With the Galaxy Note 20 launch just a week away, all eyes will be on what upgrades Samsung brings to the table. While the chipset might remain unchanged, there might be a silver lining. While Samsung flagship like the Note series and the S series are powered by Snapdragon chipsets in the US and European markets, they come with Exynos chipset in Asian markets such as India. It often tends to lose out on the performance front against Qualcomm Snapdragon counterparts. However, a new leak suggests some good news in this regard. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 release date, price, news and leaks Upcoming smartphones in India: Specs, launch date, price (Image credit: Samsung/WinFuture) According to a tweet by Anthony, a Youtuber, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 will continue to be powered by the Exynos 990 chipset, but with major improvements in terms of the performance and efficiency. These optimizations should bring it closer to the Snapdragon 865 series. He even suggested that it is almost li...
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Honor Play: the phone that kills the high pricetag without killing performance
Why spend a fortune on an expensive flagship, when the Honor Play can offer just as much for a fraction of the cost?
In recent years the smartphone industry has been increasing the price of their handsets,to the point where a flagship device can cost over £1,000. You could buy a small used car for that amount - even though it’s almost guaranteed to be terrible. The question you have to ask yourself is, are you really paying all that money for the best-possible device?
You don’t need to small fortune on the latest big-name smartphone to make sure you get great performance - especially if you’re getting involved in the latest mobile gaming trends. The Honor Play offers a tremendous amount of power, regardless of what you might want to use it for, and with a £299 price tag that’s more than competitive.
Incredible power for the moneyIt’s the best performance you can hope to get at this price point, and it’s more than capable of out-performing some of the more expensive phones that supposedly come with better hardware.
You see the Honor Play comes with a key performance enhancing feature called GPU Turbo, which pushes the hardware beyond what you’d normally be able to get out of it. It’s revolutionary graphics processing acceleration technology from Huawei, and that means you can enjoy a 60 per cent increase in graphical performance, a more consistent framerate, and 30 per cent reduction in battery consumption.
That means when playing various mobile legends the Honor Play’s performance is close to that of other far more expensive flagships. Considering these brands often claim to offer the most powerful smartphone out there, it’s quite the achievement - and for far, far less to pay. GPU Turbo also means the Honor Play can easily outperform phones of a similar price point or even slightly more expensive, meaning you’re getting ultimate bang for your buck.
One of the key benefits of the GPU Turbo is its ability to smooth out the frame rate of your gaming, meaning a smoother and more premium gaming experience from your smartphone. You can find out more about that in our helpful video:
On top of this GPU Turbo adds a selection of extra features other phones on the market don’t have. There’s 3D surround sound, the 4D Smart Shock intelligent haptic feedback system, and specs that would make some pricier phones blush in embarrassment.
The Honor Play comes packing a 6.3-inch Full HD full-screen display, an octa-core processor, a choice of 4GB or 6GB of RAM, and a hefty 3,750 mAh battery. That’s a bigger battery that you’d find in most flagship devices, and it means the Honor Play will keep its performing for longer, with the GPU Turbo system delivering a real, noticeable improvement in battery life when gaming my making everything running under the hood that much more efficient.
On top of this there’s a dual rear camera, an AI system designed to help you take the best photos possible, 64GB of storage, microSD expansion, and a 3.5mm headphone jack that won’t force you to upgrade your existing headphones.
All that, and this phone only costs £299. Good performance doesn’t necessarily mean your phone needs to cost more than a month’s rent, and the Honor Play is proof that a phone isn’t worth ignoring simply because it doesn’t have a giant price tag. The bigger brands might want to take note, because the price killer is coming.
This child-proof Amazon Fire Kids tablet is £40 off for today only - a great back to school buy
Need a child-friendly tablet for both fun and learning as a last-minute back to school bargain? You won't find a better offer than today's Amazon Deal of the Day on the Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids edition tablet as it's £40 cheaper than usual at just £89.99. Hurry though as it expires at midnight tonight.
How good is that price? We see the standard £129.99 price drop to £100 every few months or so, but this £89.99 offer hasn't been seen since Black Friday last year. So we don't see this price getting any lower any time soon. More to the point, this is £10 cheaper than the smaller , which doesn't even come with a HD screen like this one - nobody like blurry screens.
This excellent child-friendly tablet comes with built-in parental controls for safe browsing, a potential 12-hour battery life, access to thousands of free gaming or educational apps and a permanently-attached 'kid-proof' case (choose from pink, blue or yellow) protecting the device. Amazon is so confident about the durability of the tablet that it's throwing in a two-year worry free guarantee, and will replace it no questions asked if it gets broken. We wouldn't mention this to your child though.
Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition tablet £89.99 at AmazonIf you'd like to take a look at the full Fire tablet range for the latest prices on all of them (especially if you've got an older child that won't appreciate the giant neon-coloured rubber case) then we've put together a guide on all the best Kindle and Fire tablet deals.
Google Chrome gets slick new update for its 10th birthday
It’s weird to think that Google Chrome has been with us for a decade, but the free web browser celebrated its 10th birthday on September 2, and fittingly, has released a flashy new update to reflect its new-found maturity.
Although Google updates Chrome every six weeks, this one’s a little bit special, with a completely refreshed look for the browser, including rounded shapes, a fresh color palette, and new icons.
A streamlined new lookThe new look uses a flat design that does away with shadows and gradients, giving Chrome a cleaner, more streamlined appearance, which makes it easier to navigate quickly. Tabs have been given a rounded shape, making it easier to see the icons for each website when you have lots of tabs open.
Aside from these aesthetic changes, Google has also upgraded its search bar to show answers to your queries in the bar itself - meaning you can get quick answers to your questions without having to open a new tab.
You will also be able to search for tabs within the search bar, which again is handy if you work with lots of tabs open at the same time. As well as that, you can now set your favorite sites on the ‘new tab’ page, and set a background image of your choice.
Google also announced that you will soon be able to search through your Google Drive files and folders using the search bar, but perhaps the most exciting update is the one it’s made to its Dino Runner game.
If you’ve ever had a bad connection you may be familiar with the pixelated T-Rex, which launches into a side scrolling game if you hit the spacebar. In celebration of Google Chrome’s tenth year, the game has been refreshed with birthday cakes and balloons, plus the T-Rex has been kitted out with a cute party hat.
To play the game, either turn off your WiFi and open a new tab, or enter chrome://dino/ In your search bar.
