We live in a digitised world where mobile has become a necessity and we cannot imagine our lives without it.  It's an alarm clock, contact diary, calculator, and our parents frustration as we use it for most part of the day. Well, if this all is true then why not take help of the mobile phone for studying as well?

In this article, I’ve made list of all the free useful apps that a student should have in their mobile phones. All the softwares mentioned below, are for android phones as I don’t have other Operating System (OS) to test. In case you don’t have an android phone but you still want to use some of the app from below, then you can use Bluestacks which allows you to run android apps on PC.

1. Dictionary: The very first app that I always download on my new phone is a dictionary. There is really no need to tell you why this software is important, however, with tons of dictionaries available in Play Store, it sometimes becomes difficult to select a proper dictionary. ‘English Dictionary – Offline’ is the appropriate choice according to me because of the fact that this dictionary has really simple User Interface (UI) and is an offline dictionary. Another feature that really impressed me is that albeit being offline software, it provides pronunciation of words along with their meaning. With user rating of 4.6/5, this app is really doing a wonderful job for me.

2. DFT Calculator: Recently, this app was shared on Stupidsid's Facebook page. If you’re an engineering student from EXTC/COMPS/IT who’s in the final year (SEM 7), then this app is a must for you. There's this subject called DTSP/IP where in you need to learn discrete transform of signal. If you have any unsolved examples on that subject and you want to verify whether your answer is right or not, then you can use this app. The name says it all. Apart from conventional DFT, you can even calculate IDFT, linear convolution and circular convolution using this app. Instructions on how to use this application, is given at Play Store.

3. Amazon Student: The very first question that comes to our mind when we are planning to buy a textbook is 'What is its price?' and 'Is the book available in market?'. With this app, you can instantly get the price of the textbook you want along with its availablity on the site. There’s a barcode scanning facility as well. Apart from this, you can trade in your book, electronics, apparel, etc. and get an Amazon gift card to spend on items you need.

4. Dropbox: I’ve come across many people who rarely keep a backup of their work like presentations, report, etc. Backup is one such thing that people quite often neglect. I prefer cloud storage back up because of the fact that you can access the contents from anywhere. Dropbox service gives you 2GB of free storage. If you suggest it to friends, you can earn up to 18GB of space. Dropbox also has software for your PC. To back up a file, just drop the file in the local Dropbox folder on your PC. After that, the file will automatically get saved to all your Android devices and even the Dropbox website!

5. Google Translate: I don’t think there’s any need to introduce this software. Often, whike searching something, I come across research papers that are in different language. That time, this software comes handy. Break through the language barriers with Google translate! With this app, you can translate between more than 70 languages; Speak, type, write, or take a picture to translate; Translate offline while travelling. Yes, you read it right. Translate without an internet connection! Apart from these features, you can even save your translations and access them from any devices. Please see to it that camera input and offline translation are only available for Android 2.3 and above devices.

6. Scientific Calculator: This app is perfect for students who need all the functionality of a scientific calculator. This student app is ideal for mathematical or scientific problems!

7. Office Suite 7: All Android phones come with built in Kingsoft office. However, the disadvantage of using Kingsoft is that it doesn’t support PDF. You need to have Adobe reader separately on your phone for reading PDF’s. So, if you have a rooted Android phone which allows you to uninstall pre installed Kingsoft, then make sure to download this software.

8. Electrodroid: A perfect app for EXTC/ETRX people. This app has resistor colour code decoder (3-6 bands); SMD resistor code; inductor color code decoder; Ohm’s law calculator; reactance/Resonance calculator; capacitor charge calculation; voltage Drop calculator; PCB Trace Width calculator; etc. etc.! With this app, you will never find difficulty in finding out what the value for black, brown, orange, yellow resistor. Or reverse way, you can easily find out the colour code for a 75 Ohm resistor! Apart from resistor, it has many more features. This is an ad supported version. You can even find a pro version with some extra features.

9. Wiki Encyclopedia Offline: Oh ho! This is Wikipedia's offline version. This version comes with about 2 million English articles. However, you'll need monstrous space of 3.6 GB on your device for this. If you want, you can use the official online version and save the pages that you're interested in, for reading it later i.e. reading it offline.

10. Self-control: This app helps people to reduce intemperate use of smart phones. For a specified period of time, this app will make sure that the execution of apps are banned in order to help to focus a little more. Basic telephone functions, such as phone call and SMS, are always executable. This app will ensure that you’re away from Smart Phone addiction, and on your way to achieve desired goal enthusiastically!
 

Image credits: google.com