The best free iPhone games on the planet

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The best free iPhone games on the planet

The days when you had to buy a dedicated gaming rig and spend a load of cash for a quality gaming experience are long gone. Thanks to the iPhone (and iPod touch) and the App Store, you can get an excellent mobile gaming experience for just a few bucks (or quid, for that matter), or even less.

In fact, a lot of the games out there are free. But can you get great games for nothing at all, or is the 'free' section of the App Store just a shoddy excuse to bombard you with in-app purchases?

The answer is, of course, both. The trick is finding the gems amongst the dross, and what follows are our picks of the bunch: our top free iPhone games, presented in no particular order, including both long-time classics and brilliant cutting-edge recent releases. We've even included a VR game for you... aren't you lucky?

New this week: Disc Drivin’ 2

Disc Drivin’ 2 is a turn-based racing game. That might make no sense on paper, but it translates well to the screen, effectively mashing up shuffleboard with high-tech levitating tracks full of speed-up mats, gaps, and traps.

You can play alone, tackling a daily challenge or partaking in speed-runs. The latter option is ideal for getting to know the tracks – essential when battling other players online. You then swap moves – bite-sized chunks of gameplay where you inch your disc around the circuit, in races that can last for days.

There are freemium shenanigans going on, mostly for cards that unlock new disc powers, and the fixed camera can be frustrating – although if you’re facing the wrong way, you should probably resolve to learn that track’s layout a bit better. Those minor niggles aside, this is a compelling, entertaining racer that rewards extended play.

Want to learn more about the latest iPhone? Check out our overview of the iPhone X below!

Slime Pizza is a platform game, with running and jumping replaced by catapulting the protagonist around like one of the characters from Angry Birds. The hero here (a delivery drone for Slime Pizza) is a gloopy blob that sticks to ceilings and walls, and his world is one of lethal traps, gigantic spiders, and annoyingly efficient guard dogs.

Your aim is to grab scattered pizzas and make your way ever further into a game continually finding inventive ways to kill you. With its unconventional controls and restart points that only appear every half-dozen or so screens, Slime Pizza can frustrate when you hit a tricky bit and repeatedly have to fight your way back for another go.

On the whole, though, it’s a novel mobile platformer with enough charm and smarts to make you stick around.

The Battle of Polytopia is more or less a classic version of Civilization played in fast-forward. You start off with a single city, surrounded by the unknown. You then explore, research technologies, and give anyone who gets in your way a serious kicking.

Unlike the sprawling Civilization games, Polytopia is focused and sleek. The technology tree stops before guns arrive, the standard game mode limits you to 30 moves, and new cities cannot be founded – only conquered.

For the more bloodthirsty, there’s a domination mode, where you aim to be the last tribe standing. The maximum map size expands and online asynchronous multiplayer opens up if you pay for more tribes. However you play, this is a furiously addictive, brilliantly realized slice of mobile strategy.

Hyper Beam is an entertaining, novel take on twin-stick arena shooters, in that there isn’t any shooting. Instead, you control a pair of discs – one moved by each of your thumbs – which are linked by an energy beam.

The idea is to position the discs so the beam blows up invading ships. This is easier said than done. Before long, you’re weaving your two discs between hails of bullets, and if one is hit, the beam temporarily powers down.

Manage to fully charge the beam – by blowing up a set number of aliens – and you briefly get to turn the tables. Your two discs become neon psychos, with which you mow down scores of enemies. These cathartic moments also make for a nice change of pace, contrasting with the more considered, strategic moments elsewhere in the game.

Six Match is a match-three game with a twist. Rather than arbitrarily swapping gems, you control a character with the oddly literal moniker Mr Swap-With-Coins, and as the game’s name suggests, he has just six moves after every successful match to make another.

The game wrong-foots you from the start. Any muscle memory you have from the likes of Bejeweled evaporates as you figure out the most efficient way to make the next match. The result is a game heavy on puzzling and light on speed.

Just when you think you’ve got it worked out, Six Match throws new mechanics into the mix: diamonds you clear by dropping them out of the well, deadly skulls and cages that push entire lines of coins. The layered strategy should keep you matching for the long term, as you figure out new ways to crack your high score.

ARcade Plane – with emphasis in the ‘AR’ – combines the complex and the simple, providing you with an augmented reality gaming experience controlled by a single digit.

The game projects a tiny city on to a nearby surface, above which a plane circles. It’s low on fuel and – for reasons unknown – must grab a set number of stars before it lands. The tiny snag: the city is rather suspiciously surrounded by extremely tall, spiky hills – and between them is where the stars are found.

You hold the screen to dive, carefully timing doing so to snatch up stars, then release the screen so your plane briefly soars heavenward again. All the while, your city grows and you unlock more planes. Simple stuff, then, but an effective and fun use of AR that anyone can get into.

It’s Full of Sparks finds you in a world where firecrackers are cruelly imbued with sentience. Aware of their imminent demise, they make a beeline for water to extinguish their spark and therefore not explode. Your aim is to help them make a splash.

Each of the 80 hand-crafted levels takes a mere handful of seconds to complete – at least when you master the precise choreography required. Before then, there’s plenty of trial and error as you tap colored buttons to turn hazards and chunks of the landscape on and off, and grab rotors that let you soar heavenward.

Despite occasionally slippy controls, this one’s a joy – full of personality and smart level design. It’s likely to put a smile on your face even when your firework goes out with a bang.

Jump Drive starts off with some guff about the discovery of a space propulsion system, but this is just an excuse for a tense, cleverly designed one-thumb game of timing and nerve.

Your little ship drifts through space very slowly unless you tap the screen, in which case it darts towards its next target. The problem is there’s usually something very dangerous in your way.

Basic structures that block your path include walls that shift lazily back and forth; but Jump Drive regularly shakes things up, gradually revealing whirling wheels of death you must dart inside and then beyond, and systems that drag your ship left and right.

The clockwork nature of these objects makes Jump Drive one of those games where if you smash into something, you’ve only your reflexes and sense of timing to blame.

Amazing Katamari Damacy is a deeply weird endless runner. It’s based on a popular PlayStation 2 game, where a tiny prince rolls a magical ball (the titular katamari) into smaller things to make it grow.

On iPhone, the original’s free-roaming nature has been dispensed with, but its bonkers premise remains. You start off rolling nails into your ball, but it quickly balloons to take on toys, vehicles, and entire buildings.

The controls are a touch slippy – although better in tilt than swipe – and games can be lengthy. But this one’s a visual treat, with an interesting twist that makes it worth a look even if you’re tiring of games where you endlessly sprint into the screen.

Rainbow Rocket is a tense arcade test akin to juggling – albeit with rockets fired towards asteroids threatening to obliterate your planet.

The three colored rockets at the foot of the screen are each launched with a tap. The snag: in Rainbow Rocket, you must match each rocket’s color with that of the asteroid it’s fired at, or everything explodes. Presumably, this universe’s creator is an artist.

Initially, this is simple, but the game quickly becomes tricky when you start mixing colors (by swiping one rocket over another), and dealing with giant asteroids that have different colors for their cores and surfaces. Fun stuff – and that’s before you consider the breakneck meteor mode.

Beat Street is a touchscreen brawler that wears its influences on its sleeve. The pixelated art recalls classic beat ’em ups, and the stop-start gameplay - with occasional unsporting use of baseball bats to bash enemies around the head - smacks of Double Dragon and Streets of Rage.

Yet this isn’t slavish retro fare. The game feels familiar, but its set-up is entertainingly oddball (liberating a city being terrorized by sentient, bipedal, suited rodents), and everything is controlled by a single thumb.

The controls could have spelled the end for Beat Street, but - amazingly - they work brilliantly, enabling deft footwork, punches, kicks, special moves, and the means to smash an evil rat’s face in with a brick. Apart from unnecessary grind-to-unlock levels, Beat Street’s the perfect freebie iPhone brawler.

Duke Dashington Remastered is a fast-paced single-screen platform game featuring dapper explorer Duke Dashington. Suitably, given his moniker, this treasure-hunting gent doesn’t so much walk as dash. Press left or right and he hurtles in that direction until hitting a wall. Prod up and he shoots towards the ceiling.

This turn of speed is handy, given that his adventures take place within four crumbling dungeons. He must escape each room before a ten-second timer runs down, or end up being a kind of buried treasure himself.

Smart level design turns each of the 120 rooms into something akin to a tiny puzzle. And although the entire game can be dashed through in a couple of hours, a time-attack mode gives hardy and dextrous armchair adventurers a reason to return.

Cally’s Caves 4 continues the adventures of worryingly heavily armed pigtailed protagonist Cally, a young girl who spends most of her life leaping about vast worlds of suspended platforms, shooting all manner of bad guys.

For once, her parents haven’t been kidnapped (the plot behind all three previous games in the series) – this time she’s searching for a medallion to cure a curse. But the gameplay remains an engaging mix of console-like running and shooting, with tons of weapons to find (and level-up by blasting things).

But perhaps the best sections feature Bera, Cally’s ‘ninja bear cub’ pal. His razor-sharp claws make short work of enemies, resulting in a nice change of pace as the furry sidekick tears up the place.

Infiniroom is an endless runner set inside a claustrophobic room. The dinky protagonist leaps from wall to wall, going in circles and avoiding electrified boxes that periodically pop-up.

Every now and again, a chunk of surrounding wall turns orange, before vanishing and opening things up a bit. But sometimes space within the room turns red – a warning that it’s about to become wall again, and that you really shouldn’t be there when it does. Lasers and whirling saw blades add further complications.

Each character in the game has a special power, designed to increase their longevity. But make no mistake: this is intense twitch gaming of the Super Hexagon kind.

Managing to survive for a minute requires almost superhuman reactions. Just be aware all those short games add up – Infiniroom might be brutal and frustrating, but it’s also hugely compelling.

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle re-imagines Sega’s long-time mascot’s adventures as a 3D lane-based auto-runner. Which is to say that it’s an awful lot like Sonic Dash and Sonic Dash 2, which you may have already played.

The twist here is in the ‘battle’ bit, which pits you against three other human players. As you belt along the track, avoiding traps, you can grab pick-ups – many of which happen to be weapons.

This transforms the slightly throwaway Sonic Dash format into a tense and competitive on-rails racer closer in nature to Mario Kart.

Naturally, there’s still a load of freemium shenanigans stinking the place up a bit, but even for free there’s plenty of blazing fast fun to be had.

BotHeads looks like a low-rent Badland game, with its colorful backgrounds, and levels full of silhouettes. But BotHeads plays very differently, being more about precision than semi-controlled chaos – even if you’re often pelted along against your will.

Your BotHead has two thrusters to keep it aloft. You travel rightwards, towards periodic checkpoints that allow a few seconds’ breathing space. Levels are full of hazards, from pinball-like bumpers that hurl you off-course to giant saw blades.

That wouldn’t be so bad, but the aim is to get through the entire game in one go. By means of ‘encouragement’, the trails of ex-BotHeads from failed attempts appear in the background of subsequent attempts. It all combines to make for an immediate, compelling blend of styles and ideas that’s perfectly suited to iPhone.

Super Phantom Cat 2 is an eye-searingly colorful side-scrolling platform game. Like its predecessor, this game wants you to delve into every nook and cranny, looking for hidden gold, unearthing secrets, and finding out what makes its vibrant miniature worlds tick.

It’s also a game that never seems content to settle – and we mean that in a good way. It revels in unleashing new superpowers, such as a flower you fire at walls to make climbing vines, or at bricks to increase their fragility. It also wants you to experiment, figuring out how critters who are ostensibly your enemies can be coerced into doing your bidding.

The only downside is the presence of freemium elements (ads and an ‘energy’ system) - although both can be removed with inexpensive IAP if you agree this is one cool cat to hang out with.

Anycrate takes the idea of a gunfight and hurls it headlong into absurdist territory. There’s no ‘20 paces’ nonsense here – instead, the two protagonists are on floating stone platforms, leaping about like maniacs and blasting each other with gigantic bullets.

You can share your device to play against a friend (which is admittedly more suitable with an iPad) or play against the AI.

And given that we’re firmly in arcade territory, it should come as no surprise that there are all sorts of power-ups that affect the game in various ways. Medical kits patch up your tiny soldier, but you’re just as likely to blast a crate that unsportingly sends fiery meteors your opponent’s way.

Given that you only get two buttons (Jump and Shoot), there’s a surprising amount going on in Anycrate, not least when you venture into the co-op mode with a friend, and find yourselves battling to protect a pile of bling from tiny ‘magical’ thieves. No, we weren’t expecting that twist either.

Train Bandit isn’t exactly nuanced. It depicts a showdown on top of a train, where a bandit faces off against an endless stream of foes, all of whom are quick on the draw – and armed to the teeth.

The bandit’s not going to take his impending demise lying down – instead, he’ll take as many of the enemies with him as he can. You therefore tap left and right to dart between carriages, kicking enemies in the face before they shoot you.

Make one wrong move and you’re dead. Misread the type of enemy you’re facing and you’re dead. Pause for a fraction of a second too long and you’re dead. You get the picture. But the great thing about being a bandit in a videogame – you can always be resurrected for another quick go.

Data Wing is a neon-infused story-driven racing adventure. It’s also brilliant - a game you can’t believe someone has released for free, and also devoid of ads and IAP.

It starts off as an unconventional top-down racer, with you steering a little triangular ship, scraping its tail against track edges for extra boost. As you chalk up victories, more level types open up, including side-on challenges where you venture underground to find bling, before using boost pads to clamber back up to an exit.

The floaty world feels like outer-space, but Data Wing actually takes place inside a smartphone, with irrational AI Mother calling the shots. To say more would spoil things, but Data Wing’s story is as clever as the racing bits, and it all adds up to the iPhone’s most essential freebie.

Tappy Cat is a rhythm action game, with you playing as a musical moggie. Your cat sits before a ‘tree guitar’, and notes head out from the middle of the screen along two rails. These must be tapped, held, or tapped along with another note, depending on their color.

This is routine for a rhythm action game, but it’s the execution that makes Tappy Cat delightful. It feels perfectly tuned for iPhone (your thumbs can always reach the notes), and there’s a cat-collection meta-game, rewarding you with new kitties when you totally nail a tune.

The only bum notes are a lives system (a video ad will give you five lives – although there is also a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 endless lives IAP for those who want it), and the way in which a single major blunder ends your latest attempt at musical superstardom of the furry kind.

Flat Pack wraps a two-dimensional platform game around three-dimensional shapes. You control a little flying creature tasked with collecting every side of a cube before finding a level’s exit.

But figuring out where to head isn’t straightforward, because in applying a 2D game world to 3D wall surfaces, you can end up facing a different way when entering a plane from a new direction.

Fortunately, the game has a gentle difficulty curve – death means restarting a level, but not collecting cube parts you’ve already found. And Flat Pack slowly introduces its new ideas, such as enemies defeated by smashing them from below.

Should you find the main game discombobulating, there’s also an augmented reality mode, which has you walk around a puzzle with your iPhone. It’s a weird but effective experience.

Memory Path is a simple memory test that showcases how polish and smart design can transform the most basic of concepts into an essential download.

Across 50 levels, you tap left or right to move along a path toward a goal. The twist is the path disappears shortly after you enter a level. Initially, remembering where to go isn’t tough, but later levels are likely to find your adventurer regularly impaled before you finally succeed.

Levels complete, you’ll feel fully trained for the endless modes. Random shuffles the order in which you tackle levels; and Race Path is all about speed – how far you can get before the road ahead vanishes. Sharp isometric graphics, a gentle soundtrack, and unlockable characters further boost the game’s longevity.

Power Hover: Cruise is three endless runners (well, surfers) for the price of one. It borrows the boss battle levels from the superb, beautiful Power Hover, and expands on them. You get to speed through a booby-trapped pyramid, avoid projectiles blasted your way by an angry machine you’re chasing through a tunnel, and whirl around a track that snakes through the clouds.

This is a gorgeous game, with silky animation and minimal, but vibrant objects and scenery. The audio is excellent, too – the rousing electronic soundtrack urging you on.

There are a couple of snags: games can abruptly end due to difficulty spikes, and the controls initially seem floaty. But we grew to love the inertia, which differentiates Power Hover: Cruise and makes it feel like you’re surfing on air. As for the difficulty, spend time learning the hazards and mastering the game, and you’ll soon be climbing the high score tables.

Finger Smash is more or less whack-a-mole with fruit - and a big ol’ dose of sudden death. You get a minute to dish out tappy destruction, divided up into seconds-long rounds.

In each case, you’re briefly told what to smash, and set about tapping like a maniac. Hit the wrong object, and your game ends with a flaming skull taunting you. (Lasting the full minute is surprisingly tough.)

This is a simple high-score chaser, and so there’s understandably not a lot of depth here. However, there are plenty of nice touches. The visuals have an old-school charm, and the music is suitably energetic.

But also, there’s the way you can swipe through multiple items, the bomb that ominously appears during the final ten seconds, and varied alternate graphics sets if you feel the need to squish space invaders, fast food, or adorable cartoon robots. Great stuff.

Spin Addict is an endless runner set in a landscape of endless industrial cogs and sparks. You control a piece of metal you set spinning with a swipe, subsequently tapping to leap, and swiping downwards to flip the ground beneath you.

In the endless mode, played in portrait, you try to get as far as possible – easier said than done when massive pieces of machinery regularly want to flatten you, and your power must be constantly replenished by grabbing golden targets.

There’s also a 15-level challenge mode, which plays out in landscape. This is more about pathfinding – getting to the end of each course intact, having collected as many gems as possible along the way. However you play, Spin Addict is a wonderful app with a properly premium feel (bar the inevitable ads, which can be removed for $0.99/99p/AU$1.49).

Leap On! is an endless jumper with a sadistic streak – at least as far as its bounding protagonist goes. The two-eyed ball is tied to a central spiked star by a huge piece of elastic. Whenever you hold the screen, the hero moves in a clockwise direction.

The snag is hitting the spiked star spells instant doom – as does touching anything else that’s black. At first, this mostly means jumping on white orbs, and avoiding the odd lurking blob, but before long, the star starts lobbing all manner of ball-killing stuff your way.

You can fight back by grabbing power ups and smashing the white bits of projectiles, while chasing dual high scores – how many white orbs you hit, and your furthest distance from the star. Leap On! is admittedly a bit one note, but the pacy, chaotic gameplay very much appeals in short bursts.

Built for Speed is a top-down racer with chunky old-school graphics, and a drag-and-drop track editor. Make a track and it’s added to the pool the game randomly grabs from during its three-race mini-tours; other users are the opposition, with you racing their ‘ghosts’.

Handling’s simple – you steer left or right. Winning is largely about finding the racing line, not smacking into tires some idiot’s left in the road, and not drifting too much.

Initially, though, the game’s so sedate you wonder whether someone mistook an instruction to make it “very 80s” by having it seem like the cars are driven by octogenarians. But a few upgrades later and everything becomes nicely zippy.

The only real snag is the matchmaking doesn’t always work, pitting you against pimped-out cars you’ve no chance against. Still, even if you take a sound beating, another tour’s only ever a few races a way.

Knight Saves Queen is a turn-based puzzle game, based on a knight leaping about a chess board. He moves in a standard ‘L’, aiming to bump off every adversary on the board, before rescuing the queen.

Initially, he’s only faced by pawns, but soon other pieces enter the fray, forcing you to carefully plan your path. Over time, allies also appear, allowing you to further manipulate the opposition, which takes pieces every chance it gets.

The bite-sized nature of the game combined with the smart puzzle design make it ideal freebie fare for mobile. We do, however, take exception at needing perfect runs on every level set to unlock the next – unless, of course, you buy coins via IAP.

Still, if nothing else, this forces you to properly tackle every puzzle, rather than blaze through with the least amount of effort.

Flick Soccer is all about scoring goals by booting a ball with your finger. It looks very smart, with fairly realistic visuals and nicely arcade-y ball movement. You can unleash pretty amazing shots as you aim for the targets, and occasionally bean a defender.

The game includes several alternate modes, providing a surprising amount of variation on the basic theme. There’s a speed option that involves flicking at furious speed, and the tense sudden-death Specialist, which ends your go after three failed attempts to hit the target.

Rather more esoteric fare also lurks, demanding you repeatedly hit the crossbar, or smash panes of glass a crazy person has installed in the goalmouth.

Like real-world sport on the TV, Flick Soccer is a bit ad-infested. You can, though, remove ads with a one-off $0.99/99p/AU$1.99 IAP, or – ironically – turn them off for ten minutes by watching an ad.