The best VPN for Chrome in 2018
The US Army is developing drones that can be charged by lasers in mid-air
Even the most power-efficient drones can only fly for about half an hour without needing a charge, but the United States Army is working on a novel solution – and it involves lasers.
According to New Scientist, researchers are experimenting with firing beams at photovoltaic cells (solar panels), giving them a boost from up to 500 meters away. If such a system could be fitted to a drone, it would remove the need for docking and charging, allowing the craft to stay aloft for hours on end.
Unlike PHASA-35 – a high-altitude drone designed by BAE Systems and Prismatic that will stay airborne by charging its photovoltaic cells above the clouds – the US military's experiment is designed for smaller craft that fly lower and are mostly used for intelligence-gathering.
Hot stuffIt's an ingenious idea, but there are a few potential pitfalls. Firstly, any light energy not converted to electricity will be turned into heat, which could melt the drone mid-flight. Then there's the safety issue of other objects straying into the beam – including people, birds and aircraft.
The US Army hopes to mitigate these problems by developing more accurate targeting, and finding more effective ways to dissipate thermal energy. It's currently working on a working model that will demonstrate the process ground-to-ground, and intends to have a ground-to-air system operational by 2020.
It's highly unlikely we'll see such remote charging technology in consumer drones any time soon though. Flying lessons are already mandatory in many countries – and that's without throwing high-energy lasers into the equation.
The best drones for beginners and pros
Microsoft revamps Outlook for Windows and online
Microsoft has revealed a suite of changes to its Outlook email client, both the Office application and Outlook.com webmail service, with the aim of making it easier and more intuitive to use.
The Outlook application for Windows, which comes as part of Microsoft Office, will soon feature a more streamlined Ribbon interface. For anyone who's used Outlook and been frustrated by the cluttered Ribbon bar that often hides useful tools and features when you need them (we’re talking from experience here), this will be a welcome move.
The Folders pane has also been rejigged so that folders are easily accessible while you’re working, which is good news for people who like to keep their inboxes organized. New messages will also be easier to spot and read, with the reading pane getting larger titles and smaller headers, leaving more room to display the email content. Responding to emails should be easier and quicker as well.
The calendar in Outlook is also getting improvements, making it easier to add attendees to a meeting, and Outlook will also be able to check availability of meeting rooms in your organization.
Web improvementsThe Outlook.com website is also getting improvements, with the search box becoming more useful by highlighting people you regularly interact with. A new tab has also been added which lets you find files quickly and easily, rather than trawling through emails to find a specific attachment.
Outlook.com is also getting 'smart replies', suggesting a selection of quick responses to emails based on their content, which you can send with one click – Gmail has had a similar feature for a while now.
The calendar in Outlook.com is also getting similar features to the Windows Outlook app in the form of meeting room availability, and new icons that give you quick and easy-to-digest information about upcoming events.
These are some worthwhile enhancements for both versions of Outlook, and it shows that Microsoft is keen to keep its services competitive in the face of popular alternatives such as Thunderbird and Gmail.
The best email provider of 2018
The best Android games of 2018: our top picks
It's been ten years since Android was first announced and in that time we've seen hundreds of thousands of games hit the Google Play Store, but obviously not all of them are high quality, and with so many available it can be tricky to make sure you're putting your cash in the right place.
Some titles are expensive and nothing more than just poor ports of a console game. Others are only a meagre amount but are genuinely more entertaining and enthralling than anything found on a console a few years ago.
When deciding what Android game is best for you, well... you've got a few choices to consider.
Firstly, remember that you won't have just one game on the go at any one time. You might have a title that's great for playing on the sofa or commute, and one when queuing at the bank.
Some work better with headphones, others don't - and we thoroughly recommend playing through a few regularly to find the games that work the best for you. Nothing better than finding something you just can't wait to play again and again!
Want to improve your Android phone in other ways? Check out the best Android apps in 2018Unlike the iPhone, the amount of dedicated gaming controllers for Android phones is a bit more bland, as there aren't as many for specific phone models... and the games that support them can be varied too.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't have a good look at what's out there, and many controllers aren't overly expensive.
Back to the games: have a think about the variety of titles to check out, whether you want something that taxes you, is a quick-fire frenzy or an RPG that you can play locally with friends.
That's why we're here - telling you the games that you need to play because we've tried them out ourselves. We head through the new and bubbling lists of titles each week, have a look at what's good and let you know.
We try to keep this list as fresh as possible, so if your favorite falls off the chart then it's not a bad game... there's just more out there to try.
So get ready to get clicking through our gallery... we guarantee you'll have found something to play before you know it.
New: Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$6.49)
Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a racing management game without the boring bits. Rather than sitting you in front of a glorified spreadsheet, the game is a well-balanced mix of accessibility and depth, enabling you to delve into the nitty gritty of teams, sponsors, mechanics, and even livery.
When you’re all set, you get to watch surprisingly tense and exciting top-down racing. (This being surprising because you’re largely watching numbered discs zoom around circuits.) One-off races give you a feel for things, but the real meat is starting from the bottom of the pile in the career mode, with the ultimate aim of becoming a winner.
It’s all streamlined, slick, and mobile-friendly, and a big leap on from the relatively simplistic original Motorsport Manager Mobile.
Supertype is a word game more concerned with the shape of letters than the words they might create. Each hand-designed level finds you staring at a setup of lines, dots, and empty spaces in which to type. Tap out some letters, press the tick mark, and everything starts to move.
The aim is to get the letters you type to the dots. In some cases, the solution may be fairly obvious – for example, placing a lowercase l on each ‘step’ towards an out of reach dot at the top of a staircase, then having a p at the start tip over to set everything in motion. More often, you’ll be scratching your head, experimenting, trying new approaches, and then grinning ear to ear on cracking a solution.
Typeshift rethinks word searches and crosswords. You get a tactile interface of jumbled letters within draggable columns. Your aim is to change the color of every tile – and tiles only change when they’re part of a word you make in the central row.
The game occasionally heads further into traditional crossword territory, adding clues to the mix, which you must match to the words you find. Either way, it’s a brain-smashing touch-optimized word-game experience.
There are joyful animated and audio touches throughout, too, and everything feels hand-crafted, rather than you being sent endless algorithmically generated puzzles. Naturally, such polish costs money – beyond the free download, you pay for packs of puzzles. But they’re worth every penny.
AR Smash Tanks comes across like a one-on-one Angry Birds, only you’re pinging tanks about rather than furious avians, and the entire thing plays out in augmented reality.
