Featured Apps :) - Tree of Souls

**Disco Scratch** · #1 11-29-2016, 09:55 PM

I thought it would be great to for us to share some of our favorite mobile apps. So to start I'll show off the SwiftKey Keyboard, which as I understand is compatible with both Android and iOS just don't hold me to that. This is just going to be a look at the SwiftKey Keyboard. I'm not going to cover every feature, but I will cover the basic functionality and possibly look at the advanced menus later.

Spoiler: "Product Description

First off I must say the layout configuration options produce a very nice and very functional keyboard. To make any changes you can press the SwiftKey logo between the 123 and emoji buttons and that will bring up the settings and where you can toggle certain features, but if you just want to make a quick change all you have to do is press the three bars on the upper left on the keyboard to reveal a quick menu and for the purposes of this post I'm just going to cover what's in the quick menu and I'm going to use screenshots so it's as self explanatory as possible.

So what were looking at below is the SwiftKey Keyboard while using Google Docs with some random document open and next we'll get into the quick menu.

So here's the quick menu and as you can see you have access to layout, resize, undock, key toggles and more. The key toggles button and the more button along with the SwiftKey logo button I mentioned earlier all essentially take you to the same place, which is kind of redundant so I'm looking for them to make some changes there in the future.

The menu is very simple and straightforward. Here's how you can change the layout.

Heres how you resize the keyboard.

This is what it looks like when you undock and drag the keyboard around.

I'm going to exclude the main menu this time, but I may post them later. Below is a look at the incognito toggle, which is a new feature released this month. It temporarily stops the keyboard from learning new words. There are some ‘colorful’ words you may use during certain searches that you don't want your keyboard to remember.

You can move from the settings to the theme section by selecting the paint brush. From there you can instantly switch between any of your themes or you can download new themes. They have a lot of free themes or you can buy one for $0.99.

Next is the clipboard, which was just released Sunday 11/27. This has got to be my favorite feature. I've been using it to type this post and it makes things so much easier. Essentially anything you don't want to type out you can permanently keep in your clipboard (on file not in memory). The cool part is you can assign a name to it so when you type that name your clipboard item comes up as an option in your suggested words bar. Very useful! In my screenshot as you can see anytime I type the word “color” the color tag with the color I use on ToS will come up on my suggested words bar.

I've used every keyboard available for Android and the SwiftKey Keyboard is above and beyond the rest.

Do you know a useful app? Please share it with us.

Eltu · #2 11-30-2016, 08:05 PM

Shameless self-promotion... at my game studio we're making this Windows/Android cross-platform MMO (iOS coming soon):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...madotter.vhmmo

MMOs aren't really my genre of choice otherwise (I prefer single-player games) but I think we've succeeded reasonably well here by making more of a fully featured game for mobile rather than the very shallow mobile games seen elsewhere in the same genre.

In terms of other apps, I like Feedly - it's one of the better RSS readers out there and has clients on Windows, Windows Phone, Android, iOS and the web - I used to use Opera's RSS reader but since the decline of that browser this is a neat replacement.

iron_jones · #3 11-30-2016, 11:30 PM

I'm a big Swiftkey fan.

**Disco Scratch** · #4 12-01-2016, 11:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eltu

Shameless self-promotion... at my game studio we're making this Windows/Android cross-platform MMO (iOS coming soon):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...madotter.vhmmo

That looks awesome! Thanks for sharing. I'm not surprised by the decline of the Opera browser. We simply have better options. I used it back in the day on my desktop PC for one purpose and one purpose only. I used it to obtain illegal copies of music from music sites that loaded music into the cache.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iron_jones

I'm a big Swiftkey fan.

It's great isn't it? What's your favorite feature?

**Disco Scratch** · #5 12-01-2016, 11:09 PM

I love space and everything about it. I've spent many nights looking up at the stars. Sometimes I wonder where certain things are and there's an app for that. Well, there's a few apps for that. The app that I'll be talking about is called SkEye a 1.09Mb app. So let's take a look at it.

When you open up the menu you do have a lot of options and I'll cover a few of them, but not all of them.

First let's look at are the quick settings. These are basic settings that allow you to turn off certain graphics or change transparency levels.

Back in the main menu there are themes that you can switch to in order to have better viewing at night so the screen isn't glaring at you. So this is a pretty handy feature so once you find the object you're looking for on screen you'll actually be able to look up and see it in the sky.

The search function is straightforward. You can either type in something to search or you can go in and select the object you wish to locate.

