According to the latest statistics, the average person spends a whopping 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone each day. And although excessive smartphone use is associated with a number of negative things such as sleep problems and depression, it can't be denied that technology might also be a powerful tool for learning, staying organised and focused on your goals.

In particular, university students can greatly benefit from phone apps helping them to define priorities, create an effective workflow, manage their life as students, and make study plans, notes, flashcards, and mind maps.

Here are the 8 most helpful of them:

Notion

Android/iOS/Web, Free

What it's useful for: Notion is a great app for maximizing your productivity in general. It can be useful for many things, including note-taking, creating personal libraries and mood boards, creating plans and managing personal and team projects.

Grammarly

Android/iOS/Web, Free

What it's useful for: Even native speakers struggle with grammar and spelling from time to time. Grammarly corrects mistakes and punctuation and gives recommendations on how to improve any given text to make it sound more academic or professional. This is an invaluable tool for students who get a lot of written assignments in the course of their studies.

myHomework Student Planner

Android/iOS/Windows, Free

What it's useful for: myHomework Student Planner is a perfect app for both university and school students because it allows users to keep track of all assignments, tests and projects, and conviniently filter them by class, priority and type.

Google Translate

Android/iOS/Web, Free

What it's useful for: Although this popular app is primarily used as a translation engine, it also can be a great language learning aid, helping students expand vocabulary, understand simple texts, and find simple and useful phrases to use in conversations.

Mindomo Mind Mapping App

Android/iOS, Free

What it's useful for: Creating mind maps (i.e. visually organise information into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole) is a great way to revise and better consolidate new information. This app has many amazing features that allow a student to present ideas, study and memorize using templates or creating diagrams from scratch.

Brainscape

Android/iOS, Free

What it's useful for: A simple-to-use flashcard app that uses spaced repetition to help you learn and memorize things more efficiently. It allows users to create classes (subjects) they are studying and decks of flashcards on specific topics within them.

Lexilize Flashcards

Android/iOS, Free

What it's useful for: This flashcard app is specifically aimed at language learners. It allows you to create your own dictionary, learn new material with games, and listen to the words in auto-player mode.

Microsoft Lens - PDF Scanner

Android/iOS, Free

What it's useful for: A very handy app that makes pictures of whiteboards, blackboards, and all kinds of printed documents readable by converting them to editable PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files.

Want to know more about what it's like to study as an international student in the UK and how to become one? LEO International Online School offers a diverse and intensive two–year A-Level programme designed to prepare students for entry to universities in the United Kingdom. Learn more about this programme and our other courses here, and don't hesitate to contact us at info@leo-school.uk.