You take on a friend or AI opponent, on a battlefield that can be squeezed on to a table or conceivably resized to fill a big chunk of a lawn. Your mission is to smash your opposite number’s three tanks using your own, or by cunningly toppling buildings and making use of power-ups.
Although AR Smash Tanks could have worked without AR, it’s far better with it. You can consider shots from every angle, like you’re playing a decidedly surreal game of pool. The lack of online play is a pity, but for local multiplayer this one’s – as Brits say in praise – smashing!
Lichtspeer is a trippy take on tower defense – like a single-lane Plants vs Zombies, only you’re fending off deranged futuristic Nordic and Germanic foes, are armed with an endless supply of glowing javelins (the titular Lichtspeer), and act under the watchful eye of an angry, demanding heavy metal god.
So, yes, this one has a veneer of weird, but the underlying mechanics are straightforward enough: aim your spear Angry Birds-style, lob and repeat. Get in some headshots, and the game rewards you. Miss too often and the god’s wrath briefly freezes you, making you temporarily vulnerable.
The main downsides to the game are repetition and brevity. However, gradually acquired special moves shake things up (and are a godsend on packed levels), and when you’re in the neon Lichtspeer zone, it has a focused, hypnotic quality – along with a pleasing dash of madness.
Dissembler is a match-three game with a difference. Instead of presenting you with a wall of gems that’s replenished when you make matches, Dissembler levels are akin to modern art – abstract creations comprising colored tiles.
You still swap two elements to try and match three (or more), but here matches vanish. The idea is to end up with a blank canvas. At first, this is easy, but Dissembler soon serves up challenges where you end up isolating tiles unless you’re very careful.
This shifts the game more heavily into strategic puzzling territory – and it’s all the better for it. You’ll feel like the smartest person around on figuring out the precise sequence of moves to clear the later levels. And even when you’ve finished them all, there’s a daily puzzle and endless mode to keep you occupied.
The Room: Old Sins finds you investigating the disappearance of an engineer and his wife. The trail leads you to a spooky attic. On getting the lights working, you see a strange dollhouse, which then sucks you inside.
You discover the toy is in fact a full reconstruction of a mansion, with a side order of Lovecraftian horror. Unraveling the mystery at the heart of the game and its impossible world then happens by way of devious, complex, tactile logic puzzles.
Old Sins looks and sounds great, and moving around is swift – there’s none of the dull trudging you find in the likes of Myst. Of course, if you’ve played The Room, The Room Two, and The Room Three, you’ll know all this already. If you haven’t, grab Old Sins immediately – and its predecessors, too. They’re some of the finest games on Android.
SiNKR is a puzzle game based around pucks, hooks and holes (or, if you like, hooks, lines, and sinkers). It dispenses with timers, scores, text and IAP – it’s just your brain against its challenges.
The game’s abstract visuals are striking, and the way it plays feels fresh. Pucks are dotted about, and you must drag them to holes by using hooks that are retracted by you pressing hexagonal buttons.
The clever bit is how SiNKR works with such basic elements to create puzzles that have you staring at the screen, baffled as to the correct order in which to retract the hooks, and when to flip them over.
It gets more complicated later on, with new ideas and obstacles, but you’ll nonetheless likely be done within a few hours. Still, this kind of premium ad-free experience is to be encouraged on Android, and SiNKR is easily worth the tiny outlay.
.projekt is a relaxing and brilliantly designed minimal puzzler that twists your brain by forcing you to think in two and three dimensions simultaneously. At the center of the screen is a five-by-five grid, which you tap to build blocky structures from cubes. The aim is to have the shadows they project match patterns on two visible walls.
At first, this is simple stuff, but .projekt subtly ramps up the challenge as you move through its levels. You’re forced to spin the canvas multiple times, and often to destroy your structure and rebuild as an approach turns out to be a dead end.
Never does .projekt become a frustrating experience, however. You’re not on the clock, there are no move limits, and there are no IAP lurking. It’s just about you and the blocks, and imagining how an object looks from two points of view.
Super Hexagon is an endless survival game that mercilessly laughs at your incompetence. It begins with a tiny spaceship at the center of the screen, and walls rapidly closing in. All you need to do is move left and right to nip through the gaps.
Unfortunately for you, the walls keep shifting and changing, the screen pulses to the chiptune soundtrack, and the entire experience whirls and jolts like you’re inside a particularly violent washing machine. It seems impossible, but you soon start to recognize patterns in the walls.
String together some deft moves, survive a minute by the skin of your teeth, and you briefly feel like a boss as new arenas are unlocked. And although complacency is wiped from your face the instant you venture near them, Super Hexagon has an intoxicating, compelling nature to offset its mile-long sadistic streak.
Florence is an interactive experience at the fringes of gaming – a short-form illustrated storybook peppered with game-like elements. These are designed to help you empathize with the protagonist – the titular Florence – and move the story onward.
There’s little challenge here, more an invitation to delve into the life of a young woman as she moves from the drudgery of the everyday to the dizzying thrills of experiencing her first love. Your input is slight and sporadic, but cleverly conceived, whether you’re mindlessly tapping figures in a spreadsheet or arranging puzzle pieces in speech balloons, the pieces decreasing in number as the conversation becomes easier.
The story is short, and there’s perhaps little replay value, but Florence should please anyone looking for a heartwarming way to spend an hour with their Android device that’s a bit different from typical gaming fare.
ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun finds a nutcase blasting his way through corridors of extremely angry, heavily armed aliens, while he himself is only armed with a really big gun. That might sound fine, until you realize the gun is also his means of staying aloft.
This means to go higher, he must blast downward, temporarily becoming vulnerable to incoming fire. If he shoots forward, he starts to plummet towards the hard, deadly ground. ATOMIK therefore becomes a manic, high-octane balancing act of finger gymnastics, with the potential to get killed very frequently.
On every death, the game rewinds the level so you can try again, and wallow in your failure to complete challenges that are a mere 20 seconds long without dying dozens of times first. But when you crack one, you really do feel like a boss.
Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery is an adventure game that’s about discovery and exploration. It’s a relentlessly beautiful experience, with rich retro-infused artwork and a lush soundtrack. The game encourages you to breathe everything in, take your time, and work at your own pace.
Unlike most adventures, which tend to be obsessed with inventories, Sworcery is mostly concerned with puzzles that are confined to one screen. Solutions are frequently abstract, involving manipulating your environment or even time itself. You may free woodland spirits with musical prowess, or discover a solution requires playing at set points during the lunar calendar.