Drop Wizard Tower is a superb mobile take on classic single-screen arcade platform games like Bubble Bobble. Your little wizard has been thrown in jail by the evil Shadow Order, and must ascend a tower over 50 levels to give his enemies a good ‘wanding’ (or something.)

It’s all very cute, with dinky pixelated enemies, varied level design (skiddy ice; disappearing platforms; watery bits in which you move slowly), and fast-paced boss battles against gargantuan foes.

Most importantly, it’s very much designed for mobile. You auto-run left or right, and blast magic when landing on a platform. Said blasts temporarily stun roaming enemies, which can be booted away, becoming a whirling ‘avalanche’ on colliding with cohorts.

The auto-running bit disarms at first – in most similar games, the protagonist stays put unless you keep a direction button held. But once the mechanics click, Drop Wizard Tower cements itself as a little slice of magic on your iPhone.

This blast from the past (of PC gaming) masquerades as a racer, but often feels like you’re hunting prey – albeit while encased in a suit of speeding metal.

The freeform arenas find you in a dystopian future where people and cows blithely amble about while deranged drivers smash each other to bits. Victories arrive from completing enough laps, wrecking all your opponents, or mowing down every living thing in the vicinity.

In the 1990s, this was shocking to the point of Carmageddon being banned in some countries. Today, the lo-fi violence seems oddly quaint. But the game’s tongue-in-cheek humor survives, sitting nicely alongside bouncy physics, madcap sort-of-racing, and deranged cops attempting to crush you into oblivion should you cross their path.

One Tap Rally distills the top-down mobile racer into a one-thumb effort. Press the screen and you accelerate; let go and you slow down. In the nitros mode, you can also swipe upward for an extra burst of speed.

It feels a bit like slot-racing, but the tracks are organic and free-flowing, rather than rigid chunks of plastic. Learning each bend and straight is essential to get around without hitting the sides – important because such collisions rob you of precious seconds.

You’re also not alone – One Tap Rally pits you against the online ghosts of other players. Each time you better your score, you improve your rank on the current track, ready to face tougher opponents. This affords an extra layer of depth to what was already an elegant, playable mobile racer.

Crazy Taxi is a port of a popular and superb Dreamcast/arcade title from 1999. You belt around a videogame take on San Francisco, hurling yourself from massive hills, soaring through the air like only a crazy taxi can, and regularly smashing other traffic out of the way.

Given the ‘taxi’ bit in the title, fares are important. Getting them where they want to go in good time replenishes the clock. Excite them and you’re awarded bonuses. Go ‘crashy’ rather than ‘crazy’ and the fare will take their chances and leap out of your cab, leaving you without their cash.

Crazy Taxi looks crude, but still plays brilliantly, and even the touchscreen controls work very nicely. For free, you must be online to play, however – a sole black mark in an otherwise fantastic port (and one you can remove with IAP).

Yeah Bunny is an enjoyable platform game featuring a speeding rabbit, who blazes along in a cartoon world, collecting carrots, grabbing keys, and trying to not get impaled on the many spikes some irresponsible dolt has left lying about.

It’s an auto-runner, so controls boil down to tapping the screen to jump at the most opportune moments. This nonetheless affords you plenty of control, such as double-jumping in mid-air for extra distance, or wall-jumping like a bunny ninja.

The game looks superb, with plenty of neat touches like the smoke trail behind the rabbit. And although it can be frustrating when the furry hero is spiked yet again, you can always continue your progress by watching an ad or dipping into your reserve of collected carrots.

In Fish & Trip, you command a single smiling fish, happily swimming in the ocean depths. Using your finger, you direct the fish towards eggs and other stragglers, the latter of which join you to gradually form a school. Unfortunately, everything else in the sea is hungry for a fish dinner.

At first, you’ll spot spiky anemones and the occasional sluggish green fish with big teeth. But eventually, you’ll be zig-zagging through claustrophobic seas, trying to find new friends to keep your school alive, and avoiding massive sharks that show up to the theme from Jaws.

It’s all rather simple, and may eventually pall. But in the short term at least, Fish & Trip is one of those wonderful and rare iPhone games pretty much guaranteed to plaster a smile on your face.

Topsoil, like its subject matter of gardening, is something that only really works if you’re willing to put in the investment. And that’s because it’s a puzzler that’s easy to grasp within seconds, but that rewards long-term play, as you slowly master new strategies to lengthen your games.

The board is a four-by-four grid, into which you add plants. Every four moves you can harvest a plant – or group of adjacent plants – which turns the soil. A reckless approach soon leaves you with non-contiguous chunks of land and no chance of removing loads of plants at once.

Even when planning ahead, the game’s inherently random nature can rapidly end a game. But Topsoil’s charm and gradual drip-feeding of new items to plant makes for a leisurely and enduring brain-teaser ideal for filling spare moments.

There’s a lot going on in 3D racer NASCAR Heat Mobile. There’s the racing bit, obviously, which is rather nicely done. You find yourself on an oval of tarmac, attempting to slipstream and weave your way to the checkered flag, avoiding a horrible pile-up along the way. It all looks rather smart, even if vehicle movement is occasionally suspect; the controls are simple and responsive too.

Away from the racing, you can delve into a meta-game of sorts, erecting buildings to generate resources that support your little race team’s efforts. This can be a bit of a distraction, but adds depth to the game.

And while the entire package doesn’t hold a candle to the madcap racing in the likes of Asphalt, it works nicely if you fancy speeding along in a manner that’s a bit more grounded.

rvlvr. is an easy game to dismiss. Despite the pleasant piano soundtrack and clear visuals, it doesn’t seem like anything special. You get a bunch of interlocking circles with dots on, and must select and rotate them so the puzzle matches the image at the top of the screen. Easy!

Only rvlvr. is anything but. Once you’ve blazed through the initial levels, everything becomes a mite more complicated. You end up staring at half a dozen or more rings with dots liberally sprinkled about, realizing one wrong move might wreck everything you’ve to that point worked so hard for.

This mix of progression and challenge, alongside rvlvr’s quiet elegance, will keep it rooted to your home screen. And that you can skip any of the 15,000(!) puzzle combinations is a nice touch, ensuring you won’t remain stuck on a single test you can’t get your head around.

There’s ambition at the heart of Full of Stars, which so easily could have been yet another run-of-the-mill tap-based survival game.

Much of your time is spent in space, tapping screen edges to deftly weave your ship through space debris. When possible, you scoop up stardust to charge up your weapons system and a hyperdrive that blasts you towards your destination at serious speed.

But Full of Stars is also a role-playing game of sorts, finding you immersed in a plot that puts humanity on the brink. Along with your deft arcade skills, you’ll need to manage resources and make vital decisions to ensure your survival.

It can get repetitive, and the arcade sections are sometimes harsh, but Full of Stars is a commendable effort at trying something different – a story-driven journey that demands both arcade and strategic smarts.

Swordigo is a love letter to the classic side-scrolling platform adventures that blessed 16-bit consoles. You leap about platforms, slice up enemies with your trusty sword, and figure out how to solve simple puzzles, which open up new areas of the game and move the plot onwards.

The plot is, admittedly, nothing special – you’re embarking on the kind of perilous quest to keep evil at bay that typically afflicts videogame heroes. But everything else about Swordigo shines.

The virtual controls are surprisingly solid, the environments are pleasingly varied, and the pace ranges from pleasant quiet moments of solitude to intense boss battles you’ll struggle to survive. All in all, then, a fitting tribute to those much-loved titles of old.

It appears we’ve got to the stage where taping up boxes is considered a viable subject for an iOS game. Bizarrely, though, Tape it Up! appeals.

It takes place on an endless scrolling conveyor belt, with your little dispenser leaping from box to box as you swipe. It’s easy to grasp, but tough to survive when everything’s moving at breakneck speed.

Grab enough coins and you unlock rather more esoteric dispensers that give the game a surreal edge. You might end up sealing boxes with milk, while cows moo in the background, or controlling a little console-style dispenser while an exciting-looking shoot ’em up taunts you by playing itself below.

Ah well – everyone knows taping up boxes is more fun than blowing up spaceships, right?

Playing football on your own can be dull – that is, unless you’re the sporty hero of Footy Golf. As ever, scoring is the main aim – and there’s a goal to be found somewhere on each course. But along the way, you can also collect coins someone’s generously left lying around.

The controls are straightforward (aim with a directional arrow and then let rip); much of the challenge comes in trying to maximize your star rating by reaching the goal using the fewest possible kicks. You’ll also have to navigate increasingly complex courses as you move through a city, caverns, a factory, and a scorching desert. 

The game’s a bit ad-infested, with a mildly hateful level unlock mechanism that encourages grinding, but played in bite-sized chunks, it’s definitely more ‘match winner’ than ‘own goal’.

You know when a game’s entire App Store description is “an exciting new thumb-sport” that you’re probably not heading for a title with oodles of depth.

And so it proves to be with Jelly Juggle, which is more or less a one-thumb take on Pong that you play by yourself.

Here, a little fish swims in a circle whenever you press the screen, aiming to keep a square jelly in play. If you don’t think that’s hard enough (and, frankly, it is – this game’s like juggling at speed), crabs eventually mosey on in to complicate matters, and new levels open up where you’re juggling multiple jellies.

A simple title, then, but one with immediacy (given how simple it is to grasp) and relentless intensity. Plus, games are short enough that you can probably have several attempts to beat your high score while waiting in a queue at the grocery store.

It’s always the way: there you are, a mage, supplying everything for your town’s increasingly slovenly citizens, when the ruckus from a particularly rowdy party causes a beaker of something potent to fall into your cauldron, blowing up your tower and turning you into a living skeleton. A typical Friday, really.

In Just Bones, the skeleton appears to be in a kind of Groundhog Day scenario, collecting up his various parts across tiny 2D platform game worlds, before flinging himself into a portal and repeating the process somewhere new.

It’s all very silly, but also a novel take on a platform game; and for those who like a challenge, there are some seriously tough speedrun targets to beat.

In this auto-running platformer, titular hero Yobot dodders about cavernous rooms within a robot manufacturing plant. Using his not-very-super powers of jumping and being able to stop a bit, you must help him to the exits, grabbing switches and keys along the way.

The stopping aspect of Yobot Run is complicated by you only having limited stop power – you can’t just sit there for ages, waiting for a moving platform to be just so.

The result is a game where you’re always anxiously searching for a route to the next waypoint, trying to avoid dying on one of the plant’s many hazards.

(Although, frankly, someone needs to have a word with the architect, given the number of spikes the plant has, and the exits being on impossible to reach platforms.)

Although, at its core, this is a fairly standard lane-based survival game (swipe to avoid traffic; don’t crash), Dashy Crashy has loads going on underneath the surface. It’s packed full of neat features, such as pile-ups, a gorgeous day/night cycle, and random events that involve maniacs hurtling along a lane, smashing everything out of their way.

It also cleverly adds value to mobile gaming’s tendency to have you collect things. In Dashy Crashy, you’re periodically awarded vehicles, but these often shake up how you play the game. For example, the cop car can collect massive donuts for bonus points, and an army jeep can call in tanks – just like you wish you could when stuck in slow-moving traffic.

Flinging a plastic disc about isn’t the most thrilling premise for a game, which is why it’s a surprise Frisbee Forever 2 is so good. The game finds a little toy careening along rollercoaster-like pathways, darting inside buildings and tunnels, and soaring high above snow-covered mountains and erupting volcanos.

You simply dart left and right, keeping aloft by collecting stars, and avoiding hazards at all costs – otherwise your Frisbee goes ‘donk’ and falls sadly to the ground. Grab enough bling and you unlock new stages and Frisbees.

This game could have been a grindy disaster, but instead it’s a treat. The visuals are superb – bright and vibrant – and the courses are smartly designed. And even if you fail, Frisbee Forever 2 lobs coins your way, rewarding any effort you put in.

Pixel Craft takes no prisoners. No sooner have you found your feet in your little auto-firing spaceship than hordes of aliens blow you into so much stardust.

Before long, you clock formations and foes, learn to dodge huge arrows fired by a massive space bow, figure out how to avoid kamikaze ships, and discover how to best an opponent that’s apparently ambled in, lost from arcade classic Caterpillar. Then you face a massive boss and get blown up again.

It’s staccato at first, then – even grindy. But Pixel Craft has a sense of fun and urgency that makes it worth sticking with. The aesthetics and controls are impressive, and death always feels fair – to be blamed on your fingers failing you.

But with perseverance comes collected bling and ship upgrades. Then you’re the one dishing out lessons in lasery death!

(At least until you meet the next boss.)

Depending on your way of looking at things, Narcissus is either a weird platform game for one or an amusing 50-level leapy game for two.

The basics are essentially based on the game Canabalt – Narcissus leaps from platform to platform, lest he fall down a gap and go splat. But if you recall your Greek mythology, Narcissus had a reflection; in this game, the reflection is visible on the screen.

The snag is the world in which the two characters jump isn’t a mirror image. For the single player, this makes for a tough challenge, keeping track of two tiny leapers, who often need to jump at different times. With a friend, it’s easier, so long as you don’t hurl your iPhone at a mirror should one of you badly mis-time a jump.

If you’ve played Super Dangerous Dungeons, you’ll be well aware developer Jussi Simpanen knows how to make a cracking platform game. Even so, Heart Star is a disarmingly charming treat.

You aim to guide two friends to a goal in each of the 60 tiny single-screen levels. The chums are typically surrounded by platforms, spikes, and switches – and that’s before you consider the perilous drops into a bottomless void. Also, there’s usually no obvious way for both to reach the goal.

It’s a head-scratcher until you start utilizing Heart Star’s world-swapping. Prod a button to switch character, whereupon the other friend’s platforms vanish. With a combination of brainpower, deft finger-work, and having the friends collaborate – often by one hopping on the other’s head – a solution should present itself, allowing you to continue on your journey.

It’s another vertically-scrolling endless survival game, where you’re pursued by a world-eating evil, but Remedy Rush is novel in subject matter and the way in which it plays.

The basics are familiar: you direct the protagonist by swiping about, aiming to keep ahead of your inevitable demise for as long as possible. But in Remedy Rush, you play as an experimental remedy (such as a cookie or sunglasses) exploring a grid-like infected body.

As you scoot about, toxins are destroyed to open up pathways, and health bursts can be collected to take out any cells and germs that are in your way. Over time, the host gets sicker and the fever more ferocious; when the end comes, you can try again with a new remedy, each one having its own game-altering side-effect.

King Rabbit has some unorthodox enemies. Having kidnapped his rabbit subjects, said foes have dotted them about grid-based worlds they’ve filled with meticulously designed traps.

Mostly, this one is a think-ahead puzzler, with loads of Sokoban-style box sliding. But instead of being purely turn-based fare, King Rabbit adds tense swipe-based arcade sections, with you running from scary creatures armed with rabbit-filleting weaponry.

Really, this isn’t anything you won’t have seen before, but King Rabbit rules through its execution. Visually, everything’s very smart, from the clear, colorful backgrounds to the wonderfully animated hero (and the little jig he does on rescuing a chum). But the puzzles are the real heroes, offering a perfect balance of immediacy and brain-scratching.

This one’s not freaky, nor is it even a racing game - so, sorry for luring you in with that. Instead, Freaky Racing is an endless runner of sorts. With visuals that appear to have lumbered in from 1981, the game has you steer a blocky black car along a vertically scrolling track. The problem is, you haven’t got any brakes – and things speed up really quickly.

Before long, you’re weaving through chicanes, avoiding your doddering racing chums, and trying to avoid going near the road edges, which are apparently made from some kind of material that makes cars instantly explode. Chances are, you won’t last long in Freaky Racing’s strange little world, but it’s a weirdly compelling title that’ll keep you coming back for more.

There’s a bit of cheating going on in Moveless Chess. Although your opponent plays a standard game, you’re some kind of wizard and apparently don’t want the hassle of moving pieces.

Instead, you’ve limited action points, which are used to transform pieces you already have on the board. (So, for example, with three points, you can cunningly change a pawn into a knight.) The aim remains a game-winning checkmate, and, presumably, avoiding the ire of your non-magic opponent.

It’s chess as a puzzler, then, and with a twist that’ll even make veterans of the game stop and think about how to proceed at any given moment.

After all, when you get deep into the game’s challenges, you might find wizarding powers don’t always make for a swift win when you can’t move your pieces.

We’re sort of in Crossy Road territory here, but instead of a chicken hopping along an endless landscape of roads and rivers, Redungeon finds a little knight dumped in a seemingly infinite dungeon full of traps.

Credit to whoever wanted to make the knight suffer, because said traps include endless inventive ways to kill someone, from squelching blobs of goo to massive metal panels that slam together, squashing flat anyone daft enough to get in their way.

As ever, you’re being chased by some kind of unrelenting evil (here depicted by loads of spooky red eyes) and so can’t hang about.

As such, you’ll mostly fail by swiping the wrong way when in a panic, thereby impaling your knight. Still, grab enough bling on your journey and you can upgrade your character (and unlock new ones), giving them a fighting chance – well, at least an extra 30 seconds.

In Icarus – A Star’s Journey, you help a fallen star get back to the heavens. To make each little leap upwards, you drag back and release to catapult the star, like a celestial Angry Bird. Over time, energy is used, your star eventually exploding; to avoid that, you temporarily lurk inside other stars for a quick top up.

Much of the challenge involves successfully navigating hazards – usually spinning shapes you awkwardly ricochet off of – before you burn through your health.

Grab enough orbs along the way and you can lengthen subsequent attempts through leveling up and gaining extra health. If only you could burn through the ads, too, since they obliterate the tranquil vibe – but, inexplicably, there’s no IAP for that.

Given Laser Dog’s tendency to make infuriatingly difficult games, Don’t Grind at first seems like a departure. You control a little cartoon banana, keeping it in the air – and away from massive saw blades – by tapping the screen and swiping to move a bit. It’s like a pleasant keepie-uppie effort – for a few seconds.

After that point, all hell breaks loose, with your worried-looking fruit having to escape a squishy, painful death by avoiding laser guns, rockets, and all manner of other hazards intent on shoving it towards the blades.

Collect enough stars while tapping the screen and you can unlock new victims. If you’re terrible, there are no shortcuts to bolster your collection either – the only IAP is to get rid of the ads. Brutal.

With eye-searing colors and jagged pixels, Tomb of the Mask looks like it’s escaped from a ZX Spectrum, but this fast-paced twitch maze game is very much a modern mobile effort. In a sense, it feels a bit like a speeded-up and flattened Pac-Man 256, with you zooming through a maze, eating dots, and outrunning an all-devouring evil.

But the controls here are key – a flick hurls you in that direction until something makes you stop. Hopefully, that’s a wall. If it’s a spike or an enemy, you’re dead.

The procedurally generated Arcade mode increasingly ramps up the intensity as you strive to reach the end of each tomb, while a stage-based mode pits your flicking finger against 60 deviously designed set challenges.

If you’re a fan of knocking metal balls about, you’re likely frustrated with iPhone pinball. Even an iPhone Plus’s display is a bit too small, resulting in a fiddly experience replete with eye strain. Enter PinOut!, which rethinks pinball in a manner that works perfectly on the smaller screen.

In PinOut’s neon-infused world, you play against the clock, hitting ramps to send your ball further along what’s apparently the world’s longest pinball table. Rather than losing a ball should it end up behind the flippers, you merely waste vital seconds getting back to where you were. When the clock runs out: game over.

The result is exciting and fresh, and the relatively simple mini-tables are ideal for iPhone. Moreover, the game’s immediacy makes it suitable for all gamers, overcoming pinball’s somewhat inaccessible nature.

One of those games happy to repeatedly punch you in the face, Nekosan is a brutal single-screen platformer. The premise is that the mice have stolen all the stars, and hidden them in a dungeon. It’s up to the heroic Nekosan to retrieve them.

The snag is that, unlike most platform games, Nekosan only affords you control by way of tapping anywhere on the screen. Depending on where the kittie’s positioned, said tappage might fling him into the air, have him leap from a wall, or help him bound on a mid-air switch.

You must therefore figure out how to traverse each puzzle-like level, using perfect timing to ensure the jumping feline isn’t killed. And while you do, suitably, get nine lives, you’ll find they disappear extremely rapidly.

At a glance, Super Cat Tales looks like it’s arrived from a 1980s console. Bright colors, chunky pixels, and leapy gameplay put you in mind of a Mario or Alex Kidd adventure.

