Living
The Art Of Appiness: Top iPhone Apps
From apps designed to help you relax, travel smarter or appraise tattoos, we reveal the apps that will take your beloved smartphone to the next level
Enjoy our edit of 10 exciting new (or improved) smartphone apps – all designed to transform the way you work and play.
Keep Calm And Carry On
Naysayers might claim that the best path to inner calm is to switch off your smartphone, but we all know that isn’t going to happen, is it? Taking a more pragmatic approach, the Headspace meditation app, which is endorsed by Emma Watson, offers a refreshingly simple route to inner calm through the use of 10-minute long exercises designed to guide your meditation. All together now, take a deep breath and… ‘Ommmmm’.
A Matter Of Taste
There’s a huge variety of cooking apps available for the budding gourmand, but a key difference with the Tastemade brand is the judicious balance between recipe ideas and how-to videos, taking you through the intricacies of preparing meals, together with original food shows. This is clearly conceived as the nexus point of food, travel and lifestyle and, be warned, it creates an appetite for more.
Tell Your Story
The StoryWorth app offers an ingenious way to compile family stories and knowledge. Think of it as part scrapbook, part fireside chat: You simply invite a relative to join, and they then have the opportunity to respond to a series of cleverly structured weekly questions. The collected stories can be archived privately on the app just for you or, for a more permanent reminder, you can even convert the stories into a hardcover book.
The Relay Winner
Perfect for urban explorers, the charm of the Relay app is its sheer simplicity. If you’re planning your next weekend break to a buzzing urban hotspot, you can use the app to map out your perfect itinerary by pinning everything from essential bars, restaurants and clubs through to visitor attractions and other places of interest. Create one map per location (or even per trip) and share with travel companions and friends.
Movie Magic
Chances are you already have a photo editing app (or two) on your phone, but what about a video editing one? The new Videorama app allows you to transform still images into video, combine photos and film, plus add an impressive variety of audio and visual effects to your video footage. Sure you could just rely on the basic video editing tools offered by your favourite social media channel, but why would you want to once you’ve seen just how easy to use the Videorama app is?
Game-Changer
Whatever you think about the planet’s apparent obsession with Pokémon Go, it has undeniably changed perceptions about the future of location-based and augmented reality gaming. One of the most original augmented reality apps for younger members of the family is Crayola Color Alive, which seemingly brings kids’ sketches to life by magic with an array of special effects and animations with fairies, elves, unicorns and other magical creatures flying out of the drawings.
A Step Ahead
So you’d like to be the next Mo Farah or Almaz Ayana? Or maybe you just want to push yourself to your own limits? The remarkable RunGo voice-activated app promises access to the world’s best running routes, both in cities and on remote trails, and even gives you the choice of sharing routes and locations privately with friends or publicly so that you don’t have to run alone. As if that wasn’t enough, users can also track runs completed, calories, pace and much more.
Star Quality
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” The inimitable Oscar Wilde would surely have approved of Star Walk 2, the next generation of the iconic Star Walk app series, which was based on the simple premise of being able to point your iPhone at the heavens and receive a host of information on what you’re seeing. Amateur astronomers will most likely already have the original app, but the enhanced user interface and other new features make an upgrade worthwhile.
A Change Of Pace
Already a classic of its kind, this highly awarded music mixing app has been recently upgraded. Pacemaker has proven itself to be an ideal starting point for a multitude of would-be DJs, thanks to its simple control panels and the ability to access tracks from your iTunes or Spotify playlists and then mix them. A variety of extra effects can be bought via in-app purchases when you feel ready to up your game.
Getting Inked
Another creative app that makes good use of the increasing possibilities of augmented reality, Inkhunter allows you to project a variety of tattoo designs onto any part of your body (or your friends’ bodies) and see exactly how it would look. The photo editor tool also lets you view the design from different angles. Aside from the fun browsing and experimenting with different contemporary tattoo designs, Inkhunter is especially worthwhile for removing an element of risk from choosing your tattoo design. As the makers say: no more regrets…
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