It might come across as a bit worthy at times, and there are some missteps, such as the awkward, ungainly combat, but Sworcery is evocative and expressive, and full of pay-offs that tend towards the magical, unless you happen to be dead inside.
Part Time UFO is a physics-based stacking game featuring a cute UFO that has crash-landed on Earth and now has to eke out a living. That’s right – in this era, aliens aren’t sent to Area 51, and instead scour job ads to earn some cash.
Fortunately, this little UFO is made of stern stuff and has a massive claw to pick things up. This proves handy for part time jobs, doing everything from stacking deliveries on a truck, to assisting a circus elephant’s grand finale – balancing on a tightrope, with five animals precariously plonked on a pole.
Since Part Time UFO embraces the frustration of claw machines, it can infuriate – not least when you topple a structure as the clock ticks down. Mostly, though, this is a charming and very silly game that’s loads of fun.
Meteorfall is a ‘roguelike’ role-playing adventure masquerading as a card game. You choose a hero, and then set out on a semi-randomized journey, which largely involves hacking your way through a horde of monsters. Only instead of swiping a trusty sword, or moving about a turn-based grid, your actions, attacks and strategy all revolve around cards.
With each card you’re dealt, you choose, Tinder-style, to swipe left or right. Each direction has its own outcome, which may involve smacking your foe in the face, or replenishing energy. Over time, you build up your deck, gradually increasing your strength and skills – until the moment you overstretch and are horribly killed.
Given the simple interface, there’s loads of depth here. And with every game being unique, Meteorfall is an Android title that should keep you playing for months.
Warlock’s Tower is a turn-based puzzler that finds you on a quest to convince the titular warlock – about to destroy the world – that actually everyone quite likes him and would really appreciate it if he calmed down a bit.
As you enter each tiny single-screen dungeon, you make for the exit, knowing that every step you take depletes your life force. Regeneration gems are dotted about, which means your route is typically along serpentine lines.
If that was it, Warlock’s Tower would still come recommended, but it doesn’t rest on its laurels. Work your way through the levels and there’s more than a moves limit to contend with, as the game introduces moving walkways, character-switching, and slowly advancing zombies, eager to tear your face off.
Sonic Runners Adventure tries to pull the same trick as Super Mario Run, distilling the essence of a much-loved traditional console platform game into a one-thumb auto-runner. The difference with Sonic is that he blazes along at breakneck pace, resulting in a colorful effort that has more in common with Canabalt than the precision leapy nature of Nintendo’s game.
That’s not to say there’s no case for care and accuracy though. Sonic Runners Adventure features carefully designed multi-level landscapes, each with its own rhythm.
Crack the choreography and you’ll grab the rings, bonk the monsters on the head and give the evil Dr Eggman a serious kicking. If not, you can at least take solace that this game’s mobile-friendly levels aren’t terribly expansive, and so are geared towards immediately having another go.
60 Seconds! Atomic Adventure is an initially jovial take on the apocalypse. The first – short – part of the game gives you one minute to dash around your house, picking up supplies and family members, and lobbing them into a shelter.
The second part has you making decisions regarding dishing out supplies and searching for more in the hope of surviving long enough to be rescued – assuming anyone’s left to do so.
The arcade section could do with dialing down the nuttiness in the controls. It’s too easy to end up randomly smacking into walls, nudging a chaotic feel into outright frustration. Still, take time to master the weird physics and you’ll do okay.
The strategy section has more legs for repeat play (and you can skip the arcade part if you’d rather go straight there). It offers many unexpected events, and a bleak, darkly comic edge that contrasts nicely with the bumbling arcade section that comes before it.
Vignettes sits at the extreme ‘arty’ edge of gaming, at times feeling more like an interactive toy. But there is a game lurking within – it’s just a decidedly abstract one.
You’re initially invited to interact with the game’s name. Spin it through a flat edge and this object suddenly becomes a chest, within which is a telephone that – when appropriately manipulated – becomes several other items in quick succession.
The ultimate aim is discovery – to figure out how to access each of the objects within the game. There are also plentiful secrets to discover, such as a moon landing featuring tiny cartoon astronauts, and a suitcase into which you can hurl an endless succession of socks.
It’s all very odd, but a compelling and stress-free experience that feels suitably different from anything else on the platform.
Hidden Folks is a hidden object game with a soul. It’s reminiscent of those mass-produced posters where you scour a massive, cluttered scene, trying to find the one person with a silly hat. The difference is that everything here has been made with love and care, from the hand-drawn interactive illustrations to the amusing oral sound effects.
The basics are admittedly much as you’d expect: scour the screen to find specific objects or characters, and move on when complete.
We realize that might not sound like much, but there’s a charm and humor to Hidden Folks that sets it apart from any of its contemporaries. On a larger Android phone or a tablet, this is a particularly relaxing, absorbing game to lose yourself in for a few hours.
Reigns: Her Majesty is the follow-up to the well-received Reigns, which was more or less a mash-up of kingdom management and Tinder. Again, the sequel has you perform regal duties, swiping left and right to make decisions, responding to demands from your subjects.
Throughout, you must balance the church, army, people and treasury. Should any one become too powerful or angry, your reign is over. At that point, you’re then reincarnated for another go.
Like its predecessor, this is a clever game with recurring themes, along with plots and achievements that weave their way through the ages. But the writing’s tighter this time, there’s an inventory to work with, and you’re playing the Queen – and she has a much harder time of it than a man.
Zenge is a sliding puzzle game whose early levels almost insult your intelligence, merely asking you to slide a few shapes into place. Don’t be fooled, though – Zenge is devious in a way that should make even the most jaded puzzle game fan grin.
At first, it’s just the cut of the shapes that thwarts efforts to shove them into place, but every now and again, new mechanics enter the mix, such as pieces that stick to each other, or buttons that flip shapes over.
All this plays out within a no-stress environment. There are no timers, move limits, shops, points or stars - it’s just you and the puzzles. Zenge’s purity alone would make it interesting, but the quality of the puzzles makes it a must-have.
Million Onion Hotel is a deceptively simple match game. At first, it appears you merely hammer onions the second they appear on a five-by-five grid, aiming to make complete lines and boost your score. But Million Onion Hotel is full of secrets, leaving you to figure out how its mysterious world works.
This extends to game and backstory alike. You soon realize a combination of speed and strategy is vital - as is an eye to prioritizing actions when the screen’s being bombarded by surreal, crazed animated vegetables.
Then there are the cutscenes, which seem to involve a hotel, a wormhole into a distant galaxy, and quite a lot of (cartoon) sex and violence.
