This week’s best VPN deals: ZenMate, ExpressVPN, Hotspot Shield VPN

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This week’s best VPN deals: ZenMate, ExpressVPN, Hotspot Shield VPN

The recent release of the iPhone 8 and upcoming iPhone X has left many wondering if Face ID will actually be as secure as Touch ID. Securing your mobile device with a strong password or biometrics has become increasingly important as we store more sensitive data on our smartphones than ever before, but what about protecting your devices and data online? By using a VPN to connect to the internet, you can keep your devices safe from attackers while on public Wi-Fi and while traveling.

Most VPN service providers offer services globally and thus charge in US Dollars rather than in local currencies, so we've listed pricing in Dollars for the sake of simplicity. Bear in mind that when you click through to the actual deals, you may find the prices automatically displayed in pounds, or whatever your native currency may be.

These are the best deals we found for keeping our mobile device secure on any network:

1. ZenMate - Only $38.40 for 12 months

ZenMate is a highly user-friendly VPN that explains everything in clear and simple terms. This VPN has servers across more than 30 locations worldwide and its Windows software can be set up in just a few clicks. The company is currently offering a 40% discount for new customers and a 14-day money-back guarantee is also available if you’re unhappy with the service.

2. ExpressVPN - Just $99.95 for 15 months

This VPN has over 1,000 servers across 136 locations and supports up to three simultaneous connections. ExpressVPN also offers a wide range of native clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and even BlackBerry. The company includes a kill switch in case the service goes down (in this eventuality, it will keep your true IP hidden) as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee.

3. Hotspot Shield - Lifetime license for $139.99

Hotspot Shield offers great download speeds at a competitive price, and there is even a lifetime license available for those who are very pleased with the service. This VPN has 2,000 servers across 20 locations with support for up to five devices. Hotspot Shield also offers a free 7-day trial for new users.

Check out the best VPN services of 2017 and visit thebestvpnfor.me to get the best VPN deals and offers on the market, straight from our VPN team

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Best free iPad apps 2017

OK - you've probably noticed on the Apple App Store that iPad apps cost more - sometimes a LOT more - than their iPhone equivalents. But trust us, it's worth the extra cash.

Many of the best free iPhone apps cost money in their iPad incarnations, and the quality level of what's still free for the tablet is often ropey. But among the dross lie rare gems – iPad apps that are so good you can't believe they're still free.

Of those we unearthed, here's our pick of the best free iPad apps. Note that apps marked 'universal' will run on your iPad and iPhone, optimising themselves accordingly.

New this week: Pic Collage

Pic Collage has you create collages from photos and images. In Grids mode, select some pictures, and the app automatically places them in a layout. If you’re not keen, switch to a different layout; you can also adjust background colors and border sizes.

Select an individual image and you can move and rotate it, and perform the kind of edits and adjustments you find in a slew of photo apps. Using the + button you can further customize your creation with stickers, text and doodles.

Beyond this mode, you can craft cards and ‘freestyle’ layouts. For free, it all comes across as an astonishingly flexible, usable and feature-rich take on digital collages. The only real downside is watermarks on your exported collages, but you can be rid of them forever by paying a single $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP.

iPad Air 2 reviewiPad Mini 4 reviewiPad Pro reviewFor a mix of free and paid apps, check out our amazing Best iPad apps chart or if you're more into a smaller form-factor or have your eye on the iPhone 7 check out our list of the best free iPhone apps.Haven't bought an iPad yet and not sure which is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.Are you a professional? Then our pick of the 10 best business apps should have something for you.

Doctor Who: Comic Creator does what you’d expect from its name. When you’re between seasons of the hit sci-fi show, you can satisfy yourself by fashioning custom adventures about everyone’s favorite regenerating time traveler, who goes everywhere and everywhen in a beaten-up old time machine.

Creating comics is akin to slapping down stickers – only you can move things around later. And you get a pleasingly diverse range of page layouts, along with a monster maker, so you can combine parts of the Doctor’s enemies into something suitably horrific.

The main downside is most foes lurk behind various IAPs – would it have killed the BBC to throw in a Cyberman for free? Sadly, there’s no way to use the app to get all timey-wimey and change people’s minds when the app was being made.

Sandbox offers an interesting take on coloring apps. Instead of virtual paper and pens (as per the excellent Pigment), Sandbox gives you a quirky combination of painting by numbers and old-school pixel art.

Select an image and it appears in grayscale. A tap zooms you in to a grid of numbers. Select a palette color and tap relevant grid squares to start coloring things in. Tap the wrong squares and your colors remain – but the numbers stick around in zoomed view, reminding you of your ‘error’.

Because you have to tap every single square, Sandbox might for some feel tedious. But there’s a meditative quality to proceedings, and there are plenty of images to color for free. A drag-to-color brush wouldn’t go amiss though.

Google Earth is about exploring our planet. Search for somewhere specific and the app swoops and dives to its target. Important landmarks are rendered in 3D that’s surprisingly effective – if you don’t zoom in too far.

This is an entertaining, tactile app that encourages investigation. You can drag and spin the screen, and flick through cards that point towards local landmarks. Fancy looking at something new? Hit the random button, or tap on the Voyager icon for stories based around anything from UNESCO World Heritage Sights to trekking about Kennedy Space Center.

The app is effortless to use, and the iPad’s large screen enables you to more fully breathe in the sights; the result is armchair tourism that’s far more effective than what you’d get even on the largest of iPhones.

Townske seems to bill itself as an app akin to Foursquare – a place to find the best local cafes, restaurants, and sights in major cities. But really it’s more of a place where photo-bloggers can publish their unique take on amazing locations, thereby providing you with gorgeous photos and succinct chunks of writing to devour.

You can jump right into the main feed, or focus on a specific city. You then tap on a photo to open an individual story. Every one we tried was rich in superb imagery, with just enough text to add meaningful context without interrupting the flow of the visuals.

Neatly, you can tap a map icon to see where the various photos were all taken; and if you sign up for an account, favorite stories or individual images can be bookmarked for later. But even if you simply treat Townske as a regularly-updated lean-back digital take on a newspaper travel supplement, you can’t really go wrong.

Py wants to teach you to communicate with computers. You provide some information about the kind of coding you fancy doing, and it recommends a course – anything from basic HTML through to delving into Python.

Lessons are very reminiscent of those in language-learning freebie Duolingo. A colorful, cartoonish interface provides questions, and you type out your answer or select from multiple choice options.

Py could be more helpful when you get something wrong, but its breezy, pacy nature gives it a real energy and game-like feel that boosts focus and longevity.

Unlike Duolingo, Py doesn’t have any interest in being free forever. A premium tier locks a chunk of content behind a monthly fee (along with access to mentors, who can help you through tough spots via an integrated chat). But for no outlay, there’s still plenty here for budding website - and app - creators to get stuck into.

Boldomatic comes across like a social network for people who like making bold statements – in bold colors and with bold text. Imagine Twitter, but with a chunky font, eye-searing backgrounds on every post, and a user base that’s perhaps a little too full of itself.

Which all sounds a bit unflattering, we’re sure, but Boldomatic is actually rather fun. You can zip through the feed to find random thoughts, tiny nuggets of philosophy, daft jokes, and little bits of poetry.

Fashioning your own slice of creative genius is simple, too: just type out your words, select a background color (or a photo), and share it with the world.

Boldomatic also works as a means to create content for elsewhere. Your creations can be hurled at Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr, to share them with the wider world (or Photos, if you want to keep them just between you and your iPad).

Swift Playgrounds is an app about coding, although you’d initially be forgiven for thinking it a weird game. Early lessons involve guiding oddball cartoon cyclops Byte about an isometric landscape by way of typed commands, having him trigger switches and grab gems along the way.

This is, of course, sneakily teaching you the fundamentals of logic and programming, and the lessons do then gradually become more involved. However, at no point does Swift Playgrounds become overwhelming. And the split-screen set-up – instructions and code on the left; interactive world based on your work on the right – feels friendly and intuitive.

It’s not Xcode for iPad, then, but perhaps a first step in that direction. More importantly, Swift Playgrounds can act as a first step for people who want to start coding their own apps, but for whom the very idea has, to date, simply been too daunting.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is a popular app on the desktop for viewing, annotating and signing PDFs. On iPad… well, it’s much the same, albeit with a reliance on cloud storage, and a nicely-designed touchscreen interface.

On importing a PDF from another app, Dropbox, or iCloud Drive, you can rearrange its pages, add a signature, slather the thing in comments, and highlight bits of text. If your document arrived from Adobe Scan, you can search the text, and select/copy some to paste elsewhere. Annoyingly, copying must be done manually – there’s no ‘grab all text’ option.

In the main, though, this is a friendly, usable app, and you get the bulk of its functionality for free, including the means to share edited PDFs with other apps. (IAP is mostly for converting PDFs to other formats for editing in the likes of Microsoft Word.)

Adobe Scan turns your iPad into a handheld scanner. This in itself isn’t anything special – there are plenty of paid and free scanners for iPad, including inbuilt support with iOS 11. However, in Adobe Scan’s case, it’s mostly about the ecosystem.

The basics are present and correct – place a document in front of Adobe Scan and it will automatically be captured. This feature is sometimes a bit over-eager when scanning multiple pages (in one case during review, it took a fetching angled picture of a trackpad), but you can subsequently fiddle with cropping, page order, and recoloring.

The best bit, though, is the way in which Adobe Scan also captures words. You can’t actually get at them in Adobe Scan, frustratingly, but fling your PDF at Adobe Acrobat, and you can copy and paste text to the likes of Notes. Accuracy is pleasingly high, too. 

Groovebox is a really clever app for anyone interested in making electronic music. The smartest bit is in the app being approachable for newcomers, yet offering power and features for seasoned noise makers.

The basics involve selecting a track type (drums, bass, or synth), and then a sound, whereupon Groovebox starts playing a loop. If you’re not happy with what you hear, tap the dice and Groovebox will spit out a different pattern.

Most apps of this ilk are samples-based, and so grind to a juddering halt at this point. But Groovebox goes further, offering a keyboard for live play, and a piano roll grid for tweaking a loop’s notes – or removing them all to add your own.

The lack of a song editor is a pity (you’re limited to 16-bar loops), and advanced instrument features sit behind various IAP. But for free, Groovebox offers plenty of head-nodding entertainment.

Dribbble is well known among designer types for being a hub of creativity. It’s used by thousands of illustrators, graphic designers, typographers and the like to upload ideas and see what everyone else is up to.

The discussion forums are a great way to get feedback on in-progress work and to talk about weird and wonderful sketches and experiments.

For those in a creative industry, the Dribbble app gets the bulk of the experience neatly onto your iPad. You can browse, chat, flag favorites, and adjust the toolbar to include buttons for quick access to your preferred streams.

For everyone else, it’s a hive of inspiration – a great way to explore what’s hot in visual design, perhaps even sparking some ideas to drive your own creative endeavors.

Despite being lumbered with an awkward name, Pixel art editor - Dottable is a usable and nicely-conceived app. Choose a canvas size and then the interface is split between your drawing area, layers, and tools.

The basics are all there for creating old-school pixel art, but beyond brushes and fills, Dottable adds some fairly sophisticated shapes and transform tools.

If you want to trace an image, it can be imported, and optionally converted to pixel art form. Exports are also dealt with nicely, either exporting your image as a PNG, or converting each layer into a single frame of an animated GIF.

None of this is enough to trouble the pro-oriented Pixaki, but as a freebie for pixel artists, Dottable is mightily impressive.

There are plenty of apps for doodling on your iPad, but Thoughts differentiates itself by going for a kind of razor-sharp minimalism that’s vanishingly rare these days.

On creating a new document, you can draw with a finger, and resize the canvas with a pinch. There’s also an eraser, a small palette to change colors, an interesting night mode (which flips black to white) and that’s pretty much it.

It sounds reductive, but in reality frees you up. You’re not thinking about line thicknesses and the like – you’re just drawing. Export is a little disappointing – it would be good if you could have a vector format rather than a fairly low-res bitmap – but otherwise Thoughts is a nicely simple sketching tool for iPad.

With Numbers, Apple managed to do something with spreadsheets that had eluded Microsoft in decades of Excel development: they became pleasant (even fun) to work with.

Instead of forcing workmanlike grids of data on you, Numbers has you think in a more presentation-oriented fashion. Although you can still create tables for totting up figures, you’re also encouraged to be creative and reader-friendly regarding layout, incorporating graphs, imagery, and text. On iPad, it’s all tap - and finger - friendly, too.

With broad feature-parity with the Mac version, iCloud sync, and export to Excel format, Numbers should also fit neatly into most people’s workflow.

And although updates robbed the app of some friendliness (whoever removed the date picker needs a stern talking to), it still excels in that department, from nicely designed templates through to the handy action menu, ensuring common tasks are only ever a tap away.

The idea behind Documents 6 is to be a central hub for all your files. It can pull in documents from various sources, which can then be collated and sent elsewhere. There’s a media player, smart search, PDF annotation, and document archiving (by way of zipping files) too.

However, Documents 6 also points to one particular future of the iPad many people would like to see: drag and drop between apps. Yes, this is coming in iOS 11 - but if you want it now, this is the app to start with.

Because this is a proprietary solution, it only works with Readdle apps, but it feels entirely natural in Split View to drag a file from Documents 6 to PDF Expert. And this alone may nudge productivity-oriented users towards Readdle’s apps until the official solution finally lands around September.

There are quite a few DJ apps for iPad, but they mostly tend to make the assumption you’re a master of the decks already. With its bright colors, straightforward nature, and lack of a price tag, Pacemaker feels rather more approachable to the typical wannabe deck spinner.

You can mess about with demo tracks or load tunes from your iPhone and Spotify. Then it’s a case of messing around with virtual decks, sliders and buttons to crossfade, beat-match, and add effects. If you hit on something especially great, record your live performance and share it with your friends.

It’s worth noting the app does have IAP lurking, but that’s really only for people properly bitten by the bug. Splash out and you can grab new effects or a premium subscription for precision mixing. For free, though, there’s plenty to enjoy.

Another filter app, but this one’s more about creating semi-abstract works of art than aping a bunch of photographic effects from the 1970s (although you get those too). With Trigraphy, the most interesting bits are the art filters, which can totally transform even the most mundane snap into something visually arresting.

You get four for free – more styles lurk as various IAPs – and they’re all pretty amazing. With a single tap, you can turn your photo into a landscape of isometric blocks, or overlay fragmented reflective surfaces.

With the brush tool, you can then paint out the effects layer to let parts of the original image show through, before exporting at up to 4K. It’s certainly a lot more creative than tapping a button to make a pretend Polaroid.

Automation is something you’d usually associate more with a PC than an iPad, but Workflow, can perform strings of tasks on your behalf. This means instead of dipping in and out of several apps to do something complex, you can just tap a button.

The app’s gallery includes over 200 pre-made workflows, such as turning a web page into a PDF, creating an animated GIF, or finding the nearest coffee outlet. These can be saved to your Home screen as an app, to Workflow’s Today view widget, or even as a Share sheet action extension.

Should you want to construct a workflow of your own, you can do so using a straightforward drag-and-drop interface. During creation, workflows can be tested and each step tweaked until you’re happy.

Now Workflow’s owned by Apple, its future is a little unclear, but it’s also free, so you’ve no excuse not to delve in.

There are two things a good flight comparison apps needs to be: easy to use, and useful results. Broadly speaking, Momondo ably does the job in both cases.

Looking for flights is simple; the app allows a pleasing amount of vagueness regarding locations (including regions with multiple airports, such as ‘London’, or even entire countries, such as ‘New Zealand’), and it’ll happily enable you to search for singles, returns, or multi-city jaunts.

As search results gradually load in, the app points you to the cheapest and quickest options, along with what it considers ‘best’ when taking into account price, time and convenience. For some routes, a calendar graph lets you check nearby dates to see if you can snag a bargain.

Additional filters are available to further refine your results, and you can create an account to save favorites and receive fare alerts - plus hotel listing can be added in too, should you want a more comprehensive.

On the iPhone, Prisma has become many people’s go-to app for transforming photos into tiny works of painterly art. Bafflingly, an iPad version of the app has yet to materialize, so fortunately Pixify is on hand to plug that particular gap.

In fact, in many ways Pixify is superior to Prisma. It has the same level of immediacy: load a photo and select what artwork you’d like it to resemble. But the app also provides a modicum of control over the output, in you being able to adjust brush sizes and how heavily the painterly style is applied.

The one downside on iPad is the final rendered image displays quite small on the screen. And even the $0.99/99p/AU$1.99 IAP, which unlocks higher-resolution artwork to export, doesn’t affect this oddity.

Making apps approachable is a good thing on mobile, but sometimes photo editors go a bit far, flinging all kinds of detritus into the mix (stickers; gaudy frames; a million indistinguishable filters).

With Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you instead get a more sedate and distinctly professional offering – although one that nonetheless retains plenty of immediacy.

The basic toolset includes cropping, rotation, a bunch of measured and genuinely useful presets, and an editor for adjusting tones, vignettes, colors and lens issues. Edits aren’t burned in and so you can experiment and revert as you wish. When you’re done, you can send the result to your Camera Roll.

If you’re an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, you also get DNG support, and selective adjustments. But even as a pure freebie, Lightroom’s a must-have for any iPad owner interested in improving their photographs.