But although Super Cat Tales twangs the odd nostalgia gland, the controls make it a thoroughly modern affair. Character movement happens by tapping the left or right screen edge - hold to move or double-tap to dash. While dashing, your moggie will leap from a platform’s edge; and if sliding down a wall, a tap in the opposite direction performs a wall jump.

At first, this feels confusing, as muscle memory fights these unique controls. Before long, though, this smart design dovetails with succinct levels packed with secrets, collectible cats with distinct abilities, and gorgeous aesthetics, to make for one of the best games of its type on mobile.

The Mikey series has evolved with every entry. Initially a speedrun-oriented stripped-back Mario, it then gained swinging by way of grappling hooks, before ditching traditional controls entirely, strapping jet boots to Mikey in a kind of Flappy Bird with class.

With Mikey Jumps, the series has its biggest shift yet. Scrolling levels are dispensed with, in favor of quick-fire single-screen efforts. Now, Mikey auto-runs, and you tap the screen to time jumps so he doesn’t end up impaled on a spike or plummet to his death.

It sounds reductive, but the result is superb. Devoid of cruft and intensely focused, Mikey Jumps is perfect for mobile play, makes nods to previous entries in the series (with hooks and boots peppered about) and has excellent level design that sits just on the right side of infuriatingly tough.

Minimal arcade game Higher Higher! is another of those titles that on paper seems ridiculously simple, but in reality could result in your thumb and brain having a nasty falling out.

A little square scoots back and forth across the screen, changing color whenever it hits the edge and reverses direction. Your aim is to tap a matching colored column when the square passes over it.

The snag is that the square then changes color again; furthermore, the columns all change color when the square hits a screen edge.

To add to your troubles, Higher Higher! regularly speeds up, too, thereby transforming into a high-octane dexterity and reactions test. Combos are the key to the highest scores and, as ever, one mistake spells game over.

Satellina Zero is a somewhat abstract game that borrows from endless runners and rhythm action titles. You play as a white hexagon, sliding left to right to scoop up green hexagons streaming in from the top. You can also tap, which jumps you to the relative horizontal location while simultaneously switching deadly red hexagons to green (and greens to red). It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.

Survival is reliant on observation and quick thinking, where you must constantly ensure whatever hexagons are coming up are the right color, jump across at the perfect moment, and slide to scoop them all up. Last long enough and you unlock new modes and music.

It would have been interesting to see choreographed levels with percentage scores, rather than games comprising semi-randomized waves that always end on a single missed hexagon; nevertheless, Satellina Zero is a fresh, compelling arcade experience.

Blokout is a furious, high-speed color-matching game that punishes you for the slightest hesitation. The initial mode plonks you in front of a three-by-three grid, and you have to swap colored squares, Bejewelled-style, to make complete lines, which then vanish.

The timer is the key to the game. A clock sits in the upper-left of the screen and rapidly counts down, giving you only a few moments to complete a line. If the timer runs dry it's game over; make a line and it resets, giving you another few seconds.

The intensity is therefore always set to maximum, nicely contrasting with the game's friendly, bold colors (which amusingly turn stark black and white the instant you lose); and if you stick around, you'll find further challenges by way of boosters and tougher modes.
 

There are few arcade games as refined and perfectly considered as Forget-Me-Not – and we're talking across all platforms, not just iPhone.

The game places you in procedurally generated dungeons, tasking you with eating all the flowers, grabbing a key and making for the exit. All the while, you auto-shoot ahead, blasting away at each dungeon's denizens.

What sets the game apart from its contemporaries is its energy, vitality and variety. Multiple modes shake up strategies, and the many different foes that beam in have distinct personalities to keep the gameplay varied.

Some relentlessly home in on you, whereas others are content blowing anything around them to pieces – including the maze. Suitable for one-thumb play in portrait or landscape, Forget-Me-Not is an arcade classic.

Aptly named, given that it has loads of platforms and aims to make you panic, Platform Panic is a high-speed single-screen platform game. Whenever you enter a new screen, you’ve a split second to work out what’s going on before you forge ahead, trying to beat its various traps. As is so often the way on mobile gaming titles, a single slip up spells death.

There’s auto-runner DNA in Platform Panic, since your little character never stops running – although you can change their direction with a swipe and, crucially, leap into the air. Over many games, you’ll figure out how to beat each screen, and then it’s just a question of chaining together a number of successful attempts.

This is easier said than done, mind. Scores of over a dozen are something to be proud of in Platform Panic’s world. Still, games are short enough that when your little cartoon avatar is rudely impaled, there’s always time for another go.

One of the most absurdly generous deals we’ve ever seen on the iPhone, Cally’s Caves 3 is a monstrous platform adventure that’s given away entirely for free. Many dozens of levels across eight zones find the titular Cally searching for her parents, who’ve managed to get kidnapped by an evil genius – for the third time.

Unsurprisingly, Cally’s not overly chuffed with this turn of events, and she also happens to be worryingly heavily armed for a young pigtailed girl. She leaps about, blasting enemies, finding bling, and making for an exit, in tried-and-tested platforming fashion.

This is a tough game. Although you can have endless cracks at any given level, Cally’s Caves 3 is based around checkpoints, forcing you to not just blunder ahead. But smart level design and a brilliant weapon upgrade model keep the frustration to a minimum and ensure this is one of the best games of its type on the iPhone.

Apparently turned off by chess’s commitment to beauty, elegance and balance, the developer of Really Bad Chess set out to break it. You therefore start your first game with a seriously souped-up set of pieces: several queens, and loads of knights. Your hapless computer opponent can only look on while lumbered with a suspicious number of pawns.

One easy win later and you’re full of confidence, but Really Bad Chess keeps switching things up. Rather than the AI getting better or worse, the game changes the balance of your set-up. As you improve, your pieces get worse and the computer’s get better, until you’re the one fending off an overpowered opponent.

It’s a small twist on the chess formula, to be sure, but one that opens up many new ways of playing, whether you’re a grandmaster or a relative novice.

In Maximum Car, you careen along winding roads, smashing your chunky car into other similarly Lego-like vehicles. When possible, you lob missiles about with merry abandon, boost, drift, and generally barrel along like a lunatic. It’s a bit like a stripped-down Burnout or a gleefully violent OutRun.

Your terrorising of other road users (through near misses and blithely driving on the wrong side of the road), rewards you with coins to spend on powering up your ride. Do so and Maximum Car speeds up significantly, veering into absurd and barely controllable territory.

Takedowns (as in, smashing other cars off of the road) are also positively encouraged; destroy the same car over enough races and it’ll be unlocked for purchase.

Along with a tongue-in-cheek commentary track, this is all very silly entertainment – great for quick bursts of adrenaline-fuelled racing, and absolutely not the sort of thing to play before a driving test.

This third entry in the Dots series, Dots & Co, will be familiar to anyone who's played the previous efforts. The aim is to collect a pre-set number of colored dots on each level, which is achieved by dragging out paths through dots of the same color. Manage to draw a square and all dots of the relevant color vanish.

Complications come by way of odd-shaped levels that often leave you with small groups of dots stranded within awkward shapes, and obstacles that need clearing. Cartoon 'companions' help a bit here, blasting away at the board once you've powered them up, and there are also a few special powers to make use of.

It's here the charms of Dots & Co fade slightly – as the game progresses, you can't help but feel you're being given impossible tasks, and that an awful lot of luck is required to beat levels without resorting to buying tokens to spend on powers or extra moves. Despite this, Dots & Co remains a pleasant and engaging time sink.

They don't come much simpler than Kubix, which sums up the aim of the game in what follows the hyphen in its full App Store name: 'Catch the white squares and avoid the black ones'. There is, fortunately, a bit more to it than that. As you're tilting your device to sneak past black squares and scoop up white ones the latter add to an ever-depleting energy reserve.

You'll also regularly see squares with a question mark barging their way into the arena. Catch one when it's white and you'll get a nice surprise, such as all of the squares temporarily turning white. Grab one when it's black and you'll be in for a nasty time, trying to survive in a sea of black squares, or avoid such pixels of evil while piloting a suddenly awkwardly unwieldy white circle.

Two games in one, Big Bang Racing offers a breezy single-player trials experience on trap-filled larger-than-life tracks, and then multiplayer races across similarly crazy courses. The visuals are very smart, with your odd little alien rider imbued with plenty of personality; the controls work well, too, with two pairs of buttons for moving and rotating your bike.

The game's infested with the usual trappings of modern freemium titles – chests; timers; in-game gold; in-app purchases – but, surprisingly, this doesn't make much difference nor really impact negatively on the experience. With a little patience, you can play a few races every day, gradually improving your bike, winning races, and mastering courses.

Collect enough bits and bobs from chests and you can even have a go at creating and sharing your own tracks, using an excellent built-in editor.

Poker and Solitaire have been smashed together before, in the excellent Sage Solitaire, but Politaire tries something new with the combination.

At all points, you can see the next three cards from the draw pile. You then swipe away unwanted cards from your hand with the aim of those remaining and any newcomers forming a poker hand, which then vanishes, automatically bringing in more new cards.

When possible, you want to score 'combos', through multiple hands subsequently occurring with you doing nothing at all. Naturally, this requires a little luck, but there's also plenty of skill here, in terms of managing your cards and figuring out what's coming in the pile.

It sounds confusing, but give it time and it'll dig into your very soul.

For free, you generously get the entire main single-deck game, which rapidly becomes furiously addictive. Splash out for the one-off IAP ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99) and you unlock double-deck mode and alternate card designs, along with getting rid of occasional ads.

illi is a quaint one-button puzzle platformer that simply requires you to tap the screen to jump from ledge to ledge and collect all the crystals in a stage.

Its beautiful visuals will draw you into its simplistic yet engaging gameplay, while its puzzles will challenge you with bonus requirements and unique tricks. And there's the 60 levels too that are sure to mesmerize and impress as you dodge through this cheeky little title.

Loop Mania is an addictive arcade game that is sure to challenge your reflexes and timing skills. In order to increase your score you need to collect as many dots as possible as your circle races around a circular loop, while avoiding bigger balls on its path.

The trick is to tap the screen to launch your ball onto the others to destroy them for extra points. Just don't tap at the wrong time or your race is over.

Choose your own path and explore the gothic avenues of the Victorian city of Fallen London. Define your destiny and craft your character's fate with each choice you make and quest you complete.

This literary RPG boasts excellent writing that is sure to pull you into its dark yet comedic world as you befriend the locals and choose the path you think you want to go on.

Spellspire rewards you for having a large vocabulary as each dungeon you plunder requires you to come up with as many words as possible to defeat its enemies and reach that elusive treasure at the end.

The money you get from all that looting can then be used to upgrade your spells and weapons to make each word you spell deal even more damage. How many levels can you clear?

As its name implies, Looty Dungeon tests your survival skills as you loot your way through endless dungeons teeming with traps, bosses, and falling floors.

Pick up coins to purchase additional heroes, each with different powers and stats, keeping the game fresh. Hidden dangers can easily put an end to your looting, so tread carefully and carry a big sword - which is just good advice for life really, isn't it?

Well, maybe not a sword. Perhaps a sense of self-confidence... life can sometimes be about metaphors too.

PKTBALL takes ping pong and turns into an endless arcade addiction. Outsmart your opponents to get the best score you can, get money, and unlock lots of colorful playable characters, each with their own court and soundtrack.

Once you've mastered the basics you can challenge your friends in local multiplayer matches or simply smash your way to the top of the leaderboards. This is the kind of game that you'll start playing while making dinner and only look up from when the fire brigade are breaking down your door.

A kingdom of Disney characters can be unlocked in this alternative look at the popular road-crossing game - intelligently titled Disney Crossy Road.

It's a 'magical take' on a game that has been downloaded over 50 million times, and designed to attract a new raft of players.

Cross as many roads as you can and collect coins to purchase even more stars spanning various Disney films, each with their own music and world for all you film fans out there.

And as you can imagine (if you've played the 'normal' Crossy Road before), you'll see how far you can survive with your favorites from Toy Story, Lion King, Zootopia, and many more.

Sparkwave is a simple yet addictive game where you guide a spark of light through an endless path composed of traps, collectibles, and power-ups. You'll need to have fast fingers if you want to stay alive as obstacles will spawn seconds before you rush into them. You can also pick up crystals to unlock new sparks and power-ups which can completely change the way you play.

The classic run-and-gun franchise takes on the tower defense genre in Metal Slug Attack. Missions in this colorful title ultimately come down to destroying your enemy's stronghold using your own deck of troops. You can also play online with others, and go on missions to rescue prisoners, weapons, or items that can aid your campaign.

Tennis Champs Returns is a robust remake to the 1995 Amiga tennis game and brings with it plenty of great additions and mobile-friendly controls. You can move up the ranks in career mode and challenge the computer to increasingly difficult matches. Or, compete with opponents all over the world in quick bouts. Daily challenges and mini games help to keep the interest levels going.

A beautifully pixelated adventure, Sky Chasers requires you to use your fingers to guide your character along side-scrolling paths collecting coins and completing side-quests for his friends. Your cardboard ship has a limited fuel supply, so you'll occasionally have to stop by checkpoints to refuel and avoid any pesky enemies that add an element of danger to your otherwise peaceful trip. Solve simple puzzles and upgrade your ship as you enjoy its rich colorful worlds.

Rust Bucket turns the concept of a turn-based game into a puzzle-like roguelike that is a blast to play. Each level requires you to navigate your way through a dungeon to reach its goal, but with every step you take, your enemies also move in different patterns. Strategy is key to surviving since you don't want to step in front of an enemy knowing it may kill you in your next turn.

Searching for his lost grandpa, a little boy gets lost underneath a lighthouse and now must escape from a labyrinth filled with traps and secrets. Each inventive dungeon must be rotated in order to guide the boy to the tunnel leading to the next one. You'll need to prepare yourself for spikes, levers, crumbling platforms, and other challenges that amp up the difficulty as you try to survive Beneath the Lighthouse.

Collect teddy bears and use them to aid you in making words in the adorable Alphabear. Daily boards and challenges require you to come up with words with the letters that appear on your screen. Each time you do, bears will populate the board and get bigger the more letters you use around them. Make the biggest bear you can and rack in the points and the bragging rights.

At some point, a total buffoon decreed that racing games should be dull and grey, on grey tracks, with grey controls. Gameloft's Asphalt 8: Airborne dispenses with such foolish notions, along with quite a bit of reality. Here, then, you zoom along at ludicrous speeds, drifting for miles through exciting city courses, occasionally being hurled into the air to perform stunts that absolutely aren't acceptable according to the car manufacturer's warrantee.

Three bushes make a tree! Three gravestones make a church! OK, so logic might not be Triple Town's strong suit, but the match-three gameplay is addictive. Match to build things and trap bears, rapidly run out of space, gaze in wonder at your town and start all over again. The free-to-play version has limited moves that are gradually replenished, but you can unlock unlimited moves via IAP.

Few free games are quite as polished as Hearthstone, but then this is a Blizzard game, so we hardly expected anything less.

There are dozens of card games available for iPhone, but Hearthstone stands out with high production values and easy to learn, difficult to master mechanics, which can keep you playing, improving and collecting cards for months on end. Matches don't generally take too long either so it's great for playing in short bursts.

Think you know stress? You haven't experienced stress until you've played Spaceteam, a cooperative multiplayer game that requires you to all work together as a crew (and bark orders at your friends). Sounds easier than it is; failure to cooperate will probably end with your ship getting sucked into a black hole.

In this game, golf met solitaire and they decided to elope while leaving Mr. Puzzle Game to fill the void. What's left is an entertaining bout of higher-or-lower, draped over a loose framework of golf scores, with a crazed gopher attempting to scupper everything. You get loads of courses for free with Fairway Solitaire Blast and can use IAP to buy more.

The clue's in the title - there's a quest, and it involves quite a lot of punching. There's hidden depth, though - the game might look like a screen-masher, but Punch Quest is all about mastering combos, perfecting your timing, and making good use of special abilities. The in-game currency's also very generous, so if you like the game reward the dev by grabbing some IAP.

Tap! Tap! Swipe! Rub! Argh! That's the way this intoxicating rhythm action game plays out. Groove Coaster Zero is all on rails, and chock full of dizzying roller-coaster-style paths and exciting tunes. All the while, you aim for prodding perfection, chaining hits and other movements as symbols appear on the screen. Simple, stylish and brilliant.

This latest rethink of one of gaming's oldest and most-loved series asks what lies beyond the infamous level 256 glitch. As it turns out, it's endless mazey hell for the yellow dot-muncher. Pac-Man's therefore charged with eating as many dots as possible, avoiding a seemingly infinite number of ghosts, while simultaneously outrunning the all-devouring glitch. Power-ups potentially extend Pac-Man's life, enabling you to gleefully take out lines of ghosts with a laser or obliterate them with a wandering tornado.

Although there's an energy system in Pac-Man 256, it's reasonably generous: one credit for a game with power-ups, and one for the single continue; one credit refreshes every ten minutes, to a maximum of six, and you can always play without power-ups for free. If you don't like that, there's an IAP-based £5.99/$7.99 permanent buy-out.

The endless rally game Cubed Rally Redline is devious. On the surface, it looks simple: move left or right in five clearly-defined lanes, and use the 'emergency time brake' to navigate tricky bits. But the brake needs time to recharge and the road soon becomes chock full of trees, cows, cruise liners and dinosaurs. And you thought your local motorway had problems!

In Smash Cops, you got to be the good guy, bringing down perps, mostly by ramming them into oblivion. Now in Smash Bandits it's your chance to be a dangerous crim, hopping between vehicles and leaving a trail of destruction in your wake. The game also amusingly includes the A-Team van and a gadget known only as the Jibba Jabba. We love it when a plan comes together!

If you're of a certain vintage, you probably spent many hours playing Solitaire on a PC, success being rewarded by cards bouncing around the screen. Sage Solitaire's developer wondered why iOS solitaire games hadn't moved on in the intervening years, and decided to reinvent the genre. Here, then, you get a three-by-three grid and remove cards by using poker hands.

Additional strategy comes through limitations (hands must include cards from two rows; card piles are uneven) and potential aid (two 'trashes', one replenished after each successful hand; a starred multiplier suit). A few rounds in, you realise this game's deeper than it first appears. Beyond that, you'll be hooked. The single £2.29/$2.99 IAP adds extra modes and kills the ads.

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Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition makes Alexa voice assistant child friendly

If you have kids and an Amazon Echo device, there's a good chance you've experienced the hilarity / horror of them accidentally finding some expletive-laden song just by their requesting goobledeegook. So a new Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition will be music to the ears of tech-savvy parents.

Launching in the US first (we'll have word on global availability as soon as it is announced), it costs $79.99 – considerably more expensive than a standard Echo Dot. However, it does come with some unique, child-friendly perks, including a two-year damage replacement warranty, a colorful rubber case in either red, blue or green and a year's subscription to the FreeTime Unlimited kid-focussed service.

With Alexa, FreeTime Unlimited lets parents leave their children in the capable hands of a selection of expletive-free radio stations including IHeartRadio Family, 300 appropriate Audible audiobooks and tailored premium skills from Nickelodeon, National Geographic and Disney, including alarms that sound like characters from their favorite shows and movies. 

Staying safe

FreeTime Unlimited costs $2.99 a month, but the device won't simply stop working when that free subscription runs its course.

If you choose not to renew the FreeTime Unlimited service, you can roll back to the basic free service which, like FreeTime Unlimited, lets you block Alexa features such as shopping, news reports and access to third party skills and audio services. You just won't get all that curated kids content from Amazon's major partners.

Other than that, it's your standard Echo Dot, with seven far-field microphones for directional voice capture, a built-in speaker and the option of hooking up to a more impressive playback device over Bluetooth or 3.5mm jack cable.

Pre-order open today, with shipping starting on May 9.

Amazon Alexa Easter Eggs: have some fun with your smart speaker

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You now have to be at least 16 to use WhatsApp in Europe

Next month the EU is rolling out new privacy rules dubbed GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and that could have a big impact on some tech companies, including WhatsApp, which has announced that ahead of the rules coming into effect users in Europe now need to be 16 or older.

That’s up from the previous age requirement of 13, which still applies to the rest of the world. Notably this change seems to affect all countries in WhatsApp’s ‘European Region’, not just those in the EU.

The changes are already listed on WhatsApp’s site, and according to Sky News, WhatsApp will ask users to accept new terms of service in the coming weeks, and as part of that they’ll have to confirm that they’re at least 16.

