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Peek-a-boron

Create fun timelapse videos without any effort and sans a video camera or DSLR

While the word on the street is that Android does apps — and reportedly everything else — better than iOS these days, the latter ain’t sitting pretty. With their own beautiful calendar app — Peek — they focus on minimalist, beautiful design, as is normal with all things Apple. As a good productivity tool should, Peek keeps it simple, but it also has many missing features compared to other similar apps available. Still, the ease of use and simple swipes and interface will endear this one to you. You can do the usual like creating events, setting alarms and general planning of your day and week. Clickety click click

All of us have a shutterbug lurking inside us… and with a smartphone in our hands, that facet of ours takes no time to manifest! Get experimental with TimeLapse, a unique and award-winning app that lets you take any number of photos in a sequence — called burst — and process them into a mini movie! Up until now, one required fancy video cameras and DSLRs to do it. It also reputedly takes up less storage space than other similar apps, and you get to set the shutter’s shooting interval and total time, while also being able to adjust exposure and white balance. Again, who needs a DSLR?! - Available on iOS

Schedule up

God know we all need a scheduling app, and if you’re an Android fan, the Event flow Calendar Widget works by taking over your phone’s empty lock screen, thus maximising visibility. You don’t actually have to click or open the app this way — it’s always automatically on your screen. Customise the settings to make a list of your appointments and dates, along with weather forecasts for the day. It’s a simple, elegant widget, and quickly syncs with your phone calendar. This app here is listed among the ones that Android does better than iOS. Your life might never be the same again. -Available on Android

Video mania

Sometimes you want an app on your phone/tab… well, just to kill time. Who hasn’t experienced being stuck on the metro for a long ride or in some interminable waiting room and desperately wanted something to fiddle with on their gadget?

5by comes to the rescue: acquired by the online masters of suggestions curation — StumbleUpon — it recommends short videos for you, based on your mood, and even how much time you have on hand to spare! Easy and fun to use, 5by actually makes an effort to suit content to your tastes, and the experience improves with usage.- Available on iOS

What’s Next…

So is the verdict on Android’s newest edition — KitKat — as sweet as promised? Touted as the cleverest smartphone OS of all time (it’s not available for all Android devices yet, though), it comes replete with pretty interfaces, wallpapers, taps into Google’s excellent and intelligent cloud services, and features a much enhanced Google Search app.

Also, good news for your older and slower devices — KitKat will run on as little as 512MB RAM! The entire thing is geared to improve your phone productivity and performance. The quantum leap this KitKat makes is that your new Android experience will be virtually inseparable from Google connectedness — so depending on how into Google’s services you are, the new KitKat might be a good break for you… or not.

- Available on iOS