The Artist's Picks: RealCalc

RealCalc:


Hello all, and welcome to the Apocalypse! Which is evidently not happening. (If it was happening, then you wouldn't be reading this, so I'm safe :P)

Continuing last week's talk about calculators, here we have RealCalc, an app that pretty much turns your smartphone or tablet into an old-school scientific calculator.

It's pretty cool when you first look at the screen-- it looks exactly like a calculator, no  status bar or anything!

As you can see, it has a pretty fleshed-out group of features, and works very well in my experience. My favourite thing about the interface is that you can press and hold on a button and it will activate the yellow secondary function without having to reach up and press the SHIFT key first.

Since it is just a scientific calculator, there is no fancy graphing mode or anything, but for basic calculations it excells.

Also, it works at night, unlike those old scientific calculators which had solar panels on them. It has no ads, but doesn't come with fraction support; you have to buy the Pro version for that.

Anyways, see you next week for more of my Android favourites.

The Artist's Picks: handyCalc

handyCalc:

http://dft.ba/-handycalc

Welcome back to another Artist's Picks.

Lets talk about calculators for a bit. handyCalc is simply the handiest calculator you'll ever need. Ever. It has graphing capability, it's able to solve algebraic functions, and even has a currency converter. 

No matter what your need is, handyCalc delivers, from simple calculations to advanced transcendental functions.

In addition (ha ha, a pun!) to the regular keyboard of numbers and arithmetic signs, you can access the range of advanced mathematical functions like the trigonometric operators and higher power exponents. If you can't find a certain function, you can type yours in using a QUERTY keyboard. This keyboard is also used to input variables so you can solve complex equations like:

If only I had something like this while going through high school!

When calculating, you also can get little popups before you hit the equals button, like the value of your last answer if you're including it in the current calculation, or, in this case, it states the sum and average:

You can also graph functions about x, but I find that the graphing option is a little lacking compared to other calculator apps on the Play Store. It's still massively better than my old TI-84 though.

This calculator has no ads at all, so download it for free and take advantage of the handiest calculator ever!