As mobile devices become more central to everyday life, some apps have become clear frontrunners, with millions of users who enjoy their innovative features and great user experiences.
In this review, we look at four outstanding applications that have dominated download charts and metrics of user engagement throughout 2025.
This review provides insight into what makes these platforms resonate with modern consumers.
Trending Apps and Their Key Features
1#. Focus Friend: For Productivity Tracking
Focus Friend, designed by online educator Hank Green and Honey B Games, has been named Google Play’s app of the year and topped the charts in Apple’s App Store.
The app gamifies the traditional productivity timer with a virtual bean companion that knits socks and scarves while a user is focusing on a task.
Its Deep Focus Mode temporarily blocks distracting applications during focus sessions by connecting to screen time settings on iOS.
What sets Focus Friend apart from other productivity tools is its emotional design; interrupting a focus session makes the bean drop its knitting needles and display visible sadness, it leverages the desire of users to avoid disappointing the virtual bean.
The core features of this app include live activity tracking on locked screens, break timers following the Pomodoro method, hundreds of decorative items to customise the bean’s living space, and various bean skins, ranging from coffee beans to edamame.
The interface is designed to be simple yet captivating: users earn virtual currency after completing focus sessions that they can spend to decorate their room.
The subscription tier is $1.99/month or $29.99/lifetime, although the lifetime option is the most popular among users.
The design philosophy of the Focus Friend app reflects a broader trend in the direction of wellness applications that place user mental health above monetisation via ads.
The co-founder, Hanks Green in his own words made it clear that the app was meant to have “an ad-free experience because the mobile ad ecosystem kinda blows”, and this positions Focus Friend both as a productivity tool and as a good example of ethical app development.
#2. Temu: Viral E-commerce Platform
Launched in September 2022 by PDD Holdings, Temu has since expanded its operations to more than 90 markets around the world and surpassed AliExpress as the second most-used e-retailer for cross-border sales globally. The app was created to connect consumers directly with manufacturers, cut out intermediary costs, and offer products priced 50-90% below normal retail price.
The app comes with AI-driven dynamic pricing algorithms combined with factory-direct sourcing to keep prices more competitive.
According to SensorTower data, in 2023, Temu reached almost 338 million downloads, while the gross merchandise volume of the platform reportedly reached around $112 million per day.
The platform’s catalogue has more than 250 product categories, ranging from electronics and fashion to home goods and beauty products.
Temu’s user interface has some gamification elements that are inspired by casino mechanics, including wheels of fortune, countdown timers for limited offers, and mini-games such as Farmland and Fishland that promise free items and discount coupons. These features are meant to create urgency while engaging the brain’s reward circuits.
It also encourages frequent app opens and longer browsing sessions. At Google I/O 2025, the platform was hailed as an early adopter of Web UI primitives, with integration of these technologies leading to a 10% increase in user session duration and a 15% rise in page views.
The app also offers standard shipping for free by partnering with major logistics carriers like UPS, FedEx, and USPS. Recent modifications in supply chains available on the app have allowed Temu to move beyond just Chinese imports, and 57% of US consumers have shopped on the site, a notable degree of market penetration despite high regulatory scrutiny worldwide.
#3. ChatGPT: AI Assistance and Productivity
The ChatGPT mobile app has generated $1.35 billion in revenue through July 2025. This is over six times compared to the same period in 2024.
This conversational AI assistant has evolved from just a simple chatbot into a very useful productivity platform with capabilities spanning creative writing, data analysis, and real-time problem-solving.
In recent updates, OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT Pulse for Pro users; this feature performs research and delivers personalised updates based on your chat history, connected calendar apps, and user feedback. Also, an advanced voice mode is now supported in the application, including real-time conversations, screen sharing capabilities, and even the ability to upload videos to interact naturally with your words instead of writing queries.
The “Projects” feature allows users to organise conversations thematically, upload relevant files, set custom instructions, and maintain context across multiple sessions.
This is now enhanced with improved memory that can refer back to recent conversations for free users to create responses that make more sense and with relevant context.
The interface of the app allows for seamless transitions between devices, with conversation history synchronising across iOS, Android, and desktop platforms.
OpenAI also recently introduced an Apps SDK that enables developers to build their own interactive applications running inside ChatGPT conversations, with applications responding to natural language prompts and featuring interfaces directly within the chat environment. This extension places ChatGPT not just as a tool itself but as an ecosystem where third parties can reach more than 800 million users.
#4. Luminar Neo: Professional Photo Editing
Among Google Play’s best apps for 2025, Luminar Neo has redefined photo editing with its smooth workflow across devices, powered by an AI toolkit.
The application comes with professional-grade capabilities that can be accessed without a subscription, just like traditional editing software.
Core features of this app also include generative AI tools like GenErase to remove unwanted elements, GenExpand to extend photo boundaries, and GenSwap to replace specific elements with AI-generated alternatives.
Then, there are also specialised enhancement tools like Sky AI, which can smoothly replace skies, Relight AI for dynamic lighting adjustments, and Skin AI for automated portrait retouching.
The Luminar Ecosystem, introduced in the Fall 2025 update, syncs edits between mobile and desktop applications, enabling users to start editing on smartphones and transition smoothly to computers for fine-tuning.
Other additions include Luminar Spaces for creating shareable online galleries and the Light Depth tool for precision relighting, further extending the utility of the application beyond individual editing into collaborative and presentational contexts.
The mobile version of this app can support RAW file editing and includes Apple Pencil compatibility for iPad users, allowing precise, hands-on control.
The platform can function both as a standalone editor and as a plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom, meaning that integration into existing workflows doesn’t require a full software migration.
Benefits and Real-World Use Cases
Each trending application addresses different user needs. Focus Friend addresses the modern challenge of smartphone distraction. The app operates by flipping the typical relationship that exists between users and their devices.
Students who are studying for exams will appreciate the longer spans of focus time, while professionals handling any complex projects can make good use of the Pomodoro-like break timers that can help them avoid burnout. The app’s approach tends to work in cases involving people with ADHD.
The most visible impact of Temu, however, is how household budgets can be managed, where consumers who need value can find products at very affordable price points.
The direct-from-manufacturer model helps to support small business owners’ inventorying products, crafters buying materials for creative projects, and families who are furnishing their homes on tight budgets.
On the other hand, ChatGPT serves a growing variety of functions, from students who write research papers with live citation support to developers debugging code with conversational explanations about complex algorithms.
Marketing teams can also brainstorm concepts for their campaigns on the app, and entrepreneurs can use the business plan refinement capabilities. Also, the new voice mode features can be very indispensable on commutes or physical activities because they allow for hands-free productivity that can’t be done with a text interface.
Luminar Neo empowers photographers of every skill level, from hobbyists who want to improve vacation snapshots to professionals managing client media.
The cross-device compatibility enables modern workflows in which initial selections can happen on mobile devices during shoots, while detailed editing is done on a desktop workstation.
Conclusion
These four applications are successful not just because of the features they have but due to their understanding of fundamental human behaviours: our need to get things done, our attraction to value, our preference for natural interaction, and our creative drives.
The applications do not come with common distractions or challenges like annoying ads or unnecessarily complex interfaces, instead, they seek sustainable relationships with their user bases.
