With the Galaxy Note 20 launch just a week away, all eyes will be on what upgrades Samsung brings to the table. While the chipset might remain unchanged, there might be a silver lining. While Samsung flagship like the Note series and the S series are powered by Snapdragon chipsets in the US and European markets, they come with Exynos chipset in Asian markets such as India. It often tends to lose out on the performance front against Qualcomm Snapdragon counterparts. However, a new leak suggests some good news in this regard. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 release date, price, news and leaks Upcoming smartphones in India: Specs, launch date, price (Image credit: Samsung/WinFuture) According to a tweet by Anthony, a Youtuber, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 will continue to be powered by the Exynos 990 chipset, but with major improvements in terms of the performance and efficiency. These optimizations should bring it closer to the Snapdragon 865 series. He even suggested that it is almost li...
TechRadar - All the latest technology news
It's all in the screen: Here are the smartphones with the best displays
Having a good quality display is the very basic aspect of any smartphone – while a powerful chipset may be able to render great graphics and deliver smooth performance, without a good quality display, the experience will always remain subpar.
Keeping that in mind, we have curated a list of smartphones with the best displays in the market right now. For this purpose, we have considered aspects like colour reproduction, sunlight visibility, brightness etc.
AMOLED technology has come a long way and as far as smartphones are concerned, Samsung has pioneered it with its smartphones over the last few years. The company’s latest flagship, the Galaxy Note 8, comes with one of the best displays on smartphones – the phone features a big 6.3-inch Quad HD+ Super AMOLED panel and almost crosses 650 nits when it comes to brightness.
The Galaxy Note 8 also performs great in other aspects like colour accuracy and sunlight visibility.
Another aspect to note is that the Galaxy Note 8 comes with HDR support, allowing you to see a lot more details in the highly dark/bright areas of the scene.
Read the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review.
The iPhone X represents a bold and a radical step in terms of smartphone design from Apple. Featuring a notch on the top and ditching the Home button, the iPhone X is also the first iPhone to feature an AMOLED panel.
According to several sunlight visibility tests, the iPhone X’s display scores the highest points when compared to any other smartphone launched in 2017. While the display refreshes at a usual rate of 60Hz, the touch sample rate is at 120Hz, giving users an almost instant and smooth reaction. Just like the Galaxy Note 8, the iPhone X also comes with HDR support.
Read the Apple iPhone X review.
Xiaomi made bezel-less smartphones popular with the original Mi Mix. However, for the Mi Mix 2, Xiaomi chose a slightly smaller display at 5.99-inches. However, unlike the top two phones in this list, the Mi Mix 2 comes with an IPS LCD panel.
Although the Mi Mix 2 does not offer Quad HD resolution, it does come with a highly colour accurate screen, beating even the iPhones.
In the mid-range segment, the Mi Mix 2 is a good option that you can consider apart from other phones like the OnePlus 5T and the Honor View 10.
Read the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 review.
The OnePlus 5T rectifies almost all the issues that cropped up with the OnePlus 5, and the displays sees the most significant upgrade in the company’s latest smartphone. While the OnePlus 5 was plagued by the ‘Jelly scrolling’ effect, the OnePlus 5T’s display is nearly flawless.
OnePlus has also embraced the new 18:9 aspect ratio with its latest flagship – the OnePlus 5T comes with a 6-inch Full HD+ Optic AMOLED panel with DCI-P3 support.
Read the OnePlus 5T review.
Smartphones with Quad HD displays are the norm when it comes to flagships, with some of them even offering HDR support, but there is only one smartphone that offers HDR support at 4K resolution. The Sony Xperia XZ Premium also comes with Adaptive Tone Mapping, a feature found in Sony’s BRAVIA TVs, allowing you to enjoy media regardless of the light condition.
Read the Sony Xperia XZ Premium review.
The Honor View 10 is Huawei’s latest flagship smartphone in the budget segment, offering some of the high-end specs at mid-range prices. In addition to delivering a very good value for money, the Honor View 10 also comes with a 5.99-inch 18:9 display with a Full HD+ resolution. Out in the sunlight, the Honor View 10 can get bright enough to be legible. In terms of colour reproduction, the View 10 can compete very well with high-end phones with IPS LCD panels.
Read the Honor View 10 review.
The Xiaomi Mi A1 is the first Xiaomi smartphone to run on stock Android. Launched under the Android One program, the Mi A1 comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display. Even though it comes at a budget price, the Mi A1 defies the price when it comes to the display and the overall quality – the phone’s display can reach up to 550 nits brightness and up to 1570:1 contrast ratio, which translates to an excellent experience overall. The colour reproduction is also decent, especially given the budget pricing of the phone.
Read the Xiaomi Mi A1 review.
Best phones under Rs 25,000 in India
Best iPad apps 2018: download these now
It's the apps that really set iOS apart from other platforms - there are higher quality apps available on the App Store for the iPad than any other tablet. So which ones are worth your cash? And which are the best free apps?
Luckily for you we've tested thousands of the best iPad apps so that you don't have to. So read on for our selection of the best iPad apps - the definitive list of what applications you need to download for your iPad now.
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.If you are looking for games, then head over to Best iPad games - where we showcase the greatest games around for your iOS device. Or if you're using an iPhone X or iPhone 8 head over to our best iPhone apps list. And if you're a professional, you may want to head straight to our top business apps.
New: Concepts (free + various IAP)
Concepts is an advanced vector-based sketching and design app. Every stroke remains editable, and similar flexibility is evident elsewhere, with varied grids (dot; lined; isometric), definable gestures, and an adjustable interface.
With version 5, Concepts’ design revamp transformed the main toolbar into a space-efficient tool wheel, from which Copic swatches pleasingly explode when you switch colors. As such, the app’s a touch alien at first, and can be fiddly if you don’t have a Pencil.
But Concepts soon becomes natural and fluid in use, and it’s apparent the app’s been designed for touch, rather than a developer hammering desktop concepts into your iPad.
If you’re not a professional architect, illustrator or the like it might be overkill, but if you’re unsure, you can get a feel for the app for free. IAPs subsequently allow you to unlock shape guides, SVG and PDF export, infinite layers, and object packs.
Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!
Artomaton - The Motion Painter is an ‘artificial intelligence artist’ – recreating photos as sketches and paintings. For free, you get a small selection of media, but pay a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP and you unlock the full range, including the arresting ‘Pointil’ (as in ‘lism’), scribbly crayons, and a lovely sketch/watercolor combo.
Unlike most competing apps, this one has many settings for adjusting properties, such as vignettes, stroke width, hatching angle, and color saturation.
It even works with video, and although it takes some time for Artomaton to draw all of the individual frames (just a 20-second clip will need close to 200), output with ‘Sketch&Water’ has a gorgeous scratchy hand-drawn quality.
For free, then, this is a great download; but grab that paid IAP for something really special.
Yoink is a superb iPad shelf app, providing a place to temporarily store and collate files and content. It supports pretty much anything you can drag and drop on iPad – images; text; URLs; documents – and works in Split View and Slide Over (the latter feeling like Yoink’s most natural set-up). Handily, you can directly import items, too, or send content to Yoink via share sheets.
Yoink excels in the details. When items are dragged off of Yoink, they’re copied or removed, depending on the status of a padlock icon. Groups of items can be collated into stacks, and moved as one.
And because Yoink exists as a Location in the Files app, you can explore and interact with anything you’ve saved to the app without opening Yoink itself.
MindNode 5 is a mind-mapping app. That might sound dull, given that such tools are associated with boring business meetings that involve massive whiteboards... and the hope the ground will swallow you up.
But MindNode 5 is different. It’s sleek and fun to use as you smash out ideas. You can start with a Quick Entry list, which the app then turns into a mind map; or you can manually create and position nodes. For more context, it’s possible to add photos, stickers, and notes to your maps. And for when you do have to get properly businesslike, there’s a vertical layout for organizational charts.
Whatever you’re working on, MindNode 5 is far better than paper equivalents – it’s flexible, sharable, and always comprehensible.
Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 represents a leap forward for iPad education apps and digital textbooks alike. In short, it turns your iPad into an anatomy lab – and augmented reality extends this to nearby flat surfaces.
You can explore your virtual cadaver by region or system. Additionally, you can examine cross-sections, micro-anatomy (eyes; bone layers; touch receptors, and so on), and muscle actions. If you want to learn what makes you tick, it’s fascinating to spin a virtual body beneath your finger, and ‘dissect’ it by removing sections.
But the AR element is a real prize, giving you a captivating, slightly unnerving virtual body to explore. Ideal fodder for medical students, then, but great even for the simply curious. And although it’s pricey for the latter audience, the app’s often on sale, most recently dropping as low as $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49. Snap it up if you see it cheap.
Zipped largely fixes a major shortcoming of the iOS Files app for iPad – its inability to deal with ZIP archives. The default Files app merely lets you peek inside a ZIP and extract items one at a time, but Zipped is far more capable.
If you need to unpack an archive, that can be done with a couple of taps. The files within are then saved to a user-defined location – either as they are, or within a named folder.
Creating archives is simple, too, and works via drag and drop in Split View or – an often better option – Slide Over. The one snag is Zipped only recognizes specific file formats, although the most common are covered.
Still, the low price makes it worth grabbing even if you only use it to quickly get at files within ZIPs, rather than laboriously extracting them one by one.
Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga brings the popular PC desktop app for digital artists to the iPad. And we mean that almost literally – Clip Studio looks pretty much identical to the desktop release.
In one sense, this isn’t great news – menus, for example, are fiddly to access, but it does mean you get a feature-rich, powerful app. There are loads of brushes and tools, vector capabilities, effect lines and tones for comic art, and onion skinning for animations. It also takes full advantage of Pencil, so pro artists can be freed from the desktop, and work wherever they like.
The app could do with better export and desktop workflow integration, and even some fans might be irked by the subscription model. But Clip Studio’s features and quality mean most will muddle through the former issues and pay for the latter.
Zen Studio is a unique, beautifully conceived painting and coloring app. Instead of giving you a blank canvas for free-form scribbling, Zen Studio opts for a triangular grid. Tap spaces and they fill with your selected color as a note plays. This combination of coloring and ad-hoc melody proves very relaxing – for children and adults alike.
In its free version, this is an entertaining app, but it’s worth grabbing the main $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP. This lets you save unlimited drawings (rather than just eight), and unlocks white paint, which acts as an eraser on compositions with white backgrounds.
It also provides access to a slew of tutorials. These have you build up a picture by coloring inside stencils, which even a two-year-old should be able to cope with – and then subsequently scrawl over when the stencils disappear.
Percolator is a photo filter app for ‘brewing’ circular mosaics using a custom recipe. The coffee theme is fanciful, but it is admittedly lovely to see your photo explode into a bunch of bubbles that disappear and then reform when major changes are made to the ‘grind’ (circle size and effect) settings.
Mostly, though, we were impressed by Percolator because its effects range from the bizarre to the beautiful. Some have a kind of classical feel, a few look like high-end art posters, and with careful tweaking of ‘brew’ (pattern and blend) and ‘serve’ (effect and texture) settings, you can even approximate painterly effects.
It’s a pity you can’t save your own custom presets, although the app does at least offer some examples to get you started. For the most part, though, Percolator’s a tasty treat.
Dropped is an app designed to take advantage of the drag and drop feature that made its debut in iOS 11. It’s designed as a temporary resting point – commonly referred to in computing terminology as a ‘shelf’ – for various kinds of data, including URLs, photos, videos, text, emails, notes, and PDFs.
The idea is you can dump a bunch of things on Dropped, and figure out what you want to do with them later. Helpfully, the app automatically organizes items into categories (media; text; URLs; files), although you can also scroll through your entire list in the Recents tab.
Search and rename functionality would be helpful, but otherwise Dropped is a very useful app to have if you’re often moving content around on your iPad. It’s usable, straightforward, and works especially well as a Slide Over app.
Prompts is a writing tool designed for anyone having a hard time getting started. Create a new document and the app draws from over 300,000 unique starting lines and prompts. If you’re not keen on what it provides, tap refresh until you get something suitably inspirational.
As you’re typing away, the app then leaves you alone, but you can at any point tap the prompts icon to get a further helping hand. Often, the suggestions are rather obvious, but that doesn’t mean they’re not helpful.
The app also includes a tracking and statistics system, to try and get you writing regularly. On that basis, it’s a useful training aid to keep your writing ‘muscles’ fit and healthy, even if you naturally gravitate towards Scrivener and iA Writer when it’s time to get down to serious writing.
Little Digits is a new spin on finger counting, making use of the iPad’s large screen, and its ability to recognize loads of fingers pressing down at once.
The app’s most basic mode responds to how many fingers are touching the screen. Use a single digit, and the app chirps ONE! while a grinning one-shaped monster jigs about. Add another finger and the one is replaced by a furry two. You get the idea.
Beyond this, the app offers some basic training in number ordering, addition and subtraction, making it a great learning tool for young children.
But the smartest feature may well be multiple language support and recording. This means you can use the app to learn to count in anything from French to Swedish, and record custom prompts if your own language isn’t supported.
Kaleidoscope is a resolutely production-focused app, designed to take advantage of new functionality found in iOS 11 on modern iPads.
The app’s used to quickly compare the contents of files, images, and folders. It makes great use of drag and drop from Apple’s Files app, and uses colored overlays to clearly outline the differences between two text documents or whatever’s lurking inside a pair of folders.
When comparing images, there are various views (such as a basic A/B switch), but Kaleidoscope’s interpretation of a wipe slider is awkward, having two handles that must be separately positioned. And even with text, there’s one shortcoming, in the iOS app lacking the ‘text merge’ capabilities of its macOS cousin.
Still, if you routinely find yourself juggling folders or text documents, Kaleidoscope may prove an essential part of your iOS toolkit.
SoundForest is a creative sound toy that mashes up minimalist animal stickers and song-making.
Across four environments, you drag stickers from a strip at the bottom of the screen onto your canvas. Each one – be it animal, plant, or landmark – makes a sound that rarely recalls reality. A mandrill, for example, blasts forth a raucous slap bass. It’s colorful, entertaining, and encourages discovery and experimentation.
Once you’ve dotted your stickers about, you can fire up your composition. The sun or moon acts as a playback head, and your stickers animate as your oddball musical masterpiece blasts forth.
Pros may be frustrated by the app’s lack of export functionality, but really SoundForest is more for the masses than them – an approachable, fun way to make a noisy music loop, using a vibrant, unique interface.
Toca Life: Farm is an ambitious and rich exploratory title for kids, inviting them to manage a farm and fashion their own stories.
There are four locations: barn, house, field, and store. Each of them is packed full of elements to interact with. For youngsters, there’s plenty of fun to be had just poking around, making noises, and dragging colorful characters about.
Toca Life: Farm encourages older kids to think a little more. They can grow their own ingredients, which can subsequently be made into food. Animals can be fed and cared for, whereupon it’s possible to reap the rewards of eggs from chickens and milk from cows.
There’s no stress - this title is all about moving at your own pace. Importantly, it also eschews advertising and IAP, ensuring your little farmer can’t accidentally spend real-world cash on virtual hay bales.
Procreate is a powerful, feature-rich digital painting and sketching tool. You immediately get a taste for what’s possible by exploring the example art; and the more you poke around, the more you realize the potential on offer.
Procreate isn’t aimed solely at pros, though. Sure, they’ll love its advanced features – a perspective grid; custom brushes; layer masking; curves. The interface, though, is approachable enough for anyone. The thin strip across the top enables fast access to tool and brush menus; at the side is a bar for quickly adjusting your brush’s size and opacity.
The brush selection is immense, whether you’re into abstract doodling with strange textures, digital takes on traditional media, or something fantastical by way of brushes that paint with ‘light’ atop your creation.
In short: just buy this app, because it’s terrific.
Chambers Thesaurus is a thesaurus for your iPad. You might argue that doesn’t sound like the most exciting app in the world – and you’d be right. But if you do any writing on your iPad, it’s pretty much essential.
On macOS, Apple bundles a thesaurus with its Dictionary app, but this is absent on iOS, which merely attempts to correct spellings. Chambers’ offering therefore fills a void – and it does so in a straightforward, unassuming, highly usable manner.
Entries are clearly laid out, and you get a handy search sidebar in landscape. Pages can be bookmarked, and shared, or sent to equally impressive sister app Chambers Dictionary. If you fancy both, grab the bundle to save a few bucks.
Tayasui Memopad is a drawing tool for iPad that places an emphasis on speed. Its no-nonsense approach gives you a blank canvas on which to scribble, and a small but pleasingly diverse set of tools.
You get the usual brushes and pencils, but also more imaginative fare: blocky ‘pixel’ fingerprinting, and a slightly splodgy India ink pen – the latter being part of the one-off IAP pack. There are no layers or objects – everything you add is burned into the page (although you of course get an undo).
But it’s with image management that Tayasui Memopad really shows its stuff: your images are automatically sent to Photos, and your current canvas is copied to the clipboard when you exit the app, ready for pasting elsewhere.
