Welcome to the 193rd edition of Android Apps Weekly! Here are your headlines from the last week!
- Google Play will now punish poorly made apps. Android apps that have frequent problems will have less screen time on the Play Store. Some of the metrics Google will measure will include when apps don’t respond, crash rates, slow rendering, frozen frames, wake locks, and more. The bottom 25% of apps will show up less often in search results and on recommendations. That’s great news.
- The latest Humble Bundle is out! Included in this bundle is Never Alone: Ki Edition, Limbo, A Tale of Two Sons, and many, many more. You can grab a few games by paying $1. Beating the average will reward you with most games. Paying $5 or more will get you every game on the bundle. There are 12 total games up for grabs. It’s a great way to get some classics for cheap and also give to charity!
- The Google Play Store received probably its worst update ever this week. The Play Store can now prevent root users from downloading certain apps. Netflix was among the first to use the feature. Root users noticed that they could no longer download the app. Now any app developers can do that as well. Google’s SafetyNet API tells the Play Store if a phone is running custom firmware or root.
- Angry Birds Evolution now has a set launch date. It’ll be in June 2017. The game will take the franchise back to its roots. You’ll be flinging birds at structures to defeat the pigs. Except this time it’ll be in a 3D space instead of the classic 2D. Pre-registration is open now. Those who pre-register will have free stuff added to their accounts once the game launches.
- Google announced the winners of the Google Play Awards 2017 late last week. There were a dozen categories in total, including best AR and VR experience, best app, best game, best multiplayer game, and more. Some of the winners include Memrise, Hearthstone, IFTTT, Mushroom 11, and Runtastic. You can follow the above link to check out the entire list of winners.
For even more Android apps and games news, updates, and releases, check out this week’s newsletter by clicking here! There we have tons of info that we didn’t have space for here. That includes Uber’s new Freight app, some big changes to Facebook and Pokemon Go, and some big Android Pay news! You can fill out the form below to get the newsletter every Sunday. The Android Authority app is also a great option for faster, more frequent news updates!
Zombie Gunship Survival is the sequel to one of the most popular shooters on Android. This one features a lot of the same mechanics from the first one. You play as a gunner in the air. Your goal is to mow down zombies to save people. The secondary objective is building a base to protect people. It features unlockable weapons, troops you can deploy, and more. The game has freemium bottlenecks that can be annoying. Otherwise, it’s a solid mobile shooter.
Timbre is a simple little video and audio editor. It essentially does three things. It’ll convert your stuff to other stuff, cut it down, or join it with another file. It doesn’t sound like much. However, with some patience, you can do some fun stuff with this. Most processes don’t take too much time. You can even remove the audio from a video or convert a video to audio format. It’s no Adobe Premiere Pro, but it does the simple tasks very well. It’s also totally free with no ads.
Pokemon: Magikarp Jump is a time waster through and through. Your goal in this one is to teach your Magikarp how to jump. You’ll train it, feed it, and gather help from other Pokemon. The goal is to make your Magikarp jump higher than all the others. It features some light customizations as well. You’ll have to train through several generations of Magikarp in order to get the best one. It’s a silly, simplistic Tomagotchi clone with a Pokemon theme. That doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable for some, though.
Fenix is a very successful Twitter app. Pretty soon, we’ll have a second one. Fenix 2 is currently in active development. However, you can test it out now if you want to. Just become a tester using the link above, download the app and go. As far as Twitter apps go, this one isn’t half bad. It features a simple design, theming, some customizable, and it feels light. However, it is a beta and there are some features that don’t work yet. It won’t replace your current Twitter client right now, but it may very well be good enough to do so when it’s fully released.
Terminator Genisys: Future War is a mobile game themed around the most recent Terminator movie. It’s a kingdom building style game. You’ll be tasked with building a base and defending it. You can also choose which side you fight on. You can go with the Resistance to defeat Skynet or go with Skynet and destroy the human race. The game works well enough. It has some decent game play features. However, it is yet another freemium kingdom building game.
Thank you for reading! Here are some related app lists to check out!
If we missed any big Android apps or games news, tell us about it in the comments! Thank you for reading! Check back next week for the next Android Apps Weekly.