The only problem I have with this app is how sluggish it feels. There's a delay from when you move your device to when you see it on the screen, but this is the most accurate app I've been able to find. Other apps like Sky Map do a better job with responsiveness and it actually gives you obvious visual representations of the planets on screen, but even with the highest accuracy levels active the position of the celestial bodies on screen are off by a lot compared to their location in the sky. It is enough to give you a general idea of location so it would be good enough to for most basic users. Let's take a look at that.

Here's the thing I like about Sky Map that SkEye doesn't do. You can look at the screen and there's no question where the planets are and what you're looking at. The problem comes with accuracy. When I took this screenshot it was at about an 80° angle. The real objects were actually at a 45° angle. I've checked and double checked the calibration and I've got it locked in. It's just off, which is a shame because 50 million people use Sky Map and only 1 million people use the more accurate SkEye app. Of course, as I said it's good enough for most basic users who just want an app to give them a general idea of the location of celestial bodies in the sky.

If you ever lose anything important….

Ah, there it is right where I left it… kind of. Notice how they make the ring so big. Yea, it's because it's that inaccurate. It just kind of gives you a general idea of location.

Here's a look at the basic toggles to the left. There really isn't any settings to speak of so I'm not even including that, but you do have toggles to remove certain graphics from the screen and you can push the eye icon to switch to a night viewing mode.

All in all I would give SkEye a 8/10 and I would give Sky Map a 3/10. That's just my overall rating. As far as responsiveness I give SkEye a 4/10 and I give Sky Map 9/10.

Dr. Na'vi · #6 12-01-2016, 11:34 PM

^SwiftKey looks good, going to try it

Also, it looks like all skins for SwiftKey are (currently?) free: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/com...mpletely_free/

Dr. Na'vi · #7 12-01-2016, 11:49 PM

My personal "must have" system app is "X Privacy", it needs root access to work though:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...nstaller&hl=en

It allows you to block other apps from accessing the internet/phone number/contacts/and many more

For example, facebook and skype can no longer fck up my phone contacts after each update, because there is no write access to the contact list anymore and the list appears empty for these apps

**Disco Scratch** · #8 12-01-2016, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Na'vi

^SwiftKey looks good, going to try it

Also, it looks like all skins for SwiftKey are (currently?) free: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/com...mpletely_free/

Yes, I can confirm that all themes are currently free for the SwiftKey Keyboard. Now is the perfect time to try it out!

https://blog.swiftkey.com/all-themes...re-now-free-2/

iron_jones · #9 12-02-2016, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eternal Enigma

It's great isn't it? What's your favorite feature?

It lets me use profanity unlike Samsung and this bull**** forum.

**Disco Scratch** · #10 12-02-2016, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Na'vi

My personal "must have" system app is "X Privacy", it needs root access to work though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iron_jones

It lets me use profanity unlike Samsung and this bull**** forum.

Here's a better explanation of the newest features just released at the end of November.

https://blog.swiftkey.com/swiftkey-h...ndroid-update/

**Disco Scratch** · #11 12-06-2016, 04:01 AM

Something simple that may be easily overlooked that everyone needs is a good calculator. I searched for a good calculator for a year and tried out nearly every calculator available for Android. I finally found one that had the type of layout I was looking for with large numbers, but also with themes so it looks great too. So let's start by taking a look at it. It's called CALCU (Stylish Calculator Free) and I think it used to be called MyCalc. They recently released a new black theme and that's the one I'll be showing here. So let's take a look.

Spoiler: Product Description

If you swipe down on the keys you can access more of the function and scientific keys.

If you want access to all the keys all the time you can have them always display by checking the settings in the settings menu.

Here's a look at some of the settings you have available.

Now we're getting to the selling points. These are what made me spend money on this calculator app to remove the advertisements. First we have themes. There are 22 themes thus far. To get to them you can find them in settings.

Of course, you can always just swipe from the left to get to the themes.

Now we're to my favorite feature. A history list of previous calculations.

It has pretty good memory too because I can go all the way back to August of 2016. Very handy for bill paying.

Do you know a useful app? Please share it with us.

**Disco Scratch** · #12 12-17-2016, 01:07 AM

The new Google Keyboard called Gboard was just released earlier today. It has themes now and the ability to have a custom background, but that's pretty much the only good thing about it. In my opinion SwiftKey is much better, but if SwiftKey isn't for you then perhaps the new and improved Google Keyboard is worth another look. It does have a feature that allows you to search the Internet directly from the keyboard by pressing the Google "G" button.