As a drawing app, you might argue Tayasui Memopad is ultimately quite ordinary – if usable; but as a drawing app designed for efficiency, it excels where it counts.
MaxCurve is a professional-quality photo editor, designed for people who want plenty of control over the images they’re working on. Much of the app is based around curves you typically find in high-end editors such as Photoshop.
Adjusting curves is pleasingly tactile, enabling you to make dramatic or subtle adjustments to colors and exposure settings with ease. It makes many of MaxCurve’s iPad contemporaries seem comparatively crude. Smartly, edits are stored as virtual layers, which can be toggled, and there are also tools for cropping and vignettes.
The app feels at home on iPad, which provides enough space to see your photo and tools, without the latter obscuring the former. MaxCurve could probably do with some quick-fix solutions for things like exposure, but then perhaps that’s missing the point of an app more about careful, considered edits rather than speed.
The Brainstormer is designed to spark ideas when you’re working on a story. In its default state, it’s something of a visual oddity, with three wheels that you spin for a random set-up of plot/conflict, theme/setting, and subject/location. Individual wheels can be locked, and you can swap the wheels for a ‘slot machine’ interface if you prefer.
Although that might seem a bit gimmicky, The Brainstormer can be genuinely useful if you need a little nudge to get going. Also, the app is extensible, vastly broadening its scope. You can buy additional wheels via IAP, such as creature and world builders.
You can also directly edit existing wheels, or create your own from scratch. When you’re fresh out of ideas, a couple of bucks for endless new ones could be a bargain buy that sends you on your way to a best-seller.
Textastic is a text editor geared towards markup and coding. It’s an app that takes a no-nonsense approach – very evident the second you sit before its tasteful, minimal interface.
But that doesn’t mean the app’s heavily stripped back. As you work with Textastic, you realize it’s been cleverly optimized to speed your work along. The custom keyboard row is superb, providing fast access to a slew of handy characters.
Not keen on the way code is presented? Quickly flip to the settings, and tweak the fonts or choose an entirely new theme.
As ever, there are limitations to an iPad editor of this kind, most notably local previews when coding web pages. On that basis, you’re probably not going to create a site from scratch with Textastic.
But with its smart editor, useful settings, Split View support, and a built-in file-transfer system, it’s ideal for making quick changes or typing up Markdown notes when on the move – or on the sofa.
Thinkrolls Kings & Queens is a set of logic and physics tests for children disguised as a game.
Like other Thinkrolls titles, it involves rotund protagonists working their way to the bottom of a series of blocky towers. Their way is regularly barred by various elements that must be successfully manipulated to fashion a way onward.
For example, gears and racks might need combining to create a conveyor belt, or a mirror shifted to reflect light and remove a ghost.
It’s all clever stuff, and also broadly stress-free. There are no time limits at all, and multiple profiles can be set up to cater for several kids on a single device.
And although Kings & Queens is intended for kids between five and eight years old, the interface and design is such that younger children should be able to delve into the adventure, too – albeit perhaps with supervision to initially help them understand the trickier challenges.
Plotagraph+ is a photo editor designed to make snaps more animated. The results are essentially cinemagraphs – stills with subtle looping animations, such as a flowing river within a landscape, or waving hair in an otherwise stationary portrait. With Plotagraph+, though, you add movement to any existing single image, rather than working from a series of stills or a video.
After you load a photo, you drag ‘animation’ arrows across areas you’d like to move, and use masks or anchor points to define sections that should remain stationary. Speed and crop tools add a modicum of further control. It’s all very straightforward.
The effect is specialized, mind, and only works well with certain images. You won’t, for example, find Plotagraph+ successfully animate a human face. But it works wonders on flowing elements (smoke; clouds; water; hair), and can with care be used to craft visually arresting madness based around shots of architecture.
CARROT Weather is a weather app helmed by a HAL-like artificial intelligence that hates humans. As you check whether it’ll be sunny at the weekend, or if you’ll be caught in a deluge should you venture outside, CARROT will helpfully call you a ‘meatbag’ and pepper its forecasts with snark.
That probably sounds like a throwaway gimmick, but it’s actually a lot of fun – adding color and personality to a kind of app usually devoid of both. Most importantly, though, CARROT Weather is a really good weather app.
The forecasts are clearly displayed, the interface is superb, and the Today view widget is one of the best around. There’s even an amusing mini-game for finding ‘collectable’ hidden locations.
There are some downsides: the rainfall/cloud maps are weak, and there are no notifications. But if you’re bored of the straight-laced, dull competition, and fancy a weather app that’s informative and entertaining, CARROT Weather’s well worth the outlay.
Waterlogue is all about transforming photos – or any other picture you care to load – into luminous watercolors. You shoot a photo or open one already on your iPad, and then choose from one of 14 pre-set styles. Waterlogue will then rapidly ‘paint’ your photo in a manner that looks pleasingly authentic.
Although the app doesn’t offer the level of control (nor the endless playback) of Oilist, you do get a few settings. Brush size, lightness, and borders can be amended, each change providing a thumbnail preview you can tap to have Waterlogue repaint your image.
Export size is reasonable (at 250dpi, you’d get roughly an 8 x 6-inch/21 x 16cm print), and the app as a whole is approachable enough for everyone, while being just about authentic enough to appeal even to those who dabble in real paint.
Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Safari is an entertaining digital take on those children’s games where you create weird and wonderful (and occasionally terrifying) creatures by combining different body parts. Here, you get tops and bottoms to swipe between, in order to construct the likes of a ‘zeboceros’ or ‘crocingo’.
Each animal is nicely illustrated and comes with two verses of text, which the app can optionally read aloud. Also, note you don’t have to create strange new animals – you can instead match halves to make normal ones.
Perfect for when your resident tiny person is getting a bit perplexed at seeing a grinning elephant propped up by a spindly pair of flamingo legs.
With Hyp, you’re essentially in digital lava lamp territory. Drag about your iPad’s display, and you’re treated to an ethereal – if somewhat neon – light show that mutates and evolves as you experiment. Ramp up the volume and a soothing responsive soundtrack plays, sucking you further into the chill-out zone.
For the outlay, that alone would do the job, but double-tap and Hyp offers more. You can snap a shot of the current pattern, adjust the speed and complexity of the animation, or prod a randomizer to shake up what you’re seeing and hearing.
We’d love to see an autoplay option too, so Hyp could be played indefinitely with the iPad in a stand; otherwise, this is a simple, smart, engaging slice of digital ambience.
Affinity Photo is the kind of app that should extinguish any lingering doubt regarding the iPad’s suitability as a platform for creative professionals. In essence, the app brings the entirety of Serif’s desktop Photoshop rival (also called Affinity Photo) to Apple’s tablet, and carefully reimagines the interface for touch.
You’ll need at least an iPad Air 2 to run the app, but an iPad Pro for best performance. Then also armed with a digit and/or Apple Pencil, you can delve into a huge range of features for pro-level image editing, creation and retouching.
The live filters and liquify tools are particularly impressive, responding in real-time as you work on adjustments, and make for a surprisingly tactile editing experience. But really pretty much everything’s great here for anyone who wants properly high-end photo editing on their iPad.
Although Addy doesn’t really offer anything new, this is an app that does an awful lot right. It manages to make adding text to images fun, along with providing a no-nonsense interface that marries usability and power.
Load a photo and you can add art, text, and effects, before sharing it. ‘Art’ comprises slogans, shapes, and clip art. This can be recolored and resized, and you can add shadows and adjust opacity. Text is similarly easily added, and there are straightforward spacing and alignment options for tidying typography.
Finally, the effects comprise filters and overlays, the latter being eye-catching but limited in terms of application (you can adjust opacity but not, say, rotation). Still, as a package, Addy’s easy to love, given the speed at which you can work and the quality of the end result.
If you’re only occasionally adding text to an image you might be fine with a free app, but the ease of use and quality results make Addy worth a fiver for everyone else.
There are full-on screenwriting tools for iPad, such as Final Draft, but Untitled is more like a smart notepad – an app for a first draft until you feel ready for, um, Final Draft.
You jot down ideas, and don’t worry about formatting – because the app deals with that. In some cases, it does so automatically – write “Inside TechRadar HQ at midday” and Untitled will convert it to “INT: TECHRADAR HQ – MIDDAY” in the full preview (which can be exported to PDF or HTML).
For dialogue, place the character’s name above whatever they’re saying and Untitled correctly lays everything out.
Some other formatting needs you to remember the odd character - ‘>’ before a transition and ‘.’ before a shot. But that’s not too heavy on the brain, leaving you plenty of headspace to craft your Hollywood breakthrough.
On the Mac, PDF Expert 6 is a friendly, efficient, usable PDF editor. If anything, the app’s often even better on iPad.
You can grab PDFs from iCloud or Dropbox. Pages can be rearranged by drag-and-drop, and you can add or extract pages with a few taps. Adding pages from another document sadly remains beyond the app, but you can merge two PDFs in its file manager.
As a reader, PDF Expert 6 fares well, ably dealing with large PDFs, and the text-to-speech mode can read documents at a speed of your choosing. Similarly, the app makes short work of annotations, document signing, and outline editing.
Buy the ‘Edit PDF’ IAP ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 on top of the original price) and you can directly update text, redact passages, and replace images. You’re obviously a little limited by a document’s existing fonts and layout, but this functionality is great if you spot a glaring error while checking a vital PDF on your iPad.
With visible pixels essentially eradicated from modern mobile device screens, it’s amusing to see retro-style pixel art stubbornly clinging on.
But chunky pixels are a pleasing aesthetic, evoking nostalgia, and you know thought’s gone into the placement of every dot. Pixaki is an iPad pixel art ‘studio’, ideal for illustrators, games designers, and animators.
At its most minimal, the interface shows your canvas and some tool icons: pencil; eraser; fill; shapes; select; color picker. But there are also slide-in panels for layers/palettes, and the frame-based animation system.
Bar a slightly awkward selection/move process, workflow is sleek and efficient (not least with the superb fill tool, which optionally works non-contiguously across multiple layers), and the app has robust, flexible import and export options.
Perhaps most importantly, Pixaki’s just really nice to use – more so than crafting similar art on a PC or Mac, and although pricey it’s worth the money for anyone serious about pixel art.
The iPad may not be an ideal device for shooting photos, but its large screen makes it pretty great for editing them. And Mextures is perhaps the finest app around for anyone wanting to infuse their digital snaps with character by way of textures, grunge, and gradients.
The editing process is entirely non-destructive, with you building up effects by adding layers. In each case, textures, blend modes and rotation of scanned objects can be adjusted to suit, and you can experiment without fear of edits being ‘burned in’.
Particularly interesting combinations can be saved as ‘formulas’ and shared with the Mextures community – or you can speed along your own editing by downloading one of the many formulas that already exist.
There are quite a few dictionary apps on iPad, and most of them don’t tend to stray much from paper-based tomes, save adding a search function. LookUp has a more colorful way of thinking, primarily with its entry screen. This features rows of illustrated cards, each of which houses an interesting word you can discover more about with a tap.
The app is elsewhere a mite more conventional – you can type in a word to confirm a spelling, and access its meaning, etymology, and Wikipedia entry.
The app’s lack of speed and customization means it likely won’t be a writer’s first port of call when working – but it is an interesting app for anyone fascinated by language, allowing you to explore words and their histories in rather more relaxed circumstances.
First impressions of Oilist might lead you to think it’s yet another filter app. And to some extent it is, given that Oilist enables you to feed it a photo and end up with something resembling an oil painting.
However, Oilist also has much in common with generative creativity apps, since it keeps painting over and over, to mesmerizing effect. Additionally, it’s not an app where you select a preset and then sit back and wait – instead, while Oilist is painting, you can adjust settings, and even splatter the virtual canvas with ‘chaos’ paint if the mood takes you.
This is all entertaining in and of itself, but Oilist also has practical benefits – at any point, you can snap the in-progress painting, and the resulting high-res image can be exported for sharing online or even printing on a canvas.
There are so many amazing music-making apps on iPad that it’s hard to choose between them. With Audiobus 3, you sort of don’t have to, because it acts as a kind of behind-the-scenes plumbing.
Virtual cabling might not sound sexy, but it hugely boosts creative potential. You can send live audio or MIDI data between apps and through effects, mix the various channels, and then send the entire output to the likes of GarageBand.
Much of these features are new to Audiobus 3, and this latest update also adds Audio Unit support, enabling you to open some synths and effects directly in the app.
With support for over 900 iOS products in all, Audiobus 3 is an essential buy for anyone serious about creating music on an iPad.
Young children love wooden puzzles, where you plug a load of letters into letter-shaped holes (with a little luck, ones that actually fit). The thing is, those puzzles never change, whereas Endless Alphabet has over a hundred words to play with.
On selecting a word, a horde of colorful monsters sprints across the screen, scattering the letters, which must then be dragged back into place. As you do so, the letters entertainingly grumble and animate. Once the entire word’s complete, a short cut-scene plays to explain what it means.
From start to finish, Endless Alphabet is an excellent and joyful production. The interface is intuitive enough for young toddlers to grasp, and the app’s tactile nature works wonderfully on the iPad’s large display.
The ‘pro’ bit in Redshift Pro’s name is rather important, because this astronomy app is very much geared at the enthusiast. It dispenses with the gimmickry seen in some competing apps, and is instead packed with a ton of features, including an explorable planetarium, an observation planner and sky diary, 3D models of the planetary bodies, simulations, and even the means to control a telescope.
Although more workmanlike than pretty, the app does the business when you’re zooming through the heavens, on a 3D journey to a body of choice, or just lazily browsing whatever you’d be staring at in the night sky if your ceiling wasn’t in the way.
And if it all feels a bit rich, the developer has you covered with the slightly cut down – but still impressive – Redshift, for half the outlay.
Generally speaking, music apps echo real-world instruments, as evidenced by the piano keyboards found in the likes of GarageBand. KRFT is different – along with creating loops and riffs (either by bashing out a tune on a grid of pads, or tapping out notes on a piano roll), you also create the play surface itself.
Designing your instrument in KRFT is all based around shapes and icons – diamonds trigger loops, dials adjust sound properties, and squares can be set to trigger several loops at once.
Admittedly, staring at a blank canvas can intimidate, because you must consider composition and instrument construction as one. But KRFT bundles several inspirational demos to show what it can do – and they’re so much fun they might be worth the entry fee on their own.
Billing itself as a kind of 3D sketchbook, isolad is designed for people who want to quickly draw isometric artwork. Its toolset is simple – you get a line tool for connecting magnetic dots, a shape fill tool, undo, panning and zooming.
That might sound reductive, but isolad’s straightforward nature means anyone can have a crack at doodling the next Monument Valley, and you end up focusing more on what you’re creating rather than being deluged by a load of tools you’ll never use.
Future updates promise the addition of selections and layers, but for now isolad’s elegant simplicity is enough to make it a winning app.
The idea behind Printed is to transform your photos into vintage printed art. You load a photo (or choose from one of the demo images), press a filter, and are suddenly faced with something that could have fallen out of a 50-year-old book, or been posted on a wall many decades ago.
But Printed is more than a tap-and-forget filter app: beyond the filter selection are tools for adjusting dot pitch, brightness, borders, and color saturation.
There are some shortcomings: changes to settings are initially displayed as a thumbnail you tap to approve, which only then gets rendered at full-size (whereupon it may look different from how you thought it would); and landscape orientation appears to have been an afterthought.
But on a large iPad display, the actual filters – which are excellent – are shown off to their fullest, in all their retro dotty glory.
If you’re the kind of person who likes spinning virtual decks, you’ll tell right away with djay Pro that you have in your hands something special. On the iPad – and especially on an iPad Pro – the app has room to breathe, lining up all kinds of features for being creative when playing other people’s music.
You get four-deck mixing, a sampler, varied waveform layouts, and useful DJ tools like cue points and beat-matching. There are also 70 keyboard shortcuts for quickly getting at important features, such as matching keys and adjusting levels.
For a newcomer, it’s perhaps overkill, and the similarly impressive djay 2 is cheaper. But if you’ve got the cash, djay Pro is a best-in-class app suitable for everyone – right up to jobbing DJs.
Even iPads with the largest amount of storage can’t cope with a great deal of on-board video. Infuse Pro is designed to access your collection, without any of it needing to be on your device.
The app connects to local drives and cloud services, and plays a wide range of file types, including MOV, MKV and VIDEO_TS. If the files are named sensibly, Infuse downloads cover art and can optionally grab soft subtitles. The interface throughout is superb.
On iPad, you also get full support for Split View and picture-in-picture, so you can pretend to work while watching your favorite shows. And if you continue on another device – this universal app is compatible with iPhone and Apple TV – cloud sync lets you pick up where you left off.
Reasoning that sketchbooks aren’t complicated, and so nor should your iPad be, Linea offers a friendly approach to digital sketching. The main interface puts all of the app’s tools within easy reach – colors on the left, and layers and brushes on the right. Scribble nearby and they get out of the way, or you can invoke full-screen with a tap.