Million Onion Hotel’s certainly not your average gem-swapper – it’s much, much more.
Framed 2 follows in the footsteps of Framed – a puzzle game based around rearranging panels of an animated comic book.
The story features a mysterious ship, smuggling, and quite a lot of sneaky spies. As you play a scene, something inevitably goes horribly wrong for the protagonist and you must swap frames around to make things play out differently. Like the original, this is all wonderfully tactile, but the puzzles are better this time around, with more emphasis on reusing panels.
It’s even fun when it goes wrong. You don’t often get to be entertained when failing in a puzzle game, but here you’ll want to fail each level if you succeed first time, just to see what amusing japes Framed 2’s cast would have got into otherwise.
Disjoint is a puzzle game based around swinging triangles. And also a pig and a hobo. The triangles are the main bit, and you spin them about each other across 100 puzzles to reach pre-defined goals.
The snag is that level layouts are minimal – mostly blank space. Often, you’ll need to move triangles into precise positions so others can reach their destinations. Elsewhere, some may need to ‘help’ others past goop that would otherwise set them solid.
Disjoint has unlimited undos, which help lessen frustration when mistakes are made – whether due to poor strategy or the slightly fiddly controls. This also gives you a shot at winning each level’s three-star reward for meeting the minimum number of moves.
And the pig and hobo? They’re just the narrative – although it’s an amusing one. The hobo is helping the pig on the promise of finding treasure. Now guess what the pig’s betrothed is called…
Bury Me, My Love is another game in the Lifeline mold – a branching narrative akin to a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which plays out in real time.
What’s different is this game’s narrative draws from the real-life stories of Syrian refugees. You play Majd, whose wife Nour is trying to reach Europe. She contacts you via a messaging app, and you respond with advice – which may have a very big impact.
This kind of adventure can be tense, leaking into your real life as you await responses, but Bury Me, My Love takes this to the extreme – for example, when it’s been 24 hours since you heard from Nour, who was heading to a heavily armed border.
This kind of topical subject matter won’t be for everyone, but if you want a game that will make you think a bit, it comes recommended.
Monument Valley 2 is the follow-up to landscape-bending puzzler Monument Valley. As in its predecessor, you fashion impossible pathways by manipulating Escher-like constructions in order to reach goals.
This is a gorgeous game. The minimalist architecture is dotted with optical illusions. Imagination abounds throughout, and the color palette dazzles, half making you wish you could print every level out as a massive poster to stick on the wall.
The actual puzzles are slight and the game itself has been criticized for being short, but thoughts of brevity evaporate when you’re confronted by one of Monument Valley 2’s many spectacular, beautiful moments, such as a side-on level that resembles modern art and a section where trees explode from pots when bathed in sunlight. In short, this is a mobile experience to savor.
Caterzillar feels a bit like Super Mario Galaxy rendered in 2D, starring a ravenous larva. Each level comprises a number of floating structures, which you can leap between. These spin beneath your many legs, making for a decidedly disorienting play experience.
Much of the game is therefore about figuring out how to get around levels where down may, within seconds, turn out to be up. And just when you get your bearings, the game will helpfully fire you halfway across the level in a cannon, or shoot vines into the air, creating mid-air loops.
The rest of the actual underlying game is all rather simple: collect a bunch of stuff; avoid enemies; get to an exit. Also, some levels require an awful lot of backtracking. Even so, Caterzillar’s anti-gravity madness makes it a winner.
Thimbleweed Park is an adventure that sends you back to the halcyon days of 1987. Mainly because that’s when it’s set, in the titular Thimbleweed Park, and there’s been a murder. But also, this game recalls classic PC point-and-clicker Maniac Mansion, in everything from visual style to interface.
That doesn’t mean this is a crusty old relic. Industry veterans Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick have written a winning script (which gets increasingly weird as you play), and come up with dozens of cunning, tricky puzzles to keep your brain fizzing throughout the game’s 15-to-20-hour length.
Now and again, it perhaps gets a bit too obtuse. But mostly, this is a game that knows it’s a game - and that also wants you to know it’s a take-no-prisoners puzzle title. One that features plumbers who are also paranormal investigators, dressed as pigeons. (We did say it was weird.)
Death Road to Canada is a zombie movie smashed into a classic retro game. Little pixelated heroes dodder about a dystopian world, bashing zombies with whatever comes to hand, looting houses, and trying to not get eaten.
The road trip is staccato in nature. The game constantly tries to derail your rhythm and momentum. In Choose Your Own Adventure-style text bits, the wrong decision may find you savaged by a moose. Elsewhere, intense ‘siege’ challenges dump you in a confined space with zombie hordes, often armed only with a stick. Handy.
These abrupt elements can grate – as can the slightly slippy controls that aren’t always quite tight enough; but otherwise this is an ambitious mash-up of RPG and arcade gaming, with generous dollops of black humor – and BRAIINNZZZ.
Love You To Bits is a visually dazzling and relentlessly inventive point-and-click puzzler. It features Kosmo, a space explorer searching for the scattered pieces of his robot girlfriend, bar the lifeless head that’s still in his clutches. Which is a bit icky.
Don’t think about that too much, though, because this game is gorgeous. Through its many varied scenes, it plays fast and loose with pop culture references, challenging you to beat a 2D Monument Valley, sending up Star Wars, and at one point dumping you on a planet of apes.
Now and again, you’ll need to make a leap of logic to complete a task, and puzzles mostly involve picking things up and using them in the right place – hardly the height of innovation. But this game’s so endearing and smartly designed you’d have to be lifeless yourself to fail to love it at least a little.
Run-A-Whale is a sweet-natured endless runner. Well, endless swimmer, given that its protagonist is a friendly whale giving a lift/thrill ride to a shipwrecked pirate.
There’s no tapping to leap here, though; in Run-A-Whale, you hold the screen to make the whale dive. When you let go and he breaks the surface, he soars (very) briefly into the air, before returning to the water with a splash.
As ever, the aim in Run-A-Whale is survival – and that in itself isn’t simple. The game’s one failing is it sometimes makes it really tough to avoid hazards, which can include whale-stopping walls someone’s carelessly built beneath the waves.
Mostly, though, this one’s a gorgeous romp through beautiful landscapes, grabbing coins, occasionally being fired into the sky by a cannon, and regularly fending off giant crabs and octopodes.
Sidewords is a rare word game that isn’t ripping off Scrabble or crosswords. Instead, you get blank grids with words along two edges. You must use at least one letter from each edge to make new words of three or more letters. Each selected letter blasts a line across the grid; where lines meet become solid areas filled with your word. The aim is to fill the grid.