It’s not yet clear how WhatsApp will verify a user’s age, but we imagine it will probably be reliant on honesty.

View your data

GDPR also requires greater transparency from companies as to what data they collect and how it’s used, and as such WhatsApp will also be allowing users to download and see that data in the coming weeks. That’s a change that will be coming worldwide.

Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, is working on similar transparency changes, though it’s also moving the data of 1.5 billion users to avoid them falling under the new rules.

Regretting a WhatsApp message? Here's how to delete it

Via Engadget

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The best free file recovery software 2018

We all know the importance of making regular backups, but that's of little comfort to anyone – even those with good backup regimens – who suddenly find themselves confronted by the stomach-churning feeling of data loss. That's why it's always a good idea to have a reliable free file recovery program on hand for emergencies.

Whether it's a virus infection, a hardware failure, or just human error, it's all too easy to lose vital files. As soon as you've become aware of data loss, it's critical you stop using the drive affected immediately. Whether the drive itself is failing or you've simply deleted a file accidentally, this is the golden moment when you may be able to get your data back before it's gone for good.

We've picked five of the best free file recovery tools in the business. Just pick the one closest to your requirements and with a bit of luck (and no small measure of help from the app involved), you could yet save your files.

Recuva makes recovering your lost files as simple as possible

Piriform Recuva makes things as easy and stress-free as possible. It opens by default to a file recovery wizard, which advanced users can subsequently skip.

From here, choose the type of file you're trying to recover (picture, documents, compressed, emails and all files are among those on offer) and it'll focus its search accordingly.

You can target your search to a specific location or search all your drives, and you can opt to choose a quick or deep scan. The latter takes much longer, but flushes out more results. Then click 'Start' and wait for the scan to complete.

Once done, your results are presented, with each recovered file given a rating depending on its condition. You can recover files direct from here or switch to Advanced Mode for a frankly better view, offering file preview, information and a peek at the file's header.

Piriform Recuva reviewDownload Piriform Recuva

With IObit Undelete, file recovery takes just a couple of clicks

If you’ve ever used IObit Uninstaller or Advanced SystemCare, it’ll be no surprise that IObit Undelete is refreshingly easy to use, with an intuitive interface that makes file recovery as painless as possible. Select either the types of file you’re looking for (including documents, videos. Music and pictures) and the drive where they were stored, then click ‘Scan’.

There’s no ‘deep’ option, but scans are fast and turned up the files we were looking for. IObit Undelete gives you an estimate of recoverability (excellent or poor) to indicate whether restoration is likely to be successful. 

Hovering your mouse pointer over the eye icon on the right lets you preview the file if possible, and restoring it is as simple as checking the appropriate box, clicking ‘Recover’ and choosing where to save it. 

IObit Undelete might not offer as much granular control as Recuva, but it’s quick, effective and easy to use – ideal if you’ve lost something important and panic is setting in. Highly recommended.

Download IObit Undelete

DMDE Free Edition can recover lost data from a huge number of drives

Our third favorite free file recovery tool is often overlooked. DMDE Free Edition scores major points because it's capable of recovering data from a wide array of drives, including 2TB+ drives rescued from a fried external drive enclosure with proprietary formatting (it's a long story).

DMDE may not be the simplest tool to use, but it's one of the most effective, and our step-by-step file recovery guide will help you with the basics.

DMDE works by letting you select a drive and then identifies all mountable partitions, with the most obvious choices highlighted. If successful, you're then shown a File Explorer-like view to browse the drive and recover what data you need from it.

There are restrictions on the way you can recover data from the free version, but there's no limit to how much you recover. If you want a simpler and faster recovery process, just upgrade to the Express or Standard edition.

DMDE Free Edition reviewDownload DMDE Free Edition

PhotoRec is a capable file recovery tool, as long as you don't mind the text-based interface

TestDisk and PhotoRec are a handy pair of file recover tools that come as a set. Don't be fooled by the name – PhotoRec recovers far more than just photos. It works with a wide range of file systems and media, from hard drives to CD/DVD, USB flash drives and memory cards, and there are builds for Mac and Linux, giving you flexibility to recover data from a different computer if necessary.

It also has deep knowledge of over 200 file formats, which helps with reconstructing lost files, and comes packaged with TestDisk, which can be used to recover partitions.

The main complication is the user interface – it's a command line affair, with no mouse support. At first glance this appears complicated, but the program steps you through the process via a series of menu screens, and because it mounts the target drive in read-only mode, there's no danger of data being lost if you take a wrong turn – you can't write data to the drive you're recovering from, for example.

TestDisk and PhotoRec reviewDownload TestDisk and PhotoRec

Restore a whole lost partition with MiniTool Partition Recovery Free

One of the most frightening data loss experiences is when an entire drive or partition goes missing. Often this can be traced to an accidentally deleted partition or one where the partition header has corrupted.

If the issue is this simple, getting the partition back can be done quickly and easily without leaving Windows using MiniTool Partition Recovery Free.

Just fire it up, select the drive containing your lost partition, then choose whether to scan the entire disk or just a portion of it (say the part where your missing partition should be). Choose between full and quick scans, then sit back and let the program do its work.

Don't panic if it appears to become non-responsive, just be patient and eventually it'll list all detected partitions on the drive. Select all of them – including your missing partition – and click 'Finish' to restore it.

You can also double-click a partition to view its file contents – perfect for verifying it's the one you're after.

Download MiniTool Partition Recovery Free

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Wear OS: Google's new name for Android Wear explained

Android Wear isn't dead, instead it has been renamed Wear OS, with Google preparing for the diverse future of smartwatches.

There are more than 40 Wear OS watches today that launched with Android Wear software, but have been given the new name and logo in a software update. 

That has been an easy change for Google to make. New features, however, are the bigger story, and we fully expect whatever Google had planned for Android Wear 3.0 is in fact coming in a Wear OS update later in 2018.

We're sifting through Wear OS rumors and providing you with details of what we hope Google has planned for the future of its wrist-worn wearable software.

Why the Wear OS name is a smart move by GoogleHow to upgrade your smartwatch to Wear OS nowOur list of the best Wear OS watches money can buy Cut to the chase What is it? Google's new name for it's smartwatch operating systemWhen is it out? Rolling out to newer watches nowHow much will it cost? It'll be free of charge Wear OS name change

Why the new name? Google's official announcement on March 15 2018 pointed to the fact that one in three Wear OS users owns an iPhone. Android Wear as a name is rather limiting.

"We’re now Wear OS by Google, a wearables operating system for everyone," said Google in an official statement.

"We’re announcing a new name that better reflects our technology, vision, and most important of all—the people who wear our watches."

Simply put, even if you own an iPhone X, you shouldn't be turned off from buying into the Wear OS ecosystem and sent into the arms (wrists?) of the Apple Watch 3.

Wear OS release date

Wear OS smartwatches are due for an update, way more than Google changing the name from Android Wear. That's really not all we wanted from Android Wear 3.0.

"You’ll begin to see the new name on your watch and phone app over the next few weeks," said Google in March and that has been the case for most modern Android Wear watches. We're thinking that's just the start though.

Google will likely save the true, feature-driven Wear OS details for Google IO 2018 in a few weeks. That takes place on Google's Mountain View campus starting May 8 this year.

A significant Wear OS update is overdue. Android Wear launched in June 2014 after being announced in May of that year. It did see a sizable Android Wear 1.1 update roughly a year later in March 2015, but then Google stuck to minor tweaks between then and the jump to Android Wear 2.0 in February 2017.

What watches are getting Wear OS?

Google has provided a list of devices that are currently being updated with the new Wear OS branding.

Whether all of the watches below will get the new features when the next update comes around remains to be seen, but we have high hopes for most on this list considering each is getting the Wear OS branding.

Casio PRO TREK Smart WSD-F20Casio WSD-F10 Smart Outdoor WatchDiesel Full GuardEmporio Armani ConnectedFossil Q ControlFossil Q ExploristFossil Q Founder 2.0Fossil Q MarshalFossil Q VentureFossil Q WanderGuess ConnectGc ConnectHuawei Watch 2 (both cellular & non-cellular versions)Hugo BOSS BOSS TouchKate Spade ScallopLG Watch SportLG Watch StyleLouis Vuitton TambourMisfit VaporMichael Kors Access BradshawMichael Kors Access DylanMichael Kors Access GraysonMichael Kors SofieMontblanc SummitMovado ConnectMobvoi Ticwatch S & Ticwatch ENixon MissionPolar M600Skagen FalsterTAG Heuer Connected Modular 41TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45Tommy Hilfiger 24/7 YouZTE Quartz Wear OS update news and rumors

There’s nothing official to report yet on Wear OS features that we anticipate seeing at Google IO, but as soon as we hear anything we’ll update this article.

Usually we've heard a bit more about a new software update by now, so Google is clearing doing a good job at keeping the details under wraps. Hopefully that means there are some big new features the company doesn't want us to hear about yet.

What we want to see

We might not know anything about Wear OS yet, but we know what we hope Google is working on. The following seven things top our list.

1. More apps

Android Wear didn't have the kind of app problem that plagued Windows Phone, but it could definitely use a wider selection in the next big Wear OS update. It's trailing the kind of developer support we see from Apple's watchOS, which will see a watchOS 5 update at WWDC 2018.

That’s surprising. All of the Wear OS smartwatch combined aren't as popular as the Apple Watch series, but it’s a vicious circle – without the apps these smartwatch are never likely to reach Apple Watch-level popularity. So we’d like to see a wider selection with the launch of Android Wear 3.0. We don’t know how Google will manage this, but we have faith.

2. Better efficiency

Two problems that plague many Android Wear devices are weak battery life and middling performance. Faster chipsets and bigger batteries (if manufacturers can find a way to squeeze them in) are the most obvious solutions to that, but Google could probably help at a software level.

If it can make Wear OS more lightweight and efficient than previous versions then we might be able to get noticeable speed and life boosts on existing hardware.

3. Greater support for iOS

Android Wear and the forthcoming Wear OS update now work reasonably well with iOS, but the experience is still more limited than if you have an Android phone, as, for example, notifications can’t be interacted with in as many ways, leaving you unable to respond to WhatsApp messages and the like.

There’s also no iMessage support, and while we can’t see that changing, as it would presumably require additional cooperation from Apple, we’d like to see Google work to get the core experience up to the same standards when paired with iOS as it is with Android.

Want to use an Android Wear watch with your iOS phone? Check out our guide to the best smartwatches for iPhone 4. A smoother roll out

One of the downsides of Android on phones is that new versions of the operating system often take a long time to arrive on handsets, if they arrive at all. That’s partially down to the heavy skins manufacturers put on their devices, meaning they have to work a lot harder to get the update functional.

This should be less of an issue on Wear OS, since while manufacturers offer some light customization it’s broadly the same across devices, yet Android Wear 2.0 still took a long time to arrive on some watches and many older ones didn’t get it at all.

For Wear OS, we want every watch that currently has Android Wear 2.0 to get the update (unless there’s a hardware reason it can’t) and for all of them to get it in a timely fashion.

5. Let you use your watch as your password

If you’ve got an Wear OS device, you can have your Android phone or Chromebook automatically unlock when connected to it, but the same skill can’t be extended to a Windows or Mac computer.

Since we’d wager most people have one of them this is a big omission, albeit an understandable one, since they’re not running a Google operating system. If at all possible though we’d like Android Wear 3.0 to let your watch unlock non-Google devices.

6. Cast content

Google Cast is a great way to get media from your phone to your TV or stereo, but the same feature doesn’t exist on Android Wear.

Arguably it would be less useful on a watch, but there are certainly times when it would be handy to be able to cast music from our wearables to a Chromecast Audio.

7. Interface tweaks

With version 2.0 Google polished Android Wear’s interface, but there’s still work to be done to make interacting with these tiny screens easier.

We want Wear OS to further polish and refine the interface, but in terms of specific improvements we’d love to see an easy way to get back to a workout or call screen from the home screen.

On our phones there’s a green bar at the top for calls and the recent apps menu for everything else and neither is more than a tap or swipe away, but on Wear OS navigation doesn’t feel quite so simple, and a single tap – whether accidental or intentional – can leave you far from where you were before.

These are the best Wear OS smartwatches you can buy

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The best web browser 2018: faster and more secure

Most of us tend to choose a web browser and stick with it for years. It can be hard to break away from your comfort zone – especially when you've become used to its quirks – but trying a different browser can greatly improve your experience on the web.

Whether it's enhanced security, improved speed, or greater flexibility through customizable options and plugins, the right browser can have a huge effect on your online life. Here we've put the biggest browsers through their paces (plus one that you might not be familiar with) to identify the one that does the best job of ticking all those boxes, but if you have a particular concern then read on to see if there's an alternative that might be better suited to your needs.

After several years dropping behind the competition in terms of speed, Firefox is back in the game with a fully updated code base

Firefox recently received its biggest update in 13 years, and it's so impressive, it's propelled the browser to the top of our list. 

Firefox has always been known for its flexibility and support for extensions, but in recent years it had started to lag behind the competition in terms of speed. Firefox Quantum, first released last year, represented a total overhaul of the browser's code base, with speeds now comparable with Google Chrome. That's not just on top-end computers, either – the new Firefox makes frugal use of RAM, even with masses of tabs open.

Firefox also scores serious points when it comes to privacy. Mozilla is non-profit, which means it doesn't have the same impetus to sell your data as some other browser developers. The organization also makes regular updates to help protect its users' privacy as internet companies come under increasing scrutiny over the way they treat people's data.

Quantum also introduced a new system for extensions that prevents rogue developers making malicious changes to the browser's internal code. 

It's not always the absolute fastest – for some pages Chrome still has the edge, as Mozilla's own video demonstrates – but the new Firefox has come out swinging and is our pick for the best web browser of 2018 so far.

Mozilla Firefox reviewDownload Mozilla Firefox

Chrome is a superb browser - fast and adaptable - if you aren't bothered by letting Google handle all your online activity

With Chrome, Google has built an extendable, efficient browser that deserves its place at the top of the browser rankings. According to w3schools' browser trend analysis its user base is only rising, even as Microsoft Edge's install numbers are presumably growing. Why? Well, it's cross-platform, incredibly stable, brilliantly presented to take up the minimum of screen space, and just about the nicest browser there is to use.

Its wide range of easily obtained and installed extensions mean you can really make it your own, and there's support for parental controls and a huge range of tweaks and settings to ensure maximum efficiency.

But there are downsides, and potentially big ones. It's among the heaviest browsers in terms of resource use, so it's not brilliant on machines with limited RAM, and its performance doesn't quite match up to others in benchmarking terms. And with Google's tentacles running through it, you might be uncomfortable with the ways in which your browsing data may be used.

Google Chrome reviewDownload Google Chrome

Opera is a superb browser with a clean interface and built-in ad-blocker, plus a Turbo mode that makes slow connections more useable

It's sad that Opera makes up only around 1% of the browser market, because it really is a quality browser. It launches fast, the UI is brilliantly clean, and it does everything its rivals can do with a couple of extras thrown in for good measure.

The key reason we'd at least recommend having Opera installed alongside your main browser is its Opera Turbo feature. This compresses your web traffic, routing it through Opera's servers, which makes a huge difference to browsing speed if you're stuck on rural dial-up or your broadband connection is having a moment.

It reduces the amount of data transferred too, handy if you're using a mobile connection, and this re-routing also dodges any content restrictions your ISP might place on your browsing, which can be mighty handy. Opera automatically ducks out of the way if you're using secure sites like banks so your traffic is free and clear of any potential privacy violation.

There's also an integrated ad-blocker – which can be switched off if you're morally inclined in that direction – and a battery-saving mode which promises to keep your laptop going for longer.

Opera reviewDownload Opera

Edge works on all your Windows 10 devices, with sandboxing for security and a special reading mode to isolate the important content on pages

The default 'browsing experience' on Windows 10, and unavailable for older operating systems, Edge is an odd one. Quite why Microsoft needs to be running a pair of browser products in tandem rather than making Edge backwards compatible is beyond us. The company's reason, it seems, is that Edge represents the more user-friendly end of Redmond's offering while Internet Explorer scales a little better for enterprise.

Integration with Windows 10's core gimmicks seems to be Edge's main strong point. It happily runs as a modern-skinned app on Windows 10's tablet mode, and works with Cortana. It's also highly streamlined for the current web age, doing away with insecure protocols like ActiveX and forcing you into Internet Explorer if you want to use them. We're more used to browsers failing to render newer pages than we are to being told off for visiting older corners of the web.

Curmudgeonly grumbles aside, actually using Edge is a perfectly pleasant experience. It's super-quick, hammers through benchmarks, its integrated reading mode makes complex sites more palatable, and by sandboxing it away from the rest of the operating system Microsoft has ensured that Edge won't suffer the security breaches of its older brother.

It's just a shame that Microsoft is quite so insistent on forcing Edge upon Windows 10 users, making it the default browser for links opened in the Mail app, adding shortcuts to your desktop after major OS updates, and presenting it as a potential result if you start typing 'Firefox' in the Cortana search box.

Windows 10 (including Edge) reviewGet Windows 10 (including Edge)

Microsoft Internet Explorer is a fast and powerful browser, and makes modest use of your system resources, though it lacks the flexibility of Firefox and Chrome

Microsoft Internet Explorer has seen some ups and downs in its long tenure, from dominating the browser charts to languishing behind its main two competitors. This is partly an issue of choice – particularly the browser choice that Microsoft was forced to give customers after a court ruling – and partially because older versions fell behind the rendering and compatibility curve.

There are no such issues with Internet Explorer 11. It's clean, powerful, highly compatible, and it demands less of your RAM and CPU than equivalent pages would on Chrome or Firefox. Plus it one-ups both of them on WebKit's Sunspider benchmark.

That's not to say this browser is perfect. Google's V8 benchmark sees it struggling, and IE isn't quite as able to handle add-ons and extensions as many of its competitors. So while there's no reason to avoid IE like there might once have been, if you're looking for a more customised browsing experience you're out of luck.

Download Microsoft Internet Explorer

Vivaldi is a relatively new browser that's bound to see more development soon. Its interface is fully customizable, though it doesn't officially support extensions yet

Here's something a bit different. We all spend probably far too much time sitting in front of our web browsers, and up-and-comer Vivaldi wants to make that as pleasant and personal an experience as possible.

The whole style and structure of its interface is entirely up to you. There's a built-in note-taking system, you can dock websites as side panels while using the main window to do your main browsing, and we love its innovative tab stacking tech, which allows you to group up tabs and move them around to avoid the crowding that so often plagues other browsers.

Vivaldi is built on Chromium, which means you can expand it even further with extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Just pick your preferred plugin and click 'Add to Chrome'. Some extensions might behave slightly differently in Vivaldi, but most work perfectly.

Vivaldi is a refreshing and creative take on web browsing, and one to watch in the next couple of years as more features are added.

Vivaldi reviewDownload Vivaldi

Tor Browser is a heavily modified version of Firefox that re-routed web traffic via random nodes worldwide

Tor Browser is, perhaps unjustly, most regularly associated with the seedy underworld of the dark web. While it's true that you can use this web browser to access otherwise unlisted sites, Tor's privacy aspects – where your traffic is routed through random nodes the world over, making it very hard to track - are its real asset.

Tor Browser is really a package of tools; Tor itself, a heavily modified version of the Firefox Extended Support release, and a number of other privacy packages that combine to make it the most secure browsing experience you're likely to find. Nothing is tracked, nothing is stored, and you can forget about bookmarks and cookies.

You'll need to alter your browsing habits to ensure that you don't perform actions online that reveal your identity – Tor Browser is just a tool, after all – but for a secondary browser useful for those private moments it's a great choice. Run it from a USB stick and nobody need even know you have it at all.

Tor Browser reviewDownload Tor Browser Make emails easier to manage with the best free email client.

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Apple Music vs Spotify: the music streaming titans go head-to-head

There are many streaming services to choose from. But there are only two real contenders for the stop slot, Spotify and Apple Music.

As these two titans battle for total dominance of our music streaming allegiance, we consumers reap the rewards as both services has transformed themselves to compete.

Spotify has the advantage at the moment with a much larger user base. 2018 changes also make this the only one to pick if you don't want to pay. Apple may offer a Music trial, but Spotify lets you curate 15 playlists you can play as much as you like without shelling out a dime. 

However, that doesn’t mean that Apple is out of the running. Designed and backed by one of the most recognisable brands in the world, Apple Music has increased its standing tenfold thanks to plenty of exclusive releases and seamless integration with iOS devices. You'll want Apple Music if you're thinking of buying a HomePod too. 

