Welcome to the final round of Gizmodo’s March Madness Group Challenge to rank the greatest apps of all time!After a month of being overtaken as a multi-billion dollar app with billions of users, Calculator is finally being phased out by Flashlight yesterday’s game. Today’s winner will officially wear the crown, and it all comes down to two apps that help us explore the unknown.
If you’re just tuning in, you can read all of our selection criteria for this historic match right here. Check out the full list of contestants embedded below. As always, if you think we’ve missed your personal favorite app, give us a shout in the comments. Now, let’s take a look at today’s challengers.
Here’s what we said about Google Maps in the first round:
Launched in 2005, Google Maps is one of the oldest candidates in the competition, but its age shows no signs of slowing down. If there’s one mobile app that can be said to have made the world a better place, this one is indisputable. The days of printing MapQuest directions were officially over when this bad boy came along. Even Apple hasn’t caught up.
This is what we wrote about flashlights last time:
For many people, a flashlight app is not an app at all. Today, it is a built-in utility on most smartphones. But this is not always the case. In 2010, a full two years after the App Store launched, Apple finally allowed apps to use the camera flash on the iPhone 4 as a continuous flashlight. Many developers have jumped on the gold rush.
By 2013, there were over a thousand flashlight apps in the App Store, but the good times fell apart when Apple added native flashlight functionality. Whoever is still making money in this crowded field is going bankrupt, and many brick-and-mortar flashlight manufacturers may be feeling the pain.
A flashlight app does one thing, and what it does is useful. This is something countless apps cannot do.
So, reader, what would it be?Should Google Maps glorify or humble its flashlight? this The greatest app ever?
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