There’s Pencil support, but no pressure sensing by other means. Also, although some of the pens offer blend modes, the end result still looks quite digital rather than realistic. Even so, Linea’s straightforwardness and smart design tends to make it a joy to use, even if the app lacks the range of some of its contemporaries.
If you find iMovie isn’t quite doing it for you from a video editing standpoint, take a look at LumaFusion. This multitrack editor is designed with the more demanding user in mind, and is packed full of features to keep you editing at your iPad rather than nipping to a Mac or PC.
The main timeline provides you with three tracks for photos, videos, titles and graphics, and you get another three audio tracks for complex audio mixes involving narration and sound effects. Should you wish to take things further, LumaFusion includes a slew of effects and clip manipulation tools seemingly brought over from the developer’s own – and similarly impressive – LumaFX.
Occasionally, the app perhaps lacks some of the elegance iMovie enjoys, and LumaFusion is certainly a more involved product than Apple’s. But if you want fully-fledged video editing on your iPad, it’s hard to think of a better option.
On iPhone, Hipstamatic lets you switch between a virtual retro camera and a sleek modern camera app. On iPad, it all goes a bit weird, with the former option giving you a camera floating in space, and the latter making you wonder why you’d use a tablet for taking snaps.
But Hipstamatic nonetheless gets a recommendation on the basis of other things it does. Load an image from your Camera Roll, and you can delve into Hipstamatic’s editor. If you’re in a hurry, select a predefined style – Vintage; Cinematic; Blogger – and export.
Should you fancy a bit more fine-tuning, you can experiment with lenses, film, and flashes. And plenty of other adjustments are available, too, such as cropping, vignettes, curves, and a really nice depth of field effect.
Wikipedia is, in reality, a massive web of articles, but when browsing, it looks more like a sea of links. WikiLinks rethinks exploring Wikipedia through the use of spider diagrams, providing a clever visual overview of the relationship between subjects.
On iPhone, you switch between views, but the app makes use of the iPad’s larger display by splitting it in two. On the left is your mind map, which grows as you tap on new articles. On the right is your current selection to peruse.
As a reader, WikiLinks is less remarkable – article sections irritatingly begin life collapsed, and it all feels a bit cluttered. But when using Wikipedia for research, no other app is so helpful in enabling you to see the links between the site’s many pages.
If your iPad’s sitting around doing nothing while you work on a Mac or PC, Duet Display can turn it into a handy second screen for your desktop or notebook.
You fire up the app on your iPad and a companion app on your computer, and connect the two devices using a cable – like it’s 2005 or something. Minimalist fetishists might grumble, but a wired connection means there’s almost no lag – even when using Duet Display’s highest detail settings and frame rates.
With macOS Sierra, you also get one extra goodie: a virtual Touch Bar. So you needn’t splash out on a brand-new MacBook Pro to check out Apple’s latest interface innovation – you can use Duet Display instead.
Carl Burton’s Islands: Non-Places is listed in the App Store as a game, but don’t believe a word of it. Really, this ten-scene artistic endeavor is a surreal, mesmerizing semi-interactive animated film.
Each ‘non-place’ is somewhere you’d usually ignore or stay only on a very temporary basis, but here, the mundane is subverted through unusual and unexpected juxtapositions.
You’ll find yourself staring at a luggage carousel, before the bags begin a lazy Mexican wave. Elsewhere, palm trees ride mall escalators, while a run-of-the-mill seating area is suddenly flooded, a warning siren slicing its way through inane background chatter.
The result is frequently disorientating, but Islands also has the capacity to surprise, and is often oddly beautiful.
There are plenty of apps out there that attempt to transform images into something that might once have appeared on the screen of an ancient piece of computer hardware, but none match Retrospecs.
You either take a photo or load an image from your iPad and then select a preset. You get everything from the chunky character-oriented Commodore PET, through to relatively powerful fare such as the detailed 16-bit graphics of the SNES and Atari ST.
From an authenticity standpoint, Retrospecs wins out, but the app also affords plenty of tweaking potential. You can switch modes for those machines that offered multiple resolutions, choose alternate dither patterns, and adjust contrast, vibrancy, and other settings. Best of all, you can use any of the existing presets as the basis for your own unique slice of retro-filter joy.
It’s concert time for the motley crew of Toca Band, in this toy designed to help kids explore music creatively. (And, um, adults who might get sucked in a bit.)
It’s all very simple: drag weird cartoon characters (each of which plays their own instrument) to spots on the stage, and they automatically jam along with the only song that Toca Band appears to know. Lob a musician at the star and they start a unique solo improv with a modicum of user control.
Toca Band is a very sweet app, which even toddlers should be able to grasp. A word of warning, though: that Toca Band riff will quickly become an earworm you’ll be hard pressed to remove.
iA Writer provides a writing environment suitably focused for iPad, but that also makes nods to the desktop.
The main screen is smartly designed, with a custom keyboard bar offering Markdown and navigation buttons; if you’re using a mechanical keyboard, standard shortcuts are supported.
Further focus comes by way of a typewriter mode (auto-scrolling to the area you’re editing) and graying out lines other than the one you’re working on.
Elsewhere, you get an optional live character count, iCloud sync, and a robust Markdown preview. We’d like to see a split-screen mode for the last of those (as per the Mac version), but otherwise iA Writer’s a solid, effective and affordable minimal writing app for iPad.
We're not sure what makes this edition of the famous mockney chef's recipe book 'ultimate', bar that word being very clearly written on the icon.
Still, Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes is certainly a very tasty app. The 600 recipes should satisfy any given mood, whether you're after a sickeningly healthy salad or fancy binging on ALL THE SUGAR until your teeth scream for mercy.
Smartly, every recipe offers step-by-step photos, so you can see how badly you’re going wrong at any point. And when you've nearly burned down the kitchen, given up and ordered a pizza, you can watch the two hours of videos that reportedly tell you how to "become a real kitchen ninja".
Note: this doesn't involve wearing lots of black and hurling sharp objects at walls, sadly.
Music-creation apps can overwhelm, even when trying to be friendly. Lily neatly takes a rather more playful – if slightly twee – stab at having you make tunes.
You start by selecting a color and shape. The former dictates an instrument and the latter the number of leaves on your lily. Tap + to open the flower, and then the flower itself to access a pulsating playback head.
You then tap spaces to lay down notes, which can be shifted entire octaves by prodding adjacent vertical lines. Repeat the process with more lilies and you'll soon have an oddly delicate cacophony serenading your ears.
Lily's a very sweet app. It's perhaps a touch too abstract to be as immediate as it wants to be, but all becomes clear with a little play. We do wish songs could be saved (although you can export a recording) – the lives of these lilies are all too fleeting.
So, you’ve picked up an iPad synth to compose music, play live, or bound about like a maniac, pretending you're on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, Poison-202 is ideal for all such sets of circumstances.
The moody black and red graphic design is very 1990s, but it's Poison-202's sounds that hurl you back to the halcyon days of electronic music. Aficionados of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Orbital will be overjoyed at the familiar (and brilliant) sounds you can conjure up simply by selecting presets and prodding a few keys.
And if you're not satisfied by the creator's (frankly awesome) sound design smarts (in which case, we glare at you with the menace of a thousand Keith Flints), all manner of sliders and dials enable you to create your own wall-wobbling bass and ear-searing leads.
There are iPad synths that have more ambition, and many are more authentic to classic hardware; but few are more fun.
For free, Ferrite Recording Studio provides the means to record the odd bit of audio, bookmark important bits, and mash together a few such recordings into something resembling a podcast. But pay the $19.99/£14.99 IAP and this app gives desktop podcast-creation products a run for their money.
Using the smartly designed interface, you can import clips and sounds from various sources, craft multi-track edits that make full use of slicing, fading, ducking, and silence stripping, and add professional effects to give vocals that bit of extra punch.
On an iPhone, this is an impressive app, but on iPad, the extra screen space you get makes for significantly faster editing of your audio and a far superior user experience compared to the cramped screen.
Rather than be all things to all people, Zen Brush 2 is a painting app with a sense of focus, emulating the feel of an East Asian ink brush. It's therefore suited to flowing, semi-abstract artistic effort with your finger to offer a digital take on calligraphy.
On iPhone’s teeny screen this app feels a little redundant, but it comes alive on the iPad's larger display, especially if you have a stylus. The selection of tools is intentionally limited to keep you focused, but you can still swap between a red and black brush, experiment with alternate brush sizes or dryness values and swap out the underlying canvas.
There is a sense of give and take about Zen Brush 2's level of realism: strokes are applied wonderfully, but inks don't interact with each other nor the paper beneath. Still, the strong sense of character gives artwork created in Zen Brush 2 a unique feel and it's a relaxing, almost meditative, app to spend time with.
There are loads of great painting apps for illustrators and artists, but Amaziograph tries something a bit different, introducing you to a world of tessellation and symmetries. This makes for an app that has plenty of potential for professional use, but also one that anyone can enjoy.
To begin, you select a style. The simplest is a split-screen mirror, but there are also kaleidoscope-like options, and those that create tiled, repeating patterns. It's then a question of scribbling on the canvas, and watching a pattern form before your eyes.
The toolset is quite basic (with a bafflingly overthought color palette selector), but Amaziograph chalks up a big win when it comes to flexibility.
At any point, you can adjust the settings of the current grid, or choose a different symmetry/tessellation type. This propels the app far beyond 'toy' territory, opening up avenues for creativity regardless of your level of artistic prowess.
As a combination clock and weather app, Living Earth works well across all iOS devices, but use it with an iPad in a stand and you've got something that'll make other clocks in the immediate vicinity green with envy.
As you might expect, your first job with the app is to define the cities you'd like to keep track of. At any point, you can then switch between them, updating the main clock and weather forecasts accordingly. Tap the weather and you can access an extended forecast for the week; tap the location and you get the current times and weather for your defined locations.
But it's the Earth that gets pride of place, taking up the bulk of the screen. It shows clouds by default, although weather geeks can instead choose colors denoting temperature, wind speed or humidity values. Then with a little swipe the globe rotates, neatly showing heavily populated locations during night time as lattices of artificial man-made light.
Whether you need a few minutes of peace or help to fall asleep after hours of stress, Flowing offers meditative splashy reflection. Choose from six scenes, plonk headphones on and then just sit and listen to gorgeous 3D audio recordings of streams, waterfalls and rivers.
Should you feel the need, noodle about with the parallax photo - although that’s frankly the least interesting bit of the app.
There is room for screen interaction though - the slider button gives you access to a mixer, to trigger ambient soundtracks by composer David Bawiec, and add birdsong and rain; while the Flowing icon houses guided meditations by Lua Lisa.
There’s also a timer, so you can fall asleep to a gently meandering brook without it then burbling away all night. In all, even if you don’t make use of every feature, Flowing is an effective, polished relaxation aid.
Animation can be painstaking, whether doing it for your career or just for fun. Fortunately, Stop Motion Studio Pro streamlines the process, providing a sleek and efficient app for your next animated masterpiece.
It caters to various kinds of animation: you can use your iPad’s camera to capture a scene, import images or videos (which are broken down into stills), or use a remote app installed on an iPhone. Although most people will export raw footage to the likes of iMovie, Stop Motion Pro shoots for a full animation suite by including audio and title capabilities.
There are some snags. Moving frames requires an awkward copy/paste/delete workaround. Also, drawing tools are clumsy, making the app’s claim of being capable of rotoscoping a tad suspect. But as an affordable and broadly usable app for crafting animation, it fits the bill.
Scanners for iPad have come a long way from their roots as souped-up camera apps, and Scanbot 6 is making a play to be the only one on your iPad - by doing way more than just scanning.
The basics are ably dealt with - the app automatically locates documents in front of your iPad’s camera (assuming there’s contrast with the desk underneath), and you can crop, rotate, color-adjust, and save the result.
Buy the Pro IAP, though, and Scanbot becomes far more capable. It’ll run OCR text recognition on any document, and attempt (with a reasonable degree of success) to extract details for single-tap ’actions’, such as triggering a phone call or visiting a website, based on what it finds.
There are annotation and PDF signing tools, and the means to reorder pages in multi-page documents. So rather than being a tap-and-done scanner, this app keeps helping once the scans are done, making it an essential purchase for the office-oriented. (We do miss the smiling robot icon, though – the new one is so dull.)
Another example of a book designed for kids that adults will sneak a peek at when no-one's watching, Namoo teaches about the wonders of plant life. Eschewing the kind of realistic photography or illustration you typically see in such virtual tomes, Namoo is wildly stylized, using an arresting low-poly art style for its interactive 3D simulations.
Each of these is married with succinct text, giving your brain something to chew on as you ping the components of a plant's cells (which emit pleasingly playful - if obviously not terribly realistic - sounds and musical notes) or explore the life cycle of an apple.
On the desktop, Scrivener is widely acclaimed as the writer's tool of choice. The feature-rich app provides all kinds of ways to write, even incorporating research documents directly into projects. Everything's always within reach, and your work can constantly be rethought, reorganised, and reworked.
On iPad, Scrivener is, astonishingly, almost identical to its desktop cousin. Bar some simplification regarding view and export options, it's essentially the same app. You get a powerful 'binder' sidebar for organizing notes and documents, while the main view area enables you to write and structure text, or to work with index cards on a cork board.
There's even an internal 'Split View', for simultaneously smashing out a screenplay while peering at research. With Dropbox sync to access existing projects, Scrivener is a no-brainer for existing users; and for newcomers, it's the most capable rich text/scriptwriting app on iPad.
At the last count, there were something like eleven billion sketching apps for iPad, and so you need something pretty special to stand out. Concepts shoots for a more professional audience - architects, designers, illustrators, and the like - but in doing so presents a far more flexible product than most.
When scribbling on the infinite canvas, you're drawing vector strokes, which can be individually selected and adjusted. The tools area is customizable and colors are selected using a Copic color wheel.
Pay the pro IAP and you unlock all kinds of features, including precision tools and shape guides, endless layers, and the means to export your work as high-res imagery, SVG, DXF or PSD. In use, whether using a finger or stylus, Concepts is elegant and usable but powerful.
So for free, this is an excellent tool for wannabe scribblers, and for the price of a couple of coffees, a high-end digital sketchbook suitable for professionals. Sounds like a bargain either way to us.
Your eyes might pop at the price tag of this iPad synth, but the hardware reissue of this amazing Moog was priced at a wallet-smashing $10,000. By contrast, the Model 15 iPad app seems quite the bargain. To our ears, it's also the best standalone iOS synth on mobile, and gives anything on the desktop a run for its money.
For people used to messing around with modular synths and plugging in patch leads, they'll be in heaven. But this isn't retro-central: you can switch the piano keyboard for Animoog's gestural equivalent; newcomers can work through straightforward tutorials about how to build new sounds from scratch; and those who want to dive right in can select from and experiment with loads of diverse, superb-sounding presets.
There are plenty of apps that enable you to add comic-like filters and the odd speech balloon to your photos, but Comic Life 3 goes the whole hog regarding comic creation. You select from pre-defined templates or basic page layouts, and can then begin working on a Marvel-worrying masterpiece.
Importing images is straightforward, and you get plenty of control over sound effects and speech balloons. For people who are perhaps taking things a bit too seriously (or actual comic creators, who can use this app for quick mock-ups), there's a bundled script editor as well.
Oddly, Comic Life 3's filters aren't that impressive, not making your photos look especially hand-drawn. But otherwise the app is an excellent means of crafting stories on an iPad, and you can export your work in a range of formats to share with friends - and Stan Lee.
It's been a long time coming, but finally Tweetbot gets a full-fledged modern-day update for iPad. And it's a good one, too. While the official Twitter app's turned into a 'blown-up iPhone app' monstrosity on Apple's tablet, Tweetbot makes use of the extra space by way of a handy extra column in which you can stash mentions, lists, and various other bits and bobs.
Elsewhere, this latest release might lack a few toys Twitter selfishly keeps for itself, but it wins out in terms of multitasking support, granular mute settings, superb usability, and an interesting Activity view if you're the kind of Twitter user desperate to know who's retweeting all your tiny missives.
This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.
For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning.
(Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)
There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.
Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low-res comics look good.
Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.
You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.
The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.
Pop music is about getting what you expect. Ambient music has always felt subtly different, almost like anything could happen. With generative audio, this line of thinking became reality. Scape gives you a combined album/playground in this nascent genre, from the minds of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers.
Each track is formed by way of adding musical elements to a canvas, which then interact in sometimes unforeseen ways. Described as music that "thinks for itself", Scape becomes a pleasing, fresh and infinitely replayable slice of chillout bliss. And if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can sit back and listen to an album composed by the app's creators.
Illustration tools are typically complex. Sit someone in front of Adobe Photoshop and they'll figure out enough of it in fairly short order. Adobe Illustrator? No chance. Assembly attempts to get around such roadblocks by turning graphic design into the modern-day touchscreen equivalent of working with felt shapes — albeit very powerful felt shapes that can shift beneath your fingers.
