In these times when our smartphones are considered a close part of our survival, utilizing them productively becomes essential. Scrolling through the App Store and Google Play, it is difficult to screen out productive applications from an available pool of hundreds. Here, the discussion will proceed on producing the best productivity applications for smartphones, updated up to the year 2023, which have been designed to streamline tasks, manage time, and boost efficiency in both personal and professional spheres.
1. ABBYY FineReader: ABBYY FineReader turns pictures of words into editable typed text. It's not an impulse buy, but it's the very finest app for optical character recognition, which will let you pull off big jobs. If you have to scan entire books, really long legal documents, or old documents whose text might be a little blurry, it is well worth the money.
Price: $169.99
2. DocuSign: It's an online system designed to manage contracts and other documents requiring electronic signatures. DocuSign offers mobile apps that make it very easy to review a file and then sign off on it using your phone's touchscreen and your finger. Even if you don't need DocuSign in your work life, this application might be quite useful at home, say the next time you are asked to drop your signature on something from permission slips to lease agreements. Signing forms with the app is free, but a paid subscription plan to send documents and collect signatures is required.
Price: $10
3. Google Gemini: If you want to use an AI chatbot on your smartphone, Google Gemini, formerly called Google Bard can be an option for you. Gemini can be used for research purposes, shopping, and travel arrangements because, with Gemini, one has access to timely information from the web. One can also press Google It and get more traditional search results in case of an undesired result. While AI chatbots are certainly not for everybody or every kind of work, Gemini can help anybody become more productive if one can use a hand in researching, writing, and summarizing text. It's available for free.
4. Grammarly: In contrast to mere spell checkers, Grammarly is a fully functioning writing assistant application. You set it up to advise on whatever kind of writing you are doing. You would set it up one way if you're writing a dissertation that requires a very formal tone and another way for a blog post where shorter sentences and far more informal language would work well.
It's an app for writers that gives suggestions not only on style changes but also grammar and spelling corrections. It's wonderful for anyone who needs help writing. It's also available for free.
5. IFTTT: IFTTT is short for "If this, then that." This app is used to create custom automation between online services and devices. For example, you could create the following recipe: "When someone tags a photo of me in a Facebook photo, copy that photo to Dropbox." These little recipes are somewhat tedious to create but if you're sloth-like and wish someone else would do the heavy lifting, then you can peruse automations that others have shared with the community and click to make them yours.
6. Otter.ai: Otter.ai, or simply Otter, is one of the best transcription applications out there, certainly one of the most recommended bunches if you are looking for a free solution to fulfill your AI-powered, automated transcription needs. You get a good deal of functionality for free, including 300 live transcription minutes per month and three prerecorded audio or video files for transcription per lifetime.
If you are a huge fan of Otter and would like more bandwidth, you can subscribe to a paid plan starting at $16.99 per month, or $120 per year. There are 1,200 minutes per month for live transcriptions. All transcripts can be audio files up to 90 minutes in length. And you can upload and transcribe 10 prerecorded files a month. It's also available for free.
7. Shortcuts: Apple's Shortcuts, which is a free app on Apple mobile devices, can be turned into a personal productivity assistant. The application allows users to develop automation, which means a series of events happen automatically after being triggered.
For example, you can set a trigger that says, "When I stop my phone's Wake-Up alarm,” and then the reaction that says, "Then automatically play a morning news podcast." Similarly, if you set the trigger as "When I arrive at such-and-such a location based on GPS, then automatically silence notifications,” your phone will automatically get silent once you reach your mentioned location.
8. Zapier: If you want some of your work to be automatically done, Zapier is a great app to try. This great web-based tool allows one to set up automation between applications and services, just about the same as IFTTT but focused more on business applications.
Here's an example of automation you might set up in Zapier. "Every time a customer purchases an item from my website, add a task in Asana for my fulfillment team, add this customer's email address to the Mailchimp mailing list, and send a confirmation message to the customer." Due to this automation, you save a lot of time for important work.
With how they have become part of our lives nowadays, using a smartphone for productivity is not optional anymore; it's a must. We discussed the types of productivity applications existing today, from document management applications like ABBYY FineReader and DocuSign to task automation apps like IFTTT and Zapier. Each of them is designed to meet the needs specified, so every personal and professional task is done effectively.
AI-powered tools, such as Google Gemini and Otter.ai, together with the capability they have under the hood, represent a quantum leap in productivity through automation and intelligent assistance. At the same time, apps such as Grammarly and Shortcuts allow for customization and flexibility so that users can fine-tune their digital experience for their specific preferences.
Ultimately, being most productive depends on the selection of apps that best serve your goals and the manner of working. Thus, whether you are interested in automating the tedium, better document management, or improving your writing, the apps discussed in this post give just the right mix of functionality and innovation. As we go deeper into 2024, these tools will further evolve to provide advanced features and maintain their worth in keeping you productive and ahead of others.