We began this year´s first trimester with dozens of new apps added to Google Play Store, for the use (and joy) of all of us Android consumers.

As you probably already know, last year Google released an Android Excellence recognition, in the Editor’s choice page of the Play Store. This, to provide proper attention to apps with better experience and performance from the rest.

Photo by Stephen Frank on Unsplash

Android Excellence recognition has been divided into two categories: apps and games. We would like to talk about some of the ones from the first category.

We must say that most of these apps are not strictly new releases, however, they have been constantly optimized to perform great on Android, something valuable to take as reference. And with lots of great reviews and ratings, they deserve to be considered as promising apps of 2018.

Fabulous – Motivate Me

Do you want to start creating better habits to enhance your productivity or health? You should try Fabulous – Motivate Me then. You´ll only need 19 days to reset your habits!

This app functions with integrated coaching to help you achieve your often wanted (yet not accomplished) goals like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more relaxed, improving your concentration level, and more.

The best of all is that Fabulous makes use of scientific basis to keep you motivated, providing you useful reminders and exercises to make you feel better every day.

Shpock

Shpock might be one of the most complete apps you can use to buy and sell used things. With a friendly interface, it has been one of the most downloaded apps for shopping in the UK for the last couple of years.  

It has great integrated functions such as sharing on social media, searching for alerts, chatting or reporting system. Plus, it has even let young designers start selling their original creations in a platform that lends itself to this.

WeVideo

WeVideo is an amazing video editor for mobile apps. It has been redesigned to improve User Experience, which makes tasks like adjusting clips length, adding music or text and recording your own narrations more intuitive and really easy to use.

This app comes with nice themes to help you polish your videos for personal use or share them on social media. This video editor is perfect for enthusiastic videographers who want to take their favorite moments to the next level.

Blinkist

Blinkist gathers the central ideas of best-selling nonfiction books to help you find a better version of you. Summarized into 15-minute reads or audios, the app aims to grow the potential of their users, by gaining knowledge on economics, science, history or culture topics.

Again, besides its proposition value, this app is great due to its improved User Experience and performance.

Journey

Journey is a great example of the Keep It Simple principle. It covers all the things that need to be covered and does it beautifully: Cross-platform, photos storage, organization, social media, night mode and even a passcode to keep you journaling private.

This diary app will let you relive all those significant moments of your life on your mobile device.

Rather than talking about well-positioned apps from this list like LinkedIn, Airbnb or Acorns, we decided to mention what we thought would be less-known apps. It is worth to remind Android excellence apps are no chosen by the number of downloads but by experience and performance.

Do you agree they could grow even more this year given their excellent design and usability? Which ones you think will be added in the next Google Play´s update? Let us know in the comments!