How to Spend That Google Play Gift Card You Got for the Holidays
Perhaps a distant family member, thoroughly confused with who you are and what you want in life, bought you a Google Play card this holiday. Not the best gift! But also not entirely useless, as long as you know how to spend it.
Below, a complete guide to making the most of that Google Play card on your Android device.
Games
Threes: $2
The day I discovered Threes was probably my lowest point of productivity in history. This puzzle game is addictive and endlessly entertaining. Though it does take a while to get the hang of, it’s not nearly as infuriating as, say, Candy Crush. Use it to waste time on the bus, or while you’re waiting to meet a friend. You won’t be disappointed. 3, 6, 12, 24 …
Monument Valley: $3.99
The beautifully designed Monument Valley is ultra relaxing. Inspired by Japanese prints and the art of M.C. Escher, the game brings you on a Zen-like journey, guiding a princess through her gorgeous fairy-tale land. As you manipulate the environment to aid her, atmospheric audio plays in sync with your actions. Overall, much less upsetting than your average app.
I admire this game for one major reason: Its creators understand that a game doesn’t have to make any sense to be fun. The storyline follows a mysterious fisherman named Billy, who must resolve his troubled past by navigating the deep seas. You do this, of course by first fishing for various creatures deep into the ocean, and then slinging them into the air and blasting them to pieces with a gun. What can I say? The heart wants what the heart wants.
Not a baaaaaad way to spend your money, especially if you’re a goat enthusiast.
Productivity
Nova Launcher: $4
For any Android fan who’s obsessed with customizing her phone, Nova Launcher Prime is a must-have tool. It adds the ability to unlock your screen with advanced gestures, hide unused apps, set custom scrolling effects, and create swiping shortcuts within apps.
Home Budget: $6
This app is a hyper-organized tool for saving money. Not only does it whip up colorful graphs that show how you spend your income, it’s able to sync with other people’s phones in your household. Meaning that you can all work together to stay true to one budget. It might require a little manual input now and then, but it’s a surefire way to make you more aware of where your cash disappears to each month.
Sidebar Pro: $2
This multitasking tool is sleek and easily adjustable, allowing you to pin as many apps as possible to your sidebar for quick access. It also allows you to customize icons’ opacity, sizes, positions, and colors. Perfect if you need your phone or tablet’s home screen to look juuuuust right.
Lux Auto Brightness: $3.80
Here’s another indispensable app for the home-screen obsessive: a brightness adjuster that’s smart enough to dim and light up based on your environment. Train it to understand what you want and when, with the app’s special “Night profile.” So, if your backlight is too bright when you’re in a dark room, you can fix it, hold down on a link button, and Lux will remember those settings for next time.
Calengoo: $6
If you’re one of those people who’s so busy you forget to eat, Calengoo is probably for you. It features five different calendar views and allows you to reschedule events by simply dragging and dropping items. It syncs with Evernote and Google Tasks and Calendar and allows you to easily create separate widgets for month, week, and day views. So you don’t forget anything. Not even that afternoon snack.
Wolfram Alpha, a 30-year project from computer scientist and former physicist Stephen Wolfram, is a search engine that collects as much public data as possible, curates it, and — with this wealth of info — is able to calculate and answer an endless number of things. It’s all sourced from reliable places, too. This tool is worth having on hand.
Locale: $10
This app very cleverly adjusts your phone’s basic settings according to your geographic location or orientation. For instance, if you arrive at your yoga studio, your ringer will automatically turn silent. Come back home, and your Wi-Fi will switch back on and connect. Setting it up is pretty easy: Just create a “geofence” for a particular location, assign any number of settings for that area, save it, and relax. You’ll never have to worry about your phone acting out in public again.
Camera accessories
Afterlight: $1
This no-frills photo editing app is good for touch-ups on shots you want to throw online. It comes with 59 filters (including guest-designed ones from particularly popular Instagrammers). You also have access to a long list of cutesy frames and preset crop settings. Overall, super-easy to use and pretty to boot.
Over: $1
This one’s a useful, albeit twee, app that can help you whip up adorable greeting cards and housewarming invites. It’ll provide you with original fonts and scribbles that you can slap onto any photo — probably the best way to appear crafty without actually having any skill.
Health
White Noise: $2
Perhaps, like me, you sleep next to an irritable radiator and a talkative cat. This app helps to tune out those annoyances by looping peaceful sounds in the background. You can hook your phone up to a Bluetooth speaker or just simply set it on your bedside table. And if there’s a very particular genre of white noise (for example dryer tumbling) that’s not available in the app’s extensive catalog, you can always create your own recording and loop it into a custom mix. Overall, it’ll prevent you from waking up in the middle of the night and help you get a better night’s sleep.
Security
Cerberus: $6.12
Cerberus is not the most exciting app on this list, but it is the only one you’ll care about when you inevitably lose your phone. It allows you to remotely control your device via text message or its website, and it’ll automatically alert you if someone sticks an unauthorized SIM card in your phone. Like Google’s basic phone tracker, it’ll be able to show you where it is on a map and wipe its memory, but you can also hide the app itself, use it to record audio from the microphone, get a list of the calls being received and sent, and enable GPS, even if it’s turned off. Just be careful when/if you actually find your phone thief.
Entertainment
Star Walk - Astronomy Guide: $3
This star-enthusiast app combines a vast database of astronomical data with gorgeous design to guide you through your skygazing. Just point your phone’s camera up, and it’ll automatically overlay labels for known constellations, planets, and stars in view. It’s pretty amazing technology, not to mention incredibly fun to use for both beginners and seasoned astronomers.
djay 2: $3
Though it works best on a tablet, djay 2 is a super-slick way to sharpen your turntable skills. The latest version of the app, which I wrote about in May, gives you immediate access to all of Spotify’s 20 million-plus songs (as long as you’re a subscriber). It also has a very cool algorithm that automatically suggests songs that would mix well with others. Basically, you can now have a DJ at every party for just a small, one-time fee.
Podcast lovers will rejoice in Pocket Casts’ visually rich, intuitive design. It allows you to pick any podcast and set it to auto-download while you’re asleep (to prevent it from sucking up your cellular data). It also comes with a variable speed feature and a sleep timer, so you can fall asleep to Terry Gross’ soothing, deliberately boring voice, but not wake up to it.
Camp Finder: $3
Planning a road trip? Camp Finder is probably the best way to ensure that you don’t end up sleeping in the back seat of your car. The app is a directory of more than 18,000 campgrounds and RV parks in America, and lists each site’s rates, amenities, and contact details. You can search it by location or whatever activity or amenity you’re particularly into. After all, who says you need to sacrifice a hot shower to tour the wilderness?
If you’re looking for an iTunes gift card spending guide, look no further! (There are unsurprisingly a couple of repeats.)
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