Best FREE Live Wallpaper : Paperland Live Wallpaper

Customization is the thing we love most about our Android Phones. Among other things live wallpapers are the things that help customize our phones to our liking. Live wallpapers help change to the boring static screens of our phones on to dynamic one. Let's talk about the best live wallpaper we came across in the play store. 

     

Paperland Live wallpaper is a very interesting live wallpaper which puts a scenery on your screen with moving elements. The default theme comes with a scenery with the sun, clouds, road, trees, cars etc that are all moving. You can also adjust the speed of these objects in the settings according to your need. 

    

One of the cool features of paperland live wallpaper is that it adapts to the local weather and changes its scenery accordingly. For example if it's raining the live wallpaper will show thundering clouds and rains and if it's snowing then the live wallpaper will also display snowing.

Paperland live wallpaper is also very battery efficient and does not drain out your battery too much like other wallpapers.

Paperland comes with a default theme. There are many more themes which you can have by buying the pro version of the application from the play store. So if you use live wallpapers to customize your android device do try Paperland Live Wallpaper


Paperland Live Wallpaper

The only FREE Android Launcher you need: :Yahoo Aviate

I have been using Yahoo Aviate for 2 months now and I can conveniently say that it's the best launcher I have used. Yahoo acquired the Aviate Launcher a year before and since then it has evolved much. 

                               

Aviate provides us with everything we need when we need, meaning the launcher changes your app collections and tools that you might need according to the time of the day or your location. For example if you are at home you'll be having entertainment app collection or if you're travelling it's will bring up your travel app collection.

Aviate also auto categorises your apps into categories like social, travel, entertainment etc. And also gives suggestions of apps to add in these categories. You can always chose for which categories you want to be displayed.

Aviate also provides with widgets that can be used like news and weather etc. These widgets can be added and re sized anywhere on the screen. 

For the music lovers as soon as you plug in your headphones the launcher mode changes to listening and you can setup any music app to control the music. It also displays tweets from the artists.

As far as the launchers go this is the best launcher which is absolutely free and light in size. So do download it and give it a try.

Yahoo Aviate

Hike has it all: The awesome new feature!

The Indian instant messaging company has pushed another update with a new feature that has brought just everything you need in a messenger. The already successful instant messaging application which has been a rival to likes of WhatsApp, Viber and Line has now crossed every line to become India's favorite. Lets talk about the new feature which we think would be very successful.

With  the latest update Hike has put in a new contact in everyone's favorite list. This contact is named Natasha. With Natasha hike tries to bring to you information, search results, weather and facts which you otherwise would require to search in a browser straight to your messenger.

 

How? You ask. Well its simple, you just have to send message to this contact and the contact will immediately respond with appropriate results. For example you need weather updates about a location you just type in #weather Delhi and you get weather update for Delhi, or you want to search a person or article on Wikipedia you just type #wiki Rajnikanth  and you immediately get a response with the result. There is a lot more that you can do. A complete list can be availed by sending #more to this contact.

Hike Messenger[Android][Windows Phone][IOS]

Fleksy Android Keyboard: Why we Love it!

Fleksy is a third party Android Keyboard which is now also available for IOS devices. Now most of you use the preinstalled keyboard provided(Google Keyboard or the manufacture keyboard). But they have a limited functionality and are simple. So lets see what makes Fleksy stand out.

Fleksy has a very wide layout that is pleasing to the eye and easy to use. The keyboard can be re-sized to three basic sizes depending upon the size of your screen. But the keyboard layout is such that you need both hands to type in. I find this good as with the large screen phones now I don't see how one can type only with one hand. Also the keyboard does not have the popular swipe feature and that's not a problem for me as I don't use swipe to type phrases.

The feature that makes Fleksy catch the eye is the extensions. Fleksy has a lot of extensions to add to the keyboard like the number row above the keyboard, shortcuts to apps and hot-keys etc. You can add up to three extensions to your keyboard according to your liking. And let me tell you these extensions work like a charm.

Although one of the feature that still lags behind is the language support. Fleksy has only basic language support and languages like Urdu and Hindi are still under development.

High on features the keyboard is also high on price. There is a limited trial and a limited number of themes and extensions that can be used. For all other things you'll have to pay. You can always just buy the keyboard and use the basic themes and extensions which are enough if you ask me. That said I have been using this keyboard since last six months and it hasn't disappointed.

Fleksy[Android][IOS]

Tell us which third party keyboards do you use on your device.

Take A Look: Photo Editor Apps

Photo Editor Apps for Android and other platforms

1. Aviary[Android]

Aviary is a nice photo editor that comes with a lot of customization options. You can always chose from numerous effects to add to the original photo. There are a lot of plugins available for effects most of which are free but you might have to buy some if you need all the effects, that said i would say that you might not need to buy any because there are already a lot of options to chose from. Then there are stickers and overlays which can be added to the photos. You can add text, draw and blur the images. In short it has a lot of options to try and a lot of cool effects. One other feature called Meme is given however it just gives an option to add upper and bottom text to the photo to make it a meme as known in popular internet culture. It has a very nice UI and sharing options once you are done with editing photos.

       

2. Adobe Photoshop Express[Android][Windows Phone]

This is an app by the masters themselves. Adobe has released this app to mobile platforms to make the task of photo editing even more easier and on the go. However the app is heavy on the size. This has a comparatively lesser effects than Aviary and you have to buy premium effects. It has only some editing options available for example cropping, red eye removal, blemish removal etc. (No stickers). Frames can be used. The UI is basic. All in all the app does the work it is supposed to do, but it could have been better. One of the feature available is that you can edit the images stored in your adobe account from the cloud. 

 

3. Autodesk Pixlr[Android]

This is the app that i found most promising. Its light weight (only 11mb), however it will download plugins for effects and everything else(Yes! it pretty much downloads everything so you can download everything according to your need). The UI is great and sharing options too. The app also lets you create collages with changing layouts and effects. If you are looking all for one app this is the one. You don't need to go any further.

                                  
 

How's Your Lollipop?

It's been about 4 months since the big roll out of Android 5.0 Lollipop was started by Google. Though still a very minute percentage of the devices are actually adopting it. Some known reasons for this small percentage are obvious, many OEMs have still not released there version of the lollipop to their devices. But there are also other reasons for which people are still opting out of updating their devices to lollipop.

In my experience, Lollipop till now has been a bumpy ride. First was the confusion related to its roll out. I still haven't figured out why the OEMs do not try to release the update worldwide instead of releasing to small percentages in different regions. Slow as it was, when I received the update I was pretty excited to bump up my device from the earlier KitKat to Lollipop, but I may have been in a hurry.

Since the update, my device is pretty much unpredictable. Yes, I never know when my device would suddenly become irritatingly slow or when the battery would rapidly discharge. Granted that with the new material design the UI looks good. But what compromises have been made for that? The lollipop was supposed to be more optimized so that the RAM usage is low. Tell you what, RAM usage is so low the device suddenly hangs. The app switcher is now in card layout looks neat but actually does not help if the apps stop working when switching to other.

Talking about the battery life, after the update I was a little happy as I thought the battery life had increased but a week into the lollipop and now I struggle to keep my device from dying.

Though I know these problems are being worked out continuously as we speak and would probably be patched up soon enough. But what we expect as a user is a stabler version to begin with. Battery life and multitasking are some of the basics of today's average smartphone users. These issues should be the topmost priority while releasing updates and patches. Hoping for more Lollipop updates soon.

This has been my experience with the lollipop in two months. Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.