MediBang Paint feels like one of those apps where you’re always waiting for the catch to arrive. Create a new canvas and you end up staring at what can only be described as a simplified Photoshop on your iPad. There are loads of drawing tools, a layers system (including photo import), and configurable brushes.

Opening up menus reveals yet more features – rotation; shapes; grids – but palettes can also be hidden, so you can get on with just drawing. Judging by the in-app gallery of uploaded art, MediBang is popular with manga artists, but its tools are capable enough to support a much wider range of digital painting and drawing styles – all without costing you a penny.

There are two ways to approach Seaquence, where the first is as a really bizarre interactive album. Select a track and a bunch of little creatures swim about on the screen, which results in spatialized sound mixes. (Stick some headphones on to hear how their movements affect the placement of sounds being played.) You can manually fling the creatures about, or tap-hold to remove them.

But Seaquence also enables you to edit. Add a new creature and it’ll instantly change the track. Tap a creature and you can delve into a scale editor, sound designer, and a sequencer for adjusting the notes of the current loop.

A $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 IAP opens up a bunch of pro features; but for free, Seaquence is entertaining whether you’re just listening and occasionally bothering the digital sea life, or figuring out how to construct your own tunes.

If you often find yourself rooting around the web for images to use in projects, Google Images will do. But it can be tricky to know whether you have the rights to use whatever you download – and you very often don’t.

Pixabay does away with such concerns through its images being released under Creative Commons CC0. In plain English: you can do whatever you like with them.

The downside is the selection can be sparse for niche subjects, and quite a lot of the vector art is of poor quality. But for general imagery to add to a brochure or website when you’re lacking a budget for pictures, there are plenty of decent photographs to choose from, easily accessible from the app’s straightforward search.

On an iPhone, music-making app GarageBand is mightily impressive, but on iPad, the extra space proves transformative. In being able to see more at any given time, your experience is more efficient and enjoyable, whether you’re a beginner tapping the grid view to trigger loops, a live musician tweaking a synth on stage, or a recording artist delving into audio waveforms and MIDI data.

Apple’s app also cleverly appeals to all. Newcomers can work with loops, automated drummers, and piano strips for always staying in key. Pros get seriously impressive track controls with configurable effects, multi-take recording, and Audio Unit support for bringing favorite synths directly into GarageBand.

If you don’t feel terribly creative sitting in front of a PC, GarageBand’s the perfect way to unleash your Grammy-winning songwriter in waiting.

Instapaper acts as a time-shifting service for the web. You can send pages to it from any browser (PC, Mac or mobile), whereupon Instapaper strips away everything bar the content. When you open the app, it’ll quickly sync your article collection. You can then read anything you’ve stored in a mobile-optimized layout that’s entirely free from cruft.

On an iPhone, Instapaper is handy for commuters wanting to catch up on saved pages while belting along on a train. But on iPad, the larger display transforms Instapaper into a superb lean-back reading experience – your own personal periodical that’s free from the gimmickry and iffy curation found in glossier fare, and that’s instead all about the content.

You won’t trouble Hollywood with PicsArt (or PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator to use its unwieldy full name). However, it is a great introduction to animation and also a handy sketchpad for those already immersed in the field.

A beginner can start with a blank slate, paper texture, or photo background, on to which an animation frame is drawn. Add further frames and previous ones faintly show through, to aid you in making smooth transitions.

Delve further into the app to discover more advanced fare, including brush options and a hugely useful layers system. When done, export to GIF or video – or save projects to refine later. That this all comes for free (and free from ads) is astonishing.

Although Photoshop started out as a tool for retouching imagery, plenty of people use it for creating art from scratch. It’s presumably that line of thinking that led to Adobe Photoshop Sketch, an iPad app that enables you to draw with virtual takes on ink, paint, pastel and markers.

The tools themselves are broadly impressive and configurable. You can adjust brushes in all kinds of ways, and then utilize blend modes and layers for complex art, and grids/stencils when more precision is needed.

Export feels a bit needlessly restrictive – you’re mostly forced to send drawings to Adobe’s Behance network – even Photos isn’t an option. 

Also, while tools work well individually, they don’t really interact, such as when dragging pen through a glob of paint. Still, for free, Adobe Photoshop Sketch gives you a lot – and even if you don’t use the app for finished art, it works (as its name suggests) as a pretty neat sketchpad.

There are quite a few apps for creating ambient background noise, helping you to focus, relax, and even sleep. White Noise+ is perhaps the best we’ve seen – a really smartly designed mix of sound and interface design that is extremely intuitive yet thoroughly modern.

It works through you adding sounds to an on-screen grid. Those placed towards the right become more complex, and those towards the top are louder. Personalized mixes can be saved, or you can play several that are pre-loaded.

For free, you do get an ad across the bottom of the screen, only five sounds, and no access to timers and alarms. But even with such restrictions, White Noise+ is pretty great. Throw $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 at it for the extra features and noises, and it borders on exceptional.

Although Apple’s Notes is far more capable than it used to be, it can feel a touch sterile. Notebook mirrors a lot of the functionality of Apple’s app, while injecting a touch more tactility and fun.

Your notes are grouped into little notebooks, which when opened display as a grid of sticky notes. Individual notes can have a bespoke background color and contain text, imagery, audio recordings, checkboxes, and scribbles. The drawing tools lack the ruler from Notes but offer far more colors and tooltip sizes. Back in the notebook, notes can be grouped and browsed through with subtle flicks.

Export is weak and sync rather annoyingly requires an account with the developer rather than iCloud; but for a freebie note-taker on a single iPad, Notebook fits the bill.

Often, third-party apps improve on bare-bones equivalents provided as the ‘official’ take on a product, but Wikipedia is an exception. This freebie app for browsing the online encyclopedia is excellent on iPad – and probably the best option on the platform.

The Explore page lists a bunch of nearby and topical articles; after a few uses, it’ll also recommend things it reckons you’d like to read. Tap an article and the screen splits in two – (collapsible) table of contents to the left and your chosen article to the right. Articles can be searched and saved, the latter option storing them for offline perusal.

It’s a pity Wikipedia doesn’t rework the Peek/Pop previews from the iPhone version (by way of a long-tap), but otherwise this is an excellent, usable encyclopedia for the modern age.

On the desktop, Adobe Illustrator is more about enabling creative types to work up pin-sharp illustrative fare than freehand drawing. But on iPad, Adobe Illustrator Draw concentrates on doodling. You can experiment with five highly configurable brush tips, which feel great whether drawing with a stylus or a finger.

But dig deeper into the options and the professional sheen of this app becomes apparent. There are perspective grids, a layers system for mixing and matching artwork and imagery for tracing over, and stencils you temporarily overlay when extra precision is needed.

Completed images can be exported to Camera Roll or the clipboard, and Adobe Creative Cloud users can also send art to Photoshop or Illustrator with layers preserved.

A straightforward vector export option would be nice, although that’s perhaps too big an ask for a free app designed to suck you into a larger ecosystem.

Given the acres of space you get on an iPad display, it’s a bit odd that Apple’s own clock only provides a single timer. Fortunately, MultiTimer – as its name suggests – goes somewhat further by offering multiple options.

In fact, depending on the layout you choose, you can have twelve timers all ticking away at once. Each one of them can have its own icon, color and default time assigned, for those people who need to simultaneously exercise, boil eggs, and cook a turkey.

Smartly, the app works in portrait or landscape, and if you want a timer you can see clearly across the room, a single button press zooms it to fill almost the entire screen.

Should you want a bit more flexibility by way of multiple or custom workspaces, there’s a single IAP to unlock those features. 

It’s fair to say that Music Memos is primarily designed for the iPhone, enabling musicians to quickly capture a song idea, which can later be expanded on. But if you’re in a studio – home or otherwise – strumming away on a guitar, and with an iPad nearby, the app can help you compose your next chart-troubler on a much more user-friendly screen size.

You kick things off by tapping a circle in the middle of the screen, whereupon Music Memos starts recording. Tap again to stop. The app then attempts – with some degree of success – to transcribe the chords played, and enables you to overlay automated bass and drums.

It’s when tapping the audio waveform in the recordings list that the iPad’s value becomes clear – you get the whole screen to see your in-progress song, which is great for playing along with or when considering further tweaks. And with iCloud sync, you can always record on iPhone and peruse later on iPad.

A halfway house between full-fledged writing tool and capable note-taker, Bear provides a beautiful environment for tapping out words on an iPad.

The sidebar links to notes you’ve grouped by hashtag. Next to that, a notes list enables you to scroll through (or search) everything you’ve written, or notes matching a specific tag. The main workspace – which can be made full-screen – marries sleek minimalism with additional smarts: subtle Markdown syntax next to headings; automated to-do checkboxes when using certain characters; image integration.

There’s not enough here for pro writers – they’d need on-screen word counts, customizable note column ordering, and flexibility regarding notes nesting. Also, for iCloud sync, you must buy a $1.49/£1.49/AU$1.99 monthly subscription. But as a free, minimal note-taker for a single device, Bear more than fits the bill.

Fancy creating a slice of dubstep, hip hop, or deep house? Largely bereft of musical talent (or just feeling a bit lazy)?

Don’t worry – Remixlive has you covered. Using the app, you select a genre (others are available via IAP – and some extras are even free), and then superstardom is just a case of triggering loops by tapping large colored pads.

The app’s pretty much idiot-proof – pads are labelled, everything’s always in time or in tune, and you can record your efforts by tapping a big REC button. Lovely.

But if you fancy going a bit further, the app’s happy to oblige: there’s a mixing desk for adjusting levels, live effects, and an editor to mix and match pads from different genre sets. Want to import/export your own sounds? Grab the relevant IAP ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99).

The web’s pretty great, apart from the bits that aren’t. And those bits are the manner in which your journey online is monitored by countless trackers. They look into what you’re viewing and where you’re going, aiming to serve up targeted ads. Beyond privacy issues, these trackers can slow down web pages and even crash browsers.

Enter: Firefox Focus. The app itself is a brutally stripped-back, privacy-oriented browser. You go online, tracker-free, do whatever you want, and then stab Erase to delete your session. Which probably sounds ideal for nefarious purposes, but this is mostly great for basic efficiency, and also handy if someone wants to quickly get online using your iPad but not leave their accounts live when handing your device back.

Beyond this, Firefox Focus can also integrate with Safari, blocking trackers and web fonts from that browser and, potentially, increasing its performance.

If you’ve any interest in wildlife films, Attenborough Story of Life is a must-have. It features over a thousand clips picked from Attenborough’s decades-long journey through what he refers to as the “greatest story of all…how animals and plants came to fill our Earth”.

The app is split into three sections. You’re initially urged to delve into some featured collections, but can also explore by habitat or species, unearthing everything from big-toothed sharks to tiny penguins skittering about. Clips can be saved as favorites, or grouped into custom collections to later peruse or share with friends.

Some of the footage is noticeably low-res on an iPad – there’s nothing here to concern your Blu-Rays, and that’s a pity. Still, for instant access to such a wealth of amazing programming, this one’s not to be missed.

For reasons unknown to us, Prisma’s not on iPad, but Matissa provides a similar take on transforming photos into works of art. You know the drill: load a pic, select a filter, watch as the app turns it into something that looks more akin to paint on canvas, share, print, rinse and repeat.

Matissa’s filter selection is quite diverse, even if the results aren’t as convincing as Prisma’s. Still, there are some interesting ‘dynamic’ styles, which animate the end result, in a flickering loop that’s oddly hypnotic.

Everything does feel a bit too much like a blown-up phone app, though, and we wish Matissa could delve into shared albums rather than just Camera Roll. Still, it’s free, it works, and it does the job if you want to add a little art to your snaps.

The iPad and App Store combine to create an extremely strong ecosystem when it comes to art apps, but that's not terribly helpful if you don't have an artistic bone in your body.

Fortunately, there are apps like Fingerpaint Magic that enable a much wider range of people to create something visually stunning.

As you draw, feathers of color explode from your fingertip, bleeding into the background in a manner that feels like you're drawing with an alien material atop viscous liquid. You can adjust your brush and color – 'neon' from the former coming across like sketching with fire.

Artwork can be further enhanced using mirrors or background filters prior to export. The process is at once aesthetically pleasing, fun and relaxing.

A single $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49 IAP unlocks a set of premium brushes, but Fingerpaint Magic's free incarnation has more than enough to unleash your inner artist, regardless of your skill level.

Sago's range of straightforward, play-oriented educational apps tend to go down well with tiny humans, but Sago Mini Friends and its lack of a price tag should also please your wallet. It's a generous and heart-warming game in terms of content too, promoting empathy, sharing and creativity through play.

On selecting a cartoon character, you knock on doors to colorful houses and play little mini-games, such as dress-up, taking a bath, and having a snack. In the last of those, feed too many items to one character and the other looks sad, hopefully prompting your own tiny person to figure out that sharing is a good thing.

On iPad, Sago Mini Friends shines, with its bold colors and smartly designed interface. There's no advertising, nor any IAP, meaning toddlers can play in safety without interruptions.

The App Store's awash with alternate cameras with editing smarts, but MuseCam warrants a place on your iPad's home screen nonetheless. As a camera, it's fine, with an on-screen grid and plenty of manual settings. But on Apple's tablet, it's in editing that MuseCam excels.

Load a photo and you can apply a film-inspired filter preset (based on insight from pro photographers), or fiddle around with tone curves, color tools, and other adjustment settings.

The interface is bold, efficient, and usable, making it accessible to relative newcomers; but there's also enough depth here to please those wanting a bit more control, including the option to save tweaks as custom presets.

IAP comes in the form of additional filters, but what you get for free is generous and of a very high quality, making MuseCam a no-brainer download.
 

On YouTube alone, something like 60 hours of new video is uploaded every minute of the day. So keeping track of the best video from across the web is impossible.

Hyper aims to cut through the dross, serving up a daily selection of videos selected by a team of award-winning filmmakers.

The app can download videos overnight for offline playback, and presents your daily selection as a Harry Potter-like magazine page, video loops playing behind bold headlines. Simply tap to play, drag across videos to scrub, and tap to pause. On supported iPad hardware, click the home button and you can continue watching the current video with Picture-in-Picture mode.

Chances are even Hyper's considered selection won't always be to your tastes, and it's often a bit too US-oriented; but Hyper is nonetheless a great place to start your daily trawl through online video, and frequently serves up interesting things to watch.

Slash Keyboard is a custom iPad keyboard that makes sharing online content easier. Tap the slash key for a list of commands, which you can filter by typing a letter or two, and then enter search terms and prod a result to insert it into a document.

This makes it a cinch to quickly find and add links (Wikipedia articles; SoundCloud songs; App Store products; and so on) to notes, documents and social media posts. Additionally, Slash Keyboard speeds up typing with gestural single-finger scribbles in a manner similar to Swype and SwiftKey.

It’s not a perfect app by any means, as links are US-focused and sometimes use a proprietary link shortener rather than giving you the entire URL. Also, long-pressing the top row of letters cuts off the menu displaying related special characters.

But Slash's usefulness counters such drawbacks, and it's at the very least worth considering as an occasional alternate keyboard when wanting to link to a bunch of things you've found online.
 

As iOS has evolved, Notification Center has become a far more useful and robust part of the iPad experience. It can now house all kinds of useful information, which is accessible via a single downwards swipe. The idea behind Cheatsheet is to create a place for tiny things you need to remember, such as luggage combinations, phone numbers, and Wi-Fi passwords.

The Cheatsheet app enables you to configure your list of items and their sort order; a custom icon can also be assigned to each one. On iPad, the screen is big enough to show two rows of 'cheats', meaning the widget rarely takes up much space.

Note that for free, you get all of this without even any ads, but there's a single IAP ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49) to extend Cheatsheet further; this gives you extra icons, iCloud notes sync, a custom keyboard, and an action extension, along with allowing the developer to eat.
 

There are loads of apps for making basic edits to photos and slapping on some words, but Little Moments stands out primarily through being rather jolly (if a little twee at times) and being extremely easy to use.

Load in a pic (or use the camera to shoot a new one), and you can quickly add a filter, adjust things like saturation and contrast, overlay some text boxes, and get creative with quotes and stickers.

Weirdly, the last two of those things are pixelated when browsing through the app, but look just fine when added (and sadly many of the categories also sit behind in-app purchases).

But everything else about Little Moments is a joy, from the non-destructive adjustments (unless you select a new filter, whereupon everything resets) to the friendly, intuitive interface.
 

Part meditative relaxation tool, part sleep aid, Melodist is all about creating melodies from imagery. All you have to do is load something from your Camera Roll, and the app does the rest.

On analyzing your photo or screen grab for changes in hues, saturation and brightness, a music loop is generated. You can adjust the playback speed, instrument and visual effect (which starts off as a lazily scrolling piano roll), along with setting a timer.

Although occasionally discordant, the app mostly creates very pleasing sounds. And while it’s perhaps missing a trick in not displaying your photo as-is underneath the notes being played (your image is instead heavily blurred as a background), you can export each tune as audio or a video that shows the picture alongside the animation.

These free exports are a pretty generous gesture by the developer; if you want to return the favor, there’s affordable IAP for extra sounds, animation and MIDI export.

One of the great things about the app revolution is how these bits of software can help you experience creative fare that would have previously been inaccessible, unless you were armed with tons of cash and loads of time. Folioscope is a case in point, providing the basics for crafting your own animations.

We should note you’re not going to be the next Disney with Folioscope – the tools are fairly basic, and the output veers towards ‘wobbling stickmen’.

