Who needs a pocket calculator when you have one of the best calculator apps on your smartphone? After all, even your average phone can outperform a calculator, and you only have to drag one device instead of two.
Of course, most phones have their own built-in calculator apps. As good as they are, they lack the advanced features of the best calculator apps, especially if you have a lot of scientific calculations to do.
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If you need more power than your phone provides, try one of the best calculator apps.
1. Pcalc Lite
PCalc Lite for iOS has earned a spot on the list of best calculator apps as a free and highly flexible scientific calculator with powerful features. While the base app is great, you can also use some valuable add-ons.
The basic package offers a good amount of work to work with, including trigonometric and logarithmic functions, radiant space, undo and redo, and unit conversions and constants. Users looking for more power can purchase additional features and customizations via in-app purchases or purchase the premium version of PCalc (opens in a new tab) for $ 9.99.
2. Calzy (iOS: $ 1.99)
Calzy takes a neat approach to calculator apps with a “Memory Area” to quickly store and mark calculations, variables and other information you may want to save for easy access across multiple sessions. The app also includes a configurable keyboard, 3D touch support, science functions, history and bookmarks, and support for multitasking.
Calzy is an excellent all-round calculator app, so it’s no surprise that it previously won one of Apple’s app design awards.
3. Calcularium (iOS: free)
InVooDoon Calcularium combines several convenient controls with powerful tools for entering and editing calculations. The result is an easy-to-use calculator app that also offers excellent functionality under the hood.
Users can enter numbers using a traditional keyboard or enter equations in voice or photo mode, then name each number and variable for quick search and recall. With gesture control, you can rearrange the elements of any equation and save formulas and variables, or divide individual variables into sub-equations.
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Calcularium has many features, which makes the built-in video tutorials narrated by Siri a particularly useful feature.
4. Numeric 2 (iOS: free)
Numerical2 is literally an application like no other. The app speeds up input by omitting the equal button and automatically adding parentheses to changes.
However, it’s not just about speed. Scientific calculator functions for numeric fields, fractional operations and special numbers such as Pi, E and infinity. The app supports landscape mode, split screen multitasking, and also includes a custom keyboard for performing calculations in another app.
Furthermore, Numerical also has several themes and a theme creator.
5. CalcNote (Android: free)
Traditional desktop calculators are well known, but they don’t add context to your calculations. However, spreadsheets can be overwhelming for quick additions. CalcNote offers a middle ground by combining a notepad with a calculator. This means you type your sum in natural language and the app extracts the important bits and adds up the numbers.
If you’ve used Soulver on macOS (and previously on iOS), the concept is familiar. And while CalcNote isn’t as refined or powerful as Soulver, it’s a great way to track expenses and add up bills, not least because you can quickly and easily reference totals from previous rows on subsequent rows. If you like the free version, the ad-free pro option (opens in a new tab) ($ 5.49) is also worth considering.
6. HiPER (Android: free)
Instead of a generic calculator experience, HiPER focuses like a laser beam on providing an excellent scientific calculator app for Android smartphones and tablets.
Mimicking the layout of traditional scientific calculators, HiPER includes basic arithmetic operations, as well as a wide selection of functions and special operations, including fractional operations, mixed numbers and more.
