A recent survey on smartphone usage revealed a rather startling statistic. Apparently, 80% of smartphone users check their phone within minutes or even seconds of waking up! It is also estimated that 68% of smartphone users use at least one app, with many using a whole plethora of apps. So, considering these statistics, it made sense to compile a list of 16 awesome apps that will hopefully help kick-start your morning!
Alarm Clock Xtreme (Android)
Alarm Clock Xtreme is a fantastic app that lets you heavily customize your alarms. Offering features like a gentle wake up (alarm with slowly increasing volume), snooze with math puzzle solver, auto-snooze and heavily customizable alarm repeater, this app potentially allows you to spend just 5-10 minutes to take care of all routine alarms that you might need for the rest of your life if you really want to!
Wave Alarm (iPhone)
The USP of Wave Alarm is about how you can use a wave like gesture to silence or snooze your morning alarm, without actually touching your phone.. With most people fumbling and prodding for their phones after being groggily woken up by their shrieking phones, the Wave Alarm provides a refreshing way to silence or snooze your alarm, before they get on with their day.
AccuWeather (Android)
This is one absolutely awesome weather app, capable of providing “hyper-localized” weather reports, localized right down to your street address!
With amazing features like MinuteCast, push notification alerts and the two-hour hyper-localized weather forecasts, this is the only weather app you will need to decide how to dress or to figure out how to plan your day’s itinerary.
AccuWeather for iPhone
With AccuWeather easily being the go-to choice of weather app for Android, it is no surprise that it is also one of the best apps for the iPhone as well. AccuWeather for iPhone offers the same features as the Android version, with the only difference being the different, clean and unique UI that you are so used to seeing on iOS specific apps.
Wunderlist – To-do & Task List for Android
Nothing starts off a day like an organized to-do list, one that is easy to manage and edit. Wunderlist is just that, a remarkably easy and wonderful way to keep a record of things to do for the day.
With the ability to sync across all your computing devices, this is one app that is always going to help you stay on top of your to-do list. Your to-do list can also be shared and collaborated with team members, giving you a great way to delegate your itinerary management efficiently.
Errands To-Do List for iPhone
Though there is a fantastic iPhone Wunderlist app to manage your to-do list, the Errands To-Do List app can be a better choice as app of choice if you want a to-do list manager with more oomph to offer in the UI department.
Featuring a simple yet exciting graphical UI, Errands To-Do List is also a very efficient and well thought out to-do list app that syncs across all your Apple devices, in addition to syncing up to iCloud.
The task images, multiple view modes and automatic badge updating make managing your daily to-dos quite an interesting task!
Flipboard: Your News Magazine for Android
Flipboard is so much more than a personalized news magazine. Once you download this app, you will just need a few quick touches and a few minutes to set up the app to give you a collection of great news stories from all around the world, on a continually updated basis, day in and day out. Since you will decide what’s interesting to you, you will definitely find this news stream an exciting read in the morning.
Besides being a great early-morning news digest, Flipboard also allows you to view a digest of all your popular social network feeds.
One app to let you read personalized news from all over the world and also view your Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus feeds, What more can you ask of a news aggregator app!?
Flipboard: Your Social News Magazine for iPhone
Flipboard is easily the best news-aggregator app for the iPhone as well. With the app running the same engine as the Android version, only the UI is modified to seamlessly blend into the iOS feel and look.
MyFitnessPal – Calorie Counter for Android
If you are trying to lose weight, there is one golden rule that you must follow. You must eat fewer calories than you burn. A calorie counter app solves at least part of that equation by allowing you to track exactly how many calories you consume in a day, starting right with your morning breakfast, the most important meal of the day.
MyFitnessPal boasts the largest food and calorie database in active apps, allowing you to quickly enter the foods you have eaten to find relevant portion sizes and the corresponding calorie values. Besides letting you track calories consumed, it also lets you track calories burned, giving you a easily analyzable progress chart to help you with your quest to get in shape!
MyNetDiary – Food Diary and Calorie Tracker for iPhone
Designed as a calorie counter for the iPhone, this app also features an impressive database that lists over 590,000 food items. Besides listing calorie content for individual ingredients, this app goes the extra mile to list calorie count information after the scanning of bar codes of various foods that you can buy in the grocery store.
Its exercise module, with a database of over 500 exercises, will allow you to use a few touches to quickly record the number of calories that you burn with exercise.. Every part of the app’s navigation is an absolute pleasure to deal with. Everything from your favorite foods and exercises can be marked as favorites for quick repetitive future entries.
TuneIn Radio for Android
TuneIn is a fantastic radio music app that aggregates music from radio stations all over the world. Yes, from all over the world! All you need is a fairly quick internet connection to access these thousands and thousands of radio stations.
With over 100,000 radio stations and more than 4 million podcasts playing at any given time, you will never run out of great music and audio content to listen to in the morning.
TuneIn Radio for iPhone
Offering the same breadth of music and podcasts as its Android counterpart, TuneIn for iPhone is easily the best iPhone app to have if you love to listen to your favorite radio stations, playing right out of your iPhone in the morning.
Workout Trainer for Android
If you can’t afford a personal trainer in the gym or if you just don’t have the time for one, you can get your smartphone to stand in during your mornings, the best time to exercise and energize for the rest of the day.
The Workout Trainer app lets you choose from various workouts based on your goals. So, whether you are looking to lost weight, build muscle or get those six-pack abs, Workout trainer will be there to guide you, with videos, photos and detailed instructions for each and every exercise.
Fitness Buddy for iPhone
Fitness Buddy was actually recommended as a personal workout app by ESPN! Containing a database of over 400 exercises targeting every part of your body, this app can definitely assist with your fitness efforts in the morning.
Animated videos show you exactly how exercises are to be done. The app also allows you to target specific muscle groups with isolated workouts that produce more specific results that you might be after.
Waze Social GPS Maps & Traffic for Android
If your commute to work takes anything more than 15 minutes, it is probably a significant part of your mornings. Waze is an app that is based on an incredibly ingenious idea, one that allows the apps to collect real time traffic information as thousands of people drive around in their cars. This data from thousands of drivers is then taken and crunched to give you live updates on traffic when you drive to your work.
Live routing provided by the app will help you avoid traffic brought on by accidents, road work, road closure and other unforeseen circumstances. The app also lets you find gas stations with the lowest gas prices!
Waze Social GPS, Maps & Traffic for iPhone
The iPhone version of Waze is also as potent as the Android version. The only change is in UI which iPhone lovers will surely appreciate.
Featured photo credit: Morning Conversation via flic.kr