At the foot of the screen are loads of design elements, and you drag them to the canvas. Using menus and gestures, shapes can be resized, coloured, duplicated and transformed. Given enough time and imagination, you can create abstract masterpieces, cartoonish geometric robots, and beautiful flowing landscapes.
It's intuitive enough for anyone, but we suspect pro designers will enjoy Assembly too, perhaps even using it for sketching out ideas. And when you're done, you can output your creations to PNG or SVG.
The lofty boast with RealBeat is that you can use the app to make music with everything. The remarkable thing is, you really can. The app has eight slots for samples, waiting for input from your iPad's mic.
You can record snippets of any audio you fancy: your voice; a spoon smacking a saucepan; a pet, confused at you holding your iPad right in front of its face. These samples can then be arranged into loops and songs using a familiar drum-machine-style sequencer and pattern editor.
Completed masterpieces can be exported using Audio Copy and iTunes File Sharing, and the app also integrates with Audiobus.
On the desktop, Panic's Transmit is a perfectly decent FTP client. But when it was first released for iPad, Transmit felt rather more like the future. It was smart and elegant, utilising all of the then-new iOS features, such as Share sheets.
Even today, its interface seems a step beyond its contemporaries — the vibrant icons and dark lists look gorgeous and modern. Most importantly, the app remains very usable, with an excellent drag-and-drop model, smart previews, and support for a huge range of services, including local shared Mac folders.
Calling Editorial a text editor does it a disservice. That's not to say Editorial isn't any good as a text editor, because it very much is. You get top-notch Markdown editing, with an inline preview, and also a TaskPaper mode for plain text to-do lists.
But what really sets Editorial apart is the sheer wealth of customisation options. You get themes and custom snippets, but also workflows, which can automate hugely complex tasks. You get the sense some of these arrived from the frustrations at how slow it is to perform certain actions on an iPad; but a few hours with Editorial and you'll wish the app was available for your Mac or PC too.
Previously known as iDraw, Graphic is now part of the Autodesk stable. Visually, it looks an awful lot like Adobe Illustrator, and it brings some suitably high-end vector-drawing smarts to Apple's tablet.
All the tools and features you'd expect are present and correct; and while it's admittedly a bit slower and fiddlier to construct complex imagery on an iPad than a PC, Graphic is great to have handy when you're on the move. Smartly, the app boasts plentiful export functions, to continue your work elsewhere, and will sync with its iPhone and Mac cousins across iCloud.
One of the curious things about the iPad is the absence of major Adobe apps from the App Store. The creative giant instead seems content with smaller, simpler 'satellite' apps, assuming users will continue to rely on the desktop for in-depth work. Pixelmator thumbs its nose to such thinking, reworking the majority of its desktop cousin (itself a kind of streamlined Photoshop) for the iPad.
Given the low price tag, this is an astonishingly powerful app, offering brushes, layers, gorgeous filters, levels editing, and more. You need to invest some time to get the most out of Pixelmator, but do so and the app will forever weld itself to your Home screen.
There are plenty of apps that provide the means to turn photos into messages and poster-style artwork. Elsewhere in this list we mention the excellent Retype, for example. But if you hanker after more control, Fontmania is a good bet.
This isn't the most complex or feature-rich app of its kind, but it is extremely pleasing to use. On selecting your photo, you can add a filter. Then it's down to business with typography. The 'Art' section houses frames, dividers, shapes and pre-made 'artworks'. The 'Text' section is for typing out whatever you like, and you can choose from a range of fonts.
Really, it's the interface that makes Fontmania. The simple sidebar is clear and non-intrusive, providing quick access to tools like Color and Shadow. All items added to the canvas can be manipulated using standard iOS gestures, avoiding the awkwardness sometimes seen within this sort of app.
Perhaps best of all, though, Fontmania is a pay-once product. Download and you get access to everything, rather than suddenly discovering a drop shadow or extra font will require digging into your wallet again.
iPad video editors tend to have a bunch of effects and filters lurking within, but with VideoGrade you can go full-on Hollywood. On launch, the app helpfully rifles through your albums, making it easy to find your videos. Load one and you get access to a whopping 13 colour-grading and repair tools.
Despite the evident power VideoGrade offers, the interface is remarkably straightforward. Select a tool (such as Vibrance, Brightness or Tint), choose a setting, and drag to make a change. Drag up before moving your finger left or right to make subtler adjustments.
Smartly, any tool already used gets a little green dash beneath, and you can go back and change or remove edits at any point.
All filters are applied live to the currently shown frame, and you can also tap a button to view a preview of how your entire exported video will look. Want to compare your edit with the original video? Horizontal and vertical split-views are available at the tap of a button. Usefully, favorite filter combinations can be stored and reused, and videos can be queued rather than laboriously rendered individually.
Korg Gadget bills itself as the "ultimate mobile synth collection on your iPad" and it's hard to argue. You get well over a dozen varied synths, ranging from drum machines through to ear-splitting electro monsters, and an intuitive piano roll for laying down notes.
A scene/loop arranger enables you to craft entire compositions in the app, which can then be shared via the Soundcloud-powered GadgetCloud or sent to Dropbox. This is a more expensive app than most, but if you're a keen electronic-music-oriented songwriter with an iPad, it's hard to find a product that's better value.
There are quite a few apps for virtual stargazing, but Sky Guide is the best of them on iPad. Like its rivals, the app allows you to search the heavens in real-time, providing details of constellations and satellites in your field of view (or, if you fancy, on the other side of the world).
Indoors, it transforms into a kind of reference guide, offering further insight into distant heavenly bodies, and the means to view the sky at different points in history. What sets Sky Guide apart, though, is an effortless elegance. It's simply the nicest app of its kind to use, with a polish and refinement that cements its essential nature.
Every now and again, you get an app that ticks all the boxes: it's beautiful, audacious, productive, and nudges the platform forwards. This perfectly sums up Coda, a full-fledged website editor for iPad.
The app's graphic design borrows from the similarly impressive Transmit for iOS, all muted greys and vibrant icons. It's a style we wish Apple would steal. When it comes to editing, you can work remotely or pull down files locally; in either case, you end up working in a coding view with the clout you'd expect from a desktop product, rather than something on mobile.
Naturally, Coda is a fairly niche tool, but it's essential for anyone who regularly edits websites and wants the ability to do so when away from the office.
When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.
Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.
For most guitarists, sound is the most important thing of all. It's all very well having a massive rig of pedals and amps, but only if what you get out of it blows away anyone who's listening. For our money, BIAS FX is definitely the best-sounding guitar amp and effects processor on the iPad, with a rich and engaging collection of gear.
Fortunately, given the price-tag, BIAS FX doesn't skimp on set-up opportunities either. A splitter enables complex dual-signal paths; and sharing functionality enables you to upload your creations and check out what others have done with the app.
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.
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.
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.
On opening Toca Nature, you find yourself staring at a slab of land floating in the void. After selecting relevant icons, a drag of a finger is all it takes to raise mountains or dig deep gullies for rivers and lakes.
Finishing touches to your tiny landscape can then be made by tapping to plant trees. Wait for a bit and a little ecosystem takes shape, deers darting about glades, and fish swimming in the water. Using the magnifying glass, you can zoom into and explore this little world and feed its various inhabitants.
Although designed primarily for kids, Toca Nature is a genuinely enjoyable experience whatever your age.
The one big negative is that it starts from scratch every time — some save states would be nice, so each family member could have their own space to tend to and explore. Still, blank canvases keep everything fresh, and building a tiny nature reserve never really gets old.
The fairly large screen of the iPad means you can access desktop-style websites, rather than ones hacked down for iPhone. That sounds great until you realise most of them want to fire adverts into your face until you beg for mercy.
Old people will wisely suggest 'RSS', and then they'll explain that means you can subscribe to sites and get their content piped into an app.
Reeder 3 is a great RSS reader for iPad. It's fast, efficient, caches content for offline use and — importantly — bundles a Readability view. This downloads entire articles for RSS feeds that otherwise would only show synopses.
Like on the iPhone, Reeder's perhaps a bit gesture-happy, but it somehow feels more usable on the iPad's larger display. And we're happy to see the app continue to improve its feature set, including Split View and iPad Pro support, font options for the article viewer, and the means to sync across Instapaper content.
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).
The vast majority of iPads in Apple's line-up don't have a massive amount of storage, and that becomes a problem when you want to keep videos on the device. Air Video HD gets around the problem by streaming video files from any Mac or PC running the free server software. All content is live-encoded as necessary, ensuring it will play on your iPad, and there's full support for offline viewing, soft subtitles, and AirPlay to an Apple TV.
Perhaps the best bit about the software is how usable it is. The app's simple to set up and has a streamlined, modern interface - for example, a single tap downloads a file for local storage. You don't even need to be on the same network as your server either - Air Video HD lets you access your content over the web. Just watch your data downloads if you're on 3G!
Apple's own Calendar app is fiddly and irritating, and so the existence of Fantastical is very welcome. In a single screen, you get a week view, a month calendar and a scrolling list of events. There's also support for reminders, and all data syncs with iCloud, making Fantastical compatible with Calendar (formerly iCal) for macOS.
The best bit, though, is Fantastical's natural-language input, where you can type an event and watch it build as you add details, such as times and locations. On iPad, we do question the layout a little - a large amount of space is given over to a month calendar view. Still, in portrait or, better, Split View, Fantastical 2 is transformative.
You're not going to make the next Hollywood hit on your iPad, but iMovie's more than capable of dealing with home movies. The interface resembles its desktop cousin and is easy to get to grips with.
Clips can be browsed, arranged and cut, and you can then add titles, transitions and music. For the added professional touch, there are 'trailer templates' to base your movie on, rather than starting from scratch.
And should your iPad be powerful enough, this app will happily work with and export footage all the way up to 4K, which will likely make anyone who used to sit in front of huge video workstations a decade or two ago wide-eyed with astonishment.
Touch Press somewhat cornered the market in amazing iOS books with The Elements, but Journeys of Invention takes things a step further. In partnership with the Science Museum, it leads you through many of science's greatest discoveries, weaving them into a compelling mesh of stories.
Many objects can be explored in detail, and some are more fully interactive, such as the Enigma machine, which you can use to share coded messages with friends.
What's especially great is that none of this feels gimmicky. Instead, this app points towards the future of books, strong content being married to useful and engaging interactivity.
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.
There are loads of note-taking apps for the iPad, but Notability hits that sweet spot of being usable and feature-rich. Using the app's various tools, you can scribble on a virtual canvas, using your finger or a stylus. Should you want precision copy, you can drag out text boxes to type into. It's also possible to import documents.
One of the smartest features, though, is audio recording. This enables you to record a lecture or meeting, and the app will later play back your notes live alongside the audio, helping you see everything in context. Naturally, the app has plenty of back-up and export options, too, so you can send whatever you create to other apps and devices.
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.
Soulver is more or less the love child of a spreadsheet and the kind of calculations you do on the back of an envelope. You write figures in context, and Souvler extracts the maths bits and tots up totals; each line's results can be used as a token in subsequent lines, enabling live updating of complex calculations. Drafts can be saved, exported to HTML, and also synced via Dropbox or iCloud.
Initially, the app feels a bit alien, given that people have been used to digital versions of desktop calculators since the dawn of home computing. But scribbling down sums in Soulver soon becomes second nature.
We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.
But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.
When someone talks about bringing back the sounds of the 1980s, your head might fill with Human League and Depeche Mode, but if you played games, you'll instead think of Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway, chip-tune pioneers whose music graced the C64, leveraging the power of the MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID (Sound Interface Device) chip.
SidTracker64 is a niche but wonderfully designed iPad app that's a complete production package for creating SID tunes. It's unashamedly retro in terms of sound, but boasts a modern design, with powerful editing and export functionality. If you're only into raw chip-tune noises, Audiobus and Inter-App Audio are supported; but if you're an old-hand, you'll be delighted at the bundled copy of Hubbard's Commando, ready for you to remix.
Samsung Galaxy X: the story of Samsung’s foldable phone so far
Update: Samsung has mentioned foldable phones in its latest financial statement, adding to the evidence that we might see one soon.
Foldable phones are coming – it’s only a matter of time – and it's looking increasingly like Samsung could be the first company to commercially launch one, possibly as soon as this year.
We may even know what it’s called, with the mysterious Samsung Galaxy X being the subject of several bendable leaks, foldable patents and flexible rumors.
But whether X marks the spot or not, we’re clearly entering a foldable future. To see how we got here and where we’re going, here’s the story of Samsung’s foldable phone so far.
Seven years in the making
The idea of a foldable phone isn’t new to Samsung, in fact way back in 2011 the company showed off a prototype of exactly that.
The device looked chunky and awkward, but even back then it somewhat worked, remaining intact after 100,000 folds, with only a 6% drop in brightness at the center, where all the folding action happened.
This clearly wasn’t a commercial product, but later that year Samsung launched a concept video of a fully bendable (and transparent) mobile device, that could fold out from a phone-sized screen to a tablet-sized one, showing Samsung's ambitions for the technology.
Production problemsWhile a device like the one in the video above is likely still years away even now, by 2012 Samsung was already hard at work trying to launch the first generation of flexible or foldable phones, but a report late in the year claimed that problems with the production of flexible screens would hold the first bendy display back until at least 2013.
That didn’t stop Samsung showing off another video of a foldable future though, highlighting all sorts of transparent screens, made from plastic that’s thin, light and flexible enough to fully fold or roll.
And as 2012 came to a close it seemed Samsung might be overcoming its production problems, with another report claiming that its flexible plastic screens were in the final stage of development, with the first phones sporting them likely to land in mid-2013.
Samsung’s bendy plastic screens got a more real-world debut at CES 2013, along with a name – they were now called ‘Youm’, though it was clear from the flexible prototype on show that Samsung was still far from putting a Youm display on a commercial device.
That was made even more clear when the tech was reportedly hit with new manufacturing issues in April 2013. Supposedly the previous problems had been solved, but now Samsung was apparently struggling with the encapsulation technology, which protects the screen from moisture and air damage.
Round the EdgeThe closest thing we actually got to a foldable phone from Samsung in 2013 was the Samsung Galaxy Round. This was far from the prototypes and concepts we’d seen, but as the world’s first curved screen smartphone it was a big step in the right direction.
That was followed up by the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, which curved in a now more familiar direction, one which Samsung has since fully embraced with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and other phones with curved edges.
These are still far from being foldable, and while a Samsung executive did promise a truly bendable device by the end of 2014, whatever he was referring to never appeared.
Project ValleyTalk of foldable phones went a bit quiet until mid-2015, when it was rumored that an upcoming phone codenamed Project Valley could be foldable.
At this point little was known about the device, which would apparently have two screens, but it was said to be in early development, so was unlikely to arrive for a while, if at all.
In September 2015 an “insider” claimed that we’d see a bendable phone in January 2016. It wasn’t clear whether this was Project Valley or not, but apparently it would come in both mid-range and high-end flavors. Though, of course, it didn’t arrive at all.
Samsung Galaxy XIn May 2016 Project Valley got a new name – the Samsung Galaxy X, which was believed to be the name it would release under.
According to reports at the time it would be ready for release in 2017 and would have a foldable 4K display, so that the resolution would remain high even when the phone was folded.
We were sceptical about that launch date at the time, and were right to be, as we're now in 2018 with no sign of it.
But that’s not quite the full story so far. At SID 2016 Samsung showed off a roll-out display – but one which didn’t have a touchscreen layer, which would be pretty vital for a smartphone.
Then in June 2017 “people familiar with the matter” reported that we might see two foldable phones from Samsung in 2017 - backing up those previous Galaxy X reports.
Supposedly one would fold out from a 5-inch handset to an 8-inch tablet, much like the concept video Samsung showed back at the beginning of our story, while the other would fold in half like a cosmetic compact, along the lines of a folding phone patent we’d already seen.
This 2017 launch didn't happen, but Samsung was clearly on the right track, with another patent looking to solve one of the biggest problems with folding phones – the ability to fold without damaging any internal components.
The patent described an “artificial muscle”, which would move in time with the screen bending to protect other components.
We've seen plenty of early glimpses that claim to show off the Samsung Galaxy X. One came from a patent spotted by GalaxyClub, highlighting a long device, with a shape more like a remote control than a smartphone, but one which could fold down to half the size.
The shape doesn’t seem particularly practical, so we doubt this is the form the Galaxy X will take, but it’s vaguely along the lines of the phone-to-tablet convertible we’ve been hearing about, and a similar design has popped up since.
Credit: LetsGoDigital
One of the more recent bits of information that may point to the foldable X looks different than previous info. Much like the ZTE Axon M that came out in 2017, images from the patent filing (shown above) show off a bezel-licious device that folds in a clamshell design.
According to some sources, more than 100,000 units were going to roll out in the third quarter 2017 - though they added that plans for a 2017 launch could apparently be changed, which has clearly happened if any such plans ever existed.
That gelled with a tweet from tipster @mmddj_china, who claimed the Galaxy X would land in Q3 of 2017 - which again, obviously, did not happen.
