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Today’s Apps
- Imgy [Add unlimited icons to your homescreen — works with any homescreen launcher]
- Pencil Sketch [Turn any image/photo into a black and white or color sketch]
- Block Puzzle [Game]
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About Android Apps of the Day
Android has over 450,000 apps. With so many apps out there, app discovery (aka finding new and useful apps) is extremely difficult. With our Android Apps of the Day initiative, dotTech aims to change that. Everyday we post three apps, allowing our readers to discover new apps, daily. Enjoy! [Subscribe to our Android section to never miss an article: RSS Feed | E-mail]
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Apps for July 3, 2012
Imgy
Most homescreen launcher apps, including default homescreens and third-party homescreen launchers, restrict users to a4x4 grid, allowing up to 16 icons per homescreen page. Imgy is an app that looks to break that restriction.
What Imgy does is it allows users to add as many app icons on a homescreen page as desired. Imgy does this by resizing icons; as you add more icons, Imgy automatically resizes existing icons to accommodate the new ones, ensuring that all icons fit on your homescreen. The genius of Imgy is it isn’t a homescreen replacement app; rather, it works on any homescreen launcher app, may that be the default homescreen launcher that came with your device or a third-party launcher you installed (such as GO Launcher EX, ADWLauncher, Apex Launcher, etc.) How exactly does Imgy work with all homescreen launcher apps? Through widgets.
You see Imgy provides you with widgets that you must place on your homescreen. App icons are added inside those widgets. As such, Imgy will work with any homescreen launcher that supports widgets. And Imgy provides four different widget sizes (4×1, 4×2, 4×3, and 5×2) so you can mix and match Imgy with your other icons as desired; and you can place Imgy on any number of homescreen pages as desired. To put it in very simple terms, Imgy essentially is a widget app.
The downside to Imgy using widgets is adding icons to Imgy isn’t as easy as drag from app tray onto homescreen, as is the norm with Android. Rather, you must manually add apps to Imgy widgets via their settings. However, Imgy does have an option to automatically add newly installed apps to widgets, so that does mitigate the annoyance somewhat.
Aside from app icons, Imgy also works with bookmarks and contacts.
Imgy comes with two versions, free and paid. Free version has all the features mentioned above. Paid version add more features but the developer isn’t very clear on exactly what features are added. As per my tests, free version has two locked features which are unlocked when you purchase paid — automatically resizing icons based on usage and adjusting icon transparency based on usage.
Price: Free, $0.99
Version discovered: v1.0.2
Requires: Android 2.2 and up
Download size: 217 KB
Imgy on Play Store | Imgy Unlocker on Play Store
Pencil Sketch
Pencil Sketch is an app that turns any image/photo into a… pencil sketch.
Using Pencil Sketch is very easy. Either select an existing image/photo from gallery or snap a new photo using your camera (front or back, flash is supported). After that Pencil Sketch automatically generates a black and white pencil sketch of the image. If you want a color pencil sketch, you have the ability to switch to that. Once a sketch is created, you can either save it to your device or share it via Gmail, email, messaging, etc.
The plus side to Pencil Sketch is it is very easy to use. The downside is there are almost no options or settings for customization aside from picking black and white or color; and there is no way to control the resolution of output images — they are all 640×480. (The developer may be thinking of adding a paid version of Pencil Sketch in the future that has all the features lacking in the current free version; so keep an eye out for that.)
Price: Free
Version discovered: v2.1
Requires: Android 2.3.3 and up
Download size: 441 KB
Block Puzzle
Block Puzzle is a puzzle game for Android that can be considered to be a mix of Tetris and Tangrams.
The goal of each Block Puzzle level is to fit Tetris-like blocks inside a gray region. It may sound simple on paper (on screen) – and it really is very easy in the beginning stages – but as you progress through the game the difficulty dramatically increases.
In total, there are 2,000 levels to Block Puzzle; 500 ‘Novice’ levels, 500 ‘Normal’ levels, 500 ‘Expert’ levels, and 500 ‘Master’ levels. For better or for worse, Block Puzzle allows you to skip around from level to level (i.e. you don’t have to finish the game in a linear progression); so if you ever get stuck on a stage, you can easily skip it and move onto the next.
Price: Free
Version discovered: v1.2
Requires: Android 1.5 and up
Download size: 1.0 MB
dotTechies: We have tested all the apps listed above. However, Android Apps of the Day articles are not intended as “reviews” but rather as “heads-up” to help you discover new apps. Always use your best judgement when downloading apps, such as trying trial/free versions before purchasing paid apps, if applicable.
