10 apps thats brings you real CASH and REWARDS

How much do you pay for apps on your iOS or Android device? Do you know that you can earn real cash and rewards from using certain apps? Granted that you will have to work for it by carrying out tasks like grocery shopping or checking out a new line of clothing, watching trailers, taking photos, and meeting new people. Sound interesting?
Then, you really should check out these 10 apps that will earn you real cash and rewards (gift cards and redeemables). We’ve split the tasks from the rewards to help you figure out which app to try out first., but something tells us that you’d probably be checking all of them out. Some even help you to get in shape and to do your part for charity.

1. Field Agent

What to do: You turn into a field agent for some field work, carrying out small missions in your neighborhood. You’ll get instructions of what to do and where to go, places like your local shopping mall, grocery store, or any landmark. The jobs must be completed within 2 hours, and is on a first come, first served.
What you get: Each job is worth between $2 and $12 (paid via PayPal).
Platform: iOS

2. CheckPoints

What to do: You can earn points for checking in to a grocery store, cafe or shopping mall, scanning the items that you buy during these errands or even when you recommend a friend to join CheckPoints.
What you get: The earned points can then be redeemed for rewards like Amazon.com and Walmart gift cards, games, cool gadgets and more.
Platform: iOS | Android

3. EasyShift

What to do: Complete simple assignments (Shifts) such as taking photos, giving an opinion, or recording the price of a product. After you complete several tasks, you will be promoted and will then be able to unlock higher-paying assignments and other valuable perks.
What you get: Payments will be made via PayPal and can be processed within 48 hours.
Platform: iOS

4. App Trailers

What to do: Preview trailers about apps and earn points while you’re at it. Help the app makers improve their app trailers by sharing honest opinions about what they need to add to complete the trailer.
What you get: You get paid half a cent for each video you watch. For trying out a demo (of an app), you can get paid between 9 cents to a dollar. Joining via a friend’s referral code may give you a head start of 50 points.
Platform: iOS | Android

5. Iconzoomer

What to do: Take photos of what is asked in your assignment: your lunch, your drink, or the shoes you are wearing, and earn money for each snap. Share a comment about the snapshot (if you got a feedback you want the manufacturer the know, this is your chance), and that’s it.
What you get: Earn money for each completed assignment via PayPal or get free merchandize. There is also the option to donate to charity via Unicef.
Platform: iOS | Android

6. GymPact

What to do: Exercise at the gym and earn money. Seriously! Once you’ve made a week-long pact on GymPact, you get paid for every day you go, and you have to pay for every day you skip. Those who get to the gym to exercise get to claim their monies from those who didn’t!
What you get: You’re getting $0.50 to $0.75 per workout which must lasts a minimum of 30 minutes. And you get to follow your exercise regime, and keep fit and healthy.
Platform: iOS

7. Gigwalk

What to do: Be a Gigwalker and run special assignments for clients at a preset price. You could be asked to take photos of a place, hand out fliers, check out a new bistro or a new product, or even become a mystery shopper. You essentially become your clients’ eyes and ears simply by being at the right place and the right time.
What you get: Get paid from $10 to $15 an hour.
Platform: iOS

8. Shopkick

What to do: If you are a heavy shopper and love trends and bargains, earn ‘kicks’ just by being yourself with Shopkick. Find participating shopping places that allow you to earn kicks with every walk-in and/or purchase and you will be able to redeem rewards with the ‘kicks’.
What you get: You get a first look at items at the store (while earning extra ‘kicks’) even before an actual walk-in. Use your ‘kicks’ to unlock gift cards and products you can redeem.
Platform: iOS | Android

9. ESPN Streak For The Cash

What to do: Think you know your sports team? Then name your predictions for each game and make sure you get the longest winning streak of the month. To make it tougher, you have to make the call for 10 different sports and maintain your streak.
What you get: The longest winning streak for a team or a player will win a monthly grand prize of $50,000.
Platform: iOS | Android

10. Phewtick

What to do: Get Phewtick on your phone, meet up with someone, scan a QR Code and voila, get paid just for meeting people.
What you get: Earn points that you can cash out, or donate to Unicef or the Red Cross. And meeting new people for work or leisure.
Platform: iOS | Android

More Apps!

Here are 7 more apps where you can earn money just by answering surveys, watching videos, downloading free apps among others.
Cash King: You earn money for downloading and trying out free apps (including new games), watching videos or completing surveys. Get paid via PayPal or receive Amazon.com gift cards in return.
Platform: Android

Get Paid to Play!: Watch some video ads, download and play some new games, and register on websites to get paid. You can withdraw your payment from PayPal.
Platform: Android

NPolls: Share your opinions by answering polls. Topics may cover politics, sports, social trends, lifestyle, brands and more. You are paid usually around 20 cents per survey.
Platform: iOS | Android

Mobile Rewards: Sign up for a free service, watch a Youtube video, or mention a product on your Facebook Wall. Earn credits that can be redeemed in cash via PayPal. Use a referral link and you can earn 100 credits for every friend who signs up, plus 10% of their earnings.
Platform: iOS

JunoWallet: Play games, watch videos, complete surveys and invite tons of your friends to join JunoWallet. A variety of rewards via Invites (3 levels) which can come as giftcards for games, pizza, coffee, movie tickets and more.
Platform: iOS | Android

Earn Money: Download free or paid apps, register to free or paid websites, or watch ads to earn points that can be accumulated and turned into cash. Payment is done via PayPal.
Platform: Android

Thumbspeak: Answer questions in polls and surveys and get paid for your opinion. Get paid via PayPal or cash in on gift cards.
Platform: iOS

Review of Nokia X

Hands on: Nokia X review

Microsoft tries to own all the Google juice

Plus +

1. Sleek User interface
2. lowest price

negatives -

1. Low storage space
2. same kind of design (Chunky)
3. There is no Playstore

 

 

Design and interface 

The Nokia X is the Finnish brand's big effort to make greater waves into the low, low end of the smartphone market – and it's enlisted the help of Android to make that happen.
The Nokia X is a phone that comes with a fairly decent spec list for a phone that's coming in at €89 before tax (around £75, $120, AU$135) – we're talking a dual-core 1GHz processor from Qualcomm, 512MB of RAM, a 4-inch WVGA screen and a 1500mAh battery.

