2017 is almost over and the world is ready to welcome 2018 with open hands. A lot of people would have bought new phones or other gadgets this holiday season and might be wondering what kind of apps or games to install on their phone, what are absolutely necessary and genuinely useful so that they could proceed using their new device with its full potential.
But finding the useful and must have apps among the millions of apps available for download in the Google Play Store is not an easy task and you can’t spend hours searching for what to install on your new Android phone. So, we have done the work for you and have put together a list of 10 must have and most useful Android apps that you should start your 2018 with.
1. NOVA LAUNCHER
The first thing every Android user must do after getting a new phone is to customize its homescreen and other aspects of the user interface and the best way to do that is to download the most popular and the highly customizable Android launcher called Nova Launcher. 
Nova is one of the most used launchers for Android, mainly because of its deep customization options and the ability to tweak your device to look like anything you want by changing the wallpapers, icon packs, fonts, and even adding widgets, gestures and other additional features to your homescreen.
2. PIXEL ICON PACK
While you can customize the look of your new Android phone mostly with Nova Launcher or other popular custom launchers for Android, it alone is not enough to give your device a fresh and an unique look. Along with installing a custom launcher, you could also try to further customize your device by applying a custom icon pack 
With lot of icon packs available for download from the Play Store and a lot of new ones being added every day, we have found the Pixel Icon Pack to be the best among the lot. The main reasons for recommending the icon pack is that it gives a stock Android feel to your device and it has been recently updated to look like the icons of Android Oreo 8.0. So, if you are a fan of the Pixel devices or the stock Android look, then this app is a must have.
3.TEXTRA SMS
Textra SMS app for Android is kind of like iMessages for iPhones. While it is not technically exclusive and not a paid app, it certainly has a lot more features than you could ask from a text messaging app. For starters, it has 100s of unique themes with the Material design guidelines for both dark and light theme lovers, floating bubble notifications like Facebook Messenger and you can even schedule messages with this app! 
Also, just like other popular social messaging apps like Whatsapp or Messenger, Textra SMS also supports sending of all kind of media files like, image, video, audio and even GIFs. The best part about Textra is that you can customize what kind of emojis you want to use like Android, iOS, Twitter or Instagram. The app is completely free and has very minimal ads which could also be removed by making an one time in-app purchase.
4.IFTTT
IFTTT, short for If This Then That, is an automation based app where the user could connect multiple services together to make them work as a collaborative activity. The app consists of hundreds of pre defined appplets connected with popular services like Facebook, Twitter, iCloud, Spotify etc and you can even create your own applets if you want. 
Once you select an applet and configure its functionality, everything else will happen automatically from there. For example if you select the Facebook and Instagram Applet, whenever you upload an image to your Instagram profile, the app will automatically upload the same image to your Facebook profile, whenever there is a change in the weather it will send you a mail or change your calendar event and so on.
5.FLYNX
Flynx is one of those apps which you should definitely install on your device if you are someone who multi tasks a lot and doesn’t prefer constantly switching between different apps everytime you click on a link or read an article. What the app basically does is that, whenever you click on a link while browsing through an app other than the browser app, the app will open the link in a floating bubble on your screen. 
The article will be loading in the background and whenever you want to read that post, you can just click on the link and it will be opened just like the Facebook Messenger bubbles. You can also open multiple bubbles at the same time and even bookmark them so that you could open the app and read your favourite articles anytime you want. The app even has a reading mode where it blocks the images and ads and just shows you the text.
6.FLESKY KEYBOARD
If you don’t like the traditional keyboard that comes with your Android smartphone, then you should try the Flesky Keyboard, the most customizable keyboard which also comes with a lot of extensions. The app developer claims that it is one of the fastest keyboards available in the Play Store and it even lives up to the mark with the help of multiple gestures and addons. 
You can even use the Flesky Keyboard to directly search the internet, send GIFs or even funny memes without leaving the app. The app also supports sending stickers to compatible messaging apps and you can even customize the existing gestures or add your own based on your preference.
7.BLACKPLAYER
BlackPlayer is my personal favourite music player and it is better than the default music player app found on your Android phone in a lot of ways. For starters, it has a beautiful minimalistic design with dark theme which goes very well with devices with AMOLED display and creating a playlist of your favourite songs with BlackPlayer is much easier than other apps. 
The music player app also has other features like an advanced equalizer with 5 bands, individual customization options for sound effects and it even displays the lyrics when they are available for the particular songs you listen to.
8.PIKTURES
Most stock Android smartphones do not come with a standalone gallery app and the ones found in the other OEMs are also not that good and do not serve many purposes of the user. Fortunately, there are a lot of third party apps available to serve this need, and Piktures is one of the best. 
The app is based on a slide layout, you have to just keep sliding right to access your photos and videos and even your shared files present on third party cloud apps like Google Drive or Drop Box. The best thing about the Piktures Gallery app is that you can access almost all of the features for free and with no ads.
9. 1WEATHER
The best things about the 1Weather app are its beautiful widgets and its intuitive app interface. The weather app comes with a lot of widgets which support multiple sizes and locations and you can add upto 12 locations to the app to get the weather report of different cities at the same time. 
The app sends you occasional notifications about severe weather alerts and abnormal changes in the temperature and all these information are directly gathered from official weather providers so they are extremely accurate. 1Weather is also lite in size and you can even customize the update interval to make sure it doesn’t affect your battery life much.
10. BACKDROPS
Backdrops is currently the best wallpaper app you can find on the Google Play Store and it is also the most recommended one by top reviewers and critics. The main reasons being, the app developers manually design and upload the wallpapers to the app so that every single wallpaper you find on Backdrops are 100% unique and cannot be found elsewhere. 
If you are someone who wants to give an unique look to your phone’s homescreen and think no one else could have the one I use, then Backdrops might be the perfect choice for your needs. The app is free to use and comes with ads, but if you want to buy the premium version, then the ads would be removed and you would also get access to some of the premium categories.
Let us know what you think about the apps mentioned in the list. Do you think these would be useful for your new device? Let us know in the comments below your thoughts and if you know any other apps that you think would be useful for new Android users.