On smaller levels, this is simple, but larger grids can be challenging – especially when you realize a massive word (that on discovery made you feel like a genius) leaves spaces that are impossible to fill. Fortunately, Sidewords encourages experimentation, and so you can remove/replace words at will.
It’s clever and a bit different; and if you tire of the main game, you can fire up mini-game Quads, which marries word-building and Threes!-style sliding tiles. Two for the price of one, then – and both games alone are worth the outlay.
Freeways is one of those games that doesn’t look like much in stills, but proves ridiculously compelling from the moment you fire it up. In short, it’s all about designing roadways for autonomous vehicles.
It comes across a bit like a mash-up of Mini Metro and Flight Control. You link roads together, often by designing monstrous spaghetti junctions, only you’re armed with tools that make you feel like an urban planner drawing with chunky crayons while wearing boxing gloves.
The game’s crude nature is part of its charm. It’s more about speed and immediacy than precision, a feeling cemented when you realize there’s no undo. When your road system gets jammed, your only option is to start from scratch and try something new.
In truth, the inability to remove even tiny errors can irk, not least when roads don’t connect as you’d expect. Otherwise, Freeways is a blast.
Card Crawl mixes solitaire and dungeon crawling, and does an awful lot with a four-by-two grid of cards.
In each round, an armor-clad ogre deals four cards, which may include monsters, weaponry, potions, and spells. Beneath sits your adventurer’s card, two spots for items to hold, and one to stash a card for later.
To progress to the next draw, you must use three of the cards dealt to you. For example, you might grab a sword, use that to kill a demonic crow, and then quaff a potion.
Getting through the entire deck requires strategy more than luck. For example, down health potions when you don’t need to, and you may not survive later when weaponless and battling multiple enemies.
Generously, the basic game is free; but we recommend buying the one-off IAP to unlock the full set of cards and game modes.
Miracle Merchant has you mix potions for thirsty adventurers, fashioned from stacks of colored cards. Each customer asks for a specific ingredient, and mentions another they like. Across 13 rounds, you must manage your deck to ensure everyone goes away happy. Fail once and your game ends.
Decisions must be made carefully, because once cards are placed, they can’t be moved. Combinations prove vital for success: pairs of cards boost your score, as does matching cards to the colored icons found on those already in play. There are also ‘evil’ cards with negative values to overcome.
The game doesn’t feel as refined as the developer’s own Card Thief, but we enjoyed its elegance. There’s no messing about with special powers and leveling up – it’s just you, cards, and a set of rules. There’s perhaps a touch too much reliance on card counting and luck, but Miracle Merchant’s nonetheless a simple, engaging, unique stab on solitaire.
Linelight is a gorgeous, minimal puzzler that pits you against the rhythmic denizens of a network of lines levitating above a colored haze. Your aim is simply to progress, inching your way along the network, triggering gates and switches, and collecting golden gems.
Early puzzles are content to let you get to grips with the virtual stick (one of the best on Android). Soon, you’re faced with adversaries that kill with a single touch. But these foes aren’t merely to be avoided – they must also be manipulated into position to trigger switches that open pathways that enable you to continue.
Now and again, new mechanics keep things fresh, as do abrupt changes in pace, such as a memorable several-screens-long pursuit/dance with an enemy towards the end of the game’s first section. In all, Linelight’s an enchanting, vibrant, superbly designed experience – an essential purchase for your Android device.
Fowlst is a playable, immediate old-school arcade game featuring an owl who’s trapped in hell “for some reason”. As you tap the left or right of the screen, he briefly flaps in that direction before gravity does its thing. Your aim: survival – easier said than done in endless rooms of angry demons.
Fortunately, you can fight back. Smacking into a demon destroys it. (Note: this really doesn’t work with massive whirling buzz-saws.) Some demons spit out loot when they expire, enabling you to power-up your owl in its subsequent lives.
And it turns out you’ll be grateful for rockets that shoot out of your behind when tackling giant (and oddly goofy) caterpillar-like bosses and the huge flame-spewing demons determined to make your time in hell, well, hell.
cityglitch is a superb turn-based puzzler that appears to play out in a digital city of virtual skyscrapers being attacked by system glitches. Imagine your favorite virtual reality movie presented as a game from 1983, slathered in neon, and you’re halfway there.
As the hero darts from rooftop to rooftop, they’re immersed in grid-based puzzles, which incorporate runes you light to eradicate the glitches. The brilliant bit - and this is a rarity in gaming - is cityglitch doesn’t tell you how to deal with anything.
You must discover how to manipulate cats, ghosts, arrows and other foes, outthinking the set-up you’re provided, in order to emerge victorious across the 95 surprisingly diverse challenges.
No Stick Shooter is a single-screen shoot ’em up that marries the best of old-school retro blasters with modern touchscreen controls.
As its name suggests, there are no virtual D-pads to contend with. Instead, as the aliens menacingly descend towards your planet, you tap their general location to fling something destructive their way.
The key to victory doesn’t involve tapping the screen like a lunatic, though. Your weapons need time to recharge, and specific armaments work well against certain foes. In a sense, it all plays out like a strategy-laced precision shooter on fast-forward, with you clocking incoming hostiles, quickly switching to the best weapon, and tapping or swiping to blow them away.
There are just 30 levels in all, but only the very best arcade veterans are likely to blaze through them at any speed – and even then, getting all the achievements is a tough ask.
Super Samurai Rampage is a manic swipe-based high-score chaser, featuring a samurai who has - for some reason - been provoked into a relentless rampage.
Said rampage is dependent on you swiping. Swipe left and you lunge in that direction, slicing your sword through the air. Swipe up and you majestically leap, whereupon you can repeatedly swipe every which way, fashioning a flurry of airborne destruction akin to the most outlandish of martial arts movies.
Along with dishing out death, you must ensure you don’t come a cropper yourself. And attack is your only form of defense, because when you’re moving, you’re also deflecting incoming projectiles. You’re also likely racking up quite the body count, which accumulates in bloody retro-pixel form at the foot of the screen.
It’s of course entirely absurd, and without much nuance; but Super Samurai Rampage is an arcade thrill that’s entertaining, and where repeat play is rewarded with gradual mastery – or at least lasting a few seconds longer before your inevitable demise.
Yankai’s Peak is a puzzle game that combines box-pusher Sokoban, pyramids, and the evil mind of a sadistic games creator, intent on making you weep.