However, it's important not to compare to this to the likes of the Moto G, as it's not meant for the more developed regions in terms of smartphone use. This is for areas where Android devices are sold at a much lower average price, but still can do the basic things that others can.

With that in mind, the Nokia X is probably a little better than OK. The polycarbonate body is fairly chunky, but in the hand it dovetails well with the smaller screen, as it would be hard to hold something that small and thin.

The screen doesn't seem to suffer either – the contrast is strong, helped by the smorgasbord of colour on offer from the live tiles.
There's not a lot else on offer here in terms of ports or anything – the mandatory headphone jack and camera (which is only a 3MP option with no flash) are the only other items in a sea of matte plastic.

But this isn't meant to be a phone that's all about design – the Nokia X is supposed to offer a differentiated user experience from the rest of the identikit Android phones on the market.

To that end, I actually rather liked what Finland's top Microsoft subsidiary is doing – there's a nice fusion of Android familiarity and Windows Phone functionality.
The live tiles idea is really cool – it's essentially just a clever way of doing Android widgets, but while other launchers can make things look too complex, Nokia is doing things its own way and making it all seem a lot cooler.

For instance, there's no 'Apps' key that shows all the little bits of software you've downloaded – now it's all in one long list that just endlessly scrolls. To that end, it can get a bit messy, so Nokia's method of creating folders is needed and something that wasn't possible on Windows Phone.

It's nothing special, and you can't just drag and drop to create a folder, instead needing to tap an icon. But at least dragging the live tile icons for each app will allow you to move the order around automatically, and some, such as the gallery, will expand to show pictures in your album.

There's even the chance to change the colour of some apps to match your theme – although the fact you can't do this to all of them means this feature is slightly negated.
You can also see more notifications on the lock screen than you might on other Nokia phones - it's a little boring in terms of design, but works well enough.

The other big change is Nokia's Fast Lane – it's an odd change from the notifications bar, as it's essentially the same thing but one long scrolling page that can be accessed by swiping right or left.

It's cool in some respects, as it allows you to dynamically control things like the music player, and always keeps your most-used apps close at hand. However, there is still the same pull-down bar as on other Android handsets here, but it's only for changing settings.

Come on Nokia, you don't have to change EVERYTHING.
Fast Lane isn't the same as the multi-tasking menu you'll get on the likes of most other Android phones - while long pressing the icon will shut it down, the app apparently still runs.
However, we noted that the multi-tasking menu is still there, but you'll need to install specific apps to get it to work - not hard, but its absence out of the box may irk some.

CPU

The dual-core processor seems perfectly able to handle all tasks – it stuttered a fair bit when opening some apps, and in the demo the mapping application didn't like rendering 3D images at speed, but on the whole it was OK.
Then again, it feels like this should be a little cheaper as a device once you've dug a little more into it. It's likely to be pretty kind to that 1500mAh battery, so at least you won't be reaching for the charger every seven seconds.

The Nokia X only features 4GB of on-board storage, and no microSD card expansion (unlike the Nokia X+, which has that option and 768MB of RAM to speed things up a little) which is a real worry when it comes to trying to add media as well as downloading apps – there's not a lot of room for much else.
Update: So it turns out we were fed wrong information on the Nokia stand - there is a microSD slot here, as you can see, meaning the only difference between the X and X+ is the extra RAM...we'd always recommend paying more to get that speed boost, but in some countries a few pounds difference in the price is a huge thing.

There's also a removable battery in the mix too (like its brother) - I'm going to guess that Nokia will only release either the X or X+ in more developed markets, and it will likely be the latter to ensure greater app performance, given how close these models are.
Camera
Nokia's 3MP effort without flash is just that: non-flashy. It's a super-basic snapper, and it's almost so basic that I feel the Finns should be making a bit more of an effort, even at this price point.
However, there are some tweaks: you can alter the white balance and exposure levels ( a fairly easy trick for most chips these days) so you can start to improve the brightness when the darkness begins to set in.

The pictures you take also append to a Live Tile on the home screen in a similar way to Windows Phone - although only if you've sized up the window, given you can make the Live Tiles bigger and smaller as you wish in most cases.

Nokia has been very careful to remove everything from Google here and make it all about Microsoft – there are lots of similarities between the UI on show here and Windows Phone.

OneDrive is front and centre, and with 10GB of storage on offer that might seem enticing for those stuck using Android phones with no access to Google's Drive.
However, there does seem to be a feeling this is forced into the phone – part of me keeps wishing that Nokia had just done this before signing itself away to Microsoft, as this could have been a really good addition to the Android game.

Early verdict

The Nokia X is a hard phone to work out – on the one hand, it's a super cheap handset and as such has the budget specs you'd expect.
On the other, it seems to be not much better than the Lumia 520, which is a Windows Phone handset and supposed to sit above it in the product line – on current prices, it's also cheaper.
There are some worries here even for the developing nations: that 4GB of storage could get eaten up quickly, and while Nokia is touting the ability to add third party apps through other stores, new phones can live and die by app availability and that could kill the Nokia Android project.
The Nokia X is constructed well enough, has a interesting new UI and is breaking new ground – but as a new phone, it seems a bit expensive for what's on offer.