Today, if there is anything that comes after food, water, and air, then it has to be apps, especially for the millennials who turn to Siri for their critical life questions like- “is Santa Claus real” or “which is better, Mac Pro or Air” or “how do I run the Siri app on my phone”.
Table Of Contents:
1. Splitwise
2. Airbrush
3. Wikipedia
4. Swagbucks
5. Coffitivity
6. Battery Doctor
7. Wave Alarm
8. Flipboard
9. Allrecipes
10. Camscanner
11. Daily Random Facts
12. Songkick
13. Linkedin Students
14. Myfitnesspal
15. Memory trainer
16. Waze
17. Slice
18. Rescuetime
19. Quizlet
20. Photomath
21. Schoold
22. Wifi Map
However, as a student, although excessive mobile usage can be detrimental to your academics among other things, there are also lots of good apps which can make your life easier in the true sense and complement your academics, time management, and overall mobile behavior.
In this post, we have scoured the web for such apps. And we have been careful to include only those apps which are free because only to a student every penny matters. In case you happen to disagree with our choice, please drop your thoughts in the comment.
1. Splitwise
Why– Split your bills
Splitwise helps you split the bill of the last party, lunch, dinner or any similar expense among all the pals while saving you from the mathematical hassles.
It is simple to use, strictly focuses on the problem it is trying to solve and doesn’t come with any fancy feature outside the one that makes splitting expense easier.
2. Airbrush
Why– To make you Instagram ready
Airbrush is a photo editing app which offers remarkable ease in editing your photos before you upload it to Instagram and make the world a better place. It enjoys an incredible rating of 4.7 on play store with 256,432 users having voted at the time of writing this.
3. Wikipedia
Why– Free World-o-pedia
There are countless students in the world who would owe their college degree to Wikipedia which is one of the reasons why it is the 6th most popular website in the world. It is a powerhouse of extensively vetted information, free and non-profit so you shouldn’t bother about scouring ad blocker tool while running Wikipedia app.
4. Swagbucks
Why– Earning while spending
There is more than one reason why you need an app that makes you quick money while saving you the hard work at least when you are in college. Swagbucks is a rewards program app “that gives you free gift cards and cash for the everyday things you already do online.” However, the app ratings are not too encouraging. It holds a cumulative rating of 3.7 with 2301 users rating it 1-star compared to just 5791 users who rated it 5. Yet, when I scoured for other apps running similar rewards program this one looked most promising amongst all.
5. Coffitivity
Why– To help you focus
A research paper published by Oxford University Press in 2012 concluded that “a moderate (70 dB) versus low (50 dB) level of ambient noise enhances performance on creative tasks “. It inferred, which many people already claim to have experienced, that a decent background noise most similar to that of a coffee shop can boost your creativity better than an absolute silence.
Coffitivity app which simply plays regular coffee shop noise is the product of this paper’s conclusion. If you are also one of those folks who visit Starbuck to power their creativity, this app may save you some money.
6. Battery Doctor
Why- Yeah, I agree. Wrong question.
“Poor battery” is third on the list of world problems after global warming and Uber’s surge pricing. But very ironically, to solve battery problems caused by running apps, you need to install another app. DU Battery is one such app. I compared with couple more potential choices like DU Battery, Juice Defender, Power Battery and couple others and finally settled on this after comparing the ratings.
7. Wave Alarm
Why– Waking up sweetly
Waking up early is a terrible phase in student’s life that he endures with a false assumption that it will pass once he graduates. However, how to wake up causing least torture to yourself is next biggest question after who let the dogs out?
Wave Alarm is one such free innovative app in the crowded alarm clock market that employs motion control technology. It’s USP is that when the alarm blasts in the morning you don’t need to ransack the house to get hold of your phone. You only have to wave your hand over the device and the alarm will turn off.
8. Flipboard
Why– To read more
Flipboard aggregates the topics, news, publications of your choice and puts them together so that you can flip through them without individually scouring those pages one by one on your app or browser. It evades the need of installing multiple apps for multiple publications or bookmarking your favorite sites.
Another reason for installing it is that as a student, you need to stay updated more than you think you should so that you don’t disgrace yourself like your pals in this video.
9. Allrecipes
Why- Learn to cook
Cooking is not just a compulsion for the broke guys. It’s a life skill that every kid should learn and many lazy adults don’t know.