Elsewhere we were hearing that Samsung would only have a prototype ready by then, and supply chain sources speaking to DigiTimes said that a small production of foldable handsets would be made in the fourth quarter of the year, but technical issues may mean we wouldn't see mass production before mid-2018 - something which now looks optimistic.
Other sources similarly said that several thousand dual-screen prototypes might land in 2017, but that a commercially available product wouldn't.
Most damningly of all, one of Samsung Display's own engineers has claimed we won't see a foldable phone for a while, saying: “Because the bezel-free display currently sells well, we still have enough time to develop foldable display. The technology is expected to be mature around 2019.”
Although more recent news comes direct from Samsung's mobile boss, and is a little better, as he claimed the company was aiming for a 2018 launch, assuming it could overcome certain unspecified problems. Though he's since slightly backtracked on those claims.
A phone with a model number linked to the Galaxy X also showed up on Samsung's site, but it's since been revealed that this is an unrelated handset.
In November 2017 we finally had a look at the possible interface of the Galaxy X, revealing a familiarly Samsung UI, but where each half of the display shows a different screen, rather than just making everything bigger or smaller.
This interface was shown in a patent, which also gave us another look at the possible design of the phone, showing something with a laptop-like design, but a second screen where the keyboard would be.
And in early 2018 an industry source claimed Samsung will likely start producing the phone - which will apparently have a 7.3-inch display - in November 2018, with a launch likely in December or early 2019. However, they added that it's likely to have an ultra-premium price tag.
But apparently prototypes of the folding phone have already been shown off behind closed doors at CES 2018, which took place in January, while Samsung's Q4 2017 financial results included claims that foldable OLED panels and phones could be a big money-maker for Samsung in 2018 and beyond - which is yet more evidence that the Galaxy X is coming soon.
The shape of things to comeThat brings us up to today, and while Samsung has made some commercial progress towards a flexible phone, with curved screens on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S8, on the surface it doesn’t seem much closer overall to a truly foldable display than it did way back in 2011.
There’s lots of talk of a 2018 launch, but that’s not the first time a questionably close launch has been rumored.
If anything, it may arrive later, since a Samsung employee has said not to expect the Galaxy X before 2019.
But behind the scenes promising progress does seem to have been made. Over the years several key problems in development appear to have been solved – from making a screen that can be folded thousands of times without breaking, to avoiding damage to internal components.
So we still see folding phones in our future, and maybe even the not too distant future.
LG is working on foldable screens too
Update: SNES Mini back in stock and at a decent price too. But for how long?
Update: We're delighted to tell you that the SNES Mini deals are still live. Very.co.uk and Nintendo recently added fresh stock to their sites for the Nintendo Classic Mini Super Nintendo Entertainment System (and that's the last time we'll refer to that overlong name today) and stock is still available.
This is fantastic if you missed out at launch last year or decided to wait when retailers starting jacking up the prices beyond the £70 RRP. If you bought one to flog on eBay, it's looking like your chances for a profit are running out!
Original story follows...
Our SNES Mini stock alert buzzer just went off and we're here to let you know where you can buy a brand new SNES Mini right now. Better yet, it's not at a jacked up opportunistic price. And no, we don't mean the pretend new RRP of £79.99, but the actual original RRP of £69.99 - much cheaper than the wave of £100+ prices we're seeing on eBay.
With any luck, Nintendo won't be so stingy on the production line when the inevitable N64 Mini comes along later this year. We wouldn't hold out for a Wii U Mini any time soon though.
Nintendo 64 Classic Mini: what we want to seeThe best Nintendo Switch deals
LibreOffice 6.0 makes it easier than ever to switch from Microsoft Office
The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 6.0 – the latest major upgrade to the open source free office suite. The new version is available now for Windows, macOS, Linux and the cloud, and new features will be rolled out to the Android edition in the coming months.
“This is the start of a new development cycle,” explained Italo Vignoli, co-founder of The Document Foundation. “We want to make out software easier and simpler for users all over the world. They want to be able to access features easily, including people who are used to Microsoft Office.”
Cleaner navigationThe Document Foundation’s team of volunteer coders have made several changes to make LibreOffice more accessible, and ease the change from Microsoft Office. One of the biggest changes is the Notebookbar – LibreOffice’s equivalent of the Office ribbon – which is now easier to navigate, with a new tabbed option for the suite’s word-processing software Writer.
Writer’s dictionaries are now better at dealing with new words, automatically recognizing words that can be expressed in different forms (as part of a compound, for example).
LibreOffice Impress 6.0 includes new templates and a default aspect ratio of 16:9
The default slide size in LibreOffice Impress has switched to 16:9 to suit modern screens and projectors. The Document Foundation has added 10 new templates to suit the new aspect ratio, and updated several existing ones accordingly.
Spreadsheet application Calc has received some smaller but still useful updates, including the ability to export a selection of cells as a PNG or JPG image.
Cloud and mobileThe Document Foundation has brought the cloud version of LibreOffice more in line with the desktop version, adding a Save As function, and adding spell-checking to Writer, Calc and Impress. However, it’s important to note that LibreOffice Online is a server service designed for big companies – not a ready-to-use consumer service like Google Docs or Microsoft Office Online.
LibreOffice’s old WikiHelp directory has been replaced by Help Online – an improved online support archive with an adaptive design that works equally well on desktop and mobile devices.
LibreOffice's new Help directory is cleaner and easier to navigate
A new version of LibreOffice Viewer for Android will be coming soon too, with the ability to create new documents, a tab-based toolbar with formatting options, and the ability to add pictures from your device or the cloud. The release date hasn't been confirmed yet, but we expect to see the new features within the next few months.
LibreOffice 6.0 is available to download now for Windows, macOS and Linux.
What's the best free office software you can download today?
The Fifth Element director Luc Besson in talks with Netflix for multi-movie deal
Netflix may be about to claim another big Hollywood scalp for its stable, with legendary French director Luc Besson said to be preparing to sign a multi-movie deal with the streaming company.
Besson, who directed classics including The Fifth Element and Leon: The Professional, would have a $30 million budget per movie, with the films coming under the Netflix Originals banner.
The deal could also expand to include the rights to the film library of EuropaCorp, Besson's production company, and even a stake in the company too. This would potentially give Netflix control of franchises including Taken, Taxi and The Transporter.
Besson bouncing back?Besson has as much, if not more, to gain from the deal than Netflix. Last year the director's sci-fi epic, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, flopped, leaving EuropaCorp $285 million in debt and reducing its valuation to $73 million, a fall of 60% from where it was before the release of the movie.
However, Besson retains a pedigree that's no doubt attractive to Netflix, despite recent woes. He would be following in the footsteps of Mark Millar, the comic book legend responsible for Kingsman and Kick-Ass, whose company Millarworld was recently acquired by Netflix.
We were lucky enough to have Luc Besson act as TechRadar's guest editor for a day last year. Click here to check out the fantastic sci-fi focused features and content Besson brought to TechRadar's world.
Via: Variety
Best movies on Netflix
This Sonos deal lets you buy two speakers for the price of an Apple HomePod
While the Apple HomePod made waves earlier in the week when its February 9 release date was announced, it’s now Sonos’ turn to snag some of the spotlight with these excellent Sonos deals.
Today, Sonos announced that it's offering a pretty hefty discount on a pair of its black or white Sonos One smart speakers for $349 in the US and £349 in the UK, which, strangely enough is the same price as Apple’s HomePod. Isn’t that a real coincidence?
The irony of setting the price of two Sonos One speakers on par with the Apple HomePod isn’t lost on Sonos. In fact, in a press release sent to TechRadar, it seemed to embrace it:
“Sonos One sounds incredible on its own, but the ability to have a stereo pair or have music in two rooms vs. one at $349 US feels like it’s an easy choice for those who truly love music,” said Joy Howard, chief marketing officer at Sonos. “We believe in freedom of choice and don’t want to lock people into a specific ecosystem – it’s why we support more than 80 streaming services globally and will take an agnostic approach to voice assistants as well.”
Two speakers vs one for $349? Not locking you into a specific ecosystem? Sounds like maybe, just maybe, Sonos is taking a swing at Apple here. Although, that being said, Sonos One does support Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music and dozens more, plus Amazon’s Alexa and future plans to support Google Assistant and Apple AirPlay 2 so … yeah, it’s kind of hard to argue about that specific ecosystem comment.
Fancy a different model? Check out more Sonos dealsOr maybe you'd like to see the latest Apple HomePod prices?These are the best stereo speakers in the world
Alexa can now send text messages – but there’s a catch
Amazon has introduced a new feature: SMS messaging. If you’re currently the proud owner of an Echo device you’ll know that you can send messages between Echo devices, but this new feature allows you to send more traditional text messages using only your voice.
You’ll need to live in the US and have an Android phone linked up to your Alexa account in order to take advantage of this feature. There’s no word yet on whether this feature is going to be coming to iOS devices or other regions.
We’d be surprised if it stayed as a US exclusive feature, but given that Apple is due to release its own smart speaker (the HomePod) to the market in the coming weeks, it’s possible that the feature won’t come to iOS, as Apple may offer an iMessage alternative.
Alexa, text Wife I'm losing my voiceWhat’s quite cool about this new feature is that although you won’t be able to send MMS messages (or group messages, or message 911), it looks like you’ll be sent not only the text message but also a link so you can listen to the message.
This new feature looks like it’s not the only change that Amazon in making to Alexa. In a Superbowl teaser commercial, Alexa loses ‘her’ voice, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos lines up replacements. This could mean that on Sunday we get a host of new voices in Echo devices.
The YouTube video lines up a number of videos on Autoplay of celebrities opening Amazon boxes with headsets, including rapper Cardi B, actor Anthony Hopkins, chef Gordon Ramsey, and comedian Leslie Jones. It’s not clear yet if these are going to be permanent voices or just a marketing stunt. We’ll keep you posted. For now, you can watch the teaser below:
Want to see Alexa's best skills? Check out: The best Amazon Echo Alexa skills and commands: The best uses for your EchoVia Engadget
Samsung provides more evidence the foldable Galaxy X could arrive this year
Samsung has been quite open about its plans to launch a foldable phone as soon as possible, and some rumors even point to a launch by the end of 2018. That might sound optimistic, but even Samsung’s latest financial results suggest that's not out of the question.
At the very least, production of the phone – currently known as the Samsung Galaxy X – might well start this year, as in its Q4 2017 earnings statement Samsung has mentioned that in 2018 its display panel business will "reinforce its competencies in new applications such as foldable [displays]."
That doesn't necessarily mean the handset will be ready to launch this year, but it's possible, and it sounds like it would be by 2019 at the very least.
A foldable futureIn fact, in the same statement Samsung notes that "as for the Mobile business, Samsung will continue its efforts to differentiate its smartphones by adopting cutting-edge technologies, such as foldable OLED displays." Though the time frame for that is less clear.
Of course, any plans Samsung has could be held up by issues with the technology, indeed in his latest comment on a folding phone, Samsung's mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said that "there are still durability issues that we need to address."
But it's really starting to sound like the wait for the Samsung Galaxy X might almost be over.
Before the Galaxy X we'll see the Samsung Galaxy S9Via SamMobile
The best VPS hosting providers of 2018
Standard web hosting packages are cheap and user-friendly, but they're also slow, inflexible, and don't have the power or functionality that professional and business users often need.
If you need more than a basic host but can't afford a dedicated server, Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting could be a smart choice.
Buying a VPS plan means that you get your very own virtual server environment. You have full control over the operating system, the extensions and apps you install, and all their settings. Each physical server will still host multiple VPS customers, but not as many as with shared hosting, and typically each VPS will be allocated a share of key resources – RAM, storage space, CPU cores – for their use alone.
This can be easier to manage than you might think. Many VPS plans include standard tools like cPanel to help monitor and configure your site. Some hosts will manage the service for you, monitoring for problems like a crashed service, and fixing them as soon as they're detected.
VPS prices and specs vary from a few pounds a month to hundreds, depending on your requirements. There's a lot of choice out there, but don't panic – our list of five top providers will point you in the right direction.
Check out the best web hosting services for 2018
Shopping for a VPS host often means staring at some huge product comparison table and trying to figure out which of its many plans works for you.
Namecheap makes life easier by providing only two plans, and making it extremely clear exactly what you're getting in each case.
Prices start low at only £11.85 ($16.60) per month on the annual plan, but that still gets you 2GB RAM, two CPU cores, 40GB of storage, 1000GB bandwidth and one dedicated IP.
Buying add-ons can improve these baseline specs. If you need more dedicated IPs, for instance, you don't have to upgrade to a new plan – Namecheap will add extra IPs to your product for only $2 (£1.45) each.
The service isn't quite as cheap as it sounds. The starter plans aren't managed, for instance (the host doesn't look after them for you), and they don't include a cPanel licence. Adding both of those capabilities will cost you an extra $41 (£29.30) a month.
Still, Namecheap does provide some exceptionally configurable VPS products for users who know what they're doing. Even if you're a beginner, checking out the various options on offer here will help you understand the factors you need to think about when choosing a VPS provider.
Sign up for Namecheap here
Check out a few VPS hosting providers and it's easy to be tempted with low headline rates, but don't be fooled – companies use a range of tricks to keep their charges down.
The hardware specs of a starter product are often kept unrealistically low, for instance, to keep the price right down. Important items – backups, cPanel – may be expensive extras. And even then, the headline rate may only apply if you pay for two or three years upfront, increasing dramatically on renewal.
InMotion Hosting is refreshingly different. Its baseline VPS-1000HA-S plan doesn't have the most eye-catching price at $27.99 (£20) per month over two years, but it's easy to see why the company asks this much. The product has a better specification – 4GB RAM, 75GB storage, 4TB bandwidth, 3 dedicated IPs – than some high-end plans from other providers, backups and a cPanel licence are included for free, and there's a 90-day money-back guarantee.
There's an unusual feature in what InMotion calls "unlocked CPU cores". Rather than having access to one or two cores only, you're able to spread your processing load across all cores on the server, a major performance boost for tasks involving a lot of simultaneous processing.
Welcome bonus touches include a feature called Launch Assist, which essentially means you get two hours of free time with one of InMotion's server administrators. Whether you need to change domain settings, configure cPanel, migrate WordPress or database files, they can help you get the job done.
Put it all together and you're getting a very capable set of VPS hosting plans. If you'd prefer a package which comes with unexpected surprises, rather than hidden catches, we'd give InMotion a try.
Sign up for Inmotion Hosting here
Some VPS hosts focus on first-time users, others go for big business, but Hostwinds does its best to appeal to everyone with no less than 10 different VPS hosting plans.
The low-end Tier One plan looks a little underpowered to us, with just 512MB RAM, one CPU core, 20GB of disk space and 1TB traffic. But it's cheap at $7.95 (£5.70) per month for the initial term, $9.95 (£7.10) on renewal, and you can extend it significantly without spending a huge amount (adding basic server monitoring and cloud backups costs an extra $6 – £4.30 – a month for both).
The more realistic Tier Four includes 4GB RAM, 50GB drive space, two CPU cores and 2TB of traffic. It's also significantly more expensive at $37.49 (£26.80) a month for the starting term, $49.99 (£35.70) a month afterwards, but still competitive with other providers.
Meanwhile the top-of-the-range Tier Ten product gets you 64GB RAM, 16 CPU cores, 500GB storage and 9TB of traffic for an initial $551.99 (£394) a month, $735.99 (£526) on renewal. You probably don't need anything like that, but this does show there's plenty of scope for upgrading your site over time.
Every plan has some appealing configuration options. In particular, along with support for the usual Linux variants – CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian – you can choose Windows Server 2008, 2012 or 2016 for only a $5 (£3.60) a month premium. That's very good value, and if you're more familiar with Windows than Linux, it could save you from lots of management hassles later on.
Sign up for Hostwinds here
Liquid Web is a premium web hosting provider which has been offering top quality managed solutions for more than 20 years, and now handles 500,000 sites for more than 32,000 customers worldwide.
The company doesn't try to beat the competition on price, instead focusing on delivering comprehensive products which will deliver quality results.
The cheapest Liquid Web plan may cost $59 (£42) a month, for instance, but that gets you 2GB RAM, 40GB storage and a very generous 5TB of bandwidth.
There are lots of configuration options. Instead of just telling you that you're getting CentOS 7, Liquid Web allows you to select CentOS 6, Debian 8, Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04, and often with multiple options of their own: cPanel, Plesk, CloudLinux and more.
This is a managed product, too. Liquid Web fully supports the base operating system, and the support team will proactively restore failed services as soon as they're detected. Getting a managed VPS with other providers could cost you an extra $30 (£21) a month, or more.
If your VPS still has issues, there's speedy 24x7x365 support from knowledgeable professionals who will do their best to solve your problems at speed.
Liquid Web may not have the most appealing headline prices, but it's still cheaper than many others considering the features you get, and the excellent support will help keep your site running smoothly down the line.
Sign up for Liquid Web here
OVH is a budget web host which offers straightforward VPS products for some of the lowest prices around.
The range starts with the VPS SSD 1 plan, which gets you one CPU core, 2GB RAM and 10GB of SSD storage for only £2.99 ($4.20) a month for the first year, £3.99 ($5.60) on renewal.
