It’s the end of the week, which means it’s high time to give your Android phone a fresh batch of fun apps games to explore this weekend. Angry Birds Action! is arguably the week’s biggest release, putting a fresh spin on the series while maintaining its bird-catapulting core.
so interesting this week is Radon, an app that uses ultrasonic waves to pass links between nearby devices. Apple Music got a nice update this week, as well, adding music videos family accounts, while iens vs. nball revives the classic sci-fi film series as digital tables Rom Flix saves you the hassle of browsing through TV listings on Netflix.
Angry Birds Action!
In three short weeks, The Angry Birds Movie will hit theaters nationwide, catapulting the mobile classic into a different realm of entertainment. Naturally, there’s a new game to celebrate the pending release. Angry Birds Action! maintains the pull–fling approach of the original games, but instead of a side-scrolling experience, you’ll launch the birds into pinball-esque boards to try recover stolen eggs or snag precious cy.
Once flung, the birds bound between bumpers explosive boxes until they ultimately slow stop, you’ve got a few attempts per stage to grab all of the items. There’s some lightly explosive fun to be had early on, hopefully there’s enough variation to keep things fresh later on. However, the limited energy system seems like it could be very restrictive, unsurprisingly, there are plenty of ads. Still, it’s colorful free, worth at least a try from old fans.
Radon
If you need to share a link with a nearby friend, you might email or message it—but have you considered using ultrasonic waves? Now you can do just that with Radon, an app that uses ’s own Nearby A to allow speedy transfers between local devices. Radon actually uses Bluetooth, -Fi, ultrasound to make the transfers, you don’t need to be on the same network as any other device.
In fact, it’ll send a link to numerous phone or tablets at once if they’re all in close proximity running the app. That’s the biggest downside, of course: everyone needs the Radon app to use the functionality, but it’s free easy to use. Once installed, using Radon will appear as an option when sharing a link, you can quickly send it to a local pal. It could be a good way to swap mobile destinations with co-workers or roommates, for example.
Apple Music
Apple Music is still listed as being in beta after nearly six months on Android, but at least it picked up a crucial feature this week: music videos. It’s a part of the streaming service that was on iOS computers from the start, but Android users curiously had to wait. The app doesn’t have a dedicated music video section from the navigation menu, although there is a category on the New page they come up in search appear on artists’ pages, as well.
so new this week is the ability to sign up for a family membership directly from the Android app, rather than use an iOS device or iTunes to do so, it’s still a stellar deal: up to six users can piggyback on the same account for $15/month. Both features help make Apple Music a stronger streaming competitor on Android, although Spotify remains tough to beat. Still, if you didn’t grab the three-month free trial before, now might be the time to give it a shot.
iens vs. nball
Tuesday was “ien Day,” celebrating the classic sci-fi franchise with an ien/iens double feature in select theaters a hilariously botched Reebok shoe launch. On the plus side, this week also brought the release of iens vs. nball, the latest licensed experience from the makers of the excellent Zen nball. In fact, you can buy the tables within Zen nball if you want to keep all your mobile pinball fun in one app, or you can grab this new one instead.
iens vs. nball offers three tables based on different ien entries: one based on 1986’s iens, another for ien vs. edator, lastly a table inspired by the recent ien: Isolation console game. As we’ve come to expect from Zen, each table looks plays like a real-life one, but has fun digital perks, including animated characters even alien creepers you’ll need to battle back with the ball. One table is always available to play free (with ads) via a rotating selection, otherwise you can buy each outright for $2 or get all three with bonus tokens zero ads for $6.
Rom Flix
As streaming video services take over, some of us might miss being able to flip on the TV to watch a rom episode of a favorite old show—not everyone wants to browse through the listings read descriptions to pick an episode. Netflix doesn’t have a “play rom episode” option just yet, but Rom Flix was created to fill the gap.
It really, really doesn’t look like much, but this simple free app gets the job done puts some mindlessness back into TV watching. Rom Flix lets you add your favorite TV shows from Netflix to your personal listing, when you tap each, a rom episode is chosen from the series pile. From there, you can launch directly into the episode in the Netflix app. And if you’re not super choosy on show, you can even have it pick an episode from all of your favorites.