By Liyo Kikon
YOU probably have at least one of these apps on your phone and since there is no denying that Google makes some of the best apps which are available for both iOS and Android. Here are some of the best apps which you must have on your phone. I have left out obvious ones such as Youtube and Gmail since they usually come pre-installed on your phone. And there are a lot of other apps such as Docs, Sheets, Snapseed but the ones listed below are my top picks for the absolute essential apps by Google.
Gboard keyboard
I’m keeping this on the top of the list since its the latest one by Google. It’s a keyboard and there are tons of keyboards out in the web jungle, but this one really stands out since it has a trick up its sleeve in the form of web search, let me elaborate. When you are chatting with someone via whatsapp or any platform and you need to find an information about something, say an actor’s name in a certain movie or the capital of some country or literally anything, you can just tap the “G” button on the top left side of the keyboard and without ever leaving your chat app, you can search for the information you need, within the area of the keyboard itself. And the best part is that the search results are displayed in the form of cards and you can either tap on them directly or tap on the share button and the information gets added to your current chat and when you’re ready, you can simply press send. This adds a whole new level of convenience and trust me, once you start using it, you’ll be totally dependent on it. Not forgetting to mention that this keyboard has all the other basic features such as word prediction, swipe and all the bling of other keyboards.
Google Photoscan
While most people simply use their camera to scan documents or images, I prefer using Google Photoscan because with this app, there are no glares! If you are wondering, I am talking about those annoying spots of light which gets reflected from any paper which is glossy and worst of all, if you are trying to scan a document in low light and you need to use the camera flash, you will definitely get a huge spot of light reflection. Google Photoscan takes care of this problem by taking four different images automatically and combines them to create one seamless and spotless image. At first, you will surely make some mistakes while trying to scan images, but after a few trial and error, you will get used to it and honestly, this is the best scanner app available.
Google Photos
Store unlimited photos and videos for free! That was the promise made by Google and they have lived up to it! Today, I have stored all my photos from my hard drive which was more than a terabyte of personal photos and videos and I gotta say, I have never felt more peaceful since I no longer have to worry about the hard drive crashing or my computer being vaporised by aliens, they are all stored safely online and you should do the same if you haven’t done it already. Imagine having all your photos from your computer and other sources available in one location and no matter what happens to your computer or your phone or any device, your memories will always be safe.
One thing to remember is that Drive and Photos are different apps. The photos or videos which you upload to Google Drive will be available on Google Photos but not vice versa. Google Drive is used as an online storage for some of your important documents or for sharing content with others while Google Photos compresses your photos and videos as per Google’s specification, Drive will store your data as it is. But Google Drive has limited storage, initially you will get a free 5 GB of storage space, you can upgrade your storage to 100 GB for Rs. 130 per month or 1TB for Rs 650 per month. The great thing about Drive is that it is very reasonably priced and when it comes to storing important documents or for sharing with others, there is no other cloud service better than Google Drive.
This one is for two kinds of people, the office on-the-go worker and the mobile photo print enthusiast. The way Google Cloud print works is that it doesn’t matter if you have a wired or wireless printer, you can setup the cloud driver on your computer using Google Chrome browser, and then install the cloud print app on your phone and whenever you want to print something, say an email, pdf, document or photos from your phone, you simply send the print command through your phone directly to the printer at your home or office no matter where you are. This one is especially useful for anyone who is constantly on the move and when you need to print out anything, you can directly print it using your phone! How cool is that?
