New software for your shiny smartphone comes out everyday. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you might miss it. Here are our new favourite apps!
Multi-Platform
Zoe
This past August, we voiced our excitement for HTC’s Zoe app as it entered public beta. Now the team has brought a variety of much needed design tweaks and additional functionality with its official 1.0 version. Zoe trims together video and photos from your camera roll to stitch together a collage to forever enshrine the experience — basically a more involved and professional-looking Vine. The team has also announced that an iOS version will be coming sometime this fall. [ Free]
Android
Snowball
With so many messaging apps flooding our respective apps stores every week, we’ve cornered ourselves into a nesting doll situation. We have our WeChats, SMS, Facebook Messengers, Snapchats, Hangouts, WhatsApps, Lines, etc., etc., etc. Snowball is an app for apps, a central hub for this messaging madness so we can quickly respond and get on with out day. Snowball, launching in beta, takes the Facebook Messenger approach of using chat heads to show when you have a message. Also, the app has a cute yeti as a mascot. [ Free]
iOS
WeatherSignal
Weather apps are such a passive experience. Temperature, chance of precipitation, weekly forecast, and you go on with your day. How boring. WeatherSignal, brought to you by OpenSignal, lets you be a mini meteorologist by updating a massive weather database through the sensors on your smartphone. Android has been blessed with this unique weather app for a while, but this week iPhones users finally get to join in on the fun. [ Free]
Windows Phone
Wave Master
Wave Master is a brand new music maker for Windows Phone. The app lets you record, apply tons of effects (amplify, reverse, invert, silence, tremolo, wah wah, tempo change, speed change, pitch change, fade, echo, repeat), and also integrates with SoundCloud and OneDrive so you can share and store your creations as well. [$2]
Blink
Blink is already a popular photo-taking app for Windows Phone, but Microsoft Research added an important update this week that makes this must-have photo app even better. Now, the app comes with automatic noise reduction, letting users take much better photos in low-light — not to mention GIFs that aren’t grainy and noticeably low-res. [ Free]