Even here your mobile phone could come to your aid where you can install an app like Allrecipes which would suggest you what to cook depending on what’s there in your fridge. Another reason I included Allrecipes is that it is like a social network for cooking so real people post real recipes and real food images, unlike other sites whose food images stocked from Gordon Ramsay’s Instagram only depresses you further about your cooking.
10. Camscanner
Why– To scan notes
Snaps are not always reliable to copy your notes, camscanner is. It scans the notes, images, documents with an utmost precision as if you are scanning from a real scanner. I know it is not totally free and has paid in-app features but still I included it is because you don’t need those features. The app as it is good enough to address your scanning requirements.
11. Daily Random Facts
Why- To sound cool
Random strange facts are the best means to deflect an unpleasant conversation or extend a pleasant one or merely sound intelligent in front of your pals. This app does nothing except to tell you some random, cool facts that you or your friend probably didn’t know.
12. Songkick
Why- Concert guide
This app is a concert guide, yes, the one that got integrated to Shazam a few days back. It sends you an alert when you favorite artist is going to perform near you and also lets you buy tickets from the app itself. The only downside is that all the concert temptations you would get from this app would constantly remind you how you could survive with just 1 kidney and the how the other kidney can buy you concert passes.
13. Linkedin Students
Why- Career
Although a lot of students are inclining towards entrepreneurship and following their creative pursuits, for students who wish to join a company it is a good exercise to keep yourself well versed with what’s going on there and where do you fit. This app from Linkedin lets you explore the jobs and internships that fit or may interest you and also helps you in leveraging your alumni network.
14. Myfitnesspal
Why- because everyone has downloaded it
Having a fitness app could help you achieve your fitness goals- which is too bad if you don’t have one.
In fact, Myfitnesspal was the most downloaded app on play store in 2014 under health and fitness category. If you don’t have an equivalent for it do install this app right now.
15. Memory trainer
Why- Train your brain
It is imperative to constantly exercise your brain, and train its memory power. Before the advent of mobile devices, people used to carry sudoku and crossword to sweat their brain, now there are apps to do that. Memory trainer is one of those apps that creates a complex problem which stimulates critical areas of your brain. It is a must if you spend long hours in commute or you are having a hard time with your memory.
16. Waze
Why- Complement to Google Maps
We have mentioned this app more than once in our other posts on WebEngage Monk because of its critical utility and extremely helpful notification that it sends. In fact, I highly doubt that you already have this app and if you don’t, download it right now for it is an exceedingly smart tool that “uses real-time road reports from drivers nearby to improve your daily commute.” It truly does.
17. Slice
Why- Track your online purchase
Slice tracks your package from Amazon, Etsy, Ebay etc without requiring you to even feed the tracking number. It constantly updates you with the status of the package via push notification and also alerts you when the price of something that you have purchased in the past has reduced.
18. Rescuetime
Why- Tracking online time wastage
By spending higher than usual time on mobile phone millennials are sabotaging the average attention span of humans thereby causing humiliation of the entire race in front of goldfish.
But kids need to careful more than anyone else because their grades are not going to be determined by the ‘likes’ on their Instagram update. Rescue time is one app that hits you with an unpleasant yet important realization of how much time you are wasting on your not-useful apps. It tracks your time spent on each app and generates your ‘productivity’ report.
19. Quizlet
Why- Help you with learning
Quizlet is an app to help you in your learning via flashcards. It lets you share your study material with a set of flashcards and likewise, you can also scour thousands of flashcards shared by other students to find answers to your subject.
20. Photomath
Why- Help you in Maths
The play store description of this app says- “simply point your camera toward a math problem and Photomath will magically show the result with detailed step-by-step instructions.“ That’s exactly what it does with utmost simplicity. However, the only downside of this app is that it doesn’t recognize handwritten texts and can only scan printed math problems.
21. Schoold
Why- Find you the right college
Schoold is a college search app that lets students “discover trending colleges & universities, scholarships, majors, and careers that match your interests and aspirations.” In fact, it goes much deeper provides several rare but important information such as teacher to student ratio, career and income potential, scholarship details etc.
22. Wifi Map
After schools, cabs, shopping malls, gym clubs offering “free wifi” to get more traction and eventually make more money, one day it would be perhaps hospitals who would offer ‘free wifi’ or prison complexes or even graveyards (oh, someone has already done that). Today mankind is like “screw water and food, give me wifi and don’t change the password even when I die”.
Thankfully, to mitigate this problem a little, there is an app. It helps you find free and paid wifi hotspots around you.
Kasturi Patra
Prakhya Nair