The VPS SSD 2 plan doubles the RAM and storage allocation for £5.99 ($8.40) a month initially, £6.99 ($9.80) afterwards, and the VPS SSD 3 plan doubles it again and gives you an extra CPU core for £12.99 ($18.20) a month to begin with, £13.99 ($19.60) afterwards.
As you might guess, there are reasons why the price is so low. Forget 24x7x365 support by any means, for instance: there's UK-based phone support, but it's only available from Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm UK time.
Speeds are limited, too, with a 100Mbps connection. Many VPS plans will give you 10 times that as standard.
OVH does offer some plus points, though. You can have your VPS hosted in the UK, US, Australia, Singapore or several locations in central Europe. A dedicated proprietary control panel allows for managing your VPS, without the cost of a cPanel licence, and there's simple DDoS protection thrown in.
On balance, OVH isn't a service we would recommend for beginners or anyone who needs rock solid reliability and full-time support. But if you're a technical user looking for a cheap way to explore the VPS world, OVH will have a lot of appeal.
Sign up for OVH here Also check out our roundup of the best WordPress hosting providers
Top 10 best VPN browser extensions
Using a full-scale VPN service has multiple benefits: Wi-Fi connections are encrypted, a new IP address hides your identity, and you may be able to access sites you can't normally reach.
There are downsides, too. A VPN typically slows down your internet connection, might conflict with some applications, and can sometimes be expensive.
VPN and proxy browser extensions are a simpler, more lightweight alternative to a full VPN client. They're not as secure and they only protect your browser traffic, but you can get some of the same benefits – an encrypted connection, plus a site unblocking new IP – and they're an easy way to explore what each service has to offer.
Tunnello is a good example of what's available. The extension is user-friendly, offers 13 locations around the world, and says it’s ‘10x faster’ than the competition. The speed claims don’t match our experience (although it is quick), it only works on Chrome, and the free plan limits you to 200MB of data per day, but if your needs are simple that could be enough.
Below we've listed 10 of the best VPN browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. They won't all work for everyone – it depends on where you are and what you're trying to do – but they all have some level of free access so it's easy to test them out for yourself.
Check out the best VPN services of 2018
ExpressVPN’s software is top-notch, and the firm’s extensions are no exception (they’re available for Firefox, Chrome and Safari). This provider’s extensions have some neat features which are worth noting, such as DNS leak prevention (as well as taking care of IPv6 leaks), and a kill switch. They are also easy-to-use.
Another strong point here is that ExpressVPN extensions are able to shield your true location from sites that use HTML5 geolocation. However, one thing to bear in mind here is that you cannot use the ExpressVPN browser extensions without having the appropriate ExpressVPN desktop app installed.
With this provider, users have the ability to connect to over 1,500 servers in 94 countries. The service did well in our performance tests, with speeds only slightly slower than our normal (non-VPN) rates. ExpressVPN maintains a favourable privacy policy with no logging of the user’s online activity.
ExpressVPN doesn’t offer a free trial, sadly. There are three available subscriptions which come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s a bit more expensive than the average VPN provider, with the yearly plan (with three extra months) giving you the best value for money.
Get the ExpressVPN Chrome extension here, Firefox add-on here, and Safari add-on here
TunnelBear is a likeable Canadian VPN offering great performance, a strong focus on simplicity, and a website filled with cartoon bears.
Install the Chrome extension, register with your email address and you're ready to go. Click the TunnelBear address icon at any time, choose your location from the 20 available (Europe, US, India, Hong Kong, Mexico, and more), and the browser updates instantly to use your new home.
Unusually, you can toggle the service on and off instantly with a hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+U); there’s no need to touch your mouse at all.
The biggest issue with TunnelBear's standard free plan is the 500MB per month data limit, which you could easily use up in a quick browsing session. This can be increased by tweeting about the service, which earns you an extra 1GB. Upgrading to the commercial version gets you unlimited data for a reasonable $5 (£4) a month paid annually, and there are often special deals available. Speaking of which, there’s an exclusive TechRadar deal available here which gives you 5GB of data.
Whether you're using the free or commercial plans, you'll have access to the same seriously speedy network. In our performance testing, UK to UK connections gave us 35Mbps or better download speeds, the US server managed 30 to 35Mbps, and even going long-distance to Australia still got us 10Mbps; that's way better than most of the competition.
Get the TunnelBear Chrome extension here
Free browser-based VPN extensions are often disappointing, but Windscribe is refreshingly different: it has fewer limits, more features, and on balance is a quality service you might actually want to use.
One major convenience is the fact that you don't need to sign up – just choosing a username gets you 2GB of data allowance a month for free. Handing over an email address gets you an impressive 10GB a month, though, way better than some of the competition.
Windscribe's Cruise Control chooses the fastest server for you, and automatically changes it when you hit a blocked resource. You might bypass some geoblocks without ever knowing they were there.
Of course you can choose your own location, too. Options include US Central, US East, US West, Canada East, Canada West, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Hong Kong and the UK.
Whatever you're using, you get the same fast performance as the commercial plans. In our tests that meant 30Mbps and higher download speeds from our local UK server, 25-30Mbps from Europe, and 15-20Mbps when connecting to our nearest US server.
Smart bonus features can remove ads, trackers and social media buttons, or randomly rotate your user agent to help stop sites recognising you. If any of these cause problems on a favourite site, add it to Windscribe's whitelist and normal service will be resumed. Nifty.
If you do opt for a commercial offering, there’s a limited selection. Signing up for the Pro plan gets you unlimited bandwidth and access to the full 50 locations. At the time of writing the price was $3.75 (£2.65) a month paid annually, but there are loads of apps and you can install it on as many devices as you need – another uncommon bonus there.
Get the Windscribe Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here
One of the best-known names in the VPN business, Hotspot Shield is an easy-to-use service with apps for almost everything (yes, even Windows Mobile).
The Chrome and Firefox extensions can be downloaded and used for free. There's no need to hand over your email address or any other kind of personal information, which is obviously a welcome privacy plus.
Using this VPN really couldn't be any easier. Clicking a big button connects you to the best server for your location, and you can start browsing right away. Click the button again to disconnect. Who needs a manual?
You can switch to another location in a couple of clicks. US and UK servers aren't included with the free plan, but you do get access to Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.
The free version gives you 750MB of data per day, but performance is variable. We got up to 30Mbps at best, but usually it was a lot less, with most sites taking noticeably longer to load.
Still, Hotspot Shield's registration-free simplicity and range of locations is appealing, and overall it's well worth a try. If you'd like to upgrade, Hotspot Shield's Elite plan drops the ads, gets you more locations, coverage for multiple devices, unlimited data and cloud-based malware protection. Prices start at £4.50 ($6) a month (billed annually), and at the time of writing you can get lifetime usage for £89.50 ($120). The latter could work out to be a great deal in the end.
Get the Hotspot Shield Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here
ZenMate is a hugely popular VPN service based in Germany which now claims to have more than 41 million users.
The company's Chrome and Firefox browser extensions give you basic access to the VPN for free. You must sign up with your email address to get started, and also bear in mind that the service may include ads and there are only four locations (Germany, Romania, US, Hong Kong). But there are no annoying data transfer limits, and you're able to use the service as much and as often as you like.
ZenMate's browser extensions are straightforward and user-friendly. Select locations from a list and you're connected almost immediately, toggle the service on or off when you need it, and ZenMate's address bar icon updates to show when you're connected.
Speeds were reasonable on our test Windows 10 system. The German server gave us up to 20Mbps, we got 10-12Mbps from the US, and even Hong Kong's 3-5Mbps was just about enough for basic browsing.
Opting for the full commercial VPN gets you much-improved performance, more than 30 locations and the ability to use the service with other applications. Extras include malware and tracker blocking, and it's reasonably priced from £4.16 ($5.20) a month paid annually.
Get the ZenMate Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here Also consider…6. DotVPN
This freebie offering is packed with interesting features and loads of extras including a ‘bandwidth saver’. It’s also very simple to use, but we did find that there were a few sites that didn’t display correctly when the extension was running. Still, your mileage may well vary.
Get the DotVPN Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here7. Strong Proxy
Simple to set up and use, Strong Proxy enables connecting to 14 locations, including seven across the US. Bandwidth is limited to 3GB a month, but speeds are good, and unlike many free competitors, the company won't collect and resell your data to third-parties.
Get the Strong Proxy Chrome extension here8. SetupVPN
SetupVPN offers a ‘lifetime free’ plan with unlimited bandwidth, and access to 18 locations across the world: Europe, US, South America, South Africa, Japan, India and more. Speeds can be good over short distances, but tail off quickly and can be very inconsistent (our UK-US speeds ranged from 5-20Mbps).
Get the SetupVPN Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here9. Gom VPN
Gom VPN is all about unblocking restricted websites in the simplest way possible. It's incredibly easy-to-use, with no settings or even locations to select: just a single on/off button. The price isn't bad at $4 (£3.20) a month, paid annually, but you can get some full-scale VPNs for less.
Get the Gom VPN Chrome extension here10. Hola
Hola is a very different type of VPN which passes traffic through its users, rather than a network of servers. It works, and it's entirely free for non-commercial use, with no bandwidth limits. But Hola has some privacy issues, too, and overall we'd only recommend it for casual use.
Get the Hola Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on hereAlso check out our other VPN content:
Best VPN for ChinaBest VPN for MacBest VPN for torrentingBest VPN for AndroidBest VPN for WindowsBest VPN for NetflixBest VPN for CanadaBest VPN for KodiBest VPN for businessBest VPN for AustraliaBest VPN for iPhone/iOSBest VPN for ChromeBest VPN for IndiaBest VPN for gaming
Android 7 Nougat release date: when you'll get the update and new features
Latest news: Android 8 Oreo is out now, so we expect to see a lot of manufacturers focusing efforts on updating devices to the newer software rather than the older Android 7. We will keep this list up to date with the latest Nougat information as and when we have it.
Android Nougat was Google's big refresh of its phone and tablet operating system in 2016. Android is an OS that's been so thoroughly refined that the company is now more than halfway through the alphabet with names.
It hasn't stopped at Nougat either as there's now the eighth iteration of Google's OS called Android Oreo. That is out now for a select number of devices, so it may be worth checking whether your phone is ready to upgrade to even newer software.
Google released the latest version of Nougat as Android 7.1.2 software in December 2017, and many phones are still being upgraded to it now. Over 26% of active Android devices are already running the software too. There's a good chance your phone already has the latest Android Nougat software update waiting, or it's coming very soon.
All the new Android 7 features you'll be getting soonAndroid Oreo update - can your phone download it yet?Be sure to check out our guide on how to download Android 7.0 NougatBelow we've listed all of the devices we know have the update already and if it doesn't, we have the latest information on when it will launch. That said, you need to bear in mind the official release date for the update won't always be reflected in the software update section on your phone.
Manufacturers decide when the software is ready to rollout, but mobile carriers and networks can also cause delays to an update so it may be worth checking with your phone provider if the update isn't ready for you yet.
Cut to the chase What is it? The second most recent version of Google's mobile OSWhen is it out? Right now, but you'll need to wait for some devices thoughWhen will I get it? Dependent on your phone and tablet maker, read on belowWhat will it cost? The best news is it's free Android Nougat release dateAndroid Nougat is out right now, but when you'll get the upgrade is going to dependent on your device. The release date is rather staggered.
It's came pre-loaded on the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL and it's available to download on Google-made devices like the Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Google Pixel C, and the Nexus Player. That said, Android Oreo is also ready for these devices too.
Sadly, if you have a Nexus 5, you're going to miss out on the Android Nougat upgrade altogether. It misses Google's two-year cut off by a year. But it'll still get another year of Google's all-important security patches.
Samsung, LG, HTC and other phone makers, meanwhile, have to rework their own version of the software and push it out to users, and that can take months. We've listed below the devices we know about:
Samsung phones with Android NougatSamsung has updated a variety of its devices to Android Nougat including the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. The update is also ready and waiting on the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge+.
Those who own the Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017), Galaxy A5 (2017) or Galaxy A7 (2017) can download Android 7 right now to their devices, but if you own the Samsung Galaxy A8 you won't be able to get the update yet.
All of these software updates may hold you over until you decide to buy the Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus and Galaxy Tab S3, all of which come with Android Nougat pre-loaded.
LG phones with Android NougatLG technically launched the first Android Nougat phone back in September 2016 with the LG V20. But that was a 'world's first' title only South Koreans benefited from initially.
Thinking of upgrading to the LG G6? Well, everyone, right away, can get in on the Android Nougat action that way. It launched with the Android 7.0, the AI helper Google Assistant and a killer 18:9 screen in a slim body.
LG G5 owners yearning for the same Nougat update need to check the Software Update menu right now, while the LG V10 also has the update to Android 7 ready and waiting.
Things are still moving slowly for the LG G4, which is now confirmed to receive Android Nougat but it's low-priority for the 2015 phone so those who have that may have to wait a while longer.
Sony phones with Android NougatSony's Xperia XZ Premium launched with Android 7.1 software onboard, but you can now get the most recent Oreo software on it too. What about the older range of Sony phones though?
The Xperia X Performance, Xperia X, Xperia X Compact, Xperia XA, Xperia XA Ultra and Xperia XZ are now up to date with Android 7.0 Nougat. Even older phones like the Sony Xperia Z5, Xperia Z5 Premium, Xperia Z5 Compact and the Xperia Z3+ all have Android Nougat and so does the Xperia Z4 Tablet.
You won't find it on the Xperia Z3. It's an odd twist, for sure. While we were surprised to see Sony weigh into the Android Nougat developer with the Z3, it didn't follow through with the full Nougat upgrade for this phone.
HTC phones with Android NougatIf you've bought an HTC phone launched in the past year or two, you may have access to Android Nougat already. It launched on the HTC U Ultra and U Play and it's not rolling out to unlocked HTC 10, One A9 and One M9 handsets in the US and UK. While the update was delayed in the rest of Europe, everyone there should have it now, too.
HTC had confirmed it would bring the Google update to the HTC 10, One A9 and One M9 by the end of the 2016. It didn't make that deadline everywhere. But, it's here now and that's all that matters.
Android Nougat isn't available for HTC One M8 and never will be. HTC told TechRadar that it will not get the latest upgrade. You're going to have to buy a new phone for this update.
Motorola phones with Android Nougat
Motorola has now confirmed which phones it will upgrade to Android 7, and its list of phones is rather long.
Android Nougat is out for the Moto Z and Moto Z Force, and it also launched on the Moto Z Play – both the unlocked and Verizon versions of the battery-life-focused smartphone.
Nougat also launched for the Moto G5 Plus and Moto G5, which came out after the update, plus you can also get Android 7 for the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus.
Its X-series phones – like the Moto X Style, Moto X Play and Moto X Force – also have the update now, as well as Verizon's Droid Turbo 2, and stay tuned for updates on the Droid Maxx 2.
Huawei phones with Android Nougat
So far the Huawei Mate 9, Mate 8 and P9 have all been upgraded to Android 7 software upgrade, while 2017's P10 comes with it onboard straight away.
The Chinese manufacturer has updated the Huawei P9 Plus, P9 Lite and the Huawei Nova while the Huawei Nova Plus update isn't yet set.
The Huawei P8 won't be getting the upgrade to EMUI 5.0 (which comes with Android 7 features). It looks like both of those phones are set to be left behind, despite being quite recent devices.
Honor phones with Android Nougat
The Honor 8 and Honor 6X now have the Android Nougat update while those with an Honor 5C will have to wait a bit longer.
OnePlus phones with Android NougatOnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T both have Android Nougat 7.0, but if you own a OnePlus One or a OnePlus 2 you'll miss out.
ZTE phones with Android Nougat
Android 7.0 Nougat is now on the ZTE Axon 7 and it gets owners of this unlocked phone a way to step into virtual reality with Daydream VR compatibility.
Axon 7 was the first Android Nougat phone to be "Daydream-ready," and while phones like the Google Pixel and Moto Z launched with the VR software first, ZTE has made good on its promise.
Other phones with Android NougatBlackBerry has confirmed it won't be upgrading the Priv to Android 7 software and there has been no confirmation whether the DTEK50 from BlackBerry will get the update either.
Here's where you can find out about all the features you'll get when you update and download Android 7 Nougat.
Android Nougat features list: VRWe've tested out a bunch of existing Android Nougat features below, but there's one exciting new tool that isn't part of the regular Android 7.0 update: Google Daydream.
A buried menu for VR helper services in the Android N Developer Preview 4, and an equally buried release note for "Android VR" in Unreal Engine 4.12 beta, hinted at a big push for a Google Cardboard successor – sure enough, Google confirmed its VR intentions during IO.
The Play Store, StreetView, Photos, YouTube and Play Movies will all support VR, allowing you to jump into games, locations and videos, all via Google's Daydream VR platform. Google Daydream View is expected to launch in November, but will require even further updated Android Nougat software.