The basics are simple: each level plays out atop a triangular grid. Your blue pyramid must nudge colored pyramids onto matching triangular spaces. Movement and nudges come by way of flipping your pyramid in one of three directions, or ‘pinning’ one of its corners and having it spin, taking along anything it touches for the ride.
The manner in which pyramids interact is far more complex than the square boxes found in Sokoban, and that’s what transforms Yankai’s Peak into a truly testing challenge. Even early levels can stump, until you hit upon the precise combination of moves required to achieve your goal.
Deep into the game, it may take days to crack a particularly tough challenge, although you’re at least aided by unlimited undos, and a level map that gives you access to several puzzles at once.
First Strike is an oddball combination of territory-snagging board game Risk, and classic defense arcade title Missile Command. You pick a nuclear power and set about building missiles, researching technologies, annexing adjacent states, and – when it comes to it – blowing the living daylights out of your enemies.
The high-tech interface balances speed and accessibility, although games tend to be surprisingly lengthy – and initially sedate, as you gradually increase your arsenal, and shore up your defenses.
Eventually, all hell breaks lose, including terrifying first strikes, where enemies lob their entire cache of missiles at an unlucky target. If that’s you and your defenses aren’t strong enough, prepare more for ‘the end’ than ‘game over’ as the screen shakes amid all the destruction.
It’s thoughtful and clever (and often chilling), but First Strike never forgets it’s a game – and a really good one for real-time strategy fans.
The first two Riptide games had you zoom along undulating watery circuits surrounded by gleaming metal towers. Riptide GP: Renegade offers another slice of splashy futuristic racing, but this time finds you immersed in the seedy underbelly of the sport.
As with the previous games, you’re still piloting a hydrofoil, and racing involves not only going very, very fast, but also being a massive show-off at every available opportunity.
If you hit a ramp or wave that hurls you into the air, you’d best fling your ride about or do a handstand, in order to get turbo-boost on landing. Sensible racers get nothing.
The career mode finds you earning cash, upgrading your ride, and probably ignoring the slightly tiresome story bits. The racing, though, is superb – an exhilarating mix of old-school arcade thrills and modern mobile touchscreen smarts.
Samorost 3 is a love letter to classic point-and-click adventure games. You explore your surroundings, unearth objects, and then figure out where best to use them. Straightforward stuff, then (at least in theory – many puzzles are decidedly cryptic), but what sets Samorost 3 apart is that it’s unrelentingly gorgeous, and full of heart.
The storyline is bonkers, involving a mad monk who used a massive mechanical hydra to smash up a load of planetoids. You, as an ambitious space-obsessed gnome, must figure out how to set things right.
The game is packed with gorgeous details that delight, from the twitch of an insect’s antennae to a scene where the protagonist successfully encourages nearby creatures to sing, and starts fist-punching the air while dancing with glee. Just two magical moments among many in one of the finest examples of adventuring on Android.
Mushroom 11 finds you exploring the decaying ruins of a devastated world. And you do so as a blob of green goo. Movement comes by way of you ‘erasing’ chunks of this creature with a circular ‘brush’. Over time, you learn how this can urge the blob to move in certain ways, or how you can split it in two, so half can flick a switch, while the other half moves onward.
This probably sounds a bit weird – and it is. But Mushroom 11 is perfectly suited to the touchscreen. The tactile way you interact with the protagonist feels just right, and although your surroundings are desolate, they’re also oddly beautiful, augmented by a superb ethereal soundtrack.
There are moments of frustration – the odd difficulty wall. But with regular restart points, and countless ingenious obstacles and puzzles, Mushroom 11 is a strange creature you should immediately squeeze into whatever space exists on your Android device.
Slayaway Camp is a sliding puzzle game that looks like Crossy Road – if Crossy Road had turned into a 1980s horror flick. The aim is to assist psycho slasher Skullface, hacking to pieces loitering campers and cops, across dozens of levels of pixelated gore.
Essentially, it’s about pathfinding. Skullface slides until he hits something. The key is to ensure that’s a camper, and not a cop’s gun, or something equally deadly that will end his bloody rampage.
For those of a sensitive disposition, it’s worth noting Slayaway Camp is more ridiculous than horrific – even its cut-scenes (with emphasis on the cutting – and hacking) are very silly.
More importantly, the slasher thing isn’t a gimmick atop a rubbish game – although Slayaway Camp doesn’t drip with innovation regarding the puzzling bits, the challenges are solidly designed and increasingly devious as you hack your way through its many levels.
In the late 1970s, Space Invaders invited you to blast rows of invaders. In the mid-1980s, Arkanoid revamped Breakout, having you use a bat-like spaceship to belt a ball at space bricks. Now, Arkanoid vs Space Invaders mashes the two titles together – and, surprisingly, it works very nicely.
Instead of a ball, you’re deflecting the invaders’ bullets back at them, to remove bricks and the invaders themselves. Now and again, Arkanoid is recalled more directly in a special attack that has you belt a ball around the place after firing it into action using a massive space bow.
Increasingly, though, the game is laced with strategy, since your real enemy is time. A couple of dozen levels in, you must carefully utilize powerful invaders’ blasts and onscreen bonuses to emerge victorious – not easy when neon is flying everywhere and the clock’s ticking down.
In platform adventure The Big Journey, fat cat Mr. Whiskers is on a mission. The chef behind his favorite dumplings has disappeared, and so the brave feline sets out to find him. The journey finds the chubby kitty rolling and leaping across – and through – all kinds of vibrant landscapes, packed with hills, tunnels, and enemies.
The game comes across a lot like PSP classic LocoRoco, in you tilting the screen to move, the protagonist’s rotundness increasing over time, and several of the landscape interactions (oddball elevators; smashing through fragile barriers).
But The Big Journey very much has its own character, not least in the knowing humor peppered throughout what might otherwise have been a saccharine child-like storyline about a gluttonous cartoon cat.
As it is, The Big Journey isn’t terribly challenging, but it is enjoyable, whether you drink the visuals in and just dodder to the end, or simultaneously try to find every collectible and beat the speed-run time limits.
Initial moments in point-and-click adventure Milkmaid of the Milky Way are so sedate the game’s in danger of falling over. You play as Ruth, a young woman living on a remote farm in a 1920s Norwegian fjord. She makes dairy products, sold to a town several hours away. Then, without warning, a massive gold spaceship descends, stealing her cows.