Unfortunately, for the average user it’s not always easy to discern which service is right for you in terms that actually make a difference to your day-to-day life. So, to help you choose the right one for you, we’ve broken down the pros and cons of each service so you sign up and start listening.

Apple Music

How big is its music library? 

When it comes to raw numbers, Spotify isn’t as dominant as it first appears. 

While Spotify touts more than 30 million songs in its virtual catalog, Apple Music has more than 40 million to choose from. It’s a significant advantage, enabling Apple to offer a broader range of tracks in each genre and subgenre. So if you’re into French skiffle or Brazilian electro pop and you’re struggling to find your more obscure artists, there’s a great chance Apple Music will have you covered.

Plus, this being an Apple product, its interface is easy to navigate both on a Mac/PC and in more portable forms such as smartphone or tablet and you can download tracks to take them with you when you’re away from a Wi-Fi connection. It’s a feature Apple Music shares with Spotify, but it’s a vital one if you want to keep users signing up to the paid version.

How much does it cost?

Unlike Spotify, which offers both free /and/ paid versions, Apple Music only offers a free trial version before it requires you to sign up. 

It’s understandable from a business POV - especially with so many exclusives serving as a golden carrot for potential users - but not having any form of long-term free-to-use version has ultimately worked against Apple’s desire to increase its overall user base.

Free trials are limiting, especially to those looking to experience the service on a long term basis. Giving users limited access to the full experience of its service might seem like a better deal in the short term, but it suffers in the long-term compared to the free/ad-filled version Spotify offers.

Still, having three different payment plans does show Apple wants its users who are willing to cough up a more dynamic approach. Having a cheaper plan aimed at students (£4.99/$4.99) is a great deal (but not an exclusive one as Spotify offers something similar), especially as this rate still gives you access to every facet of its service. For everyone else its £9.99/$9.99 for an individual, or £14.99/$14.99 for a family subscription for up to six people 

What exclusive benefits does Apple Music offer?

Admittedly, Apple has gone to great means to cut Spotify and the smaller music streaming services out of the picture by signing some of the biggest names in popular music to exclusivity deals on new albums. 

So far, Apple Music boasts albums from Drake, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Frank Ocean, Future and more and it’s a strategy that’s really rankled Spotify over the years. Of course, if you’re not a fan of these artists then this feature might not be game-changer, but if you do then it’s a serious trump card.

Apple Music also offers Beats 1, the vanguard for a wider push towards original broadcasting on the service. It’s a 24/7 radio station that offers round the clock playlists and live DJs. It’s an internet radio station backed by Apple, so it’s as slick as you might imagine with the likes of former Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe and more on its roster. With Apple already planning more stations for the service, this original broadcasting angle is a facet Spotify simply has no answer for.

There’s also an exclusive social feature called Connect that’s packed is as part of the Apple Music package. It’s essentially a way for artists to link up with fans in a more intimate fashion, offering access to new singles, videos and messages. 

Connect might seem something designed for the bigger bands, but it’s open to any artist, offering a service not too dissimilar to what MySpace was back in its heydey. For followers, it’s simply a simple yet effective way to get a little closer to the bands you love.

Finally, there’s the exclusive video content. With its integration with iTunes, the ability to browse and play tons of music videos adds a dimension Spotify simply doesn’t offer. And Apple Music is doubling down on the visual side with original programs such as Carpool Karaoke: The Series (a longer version of James Corden’s uber-popular celeb singing skit on The Late, Late Show) and Planet of the Apps (a Dragon’s Den-esque show for app and software developers). 

What’s it like to use?

While both the desktop and portable versions are great to look at (aesthetics, after all, is Apple’s thing to a tee), there’s a disparity in the user experience between the two: Apple Music's Mac, PC or laptop version is much superior to the one you'll find on your phone or tablet. That's because the continued use of larger images and boxes suits a larger screen, and it’s really easy to navigate through your playlists, exclusives and your imported iTunes library.

That said, the setup does suit using larger tablets, as having more screen real estate makes the larger icons and more content-heavy focus a far more agreeable experience. 

The version optimized for smartphones isn’t broken by any means, but its large icon design often makes it a little fiddly to use since it doesn’t use the smaller screen of a phone to its advantage. Also, launching to your library simply doesn’t make any sense for a service that’s geared towards new music updates.

Spotify

How big is its music library?

Spotify currently boasts over 30 million songs. Sure, it’s not quite as many as Apple Music right now, but with an average 20,000 new songs being added a day we wouldn’t be surprised to see Spotify eventually match and even exceed its biggest rival.

Spotify’s strong influx of tracks has helped jettison it into the stratosphere, with a heavy focus on promoting new tracks and breakthrough artists. Curated playlists are almost always the first thing you see when you load any version of the app, with the service seemingly designing playlists for almost every musical subgenre. These are constantly being updated too, so your favorite ones never grate following extended use.

Discover Weekly, the playlist based off your listening preferences, has come leaps and bounds in the last few years with the nuances of its suggestions, although Apple’s For You playlist (introduced in 2016) now largely offers the same feature so it’s no longer the special boon it was once.

How much does it cost?

So now we get to one of the main reasons why Spotify has always held Apple Music at bay (apart from the fact Spotify isn’t limited to one operating system) - paid and unpaid access. While its trialed a few different versions over the years, Spotify has always come back to the basic formula that’s worked best - everyone can sign up and access every track in its catalog for free.

There are ads every few songs, but you can tailor 15 playlists that feature the songs you want. You also get access to top curated playlists like Discover Weekly. In the past you did not have full control over playback, and were only able to skip a limited number of times per hour.

Rather than locking content behind a paywall, Spotify wisely seals away features that simply make the service more dynamic. Want to listen to music without any adverts? Want to download as many tracks as you want to your smartphone to listen to them when away from home? Want to the ability to skip songs as and when you want on your tablet/smartphone? Then it’s time for Premium. 

It’s a business model that might seem crazy on paper, but it’s the ideal way to increase your user base by making the whole experience awkward just enough to get those users coughing up.

What exclusive features does Spotify offer?

Here’s the thing, right now, you really don’t get much that really sells the exclusivity of using Spotify. Sure, there are podcasts that are exclusive to the platform (along with plenty of others you can find on iTunes or Stitcher), but Spotify has never been that interested in that corner of the market. 

Video was an area Spotify has dipped its toes into, thanks to deals with the likes of ESPN and Comedy Central bringing some of their shows to Spotify users. However, neither seem to be resonating with users as rumor has it that Spotify might scrap its current slate of shows entirely and head straight back to the drawing board. It’s unlikely it will abandon video entirely, but it’s clear the current plan isn’t working.

Low-data mode is one 2018 extra. It caches some audio for when you lose signal, and uses less of your data allowance. 75 per cent less according to Spotify. Of course, if you have a Premium sub you can just download songs over Wi-Fi anyway.

What’s it like to use?

Spotify has had its fair few updates over the years, but it’s hard to deny how well the current UI works. Unlike Apple Music, it’s a service that’s clearly been redesigned and tweaked with smaller screens in mind thanks to the raft of options available on screen at any one time. Whether you’re downloading an album or playlist to your phone or starting a radio channel based on an artist, it’s a consistently intuitive experience.

The tile system is just small enough to make selecting new albums and playlists easy while packing in plenty of content into a timeline of content that’s ultimately curated to what you’ve been listening to and what you might want to jump into next. Spotify might just have as many playlists as it does albums, but it’s a strategy that works as its algorithms ultimately tailor the app to each user.

Being able to work with multiple platforms is another huge asset. Being able to work on almost any type of smartphone and tablet increases the scope for its audience and the UIs for all these platforms are uniformly strong. Being able to play Spotify from your console - such as the version running on PS4 - is a massive tick for the service, as is the ease with which you set it up. Overall, Spotify is currently winning the UI war. 

Verdict

Overall, both services come with their pros and cons and each one will suit a user looking for different things from a music streaming platform: Spotify offers a more well-rounded experience that’s effectively open to everyone, but its mobile experience is limited unless you’re willing to go Premium. Apple’s three-month free trial does give you a taste of its service, but its fiddly mobile design remains at odds with its impressive library and exclusive content. As it stands, Spotify remains the stronger service overall, but unless it starts upping its original content, Apple Music won’t remain in second place for long. 

Either service you choose, you'll need the best headphones around to get the most out of your music streaming subscription

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UK sees major drop in smartphone sales

British consumers may be approaching peak smartphone after new figures showed a major decline in demand for new devices across the country.

Analysis by GfK found that the UK market saw an 11 percent decline in smartphone sales compared to this time last year, the largest drop across Western Europe.

The drop reflected a wider global decline in the demand for smartphones, which fell two percent to total 347 million units sold across the first quarter of 2018. GfK noted that this figure was not helped by a six percent year-on-year drop in sales in China, and a five percent decline in the United States.

Mixed fortunes

Across Western Europe, demand was found to be two percent lower than the previous year, falling to 28.3 million units. 

However overall revenue increased 23 percent year-on-year, perhaps reflecting that customers were turning to more expensive premium devices such as the iPhone X.

“We start the year with a very different picture to the final quarter of 2017, when smartphone demand records were broken," said Arndt Polifke, GfK’s telecom expert.

"In the first quarter of 2018 by comparison, there was a year-on-year decline in global smartphone demand. It’s perhaps no surprise as we hit saturation point in more markets."

"On the other hand, consumers are tending to choose higher-priced models as they embrace the latest innovations offered by smartphone brands. As a result, the average sales price grew by an astonishing 21 percent year-on-year to $374. This led to 18 percent revenue growth globally, which is exceptional for a maturing industry.”

Best SIM only deals in April 2018

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Sea of Thieves news and updates: what's new on the Sea of Thieves

[Update: There's a new Sea of Thieves update! Find out more about patch 1.0.5 below.]

On March 20 2018, Rare's sandbox multiplayer pirate adventure Sea of Thieves was unleashed on the world. After a lot of hard work the developer now has, well, more hard work. Being an open-ended online service game, Sea of Thieves will be subject to plenty of updated and improvements throughout its lifetime. 

To help you keep on top of what's new and what's coming up, we've put together this handy page which will be updated with all the latest announcements.

Don't forget to take a look at our full Sea of Thieves review as well as our guide to survival on the high seas. 

What's new in Sea of Thieves?

Rare has released the latest patch (1.0.5) for Sea of Thieves and it's bringing a handful of changes which are more focused on improving quality of life and reducing player frustrations than on adding anything big into the game. 

Now players will find ammo crates in a better position on both ships, the same sea shanties won't play twice and UI improvements mean images load more gracefully and screens fade in.

In addition to this the Rare team has solved spawning issues around bounty hunting quests and skeleton forts, single weapon slot problems and the Kraken can no longer spawn around rocks which was really just problem upon problem. 

The team has also published support articles related to various issues players are encountering, including problems finding DLC in-game and grey screens appearing on starting up the game. 

The full set of patch notes for update 1.0.5 can be found on the Rare site. 

What's coming up in Sea of Thieves

Rare has detailed some of its new content plans in a recent blog post. Now, the new additions won't be immediate as the developer has said that its plans for the rest of April will be to address the top feedback points of its players. 

However, as we go into the month of May, Rare says players can expect to see the beginnings of some new content being introduced. 

The first content update ill be called The Hungering Deep and it will see the introduction of a brand new AI threat which, the post says, players will have to "work together to discover and defeat." Alongside this, there will be a new items, new mechanics and a few unique awards. 

It's not entirely clear what the new AI threat will be but given players will need to discover it we're imagining another mythical monster similar to the Kraken. Perhaps something like the Aspidochelone, a giant creature which is often mistaken for an island? Or the devil whale hunted in Moby Dick?

May will also bring about a live events schedule which will introduce "fun new ways to play with weekly events and rewards."

May won't, of course, be the end of the updates and Rare gave a glimpse of what is planned for the summer months. One update called Foresaken Shores will introduce an entirely new though "perilous" area to the world with another new AI enemy. Cursed Sails is another update which will bring about a new AI threat (could we finally see The Flying Dutchman?) with a brand new ship type for players. 

There's no sign of what this ship type could be but we wonder if it could be something capable of carrying more than four players (a Man o' War perhaps?) for crews that are of a mind to expand. 

Though Rare hasn't revealed everything that will be added in its future updates, we do know that it's planning to introduce the game's cosmetic microtransactions at this time, which will include pets to purchase.

As far as long-term plans are concerned, Rare apparently intends to add new guilds for a wider-variety of missions at some point and also extend the end-game for those who eventually achieve Legendary Pirate status.

How can I play it?

Sea of Thieves is now available on PC and Xbox One. It's possible to purchase the game outright, but you can also pick up an Xbox Game Pass subscription where the entire game is included. 

If you're not sure whether Sea of Thieves is for you, picking up a Game Pass trial for free and playing the game for a short time through it is a good way to find out.

The game is not a port for PC or Xbox, it works equally on both and supports cross-play. While the console version has locked frame rates of 30fps, the PC version's are unlocked. Mouse, keyboard and controllers are all supported across console and PC. 

These are the best Xbox One games available now

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Spotify Smart Speaker: what we want to see

Everyone seems to be making smart speakers these days. Rumours suggested Spotify would too, especially after we heard it was working on its own voice search interface. Y'know, like Amazon Echo or Google Home but just for music. 

Spotify held a big launch event in April 2018 and we half-hoped the speaker would appear then. It didn't. We got a big upgrade to the free Spotify service instead, letting non-paying members curate their own playlists. 

We're not giving up on the dream of a first-part smart Spotify speaker yet, though. 

There are thousands of speakers out there that will play Spotify, using Spotify Connect, Bluetooth or a multi-room platform. But what could make a Spotify smart speaker stand out? Here’s what we’d like to see. 

A multi-mic array

Amazon and Google have set the bar very high for voice recognition. Even their cheap smart speakers can hear you over music when you talk at normal conversational volume. 

A Spotify smart speaker will need a clever multi-microphone array that can not only hear you from across the room, but be able to “cancel out” any music the speaker is currently playing. 

Amazon's Echo Dot speaker.

The Echo Dot uses seven far-field microphones, with beamforming. This lets the mics listen in the direction of your voice, ignoring the sound from elsewhere in the room. As the Sonos One’s just OK voice pick-up shows, getting this right first time isn’t that easy.

A sweet deal on your Spotify sub

The best way to get people interested in a Spotify smart speaker is to bundle it in with an appealing Spotify subscription deal or discount. After all, in a year you’ll pay $120 or £120 just for a Spotify sub, which is already as much as many decent wireless or smart speakers. 

If Spotify can get its marketing right and sell the speaker with 6-12 months of streaming, or offer a longer-term discount as part of the deal, a purchase may start to seem like a no-brainer. 

BPM-based searches

Here’s a goal for the Spotify smart assistant rather than the smart speaker hardware itself: being able to make an insta-playlist based on the beats-per-minute of a song. 

The most obvious use for this is during exercise. And not all of us have gyms at home. However, it would also be useful for parties or getting into "the zone" while working.

This should be an easy one to implement, as Spotify already offers playlists based on the beats-per-minute of songs.

Long throw driver or great passive radiators

Almost all smart speakers are relatively small. Even the Google Home Max is small by traditional hi-fi standards. That means they need to use clever technology to deliver as big and powerful a sound as possible. 

For several years, the passive radiator was the most popular tool for wireless speaker makers. This is a tuned bass driver that is pulled back and forth by the movement of an active driver, which usually handles the treble and upper mid frequencies. It’s why tiny wireless speakers like the Bose SoundLink Mini II sound so bassy for their size. 

If the Spotify Smart Speaker is to be much bigger than a Coke can, though, what we want is a long throw or long excursion woofer. These are drivers designed to move more than the norm, letting them create the long wavelengths of bass frequencies at the level of a larger driver. 

A separate tweeter, or seven

If Spotify wants its Smart Speaker to get anywhere near to the sound quality of the Apple HomePod or Google Home Max, and we hope that’s the aim, it will also need separate tweeters. 

These are tiny drivers responsible for treble frequencies. The Apple HomePod relies on these extensively, using seven of the things around its frame. 

Why so many? It’s the only way Apple could get real 360-degree style sound with vital-sounding treble. Treble sound is far more positional than bass. You can tell where it’s coming from, so these seven small drivers paint the treble in this 360-degree sound image. 

Does the Spotify Smart speaker need 360-degree sound? Perhaps not, but it will need two tweeters to provide a convincing stereo image. That’s what the Google Home Max has. 

An OLED display for album art

Here’s an idea that really rests on the rest of the speaker’s design. How about an OLED screen to display album art and, potentially, even song lyrics? 

All we need is a place on the speaker for the screen to live. Most larger smart speakers have fabric grilles on their fronts, which points towards the top as the obvious place to put a display. 

Why OLED? A display like this can all-but disappear behind a black surface when not lit, as OLEDs have emissive pixels. If the display doesn’t look good, it shouldn’t be there. 

A battery

None of the main smart speakers have a battery. It makes sense. The HomePod, Echo Plus and Google Home need Wi-Fi to work properly, so have to be used at home. 

This is one area the Spotify Smart Speaker could set itself apart, though. Being able to take such a speaker into the garden or park in the summer would be a big bonus. 

What we’d need, aside from a battery, is a portable “profile” in the speaker’s wireless infrastructure. When it’s out of Wi-Fi range it could either switch to Bluetooth like a standard wireless speaker, or use a form of Wi-Fi Direct to leech off your phone’s mobile data for streaming and voice recognition. 

Wireless phone charging

Wireless phone charging has had many false starts over the years. However, now Apple’s on-board maybe it’s ready to become part of the standard consumer tech landscape. 

Almost all phones that have wireless charging use a form of Qi, the most popular standard. Even Apple’s iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. 

One traditional problem with wireless charging is it’s slow. However, using the Qi 1.2 standard the max power transfer is actually 15W, higher than some wired chargers. 

A Qi panel on the smart speaker’s top would be handy. Apple has spoilt this idea a bit, though. While the latest iPhones’ charge tech is based on Qi, Apple has tweaked it to come up with its own AirPower standard. Apple's loves proprietary tech.

Alexa or Google Assistant support

Part of the impetus behind Spotify’s move to make its own voice search is to do the job better than Google Home and Amazon Alexa. However, we hope that, with a bit of technical and political gymnastics, the speaker will be able to have Alexa or Google Assistant smarts too. 

We don’t want Spotify to do a half-arsed job of making its own fully-featured smart home assistant. And we don’t want a smart speaker that won’t ever be able to control our smart home gear. Neither of these outcomes makes much sense. 

The best smart speakers

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The best web hosting services for 2018

Whatever size of website you have, this article will help you find the best web host, and the best hosting deals for you. The first step is to identify what your needs are - with one eye on the future growth of your website - then choose an appropriate plan at the right price. Web hosting companies usually offer three main paid-for tiers of hosting packages.

Many packages include a wealth of features that you may or may not place value upon, including a control panel, the ability to create online stores easily, easy site builder tools and varying levels of support (either on the phone or live chat).

In this article, we’ve picked out UK providers (those with a UK storefront and a UK phone number) as well as some foreign web hosts that comply with several ground rules like having EU data centers, a right to cancel, a cooling-off period, a full refund policy and/or a free trial period.

We’ll cover the best web hosts in five key areas: shared web hosting, web hosting, website builders, WordPress hosting, and managed web hosting. And following that, we’ll run through a quick roundup of the very top providers in some other hosting areas such as best e-commerce hosting, for example.

Best shared web hosting

InMotion Hosting

This popular web host is a respected and professional operation which has been in business for over 15 years, with an impressive array of plans on offer including shared hosting which starts from just $2.95 (£2.10) per month.

What’s also good to see is that InMotion bundles some pretty neat extras into its plans – services that other providers often charge extra for – including the likes of malware and DDoS protection, ‘spam-safe’ email and a system of basic backups.

Read our review of InMotion

InMotion provides both cPanel and Softaculous-powered hosting, and another strong suit is some top-notch technical support should you get stuck with anything. In our testing, we found that this firm’s overall performance levels were well above average, which is good news for those who want to see fast-loading websites.

In short, there’s a great deal to like here and some tempting pricing, with the icing on the cake being a 90-day money-back guarantee should you fail to be satisfied with the service.

Check out the shared web hosting packages from InMotion Hosting

Best cheap web hosting

HostGator Hatchling

If you’re hunting out budget web hosting, then look no further than HostGator’s Hatchling plan. The beauty of this provider is that even this basic plan is unrestricted in many respects. There are no limits on bandwidth or disk space, subdomains, MySQL databases, FTP and email accounts.

