Here are free alternatives for boring android apps

The built-in apps on your Android phone may not necessarily offer the best experience you can get. Hitesh Raj Bhagat & Karan Bajaj tell you about some free apps that work much better than what the manufacturer chose as a one size fits all.

Dialer & Contacts Your default dialer might not offer smart functions like caller ID, spam blocking and smart search. But you can change that by using the free TrueDialer app. TrueDialer is one of the few apps that can completely replace your phone’s stock dialer. Brought to you by the same guys behind TrueCaller, the app taps into its extensive database to automatically show your names and photos of callers in the call history window. Moreover, it also supports dual SIM phones.

SMS
Much like the dialer app, the stock SMS app usually sticks to providing basic features. If you want something that blocks spam messages for you, we recommend TrueMessenger. It uses Truecaller’s database to identify spam and warn you. In addition, it can also automatically filter spam SMS to a separate folder without disturbing you. However, if its tons of features and customisation that you prefer, get Chomp SMS. The free app adds features like scheduled SMS, themes, signatures, blacklist, backup/restore and quick reply pop-up options.

Camera
While most stock camera apps now come with multiple modes and settings, there are third party apps that can add even more features. We recommend Open camera — it offers features like auto stabilisation, voice control, volume key control customization and even supports external microphones. Moreover, it comes with a home screen widget that lets you launch the camera app and take an image with a single tap. If you don’t like Open Camera, try the free Camera MX or Camera 360 app.

Gallery
A smart gallery app can not only help you with viewing your photos but also managing them properly. The free QuickPic app lets you organize your photos into folders, sort them, rename them and is optimised for large screen phones. It also has a privacy function built-in where you can hide select photos and videos from being visible in the gallery. You also get a built-in image editor along with support for displaying photos stored on cloud storage such as Picasa, Dropbox or Google drive. We also recommend checking out Google Photos — this free app offers auto sorting, easy search and an auto backup to cloud option.

Calendar
The default calendar on most Android phones is good enough for most users but it looks boring. Our vote goes to SolCalendar for calendar replacement. It has a built-in weather notification and you can even add stickers to particular dates if you want to highlight something. You can sync with Google Calendar and show a list view of your days’ tasks and to-do. If you want a calendar app mainly for notifications, try out the free Cal app. Instead of showing you the usual monthly or weekly view, Cal shows you the day’s events and to-dos as a list.

Clock
For working professionals, an alarm tends to be one of the most-used functions. However, the default Clock app offers limited features. Check out the free Timely Alarm clock that offers a beautiful interface with animation effects, multiple themes and three different watch faces. You can select the fade-inlength of the alarm, snooze duration, volume, enable/disable volume buttons to snooze as well as choose to shrink the snooze duration. You can also enable a challenge to allow alarm to be snoozed — you will have to solve a short puzzle/riddle in order to snooze the alarm — this will wake up the more stubborn risers.

File Manager
A file manager doesn’t have a very easy job: it has to show you thumbnails of different kinds of files, show you how your data is segregated, show you where large files are and it has to let you delete, move, copy and share those. We’re shocked when some Android phones don’t even come with a file manager installed. Our vote goes to File Commander and ES file Explorer. You’ll be able to add remote (cloud storage) accounts like Dropbox, OneDrive & Box, sort files by type or size, transfer files more easily between devices or with your PC, better management of your apps, support for ZIP and RAR files and more.

Email
Every Android phone has an email app — at least the built in Gmail app if not a third party one. You’re thinking what can one possibly add with a third-party email app? For starters, there’s Cloud Magic. It works with Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud, Office 365 or any IMAP accounts. It also supports calendar right within the app, it’s faster, integrates with different services you may use (like Wunderlist, Evernote, OneNote, Trello, Zendesk etc), spam recognition, passcode lock and remote wipe. An app called Blue Email, on the other hand, will give you a great unified inbox and let you precisely tune how you want to be notified of each kind of mail. You can set quiet hours, vibration, LED alerts for each account you configure.

Keyboard
You never know what you’re missing if you stick to the default keyboard. You’re entering text in multiple places on your phone and adding a keyboard can reduce the amount of time you spend typing and attaching different things (emoji, gif animations). For starters, you should start using a keyboard with swipe-to-type — rather than tapping on each letter to make a word. It should also keep getting better at text predictions, learning what kind of words and phrases you normally use. There are a bunch of keyboards on the Play Store, but we recommend that you try Swiftkey or Fleksy first. Some of the things you can expect are support for multiple languages, bette auto correct and predictions, keyboard themes, bilingual typing, emoji predictions, gif animations, stickers, extensions and of course, much faster typing with just a little bit of practice.

Also read: How to make your phone more useful & effective

Also read: Five Android apps to boost your office productivity