But you do get a range of brushes (of differing size and texture), several drawing tools (pen, eraser, flood fill, and marquee), and onion-skinning, which enables you to see faint impressions of adjacent frames, in order to line everything up.

The friendly nature of the app makes it accessible to anyone, and there’s no limit on export – projects can be shared as GIFs or movies, or uploaded to the Folioscope community, should you create an account.

After years of eyesight deterioration, John Hull became blind in 1983. Notes on Blindness VR has six chapters taken from his journal of the time. Each is set in a specific location, marrying John’s narrative, binaural audio, and real-time 3D animation, to create an immersive experience of a ‘world beyond sight’.

Although designed as a VR experience, this app remains effective when holding an iPad in front of your face, moving the screen about to scan your surroundings. The mood shifts throughout – there’s wonder in a blind John’s discovery of the beauty of rain, disconnection when he finds things ‘disappear’ from the world when sound stops, and a harrowing section on panic.

Towards the end, John mulls he’s “starting to understand what it’s like to be blind,” and you may get a sense of what it’s like, too, from the app, which ably showcases how to craft an engaging screen-based experience beyond the confines of television.

Among the various finger-painting apps for iPad, Nebula is one of the weirdest. You draw by dragging two fingers on the screen, which results in a set of neon lines atop the background. Twisting your fingers changes the nature of the futuristic ribbon you’re creating, and subsequent taps and twists add to its length.

Using the app’s settings, you can play with the thickness and density of the lines and switch between angled and wavy compositions. The results are very abstract whatever you do, but Nebula’s a fun app for creating something visually different on your tablet.

There’s no saving your work in the free version, though (beyond snapping a screen grab) – you’ll need the $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 Tools IAP for that, which also adds symmetry functionality and high-resolution PDF export.

The thinking behind Auxy Music Studio is that music-making - both in the real world and software - has become too complicated. This app therefore strives to combine the immediacy of something like Novation Launchpad's loop triggers with a basic piano roll editor.

For each instrument, you choose between drums and decidedly electronic synths. You then compose loops of between one and four bars, tapping out notes on the piano roll's grid. Subsequent playback occurs on the overview screen by tapping loops to cue them up.

For those who want to go a bit further, the app includes arrangement functionality (for composing entire songs), along with Ableton Link and MIDI export support. Auxy's therefore worth a look for relative newcomers to making music and also pros after a no-nonsense scratchpad.

It's become apparent that Adobe - creators of photography and graphic design powerhouses Photoshop and Illustrator - don't see mobile devices as suitable for full projects. However, the company's been hard at work on a range of satellite apps, of which Photoshop Fix is perhaps the most impressive.

Built on Photoshop technology, this retouching tool boasts a number of high-end features for making considered edits to photographs. The Liquify tool in particular is terrific, enabling you to mangle images like clay, or more subtly adjust facial features using bespoke tools for manipulating mouths and eyes.

Elsewhere, you can smooth, heal, color and defocus a photo to your heart's content, before sending it to Photoshop on the desktop for further work, or flattening it for export to your Camera Roll. It's particularly good when used with the Apple Pencil (still a funny name) and the iPad Pro, such is the power and speed of that device and input method.

The idea behind Canva is to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating great-looking layouts based on your photos. Select a layout type (presentation, blog graphic, invitation, and so on) and the app serves up templates to work with.

These are mostly very smart indeed, but the smartest thing about Canva is that these starting points can all be edited: swap out images for your own photos, adjust text boxes, and add new elements or even entire pages.

Because of its scope, Canva isn't as immediate as one-click automated apps in this space, but the interface is intuitive enough to quickly grasp. Our only niggle is the lack of multi-item selection, but with Canva being an online service, you can always fine-tune your iPad creations in a browser on the desktop.

Many of us are caught in high-stress environments for much of our lives, and electronic gadgets often do little to help. Apple has recognised this, promising a breathing visualization tool in iOS 10. In the meantime, Breathe+ brings similar functionality to your iPad.

You define how long breaths in and out should take, and whether you want to hold your breath at any point during the cycle. You then let Breathe+ guide your breathing for a user-defined session length.

The visualization is reminiscent of a minimalist illustrator's take on a wave rising and falling on the screen, but you can also close your eyes and have the iPad vibrate for cues. For free, there are some ads, which aren't pretty, but don't distract too much. For $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99, you can be rid of them, along with adding themes and usage history stats.

Between quickly trimming a video in Photos and immersing yourself in the likes of iMovie sits Splice. This is a free video editor that on the surface looks accessible - even simplistic - but that offers surprising depth for those who need it.

To get started, you import a bunch of clips. These can be reordered, and you can for each choose a transition if you don't want standard crossfades. Access an individual clip and a whole host of additional tools becomes available, including text overlays, speed adjustment, and animation effects. It's also possible to layer multiple audio files, including on-board music and narration.

For more demanding wannabe directors, Splice might still not be enough - in which case, head towards a more powerful product like Pinnacle Studio Pro or iMovie. But for everyone else, it really hits that sweet spot in being straightforward, approachable, and powerful.

With a native weather app bafflingly absent from iPad, you need to venture to the App Store to get anything beyond the basic daily overview Notification Center provides. Weather Underground is the best freebie on the platform, offering a customizable view to satisfy even the most ardent weather geeks.

Current conditions are shown at the top, outlining the temperature, precipitation likelihood, and a local map. But scroll and you can delve into detailed forecasts, dew point readings, sunrise and sunset times, videos, webcams, health data and web links. The bulk of the tiles can be disabled if there are some you don't use, and most can be reordered to suit.

Although not making the best use of iPad in landscape, the extra screen space afforded by Apple's tablet makes the Weather Underground experience a little more usable than on iPhone, enabling faster access to tiles. And for free, it's a top-notch app, although you can also fling $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 at it annually if you want rid of the unobtrusive ads.

Formerly known as Replay, Quik is a video editor primarily designed for people who can't be bothered doing the editing bit. You select photos and videos, pick a theme, and sit back as Quik pieces together a masterpiece that can subsequently be saved and shared.

For tinkerers, there are styles and settings to tweak. Post-Replay, the app offers its 28 varied styles for free, and you can delve into the edit itself, trimming clips, reordering media, adjusting focal points, and adding titles.

Alternatively, the really lazy can do nothing at all and still get results - every week, Quik will serve up highlights videos, enabling you to relive favorite moments. These videos are quite random in nature, but are nonetheless often a nice surprise. Still, anyone willing to put in the slightest additional effort will find Quik rewards any minutes invested many times over.

We've always found the Remote app a bit of an oddball. On the one hand, it's sort of iTunes for iPad, streaming your Mac or PC's library to your device. On the other, it's also a means of controlling an Apple TV.

In the former case, it's fine, if a bit slow to load large libraries. Still, the interface is in many ways superior to Music's, which now seems determined to sideline anything that isn't Apple Music.

As for controlling an Apple TV with a massive glass-screened tablet, that might seem ridiculous until you've grappled with the Siri Remote. After that point, you'll be glad to have Remote installed, enabling you to navigate your Apple TV and quickly input passwords, rather than getting frustrated to the point of wanting to hurl everything you've ever bought from Apple into the heart of the sun.

There's a tendency for relaxation aids to be noodly and dull, but TaoMix 2 bucks the trend. You get the usual sounds to aid relaxation (wind, rain, birds, water), but also an interface that nudges the app towards being a tool for creating a kind of ambient personal soundtrack.

The basics are dead simple: tap the + button, select a sound pack, and drag a sound to the canvas. You then manually position the circular cursor within the soundscape, or slowly flick so it lazily bounces around the screen, your various sounds then ebbing and flowing into the mix.

This makes TaoMix 2 more fun to play with than its many rivals. Of course, if you just want to shut the world out, that option exists too: load a soundscape you've previously created, set a timer, and use TaoMix 2 to help you nod off.

Should you want something other than what's found within the generous selection of built-in noises, packs are available for purchase (including whale sounds, 'Japanese garden' and orchestral strings); and if you fancy something entirely more custom, you can even import sounds of your own.

It says something that what once required a powerful desktop computer and a copy of something like After Effects can now be achieved using a freebie app on your iPad. With Vimo, you load a video and can add to it a bunch of animated effects and 'motion stickers'.

What makes this app all the more impressive is the level of control it affords. You're not limited to some kind of canned wiggly motion that doesn't fit your video. Instead, you drag across the timeline to play through your video and can at any point pause to rotate and move placed stickers. Vimo then figures out all the complicated bits — paths, keyframes, and so on — before you share your creation with friends.

There's IAP to remove an (unobtrusive) Vimo watermark and buy new stickers, but the free app includes plenty of content to make even the dullest home video a bit more animated and a lot more fun.

Although it's apparently designed for kids aged 9-11, Seedling Comic Studio comes across a lot like a free (if somewhat stripped back) take on iPad classic Comic Life. You load images from your Camera Roll (or take new ones with the camera), arrange them into comic-book frames, and can then add all manner of speech balloons, filters and stickers.

Decided that your heroic Miniature Schnauzer should have to save the world from a giant comic-book sandwich? This is your app! Naturally, there are limitations lurking. The filter system is a bit rubbish, requiring you to cycle through the dozen or so on offer, rather than pick favourites more directly, and a few of the sticker packs require IAP.

But for no outlay at all, there's plenty of scope here for comic-book creation, from multi-page documents you can output to PDF, to amusing poster-like pages you can share on social networks. And that's true whether you're 9 or 49.

Although Photofy includes a decent range of tools for performing typical edits on photos - including adjustments, cropping, saturation, and the like - this app is more interested in helping you get properly creative.

Within the photo editing tools are options for adding in-vogue blurs and producing collages; and in 'Text & Overlays', you'll find a wealth of options for slapping all kinds of artwork and text on top of your photographic masterpieces.

The interface works well through bold, tappable buttons and chunky sliders (although it takes a while to realise the pane containing the latter can be scrolled). And although some filters and stickers require IAP to unlock, there's loads available here entirely for free. (Also, Photofy rather pleasingly gives you alternatives for its watermark, if you don't want to pay to remove it, but aren't too keen on the default. Nice.)

With a noodly soundtrack playing in the background, WWF Together invites you to spin a papercraft world and tap points of interest to learn more about endangered species. 16 creatures get fuller treatment - a navigable presentation of sorts that hangs on a key characteristic, such as a panda's charisma, or an elephant's intelligence.

These sections are arranged as a three-by-three grid, each screen of which gives you something different, be it statistics, gorgeous photography, or a 'facetime' movie that gives you a chance to get up close and personal.

Apps that mix charity and education can often come across as dry and worthy, but WWF Together is neither. It's informative but charming, and emotive but fun.

Rather neatly, stories can be shared by email, and this screen further rewards you with origami instructions to make your own paper animal; once constructed, it can sit on the desk next to all your technology, reminding you of the more fragile things that exist in our world.

GarageBand offers a loop player, but Novation Launchpad was doing this kind of thing years before, and in a manner that's so intuitive and simple that even a toddler could record a track. (We know — ours did.)

The app comprises a set of pads, where you choose a genre, tap pads, and they keep playing until you tap something else in the same group. Performances can be recorded, and you can also mess about with effects to radically change the output of what you're playing.

Whether you're a musician or not, Launchpad is a great app for making a noise. And if you fancy something a bit more unique than the built-in sounds, there's a $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 in-app purchase that lets you import your own samples.

The iPad's well catered for in spreadsheet terms with Google freebie Sheets and Apple's Numbers, but the reality is the business world mostly relies on Microsoft Excel. Like Microsoft's other iOS fare, Excel is surprisingly powerful, marrying desktop-style features with touchscreen smarts.

You can get started with a blank workbook or choose from one of the bundled templates, which include budget planners, schedules, logs, and lists. Wisely, the app has an optional custom keyboard when you're editing cells, filled with symbols, numbers, and virtual cursor keys. This won't make much odds if you're armed with a Bluetooth keyboard, but it speeds things up considerably if you only have your iPad handy.

You might be wondering what the catch is, and there aren't many if you own a standard iPad or a mini. Sign in with a free Microsoft account and you're blocked from some aesthetic niceties, but can do pretty much everything else. If you're on an iPad Pro, however, Microsoft demands you have a qualifying Office 365 subscription to create and edit documents, but the app at least still functions as a viewer.

You might argue that Google Maps is far better suited to a smartphone, but we reckon the king of mapping apps deserves a place on your iPad, too.

Apple's own Maps app has improved, but Google still outsmarts its rival when it comes to public transport, finding local businesses, saving chunks of maps offline, and virtual tourism by way of Street View.

Google's 'OS within an OS' also affords a certain amount of cross-device sync when it comes to searches. We don't, however, recommend you strap your cellular iPad to your steering wheel and use Google Maps as a sat-nav replacement, unless you want to come across as some kind of nutcase.

The original Brushes app was one of the most important in the iPhone's early days. With Jorge Colombo using it to paint a New Yorker cover, it showcased the potential of the technology, and that an iPhone could be used for production, rather than merely consumption.

Brushes eventually stopped being updated, but fortunately went open source beforehand. Brushes Redux is the result.

On the iPad, you can take advantage of the much larger screen. But the main benefit of the app is its approachable nature. It's extremely easy to use, but also has plenty of power for those who need it, not least in the layering system and the superb brush designer.

Adult colouring books are all the rage, proponents claiming bringing colour to intricate abstract shapes helps reduce stress - at least until you realise you've got pen on your shirt and ground oil pastels into the sofa.

You'd think the process of colouring would be ideal for iPad, but most relevant apps are awful, some even forcing tap-to-fill. That is to colouring what using a motorbike is to running a marathon - a big cheat. Pigment is an exception, marrying a love for colouring with serious digital smarts.

On selecting an illustration, there's a range of palettes and tools to explore. You can use pencils and markers, adjusting opacity and brush sizes, and work with subtle gradients. Colouring can be 'freestyle', or you can tap to select an area and ensure you don't go over the lines while furiously scribbling. With a finger, Pigment works well, but it's better with a stylus; with an iPad Pro and a Pencil, you'll lob your real books in the bin.

The one niggle: printing and accessing the larger library requires a subscription in-app purchase. It's a pity there's no one-off payment for individual books, but you do get plenty of free illustrations, and so it's hard to grumble.

For a long while, Paper was a freemium iPad take on Moleskine sketchbooks. You made little doodles and then flipped virtual pages to browse them. At some point, it went free, but now it's been transformed into something different and better.

The original tools remain present and correct, but are joined by the means to add text, checklists, and photos. One other newcomer allows geometric shapes you scribble to be tidied up, but without losing their character.

So rather than only being for digital sketches, Paper's now for all kinds of notes and graphs, too. The sketchbooks, however, are gone; in their place are paper stacks that explode into walls of virtual sticky notes. Some old-hands have grumbled, but we love the new Paper. It's smarter, simpler, easier to browse, and makes Apple's own Notes look like a cheap knock-off.

There are loads of iPad apps for reading and annotating PDFs, but LiquidText is different. Rather than purely aping paper, the developers have thought about the advantages of working with virtual documents.

So while you still get a typical page view, you can pinch to collapse passages you're not interested in and also compare those that aren't adjacent.

There's a 'focus' view that shows only annotated sections, and you can even select chunks of text and drag them to the sidebar. Tap one of those cut-outs at a later point and its location will instantly be displayed in the main text. Smartly, you can save any document in the app's native format, export it as a PDF with comments, or share just the notes as an RTF.

Although Apple introduced iCloud Keychain in iOS 7, designed to securely store passwords and payment information, 1Password is a more powerful system.

Along with integrating with Safari, it can be used to hold identities, secure notes, network information and app licence details. It's also cross-platform, meaning it will work with Windows and Android.

And since 1Password is a standalone app, accessing and editing your information is fast and efficient. The core app is free – the company primarily makes its money on the desktop. However, you’ll need a monthly subscription or to pay a one-off $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 IAP to access advanced features (multiple vaults, Apple Watch support, tagging, and custom fields).

We're not sure whether Slack is an amazing aid to productivity or some kind of time vampire. Probably a bit of both. What we do know is that the real-time messaging system is excellent in a work environment for chatting with colleagues (publicly and privately), sharing and previewing files, and organising discussions by topic.

There's smart integration with online services, and support for both the iPad Pro and the iPad's Split View function.

Note that although Slack is clearly designed with businesses in mind, it also works perfectly well as a means of communicating with friends if you don't fancy lobbing all your worldly wisdom into Facebook's maw.

Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.

The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.

The prospect of drawing can fill people with terror, and so the idea of animation probably sends such folks fleeing for the hills. Animatic might calm their nerves, being the friendly face of iPad animation. Start a new project and you get a small canvas and a bunch of effective and broadly realistic tools - markers, crayons, pencils, biros - for scribbling with.

Once you've composed a frame, Animatic makes use of traditional 'onion skinning' techniques to help you produce smooth motion thereafter: up to three previous frames are shown in translucent fashion behind the one you're currently drawing. Tap 'Next' and you'll see your animation looping. Its speed can be adjusted, and you can export to video or GIF.

Beyond Animatic's approachable nature, we're big fans of its flexibility. You simply return to the main 'My Animations' screen to save (which we recommend doing often with lengthy projects, because a crash can take work with it), and can later edit any frame from any animation – nothing's fixed forever.

And while, as the bundled examples suggest, you're more likely to end up with Roobarb and Custard than Pixar's finest, Animatic is a superb way to explore making drawings move - entirely for free.