Google Daydream is part of the Android 7.1 maintenance update for Android Nougat, and it's only compatible with the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL, though other phones like ZTE Axon 7 (the first, non-Pixel Google Daydream phone) will eventually work with the headset and are available to buy right now.
5 things I already like about Android Nougat Developer Preview Multi-window supportTrue multitasking support has finally arrived as expected, and Split Screen is deservedly the highlight of Android Nougat on phones and tablets. You're going to be able to open up two apps at once on your Nexus phone or tablet.
It's a popular feature that Samsung and LG phones have incorporated into their Android skins years ago, so it's nice (and about time) Google is including the same functionality in its own software. It's easy to launch too – just long press on the recent (multi-tasking) button in the nav bar.
Multi-window support could increase enterprise interest in Android tablets and the Pixel C. It's a bet that Apple recently made when it launched similar split-screen and picture-in-picture features for iOS 9.
Meanwhile Android TV gets picture-in-picture mode, allowing you to continue watching your show in a smaller screen while performing another task.
There's also a Clear All button at the top of the multi-tasking menu on your phone to make it simple to close all your apps. Then there's a new feature called Quick Switch, which lets you jump back to the previous application with a double tap of the recent (multi-tasking) button in the navigation bar.
Direct Reply NotificationsYou won't have to navigate away from your current window (or, now, windows) just to answer an incoming message. You can just reply within the notification that appears at the top of the screen.
It worked well enough for the iPhone and iPad when the same idea made its debut with iOS 8 under the name Quick Reply. But Apple's approach to messages worked strictly with its iMessage app.
Google is opening up Direct Reply Notifications beyond Hangouts, and that could mean popular apps like WhatsApp could take advantage of this convenient inline messaging feature.
New quick settings menuGoogle is adding a new quick settings menu to the notifications shade you pull down from the top. It's a lot like the one Samsung, LG and every other Android manufacturer seems to use.
Sure, Google stock Android software has had switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode and so forth, but it required pulling the notifications bar down a second time to reveal the quick settings menu.
Now the quick settings toggles are here as soon as you gesture downward once to see notifications. The best news is that all of the buttons are small and unobstructive, leaving plenty of room for notifications.
Longtime Nexus users will also be happy to hear that the quick settings switches can be sorted to your liking, much like they can on other Android phones – you won't need the System UI Tuner to meddle.
For example, we often use MiFi more than Airplane Mode, so Mobile Hotspot icon gets promoted to be one of the five icons along the top of the initial quick settings on our Nexus 6P.
That little airplane icon is still there for our takeoff and landing needs, but it got the bump to the second swipe menu. Sorting is finally up to you, which is really what Android is all about.
Bundled notificationsGoogle hasn't done with the way Android N changes notifications. It also announced that notification cards will be grouped together if they're from the same app.
All messages from a specific messaging app, for example, are bundled together in the notification shade. These grouped alerts can then be expanded into individual notifications using a two-finger gesture or tapping the all-new expansion button.
This is basically the opposite of what Apple did in the jump from iOS 8 to iOS 9, switching from grouping them by app to lining them up chronologically. We'll see which method works best this autumn.
There's more control over your notifications in Android Nougat too, as you can now long-press on a notification to either silence future notifications, or turn them off completely.
Doze Mode 2.0One of the (literal) sleeper hits of Android Marshmallow has been Doze Mode, Google's crafty way of saving battery life whenever your device is stationary. It's basically a deep standby mode.
Android Nougat is going to step up the company's energy-saving software efforts by expanding Doze Mode so that it thoroughly limits background tasks whenever the screen is turned off.
That's ideal for throwing a phone in your pocket or your tablet in a backpack, and then retrieving it the next day or next week without having to recharge it right away. Your "I can't even" face when you pick up your dead Nexus phone the next morning could be a thing of the past.
Android Nougat performanceGoogle says Android Nougat will deliver its biggest leap forward in graphics performance with the introduction of Vulkan, giving game developers much-needed control of the GPU.
That in turn will result in even better graphics and smoother, faster performance.
If you've downloaded apps from other sources that aren't the Google Play Store, you'll now be able to identify where the app came from by going into your Settings, App Info and then Package Installer.
There have also been a number of Android runtime improvements, including optimizations to the JIT compiler, which has seen task speeds increase between 30% and 600% compared to the previous version.
Updates are also more seamless, with security updates automatically downloaded, and a simple fresh boot-up of your device will see you run the latest offering. It's also got rid of that annoying 'Android is updating' pop up when you restart after an update.
Other featuresGoogle Assistant launched with Android 7 on the Pixel and Pixel XL phones. It's a new voice activated Assistant which replaces Google Now.
Previously you couldn't input information into Google Assistant without speaking to your phone, but a new APK breakdown has suggested Google will soon update the Pixel and Pixel XL so you can just write into Assistant directly.
It means you'll be able to use all the useful features of Google Assistant without having to embarrassingly talk to your phone.
Google has confirmed the new 'Launcher Shortcuts' feature that debuted in the second beta for Android Nougat is ready for pressure-sensitive display technology.
This will make it easier for Android manufacturers to bring 3D Touch-like technology to Android handsets, as it's baked directly into the operating system.
Then there are extra security features, such as file-based encryption and Direct boot, which help your device start up faster while running your apps securely.
Last, and by no means least, Android Nougat bring support for Unicode 9, which among other things, will bring with it the introduction of 72 new emoji.
Want these features? Here's how to download Android 7 right now
Facebook bans all ads for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies over scam fears
Facebook has banned all adverts for cryptocurrencies, so you won’t see the likes of Bitcoin or any other virtual coinage being plugged across the social network going forward.
Essentially, the move has been made to protect the Facebook user base from scams which are trying to exploit the current popularity of cryptocurrencies, given the recent meteoric rise (and fall) of Bitcoin which has emblazoned it on the mainstream consciousness.
As Recode reports, Facebook has instigated a new blanket ban policy which “prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency”.
Coining it inThat means no adverts for existing coins, from major players to more minor fish, and the aforementioned initial coin offerings or ICOs – basically the virtual coinage equivalent of an IPO, which as you can imagine, is an area fraught with potential dangers in terms of scams or hackers.
Facebook notes that this policy is ‘intentionally broad’ to play things safe-rather-than-sorry for the moment, while the site works to refine its detection of such scam adverts. That may change in the future though, as Facebook says: “We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”
So this might not be the end of such adverts for good, but it certainly is for the moment.
We’ve picked out the best mining GPU of 2018
Anthem: trailer, release date and news
Update: Anthem's release date delay is now official. Via a statement to the Wall Street Journal, EA's Blake Jorgensen confirmed that the game is now expected to release in early 2019.
Meanwhile, 2018 will instead see the release of a new entry in the Battlefield series.
EA denied that Anthem's development was running behind schedule, and claimed that the change in release date was purely due to moving the game to a quieter release period.
Article continues below...
E3 is always full of surprises, and one announcement we weren't expecting at E3 2017 was a whole new game from BioWare, called Anthem.
From the short trailer shown at EA Play keynote we got a tiny glimpse of the game world wall that's the only thing that separates the civilized world from a dangerous and savage animals. Exosuits also seem to play a big part in surviving in the wilderness, and a player might jump into them as part of the game.
But while EA gave us our first taste of the game and what we might find in its Pandora-esque world, Microsoft gave us our first true look at its keynote presentation.
BioWare describes Anthem as "a new game from EA's BioWare studio, explore a landscape of primeval beauty, confront the dangers you find, and grow in power with every step".
It's the first game BioWare has unveiled since its polarizing Mass Effect Andromeda, and it looks to build on BioWare's legacy of great Sci-Fi games.
When it was first announced at E3 2017, Anthem was slated for a Fall 2018 release. However, in January 2018 a report emerged from Kotaku that the game will be delayed until early 2019.
Kotaku's report is based on the word of three sources closes to the project, one of whom said that the 2018 release date was "never realistic." There is, the report says, now a feeling in BioWare that the future of the company is tied to Anthem and its success.
It's for this reason that work on the studio's other titles, Star Wars: The Old Republic and the next Dragon Age, is now reportedly being done by much smaller teams.
There is, according to the report, no exact date decided for 2019 and "Anthem’s developers must also plan for a beta release, an EA Access launch, and an ongoing schedule of patches and updates."
It's unlikely, however, the EA will allow development to delay the game any later than March 2019, as that's when the company's fiscal year ends.
EA later confirmed that the game would in fact be launching in early 2019, but denied that Kotaku's claim about the game being behind schedule was accurate.
EA meets its Destiny in AnthemThe premise we know so far is that humanity is holed up in a bastion, cut off from the outside world. Venturing out, it appears, requires a suit of armor that will help fend off the wilds of the Pandora-esque planet.
EA is describing it as "a shared-world action RPG where Freelancers challenge the wilds past the wall, exploring a vast world filled with savage beasts and ruthless marauders, but also teeming with amazing technology and forgotten treasures". If this sounds like Destiny, you're not crazy.
"Players will be able to join with their friends to unravel the world's mysteries and defeat the forces plotting to conquer humanity."
Okay, this is Destiny.
"Throughout their journeys, players can outfit their Freelancers with powerful Javelin exosuits, each of which are equipped with unique weapons and abilities. Freelancers can customize their Javelin with gear they earn and craft throughout the adventure, and leave a lasting mark on the world".
Admittedly, the word Freelancers make the game sound a bit more like a Borderlands game than Destiny, but considering that your class is determined by which Javelin you have on, we're still seeing Destiny written all over it.
When Anthem was first announced, taking on Destiny 2 seemed like a tall order, but now that Destiny 2 appears to be having some growing pains, Anthem may be able to seize on a dissatisfied playerbase.
Life after AndromedaAnthem will be BioWare's first title after the somewhat polarizing Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Anthem will, apparently, be a science fantasy game more in the vein of Star Wars and offerings from the Marvel universe, rather than hard core science fiction title like Mass Effect BioWare Edmonton general manager Aaryn Flynn has revealed.
In a recent interview with CBC Flynn said that like these franchises Anthem will be a game in which "you see a lot of amazing things happening but we don't worry too much about why they are happening or how they are happening; the science of it.“
BioWare has dipped its toes into the science fantasy genre before with titles such as the RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the online multiplayer game Star Wars: The Old Republic. Anthem will, apparently, be much more along these lines and "much more about just having fun in a game world that is really lush and exotic and really sucks you in." Unlike Mass Effect, which Flynn says was a "more a real hard core science fiction IP."
Taking this into account, alongside the game's more online multiplayer leanings, and it seems like BioWare is certainly attempting to step into a space currently dominated by games such as Destiny. It'll be exciting to see what else a developer with so accomplished a background in lore-heavy single player storytelling can bring to this genre.
Looking for some games to play right now? These are our picks of the best PS4 games
AMD sees impressive Ryzen sales, promises Spectre-proof chips coming soon
Things continue to go well at AMD, as shown in the company’s latest financial results, with the firm also talking about cranking up the supply of graphics cards in the face of the current shortage, as well as baking in solutions for Spectre into Zen 2 chips.
The headline figure for Q4 (2017) revenue was $1.48 billion (around £1.05 billion, AU$1.85 billion), up 24% year-on-year, with computing and graphics (CPUs and GPUs) raking in $985 million (around £695 million, AU$1.2 billion), up a mighty 60% on the previous year. Impressive indeed.
Ryzen is still selling well and driving a lot of this success, although there was a very slight blip in terms of average selling prices (ASPs) remaining flat and the same as the last quarter (although still up year-on-year) – that was due to sales of Ryzen 3 CPUs. The latter are going well, but these are cheaper models, so they’re something of a headwind for that ASP.
AMD doesn’t produce separate figures for GPUs, lumping them together with processors in the computing and graphics division, but there have been question marks over how Vega is performing. These mainly revolve around flaky supply of the cards, particularly in the face of the current mining mania (with cryptocurrency miners buying up many powerful and even mid-range cards of late).
Graphic detailsDr. Lisa Su, AMD’s chief executive, noted the latter issue, and made a point of saying that the firm is busy ramping up GPU production, which will definitely be music to gamers’ ears.
Su further explained that the problem in producing more graphics cards is actually down to the memory side of things, with GDDR5 and HBM shortages being the primary bottleneck right now. It’s good to hear that the situation is apparently changing, though, and hopefully sooner rather than later. Graphics card prices are getting pretty ridiculous right now.
Another hot topic of the moment – the huge Spectre flaw which affects a whole gamut of processors including AMD’s – was also addressed, with Su stating that AMD will be baking in protection with the forthcoming Zen 2 processors.
Zen 2, which uses an improved 7nm process, is apparently now just past the design phase, but actual CPUs won’t be available until next year (according to what AMD has previously said).
On the other hand, Intel is claiming that it will have Spectre (and Meltdown – which only pertains to Intel’s chips) defenses baked into its processors later this year. In that respect, Intel appears to be ahead of the game, although the current status of patching for the chip giant is wobbly to say the least.
Via Tom’s Hardware
How does AMD rank when it comes to the best graphics cards of 2018?
You will soon see Dubai images preloaded on your Huawei phone's lockscreen
Dubai is already a destination of choice for many tourists around the world that are looking to peak into the future but a new partnership between Dubai's Tourism authority (DTCM) and Huawei is expected to make even more people aware of the wonders that the city of Dubai offers.
Users of Huawei devices from China, Middle East and Africa will now be able to access Dubai images provided by DTCM as themes, lock screens and galleries. DTCM and Huawei are also developing features in Huawei's EMUI OS that will help tourists explore Dubai in a smarter way.
Huawei plans to share Dubai Tourism information, images, videos, events information, and online booking/ordering services, with tourists, businessmen and residents to provide a convenient and seamless online experience in Dubai. These assets will be available on upcoming devices as well as existing devices and should download automatically as long as automatic updates are enabled.
MoU signed by Dubai Tourism CEO and President of HUAWEI CBG, Middle East & Africa.The MoU was signed by Mr. Issam Kazim, CEO, Dubai Tourism and Mr. Gene Jiao, President of HUAWEI CBG, Middle East & Africa .
Mr. Issam Kazim, CEO of Dubai Tourism said, “We are fully committed to raising consideration of Dubai as the destination of choice for global travelers and constantly seek exciting opportunities to reach new audiences. This MoU with Huawei will help us achieve that goal by increasing awareness of Dubai’s key selling points including local culture and heritage, gastronomy, retail, entertainment and adventure across Middle East, Africa, and China travelers and offer next-generation experiences that inspire people to visit and return to Dubai.”
Mr. Gene Jiao, President of HUAWEI CBG, Middle East & Africa commented, “At Huawei, we share the same vision as that of Dubai- to continuously innovate. The MoU underlines our shared vision with DTCM to establish Dubai as a global business and leisure hub. This partnership will help redefine traveler experience in Dubai with cutting-edge technology and service excellence.”
Huawei P Smart brings a mid-range, big screen to the UAE
The mid-range Huawei P Smart has just been launched in the UAE, and will be exclusively available through LuLu Hypermarket from February 1.
The P Smart originally launched as the Enjoy 7S in China at the end of 2017, but its name was changed when the phone was rolled out to other countries such as India.
Big screen, solid specsThe Huawei P Smart features a 5.6-inch, 18:9 aspect ratio Full HD display, Kirin 658 chipset, 32GB of storage, 3GB of RAM, dual 13MP + 2MP rear cameras, 8MP front camera and Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0.
It will slide in below the Huawei Mate 10 Pro and Huawei P10, into the middle of the firm's smartphone range.
HUAWEI has equipped the P Smart with Fingerprint 4.0 solution that can recognize prints within 0.3 seconds. Also present is Huawei's artificial intelligence (AI) technology, One-touch Split-screen, Phone Clone, Huawei Share and Dual Bluetooth Connections.
And finally, the HUAWEI P smart is equipped with a 3,000-mAh battery in combination with the Intelligent Power-saving technology 6.0, which supports background real-time detection of power-hungry apps and helps extend battery life.
In terms of price, Huawei is offering the Huawei P Smart for just AED 799 and it will be available in black, blue and gold colors.
Read our in-depth reviews: Huawei Mate 10 Pro | Huawei P10
Nintendo Switch outsells Wii U in less than 11 months
The Nintendo Switch has barely been on sale for a year, but it's already outsold the company's previous console, the Wii U.
Impressively, this means the Switch has sold more units over an 11 month period than the Wii U managed in the five years it was on sale up until December 2017.
There's no one single element that's created the Switch's remarkable success, but rather a full package that's brimming with excellent gaming experiences.
A group effortTop of the list of achievements should be the first-party exclusive games released for the system over its first year. It launched alongside The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, received an excellent Mario Kart remake within its first two months, and a top-tier Super Mario game in the form of Super Mario Odyssey.
But the hardware itself has also played its part. The ability to use the console as a handheld or a console is seamlessly integrated, and its unique two-in-one controller design adds yet more appeal.
All of this has meant that third-party publishers have given an unusually large amount of support to the console that previous Nintendo consoles have lacked. Indie developers have lead the charge in this respect, with recent hits including versions of Stardew Valley, Overcooked, and Super Meat Boy acting as three fantastic examples.
