Meet Apple's iPhone app of the year: Elevate

LOS ANGELES — Can an app make you smarter and live a happier, more fruitful life?

That was the goal when Jesse Pickard launched his Elevate app in May.

"We want to zero in on each person's struggles and help them get to a better place," he says.

The "personal trainer for the brain" app is already in a great place.

Just over a half-year old, it's been downloaded 5 million times, and Monday Apple named it best free iPhone app of the year in its annual look back at the year's app highlights.

Apple singled out brain-training apps like Elevate and rivals Lumosity and Peak-Brain Training, and says Elevate stands out due "to its great design, the best progress tracker, loads of interactivity and smart daily motivation reminders."

Pickard at first was working on SAT prep and language learning for individuals, but decided that an app could help broaden his audience.

He realized that putting vocabulary, math and retention skills into a game format could "help every single person in the world."

The Elevate app (available for both Apple and Android) comes with 25 sets of games. To get more, subscribers pay $5 monthly. Already there are "tens of thousands" of paying customers, Pickard says.

Brain training works best on mobile phones, he says, "because it's always there with you. It does more than a computer, because of the touch-based interaction."

Pickard looks to add more skills to the app in 2015.

"We want to broaden the skills we cover — help people pronounce words better, improve their grammar, read faster, calculate tips better, get into budgeting. We're just scratching the surface now."

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