The majority of comic-book readers on the App Store are tied to online stores, and any emphasis on quality in the actual apps isn't always placed on the reading part.

But with many more publishers embracing DRM-free downloads, having a really great reading app is essential if you're into digital comics. Chunky Comic Reader is the best available on iOS.

The interface is smart, simple and boasts plenty of settings, including the means to eradicate animation entirely when flipping pages.

Rendering is top-notch, even for relatively low-res fare. And you get the option of one- or two-up page views. For free, you can access web storage to upload comics. A single $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99 pro upgrade adds support for shared Mac/PC/NAS drives.

VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) are becoming very popular, due to issues people increasingly face when browsing the web. A VPN can be used to circumvent region-blocking/censorship and security issues on public Wi-Fi. Such services can baffle people who aren't technically adept, but TunnelBear is all about the friendlier side of VPNs. With bears.

After installing the app and profile, you'll have 500 MB of data per month to play with. That said, TunnelBear’s exclusive TechRadar plan offers a far more generous 5GB, 10 times the amount you get if you sign elsewhere. 

Tunnelling to a specific location is simply a case of tapping it on the map and waiting a few seconds for the bear to pop out of the ground.

Tweet about the product and you'll get an extra free GB. Alternatively, monthly and annual paid plans exist for heavier data users.

Learning a musical instrument isn't easy, which is probably why a bunch of people don't bother, instead pretending to be rock stars by way of tiny plastic instruments and their parent videogames.

Yousician bridges the divide, flipping a kind of Guitar Hero interface 90 degrees and using its visual and timing devices to get you playing chords and notes.

This proves remarkably effective, and your iPad merrily keeps track of your skills (or lack thereof) through its internal mic. The difficulty curve is slight, but the app enables you to skip ahead if you're bored, through periodic 'test' rounds. Most surprisingly, for free you get access to everything, only your daily lesson time is limited.

Maybe it's just our tech-addled brains, but often we find it a lot easier to focus on an app than a book, which can make learning things the old fashioned way tricky. That's where Khan Academy comes in. This free app contains lessons and guidance on dozens of subjects, from algebra, to cosmology, to computer science and beyond.

As it's an app rather than a book it benefits from videos and even a few interactive elements, alongside words and pictures and it contains over 10,000 videos and explanations in all.

Everything is broken in to bite-sized chunks, so whether you've got a few minutes to spare or a whole afternoon there's always time to learn something new and if you make an account it will keep track of your progress and award achievements.

We elsewhere say nice things about the official Twitter client, but Twitterrific is a better bet for the more discerning Twitter user. It has a beautifully designed interface that's a delight to use, helpfully merging mentions and messages into a unified timeline, saving you mucking about switching tabs.

Customisation options give you the means to adjust the app's visual appearance (and the app can optionally automatically switch to a dark theme at night), and powerful mute and muffle features block users and hashtags you want no part of.

Pay $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 and the app adds notifications, Apple Watch support, and translation support, along with removing ads.

It's not like Microsoft Word really needs introduction. Unless you've been living under a rock that itself is under a pretty sizeable rock, you'll have heard of Microsoft's hugely popular word processor. What you might not realize, though, is how good it is on iPad.

Fire up the app and you're greeted with a selection of handy templates, although you can of course instead use a blank canvas. You then work with something approximating the desktop version of Word, but that's been carefully optimized for tablets. Your brain keeps arguing it shouldn't exist, but it does — although things are a bit fiddly on an iPad mini.

Wisely, saved documents can be stored locally rather than you being forced to use Microsoft's cloud, and they can be shared via email. (A PDF option exists for recipients without Office, although it's oddly hidden behind the share button in the document toolbar, under 'Send Attachment', which may as well have been called 'beware of the leopard'.)

Something else that's also missing: full iPad Pro 12.9 support in the free version. On a smaller iPad, you merely need a Microsoft account to gain access to most features. Some advanced stuff — section breaks; columns; tracking changes; insertion of WordArt — requires an Office 365 account, but that won't limit most users.

Presumably, Microsoft thinks iPad Pro owners have money to burn, though, because for free they just get a viewer. Bah.

According to the developer's blurb, Zen Studio is all about helping children to relax and focus, by providing a kind of finger-painting that can only exist in the digital realm. Frankly, we take issue with the 'children' bit, because Zen Studio has a welcoming and pleasing nature that should ensure it's a hit with every iPad user.

You start off with a grid of triangles and a column of colored paints. Tap a paint to choose your color and then tap individual triangles or drag across the grid to start drawing. Every gesture you make is accompanied by musical notes that play over an ambient background soundtrack. Bar the atmosphere being knocked a touch by a loud squelch noise whenever a new paint tube is selected, the mix of drawing tool and musical instrument is intoxicating. When you're done, your picture can be squirted to the Photos app, ready for sharing with the world.

This is, however, a limited freebie in some ways. You get eight canvases, which can be blank or based on templates. If you want more, you can buy an IAP to unlock the premium version of the app. Still, for no outlay at all, you get a good few hours of chill-out noodly fun — more, if you're happy drawing over the same canvases again and again.

As you launch Kitchen Stories, you catch a glimpse of the app's mantra: "Anyone can cook". The problem is, most cooking apps (and indeed, traditional cookery books) make assumptions regarding people's abilities.

Faced with a list of steps on a stark white page, it's easy to get halfway through a recipe, look at the stodge in front of you, reason something must have gone terribly wrong, and order a takeaway.

Kitchen Stories offers firmer footing. You're first met with a wall of gorgeous photography. More importantly, the photographs don't stop.

Every step in a recipe is accompanied by a picture that shows how things should be at that point. Additionally, some recipes provide tutorial videos for potentially tricky skills and techniques. Fancy some Vietnamese pho, but not sure how to peel ginger, prepare a chilli or thinly slice meat? Kitchen Stories has you covered.

Beyond this, there's a shopping list, handy essentials guide, and some magazine-style articles to peruse. And while you don't get the sheer range of recipes found in some rival apps, the presentation more than makes up for that — especially on the iPad, which will likely find a new home in your own kitchen soon after Kitchen Stories is installed.

Beatwave is a simplified Tenori-On-style synth which enables you to rapidly build pleasing melodies by prodding a grid.

Multiple layers and various instruments provide scope for complex compositions, and you can save sessions or, handily, store and share compositions via email. You can also buy more instruments via in-app purchases.

Dropbox is a great service for syncing documents across multiple devices, and chances are you're familiar with it already. On the iPad, we used to consider Dropbox essential as a kind of surrogate file system.

Even now that Apple's provided easier access to iCloud Drive, Dropbox remains a useful install, largely on the basis of its widespread support (both in terms of platforms and also iOS apps).

The Dropbox app itself works nicely, too, able to preview a large number of file types, and integrating well with iOS for sending documents to and from the various apps you have installed.

In a sense Evernote is an online back-up for fleeting thoughts and ideas. You use it to save whatever comes to mind — text documents and snippets, notes, images, web clips, and even audio. These can then be accessed from a huge number of devices. (We suspect any day now, Evernote will unveil its ZX Spectrum app.)

The app itself could be friendlier, and there's a tendency towards clutter. But navigation of your stored bits and pieces is simple enough, and the sheer ubiquity and reliability of Evernote makes it worthy of investigation and a place on your Home screen.

When the YouTube app presumably became a victim of the ongoing and increasingly tedious Apple/Google spat, there were concerns Google wouldn't respond.

Those turned out to be unfounded, because here's yet another bespoke, nicely designed Google-created app for iOS. The interface is specifically tuned for the iPad, and AirPlay enables you to fire videos at an Apple TV.

PCalc Lite's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us. For anyone who wants a traditional calculator, it's pretty much ideal. The big buttons beg to be tapped, and the interface can be tweaked to your liking, by way of bolder and larger key text, alternate display digits, and stilling animation.

Beyond basic sums, PCalc Lite adds some conversions, which are categorised but also searchable. If you're hankering for more, IAP lets you bolt on a number of extras from the paid version of PCalc, such as additional themes, dozens more conversions, alternate calculator layouts, a virtual paper tape, and options for programmers and power users.

Although you get the sense eBay's designers can't get through a month without redesigning their app, it's always far superior to using the online auction site in a browser.

eBay for iOS works especially well on an iPad, with images looking great on the larger screen, and browsing proving fast and efficient. Speedy sorting and filtering options also make it a cinch to get to listings for whatever it is you fancy buying.

Instagram might be the current online photo-sharing darling, but it's clear veteran Flickr remains up for a fight. On iPad, it's a lovely app, with a refined and minimal UI that makes browsing simple and allows photography to shine.

Another smart aspect of Flickr is its extremely generous 1 TB of free storage. You can set videos and photos to automatically upload, and they stay private unless you choose to share them.

There are compatibility issues with the most modern Apple toys as Live Photos end up as stills on Flickr. Even so, Flickr makes Apple's free 5 GB of iCloud storage look pathetic by comparison; and even if you use it only as a belt-and-braces back-up for important images, it's worth checking out.

SkyView Free is a stargazing app that very much wants you to get off your behind and outside, or at least hold your iPad aloft to explore the heavens.

Unlike TechRadar favourite Sky Guide, there's no means to drag a finger to manually move the sky around - you must always point your iPad's display where you want to look - but there's no price-tag either. And for free, this app does the business.

There are minimal ads, a noodly atmospheric soundtrack, an optional augmented reality view (to overlay app graphics on to the actual sky), and a handy search that'll point you in the direction of Mars, Ursa Major, or the International Space Station.

Find my iPhone would perhaps be better named 'Find my Apple stuff', because it's not just for figuring out where a missing iPhone is - it can also track iPads, iPods and Macs. The app is simple, elegant and, generally speaking, provides an accurate location for devices. It also enables you to remote-lock or wipe a device.

TED describes itself as "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world". The app pretty much does as you'd expect – you get quick access to dozens of inspiring videos. However, it goes the extra mile in enabling you to save any talk for offline viewing, and also for providing hints on what to watch next if you've enjoyed a particular talk.

We tend to quickly shift children from finger-painting to using much finer tools, but the iPad shows there's plenty of power in your digits — if you're using the right app.

Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll. The core app is free, but it will cost you $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 to unlock the pro features.

The description for Cove is rather noodly — all about self-expression and creating soundtracks to capture your mood. In reality, it's a somewhat controllable instrument for creating ambient music loops. You start with a mood (which determines the scale), 'base', 'melody' and a filter (effect).

You can then play your creation, or save it alongside a kind of diary entry, noting how you feel. Unlike many simple iPad music apps, Cove does enable you to create discordant output, but beyond the hippy vibe, there is the potential here to fashion great beauty.

It's as ugly as they come, but XE Currency is the best free currency app you'll find. You define which currencies you want to see, along with the number of decimals to show. Double-tap a currency and you can set it as the base currency by tapping 1.0 in the calculator, or do bespoke conversions by typing any other value.

One for the graphic designers out there, desktop publishing giant Quark's DesignPad is an astonishingly useful app for figuring out layouts on the move, or knocking about ideas in meetings. Plenty of ready-made documents can give you a head-start, and your finished work can be exported as a PNG or emailed for use in a QuarkXPress document.

Because of its single-app nature and big screen, the iPad's become a tool many people prefer to a PC or Mac for email. However, if you're reliant on Gmail, Apple's own Mail is insufficient, not providing access to your entire archive nor Gmail's features. Google's own app deals with such shortcomings and looks as good as Apple's client.

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image. You get all the basics — cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.

The iPad is the perfect mobile device for composing music, with its fairly large display and powerful innards. This has resulted in a range of involved and impressive music-creation tools, such as Korg Gadget. Sometimes, though, you yearn for something simpler for making some noise.

This is where Figure comes in. Within seconds, you can craft thumping dance loops, comprising drum, bass and lead parts. The sounds are great, being based on developer Propellerhead Software's much-loved Reason. They can be manipulated, too, so your exported loops sound truly unique.

more info...

Huawei Mate 10 Pro release date, news and features

The Mate 10 Pro is the most exciting device that Huawei has announced for the end of this year.

It comes alongside the Mate 10, but the Mate 10 Pro is a phone you can really get excited about as it has improved some key elements we missed from most Huawei products.

Below you'll find all of the details you need to know about Huawei's new phone ahead of its launch.

Read the hands on Huawei Mate 10 Pro review Cut to the chase What is it? The newly announced phone from HuaweiHow much will it cost? Probably around AED 2,949When will it release? Just been announced, should launch later in October Huawei Mate 10 Pro price and release date

We don't know any details about the price of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro yet, but we can safely assume it'll be around the same cost as the Mate 9 Pro was last year.

The Mate 9 Pro cost AED 2,949, but the price may rise gently in each of these markets for the next generation. .

Huawei has yet to share an official release date for the Middle East, but we hope to hear more about the Mate 10 Pro launch date in the future and will update here when we officially know more.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro design and display

The Huawei Mate 10 Pro comes with a glass back design with curved edges to help it sit comfortably in the hand.

We've yet to learn the exact dimensions of the phone, but it's definitely large as this is a phablet device with a 6-inch screen in the center. The phone itself is no bigger than the Mate 9, though, as the screen is an OLED with a ratio of 18:9.

Unlike the Mate 10, Huawei has opted for a Full HD resolution here at 2160 x 1080. On paper that may sound disappointing, but this is one of the first times Huawei has used an OLED tech and that should help with brightness on the display.

The upgraded screen tech also allows for HDR 10 content, which should mean you can enjoy better contrast and more intense colors in some of the videos you watch.

On the rear of the phone is the fingerprint sensor with the dual-sensor camera sitting up just above it. There's also a strip with a different color to draw the eye away from the rest of the phone.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the upgrade, though, is the waterproofing. The Huawei Mate 10 Pro is IP67 water and dust resistant, much like the iPhone 8 and Google Pixel 2, meaning you can run your phone under a tap and it won't be flooded with liquid.

That waterproofing also means there's no 3.5mm headphone jack. Huawei has admitted it wasn't able to make a waterproof phone that still used the tech like Sony has with its Xperia XZ1 series.

Color choices for the Huawei Mate 10 Pro are Midnight Blue, Titanium Gray, Pink Gold and Mocha Brown. It's currently uncertain what color choices will be available in each market, but we'll hopefully hear more details on that soon.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro camera and battery

The camera on the Mate 10 Pro is similar to what we've seen on previous Huawei products using a 12MP color sensor and a 20MP black and white option.

Photos are taken using both sensors and the shooter now has a super wide aperture of f/1.6 which means it should perform well in low light.  On the front is an 8MP selfie shooter, too.

The Mate 10 Pro is packing a 4000mAh battery, which is the same size we saw perform fantastically in the Mate 9 last year. With a better optimized processor running everything behind the scenes here we can safely expect the Mate 10 Pro to perform well in the charging department.

It's also packed with Huawei's SuperCharge feature that means you can charge it from 0% to over 50% in under 30 minutes. There's no wireless charging though, which is a bit of a shame for those who wanted to get rid of their cables.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro specs and OS

The newly announced Kirin 970 chipset is running inside the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. It features top of the range specs and though we haven't had the chance to try it out for long, it seems to work well on both the new phones.

Huawei is putting a big focus on its new Neural Processing Unit feature that sits separately to the CPU and GPU on the chip. This features a new AI feature that will monitor how you use your phone.

It will then try to optimize features better for how you use the device. For example, it will learn that you use more battery toward the end of the day so will try and keep settings low and conserve energy before opening it up later to allow you to use the full potential of the phone.

Exactly how this will impact your use of the phone on a daily basis is a little unclear at the moment, but it's something we'll be sure to push in our Mate 10 Pro review, which is coming soon.

Other specs include 6GB of RAM and the choice of either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage. Strangely Huawei has decided not to include microSD expandable storage on this phone, so you will be limited to just 64GB or 128GB.

It's also running the latest Android Oreo software with Emotion UI 8 - Huawei's own overlay - sitting on top with a few extra features that you may find useful.

These include a new way to enter split screen mode simply and easily with only one motion and a new Smart Tips feature that will notify you when you could be using a useful feature included on the phone, such as Reading Mode.

Want to know more? Check out our hands on Huawei Mate 10 Pro review

more info...

Huawei Mate 10 release date, news and features

It’s been a big year for flagship phones, and the Huawei Mate 10 – along with the Huawei Mate 10 Pro – is likely to be the last significant one before everything kicks into gear again in early 2018.

But it might well have been worth the wait, as Huawei’s new phone is a big, powerful flagship with a sharp screen and a dual-lens camera.

We’ll let you know how well it all comes together when we’ve put the Huawei Mate 10 through a full review, but here’s everything you need to know about the specs, release date and features.

Cut to the chase What is it? Huawei's new big screen flagshipHow much will it cost? Probably around AED 2,299When is it out? Soon probably Huawei Mate 10 price and release date

Huawei hasn’t yet revealed the exact price or release date of the Huawei Mate 10, but we imagine you’ll be able to buy it soon, and if you do you’ll probably pay a lot, but potentially less than many other recent flagships.

The Huawei Mate 9 was priced at AED 2,299 and there’s a good chance the Huawei Mate 10 will have a similar price, though if anything it might well be more expensive, as it looks to be a reasonable upgrade.

Huawei Mate 10 design and display

The Huawei Mate 10 has a somewhat familiar yet distinctive design. It’s glass-backed, but with a reflective band running across it, and the edges are curved to help it sit comfortably in your hand.

