15 Fresh Android & iPhone App Designs
“Among many other things, a smartphone functions as a handheld digital sensor for the physical world. In other words, we don’t necessarily need our real world things to be directly connected, when the Web interface in our mobile devices provides the network access and intelligence.” – Andy Hobsbawm
Can you even imagine a world before smarphones? What did people do, like, five years ago, before smarphones snowballed their way into our lives?
Smartphones have become an integral part of our day to day lives. We use them to browse the web, to check the news, to check our social media profiles, to create lists, to listen to music, to watch movies, sometimes. What will come as a huge surprise to everybody is that these small, portable devices can also be used, rumor has it, to make phone calls. Go ahead. Try it.
All joking aside, we really love smartphones, and we are sure you do too. They have helped, and still are helping, us to stay in touch more than ever before, and have completely changed the speed and the way information spreads.
Thanks to these lovely little computers, we are always in touch with what is happening in the world. No matter where you are, if you have an internet connection, all the resources that only used to be available to you if you had access to a desktop PC or laptop are at the push of a couple of buttons. Not physical buttons, mind you. Nobody has physical buttons anymore. Who ever thought Star Trek would come true?
“Smartphone” is a concept that designers and manufacturers have been playing around with since 1973, but the world got to see its first smartphone (although it was not called that) in 1994, when IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator (catchy, is it not?) first became available for purchase.
The first company to ever use “smart phone” as a way to describe its product was Ericsson, fourteen years ago, when they launched the R380, a mobile phone combined with a PDA, that had a resistive touchscreen and stylus, which some of you might remember as that stick you just kept loosing.
Smartphones as we know and love them have been around for some seven years, now. Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, and it was one of the first mobile phones that used a multi-touch interface, and got rid of the stylus, or any other method of input other than the screen itself, making Apple the main benefactor of screen-wipe tissue manufacturers everywhere.
The iPhone tyrannically dominated the market, until Android phones finally started gaining popularity in 2010, and now the two represent 90% of the booming smartphone market.
Smartphones have given designers new and exciting opportunities to design cool things. A smartphone is nothing without apps, and apps are nothing without good, clever design, so we have decided to make a list of some of the most beautifully designed iPhone and Android apps out there.
1. Expense Manager
Expense Manager is an absolutely lovely Android app that allows you to keep track of your expenses, so that you can see exactly what you are spending too much money on. It boasts a lovely flat design, with bright colors and an intuitive interface. The fact that they chose red as the color for the “Health” category is a really nice touch, and keeping true to its goal of helping you save money, the app is also completely free.
2. Bubble Chat for Facebook
If you are bored with the classic Facebook Messenger, than you should definitely check out this fantastic alternative to it. It looks absolutely gorgeous, with interchangeable themes and personal backgrounds for every friend in your friend list, and it also has a really cute drawing feature, that allows you to send your friends drawings instead of text.
3. Camera+
When designing something as familiar as a camera app, there really isn’t a lot of room for experimenting in design. You have to make the interface as close to the built-in camera app’s as you can, while also making it fresh and new, somehow. Camera+ is an excellent example of this, with its cool but not extravagant design keeping it familiar and intuitive, but definitely different than the standard.
4. nwplyng
We all love music, and an intricate part of loving music is discovering and sharing new songs or artists. This app is a great way to do just that. It has some really cool features, including a Shazam-like feature that lets you find out the name of tracks you are listening to, and shortcuts to listen to tracks on Spotify. The design is, of course, simple and intuitive, the tracks being displayed in a grid layout.
5. BBC Weather
It’s easy for weather apps to look kitschy, at times. BBC Weather keeps things clear and simple, with its gorgeous flat icons and beautiful changing backgrounds. Being a BBC app, it is also pretty accurate, but weather forecasting has come a long way.
6. Pacemaker
There is no shortage of DJ apps for the iOS, but Pacemaker really stands out. Like with most iOS apps, and indeed many Android apps, the design here is flat, making the app look real sleek and elegant, which makes it a real joy to use.
7. Poket Casts
Sometimes, if you are a podcast fanatic, it’s really hard to keep track of all the podcasts you’re following. Pocket Casts is a great app that lets you centralize all your casts in one place, and it also looks absolutely stunning.
8. Circa News
Mobile browsing has really changed the way people get informed, as we’ve mentioned at the start of this article, and Circa News is an excellent example of this. Finely adapted and designed to be used with smaller screens, this app allows you to read articles and headlines on the go.
9. Hold ‘Em Odds
Poker is not just a game of chance, as anyone passionate about it will tell you. Hold ‘Em Odds brings science to the table (the poker table, that is) by calculating your odds at winning a particular round. Great concept, great app, awesome design.
10. Cobook Contacts
You’d thinks that there isn’t a whole lot you can do with a contacts app, but Cobook shows you that you most certainly can. It’s a really efficient way to sync all your contacts information, so you can easily reach the people you want, on whatever platform you want.
11. Feedly
Now that Google Reader is out of the picture, people who use RSS are, perhaps, left wanting. Feedly tries to fill the whole in RSS enthusiasts hearts by being a really good, clean news aggregator, that allows you to have the latest news from your favorite sites, all in one place.
12. Jiffy
Much like one of our previous entry, Expense Manager, Jiffy has a really good looking flat design, that looks clean and neatly spaced out. The app itself is a time management app, so if you’re having problems keeping schedules, than this really is the app for you.
13. about.me
We admit it, about.me kind of sounds like it’s a Facebook spin-off, but it does earn a place on this list for being really well designed, maybe even better designed than Facebook. It look really appealing and clean, and it does a pretty good job of looking and feeling really friendly.
14. Quora
Quora is a really cool community. Sometimes searching Google for answers to a question is pretty hard, especially if your question very, very specific (i.e. completely weird), and that’s why Quora exists. You can post questions on it, and receive answers from people who might actually know a thing or two about what you’re asking. You can, of course, also answer questions, and pay it forward.
15. Hue – Beautiful Weather
Another weather app for Android phones, only this time it is entirely flat UI. This is a great example of how to make a weather app that doesn’t feel too crowded, while also being eye-catching and useful.
That wraps up our list of 15 awesomely designed Android and iPhone apps. We hope you enjoyed our list (and the entries themselves), and that it helped you get a bit of design inspiration. Make sure to let us know what you think of the list, and share any apps you think look great, in the comment section below.
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