Why trust GreenbotOur latest roundup of the top new Android apps makes a brief stop to get some serious business out of the way, but the rest is all fun games. It’s a worthwhile stop, too, as Robinhood brings its no-fee stock trading to the ay Store following a successful start on iOS. ay the markets well you might “steal” from the rich… give it all to yourself.
As promised, the rest of this week’s selection is plenty entertaining, with the anticipated release of Fallout Shelter leading the pack alongside Adult Swim’s Monsters Ate My Metropolis. Elsewhere, Dreamify harnesses ’s new A.I. tech to turn photos into nightmarish masterpieces, while ’s own trio of free Creative b releases—ndmarker, p Swap, Tunnel Vision—are all worth at least a few minutes of your attention.
Robinhood
Once your account is approved, you can buy sell right from the app, with common transactions lacking trade fees.
If you’re serious about playing the stock market, simply making trades in front of your computer won’t be enough—you’ll want to stay connected on the go, have the ability to conduct a transaction wherever you are. For those needs, Robinhood has emerged as a real contender, racking up more than $1 billion in transactions on iOS since earlier this year. And now it’s on Android with a sleek, smartly designed app.
Robinhood’s biggest perk is the ability to make no-fee transactions for certain types of accounts (“self-directed individual or joint cash brokerage,” they note), but the app is just as appealing, with great Material Design touches throughout. In particular, the color coding to alert you to a stock’s performance, or whether the market is open or closed, lets you get up to date with a glance. It’s streamlined straightforward, so this isn’t the place to dig into trading tips; but if you want to wheel deal on your phone, Robinhood seems like a strong option.
Fallout Shelter
Can you keep your underground civilization up running— relatively happy about it?
Spun off from the beloved open-world post-apocalyptic console quests, Fallout Shelter lets you take control of your own underground base exp it, room-by-room, as you try to keep survivors alive happy. Shelter pulled huge droves of players into its web when it launched on iOS in ne, now the charming management sim is finally available on Android.
imarily, it’s meant for Fallout fans: The familiar visual aesthetic, gear, guiding premise are strong hooks for those already invested in the universe. But even for newcomers, the cycle of generating resources, sending explorers into the wastel, pleasing your survivors is amiable fun. The freemium design means things happen very slowly, however— it’s very easy to blow through your resources at first be stuck waiting. Or be tempted to spend money on in-app items, of course.
Dreamify
It’s a puppy nightmare! Dreamify uses ’s weird A.I. tech to deliver trippy photo filters.
created its Deep Dream A.I. program to teach computers how to “view” the world, all in an effort to create the ultimate tool for automatically classifying images. Instead, the tech has a tendency to take perfectly good photos stamp surreal patterns of dogs cats atop them, almost like an impressionist painter for the Tumblr generation. It’s as amazing as it is baffling.
And now you can harness its silly, attention-grabbing superpowers with Dreamify, a free third-party app that harnesses ’s open-source code. Simply select a preset effect or customize one using sliders, then choose or take a photo give the app a minute to complete the process. The results are always surprising often fantastic, making Dreamify a great app to keep tucked away for a quick laugh with friends.
Monsters Ate My Metropolis
It’s as strange colorful as the past games, but Metropolis swaps puzzles for card battles.
You can always rely on Adult Swim to deliver a delightfully delirious game. Case in point: Monsters Ate My Metropolis just launched this week, whereas the earlier Monsters Ate My Condo entries were match-three puzzlers in which you fed skyscraper floors to towering beasts, this one is a free-to-play card-battler. Your opponent? A city.
Building refining a deck of attack cards over time, you’ll attempt to tear down a city as one of the cartoonish monsters before the city can return the favor. ke the earlier games, Metropolis is aggressively goofy—but it’s an entertaining premise, the artwork music are infectiously charming. ’ll see how much the in-app purchases weigh against the long-term enjoyment, however.
ndmarker, p Swap, Tunnel Vision
Tunnel Vision (left) p Swap (right) are amusing experiments that highlight its new Android initiative.
Yes, these are three separate apps, but they’re all joined by a single theme: they’re releases from Creative b, they mark the beginning of the company’s Android Experiments initiative. Essentially, they’re all fun, interesting, often amusing apps, while you may not get significant use out of any of them, they’re worth playing around with.
Tunnel Vision offers up dazzling real-time filters that you can place atop live video footage, while p Swap lets you scrub out the lips (or any other portion) of a still photo then record video footage to fill in the blanks. ndmarker at least has some utility, on the other h, as it’s an ultra-minimal compass that points to interesting sights locations as you move your phone around. l of them are free, hopefully this is just the start of more more Creative b releases.