The dimensions are 150.5mm x 77.8mm x 8.2mm and it weighs 186g, making it a similar size and weight to the Huawei Mate 9. You’ll be able to get the Mate 10 in Mocha Brown, Black, Champagne Gold or Pink Gold.

There’s a 5.9-inch LCD screen, just like on the Mate 9, but it’s had a resolution boost, as the Huawei Mate 10 is 1,440 x 2,560, giving it a pixel density of 499 pixels per inch. Oddly that actually makes it sharper than the Huawei Mate 10 Pro’s display – though that phone uses OLED, which is arguably superior.

The screen supports HDR 10 content, and the bezels around the Mate 10’s display are fairly small, though not as tiny as on the iPhone X or Essential Phone, and it's got a conventional 16:9 aspect ratio.

Huawei Mate 10 camera and battery

There’s a dual-lens camera on the Huawei Mate 10, consisting of a 20MP black and white sensor and a 12MP color one. Typically you’ll be using both sensors to take photos, with the Mate 10 combining image data from the two for a more detailed shot.

The main lens has an f/1.6 aperture, which means it has a larger lens opening than most smartphone snappers, which should help in low light conditions, as should its optical image stabilization. There’s also an 8MP front-facing camera.

As for the battery, the Huawei Mate 10 has a 4,000mAh one, which is bigger than most phones have, though the same size as the Huawei Mate 9’s.

It worked well there, delivering a lot of life, so hopefully the same will be true here. If nothing else the Mate 10 should charge fast, as Huawei claims it can get a day of life from 20 minutes plugged in.

Huawei also claims the battery management software will intelligently allocate resources to maximize life.

Huawei Mate 10 specs and OS

The Huawei Mate 10 is powered by an octa-core Kirin 970 chipset, with four cores running at 2.36GHz and four going at 1.8GHz. It’s aided by 4GB of RAM and a neural network processing unit (NPU), which Huawei claims improves performance and efficiency for AI-related tasks.

How well this will actually work remains to be seen, but we’ll be sure to properly put it to the test in our full Huawei Mate 10 review.

There’s 64GB of storage built-in, plus a microSD card slot supporting cards of up to 256GB. You also get Android Oreo, overlaid with Huawei’s new Emotion UI 8.0.

If you’ve used a Huawei phone before this should be familiar, but it comes with a few new tricks, such as a Smart Screen function, allowing you to easily run two apps side by side in split-screen.

After a new tablet as well? Here's how to get a good tablet deal on Black Friday

more info...

Huawei Mate 10 Pro release date, news and features

The Mate 10 Pro is the most exciting device that Huawei has announced for the end of this year.

It comes alongside the Mate 10, but the Mate 10 Pro is a phone you can really get excited about as it has improved some key elements we missed from most Huawei products.

Below you'll find all of the details you need to know about Huawei's new phone ahead of its launch.

Read the hands on Huawei Mate 10 Pro review Cut to the chase What is it? The newly announced phone from HuaweiHow much will it cost? AU$1,099 (around $865, £650)When will it release? December Huawei Mate 10 Pro price and release date

We don't know all the details on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro price, but we do have the pricing for Australia.

The Huawei Mate 10 Pro price is set at AU$1,099 in Australia, with a Mate 10 Pro release date of December 4 - meaning there's still a couple of months to wait until the handset hits stores.

That late release date means we won't see a price drop for Black Friday 2017 at the end of November, but if you're looking for a more affordable Huawei flagship check out the Mate 10.

A word of warning for those in the UK though - you'll only be able to get your hands on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.

Short on time? Check out our hands on Huawei Mate 10 Pro video below

Huawei Mate 10 Pro design and display

The Huawei Mate 10 Pro comes with a glass back design with curved edges to help it sit comfortably in the hand.

We've yet to learn the exact dimensions of the phone, but it's definitely large as this is a phablet device with a 6-inch screen in the center. The phone itself is no bigger than the Mate 9, though, as the screen is an OLED with a ratio of 18:9.

Unlike the Mate 10, Huawei has opted for a Full HD resolution here at 2160 x 1080. On paper that may sound disappointing, but this is one of the first times Huawei has used an OLED tech and that should help with brightness on the display.

The upgraded screen tech also allows for HDR 10 content, which should mean you can enjoy better contrast and more intense colors in some of the videos you watch.

On the rear of the phone is the fingerprint sensor with the dual-sensor camera sitting up just above it. There's also a strip with a different color to draw the eye away from the rest of the phone.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the upgrade, though, is the waterproofing. The Huawei Mate 10 Pro is IP67 water and dust resistant, much like the iPhone 8 and Google Pixel 2, meaning you can run your phone under a tap and it won't be flooded with liquid.

That waterproofing also means there's no 3.5mm headphone jack. Huawei has admitted it wasn't able to make a waterproof phone that still used the tech like Sony has with its Xperia XZ1 series.

Color choices for the Huawei Mate 10 Pro are Midnight Blue, Titanium Gray, Pink Gold and Mocha Brown. It's currently uncertain what color choices will be available in each market, but we'll hopefully hear more details on that soon.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro camera and battery

The camera on the Mate 10 Pro is similar to what we've seen on previous Huawei products using a 12MP color sensor and a 20MP black and white option.

Photos are taken using both sensors and the shooter now has a super wide aperture of f/1.6 which means it should perform well in low light.  On the front is an 8MP selfie shooter, too.

The Mate 10 Pro is packing a 4000mAh battery, which is the same size we saw perform fantastically in the Mate 9 last year. With a better optimized processor running everything behind the scenes here we can safely expect the Mate 10 Pro to perform well in the charging department.

It's also packed with Huawei's SuperCharge feature that means you can charge it from 0% to over 50% in under 30 minutes. There's no wireless charging though, which is a bit of a shame for those who wanted to get rid of their cables.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro specs and OS

The newly announced Kirin 970 chipset is running inside the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. It features top of the range specs and though we haven't had the chance to try it out for long, it seems to work well on both the new phones.

Huawei is putting a big focus on its new Neural Processing Unit feature that sits separately to the CPU and GPU on the chip. This features a new AI feature that will monitor how you use your phone.

It will then try to optimize features better for how you use the device. For example, it will learn that you use more battery toward the end of the day so will try and keep settings low and conserve energy before opening it up later to allow you to use the full potential of the phone.

Exactly how this will impact your use of the phone on a daily basis is a little unclear at the moment, but it's something we'll be sure to push in our Mate 10 Pro review, which is coming soon.

Other specs include 6GB of RAM and the choice of either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage. Strangely Huawei has decided not to include microSD expandable storage on this phone, so you will be limited to just 64GB or 128GB.

It's also running the latest Android Oreo software with Emotion UI 8 - Huawei's own overlay - sitting on top with a few extra features that you may find useful.

These include a new way to enter split screen mode simply and easily with only one motion and a new Smart Tips feature that will notify you when you could be using a useful feature included on the phone, such as Reading Mode.

Want to know more? Check out our hands on Huawei Mate 10 Pro review

more info...

Huawei Mate 10 release date, news and features

It’s been a big year for flagship phones, and the Huawei Mate 10 – along with the Huawei Mate 10 Pro – is likely to be the last significant one before everything kicks into gear again in early 2018.

But it might well have been worth the wait, as Huawei’s new phone is a big, powerful flagship with a sharp screen and a dual-lens camera.

We’ll let you know how well it all comes together when we’ve put the Huawei Mate 10 through a full review, but here’s everything you need to know about the specs, release date and features.

Everything you need to know about the Huawei Mate 10 Pro Cut to the chase What is it? Huawei's new big screen flagshipHow much will it cost? Starts at AU$899 (around $710, £530)When is it out? November Huawei Mate 10 price and release date Mate 10 price: AU$899 (around $710, £530)

Huawei hasn’t yet revealed the exact price or release date of the Huawei Mate 10 for all regions yet, but we imagine you’ll be able to buy it soon.

We do already have the SIM-free Huawei Mate 10 price for Australia though, with the handset setting you back AU$899 (around $710, £530), along with a Mate 10 release date of November 15.

We also know that in the Huawei Mate 10 won't be available in the UK, with the Mate 10 Pro the only one of the two making its way to Britain.

The Huawei Mate 10 is nice, but check out the Huawei Mate 10 Pro in our hands on video below

Huawei Mate 10 design and display

The Huawei Mate 10 has a somewhat familiar yet distinctive design. It’s glass-backed, but with a reflective band running across it, and the edges are curved to help it sit comfortably in your hand.

The dimensions are 150.5 x 77.8 x 8.2mm and it weighs 186g, making it a similar size and weight to the Huawei Mate 9. You’ll be able to get the Mate 10 in Mocha Brown, Black, Champagne Gold or Pink Gold.

There’s a 5.9-inch LCD screen, just like on the Mate 9, but it’s had a resolution boost, as the Huawei Mate 10 is 1,440 x 2,560, giving it a pixel density of 499 pixels per inch. 

Oddly that actually makes it sharper than the Huawei Mate 10 Pro’s display – though that phone uses OLED, which is arguably superior.

The screen supports HDR 10 content, and the bezels around the Mate 10’s display are fairly small, though not as tiny as on the iPhone X or Essential Phone, and it's got a conventional 16:9 aspect ratio.

Huawei Mate 10 camera and battery

There’s a dual-lens camera on the Huawei Mate 10, consisting of a 20MP black and white sensor and a 12MP color one. Typically you’ll be using both sensors to take photos, with the Mate 10 combining image data from the two for a more detailed shot.

The main lens has an f/1.6 aperture, which means it has a larger lens opening than most smartphone snappers, which should help in low light conditions, as should its optical image stabilization. There’s also an 8MP front-facing camera.

As for the battery, the Huawei Mate 10 has a 4,000mAh one, which is bigger than most phones have, though the same size as the Huawei Mate 9’s.

It worked well there, delivering a lot of life, so hopefully the same will be true here. If nothing else the Mate 10 should charge fast, as Huawei claims it can get a day of life from 20 minutes plugged in.

Huawei also claims the battery management software will intelligently allocate resources to maximize life.

Huawei Mate 10 specs and OS

The Huawei Mate 10 is powered by an octa-core Kirin 970 chipset, with four cores running at 2.36GHz and four going at 1.8GHz. It’s aided by 4GB of RAM and a neural network processing unit (NPU), which Huawei claims improves performance and efficiency for AI-related tasks.

How well this will actually work remains to be seen, but we’ll be sure to properly put it to the test in our full Huawei Mate 10 review.

There’s 64GB of storage built-in, plus a microSD card slot supporting cards of up to 256GB. You also get Android Oreo, overlaid with Huawei’s new Emotion UI 8.0.

If you’ve used a Huawei phone before this should be familiar, but it comes with a few new tricks, such as a Smart Screen function, allowing you to easily run two apps side by side in split-screen.

After a new tablet as well? Here's how to get a good tablet deal on Black Friday

more info...

Xiaomi Redmi 5A release date, news and price

Continuing the super affordable Redmi 4A, Xiaomi Redmi 5A is launched today in China. Featuring a 5-inch display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor, the new Redmi 5A brings some good features at a very low price. While it features minor changes when compared to the Redmi 4A, Xiaomi has retained the price at just CNY 600, making it one of the cheapest entry-level Android phones out there.

Metal unibody design in the entry-level

One of the major changes with the Redmi 5A is the metallic unibody design, which is an excellent proposition in this price range. The Redmi 4A, while launched at the same price a few months ago, featured a plastic build.

More of the same, but still great value for money

Other than the metallic unibody design, the Xiaomi Redmi 5A doesn’t feature any major new features or upgrades. Even so, the phone offers excellent value for money – it comes with a 5-inch HD resolution IPS LCD display and runs on MIUI 9 based on Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box.

Powering the Redmi 5A is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor which is coupled with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. There’s an option to expand the internal storage up to 256GB using a microSD card in the second SIM slot.

On the back, the Redmi 5A features the same 13MP f/2.2 camera with an LED flash and support for 1080p recording. On the front, though, it comes with an improved 5MP f/2.0 camera, so users can expect better selfies and video calling experience.

Other features of the Redmi 5A include dual SIM, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM Radio and Infrared port. The phone is backed by a slightly smaller 3000mAh battery, while the Redmi 4A featured a bigger 3120mAh battery.

Xiaomi Redmi 5A Price and Availability

Xiaomi Redmi 5A has been priced at CNY 600, which roughly translates to $91, making it an extremely good option in the entry-level segment. It will be initially sold in China, with wider availability details to be revealed in the coming weeks. Pre-orders for the phone start today, with the phone being sold on Xiaomi Mall and other online partners like Lynx, JD.com and more.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 release date, news and rumors

more info...

Samsung’s new rugged tablet takes a leaf or two from the Galaxy Note 8

A host of new information has just been spilled online regarding the sequel to Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Active, with claims that the rugged tablet will run with a more powerful octa-core CPU, and will take further inspiration and features from the Note 8.

Those features include the appearance of Bixby on the rugged slate, an S Pen stylus – which will slot into an integrated holder on the top of the bumper case – and a USB-C port will be incorporated, as well as a fingerprint reader.

Note that the Bixby functionality will be limited to Bixby Home, not Bixby Voice, though.

As Sam Mobile reports, the leak comes courtesy of Roland Quandt, and claims that the Galaxy Tab Active 2 will up the ante to a 1.6GHz Exynos 7870 octa-core processor (from a quad-core 1.2GHz CPU) backed up with 3GB of RAM.

That’s double the memory of the original tablet, although the storage will remain the same at 16GB (sadly), and the screen will still be an 8-inch affair with a resolution of 1,280 x 800.

Quandt does, however, note that the screen will be brighter at 480 nits (compared to the 400 nits of the original).

Camera boost

The Galaxy Tab Active sequel will have twin cameras upped considerably in potency to 8MP and 5MP (from 3.1MP and 1.2MP), and a 4,450mAh removable battery, but the design will remain broadly the same.

You can also expect an LTE variant of the slate for those who want to stay online while on the move. The tablet will run Android 7.1.1 and is expected to emerge before 2017 is out, although as ever, bear in mind that this is all just speculation at this point.

Who knows, with the sequel imminent, you might be able to get a good deal on the original Galaxy Tab Active come Black Friday.

In our review of the Galaxy Tab Active, we liked a fair bit about the tablet, and definitely the impressive battery life (which the sequel will seek to maintain, hopefully, given that it has the same size battery).

The beefier hardware purported to be inside this new model should go a long way to making it more palatable on the performance front, too.

Image Credit: Roland Quandt

We’ve picked out the best business tablets of 2017Check out the prices on older models with our Samsung Galaxy Tab deals

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The best free alternative to Adobe Lightroom 2017

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the professional photographer's choice for processing raw images files, but it's not the only option. There are many great alternatives available completely free.

Lightroom has two main functions: processing images, and organizing them (through tags, naming, rating and other metadata). Like Lightroom, all the image editors we’ve featured here are capable of processing raw files straight from your camera.

Raw files contain all the data captured by your camera’s sensor, and all camera manufacturers have their own format for storing it. No screen or printer can reproduce that much detail, so it’s necessary to compress them into a format like JPG before you can display or use them. You can let your camera do that automatically, or use desktop software to control the process yourself. 

The image editors we’ve featured here let you adjust contrast, brightness, levels, saturation, sharpness, and tonality to achieve the results you envisaged when you shot the picture. They also offer tools for cropping and rotating images, but if you’re looking for retouching and healing tools, you’re better off with a free Photoshop alternative.

RawTherapee is an advanced open source Lightroom alternative for processing raw files (or compressed image files like TIFF and JPG), then sending the resulting images directly to GIMP (or your preferred photo editor).

RawTherapee uses non-destructive editing, so you can revert to the original file at any time. Its advanced image processing toolkit makes it easy to adjust exposure, colors, sharpness, and noise. RawTherapee’s de-mosaicing algorithms reduce artefacts in converted images, and its multi-core support makes full use of your available hardware.

Once you’re happy with the fruits of your labor, you can save the settings as a preset for future use. You can also process images in batches, or edit multiple files at once using the tabbed interface.

The software’s user community have created a list of cameras supported by RawTherapee, but it’s not definitive; if your camera isn’t listed, try opening a file using the software anyway.

Download here: RawTherapee

LightZone is another open source, non-destructive digital darkroom that makes an excellent substitute for Lightroom. You’ll need to sign up for an account before you can download LightZone (the software’s creators are monitoring the number of downloads to assist in future development), but it only takes a moment.

Once you’re in, LightZone can process raw files (as well as compressed image formats such as JPG and TIFF) using a series of filters, which you can stack, adjust and rearrange to achieve the desired effect. You can also choose specific areas to edit using a vector-based selection tool.

To find out if LightZone supports your camera’s raw format, check out the program’s profile guide.

Download here: LightZone

IrfanView combines a powerful image editor and organizer, with excellent support for raw and compressed file formats (see the full list). Its interface isn’t as intuitive as some other free Lightroom alternatives, but it’s been in development for 20 years and is packed with thoughtfully designed tools for photographers of all abilities.

IrfanView is one of the best free tools around for cataloging images – editing metadata, renaming files in batches, and adding tags – enabling you to get huge image libraries under control in the space of an afternoon.

IrfanView's raw processing tools are superb as well, letting you convert and rename files in batches, or spend time adjusting tonality and colors for individual photos that need more care and attention. For further editing, you can export files straight to a separate photo editor like GIMP.

