Welcome to the 360th edition of Android Apps Weekly and the last one in 2020! We hope you all have a good holiday and a happy new year too. It's been a bit slow week because of the holidays, but here are the top app and game headlines from the past week:
- Many people may get their first Android phones this year while giving up their Apple devices. There are many differences between platforms, including which apps are available for each. Those who switch may want to try some great Android alternatives to some of the best iOS apps.
- WhatsApp eventually introduces audio and video calling for desktop users. Unfortunately, only a few people now have it under a limited process. However, the service plans to start the feature after the new year. It didn't make it in time for the holidays, but it definitely will be next year.
- Google is shutting down its Android Things platform. It will begin the sunset process on January 5, 2021 and will close the platform exactly one year later to the day. Fortunately, there aren't many products affected, and Google never seemed too interested in them anyway. We don't know if Google will replace it with anything.
- We asked readers this week if they ever used the news aggregator that is usually filled with stock market introducers these days. The most popular is Google Discover, but Samsung, OnePlus, and some other OEMs have their own little tastes. Obviously, most of our readers voted for Google Discover, with second place completely ignoring the feature. Click the link to read more.
- We conducted a survey of our writers to find out our favorite games of the year. Among those we have listed, a few mobile games have made the list, including Genshin Impact and Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross. Click the link to review our selections.
Empires Mobile
Price: Play for free
Empires Mobile is the newest game from IGG. It is a strategy game with similar (but not identical) mechanics to games like Clash of Clans. You build your small empire and then train troops to take over other empires. You can choose between different fantasy races such as elves and dwarves. Of course, there are also heroes to unlock and play with. The big complaint with this one is that you can only play elves at first. The developers plan to add the other races over time. It will be a good waste of time at some point, so keep an eye on it.
Listshare
Price: Free / $ 6.49
Listshare is a simple list sharing app. You can make lists of things like groceries or just a general to-do list and share them with your family, roommates, or whoever. It has a simple, colorful user interface. Nobody should get lost with this one. You can also organize your lists into custom categories like groceries or tasks so that everything has its place. This one is new and we haven't tested it very extensively so we may have missed bugs, but it seems pretty good to us.
Forager
Price: $ 7.99
Forager is a 2D open world game with dungeon crawler elements. It started on Steam and is now also available on mobile devices. You can explore the world, collect many things, make items, build structures and manage your various resources. The graphics won't win any prizes, but the gameplay elements are actually fun. There were some issues with the early release, like the occasional crash, but most of the issues seem to have been fixed in updates. It's a bit expensive, but you can easily invest dozens of hours in this program with no problem.
Sky Weatherman
Price: Free
Sky Weatherman is a new weather app. It does a lot of basics like current temperature and future forecasts. However, this allows users to keep track of the weather on important dates. For example, you can tell the app your wedding day and the weather for that day. It's a separate part of the app so you can easily check and verify that nothing has changed. You can even set it to show the weather at a specific time each day, just like before your morning commute. It also has widgets, bad weather push notifications, and other features. We'd like a Pro version to remove ads, but otherwise it's pretty good.
Star Wars KOTOR II
Price: $ 14.99
Star Wars KOTOR II is the newest port from the popular Knights of the Old Republic series. It's a pretty deep RPG where you are trying to save the Jedi Order after it has decayed. It's a bit slow, but the RPG elements and story are so deep that you can play for dozens of hours. The mobile version is a faithful replica of the original. However, there are some bugs that cause problems while gaming. We'd recommend giving the developers time to clear up some of this, but otherwise it's a great retro RPG.
Thank you for reading! Check out these too:If we've missed any big news, updates, or releases about Android apps and games, let us know in the comments.