The one part of the Nintendo Switch equation that feels completely undercooked at the moment is its online service. After announcing a paid service alongside the console, Nintendo has continued to delay its full release and the bits that have emerged have been pretty underwhelming so far.
These are the best Nintendo Switch games so farWant to get involved? Here are the best Nintendo Switch bundle deals Via: The Verge
Microsoft’s cancelled 'Xbox Watch' looked like a killer fitness tracker
Updated: You can read about the photos that leaked out on January 22 below, but we have now seen video of the watch in action and you can watch it below.
Hikari Calyx on Twitter provided the video look at the watch that shows a similar UI to what we saw on the Microsoft Band.
Original story: Microsoft’s odd-but-interesting Xbox Watch unreleased prototype is no stranger to popping up in a leak online, but today, we’ve caught a glimpse of its user interface.
The leak is thanks to a Twitter user who appears to have acquired not one, but several, units.
If you’re familiar with Microsoft Band, then you'll recognise the tile-based interface that was popularized by Windows 8.
Obviously, the Band used a horizontally-oriented display when it was available, differing from the Xbox Watch’s square screen.
But what’s on-screen looks remarkably similar, featuring a tile for starting workouts, checking heart rate, timing a run and impressively, appears to pack in GPS.
What's not clear is exactly did this watch have going for gamers with it being called the Xbox Watch - so is that why it ended up as the Microsoft Band?
Alas, Microsoft has discontinued support for all of its wearables, and though we still can use the Microsoft Band 2, it’s unlikely that the Xbox Watch will ever release. So, why not enjoy a few photos of the unit above, which looks painfully close to being released.
Catch up on the rest of TechRadar’s fitness week where we are highlighting the techy tools you can be using to improve and monitor your physical healthVia The Verge
SIM only deals: the best plans in January 2018
So you've come to the end of your phone contract? You basically have two options - grab a brand new mobile phone deal on one of the latest and greatest smartphones on the market. Or keep your beloved phone of the last two years and sign up for one of the cheap SIM only deals on this page.
A SIM only deal is a mobile phone plan that offers calls, texts and data in return for a monthly fee, but does not come bundled with a phone. Leaving the phone out of the equation gives you more flexibility (especially if you go for a 30-day rolling contract) or is ideal if you're eyeing up a new SIM-free phone.
If you take a sift through our handy price comparison tool above you'll see that 12-month prices start from a mere £3.99 per month for a basic plan, while you can also still bag Three's Mobile Choice Award winning 30GB for £18 deal. Whatever your needs, going SIM only is just the ticket if you're thinking to team one up with a brilliant budget handset purchase.
And if you're still unsure whether SIM-only is the route for you, our expert advice will help you decide - our all knowing FAQ includes tips on switching your number, the networks that offer free gifts and answers to a host of other questions.
The best SIM only deals of the week are:We've run the figures and plucked out the very best sim only deals available this month. Whether you’re after the cheapest plan possible, want to dig out the best value big data SIM plan or just want an all-round great deal but don’t know how much to spend, you’ll find a recommendation just for you.
1. The absolute cheapest SIM only deal out there 2. The best 1GB+ SIM only deal 3. The best 2GB-4GB SIM only deal 4. The best 5GB-8GB SIM only deal 5. The best 10GB-16GB SIM only deal 6. The best 20GB-30GB SIM only deal 7. The best SIM only deal for unlimited data Check out today's best unlimited data SIM only deals 8. Best EE SIM only deal 9. Best Three SIM only deal 10. Best data only SIM deal
If you a) want to save some money; b) don't want to be tied into a lengthy contract; or c) both of the above, then SIM only is well worth considering. In fact, you're probably one of two people if your thoughts are indeed turning to SIM only:
You're coming to the end of your contract and your network is calling you a million times a day to get you to upgrade. Well if your phone is dying a death or you just fancy a change, head to our best mobile phones deal page to see what bargains are lurking, but otherwise going SIM only on your current phone is a no-brainer. You'll wind up paying much less than you are under contract, and you can stick to a rolling 30 day contract so that if your circumstances change, you can get out of the arrangement tout suite.It's time for a shiny new smartphone and you want to get the best value humanly possible. You'll have to find a few hundred quid up front for the handset (be sure to check our SIM free comparison chart) but box clever and you'll end up paying less over the next 24 months (see below). Plus, if you're a commitment-phobe, most SIM-only plans don't require you to sign up for two years like you would with a normal contract.
It can be. Teaming a SIM only plan with a standalone SIM-free handset could save you a few quid. It's usually the case when a flagship phone hits the market and contracts are made deliberately expensive. Take the Samsung Galaxy S8 as a prime example, where you could have saved over £100 over two years by splashing the £800-odd for the handset and slipping in a cheap SIM card.
Not all the savings you can make are as extravagant, and on big data it's frequently more cost effective to dive into a contract instead. But if you can afford to splash a few hundred pounds up front then the savings over the next couple of years could well be worth it.
The times have passed since most phones were locked to a network and you had to pay a dodgy backstreet 'engineer' to unlock it. Nowadays, it's standard practice for networks to let you use whatever SIM you want in the phone as soon as you've paid up the original contract (or earlier if you pay them a fee) - and Three ships all its handsets unlocked from the outset.
The exception, alas, is Apple iPhones. They're generally sold locked to the original network that you purchase them with for the life of the handset. Very frustrating if you're looking for a tasty SIM only deal once your 24 month sentence is up.
The good news is that your iPhone (or any other mobile before the end of your contract) can be unlocked - the bad news is that most networks make you pay for the privilege. Insert a friend or family member's SIM into your phone to see whether it's already unlocked and, if it isn't, look for your network below to see how to cut ties with them:
EE Once six months have gone by on your contract, you can call EE on 0800 956 6000 and pay them £8.99 to unlock your phone. It says it will take around 10 days to complete. PAYG phones can be unlocked for free.O2 As long as you don't own a Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus (they can't be unlocked until you've paid off your contract), you can unlock any O2 phone - including iPhones - for free if you're on a pay monthly contract. PAYG customers have to pay £15.Three Fear not, all phones on Three are unlocked as standard. Shove whatever SIM you like in there, it will work a treat.Vodafone The red network doesn't quite get the same marks as Three, as your phone will be locked to them on arrival. But they have made unlocking handsets absolutely free within 10 days of your request.
There are three sizes of SIM card that you can get for your phone, and the one you need will depend on your handset. It's been a while since the traditional, so-called standard SIM (15x25mm) has genuinely been the staple in new phones. Instead, any phone you've bought within the last five or so years is much more likely to require a micro (12x15mm) or nano (8.8x12.3mm) SIM - the iPhone 5 was Apple's first mobile with a nano SIM, while Samsung began using the smallest size in its Galaxy S6.
Before you purchase your new SIM, double-check the manufacturer's website to see what size you require. And if you're simply not sure, most networks now simply send out a triple SIM, so you'll get one of each size.
Ever heard of PAC codes and wondered what a classic 80s arcade game had to do with telephone numbers? It actually stands for Porting Authorisation Code, and it's the set of digits that you need to grab from your old network to let you transfer over your existing mobile number. If you're on one of the major networks, you can see what phone number you can contact them on here:
EE 07953 966 250O2 0344 8090202Vodafone 03333 040 191Three 0333 300 3333ID 0333 003 7777GiffGaff 43431 from your handsetVirgin 0345 6000 789BT 0800 800 150Tesco 0345 301 4455Sky 03300 412 524Asda 0800 079 2732If you want to grab a bargain SIM only plan above, but it's on your existing network then your network won't release a PAC code and you'll be forced to take a new phone number.
At least you would have, if it wasn't for this clever (if convoluted) work-around. You have to order a free pay-as-you-go SIM from another network. Once you have it, you can tell your old network that you're moving and they'll give you that precious PAC code. Then, once your number is registered to the substitute network, simply get another PAC code from them. Take that to your old network, and they'll move your number to your new contract. Simple - kind of!
Unlike with a contract, there's a lot more flexibility available when it comes to how long your SIM only plan will last. Two year commitments are virtually unheard of, with the norm being either one year or rolling one month contracts for ultimate flexibility. You can often get better prices if you tie yourself in for 12 months, especially on larger data tariffs. But sticking to one month at a time means that you can effectively hand pick a new plan to suit you every 30 days or so.
Because you can change your plan up more regularly than a normal, lengthier contract, it's less crucial to get this nailed from the start. But if you're thinking of grabbing a 12-monther or just put a personal pride on getting things right first time, then we'll help you pick out the sweet spot of data for you.
Firstly, check your phone to see how much data you've been using to date, and whether you have the tendency to use more than your current allowance every month. Then, if you're still unsure, check out our guidance:
0-1GB Tiny amounts of data on SIM only deals could be a blessing or a curse. If you're putting it in a rarely used phone that will scarcely be away from wi-fi then you're quids in. But if you end up with one because your head's turned by the incredible price, then you could end up paying more if you continually go over your allowance.2-3GB For anybody who needs data for little more than the occasional Google Maps route planning, 2GB and 3GB plans come cheap and give you much more freedom to check the football scores and scroll Facebook away from the wi-fi without danger.4-8GB If you can't leave the house without having a music streaming service like Spotify pouring into your ears, then it might be worth paying for some extra GBs of data.10-16GB This is a significant amount of data and some networks offer it for a very appetising price. Whether streaming music, downloading podcasts, watching social media videos, or all three is your thing - you should be covered.20-30GB Only smartphone junkies that need regular (and hefty) data fixes need bother with this avalanche of GBs. You'll be able to rinse Netflix, Spotify and online games without too much fear of topping out.Unlimited Maybe it's because you use remarkable amounts of data. Maybe it's because you simply don't want to keep checking how much data you've used every month. Whatever your reason to go unlimited, you have only two choices when it comes to network: Three or GiffGaff.
Call it practicality, call it greediness, call it what you want - it's human nature to want 'unlimited' anything if offered. But you should think genuinely about whether you really need it in a world where the likes of WhatsApp and Skype let you call and text for free over wi-fi or 4G. If you decide that a few thousand monthly minutes and texts should do you, then you could shave off some cash from your bill.
While EE, O2, Vodafone and Three are generally considered the major four networks for contract plans, when it comes to SIM only there are some other key players are well worth a look. See what we think of them below, and whether you'll get any free perks to help persuade you to sign up. Plus, we'll tell you about a couple of other SIM sellers that might be able to wrangle you an even better deal.
If you want fast and furious 4G, then your choice has to be an EE SIM only deal. Its speeds are around 50% faster than the other major networks, which is really noticeable if you like watching films or football on the move. And EE gives you three free months of BT Sport, as well as six months of Apple Music.
View all: EE SIM only deals
O2's best claim for your contract is with its Priority rewards - from cheap lunch deals and pre-order privileges on gig tickets, to ad-hoc discounts and competitions. Plus, they have 1000s of Wi-Fi hotspots in shops and cafes that you can connect to for free and save your precious data.
View all O2 SIM only deals
Vodafone seems to have been around since mobile phones were cumbersome bricks, but they remain a major player. Look out for a Red Entertainment tariff, which gives you your choice of a NOW TV Entertainment Pass, Spotify Premium or Sky Sports Mobile subscription.
View all Vodafone SIM only deals
Three is still the only network to offer unlimited data and it often features unbeatable deals on other big data plans - that makes them a natural choice of many a data hungry smartphone addict. And it has has just started getting generous with perks - you can get cheap dinners and free coffees through its Wuntu app.
View all 3 mobile SIM only deals
That familiar old stalwart of telecommunications BT is so-so when it comes to SIM only tariff prices. That's unless you're already a BT broadband customer, in which case you get some really favourable prices - a fiver less than the rest of the hoi polloi. Plus you get a BT Reward Card that can be spent anywhere that accepts Mastercard, the value of which depends on how much data you're in for.
Check below to see the current prices plans and what value Reward Card you can claim when you sign up. It's also worth noting that the 6GB and 20GB SIM only deals with BT also include free access to BT Sport on mobile.
For existing BT Broadband customers
(click the customer option at the top if the prices are more expensive)
12 months | 500MB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £40 BT Reward Card - £6 per month at BT
12 months | 3GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £60 BT Reward Card - £10 per month at BT
12 months | 6GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £60 BT Reward Card - £12 per month at BT
12 months | 20GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £80 BT Reward Card - £20 per month at BT
For non-BT Broadband customers:
12 months | 500MB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £40 BT Reward Card - £11 per month at BT
12 months | 3GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £60 BT Reward Card - £15 per month at BT
12 months | 6GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £60 BT Reward Card - £17 per month at BT
12 months | 20GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | £80 BT Reward Card - £25 per month at BT
iD is a good option if bargain basement prices are what you covet most. This is a network run and owned by Carphone Warehouse - it piggybacks on the Three network. It's an excellent option if you want great value on a rolling monthly contract.
View all iD SIM only deals
GiffGaff is very hard to beat on price – if you want to grab a cheap SIM card deal, this could be your best option. You can't argue with £5 a month. The cheap deals don't give you much of an allowance to play with, but if you just want to keep your phone going and available to use for calls and texts with the occasional bit of internet use outside of your home WiFi, GiffGaff is a strong offering. Look out for the T&Cs though as some of the big data deals throttle the speed after a few gig.
View all giffgaff SIM only deals
Virgin Mobile has been going for a long time, and some of its SIM only deals are particularly attractive. They're all one-month rolling contracts, so you can stop paying at any time if you so wish, giving you flexibility if you want to change your plan or go for a phone-inclusive deal down the line. Prices start from as little as £9 a month.
View all Virgin Mobile SIM only deals
The UK's biggest supermarket has been known to offer competetive - if not stellar - SIM only deals, with low data prices starting around the £6 a month mark. Where it get's really interesting is if you download the Xtras app to an Android phone: you'll save £3 on your monthly bill, but you will have to see adverts every time you unlock your handset.
View all Tesco Mobile SIM only deals
TalkTalk is a telecoms company that also offers home phone, broadband and TV packages, so the best deals can be had if you sign up for more than one service. However, at the time of writing the cheapest deal is £3.95 per month for an admittedly measly 250MB of data. Better yet, for just £7.75 you can get 2.1GB.
View all TalkTalk SIM only deals
Plusnet might be more well known for its broadband deals, but it's also keen to push some very cheap 30-day SIM only deals. You don't have to be a Plusnet customer, although you could get double the data on some of these SIM only deals if you are. You don't have to worry about signal either as Plusnet uses EE's network that covers 99% of the UK. Plusnet's latest cheap SIM only deals start at just £4 a month, check them out via the link below.
View all Plusnet SIM only deals
Freedom Pop is trying something new - offering contracts for FREE. The catch being that you only pay if you do over the allowances of your bundle or opt for a larger deal. The prices for doing so vary, so be sure to take a look at the small print. It seems that they feature a different offer each week, but seeing as you can cancel at any time, they may be worth a look.
View all Freedom Pop SIM only deals
It's always worth checking out Mobiles.co.uk before settling on your SIM - its aggressive price cuts are often unmatched by anyone else. While the online retailer is known more for its handset contracts, it also offers a wide range of SIM only deals from all your favourite networks.
View: SIM only deals at Mobiles.co.uk
Carphone Warehouse doesn't just sell handset contracts. It also has a wide range of SIM only deals for Vodafone, O2, EE and ID. The online store is also known to include additional incentives such as half price fees for six months, free Beats by Dre headphones or Currys vouchers.
View all Carphone Warehouse SIM only deals
It's one of life's (many) little frustrations - you sign up with a network, get your SIM up and running and then discover that you get no coverage at all in your house. Well this little pain in the neck can be avoided by using the dedicated coverage checker that most networks provide. Enter your postcode and you'll see whether your address has 2G (calls, texts and email), 3G (the basics plus picture messaging and faster web browsing) and 4G (all the powers of 3G, plus faster downloads, online gaming and media streaming) coverage.
We've provided links below to all the available coverage checkers on multiple networks. We'd advise not only checking coverage in your home, but also work, school, uni, favourite pubs and so on. Anywhere where you spend time on a regular basis really.
EE coverage checkerO2 coverage checkerVodafone coverage checker3 mobile coverage checkerBT mobile coverage checkeriD coverage checkerGiffGaff coverage checkerVirgin mobile coverage checkerTesco mobile coverage checkerTalkTalk coverage checkerPlusnet coverage checkerFreedom Pop coverage checker
If you buy a phone after visiting this page, TechRadar will be paid a small commission by the network or reseller you buy from. This money is paid by the site you buy from and thus does not affect the amount you pay for your phone contract. If you go direct to the site you buy from, you would pay the same amount.
While some sites out there will be paid larger fees for pushing people to specific deals that aren't necessarily the cheapest, TechRadar will always find you the absolute best value. Trust and integrity is important to us, so if you ever think we're not displaying the very best deals let us know.
The SIM only deals on this page are checked every day to make sure they're still available and up to date! If you're ready to go SIM only, then head back to the top of this page and use our tool to find the perfect plan...
Comments
Post a Comment