IrfanView receives regular updates, and there’s a lively community of users on hand to offer support, should you need it. 

Review and where to download: IrfanView

Chasys Draw IES is more than just a Lightroom alternative – it’s a full image editing suite that’s for personal and professional use. Not only is it an excellent photo editor and converter, you can also use it to capture still images or video from your desktop, create icons and cursors, make frame-by-frame animations, convert images in batches and create your own artwork from scratch.

The raw processing component, Chasys Draw IES raw-Photo, might not be as intuitive as some other raw image processors, but it gives you an exceptional degree of manual control. You can tweak red, blue and green curves, and adjust white balance, sharpness and contrast before the images are exported in CD5 format. You must then use Chasys Draw IES Converter (included in the package) to convert the files to JPG or TIFF format.

Chasys Draw IES supports raw files from all the popular camera manufacturers. You can find a list of supported formats on the developer’s site, but it’s not exhaustive so don’t be disheartened if your model isn’t listed.

Download here: Chasys Draw IES

Google Picasa was another great free Lightroom alternative, but it was discontinued in May last year and replaced with Google Photos – a free photo editor available as a mobile app and online, with an optional desktop tool for uploading images.

Google Photos is very convenient for editing and managing photos on an Android phone thanks to its simple toolkit and free online storage, but it's also possible to use the web interface to process and convert raw images (see the full list of supported formats). Online storage is free, but only for photos in JPG or WEBP format; you'll have to use your Google Drive storage allocation for anything else.

Google Photos offers a selection of attractive filters that can be applied with a single click, plus sliders labelled Light, Color and Pop, which adjust brightness, saturation and contrast, respectively.

Unfortunately, although it's a superb app for mobile devices, Google Photos doesn't offer the same processing power as the Picasa desktop software. There's no batch processing and editing is quite basic, so it's slipped down our rankings to number five.

Try it online: Google Photos

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Razer Phone release date, news and rumors

It looks like a new company is about to enter the smartphone arena, as gaming peripheral brand Razer is set to announce its first handset on November 1.

Yet despite the close launch, the name of the phone, which for now we’ll call the Razer Phone, still hasn’t leaked, and we’ve only so far seen one possible picture of it.

The picture we talk of isn't the one above - that's Razer's Power Bank charger - but you'll be able to see it further down the page.

The new image, plus a previous specs leak, gives us a reasonable idea of what we may be able to expect from the gaming-focused Razer Phone in many ways, and you’ll find all those details below.

Cut to the chase What is it? Razer's first smartphoneWhen is it out? Being announced November 1What will it cost? Probably a lot Razer Phone release date and price

Razer's site teases a November 1 phone announcement

The Razer Phone is set to be announced on November 1, as Razer has teased the launch on its website, though hasn’t yet confirmed the timings for its event just yet.

How soon after the announcement you’ll be able to buy the Razer Phone, or how much it will cost, also remain a mystery for now.

However, we’d expect it will carry a high-end price, as leaked specs suggest it will be a flagship handset, so we’d imagine you’ll have to pay upwards of $700 (£600, AU$1,000).

Razer Phone design and screen

Hottest leaks:

A blocky designA 5.7-inch QHD screen

So far we’ve only seen one leaked image of the Razer Phone and it doesn’t show the full handset. 

The shot, apparently obtained by an unnamed insider and shared by TechByte, shows just half of the back of the phone, but we can make out some details from that.

It has a blocky, angular design, very similar to the Nextbit Robin, which is no surprise, since Razer has purchased Nextbit.

If this is the Razer Phone it looks a lot like the Nextbit Robin. Credit: TechByte

It’s shown in black here and while it may come in other colors it’s possible that black will be the only option, as Razer is fond of that color. Oddly though there’s no sign of the green that Razer also tends to use on its products.

The rear is plain other than a large white Razer logo. It’s hard to tell what the Razer Phone is made out of, but given the likely high-end specs we’d expect a metal or glass case rather than a plastic one.

Other visible details include a dual-lens camera and two small buttons on the left edge, likely to control the volume.

There are no images of the screen, but a GFXBench listing suggests it will have a 5.7-inch 1,440 x 2,560 one. 

That’s a conventional QHD resolution, suggesting the Razer Phone will probably have a 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than opting for a more widescreen design like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and some other recent handsets.

TechRadar’s take: We’ve only seen one image of the phone so it could well be wrong, but it looks convincing, given the Nextbit Robin-like design. The screen specs are also believable if this is to be a flagship phone.

Razer Phone camera and battery

Hottest leaks:

A dual-lens 12MP camera

The one benchmark we’ve seen for the Razer Phone lists a 12MP rear camera, though there’s no mention of a dual-lens one, even though the picture we’ve seen seems to have a dual-lens camera.

The benchmark also lists a 4K video camera and an 8MP front-facing camera, though other than HDR and a flash on the rear camera there’s no word on what capabilities and modes these cameras will have.

As for the battery, that remains unknown for now, but we’d expect to see a reasonably large one if the Razer Phone is to be positioned at gamers, which is likely given the company’s heritage.

TechRadar’s take: A dual-lens 12MP rear camera and an 8MP front-facing one are fairly standard flagship specs, so they’re believable.

Razer Phone OS and power

Hottest leaks:

7.5GB of RAM for gaming powerA Snapdragon 835 chipset

We’re again reliant on the one benchmark we’ve seen here, but that suggests the Razer Phone will have a Snapdragon 835 chipset and an Adreno 540 graphics chip, which would make it a match for the likes of the LG V30 and the US version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

Where it seemingly doesn’t match those phones is RAM, as the Razer Phone supposedly has 7.5GB of the stuff, which is more than almost any other smartphone – though there is a version of the OnePlus 5 with 8GB.

That might sound like overkill but it’s actually believable, since the Razer Phone will likely be designed for high-end mobile gaming, which needs all the power it can get.

We can’t be certain of that, but since Razer is primarily a gaming peripheral company it’s very likely, especially as Razer’s CEO has previously mentioned creating a mobile device “specifically geared toward gamers” and since the teaser page on Razer’s site includes “watch, listen, play” in the URL.

The operating system meanwhile is very likely to be Android, and indeed the benchmark we’ve seen lists Android 7.1.1. 

Since Android Oreo is out we’d expect that to be on the phone, so this could be dated or inaccurate information, which calls all the other specs into question too, but it’s all we’ve got to go on for now.

Whichever version of Android it lands with it’s likely to be skinned by Razer, since the benchmark also mentions “Android Razer Edition.”

TechRadar’s take: The specs we’ve seen are believable given the likely focus on gaming, but we’d take them with a pinch of salt since they only come from one source.

Razer Phone other features

Hottest leaks:

64GB of storageCloud gaming

The only other spec we’ve seen listed for the Razer Phone (again in that benchmark) is 64GB of storage, but there are some possible features we can guess at.

For one thing, given that Razer owns Nextbit it would make sense for the company to use one of the most interesting ideas found in the Nextbit Robin, namely the ability to offload files and even apps to the cloud, so that less internal storage is used.

The Razer Phone might build upon the cloud skills of the Nextbit Robin

We’ve theorized before that Razer may even take it a step further and allow you to stream games from the cloud, which as well as freeing up space would potentially allow the Razer Phone to run more demanding games than many handsets, since much of the horsepower could also be provided by the cloud.

Given the gaming focus Razer may also look at providing proper gaming controls, rather than just a touchscreen. If it does these could be additional hardware buttons, but would more likely take the form of a detachable controller.

Or perhaps you’d even be able to pair the Razer Phone with Razer’s gaming keyboards, giving you near endless hardware buttons.

TechRadar’s take: Hardware buttons and cloud gaming are simply speculation for now, but it would make sense for Razer to leverage the cloud to some extent, given that it’s gone to the trouble of acquiring a company with experience in that area.

Black Friday could be the best time to buy a new phone

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Vodafone offers 90GB 4G data, unlimited voice calls for 6 months at Rs. 399

Vodafone India has announced another interesting plan with 4G data and unlimited voice calls. Ever since Reliance Jio’s entry into the Indian telecom sector, the incumbent operators have been battling with their new recharge plans to compete against Jio’s attractive plans.

Under this new plan, Vodafone is offering 90GB 4G data and unlimited local and STD voice calls with a validity of 6 months to prepaid customers. This means that users can use 0.5GB of data per day, however, Vodafone has not kept any restrictions on daily data usage.

The company has not revealed whether this plan is valid for new users only or old users can also recharge with this plan. The same plan is also available for post-paid users, however, the tariff has been increased to Rs. 499 for them.

This plan has been launched to compete against Reliance Jio’s 399 plan under which the company offers 1GB 4G data per day, unlimited local and STD voice calls, free SMSs and access to Jio’s suite of apps with a validity of 84 days. Jio has also announced a Diwali offer for its users under which the customers who recharge with the Rs. 399 plan before October 19 will get 100% cashback in the form of vouchers.

Recently, India’s largest telecom operator, Airtel had announced a plan of Rs. 495 under which the company is offering 1GB data per day, unlimited local and STD voice calls, 99 SMSs per day and free outgoing on roaming with a validity of 84 days.

Similarly, Idea Cellular has introduced a plan of Rs. 444. Under this plan, the company is offering unlimited local and STD calls, 1GB 4G data per day with a validity of 84 days to users with 4G handsets. Users with 3G/2G handset will get unlimited local and STD voice calls and 2GB 3G/2G data for 35 days.

Interestingly, Reliance Jio recently announced that it is going to update its tariffs on October 19 so we may be seeing many more new plans from these telecom operators after Jio’s announcements. Reports have suggested that the latest entrant in the telecom segment, Reliance Jio may increase the prices of its plans on October 19.

Reliance JioPhone vs Airtel Karbonn 4G Indian

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Here’s what Windows 10 will look like with the Fall Creators Update

Microsoft has posted a teaser video showing off the changes its new Fluent Design System will make to Windows 10’s interface with the release of the Fall Creators Update (which begins rolling out tomorrow).

A number of apps and menus will get the Fluent Design makeover, including the core applications such as Photos and People, with a good bit of tinkering seemingly done to Groove Music – somewhat puzzlingly seeing as Microsoft just pulled the plug on the streaming service (though it can still be used as a music player).

Maybe we’ll see some great Black Friday deals on the Windows 10

The other main point of interest here is the fact that Microsoft is only bringing a limited portion of the overall Fluent UI to Windows 10 with the Fall Creators Update, namely the Acrylic (blur/transparency) and Reveal (buttons being outlined, or icons revealed when the cursor hovers over something) effects.

More jazzing up of the operating system’s interface is in the pipeline, but to begin with these are the only goodies you’ll be getting. You can check them out in the video below.

Fluent finery

They seem like useful touches and certainly give the interface a more modern feel, although reaction across the internet has seemed a bit mixed concerning the Fluent Design System. But then again, it always will be – you’re never going to please all of the people, all of the time, particularly when it comes to aesthetic changes which are naturally more subjective.

As we noted at the outset of this story, the Fall Creators Update deployment process starts tomorrow, although you may have to wait quite a while before it’s available on your PC (several months in some cases, if past history is anything to go by).

As always with these big updates, Microsoft is conducting a gradual rollout to help spot any problems and bugs which might still be hanging around.

Via: MS Power User

Some of the best laptops out there run with Windows 10

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Top 20 cheap laptop deals in October 2017

A great cheap laptop deal can be hard to find with so many options on the net. That's where we come in. Our team of dedicated deal hunters are on the lookout every day to find the best laptop deals from the most reliable retailers on the net. So, for the best value cheap laptops, with genuine discounts over the trumped up fake 'deals' take a look below. 

You don't have to wait for the Black Friday deals, as we're looking for great laptop prices all year round. We've got the best up-to-date laptop voucher codes too.

Best Laptop 2017: our pick of the 15 best laptops this year

If you're after a cheap laptop for web browsing and other simple tasks, or you need a new laptop for school or work, or you simply need a really powerful laptop for as little money as possible, we have options for you.

At the top of the page you'll find our selection of the very latest and best cheap laptop deals of the week followed by a selection of popular quality laptops that retailers like to discount on a regular basis. Underneath those laptop deals you'll find our pick of the latest best laptops and the best available prices.

If you're from the States or Down Under, be sure to check out our selection of the top laptop deals in the US or in Australia in our always-updated guides.

Cheap laptop deals of the week

HP 255 G5: Take a look through our other deals this week and you might think there there are cheaper laptops with 4GB of memory out there (and there are), but this one is worth a look as it comes with a 128GB solid state drive (SSD), which the cheaper laptops on this page can't match. So if speed over size is a must, this is a speedy bargain (and £50 off) at just £379.99 @ Tesco.

Asus Chromebook C300SA: This Chromebook comes with 4GM of RAM, that's double the memory of most cheap Chromebooks and will multitask much better. As it's a Chromebook, it uses the Chrome OS instead of Windows. If you're already a Chrome fan using Gmail, Google Docs and the like this looks very tidy at just £241.32 @ BT

Acer Chromebook: If you're after a cheap Chromebook but with a bit of bling, then how about this 14-inch Acer model. It's not particularly powerful, but for basic tasks like browsing and document editing you'll be sported. If gold isn't your thing, then there's a silver option for the same price. Check out both of these cheap laptops for £229.99 @ Currys.

HP 250 G5: The HP 250 series of laptops are excellent for day-to-day activities and multitasking. The i5 processor, 8GB RAM and 1TB hard drive are more than most users will ever need for work, web browsing and catching up on Netflix. A great laptop deal at £449.98 @ ebuyer.

HP 250 G5: If the model above isn't quite packing enough spec for your liking, this one from specialists, LaptopsDirect, comes with an i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive.  If you're looking for a new uni laptop that will last a few years, we think this is a super choice for just £529.97 @ LaptopsDirect.

Asus C201PA Chromebook: If you're happy to say goodbye to Windows and take advantage of the very capable Google/Android ecosystem services for basic laptop needs this 11.6-inch Chromebook comes with a 13-hour battery life. Save an additional £20 this week as it's only £191.66 at Amazon

Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA: This is one of our favorite looking laptops of 2017 with a distinctive blue with gold finish. The specs match the looks too with an i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid state drive. Get it cheaper than anywhere else on the net, with free delivery and a two year guarantee for just £999.95 @ John Lewis.

Asus ZenBook UX390UA: If you fell in love with the gorgeous blue Asus above but don't want to spend that much money you can get one with lower spec for £200 less. Short version, the main differences are 8GB of RAM (down from 16GB) and an i5 processor instead of the i7. Still a very powerful and very pretty laptop. And now £799.97 @ Laptops Direct.

Acer R11 Intel: This 11.6-inch 2-in-1 convertible has had even more money knocked off its price this week making it one of the cheapest deals on this page. With 4GB of RAM and eight hours of battery, it's a step up from most cheap hybrids. Get it now for just £219 @ Tesco.

Dell Inspiron 15 5000: If the 7000 series is a bit much (see the best prices further down this page), then why not save yourself £100 today on this still very capable model with 4GB RAM and a 1TB HDD. Not bad at all for just £399.99 at Currys.

The best gaming laptop deals of the week

10% off all gaming laptop and desktops at AO.com
AO.com is currently running a massive sale on all of its gaming laptops and desktop rigs, knocking 10% off the lot. Some of them are even bundled with a gaming mouse, laptop backpack and a headset. You don't need a code, just add anything from the link below to your basket and you'll see the discount added automatically when you scroll down to the bottom. Yes, it would make more sense to show the discounted price automatically in the list or on each item's page. If you want to check a price without adding it to your basket, you could always fire up the calculator on your phone and times the cost by 0.9 to see the discounted price.

View: 10% off gaming laptops and desktops at AO.com

Acer Nitro 5: If the idea of spending a grand on a new gaming laptop sounds like silly money to you, then you may well have a place in your bank balance for this Acer gaming laptop deal. It comes with an i5 processor, GTX 1050 graphics, 8GB RAM, 1TB hard drive and a 128GB SSD. All for a very reasonable £899 @ Tesco.

Acer Aspire VX 15 VX5-591G: Another reasonably priced gaming laptop with plenty of grunt for you here. you're getting a 7th-gen i5 processor, 8GB RAM, a 1TB hard drive, 128GB SSD and GTX 1050 graphics. Take a look for £899.99 @ Very.

We'll continue adding the best laptop deals in the latest sales as we find them. Up next, you'll find the latest prices on some of the most popular laptops around, followed by the best deals on TechRadar's favourite laptops.

Where to find the best laptop deals: Amazon laptop dealsJohn Lewis laptop dealsCurrys laptop dealsTesco laptop dealsArgos laptop dealsLaptops Direct dealsDell laptop deals

Popular cheap laptop deals

There have been some generous offers lately for this popular Lenovo laptop series. Any choice between the 4GB and 12GB RAM options should run multiple applications at once. Hard drive sizes vary from 256GB SSD to 1TB in regular form. Some options also include dedicated Nvidia GeForce GTX 940MX graphics.

At around £200, the HP Stream 14 is decent value if you're after something to cover the basics like web browsing or document editing. It's competitively priced again the cheaper Chromebooks out there despite the 14-inch screen and Windows 10 operating system.

There's some hefty grunt under the shell of these HP 250 G4 and G5 models  and there are some great prices this week. The Intel Pentium processor and 4GB/8GB of RAM mean this laptop will whip through pretty much any day-to-day activity you can throw at it without the juddering performance of cheaper laptops. Hell, it'll even have a decent crack at playing a few of the less demanding games out there.