You also get cPanel-based management of your website, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Other laudable benefits include 24/7 customer support, and $200 worth of Google and Bing Ads credits.

Read our review of HostGator

There are some limitations, though, including the fact that this is one provider which doesn’t give you a free domain name for a year, and you can only operate one website on the Hatchling plan (although the latter isn’t an uncommon restriction with the cheapest hosting plans).

Further benefits include a 45-day money-back guarantee, not to mention free transfers for new accounts within the first month after you’ve signed up. There’s lots to like here considering the minimal impact on your wallet, with pricing as low as $2.64 per month on a three-year contract.

Check out the cheap web hosting packages from HostGator

Best website builders

Wix

Wix offers an attractive range of plans and boasts some truly impressive depth when it comes to tailoring your website to best match your needs. The service has a user-friendly editor that bristles with content and functionality, and allows you to fine-tune your site in a huge amount of different ways.

And there’s depth across the board, so for example, when it comes to templates, you don’t just get a scattering of predefined sites, but more than 500 of them. You’ll often find that you’re spoilt for choice with Wix.

Read our review of Wix

Other powerful features include an integrated image editor with tons of Instagram-style filters, and a raft of ecommerce templates to boot (note that Wix doesn’t levy transactions fees on your sales, either, unlike some rivals).

Wix even has a free plan, although that limits bandwidth and storage space (to 500MB) and puts branding on your site. Step up to the Unlimited plan, which is the most popular subscription, and you get 10GB of storage plus a free domain, unlimited bandwidth (as the name suggests) alongside $75 (£50) worth of Google Ad vouchers.

Most popular Wix Unlimited plan (unlimited bandwidth, 10GB storage, £7.76/monthWix VIP plan (Professional site review, Email campaigns, £15.57/monthWix eCommerce plan (online store, 20GB storage, £10.10/monthWix Connect Domain (Wix banner ads, 1GB bandwidth, 0.5GB storage, £2.55/month

Best WordPress hosting

Tsohost

Tsohost delivers the core WordPress essentials with highly competitive pricing. So while this provider might not offer some of the bells-and-whistles you could see with rival outfits, you may not need these extras, anyway.

And you’ll definitely see the difference when it comes to what’s left in your pocket after forking out for your WordPress hosting. Tsohost’s most basic plan costs only £1.49 ($2.10) per month on an annual subscription. With that, you get a free domain name, Let's Encrypt SSL, unlimited bandwidth and migration for your existing website.

Read our review of Tsohost

This plan doesn’t stint on support, either, offering 24/7 customer help via a ticket and email system. There are limits, as you might expect, including 500MB of storage, and a maximum of 25,000 page views a month. But at this price, you’re still getting a great deal.

Those who want a bit more can opt for the Startup plan which gives you 15GB of storage and up to 100,000 page views (over three websites). And this still won’t break the bank at £3.16 ($4.50) per month with an annual subscription. The prices get even cheaper if you’re prepared to sign up for two years.

Check out the WordPress hosting packages from Tsohost

Best managed web hosting

HostPapa

Managed hosting can be very expensive, but the good news with HostPapa is that the firm has some relatively affordable offerings, with managed hosting included as standard on all its VPS packages.

Another commendable aspect of HostPapa is that it provides good quality, round-the-clock technical support via phone, online chat and email. What’s more, the company makes it very clear what type of tasks customer support agents can help with (from setting things up, to more complex shenanigans like security audits).

Read our review of HostPapa

HostPapa will take care of all core maintenance tasks on your behalf, including server and control panel patches and monitoring. And this doesn’t cost the Earth, with the entry-level VPS plan running to $49.99 (£35) per month – plus you get the first month for $20 (£14).

With this plan you’re given four CPU cores, 1.5GB of RAM, 50GB storage, 1TB bandwidth, along with free SSL. Beefier plans offer up to 12 cores, 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.

You can sign up for HostPapa managed hosting here

Also check out our other hosting roundups:

Best free web hostingBest cloud hosting providersBest Linux web hosting servicesBest e-commerce hostingBest dedicated server hostingBest small business web hostingBest Windows hosting servicesBest green web hostingBest business web hostingBest colocation hostingBest email hosting providersBest VPS hosting providersBest web hosting resellersBest CDN providers

The importance of good web hosting

Today, e-commerce has become a massively lucrative channel for retailers. However, the quality of the hosting services that many small businesses are using often leaves a lot to be desired. A recent report showed that one in three Britons have abandoned their online transactions because of poor website design and inefficient hosting.

Research from hosting company 1&1's '2011 Digital High Street Audit' finds worryingly low levels of consumer satisfaction with the small business websites available to them. The risk to firms from providing a bad online experience is clear – 49% of consumers believe that a bad website makes a worse impact than a business having no website at all. This conclusion has led 37% to walk-away from companies completely, in favour of using a competitor. An additional 9% of Britons have found themselves reducing their spend with small companies as a direct result of being deterred by a poor company website.

Oliver Mauss, CEO, 1&1 Internet said: "Research shows that keeping an ugly or badly functioning website online can comprise a risk to sales revenue. Consumers have ever higher expectations, and it is essential that every company website inspires confidence. Businesses that invest carefully in their web experience will see higher levels of customer spend, retention and referral".

Choosing the right server to host your website

The hosting services your business can choose from will usually mean making a decision whether a shared, dedicated or cloud based server is right for your business. Very small businesses will usually opt for a shared or managed service as these are sometimes called. Costs are low, but your business will be sharing its server with several other enterprises.

"Businesses that invest carefully in their web experience will see higher levels of customer spend, retention and referral". Oliver Mauss, CEO, 1&1 Internet

A dedicated server as its name suggests is just one server reserved for your business. Dedicated servers are not as expensive as they once were and can make economic sense if you want your business to have its own server platform and not have to worry about other businesses on a shared server impacting your online business if they have problems.

It is important to look closely at the service level (SLA) that will be attached to your dedicated server. Look for any additional costs such as maintenance, or other 'extras' that are not covered in the rental cost. And lastly, try and buy server space that you can expand into. You don't want to find after a few months that you have outgrown your server and need to move to a new one.

Lastly as the cloud has made a major impact right across the business environment, business website hosting has also been touched by the cloud and now offers an alternative to the traditional hosting methods. The power of cloud hosting is the flexibility it offers. In effect your business can buy just the space and hosting services it needs now and expand at anytime with no disruption to business.

Abby Hardoon, Founder and MD of second generation web hosting company Daily.co.uk says: "Hosting is very much a horses for courses thing - it's a question of getting the best and most appropriate solution that you can afford. There's no need to hamstring yourself financially, though. If you're just starting out or you're a relatively small business and you know your way around a server, you might like to consider a Virtual Private Server (VPS), for example - they provide the flexibility of a dedicated server but at a reduced cost.

Your business hosting checklist

There's more to choosing a web host than just choosing the right server, you should also consider other parts of the service including the domain name. Business host PEER 1 Hosting offered this advice when choosing a hosting service for your business:

1. Get the right domain name host

A search for 'domain name registrations' on Google generates a number of different companies offering this service. Always read the small print on any domain name registration to ensure it is not going to be sold from under your feet in a year, once your website is established, or that the price isn't going to suddenly go up. If you have a very common name or are in a competitive market then it is worth considering buying the other domain name extensions (.co.uk, .com, .net etc) and pointing them to your website.

2. Do you host with your web designers or a third-party?

Once you have your website built you then have to find a home for your data to be hosted. Many web design companies offer this as part of their service, however this locks your online business into one company. Choosing a separate web host gives you more control and means that you are dealing with the web host directly instead of through a third party. This can come in handy if you anticipate spikes of traffic, perhaps as a result of a marketing campaign, and you need the host to ensure your site does not collapse under this extra pressure.

3. Read the contract small print

Many hosting providers will give you an all-in fee for set-up, hardware, operating system, support and bandwidth. This may seem like an easy option but the problem with these deals is you can't see exactly where your money is going, and so can't see if you're paying for things you don't need. The best way to ensure you're not taken for a ride is to ask for a breakdown of services and individual quotes for support, bandwidth, additional hardware etc. It's the only way to know what's being delivered, what isn't, and what is surplus to requirements.

Often overlooked the hosting services you buy for your online business are vital to get right. Consumers that have become highly critical of the online stores they buy from want to see solid websites that perform efficiently and are available on demand. The right hosting service can ensure your business becomes a destination site in its sector that your customers are sure to shout about right across their social networks.

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Dell’s new 2-in-1 is the world’s smallest 15-inch mobile workstation

Dell has announced a new notebook which the firm is claiming is the world’s smallest 15-inch 2-in-1 mobile workstation, alongside a number of other business-targeted laptops from the Precision and Latitude ranges.

The Precision 5530 2-in-1 has a 360-degree hinge and comes with stylus support, not to mention a rather nifty InfinityEdge 4K display. That touch display supports 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity for Dell’s Premium Pen, with promises of low latency meaning that the sketching-on-the-screen experience is as close to scribbling on paper as is possible.

The 5530 is powered by Intel’s 8th-gen processors (up to Core i7) with integrated Radeon Vega graphics, and has a new ‘MagLev’ keyboard that’s super-thin to help slim the device down overall.

Dell is also launching a standard (non-convertible) Dell Precision 5530 with a 4K screen that boasts improved contrast ratios and IGZO 4 display options. This notebook can be specified with up to an Nvidia Quadro P2000, up to 32GB of 2666MHz system RAM, and up to 4TB of SSD storage.

Then there’s the Dell Precision 3530 which also runs with Intel’s 8th-gen CPUs or next-gen Xeon processors, and an Nvidia Quadro P600 on the graphics front. It delivers this power at a ‘price comparable to a PC’ according to Dell, although the exact pricing hasn’t been confirmed yet (and that’s the case with all these machines).

Ready for VR

And finally in the Precision range, we have the new Dell Precision 7730 and 7530, which are billed as ‘ready for VR’ mobile workstations.

These again run with either 8th-gen Intel CPUs or Xeon processors, AMD Radeon WX or Nvidia Quadro graphics, and the potential to specify a whopping 128GB of 3200MHz system memory. The 15-inch Precision 7530 will also let you specify up to 6TB of PCIe SSD storage.

Finally, Dell introduced a pair of new Latitude laptops: the Latitude 5491 and 5591 which have been slimmed down to shrink their footprint by 30% over the last three generations.

These notebooks offer up to 19 hours of battery life and have 8th-gen Intel Core vPro CPUs with Nvidia graphics and up to 32GB of system memory.

All these notebooks should be available from Dell on May 22, except for the Precision 5530 2-in-1 which won’t arrive until late August. As mentioned, pricing details haven’t been revealed as yet, although we should hear something before these laptops are launched.

We’ve picked out the best business laptops of 2018 

more info...

Best free iPad apps 2018: the top titles we've tried

Free apps sometimes have a bad reputation, but many are gems that are so good you won’t believe they’re free. We’ve scoured the App Store to find the very best, and sorted them into handy categories, which you can find on the following pages.

On this page you'll find the app of the week - our top new selection to try out, and check back every seven days where you'll find a new option to test. After that, it's the best entertainment apps (surely the best reason to own an iPad...) and a variety of categories on the following pages to tickle your fancy.

Free app of the week: Lego Creator Islands

Lego Creator Islands is for fans of the popular construction toy when there are no plastic bricks close at hand. It starts you off with a little island, on which you build a house. Construction is simple: tap piles of bricks and they magically combine into pieces of a finished Lego set, which you drag into place.

Rinse and repeat a few times and your kid will beam as they watch their island increasingly come alive, populated with Lego minifigs and bounding Lego animals, and dotted with buildings, trees and vehicles.

The experience is, admittedly, not that deep, and you can see most of what it has to offer in an hour or so. But it’s always fun to return to, and certainly beats treading on a Lego brick while barefoot.

The best free entertainment apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether shopping, coloring, reading, watching TV or using Twitter.

Letterboxd

Letterboxd is an iPad take on a social network for film lovers. Sign up, and you can do all the usual following friends and bellyaching, only here you’re complaining about whether Blade Runner 2049 is 2049 times worse than the original, and who’s the best James Bond. If that sounds awful but you’re a film lover, Letterboxd has another use: the ability to log everything you’ve ever watched.

You can quickly assign ratings and ‘likes’ to your personal favorites, which are subsequently displayed as a grid of artwork that can be sorted and filtered. Beyond that, you can add tags, a review, and the date when you last watched the film. On the iPad’s large display, the entire app looks great – not least when you start checking out trailers of those films you’re keen to see.

Attenborough Story of life

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

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

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

Chunky Comic Reader

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

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

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

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

eBay

eBay provides access to a colossal online marketplace. Anyone can sell, and so you’ll find huge brands mingling with individuals attempting to offload the entire contents of their basements and attics.

Something of a design playground, the iPad app is regularly reworked; but whatever eBay’s designers come up with, a large touchscreen device proves to be the best way to search. You can quickly drill down into categories, and explore individual listings, swiping between photos.

If you need to keep track of things, the app offers automated notifications, and can flag searches, making it easy to see whenever new matching listings appear. And if you want to sell yourself, you can do that in-app, with eBay providing shortcuts to get your listing started (through barcode scanning or matching your item to publicly available information about it).

Fingerpaint Magic

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

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

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

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

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

Instapaper

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

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

Melodist

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

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

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

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

Notes on Blindness VR

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

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

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

Pigment

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.

Sandbox

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

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

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

Twitterrific

The official Twitter client may get the social network’s new toys first, but Twitterrific is a better bet for the more discerning Twitter user. It has a beautifully designed interface that's a delight to use, helpfully merging mentions and messages into a unified timeline, saving you mucking about switching tabs.

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

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

WWF Together

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

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

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

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

YouTube

YouTube is the best way to watch YouTube videos on your iPad. On the dynamic Home tab, you can quickly get at interesting stuff. It includes channels you subscribe to, and videos you didn’t yet finish watching; but also, it makes recommendations based on your viewing habits. The more you watch, the better they get.

On selecting something to watch, the video itself sits at the top-left of the screen, allowing you to scroll through comments other viewers have left, and peruse an up-next feed. There’s also a full-screen view for a more immersive experience.

Fittingly, for a service seemingly attempting to usurp traditional television, the YouTube app also provides access to content you’ve bought on Google Play. And with AirPlay and Chromecast support, getting what you’re watching to an actual telly is a cinch, too.

Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!

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

Our favorite free iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, graphic design and animation.

Artomaton - The Motion Painter

Artomaton - The Motion Painter is a little like Prisma, in that it uses AI to transform photos into something that looks like it was painted or sketched. However, this isn’t a single-tap filter app; Artomaton wants to afford you at least some control over your creations.

To start with, you paint in the natural media effects to the degree you’re happy with. Do so lightly and you get the subtlest of sketches; cover every inch of the canvas and you end up with a more complete piece of art. Beyond that, there are plenty of settings to fiddle with.

The resulting images aren’t always entirely convincing in terms of realism, but they always look good. And although many materials are locked behind IAP, you get plenty for free.

Adobe Illustrator Draw

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

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

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

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

Adobe Photoshop Sketch

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

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

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

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

Autodesk SketchBook

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

Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll.

The core app is free, but it will cost you $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 to unlock the pro features.

Brushes Redux

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

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

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

Canva

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

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

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

Pixel art editor - Dottable

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

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

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

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

Flickr

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

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

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

Folioscope

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

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

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

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

MediBang Paint

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

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

PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator

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

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

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

Quark DesignPad

Quark DesignPad scratches an itch if you need to get started on some layouts while on the go with your iPad – or just fancy doing the same away from the glowing screen of your Mac or PC.

This isn’t a full-fledged desktop publishing app, note. Instead, it’s about creating frameworks for page designs – wireframes that show the placement of headings, images, columns, and boxes. You can work pages up from scratch, or use one of the pre-defined layouts. With its grids, pop-up menus, and a little nudge ‘joystick’, the interface proves to be flexible and efficient.

Output options, however, are initially limited. You can save flat images to Photos, but if you want PDFs or to print via AirPrint, you’ll need to go pro ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99).

Seedling Comic Studio

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

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

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

Tayasui Sketches 

Tayasui Sketches is a drawing tool, designed to be realistic, versatile, and usable. And although various IAPs lurk for the full toolset (which includes a ruler, extra layers, and pressure sensitivity), you get an awful lot for free.

You start by selecting a paper type, or use an imported photo as the basis for your masterpiece. Then it’s time to get cracking with the pens and brushes. Although it’s perhaps a stretch to call them totally realistic, they all offer pleasing results. The watercolor brush in particular is lovely, bleeding into the paper and leaving splats on the canvas when you tap the screen.

In fact, the app as a whole is very pleasant to use, offering the right balance between trying to help and getting out of your way when you’re busy painting. And as a final neat touch, if you’re stuck for inspiration there are some coloring book pages thrown in for free.

The best free education apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for learning new things – from coding to astronomy.

JigSpace

JigSpace uses augmented reality (AR) to educate, by way of 3D models you can fiddle about with before your very eyes. Although the range isn’t exactly in Wikipedia territory, you get quite the variety of ‘jigs’ for free. There’s the anatomy of a trebuchet, a floating eye to fiddle around with, a manual car’s transmission, and many more.

JigSpace rapidly finds a flat surface onto which your object is projected. You can then pinch to resize it, or spin it with a swipe. Objects aren’t static either – many animate, and are gradually disassembled across a series of slides. For example, an alarm clock opens to show its gears and mechanisms – and because this is AR, you can check everything out from any angle.

Khan Academy

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

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

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

Py

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

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

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

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

SkyView Free

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

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

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

Swift Playgrounds

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

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

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

Wikipedia

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

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

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

Yousician

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

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

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

TED

TED is a video app designed to feed your curiosity, by watching smart people talk about all kinds of subjects.

Although the organization’s name stands for ‘Technology, Entertainment, Design’, it’s fundamentally interested in ideas. Example talks we watched during testing included a piece about screen time for kids (and why related fears are not true), not suffering in silence from depression, and mind-blowing magnified portraits of insects. What we’re saying is: this app has range.

It also has smarts. Along with a standard search, you can have the app ‘surprise you’ with something courageous, beautiful, or fascinating, and revisit favorites by delving into your watch history and liked talks, which sync across devices.

TED’s perhaps not an app you’ll open daily, but it’s a breath of fresh air when you desire brain food rather than typical telly.

The best free health, food and exercise apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for cooking, relaxing and keeping fit.

Breathe+

Many of us are caught in high-stress environments for much of our lives, and electronic gadgets often do little to help. Apple has recognized this on Apple Watch, which offers a breathing visualization tool. But Breathe+ brings similar functionality to your iPad.

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

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

Kitchen Stories

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

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

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

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

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

TaoMix 2

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

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

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

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

White Noise+

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

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

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

7 Minute Workout

7 Minute Workout is designed to give you a complete fitness workout in just seven minutes. It’s far from alone on the App Store, but we like this take because it’s straightforward – and also properly free (rather than being riddled with IAP).

The exercise screens are basic, but bold. It’s always obvious where you are in a routine, and if you’re unsure about the next step, you can tap a video playback button to view a demonstration.

Beyond the exercises, the app enables you to track your weight and set the gap between exercises, which are regularly switched during the routine. The only downside is not being able to block specific exercises if, for example, you don’t have access to a chair, or cannot perform them due to accessibility reasons.

Epicurious

Epicurious is a massive recipe book for iPad. It provides access to over 35,000 recipes, and offers a magazine-like presentation. The entry screen is awash with new recipes with vibrant photography; you can quickly flick between that and dedicated pages for themed recipes and new videos.

The app’s search is excellent. You can select by meal type, and filter available recipes by selecting specific ingredients, cuisine types, and dietary issues (such as low-fat and wheat-free). Flicking back and forth between filters and results can irk, but the app at least does so quickly and efficiently.

The actual recipe pages are a touch basic – there’s no hand-holding like the step-by-step photos you get in Kitchen Stories. Still, if confident in your abilities, it’s a great app to broaden your culinary horizons.

The best free kids apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps, learning tools, and games for toddlers and children.

Sago Mini Friends

Sago Mini Friends is a sweet-natured collection of adorable mini-games, ideal for young children. After selecting a character to play, you visit a neighborhood of colorful houses. Knock on a door and you’ll be invited inside for a playdate.

