5 Android and iOS applications to install on your smartphone without hesitation

This top 5 is not like our selections of free applications that we offer you twice a week. Here, we install the applications on our own smartphones and test them. We check if there are not too many in-app purchases, ads and if the applications respect your personal data more or less.

We try to select useful applications, whether for productivity, personalization of your interface or digital well-being. And, our top 5 always includes at least one mobile game. Applications can be free or paid, with or without a subscription. But, it will always be indicated!

Dreamdale (Android and iOS)

SayGames offers a game with strategy/construction and RPG elements, but which remains a casual game. In Dreamdale, you are first the hero who must free his kidnapped princess. You start by cutting down trees and breaking stones, so you gain resources. These can then be partly transformed and are used, among other things, to develop the island little by little.

You can go fishing with a small boat and visit/conquer other islands with a ship. Spoilers: When you free your princess, the game is not over, but you move with her into a house that needs to be furnished. So you fight in dungeons like in a role-playing game, you build your island like in other construction games and you arrange your house like in The Sims or something. The best of all worlds, in a way.

• Price: Free / Advertising: Yes / In-app purchases: Yes / Account required: No

Shades: Shadow Fight Roguelike

Shades: Shadow Fight Roguelike is not for the faint of heart and slow reactions. Fight your way through countless enemies with varying combat skills. But be careful, every step could mean the end.

Combat is simple, you have a weapon or you use kicks and punches to fight through the levels. The particularity of this game: You get a reward after each fight. For example, you increase your hit points or your chance of inflicting critical damage. Believe us, you will be grateful for every bonus, because the opponents are very strong from the start.

After each pass you will get other rewards. Weapons and armor await you, which you can upgrade later. To do this, you will use the resources that you obtain as you win.

• Price: Free / Advertising: Yes / In-app purchases: yes / Account required: No

Pok Pok (iOS)

Do you have young children at home or in your family? Then you probably know how creatively children create an entire universe full of life from a pile of dead building blocks. It is precisely this approach that the Pok Pok application wants to encourage, with currently 17 virtual game rooms filled with interactive objects.

The app is aimed primarily at children aged two to seven and follows the Montessori approach, in which children find a prepared environment in which they can find their own way. There is therefore no prepared action, but – as with building blocks – a multitude of objects which can carry out their own actions and interact with each other in various ways.

In the game rooms, for example, children move characters and feed them with honey that falls from virtual hives. They can also move pieces in ball circuits and thus influence the trajectories. They can also build their own characters with heads, torsos and legs. Or, they create their own living village from small tiles.

• Price: 7 days free, €6.99 per month or €45.99 per year / Advertising: No / In-app purchases: No / Account required: No (but subscription).

CSR Racing 2: Drag Car Racing

If you’re looking for car racing with high-quality graphics and low demands on driving skills, my tip of the day, CSR Racing 2: Drag Car Racing, should suit you just fine. As the name suggests, it’s not so much about hitting the perfect apex of a corner to accelerate at the right time, but rather hitting the quarter mile mark and finding the right moment to change gears.

As we already mentioned, the strong point of this game is its graphics. The car fleet, made up of around fifty different vehicles, does not include imaginary racing cars, but cars from Audi, BMW, Bugatti, Ferrari, Mercedes, Porsche, Lamborghini and many other models that you would probably never be able to offer you in real life.

But in this case it is not a problem, because in principle you can play for a long time without having to invest a cent. Of course, you can spend up to €9.99 in-game to buy your next tuning parts, because everything is customizable, from the appearance to the interior, engine parts, exhaust exhaust and chassis.

• Price: Free / Advertising: Yes / In-app purchases: Yes / Account required: No

aBattery (Android)

In addition to all these games, we also have a really interesting application for your smartphone, which will allow you to always be in control. This is aBattery, which gives you precise information about the status of your battery.

However, this only concerns Android smartphones and some information is only available for smartphones running Android 14. You also need to enable debugging over Wifi and download Shizuku from Google Play Store.

Once Shizuku is installed, you need to enable developer options. It’s pretty fast. To do this, open your settings and look for the option “About the phone”tap it then search for it build number.

Tap it seven times and you will have enabled developer options. Open them now and search “WiFi Debugging”. Activate the option and hold it for about 3 seconds to open the context menu. All you have to do is activate pairing mode.

Now all you have to do is start debugging via Shizuku and distribute the necessary permissions in aBattery to read the battery data. On the Google Pixel 6 you can already see that the maximum capacity has decreased slightly and it has already undergone 302 charge cycles. If you want to check if your battery is in good condition, these small steps and the aBattery app are worth it.

• Price: Free / Advertising: No / In-app purchases: No / Account required: No

What is your favorite app? And do you have any other app tips for us? Please let us know your recommendations in the comments!