A sturdy choice for a study laptop for school/college/uni. The HP Pavilion 15 has more power that the average pupil needs while keeping the costs sensible. If you're not needing extra power of an expensive laptop for video/photo editing, this is more than enough for web browsing, playing some tunes on Spotify and editing coursework.

From afar, this laptop might be mistaken for a MacBook Pro which tells you a lot about its level of quality. Don't expect a full metal chassis at this price, but this is probably one of the best looking plastic bodies in its category. There are plenty of ports (old and new), 4GB of RAM and a massive 1TB hard drive. The cheapest models have a respectable i3 processor, but you can get the more powerful i5 versions for not much more if you need that extra kick. Asus saw it fit to include a DVD writer as well as a 15.6-inch full HD screen. Despite this large display and the presence of a numeric keypad, it's just a tad thicker and heavier than an Ultrabook.

Why not upgrade your storage with a cheap hard drive or SSD? See the best hard drive and SSD deals. 

This is the newer version of the Asus Transformer Mini series. This upgrade includes a fingerprint sensor and double the RAM at 4GB for speedier performance. For your money, this is one of the most impressive two-in-one transformer models out there.

This is one of the larger Chromebook experience out there for someone looking for a full-sized laptop with an excellent screen at a super low cost. The 4GB of RAM running the Chrome OS is super fast and will allow you to really pile up tabs and apps without slowing down. The battery will easily last the best part of a day for most users too.

The best deals on our favourite laptops

We've reviewed loads of laptops over the years: we've seen the good ones, the great ones and the ones to avoid. Sometimes the best laptops pop up online at some truly deal-tastic prices. So in this section, we list the very best laptops out there and the best deals on each one.

The Dell XPS 13 is, bar none, the best laptop you can buy today. It features a revolutionary design that's astonishingly thin and light. Fitting a 13.3-inch screen into such a small frame means Dell has created a nearly borderless Infinity display. It's a powerful and long lasting machine even by today's Ultrabook standards. The XPS 13 comes outfitted with Intel's latest Skylake processors plus lighting, quick storage and memory, all while coming in at a very affordable starting price. For these reasons, it easily takes the top slot as the best Ultrabook, the best Windows laptop and the best overall laptop.

Looking for a quality gaming laptop but want to keep things under that unappealing £1000 mark? Then Dell has you covered with the Inspiron 15 Gaming range.

The Asus Chromebook Flip isn't perfect, but it's an impressive little piece of kit. Plus, it's so affordable that you might want to pick one up just to have a Chromebook on hand – even if you already own a MacBook or Windows laptop. Aside from the budget price tag, the Flip is one of the best-built Chromebooks to blaze the trail onward for more convertibles. Touchscreen functionality feels more logical, with a screen that actually rotates. The Flip meets all the core tenants of an ideal Chrome OS device.

This 10-inch hybrid comes packing a surprising amount of goods considering its small size. It's outfitted with an HD screen and more than enough power to get you through a simple day of web browsing and even image editing. When you're ready kick back with some media streaming, you can pop off the 10-inch tablet.

The Asus Strix GL502 is undoubtedly one of the best gaming laptops around for gaming in 1080p. It'll run with the settings cranked with games like Overwatch not dipping below 60fps. The battery life isn't the best, but the display, performance and built-in sound system more than make up for it.

Lenovo has crafted a brilliant, forward-thinking device that could very well create a subcategory in computing all of its own. The modest specs hold it back from taking on the big boys in terms of raw power, but the innovative digital touchpad keyboard and drawing surface look like trendsetters to us. The Android version is currently about £100 cheaper than the Windows one.

Can a tablet really replace your laptop or home PC? That's still up for debate, but the best tablet trying to make that happen is the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 - and it does a fine job with the full blown version of Windows 10, an integrated kickstand and optional keyboard attachment. Great for for creative professionals, students and everyday folks alike - it's only the premium price that push it down the list, but if you're willing to pay for it, you're getting a lot of power. A LOT.

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The best free screen recorder 2017

With a free screen recorder, it's easy to capture and share footage straight from your desktop. Fancy showing other people how to play big name games on YouTube? Would you like to make demos to show off your apps, or to teach others how to use specific software? We've got the tool for you.

The simplest screen recorders simply capture what's on your screen and save it in AVI format, but the more advanced free tools also offer editing, picture-in-picture, live streaming, and gameplay optimization.

However, you have to be careful – many free recorders will add unsightly watermarks to your clips or let you record only a handful of videos before demanding payment, so it's essential to pick the right software first to avoid disappointing results.

Here's our pick of the best free screen recorders that will help you record or stream professional-quality video from your desktop or webcam.

If you’re a keen gamer, OBS Studio is easily the best screen capture software for you. Unlike the hugely popular FRAPS (which only lets you record for 30 seconds at a stretch unless you’ve bought a license, and applies a watermark to the resulting footage), OBS Studio is open source, and completely free to use without restrictions.

Free screen recorder OBS Studio supports both streaming and recording in high definition, with no restrictions on the number or length of your creations. You can stream live to Twitch or YouTube gaming, save projects and come back to them later, or encode your footage in FLV format and save it locally.

Because OBS Studio can record directly from your graphics card, it’s able to capture games running in full-screen mode (many other screen recorders can only record if the game is windowed), with customizable hotkeys to control the recording. OBS Studio can also make full use of multi-core CPUs for improved performance, and can record at 60FPS (or even higher).

It might take a little while to set it up exactly how you want, but OBS Studio is by far the best and most powerful screen recorder for gamers.

Review and where to download: OBS Studio

OBS is our top choice for recording from a desktop or webcam, but Flashback Express comes a very close second. Despite being a free version of a paid program, FlashBack Express won't put ugly watermarks over your recordings or impose time limits, and it's packed with features and tools that rival many premium programs. Its interface is less intimidating than OBS Studio, so if you've never used a screen recorder before, it's an excellent choice.

You can record from your whole screen, a window, a selected area, or a webcam. Once you’ve finished, your recording will appear in a simple editor, where you can crop and trim it to suit your needs, then export it to YouTube, an FTP server, or your PC.

That’s all fairly standard fare for a free screen recorder, but take a minute to dive into Flashback’s advanced options and you’ll find a wealth of thoughtfully designed settings that will make your desktop recordings look truly professional. The recorder can automatically obscure passwords entered on screen, replace your silly wallpaper with a plain one, hide messy desktop icons, and highlight your mouse pointer to make it easier to follow. There's also a dedicated gaming mode that lets you define the number of frames recorded per second.

There’s no limit on the length of your recordings unless you choose to set one, which can be useful if there’s a chance you might accidentally leave the recorder running. You can also choose to break long recordings up into chunks – a brilliant touch that helps you avoid creating huge, unwieldy files. Your recordings won’t be watermarked, either.

You’ll need to upgrade to one of the premium versions of Flashback to save in a format other than WMV, but that’s the only significant limitation of this brilliant free screen recorder. 

Review and where to download: Flashback Express

Ezvid is a great free screen recorder for capturing footage from your desktop or games (though you may need to run them in windowed mode). The interface is extremely clear – just select an input source and Ezvid will give you a three-second countdown before it starts recording. The footage will be added to a timeline reminiscent of Windows Movie Maker that allows you to cut and splice clips together, and supplement them with text and images.

There are some fun extras, too – Ezvid can capture audio from your microphone, then apply distortion effects. After all, who wouldn’t want a software tutorial narrated by a robot? There’s also a text-to-speech function, and a selection of music to liven up silent presentations and slideshows.

Your video won’t be watermarked, and you can record for up to 45 minutes uninterrupted. The software will add a brief splash at the start of your recording by default, but you can right-click and delete this via the project window.

The only major drawback of Ezvid – and it’s a significant one – is the lack of an export function. You can send videos directly to YouTube, but there’s no way to encode them and save them locally. This is due to the included music, which is only licensed for use on YouTube. It’s a shame, because EzVid is an otherwise superb screen recorder.

Review and where to download: Ezvid

TinyTake is a free screen recorder designed to grab webcam and desktop footage – not in-game action. Starting a recording is simple – just click the button, then select an areas of the screen and tap [Ctrl]+[R]. 

Your recordings won’t be watermarked, but you’re limited to five minutes of footage at a time. That might not sound like much compared with some of the free screen recorders here, but it’s plenty for an average YouTube video tutorial. 

Once you’re done, you can preview your video and export it to your hard drive, to YouTube, or to TinyTake’s own cloud storage service, which gives you 2GB for your clips. 

Other tools, including annotations, are exclusive to the premium versions of TinyTake, which are designed for commercial use.

TinyTake is a lean, streamlined screen recorder, but the lack of editing tools is a shame, and places it below EzVid in our ranking.

Download here: TinyTake

Xsplit’s streaming and recording software comes in two flavors: Broadcaster and Gamecaster. They’re very similar, but the latter is designed chiefly for gamers, while the former is a more general-purpose screen recorder. 

Xsplit Broadcaster is a free screen recorder with three tiers: free, personal (for keen streamers), and premium (for commercial use). The free edition of places a watermark over recordings over 60fps, or at resolutions higher than 720p. That’s a major drawback compared to OBS Studio, but Xsplit’s simple interface might make that compromise worthwhile if you’re only intending to publish to YouTube at standard definition.

The free screen recorder can capture input from any source, including your screen, a video card, webcam, media file, or a specific program. Its game-detect function triggers automatically when you begin playing, and the results can be output as a video file, or streamed directly via Twitch, YouTube Live, and Facebook Live, to name just a few.

Download here: Xsplit Broadcaster

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Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on mobile phones

Amazon has once again come up with a plethora of exciting deals in India as the country prepares for this year’s festive season. So, this is undoubtedly the best time to buy a shiny new smartphone. To help you choose your next handset, we have handpicked some of the greatest offers which will give you the best value for your money.

The second wave of the Amazon Great Indian Festival sale has kicked off on October 4 and will last till October 8. There are tons of amazing deals to catch up across major categories, so if you want something specific, you can head over to any of these deals-

If you're looking to buy a new laptop, here are the best deals on laptops

Amazon Great Indian Festival: Best deals on laptops

Some great offers on wearables

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on wearables

Huge discounts on portable wireless speakers

Amazon Great Indian Festival: Best deals on speakers

Best discounts and offers on mobile phones

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on mobile phones

Offers on storage solutions: Hard disks, pen drives, and more

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on Hard disks, Pen drives and more

The best power bank deals on Amazon are now live

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on power banks

For the audiophiles out there, here's what Amazon is offering on headphones

Amazon Great Indian Festival: Best deals on Headphones and Speakers

Buy Apple iPhone 7 for Rs 38,999 @ Amazon (Save Rs 10,001)

Apple phones are usually not pocket friendly, especially if it's one of the latest iteration. Apple iPhone 7, which was launched at Rs 56,200 is now available at just Rs 38,999 on Amazon. If you compare the iPhone 7 to the new iPhone 8, there's no incremental upgrade that you will miss on the iPhone 7. 

Buy LG Q6 at Rs 12,990 on Amazon (Save 4000)

LG Q6, the shrunken LG G6 is up for sale with a price cut of Rs 4000. The smartphone comes with Snapdragon 435 processor and 3GB RAM, but the main highlight is its display and the camera, that can capture some really good looking shots. There are better phone in this price range that may have more power but this one turns out to be a great overall package. 

OnePlus 3T at Rs. 25,999 @ Amazon (Save Rs. 4000)

OnePlus 3T, with its 5.5-inch AMOLED display, Snapdragon 821 SoC, and 6GB of RAM is a recommended phone at Rs. 25,999. The upgraded version of the enormously popular OnePlus 3 initially came to India with a price tag of Rs. 29,999 and was later available for Rs. 24,999 during the last sale.

Buy Apple iPhone SE for Rs, 17,999 on Amazon (Save Rs 8,001)

If you are planning to go for a phone under 20k and won't mind having a smaller display, the iPhone SE is a great deal for you. It runs the latest iOS and has the internals of the iPhone 6S, which includes a powerful A9 chip with amazing camera capabilities. 

Xiaomi Mi Max 2 at Rs. 12,999 @ Amazon (save Rs. 2000)

This huge phablet from Xiaomi is a heartthrob for those who like big screens. The 6.44-inch Full HD display of the Mi Max 2 is not only huge but also excels in quality. At the time of launch, Xiaomi only brought the 64 GB variant of the phone in India which was priced at Rs. 16,999. This week, the company announced a new 32 GB model of the Mi Max 2 for Rs. 14,999. As a part of the Amazon Great Indian Festival, both the variants are available for Rs. 2000 less at Rs. 12,999 and Rs. 14,999 for the 32 GB and 64 GB versions respectively.

Motorola Moto G5 Plus at Rs.12,999 @ Amazon (save Rs. 4000)

The Moto G5 Plus is another exciting smartphone that is available for sale today. Sporting a great 12 MP rear camera with dual autofocus pixels, along with Snapdragon 625 SoC, 4 GB RAM, and stock Android OS, the phone is a decent buy at Rs. 12,999.

Buy Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime for Rs 11,490 @ Amazon (Save Rs 5,410)

Samsung's highly successful Galaxy J series does pretty well among Indian audience in between 15-20k price range. This year's J7 Prime, which comes with a 5.5-inch FHD display for multimedia lovers and an Exynos 7870 processor with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. It is one of the most favored budget handset in India, and it is selling at a great deal price.

Coolpad Cool 1 at Rs. 8999 @Amazon (save Rs. 3000)

This is one of the most underrated smartphones in this list. With specifications like 5.5-inch Full HD IPS display, Snapdragon 652 chipset, dual 13 MP + 13 MP rear camera, metal body, 4000mAh battery, etc. it is unbelievable that the Coolpad Cool 1 costs just Rs. 8999.

Lenovo K8 Note at Rs. 10,999 @ Amazon (save Rs. 2,000)

The brand new Lenovo K8 Note is quite an amazing device, thanks to the powerful deca-core MediaTek Helio X20 SoC, 13 MP + 5 MP dual rear camera, 5.5-inch Full HD IPS display with Gorilla Glass protection and 4000mAh battery. The phone which was launch at a really competitive price point is now available for Rs. 2000 less.

Nubia Z17 Mini at Rs. 15,999 @Amazon (save Rs. 4000)

The smaller variant of the Nubia Z17 flagship comes with a fantastic 13 MP + 13 MP dual camera setup, Snapdragon 652 processor, 4 GB RAM, 16 MP Selfie camera and a premium build quality. First released in India at Rs. 19,999, the phone is now available for just Rs. 15,999.

LeEco Le Max 2 at Rs. 14,499 @Amazon (save Rs. 8500)

The ill-fated LeEco actually had launched some great smartphones last year and the foremost of them is the Le Max 2. Featuring a 5.7-inch Quad HD display, Snapdragon 821 SoC, 4 GB RAM, 21 MP rear camera, the phone is available at an unbelievable price of Rs. 14,499 in Amazon today.

LG G6 at Rs. 33,990 @ Amazon (save Rs. 21,010)

After being launched in India for above Rs. 50,000, the LG G6 has received some aggressive price cuts and now the flagship smartphone is available at an all-time low price of Rs. 36,900.

Nubia M2 at Rs. 17,999 @ Amazon (save Rs. 5000)

Rocking a 5.5-inch Full HD Gorilla Glass covered AMOLED display, Snapdragon 625 chipset, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage, 13 MP + 13 MP dual rear camera, 3630mAh battery and a praiseworthy built quality, the Nubia M2 is pretty irresistible at its current discounted price.

Xiaomi Redmi 4 at up to Rs. 1500 off

The Redmi 4 is one of the highly acclaimed budgets to midrange smartphone in India. The handset which is actually quite hard to buy is now available at up to Rs. 1000 discount. However, the most-demanded 16 GB variant has not received any offer. The 32 GB version of the Redmi 4 is now available at Rs. 8499 (Rs. 500 less), while the 64 GB variant is selling for Rs. 9999 (Rs. 1000 less).

In addition to all these discounts, Amazon is offering 10 percent cash back on HDFC bank credit and debit cards. You will also get 10 percent cash back if you add balance to your Amazon Pay account.

Amazon India Great Indian Festival Sale 2017: Everything you need to know

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How to get a good PS4 deal this Black Friday

Game consoles are among the top Black Friday deals. You can expect every platform to feature in this year’s line-up of bargains. But we expect to see a whole bunch of Xbox One and PS4 deals. 

Not only does Black Friday 2017 represent the peak of pre-panic Christmas shopping, landing on 24 November, it also lines-up with some of the year’s biggest game releases. With South Park: Fractured But Whole, Gran Turismo Sport and Assassin’s Creed Origins all arriving just before or after, it’s a good time to be on the hunt for a PS4. 

A fistful of PS4 deals will appear in the week before Black Friday, so how do you know whether to hold out for the big day or bite the bullet?

The hottest Black Friday 2017 deals will appear on the day itself. However, if you spot the right deal at the right price, buying an early deal isn’t a bad idea. 

As with eBay auctions, it’s best to decide what you want and what you’re willing to pay before the action starts. Otherwise you may get caught up in the bargain-laced excitement and end up regretting your purchase. 

Choose right now whether you want a PSVR headset, the sort of PS4 you want and the games you actually want to play that might be included. PS4 deals won’t all be consoles on their own. Many will come with accessories or games too. 