The activities are varied and smartly designed. There’s a birthday party, where gifts are gleefully unwrapped, and a birdhouse to fix by hammering in nails. Our favorite, though, is a cleverly conceived snack time that finds two friends sitting side-by-side. Feed one and the other looks a bit glum, which encourages the young player to learn to share.

Entirely lacking IAP and advertising, Sago Mini Friends is a no-brainer for any parent who wants a safe, free, fun, educational app for their youngster to spend a bit of quality time with.

LEGO AR-Studio

LEGO AR-Studio is the app we first thought of when Apple started banging on about augmented reality. After all, who wouldn’t want a bunch of virtual Lego bricks to play with, which could magically integrate with the real world?

Well, it turns out Lego wouldn’t, because that’s not what this app offers. Instead, you get a small selection of AR Lego kits, which you can mess about with, take videos of, and thereby try to trick your friends into wondering why their own Lego doesn’t zoom about the place on remote control.

It’s admittedly a bit shallow, and feels a touch proof-of-concept. But here’s hoping this is just the app equivalent of a Lego baseplate on which to build, rather than a completed set.

Zen Studio

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

You start off with a grid of triangles and a column of colored paints. Tap a paint to choose your color and then tap individual triangles or drag across the grid to start drawing. Every gesture you make is accompanied by musical notes that play over an ambient background soundtrack.

Bar the atmosphere being knocked a touch by a loud squelch noise whenever a new paint tube is selected, the mix of drawing tool and musical instrument is intoxicating. When you're done, your picture can be squirted to the Photos app, ready for sharing with the world.

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

Doctor Who: Comic Creator

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

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

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

Lego Life

Lego Life is a social network for kids whose lives revolve around plastic bricks. Once you’re signed up, you explore feeds and follow themes, to become a better builder, or just see what’s current in the world of Lego.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a nod towards advertising of a kind, in new product videos being liberally sprinkled about. But mostly, this is an app about inspiration. You’re regularly offered building challenges and knowledge tests; during lazy days, you can slap stickers all over a virtual Lego kit, or build a mini-figure for your profile.

Given that it’ll mostly be kids using the app, it’s worth noting usernames are anonymized. You can’t type your own, and instead select from semi-random word lists. EmpressSensibleMotorbike, meet ElderSupersonicJelly!

Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby

Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby is a two-part game designed for children as young as six months old.

In Level 1, your youngling – now armed with a worryingly expensive piece of technology – can tilt and tap the screen to make shapes appear and bounce around. But Level 2 ramps things up considerably.

“Let’s put on a show,” chirps the app as the five shapes wiggle and jig about on the screen, lurking above a colorful keyboard. And you know what’s next: maddeningly jaunty earworms, augmented by a deliriously happy baby smacking the huge piano keys.

Your slow descent into madness will be worth it for the smile on their little face.

Toca Tailor Fairy Tales

Toca Tailor Fairy Tales is a dressing up app. You choose from a male or female customer, and then set about giving them a new and exciting outfit.

As with other Toca Boca fare, this is a tactile, immediate app. Tap a garment to adjust its type; drag and you’ll change its length. Accessories can be added from an expanding box, if you decide your appreciative on-screen ‘manakin’ needs a trendy hat.

The best bit, though, is the materials section. For each part of the garment, you can drag and drop materials onto it. This isn’t a question of merely recoloring either – you can pinch/rotate to make all kinds of crazy patterns, and even import photos or snap a texture using the iPad’s camera. Great stuff for tiny wannabe fashion designers.

The best free music and audio apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for listening to podcasts, making music or being a virtual DJ.

Novation Launchpad

Novation Launchpad is about remixing electronic music using a grid of loops. For the beginner, it’s a friendly, intuitive introduction to music-making. You load a genre and just tap away, safe in the knowledge everything will always sound great. You can even record live mixes and share them with friends.

There’s depth to Novation Launchpad as well – effects to apply, filters to experiment with, and the option to mix and match pad sounds. If you’re prepared to dip into your wallet, you can take things much further, importing your own audio files and working with a larger range of effects.

On iPad, you can buy all of these things – and a MIDI sync feature – for a one-off $14.99/£14.99/$AU22.99 IAP. But even if you stick to the free version, Novation Launchpad proves to be suitably noisy fun.

Auxy Music Studio

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

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

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

Figure

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

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

Garageband

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

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

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

Groovebox

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

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

Most apps of this ilk are samples-based, and so grind to a juddering halt at this point. But Groovebox goes further, offering a keyboard for live play, and a piano roll grid for tweaking a loop’s notes – or removing them all to add your own. You can also build up entire tracks using a ‘song sections’ feature.

The only major limitation of the free version is many advanced instrument controls sit behind IAP. Still, for no outlay, Groovebox offers plenty of head-nodding entertainment.

Music Memos

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

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

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

Novation Launchpad

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

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

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

Overcast

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.

Pacemaker

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

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

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

Remixlive

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

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

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

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

Seaquence

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

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

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

Beatwave

Beatwave is a grid synthesizer/sound toy, loosely based on Yamaha’s Tenori-on. This means you tap notes by turning on the grid’s lights. When the endlessly looping playhead collides with one, you get an explosion of color, and a sound plays.

Notes towards the top of the grid are higher, and those at the bottom are lower. Some instruments use the bottom two rows for drum sounds. Most importantly, though, Beatwave is designed to always make output listenable.

It’s actually quite difficult to create anything horribly discordant, short of filling every square on the grid.

For those who fancy more depth, the app offers plenty of alternate sounds, automated morphing, and the ability to save patterns to the sidebar, which you switch between with a tap. So it’s fun whether writing songs or just playing with sound and color.

The best free office and writing apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for writing, email, spreadsheets, presentations and calculations.

Paper by FiftyThree

Paper by FiftyThree originally invited you to sketch in virtual journals, but then dispensed with sketchbooks for a board of cards you could rearrange. This latest take tries to merge the two approaches.

The best bit of Paper – the actual sketching tools – remains intact. You scribble with pens, splash watercolors on the canvas, and draw geometric shapes that neatly retain the character of your stroke.

Beyond that, the app stumbles. Text appears as notes stuck over your work when browsing – an ugly effect – and only one image can be imported to each sketch, which you can either trace over or use as a background.

Still, despite its flaws, this is still an app worth installing, simply because it feels really great to use.

Adobe Acrobat Reader

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

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

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

Adobe Scan

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

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

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

Bear

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

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

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

Dropbox

Dropbox is perhaps the most famous of cloud storage providers. For free, you get 2GB of space for your documents and photos – and more if you pay to upgrade.

In the early days of iPad, Apple wanted to hide the file system away, and Dropbox – which was quickly supported by a great many apps – became a kind of surrogate. And even in these days of iCloud Drive, it’s very much worth installing.

The main Dropbox app is smart and straightforward, with speedy previews, the means to save content offline, passcode lock functionality, and optional automated backup of your iPad photos.

As of iOS 11, Dropbox can integrate directly into the Files app, too. Given Dropbox’s cross-device and cross-platform nature, this makes it worth grabbing even if you only use it rarely. Chances are, though, you’ll use it a whole lot more often.

There are other decent cloud storage apps too, such as Google Drive, but even if you already have that it’s worth grabbing Dropbox for a little extra space.

Gmail

Gmail brings Google’s email service to your iPad. Of course, Apple’s own Mail app does this to some extent – and supports sending and receiving from Gmail addresses. But the Gmail app provides a fuller experience.

One of the most vital is the ability to undo a send. You have to be quick, but it’s hugely useful to stop something being sent if you realize you’ve made an error, or forgotten to add an attachment.

Elsewhere, the app’s also in tune with Google’s way of doing things, and so you get profile pictures of people you’re conversing with, integration with Google Calendar, and excellent search capabilities.

Another possible reason to install: as a means to keep business and leisure fully separate, if you use Apple’s Mail for work, and Gmail for everything else.

LiquidText

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

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

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

Microsoft Excel

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

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

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

Microsoft Word

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.

Numbers

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

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

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

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

Paper

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

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

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

PCalc Lite

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

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

The best free photo and video editing apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for editing photos, working with filters, adding text to photos and editing video.

Plotaverse

Plotaverse is an image editor and social network very much of the opinion that photographs are a bit rubbish unless they move.

The meat of the app is Plotagraph+, which provides tools for animating your pics. The process is simple: mask parts you want to remain static, and then drag arrows to denote movement. Plotagraph+ then does its thing, resulting in an endlessly looping animation.

Naturally, there are limitations. The system tends to work well with flowing subjects (such as water or clouds) and geometric patterns. Still, you can create amazing videos with a minimum of effort.

The social networking bit is less impressive, as are cheesy effects overlays (free and paid) that are available for download. But in bringing a touch of Harry Potter to even the most mundane of snaps, Plotaverse feels like a little piece of magic on your iPad.

Prisma

Prisma invites you to be an artist – albeit an incredibly lazy artist who’s not against a touch of stylistic plagiarism. There’s no actual drawing or painting here – you instead load a photo (or take one using the app) and tap an effect to apply it. This effect can be strengthened or weakened by swiping across the canvas.

Rather than aping cameras and film types, Prisma is interested in traditional art – everything from classical to manga is fair game. You’ll need an internet connection to download and apply effects, but it doesn’t take long and you can remove any duds if your library starts to become cluttered.

You’re not going to turn that shot of your lunch into a forgotten Kandinsky with Prisma, but the app is capable of gorgeous painterly results. High-res output is locked behind an $1.99/£1.79/AU$2.99 monthly subscription, but SD output is fine for posting online.

Clips

Clips is a video editor designed for people who don’t want to spend a great deal of time editing – or even shooting. Unlike Apple’s iMovie, Clips is intended for impulsive shoots, and super-fast clip arrangement – a video editor for the social media generation.

On iPad, you might question its relevance. After all, you’re not going to whip out an iPad Pro to quickly shoot someone larking about on a skateboard. But the iPad’s larger screen is superb for editing, making it easy to rearrange clips on the timeline and get a proper eye for the many included filters.

There’s more lurking here too, including automatic animated subtitles, posters with customizable text and iCloud sync. Clips won’t make you a Hollywood legend, but it might just propel you towards Instagram stardom.

Photoshop Fix

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

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

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

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

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

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

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

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

Little Moments

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

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

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

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

MuseCam

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

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

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

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

Photofy

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

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

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

Pic Collage

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

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

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

Pixify

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

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

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

Quik

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

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

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

Snapseed

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.

Splice

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

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

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

Trigraphy

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

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

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

The best free productivity apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for being more productive with cloud storage, timers, iPad keyboards, automation and more.

1Password

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).

Cheatsheet

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

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

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

Evernote

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

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

Find My iPhone

Find my iPhone isn’t well named, because it’s really ‘find all my devices that are signed up to the service’. And in the case of mobile devices, you really should sign them up.

The app itself gives you a list of devices and a map, showing where each device was most recently located. Lost something in your home? Select it, tap Actions, and have it make a noise, for easier retrieval. Lost something elsewhere? Set it to Lost mode, and hope a good Samaritan will notice the custom message/phone number. (You can also erase the device remotely.)

As an added ‘bonus’, Find my iPhone’s also a sobering reminder of how much Apple kit you own, if you see a dozen little bubbles nestled around your house on the map.

Firefox Focus

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

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

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

MultiTimer

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

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

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

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

Notebook

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

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

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

Slack

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

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

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

Slash Keyboard

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

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

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

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

Thoughts

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

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

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

TunnelBear

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

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

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

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

Workflow

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

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

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

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

The best free travel and weather apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for planning a holiday, currency conversion, weather forecasts and mapping.

Google Earth

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

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

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

Google Maps

Google Maps is an app that might seem an odd fit for an iPad, but we’d argue it’s an essential install. First and foremost, it’s much better than Apple’s Maps for figuring out journeys: Google Maps can more easily find points of interest, and ably deals with public transport information.

Local areas can be explored in terms of amenities (food, drink, and sometimes entertainment), and in a more direct sense, with the road-level Street View. The latter is a great way to familiarize yourself with a place before you visit.

If you always have your iPad on you, Google Maps can save maps for offline use as well, so you don’t even need an internet connection to use it. Alternatively, sign up for a Google account, and the searches you make will be synced with the app on your iPhone.

Momondo

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

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

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

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

Townske

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

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

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

Weather Underground

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

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

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

XE Currency

XE Currency is a currency converter that’s far from the prettiest of its kind – but it is useful and has all the right features.

Initially, it lists a few currencies, with the base one at the top. Tap an item in the list to select it as the new base currency; you can also adjust the base figure – tap on the number, and then enter something new in the calculator. The list of currencies can be changed at any point, and an item’s position adjusted by tap-holding and dragging it.

Beyond that, you can analyze rates, by punching in an alternate exchange rate, view graphs that outline rates for a pair of currencies over the past decade, and sign up to free rate alerts, which notify you when specific points are hit.

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Free Games with Prime: the free PC games on Twitch Prime in May 2018

These days it seems like Amazon is really trying to add value to its Prime membership program. Faster, cheaper deliveries, video streaming, music streaming and now free games. Yes, that’s right. Free games. 

If you're an Amazon Prime member you've probably heard about this, but if you set up an account on the company’s game streaming service, Twitch, you can link it to your Amazon Prime account to become a Twitch Prime member (or you can sign up for Twitch Prime on its own). There are a few benefits to being a Twitch Prime member, including free in-game items and no ads, but the most recent and best benefit is five free PC games each and every month, starting from March 2018.

This is a great way to try out some games you’ve maybe seen streamed but haven’t had the chance to buy for yourself, totally free. Even if you’re not planning to play them straight away, it’s worth claiming them in the timeframe they’re available because as long as you have your Prime account they’ll be yours to play. Oh, and you'll need the Twitch desktop app too.

Twitch has offered free games before to Prime members but this is the first time it’s been formalized into a monthly event so we’ve decided to put together this one-stop shop where you’ll be able to see the games you can get your hands on right now, as well as see the titles that have been featured in previous months. That way you’ll know whether to hold out for it to appear.

So, without any further ado, here are the free games with Prime for May 2018. And make sure you check back - we'll be updating every month.

May 2018

All available from May 1 until May 31

Psychonauts

Get trippy in this classic action platformer from the acclaimed Double Fine studio.  This game follows the story of a young psychic called Razputin who's desperate to lend his skills to the elite group of secret agents known as the Psychonauts. Breaking into their secret facility he discovers trouble afoot and it's up to him to save the Psychonauts using his psychic powers. 

Clustertruck

Fantastic name aside, Clustertruck is a platformer set on a highway where players must leap and bound across the tops of unpredictable speeding trucks and never touch the floor. As the game goes on things get even tougher when obstacles are thrown in. 

Gone Home

Gone Home is a critically acclaimed narratively-driven adventure that shouldn't be missed. Coming home after a year abroad to find your family home abandoned and your family no where to be found, you must explore your home, leaving no drawer unopened to look for clues and unravel the mystery.

Titan Souls

Looking for a thrilling action puzzler with fluid and satisfying combat? Try Titan Souls where you take up the role of a lone hero armed with a single arrow exploring the world of the Titans that lies between our world and that beyond it. 

High Hell

High Hell is a wild and fast first-person action shooter and if that's not enough to convince you maybe the idea of saving sacrificial goats, razing drug labs and blasting your way through some truly absurd levels will. 

I, Hope

I, Hope is a visually stunning game with a poignant story that explores cancer in childhood while managing to be uplifting and encouraging.

April 2018

All available until April 30

Tales from the Borderlands

Tales from the Borderlands is probably the stand out title from this month's offering and it still stands as one of the best titles Telltale Games has produced. Based on the Borderlands series, it takes players on an episodic narrative adventure. The comicbook style visuals are just right and the writing and characters hit the comedy buttons just right.

Tokyo 42

Developed by SMAC Games, Tokyo 42 is an isometric open-world shooter - think Monument Valley with guns. The game sends you into a dark underworld of assassins in a futuristic Tokyo. Combining puzzles, stealth, shooting skills and undeniable visual style, Tokyo 42 is an enjoyable and challenging game.  You have the option to play through a single-player story mode or engage in online multiplayer modes so you won't be short of things to do. 

Steamworld Dig 2

Kingsway

Kingsway is a clever indie title that will challenge you and make you laugh all at once. One for RPG fans, this game has you manoeuvre an operating system to manage your adventure. Enemies take the form of pop ups, your inventory will be distributed across file folders, quests are emails and death is permanent. It's an entirely new way to play the classic RPG.  

Steamworld Dig 2

Another excellent free addition. Steamworld Dig 2 is a 2D platformer set in a steampunk Wild West which sees you mine underground for treasure and secrets while avoiding enemies and traps. It's better than the original and you don't hear that often.

Dub Wars

You could probably guess from the name, but Dub Wars is a music game which combines top-down shooting mechanics with electronic dance music. Using music as your weapon, you have to fire to the rhythm of each song and survive with the skill of your ears and sense of timing. 

March 2018

Available from March 15 to March 31

Superhot

Superhot is an indie first-person shooter that received a great deal of critical acclaim for good reason. Its interesting twist on the genre sees time stop when the player stops moving which makes shootouts a whole lot more interesting.

Oxenfree 

Oxenfree is a critically acclaimed supernatural thriller which follows a group of friends through a coming-of-age story on an island with a ghostly mystery. This 2.5D adventure has an addictive story, wonderful characters and an atmosphere that feels very Stranger Things.

Shadow Tactics 

If you like tactical stealth games then you’re probably going to like Shadow Tactics. Set in the Edo period in Japan, this game has you take control of a team of five deadly specialists who must help a new Shogun enforce peace. Each member of the team has their own skill and it’s up to you to make them work together well in order to successfully infiltrate areas and defeat enemies.

Shadow Tactics is set in Japan during the Edo period

Mr. Shifty 

Mr Shifty is a top-down action game that sees your take control of a teleporting hero. It’s up to you how to use Mr Shifty’s skills in order to defeat his enemies but you’ll need to be smart about and use a mix of stealth and all-out action to win.

Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation

Do you like tabletop board games like Dungeons and Dragons? Then you might want to take a look at Tales from Candlekeep. Inspired by these roleplaying adventures, this game is turn-based dungeon-crawler in which you must take up the role of an adventurer fighting through the dangerous labyrinths and jungles of the peninsula of Chult in order to reverse a deadly curse. 

Available from March 6 to April 3

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Best Xiaomi Mi 6X features: Is this what the Mi A2 will look like?

Xiaomi has announced the long-awaited Mi 6X smartphone in China on Wednesday. It is the successor to the Mi 5X aka Mi A1 in India.

With the Mi 6X, Xiaomi has differentiated itself from the Redmi series without increasing the price of the phone. It has a different design and form factor with a smaller battery, a different camera and the latest version of Android.

In China, the Mi 6X has three RAM variants— 4GB/32GB, 4GB/64GB and 6GB/128GB. Price starts at CNY 1,599 (approx. Rs. 16,900) for the base variant, while the 4GB RAM and 64GB storage option costs CNY 1,799 (approx. Rs. 19,000). The high-end variant has a CNY 1,999 (around Rs. 21,000) price tag. It will go on sale in China starting 10am local time on Friday, April 27.

The Mi 6X is made for China, but the phone may make it to India with some changes as the successor to the Mi A1. At most, we can expect the Android One certification, as it was very well-received by Indian users. 

Until then, lets take a look at the best features of the Mi 6X.

AI powered dual-camera 

One of the major upgrades this time is the camera, now it has AI integration to enhance photo reproduction quality. The camera looks solid for low-light pictures on paper, it has a 20MP Sony IMX376 sensor with f/1.75 aperture and fixed focal length. This means the Mi 6X/A2 focuses on selfies too. 

The back of the phone has a 12MP primary camera with a Sony IMX486 sensor of f/1.75 aperture and 1.25-micron pixel size. The secondary camera is exactly the same as the front camera sensor but with 1-micron pixel size.

While the setup seems promising on paper, it is further backed by AI scene recognition for enhancing colours, and to reproduce natural looking portrait pictures. To recall, the Mi A1 was rated the best sub 15K smartphone camera by us, and we expect the same with this one.

Up-to-date chipset

The Mi 6X runs Qualcomm's Snapdragon 660 oct-core chipset (4x2.2GHz Kyro 260 cores + 4x1.8GHz Kyro 260 cores) at its heart. It’s the same chipset that powers the recently launched Nokia 7 plus and has done really well in our tests. On the basis of our experience with the Nokia 7 plus, the 6GB RAM variant of the phone is likely to offer smooth performance.

