Welcome to the 439th edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the headlines from the past week:

• Instagram is testing a new age verification process in the US. It uses AI to check a person’s face to see if they are actually the age they claim to be. This is a step to prevent children from creating accounts before they are old enough to do so. It’s buggy, especially for women and darker-skinned people, but we assume those wrinkles will fade over time.
• The free versions of Google Hangouts began their transition to Google Chat this week. Many people last as long as possible on Google Hangouts. However, they won’t be able to last much longer. None of this is a surprise. Google announced the end of Hangouts last year. Click on the link for more details.
• Google is reportedly working on a new feature for Google TV devices. The feature would use your phone credentials to automatically sign in to apps on Google TV devices. For example, you would download Crunchyroll and Google TV would borrow your phone credentials so you don’t have to sign in again. It’s just a code in the Google TV Setup app. We don’t know if this will become a full feature.
• Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has officially confirmed that Netflix is ​​working on an ad-based level. He didn’t reveal much more than that, but it puts some confirmation on the matter. It will be cheaper than the ad-free plans and that’s about all we know about it at the moment. Click on the link to find out more.
• Arm made a few announcements this week, including new processors and a new GPU. You can read more about CPUs at the link, but the GPU is more interesting for the purposes of this roundup. The Arm Immortalis is the first Arm GPU with ray tracing support. It boasts a 300% performance boost over software ray tracing. Again, click the link for more, but with more Android game consoles on the way, the new GPU could be a big deal.

Three Kingdoms: Hero Wars

Price: free to play

Three Kingdoms: Hero Wars is a mobile gacha. Players build a team of heroes across a variety of different classes, and the game features a roster of over 100 heroes at launch. The fight is a pretty standard gacha fair where you place your heroes, use their abilities, and defeat the bad guys. There’s a story to play, alliances to join with friends, and the artwork is pretty decent. It relies heavily on the regular gacha formula, but luckily it does it so well. The tutorial is horrible, but after that the game is pretty cool.

Qlate

Price: Free / $2.49

Qlate is a combination of a notepad and a calculator. The notebook side of things is pretty straightforward. You can take notes, jot down ideas, or even keep lists. The calculator side of things is a bit more complex. You can do a lot with it, from academic stuff to calculating other stuff. It’s definitely not your average calculator app in that regard. The app is free with ads or you can purchase the premium version for $2.49. It is certainly an interesting idea.

My cat

Price: free to play

My Cat is a pet simulation game where you raise a cat. You get the cat as a kitten, then you raise it. There are over 40 cat breeds to choose from. It mainly consists of mini-games where you play with the kitten and just hang around. Players can even take AR selfies with their kittens in it. There are also social elements. You can visit your friends and play with your pets together. It’s a cute and family game. Just make sure to password protect your Google Play account before letting your kids play as there are in-app purchases.

Pluma RSS Reader

Price: Free / $2.99 ​​/ $2.49 per month / $39.99

Pluma RSS Reader is a clean and minimal RSS reader. It works like many other RSS readers, except this one comes with some extra features. You can get keyword-based alerts, read later so you can keep up to date with things that matter to you, and it supports both Pocket and Instapaper. There really isn’t much to say about it. It’s not necessarily trivial, but it’s also an RSS reader and we all know how it works. You can pay $2.99 ​​to remove ads and get a few features or a subscription to get things like account sync. The $39.99 price tier unlocks all features forever.

Jurassic World Primal Ops

Price: free to play

Jurassic World Primal Ops is a top-down action-adventure game. Players are tasked with traversing the game world while rescuing dinosaurs. You are trained as a dinosaur trainer, so captured dinosaurs also become your battle companions. It’s basically the gameplay loop. You fight poachers and other villains, catch dinosaurs, and explore the world. The exit was a bit rough. The controls are a bit clunky and some buttons are very slow to respond. It certainly has the potential to be good, but we’ll have to wait and see if the developers can smooth things out a bit.

If we missed any big Android app or game releases, tell us about them in the comments or tweet me at ThatJoeHindy.
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