Best Live Streaming App for Android
Sharing great moments (or just snippets of your life) with friends or loved ones has never been easier, and a new class of streaming apps allows them to join you in real time. We believe Periscope is the best of these applications today and has the greatest potential in the near future.
Periscope
Platform: Android (and iOS) Price: Free download page
Functions
- Makes live streaming a simple one-touch operation.
- Supports streaming in both portrait and landscape formats
- Allows live streaming to the general public or privately to specific invitees
- You can connect to Twitter (which makes sense since the service is owned by Twitter) to share your stream with friends and followers.
- Allows you to play streams through your profile if your friends miss the live stream
- Supports YouTube auto-download, so after the broadcast is over, you can save it and share it with a wider audience.
- Allows you to follow your Twitter contacts using the app, view available live broadcasts by geographic location, and see which of your friends are streaming live at any given time.
Where is it best
Periscope was one of the first apps that really made live streaming of events so simple and easy that people wanted to do it. Combined with the lightweight social aspects that make it fun to find other streams, watch and more importantly share your own streams with friends and upload them to YouTube for safe storage after your stream ends, this is a far cry from some of the older live streaming apps. who were awkward to use and wanted to compete with YouTube, not live with it.
This speaks to the biggest feature of Periscope – it’s very easy to start a stream, share a stream and interact with the people who are watching. It’s just a couple of steps from setup to streaming, and from there, starting a stream is pretty much one touch away. Share this on Twitter and watch people tune in, leave you messages in real time, shower you with hearts, and you have a tool that people really use to share interesting moments in their lives – or noteworthy events.
It’s this ease of use and simplicity that has made Periscope the tool of choice for people who want to do amazing things, like sharing their children’s games with family members around the world or protesters who want to broadcast the march to an energetic and engaged community. on social media or live on television. However, it’s also the same ease of use that makes it easy to stream and record things like the newest episode of Game of Thrones or a pay-per-view boxing match . However, I’ve seen our colleagues at Kotaku use it to light up E3 from the showroom , and some of my favorite YouTubers doinglive unboxing with their fans instead of keeping them waiting for the official video. service.
Periscope claims to want to help you “see the world through someone else’s eyes,” and it certainly succeeds. Perhaps most notably, it provides us with a social tool that brings us a little closer and at the same time is very easy to use.
Where it fails
Periscope is simple and elegant, but not perfect. Its integration with Twitter is tight (which makes sense), but it could integrate better with other networks as well, and saving videos and uploading them to YouTube later is great, but other video services would also be a good advantage. Of course, none of this breaks the game, and adding a ton of bells and whistles could change the balance between simplicity and function that Periscope does in droves.
A while ago, we would have complained that the Periscope is only for portrait photography, because you know what we all think of portrait videos, but that’s not an issue anymore as the latest update allows you to shoot in landscape orientation. We have seen more than a few streams to date with dotted connections and intermittent streams, but it is always difficult to tell if it is an application, a user connection, a user device, or a viewer connection.
It’s also worth noting that Periscope is Android 4.4 and up, so if you’re still using an older version of Android or an older device, you’re out of luck.
Competition
Meerkat (Free) is Periscope’s biggest competition, and to be honest, it was the first. While the two were tough rivals before, they are now slightly different. Meerkat only hosts public, live events and requires more notifications than Periscope. The user interface is a little more cluttered, definitely less elegant and a little more difficult to use. The start of the stream takes place in one touch, but this is kind of a surprise, and there are practically no settings. Signing up, however, is a little easier (you only need a phone number, profile photo, and username) and you don’t need to link your Twitter account until you want – you can also link the app to Facebook. and also if you like. It’s a good option anyway if you already use it or know people using it, but we definitely prefer Periscope.
Livestream (Free) is one of the old guards of streaming apps. The Livestream web service has been around for a long time, and its mobile apps have always made streaming live events from your phone – no matter what camera you use or how large your community is – relatively straightforward. The app has come a long way in the post-meerkat and post-periscope days and is now much easier to use. Partnerships with TV networks and sports leagues also mean that any event streamed via Livestream on the Internet is an event that you can watch on your phone and you can replay the events after they end, save your own streams to share on elsewhere, connect to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and interact with other streamers. Again, not as straightforward or easy as some of the others here, but useful if you’re looking for an alternative or more live streams to watch.
UStream (free) – Another old guard, but difficult to recommend. HD streaming is only available on certain devices, not just certain versions of Android, and its focus is solely on watching the streams that are currently streaming on UStream.com, not necessarily streaming from your device. You can stream from your device, this is clearly not what the app is really intended for. If you have a favorite stream on Ustream (like this HD live view from the International Space Station ) and want to check it out on your phone or tablet, or if you are streaming and want to see how you look on another device then it’s worth checking out.
YouNow (Free) is slightly less focused on “broadcasting events” and “looking through someone’s point of view” and more for people who want to “broadcast themselves to my friends and chat with them,” if that makes sense. Where Periscope and Meerkat seem a little more mature, YouNow uses a significant portion of the screen for live chat and recommended broadcasts, depending on whether you’re streaming or watching (respectively). To keep users engaged, the service has an in-app point and currency system that rewards you with points for certain actions that you use to “level up” later, as well as in-app “coins” and “bars” that you can use to purchase gifts for your profile or your favorite streamer. some of which cost real money. YouNow seems like it would be fun for the community if you were in an environment like this (and you have money to invest in it), but reviews on Google Play are not overly encouraging when it comes to app functionality. worried.
These are big players. There are several others like TwitCasting Live (free) and Stre.am (free), both of which are promising in terms of features and seem to work pretty well, but both are smaller players with small communities and user bases. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check them out, but it does mean that if you’re looking for communities or people who can sign up and watch your stream or interact with you, you might be better off with a little more. TwitCasting follows the border between Periscope and Hangouts, allowing you to invite other people to your stream, but its UI is very cluttered and tries too hard to focus on chat. Stre.am is light and elegant, but empty.