Sleek design

The Mi 6X retains the design language of its predecessor, but there have been a few additions on top. Like the Redmi Note 5 Pro and new Mi Mix 2S, the Mi 6X also has a vertical iPhone X-like dual-camera design.

At 7.3mm the Mi 6X looks sleek and shares its resemblance with the Mi A1 from the back. But the front has seen major changes, the 5.5-inch 16:9 display has been upgraded to a new 18:9 FHD+ display measuring 5.99-inches. It results in minimal bezels and more screen space. 

Connectivity and sensors

It is priced affordably, but the Mi 6X doesn’t compromise on connectivity options and sensors. It has all the basic connectivity options like 4G LTE, dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, Miracast, Bluetooth 5.0, IR emitter and a USB Type-C port. 

To recall, the Mi A1 was the only phone under this price range to have a USB Type-C port, while phones like Redmi Note 5 Pro, Zenfone Max Pro M1 and Honor 9 Lite still use a microUSB port. 

The phone, aside the complete set of connectivity options, packs all the basic sensors too. It has accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gyroscope, proximity sensor and fingerprint sensor.

Latest software

Unlike the Redmi Note phones from Xiaomi, the Mi 6X ships with Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. The Chinese variant will have a MIUI 9.5 skin atop. As already mentioned, if it debuts in India, it’s most likely going to run stock Android.

What’s more?

The smartphone has a 3010mAh battery, with Quick Charge 3.0 support. Notably, the 3.5mm jack is absent, but we assume the company will provide a converter in the box. Still, it might be a deal breaker for some.

It has face unlock and also has AI-powered translation, that can convert text from Chinese languages to English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Indian languages.

Camera Comparison: Honor 9 Lite vs Xiaomi Mi A1

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Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery finally lets you join the wizarding world without Harry

Over the past twenty years, JK Rowling has convinced several generations that despite the prejudices, lack of electricity and unnervingly easy murder methods, the wizarding world and Hogwarts are vastly preferable to our own world. It seems incredible, then, that after all this time we’re only just getting a Harry Potter RPG.

Created by Jam City for iOS and Android, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the first Harry Potter game that will allow fans to create their very own character and attend Hogwarts without Harry. We had the chance to go hands-on with the game and ask its developers a few questions before its launch so steel yourself, because we’re about to lay some Hermione-like knowledge on you.

Set two years after Voldemort’s attack on Harry and his parents, Hogwarts Mystery drops you into a period of relative peace in the wizarding world. There's still suspicion and fear surrounding dark magic, but with Voldemort gone we imagine there are probably far fewer mysterious deaths to contend with.

You’re attending school at the same time as characters such as Charlie Weasley and Nymphadora Tonks (you’ll even spot them during your Sorting Ceremony thanks to their distinctive hair colors). 

It's hard to miss Tonks

Time turning

Of course, Harry Potter is not patient zero when it comes to childhood angst and adventurous plots. Your own character has a story and problems to face in their time at Hogwarts. You take up the role of a student whose older brother was obsessed with finding cursed vaults under Hogwarts, expelled from the school and ran away from home never to be seen again. Scandalous, right? 

It’s not made entirely clear what happened that lead to your brother’s expulsion – let's face it, it's rare that a cursed vault obsession is going to end well – but the widely held belief is that he was a supporter of Voldemort and fled to join him after his defeat at Godric’s Hollow. 

The game’s main narrative, then, revolves around you unravelling the mystery behind your brother’s disappearance and trying to shake yourself free from his negative reputation to be seen as your own person. It's not quite the 'raised for eventual self-sacrifice' path Harry trod but we'll take it. 

Like any RPG worth its wand, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery starts things off by allowing you to create your character. You can select your sex, skin tone, eye and hair color, hair style, and choose between a range of preset eye, nose, eyebrow and face shapes. You can also name yourself anything you like. Naturally we used our own name because we deserve to see ourselves in the wizarding world, thank you very much.

Put yourself in the wizarding world

After this you’re immediately dropped into Diagon Alley to pick up your things for school. It doesn't go into the nitty gritty of collecting your gold from Gringotts or getting that pewter standard size 2 cauldron, but you will purchase your books from Flourish and Blotts, your wand from Ollivanders and you’ll even meet your first friend.

Rather than being talked at incessantly in Hogwarts Mystery, you’ll be given dialogue options, some of which will have a direct impact on the perception of your character and how the game’s narrative unfolds. You’ll be given an early example of this when you help your new friend decide what she should buy herself to make it known that she’s a serious witch with Head Girl prospects. Do not blame yourself for her fashion sense when she does make her purchase, she's beyond saving.

Not all instances of this feel entirely natural – for example, we attended Charms class with Professor Flitwick who essentially asked us whether we would be following the rules or causing trouble in his class. It's not often you go into a classroom in your first year at school and declare yourself as resident hell-raiser to the teacher. We're looking forward to getting a better look at more examples of the game's dialogue when we play the full thing. 

Though the majority of speech in the game is text-only, it has been confirmed that some of the actors from the Harry Potter movie universe have provided their voices for cutscenes, so anticipate the dulcet tones of actors like Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith, Zoe Wannamaker, and Warwick Davis at some point. We didn't get to hear those but we're pretty sure Maggie Smith is the Midas of the acting world so we're not worried.

The wizard chooses the house

Then it’s straight to Hogwarts where you’ll be sorted into your house. We were surprised that, unlike Pottermore, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery doesn’t present you with any kind of quiz to determine your Hogwarts house. Instead, it just asks you outright where you’d like to be placed. 

We both liked this and didn’t. There’s an element of exciting non-committal self-discovery that comes with being sorted into your house by a quiz – it’s almost like being given an identity. Saying you’ve been sorted into Ravenclaw is almost a way of telling people how you see yourself and what your priorities are without having to actually admit to deciding on them yourself. "Oh the internet told me I'm a Ravenclaw/Gryffindor/Hufflepuff/Slytherin, don't hate me because I'm smarter/braver/nicer/more ambitious than you."

Then again, in the Harry Potter universe it’s made clear that there’s an element of choice to the sorting hat’s decisions; Harry avoids Slytherin because he doesn’t want to be a Slytherin, not because he lacks Slytherin qualities after all.

Sort yourself out

When we asked the game’s developers the reason behind this decision they told us it was simply a matter of wanting to give players as much choice and agency in this world as possible. This is the Hogwarts experience that you want to have, right down to the common room you want to spend your evenings in. 

Once you’ve been sorted your first year begins. As you’d expect, Hogwarts Mystery will have you attending classes and learning spells and potions. You’ll attend charms with Flitwick, transfiguration with McGonagall, potions with Snape, flying with Madam Hooch and more besides. The game spans your seven years at school, so while your classes will be limited in the beginning, you’ll find you unlock more as you go along.

It’s in your first lessons that you’ll take real notice of the three modes of in-game currency: energy, gold coins and gem stones. You exert energy in your classes by learning new things, purchase more energy using gem stones and you can buy cosmetic items using gold coins. All of these currencies can be earned through gameplay, but you can also use your real-world money to purchase more gold coins and gem stones. 

Spending your galleons

This is where the inevitable microtransactions come in. Though Hogwarts Mystery is free to play and you don’t need to spend your real money on it at all, those unwilling to wait for their energy to build back up will be tempted to buy gem stones in order to purchase more energy, while those that want their character kitted out like Draco Malfoy will be willing to purchase some in-game gold. 

Using your energy and learning in classes is as simple as tapping the screen a few times as directed, which is more than a little underwhelming and not especially engaging. At the very least, the final stage of learning a spell involves tracing the correct wand movement with your finger on the touchscreen, which is a little more involved.

You don’t learn for the sake of learning in your Hogwarts classes – the spells and potions you pick up will be useful to you as you move through the game’s main narrative. So, when you find yourself in tight spots it’ll be up to you to remember the right spell to cast and do so correctly.  

Attend classes and spend all your energy on them. Just like real life!

Outside of the main story and your lessons, you can also take part in duelling, and form relationships with other students. We asked the developers if there would be any online elements which would allow players to interact with their real-life friends at Hogwarts and while we were told these would be introduced, it wasn’t made clear how they would be implemented. We suspect some kind of duelling scoreboard but we can’t be sure at all. 

Overall, we enjoyed our short time with Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery but we couldn’t help but wish we were finally getting a console and PC RPG rather than a mobile one. 

We did ask if there are any plans for a wider release (Nintendo Switch wouldn’t, after all, be such a far-fetched idea) but we were told that’s not going to happen. The developers said that mobile was the preferable option for them because, quite reasonably, it offers the most accessibility. It’s true that as fanbases go, Harry Potter is a wide ranging one. 

Mobile magic

Not everyone that loves Harry Potter will have the most recent games console or a good PC. They won’t all have a smartphone, either, but the likelihood is greater. You just have to look at Fortnite mobile to know that given a dedicated fanbase and good gameplay mobile games can be outrageously popular. 

That said, this is a good-looking mobile game. Characters are expressive and the world is colorful with nice attention to detail. You can’t directly control your character through the game world, instead you tap on locations to enter and interact with them. The environments are scrollable, however, so it’s possible to see a little more. 

We played the game on a tablet rather than a smartphone and we think this is the way we’d like to play it all the time. As convenient as a smartphone is, we want to enjoy this adventure on as large a screen as possible. 

Despite the fact that it’s not the in-depth Harry Potter RPG we always dreamed of, Hogwarts Mystery is certainly not a bad game. It’s great to be able to attend Hogwarts and not see it through the gaze of Harry, instead creating your own story and forging your own relationships in the house you always wanted to be in. Even better, it’s completely free. 

There's also a Harry Potter AR game in the works. Here's everything we know about Wizards Unite

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Europe's fastest 4G cities revealed

If you're looking for a place to grow your business alongside speedy 4G connections, then London may not be your best bet, new research has claimed.

A report from OpenSignal has revealed that London is falling behind many other European technology hubs when it comes to being able to provide fast and reliable 4G connectivity.

Amsterdam was ranked number one in terms of average 4G download speeds and availability of 4G networks, with Stockholm, Zurich and Tallinn also ranking highly. The Dutch capital was the only city that saw 4G download speeds of 40MBps, over twice as fast as the global average of 16.9MBps.

Connected

OpenSignal's report, which covered a 90 day period covering December 1st 2017 through February 2018, found that London didn't even come out on top as the best UK 4G city, being ranked behind Manchester when it came to average 4G download speeds and 4G availability.

"In order to grow, tech hubs need first-class connectivity with reliable 4G access and super-fast speeds," OpenSignal's Andrea Hoth said.

"In this regard, the top tech cities in Europe seem to be on the right track. But the rest of the world isn’t standing still either, and we’re seeing more and more cities emerge across North America and Asia offering all the right features of a tech hub."

"Whether it’s through various incentive schemes or partnerships, Europe’s cities will need to continue developing their 4G reach and speeds if they wish to remain among the best connected (and most attractive) tech hubs they are today."

The best business broadband deals in 2018

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Toshiba TV Catalog 2018: here’s every Toshiba TV model coming in 2018

In 2018, it’s pretty clear that Toshiba wants its TVs to be noticed for their tech as well as their affordability beside high-end manufacturers like Samsung and LG. Toshiba has now unveiled its full 2018 lineup and we’re seeing everything from big screen OLEDS to titled LEDs as well as HDR, Onkyo speakers and Alexa smart assistant support. 

2018 will see the release of a lot of TVs from Toshiba and let’s face it those model numbers aren’t exactly memory-friendly. In light of that, we’ve put together this catalog of all the Toshiba TV releases for this year so that you can peruse the entire lineup and see which set has all the features you’re looking for. 

Toshiba 2018 TV technology

Toshiba isn’t really known for pioneering any cutting edge TV technology but what it does do is bring the latest tech to the market for a more affordable and accessible price point, which we’re definitely not averse to. 

This year, Toshiba is continuing its mission to make OLED TVs affordable with its X98 series, while its entire UHD range will support Dolby Vision HDR as well as HDR10 and broadcaster standard HLG.

Across its UHD and Full HD ranges, Toshiba has also announced it’s aiming to smarten things up with Alexa voice support. This will mean that Amazon Echo and Echo Dot owners will be able to talk to their wireless speakers to control their TVs, whether that’s turning it on or off, changing channels and inputs, or adjusting volume. 

This maybe isn’t the most exciting addition for those who haven’t invested in the smart home just yet, but Amazon’s Alexa is certainly one of the more common and sensible assistants that Toshiba could have selected to support. 

Toshiba has also pushed to improve its sound in 2018, confirming that it’s collaborated with hi-fi and home cinema brand Onkyo on the design of all its speakers and subwoofers. 

The final improvement comes in the form of Toshiba’s smart TV portal. A part of the whole 2018 TV range, Toshiba promises this portal will deliver “a more user-friendly and personalized viewing experience” thanks to its integration of on-demand services, customizable menus and ‘view as you scroll’ feature. 

Toshiba 2018 TV ranges

Toshiba X98 OLED TV

X98 (Available in 55- and 65- inch models)

Want to upgrade to an OLED display? Then you need the slim-bezeled Toshiba X98 range. OLED displays are still premium in the TV market so while were not expecting these to come in at under £1000, it’s likely they’ll be very competitively priced compared to the competition. 

Thanks to the fact that they don’t have a backlight, these 4K HDR TVs are able to dim or switch off their pixels to display deeper blacks and more striking color contrasts. And with each pixel’s light and color individually regulated you can be assured of more realistic on-screen colors. 

Like the 75-inch U68 model, both of the X 98 TVs will have a wider color gamut, displaying up to 1024 shades per color and reproducing 99% of the DCI-P3 colour space.

This being the top range for Toshiba this year, you won't be surprised to hear that it also features its XSound Pro technology, which offers DTS TruSurround HD™ and comes with larger speakers for distinct audio quality as well as internal subwoofers for better bass projection.

Toshiba U68

U68 (available in 43-, 49-, 50-, 55-, 65-, 75- inch sizes)

The U68 range is where Toshiba is looking to go big on screen sizes so if you’ve been thinking you might just have enough room for a 75-inch set this is where you should be looking. All U68 sets are 4K with support for Dolby Vision HDR as well as HDR10 and HLG, tough Toshiba says the 75-inch model also boasts a wide colour gamut which displays up to 1024 shades per color for more life-like images.

This range also makes use of Toshiba’s XSound Pro technology which offers DTS TruSurround HD and comes with larger speakers for distinct audio quality as well as internal subwoofers for better bass projection. 

U78 (Available in 49- and 55- inch sizes)

The U78 range doesn’t quite reach the same screen sizes as the U68 range, but it doesn’t go small either. This 4K range also offers support for Dolby Vision HDR alongside HDR10 and HLG. It also boasts a built-in upscaler so that even when you’re not watching 4K content, you can be sure you’re getting the most out of your 4K screen. 

As far as sound technology goes, this range uses Toshiba’s XSound Plus which offers DTS HD and DTS TruSurround which should sound good in the front-facing Onkyo speakers. 

Toshiba T68 TV

U58 (Available in 43-, 49-, 50-, 55- and 65- inch sizes)

The U58 range is the most affordable and accessible of Toshiba’s 4K HDR range. Although it supports Dolby Vision, HDR 10 and HLG like the U78 and U68 models, however, it doesn’t have a built-in upscaler and nor does it have the same sound chops. Instead, this range has the standard XSound technology.

T68 (Available in 43-, 49-, 55- inch sizes)

Love what the U58 range is offering but you’re looking for slightly better sound? Then try the T68 range. Here you’ll find the 4K displays with Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG support. But you’ll also get the XSound Plus sound like the U78 range, with its more direct and clear front-facing speakers. 

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Samsung Galaxy S9 Active specs leak reveals a massive battery

It looks as though we might well be getting a tougher version of the Samsung Galaxy S9, as a specs list for the Samsung Galaxy S9 Active has just leaked, revealing that it has a 4,000mAh battery.

That’s significantly larger than the 3,000mAh unit in the standard Galaxy S9, or even the 3,500mAh one in the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, but it’s believable, as it’s in line with the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active.

The rest of the specs list, shared by Ready Tricks, lines up with the Galaxy S9, including a 5.8-inch 1440 x 2960 screen, an octa-core Snapdragon 845 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 12MP rear camera that can switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4 apertures, and an 8MP front-facing camera.

This could be an early look at the S9 Active's specs. Credit: Ready Tricks

Even if it's real you may not be able to buy it

We’d take all this with a pinch of salt for now, as a specs list can be easily faked and it’s not clear how the source obtained it or where from, but if Samsung is making a Galaxy S9 Active then this is about what we’d expect to see.

Other than the battery, the main difference between the Active and the standard S9 is likely to be the design. There’s no news on that, but based on past models we’d expect a flat rather than a curved screen, and a tougher build designed to survive a drop.

The source claims the S9 Active will land in quarter three of this year (July-September), which would make sense since the Galaxy S8 Active arrived in August 2017, so we’ll probably be waiting a few months yet.

And when it does arrive there's no guarantee that you'll be able to buy it – Samsung’s Active models typically aren’t widely released, with the S8 Active being a US- and initially AT&T-exclusive.

The Vernee Active is another tough phone

Via GSM Arena

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Amazon Echo Spot launched in India for Rs 12,999

The Echo series of smart speakers by Amazon has been relatively well received in India. And, with the introduction of Google Home in the country, Amazon seems to be stepping up its game by launching the Echo Spot. 

The new smart speaker is fourth in the line of Echo devices by Amazon. What makes it different from the rest is its touchscreen display. The first speaker to feature such a display was the Echo Show, but the company has no plans of bringing it to India at the moment.

Price

The Amazon Echo Spot costs Rs 12,999 and is available in two colors, black and white. 

In comparison, the Echo Dot is priced at Rs 3,999 but is also a much simpler device. The Amazon Echo costs Rs 7,999 and the Echo Plus is Rs 14,999 - thus creating the dilemma  —  whether to buy the Echo Plus or the Echo Spot when looking for smart speaker.

What's new

The Echo Spot looks like its trying to replace your alarm clock, that is if you still use one in this day and age when most people just set their alarms on their phone. Instead of a clock face, the device has a circular 480x480 pixel display that measures 2.5-inches in diameter. It definitely seems like an upgrade over your conventional timepiece, with multiple options between analog and digital clock faces. 

Echo Spot's clock face

The display isn’t just for telling time though. While the regular Echo speakers can read the news briefings back to the user, the Echo Spot can play the flash briefings from organisations like NDTV, BGR, India Today, Times Now and Aaj Tak etc. 

If they don’t find the screen too small, users can actually play whole movies off PrimeVideo or watch clips from IMDB. Even while cooking in the kitchen, the Echo Spot can help by showing the user video recipes instead of just reading a recipe out loud. Amazon says that it's working on more customisation options for how recipes are displayed, including a play-by-play function. 

It's worth noting that YouTube is still missing from the platform, following Google and Amazon's battle over their respective platforms.

Watching videos on Echo Spot

Since the display is circular, users can zoom in so that the video can occupy the whole screen instead of wasting space in landscape mode. 

Amazon claims that the Echo Spot, while still being a voice first device at heart, is meant to be even more personal than the other Echo speakers. The audio from the speakers is supposedly loud enough that the device can just rest on your kitchen counter or table top. 

A little creepy

Having a display is all well and good, but the camera on the Echo Spot might be of concern to some users. The primary function of this feature is that it allows users to video call other Echo users using Alexa. 

But that’s not where the problem lies. The issue is that having heard of instances where the smartphone camera or mic can record conversations covertly, one can’t help but cast suspicion onto the Echo Spot. 

Amazon claims that it isn’t the case and to back that claim up, they’ve given a button on the device that allows users to electronically disengage the camera.

Button to disable front camera

Aside from these two new features, the Echo Spot functions like the other Echo speakers. To talk to Alexa, users have to use the "Alexa" wake word. Alexa can then play music, make phone calls, send messages, answer queries, shop, and control other smart home devices.

Even third-party apps can function with Alexa thanks to the assistant’s own set of skills. Some of them include Uber, Ola, Zomato, and Goibibo. 

Since Alexa’s launch in India, the digital assistant has consistently been learning and gathering information about Indian phrases and accents to personalise itself for Indian users. 

Till last month, the Echo series was the only range of smart speakers available to the consumer in India. The Google Home and Home Mini, launched in April, took away Amazon’s monopoly in this segment.

Don’t know which one to get? Check out our reviews for the Google Home and Amazon Echo to figure out which smart speaker is right for you.

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