99 / IOS This one’s for scratching that Electroplankton itch – using your iphone. It has three environments in which minimal winged creatures flit about, creating melodies. It’s all very zen.
5 Teleport
£free / Android, IOS Take a selfie and this app will effectively cut out your beautiful face. You can then ‘teleport’ yourself by adding a background or, for some reason, change your hair colour. But not both.
6 Today Weather
£free / Android, IOS Yet another weather app, which despite its name fortunately covers more than ‘today’. In fact, it’s packed full of lovely data and icons. And also huge pointless photos, but they can be turned off.
7 Emojily
£free (IAPS) / Android, IOS If your main beef with emoji is that there aren’t enough of them, this app heroically helps you create your own. Backgrounds, eyes, hats and, um, poop are all there for the taking. (Don’t take the poop.)
8 Plotagraph+
£4.99 / IOS Pictures aren’t any cop these days unless they’re moving. We blame Apple. And Harry Potter. Plotagraph+ brings movement to stills by way of arrows, masking, anchor points and a bit of magic.
9 Layton’s Mystery Journey
£17.99 / Android For anyone moaning that phones don’t have ‘real games’, here’s a fab Layton effort seemingly hurled across from a Nintendo DS – with a price tag to match.