Welcome to the 428th edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the big headlines from last week:
- Google is suing a man for using Google services to do bad things. A man created a face dog adoption website, accepted money from clients, and never gave birth to puppies. The man also uses Gmail, Google Voice and other services to run this fraudulent business. Google responded by suing the person and we couldn’t be happier about it.
- Security researchers discovered SDKs that send large amounts of data to US defense contractors. It reported the app to Google and Google removed it. It is believed that apps with the SDK were downloaded more than 60 million times across various app genres. Click on the link to learn more, but rest assured, the app is now gone.
- Unlimited Google Photos is back, but it’s not free. Google announced a new Google One plan for $15 per month. It includes 2TB of data for Google Drive along with unlimited photo and video backup. This seems like the end game for Google Photos. Google says the service is quite expensive to run and this allows Google to properly fund it. It seems like a decent deal, especially with all that extra cloud storage space.
- Plex released an update which is actually pretty awesome. This lets you log in to different video streaming services so you can watch videos from any of them without needing to switch apps. It is available now for all users except Roku. Roku users will have to wait a bit longer. We asked our readers if they liked Plex, and most of them did, so we’re excited to see a great update for so many people.
- Samsung rolled out another fold in the big slowdown debacle that happened this year. Samsung says it throttles its phones to prevent overheating. Apparently, the new Spadragon 8 Gen 1 chip is causing some overheating issues when left at full throttle. Hit the link to read more.
Bonju is a kind of social network for people who travel a lot. You are friends everywhere and Bonju helps keep track of where they all are. It notifies users when you are in the same city as friends so you can contact them. That’s the core function of the app. It’s relatively niche, but does its job better than mainstream social media apps. Of course, whether you like it or not depends on whether you can get your friends to use it. It has potential.
Heritage
Price: Free / $3.99
The Ancestral Legacy is the newest game from Buff Studios. This one bills itself as both a mystery thriller and a visual novel. The player works through the story and makes decisions at major plot points. The decisions you make affect the outcome of the game. Some of the other features include achievements, multiple endings, and multiple story branches. It played well in our tests and it should scratch the itch for fans of the genre.
Wisdom is a kind of self-help application. This lets you share and receive advice on various life challenges, including things like making more money, improving your physical or mental health, and other things like that. It’s a community-focused app so you can help or receive help depending on what you want to do. This is one of those apps that may or may not help depending on who and how you are. It has a lot of potential and early adopters seem to love it.
Brave Soul: Frozen Dungeons
Price: Free to play
Brave Soul: Frozen Dungeon is a mobile RPG with gacha elements. Players get a team of heroes that they use against tons of bad guys. You upgrade your hero as you play and progress through the game. It has simple combat, over 100 heroes to collect, and lots of things to do. Some people might not like the simplicity of certain parts and we get that. Still, it’s a nice waste of time with quite a bit more depth than something like an idle RPG. The developers seem to be working on a few bugs causing the animation to stutter, but otherwise, it worked fine on our test device.
FileShadow
Price: Free trial / $7-$15 per month
FileShadow is an interesting file management application. It works a lot like Resilio Sync or NextCloud except it aims for productivity rather than self-hosted cloud storage. Basically, you install apps on your phone and computer. From there, you can manage files on both devices from either device. It can also collect your email attachments and other stuff, though that functionality costs extra. From there, you can move files around, manage them, organize them, or do whatever you like. You can even sort or filter by file type for added functionality. It looks good enough although it requires a subscription.
If we missed any major Android app or game news, let us know in the comments.
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