Credit: Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Welcome to the 360th edition of Android Apps Weekly and the last of 2020! We hope everyone has a happy holiday and a happy new year too. It’s been a bit of a slow week because of the holidays, but here are the top app and game headlines from last week:
- Many people can get their first Android phones this year, while giving up on their Apple devices. There are many differences between the platforms, including the applications available for each. Those who are changing may want to check out some excellent Android alternatives to some of the best iOS apps.
- WhatsApp is launching audio and video calls to desktop users eventually. Unfortunately, only a few people now have it as part of a limited test. However, the service plans to launch the feature after the new year. It didn’t arrive in time for the holidays, but it will definitely arrive next year.
- Google is closing its Android Things platform. The sunset process begins on January 5, 2021 and completely closes the platform a year later. Fortunately, not many products are affected and Google has never seemed very interested in that. We don’t know if Google is replacing it with something.
- This week, we asked readers if they’ve used the news aggregator that normally comes with stock launchers today. The most popular is Google Discover, but Samsung, OnePlus and several other OEMs have their own flavor. Obviously, most of our readers voted for Google Discover, with second place going to ignore the feature altogether. Click on the link to read more.
- We took a vote among our writers to discover our favorite games of the year. Among those we listed, some mobile games made it to the list, including Genshin Impact and Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross. Click on the link to check our choices.
Empires Mobile
Price: Free to play
Empires Mobile is the latest game from IGG. It is a strategy game with mechanics similar (but not identical) to games like Clash of Clans. You build your small empire and then train troops to dominate other empires. It allows you to choose from several fantasy races, such as elves and dwarves. Of course, there are heroes to unlock and play as well. The big complaint with this is that you can only play elves in the beginning. The developers plan to add other races over time. It will be a good waste of time eventually, so keep an eye out.
Listshare
Price: Free / $ 6.49
Listshare is a simple list sharing application. You can create lists of things like groceries or just a general to-do list and share them with your family, roommates or anyone else. It has a simple and colorful UI. No one should get lost using this. You can also organize your lists into custom categories, like groceries or household chores, so that everything has its place. This is new and we haven’t tested it extensively, so there may be errors that we don’t notice, but it looks very good to us.
Forager
Price: $ 7.99
Forager is an open-world 2D game with dungeon tracking elements. He started life on Steam and is now available on mobile. You can explore the world, collect many things, create items, build structures and manage your various resources. The graphics won’t win any prizes, but the game elements are really fun. It had some early release issues, such as an occasional crash, but most of the issues appear to have been fixed in updates. It is a little expensive, but you can easily spend dozens of hours without any problems.
Sky Weatherman
Price: Free
Sky Weatherman is a new weather app. It does many basic things, like current temperature and future forecasts. However, this allows users to track time during important dates for them. For example, you can tell the app your wedding day and it will tell you the weather forecast for that day. It is a separate part of the app so you can easily check and verify that nothing has changed. You can even set it up to report time at a specific time every day, just like before your daily commute. It also has widgets, push notifications for bad weather and other features. We would like a professional version to remove ads, but otherwise it is very good.
Star Wars KOTOR II
Price: $ 14.99
Star Wars KOTOR II is the latest version of the popular Knights of the Old Republic series. It is a very deep RPG where you try to save the Jedi Order after it falls into ruins. It’s a bit of a slow game, but the elements and history of RPG are so deep that you can play for dozens of hours. The mobile version is a faithful recreation of the original. However, there are some bugs that are causing some problems with the game. We recommend giving developers time to work things out, but other than that it’s a great retro RPG.
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If we missed any great news, updates or launches of Android apps and games, let us know in the comments.