Games you’re likely to see bundled as part of a PS4 deal include repeat bundle star Fallout 4, FIFA 18 and Destiny 2.

We’re going to keep several sets of eyes out for all the best Black Friday 2017 PS4 deals, and post them as they appear in the run up to the big day. However, here’s what you need to consider before they start popping up. 

Features to look out for

First of all, there are three kinds of PS4. There’s the original, the PS4 Slim and the PS4 Pro. 

The situation is a little more complicated than the Xbox One’s too. While the original Xbox One all-but disappeared once the Xbox One S design upgrade showed up, you can still buy original PS4s if you search hard enough. 

There’s not a great deal to separate the two “entry-level” PS4s either. The PS4 Slim is, no surprise, smaller than the original, but doesn’t have more power. Neither has an Ultra HD Blu-ray player or any dramatic new features. 

If you find them at the same price it’s worth picking up the Slim version as it uses less energy. However, those after a real bargain should keep an eye out for original PS4 deals. The console isn’t out for the count yet and there’s a chance pre-owned or “new old stock” bargains may appear. 

Serious gamers need to look for a Black Friday 2017 deal for the PS4 Pro, though. This is Sony’s high-power console. It is able to run games at faster frame rates and higher resolutions, using clever techniques to output at 4K. Games like Horizon Zero Dawn use some upscaling techniques to reach this res rather than relying on native 4K, which requires oodles of power. 

The PS4 Pro can also play video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video at 4K too. As the PS4 and PS4 Slim are stuck at 1080p output for these services, owners of fancy new TVs will want to get hold of a Pro model. 

Once again, though, the PS4 Pro doesn’t have an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive. If you’re still into physical media for your movies, consider an Xbox One S or Xbox One X instead. Both have a “4K” Blu-ray drive. 

Black Friday 2017 is also a great time to consider getting hold of a PSVR. This is the PlayStation virtual reality headset. 

It’s more than just an impressive gimmick thanks to great VR games like Superhot and Resident Evil 7. Many VR games (and non-VR games) have been optimised for the newer PS4 Pro too, making it another sound reason to buy the more expensive console. 

If you’re going to buy into the idea of VR, there are some other purchases to consider. You’ll need a PS Camera, which, annoyingly, doesn’t come with either the PSVR or PS4 console. A PS Move controller is also a solid buy, as many VR games use it as a motion controller. 

Predictions

It's always a tough one to nail down specific deals ahead of the big day – there's sure to be some big surprises, and a few disappointments, too. But that's not to say we can't make some educated guesses. Here are some PS4 deals that may show up around Black Friday.

PS4 Pro and PSVR bundle

It’s highly likely we’ll see an “ultimate” PS4 Pro bundle that includes the PSVR headset, a PS Camera and a Move controller. This encompasses everything you need for the full PS4 experience, bar a great big HDR-ready 4K TV. 

This is also likely to offer great value, although you’ll have to break it down to appreciate this. The actual cost may be fairly high. Prepare your purse. Remember that the PS Move controller and PS Camera are usually separate purchases, not bundled with the console. 

PS4 Slim with Destiny 2

The latest PS4 Slim bundle comes with on-line co-op shooter Destiny 2. It’s an excellent game but also a major time sink. You’ll lose a few days to this one. 

Bear in mind that the bundled version of the PS4 Slim tends to have a 500GB hard drive rather than a 1TB one. This gives you, obviously, a lot less room on which you can install games and store save files. However, you can now also just plug-in an external hard drive. It’ll need to be a USB 3.0 drive so check any old drives you have lying around. USB 2.0 ones won’t work.

That said, Black Friday is also a great time to pick up a cheap external hard drive. 

PS4 Slim 1TB

If you see a PS4 Slim sold on its own, there’s a good chance it’ll be the higher-capacity 1TB model.  This is the lower-cost enthusiast’s PS4, giving you plenty of room to install games without being at risk of running out of storage too soon. 

A game like Destiny 2 takes up more than 30GB, and other titles consume even more. 

PS4 Slim with GT Sport and racing wheel

Black Friday lands just after the release of Gran Turismo Sport, one of the most anticipated racing games in years. As racing wheels have appeared on Black Friday in recent years, a big package that includes the game, a PS4 and a racing wheel from Thrustmaster or Logitech is possible. 

Look out for a deal that includes the Thrustmaster T300 RS or Logitech G29. These are force feedback racing wheels that use motors to emulate the forces you’d feel out on the road. They are a lot of fun. The Thrustmaster gets our vote out of the two.

The best Currys Black Friday deals 2017

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The best Sony Xperia X Compact deals in October 2017

Sony created another brilliant smartphone with the Xperia X Compact, which crams in flagship features into a handy and easy to carry size. If you're looking for the best deals that let you get your hands on this awesome handset, while also giving you plenty of data, calls and texts each month, then you've come to the right place for Xperia X Compact deals.

Now superseded by the Xperia XZ1 Compact, the X Compact still impresses with a 4.6-inch 720p display, which fits comfortably in the hand and 23MP high resolution camera with fantastic autofocus.

With a smaller screen than the Xperia X comes a smaller price tag as well, and as you'll see from the deals below, there are plenty of affordable ways to get your hands on this mini wonder. Between a fall in price after Sony's latest range of phone launches and retailers preparing for Black Friday 2017, this is a great time to look for a new phone.

More options: Sony Xperia X deals | Sony Xperia XZ deals | Sony Xperia XZ Premium deals | Samsung Galaxy S8 deals | iPhone SE deals | Best mobile phone deals

The UK's best Sony Xperia X Compact deals:

Further down the page, you can see a potted version of our X Compact review to make sure that you're buying the right handset for your needs. And immediately below the absolute best Xperia X Compact deals out there in the UK today, with an array of prices and data allowances. EE is really ruling the roost, with O2, Vodafone and Three all but pulling out of this handset now.

Sony Xperia X Compact | £65.99 upfront | Unlimited mins and texts | 1GB data | £17.99pm
If you want the cheapest possible Sony Xperia X Compact deal this month on any network, then this is the offer for you. You get 1GB of data every month, which is fine for people who don't browse the web too much - or are often connected to Wi-Fi. This deal is the cheapest way to get a Sony Xperia X Compact. Total cost over 24 months is £497.75

Get this deal: from Affordable Mobiles

Sony Xperia X Compact | FREE upfront | Unlimited mins and texts | 5GB data | £27.99pm
This is an excellent deal for the Xperia X Compact, and it's even better than last month. You get the Xperia X Compact free, unlimited minutes and texts and a pretty hefty 5GB of 4G data each month, which gives you plenty of mobile internet to stream music from Spotify, Google Music or other services, all for a very decent monthly cost that's made even cheaper thanks to a £45 cashback offer. Total cost over 24 months is £671.76

Get this deal: from Buymobiles

Sony Xperia X Compact | FREE upfront | Unlimited mins and texts | 15GB data | £37.99pm
5GB not going to be enough for all the streaming, surfing and downloading you do away from the Wi-Fi? Then this tariff triples it, for an extra tenner a month. It may seem quite expensive, especially when you compare it to the newer, better Samsung Galaxy S8, but Buymobiles is throwing in snazzy iT7x2 wireless headphones worth almost £100. Total cost over 24 months is £911.76

Get this deal: from Buymobiles

We like the idea of the Compact X - a small, affordable Android phone, probably inspired by the popularity of the iPhone SE - and, on the whole, the execution is rather good, too. The camera is much better than we'd expect from a phone at this price and it feels lovely to use. It could have just done with a bit more power.

Read TechRadar's full Sony Xperia X Compact review here.

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Amazon Great Indian Festival Diwali Edition: Best Deals on Home Appliances

Amazon India is back with another blockbuster sale on the foremath of Diwali and it is probably your last chance to get the biggest discounts of the year. While there are a plethora of products available at an offer price, here, we will only focus on the best deals on consumer electronics. So, if you are planning to buy a new TV, Fridge, AC, washing machine, microwave oven, chimney or even an air purifier, check out our handpicked deals below.

Televisions

For the last couple of years, the price of LED / LCD TVs has come down drastically and the main reason is their availability at online megastores. Moreover, online-only brands like TCL and Vu has shown us that cheap pricing does not always imply low quality.

Right from the beginning of the festive season, e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart has been offering additional discounts on TVs and today we have collaborated the best deals on televisions currently available on the Great Indian Festival of the former.

Noble Skiodo 81 cm (32 inches) 32CN32P01 HD Ready LED TV @ Rs. 9990TCL 81.28 cm (32 inches) L32D2900 HD Ready LED TV @ Rs. 11,490Panasonic 80 cm (32 inches) Viera Shinobi TH-32E460D HD ready LED TV @ Rs. 17,990TCL 99.1 cm (39 inches) L39D2900 Full HD LED TV @ Rs. 17,990Panasonic 80.1 cm (32 inches) Viera TH-W32ES48DX HD Ready LED Smart TV @ Rs. 20,990Samsung 80 cm (32 inches) 32M5100 Basic Smart Full HD LED TV @ Rs. 24,490Panasonic 100 cm (40 inches) Viera TH-40E400D Full HD LED TV @ Rs. 35,700Panasonic 138.8 cm (55 inches) Viera TH-W55ES48DX Full HD LED TV @ Rs. 77,990TCL 165.1 cm (65 inches) L65P2MUS Android M 4K UHD LED Smart TV @ Rs. 94,990

Refrigerators

Refrigerators have become an integral part of our modern life and just like other electronics, they too need to be replaced from time to time. If you are planning to get rid of your aging fridge and get a classy new one, this is probably the best time. Listed below are some of the fabulous offers currently available on Amazon.in.

BPL 564 L Frost-Free Side-by-Side Refrigerator (BRS564H) @ Rs. 44,990Haier 320 L 3 Star Frost-Free Double Door Refrigerator @ Rs. 26,955LG 215 L 2 Star Direct-Cool Single Door Refrigerator @ Rs. 12,990Haier 195 L 4 Star Single Door Refrigerator @ Rs. 11,590Haier 190 L 3 Star Direct-Cool Single-Door Refrigerator @ Rs. 9,790

Air Conditioners

As the summer season bleeds into autumn, the necessity of air conditioners is gradually decreasing. However, this is also the reason why the prices of ACs are the lowest now. Here are a few deals which are simply irresistible.

Carrier Esko 18K Split AC (1.5 Ton, 5 Star Rating, White, Copper) @ Rs. 32,990Carrier 1.2 Ton 5 Star Split AC (Copper, Esko+, White) @ Rs. 28,490Whirlpool 1 Ton Star Inverter Split AC (Fantasia, White) @ Rs. 27,999Voltas 185JY Split AC (1.5 Ton, 5 Star Rating, White, Aluminium) @ Rs. 26,990LG 1 Ton 3 Star Inverter Split AC (Alloy, JS-Q12ATXD, White) @ Rs. 23,990Whirlpool 1.5 Ton Star Inverter Split AC (Fantasia, White) @ Rs. 33,599

Washing Machines

As winter approaches, getting your hands wet is not going to be a pleasurable experience. So, be wise and get one of the washing machines listed below. We assure you that you won’t get any better price elsewhere.

Mitashi 5.8 kg Fully-Automatic Top Loading Washing Machine @ Rs. 8,990BPL 6.2 kg Fully-Automatic Top Loading Washing Machine @ Rs. 9,990Onida 6.5 kg Fully-Automatic Top Loading Washing Machine @ Rs. 13,490

Microwave Oven

Microwave ovens are gradually becoming more and more important in our day to day life. Those of you who don’t yet have a piece in your home, go get one from the list below.

Morphy Richards 20 L Solo Microwave Oven @ Rs. 4,290Bajaj 17 L Solo Microwave Oven @ Rs. 3,290Bajaj MTBX 2016 20-Litre Grill Microwave Oven @ Rs. 3,999BPL 25 L Convection Microwave Oven @ Rs. 7,690IFB 25 L Convection Microwave Oven @ Rs. 9,790

Others

Here are some additional deals on chimneys, air purifiers, handheld heaters, etc.

Hindware 60 cm 1200 m3/h Auto Clean Chimney @ Rs. 10,980Bright Flame Kitchen Chimney - Lily SB, Air Flow: 1100 mâ³ /hr @ Rs. 6,599Glen Kitchen Chimney GL 6062 SX TS 60cm 750m3/hr @ Rs. 10,990Hindware 90 cm 1200 m3/h Chimney @ Rs. 12,990Faber Chimney HOOD TRATTO PLUS BK LTW 60 @ Rs. 12,990Singer IR-10 1500-Watt Immersion Water Heater @ Rs. 409Eveready Ozora 3-Litre Instant Water Heater @ Rs. 2,299V Guard Water Heater Krystal Plus 6 Litre @ Rs. 5,399Samsung AX40K3020WU/NA 34-Watt Air Purifier @ Rs. 14,990Honeywell Lite Indoor HAC20M1000W 48-Watt Air Purifier @ Rs. 12,449HUL Pureit H101 50-Watt Air Purifier @ Rs. 9,999MI Air Purifier 2 @ Rs. 8,499

Here are some of the deals and offers brought to your by TechRadar's team of tech deal experts:

If you're looking to buy a new laptop, here are the best deals on laptops

Amazon Great Indian Festival: Best deals on laptops

Some great offers on wearables

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on wearablesHuge discounts on portable wireless speakers

Amazon Great Indian Festival: Best deals on speakers

Best discounts and offers on mobile phones

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on mobile phones

Offers on storage solutions: Hard disks, pen drives, and more

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on Hard disks, Pen drives and more

The best power bank deals on Amazon are now live

Amazon Great Indian Festival 2017: Best deals on power banks

For the audiophiles out there, here's what Amazon is offering on headphones

Amazon Great Indian Festival: Best deals on Headphones and Speakers

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Dubai’s Acacus Technologies wants driverless deliveries on the roads by 2020

Deliveries can sometimes be a nightmare for companies. From ensuring that they go out on time, to delivery vehicles battling congested routes and unavailable recipients, there’s a lot that goes into a single delivery. Which is why Dubai-based Acacus Technologies wants to help revolutionize the delivery system in the city by introducing driverless delivery vehicles on the roads by 2020.

The company made waves at GITEX last year by winning a first prize of USD 100,000 at a startup pitch competition, and has since then gone on to work extensively on logistics and delivery solutions. Their software specifically helps optimize fleet management, and their machine-learning programs have been implemented by Dubai Taxi to monitor driver alertness and behavior.

This year at GITEX Technology Week, Acacus Technologies unveiled the next plan of their development – driverless delivery vehicles. The system on display uses nine cameras retrofitted on a vehicle, as well as a range of additional sensors and an on-board computer to help the vehicle monitor its surroundings in real-time. The example on-board computer uses four GPUs to process the information collected from the sensors, which would allow the vehicle to detect and respond to its environment in a very short time.

The system can technically be installed on almost any vehicle, according to Acacus Technologies. It plans to have these driverless vehicles on the roads of Dubai by 2020, in keeping with the city’s strategy for autonomous vehicles in the emirate. The biggest benefit would be tighter planning for deliveries, faster feedback for locations and delays, and overall a much smoother management system.  

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Ophelia is the strongest storm to hit the British Isles in 50 years

Hurricanes are best known for hitting the Caribbean and southern United States in summer and autumn, where the warm seas provide the energy that storms need to build up extraordinary power. But in the last decades, we've begun to see more tropical cyclones emerge in more unusual locations.

The record-breaking 2005 hurricane season saw Katrina and Rita hit the United States, but it also saw the unusual Hurricane Vince form over the North Atlantic and barrel into Spain and Portugal – the first storm to do so since 1842.

This year, however, we've been confronted with an even weirder phenomenon - Hurricane Ophelia. Ophelia didn't begin in the tropics at all - it began life as a decaying cold front over the North Atlantic in early October. 

Ex-Hurricane  

The storm sat in place for a few days, rapidly strengthening into a hurricane. First, category one was achieved, then two, then on 14 October Ophelia became the easternmost hurricane ever recorded to hit category three - indicating winds of more than 110 miles per hour.

The storm then tracked north-east, heading for Spain and Portugal. But at the last moment it shifted to a more northward trajectory, aimed at the west coast of Ireland. The more northerly waters are cooler, and so the storm has been starved enough to downgrade it below hurricane status, but it's still likely to be the strongest to hit the British Isles in at least 50 years.

“By the time Ophelia reaches our latitudes, she will be weakening and will be an ex-hurricane,“ said Met Office chief forecaster Steve Ramsdale. ”However, Ex-Ophelia will be bringing some significant impacts to Northern Ireland and western and northern Britain on Monday and Tuesday. 

Those impacts have already included wind gusts above 100 miles per hour, as well as heavy seas. At the time of writing, the UK Met Office has a string of weather warnings issued across much of the west of the country.

More to come

It's impossible to link Ophelia and other unusual hurricanes directly with climate change, because they're just single events. But sea level rise and increasing sea surface temperatures make for more damaging storms, and both of those phenomena are a part of climate change. So it's fair to say that we can expect stronger storms in the coming years.

If you'd like to track the former hurricane online, the best places are the Met Eireann and the UK Met Office websites. The Guardian is running a liveblog, Meteoalarm has summaries of all the weather warnings across the whole of Europe, while Accuweather has a great interactive hurricane tracker where you can see the history of the storm. 

Last but not least, Nullschool's wind visualisation page is a visually-arresting way to follow Ophelia's progress (pictured above).

This is how to get the best deals this Black Friday

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