by Ian Uymatiao

Just recently acquired a new smartphone, but have no idea what to do with it? Don’t fret; Wildcard is here to help you get the most out of your newly acquired mobile device. Below is a list of five mobile apps that will turn your smartphone into an invaluable companion.

5. Flow Free

Source: freeappsking.com

A good puzzle game can be a great time-waster on a smartphone, and Flow Free fills this job really well. A level of Flow Free is composed of a square grid, filled with colored pairs of circles. The goal of the game is to connect these pairs together, while at the same time filling in every square in the grid. The game starts out really simple at first, but as the grid and number of circles grow, so does the challenge of completing a level. Flow Free is a great brain tickler for the extravagant price of zero, and is well worth investing your time into solving its puzzles.

(iOS/Android)

4. Catch Notes

Source: techerator.com

Catch is a powerful tool for jotting down notes on your phone. In addition to typing simple text notes on your phone, you can also ‘catch’ notes in the form of photos, voice recordings, and QR codes, making the things around you easy to store in digital form. When you include powerful features in the form of hashtags, favorites, and location-based sorting, what you get is an indispensable app for making sure those brief moments are easily remembered and hardly forgotten.

(iOS/Android)

3. Dropbox 

Source: zdnet.com

Most of us already know how valuable Dropbox is, and it’s no different on mobile, either. Not only does the app give you access to your Dropbox files, but it also gives you powerful features, such as the ability to upload images and videos from your camera. Other apps, like PDF Readers and Text Editors, can also use Dropbox for retrieving and storing data, which makes Dropbox extremely useful both as an app and as a service

(iOS/Android)

2. Jetpack Joyride

Source: halfbrick.com

Jetpack Joyride is an extremely addicting game from the people that brought you “Fruit Ninja”. In this simple side-scrolling game, you play as a muscular protagonist named Barry Steakfries, who breaks into a laboratory, steals a jetpack and attempts to make his escape. You use the touchscreen to control the rising and falling of the jetpack as you attempt to dodge obstacles that litter the lab. The main goal of the game is to run (err, fly) for as long as possible before meeting an untimely end, with your final distance acting as the score for that run.

Thanks to excellent game design, unlockable upgrades, one-time power-ups, avatar costumes, and post-game rewards, Jetpack Joyride is a sublime time-waster that will keep you playing day-in, day-out.

(iOS/Android)

1. Pocket

Source: engadget.com

Pocket does only one thing, but does it extremely well: save online content, and make them available offline on your mobile device. In the Internet age, we are constantly drowned in blog posts, news articles, reviews, and features; and it can be difficult to keep track of all of these things. Pocket makes it super-easy by allowing you to mark a webpage for reading later with a single click on your computer (using a bookmarklet or a browser extension). Once it’s saved, Pocket will transfer the saved content to the Pocket app on your phone. Once there, it is presented in a beautiful user-interface, and with all distractions removed, so you can focus on reading.

For heavy web surfers on the go, Pocket is an invaluable app for making sure the Internet goes with you no matter what.

(iOS/Android)