Fortunately, Ruth decides she’s having none of that, leaps aboard the spaceship, and finds herself embroiled in a tale of intergalactic struggles. To say much more would spoil things, but we can say that this old-school adventure is a very pleasant way to spend a few hours.
The puzzles are logical yet satisfying; the visuals are gorgeous; and the game amusingly provides all of its narrative in rhyme, which is pleasingly quaint and nicely different.
Hero of the hour Dennis finds himself unicycling naked in this gorgeous platform game best described as flat-out nuts. In iCycle, you dodder left or right, leap over obstacles, and break your fall with a handy umbrella, all the while attempting to grab ice as surreal landscapes collapse and morph around you.
The mission feels like a journey into what might happen if Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam were let loose on game design. One minute, you’re entering a top-hatted gent’s ear to find and kiss a ‘reverse mermaid’ on a levitating bike; the next you’re in a terrifying silhouette funfair that might have burst forth from a fevered mind during a particularly unpleasant nightmare.
Some of the levels are tough, and there’s a bit of grinding to unlock new outfits. But if you want something a bit more creative on your Android, you can’t do much better than iCycle.
It’s wrong to coo about graphics when a game is otherwise uneven, but with Lumino City we’re going to do it anyway. And that’s because this puzzle-oriented adventure is drop-dead gorgeous, with truly stunning hand-crafted scenes that feel like someone squeezed a ridiculously expensive animated movie into your Android device.
The puzzling is more variable. The quest to locate your kidnapped grandfather requires defeating numerous logic puzzles. Some are irritating, with plug/switch events becoming old long before the end. But it’s hard to grumble on encountering a pathfinding puzzle involving a house that literally spins round, and a really sweet scene where you learn a song on a guitar.
Our advice: gawp at the visuals, drink in the atmosphere, and use a walkthrough to speed through the boring bits.
Anyone who thought Nintendo would convert a standard handheld take on Mario to Android was always on a hiding to nothing. But that’s probably just as well – Nintendo’s classic platformers are reliant on tight controls, rather than you fumbling about on a slippy glass surface.
Super Mario Run tries a different tack, infusing plenty of ‘Marioness’ into an auto-runner, where you guide the mustachioed plumber by tapping the screen to have him perform actions.
You might consider this reductive; also, Super Mario Run is a touch short, and the ‘kingdom builder’ sub-game alongside the main act falls flat. Still, really smart level design wins the day, and completists will have fun replaying the world tour mode time and again to collect the many hard-to-reach coins.
If you never thought a solitaire-like card game was an ideal framework for a tense stealth title, you’re probably not alone. But somehow Card Thief cleverly mashes up cards and sneaking about.
The game takes place on a three-by-three grid of cards. For each move, you plan a route to avoid getting duffed up by guards (although pickpocketing them on the way past is fair game, obviously), loot a chest, and make for an exit.
Card Thief is not the easiest game to get into, with its lengthy tutorial and weird spin on cards. But this is a game with plenty of nuance and depth that becomes increasingly rewarding the more you play, gradually unlocking its secrets. It’s well worth the effort.
A young boy hurls himself down a massive well, with only his ‘gunboots’ for protection. There are so many questions there (not least: what parent would buy their kid boots that are also guns?), but it sets the scene for a superb arcade shooter with surprising smarts and depth.
At first in Downwell, you’ll probably be tempted to blast everything, but ammo soon runs out. On discovering you reload on landing, you’ll then start to jump about a lot. But further exploration of the game’s mechanics reaps all kinds of rewards, leading to you bounding on monsters, venturing into tunnels to find bonus bling, and getting huge scores once you crack the secrets behind combos.
The game might look like it’s arrived on your Android device from a ZX Spectrum, but this is a thoroughly modern and hugely engaging blaster.
In an awkwardly laid out space colony, Cosmic Express tasks you with setting out train tracks that enable colorful little aliens to get to their destinations. Each little biodome has an entrance and at least one exit, and the tracks you draw become increasingly labyrinthine as the tests gradually toughen.
Visually, the game’s a treat, and the premise is simple enough that anyone can pick it up – there’s not even any crisscrossing of tracks, like you get in the ostensibly similar Trainyard. But eventually you realize Cosmic Express is as devious as that classic, not least on encountering gloopy aliens who leave carriages in such a state no-one else wants to get on.
Smartly, the game’s branching level unlocks also mean you’ve always got several puzzles to try, rather than ending up stuck on a particularly tough one.
That game where you cast a shadow on the wall and attempt to make a vaguely recognizable rabbit? That’s Shadowmatic, only instead of your hands, you manipulate all kinds of levitating detritus, spinning and twisting things until you abruptly – and magically – fashion a silhouette resembling anything from a seahorse to an old-school telephone.
The game looks gorgeous, with stunning lighting effects and objects that look genuinely real as they dangle in the air. Mostly though, this is a game about tactility and contemplation – it begs to be explored, and to make use of your digits in a way virtual D-pads could never hope to compete with.
You might have played enough automatic runners to last several lifetimes, but Chameleon Run nonetheless deserves to be on your Android device. And although the basics might initially seem overly familiar (tap to jump and ensure your sprinting chap doesn’t fall down a hole), there’s in fact a lot going on here.
Each level has been meticulously designed, which elevates Chameleon Run beyond its algorithmically generated contemporaries. Like the best platform games, you must commit every platform and gap to memory to succeed. But also, color-switching and ‘head jumps’ open up new possibilities for route-finding – and failure.
In the former case, you must ensure you’re the right color before landing on colored platforms. With the latter, you can smash your head into a platform above to give you one more chance to leap forward and not tumble into the void.
There’s a distinct sense of minimalism at the heart of Edge, along with a knowing nod to a few arcade classics of old. Bereft of a story, the game simply tasks you with guiding a trundling cube to the end of each blocky level. Along the way, you grab tiny glowing cubes. On reaching the goal, you get graded on your abilities.
This admittedly doesn’t sound like much on paper, but Edge is a superb arcade game. The isometric visuals are sharp, and the head-bobbing soundtrack urges you onwards. The level design is the real star, though, with surprisingly imaginative objectives and hazards hewn from the isometric landscape.
And even when you’ve picked your way to the very end, there’s still those grades to improve by shaving the odd second off of your times.
Still not sure? Try out the 12-level demo. Eager for more? Grab Edge Extended, which is every bit as good as the original.
In stills, Causality resembles a run-of-the-mill puzzler that’d be easy to dismiss. But it’s in fact an Android gem – a terrifically clever game that messes around with time travel… and your head.
The aim is to get each spaceman to an exit that matches the color on their helmet. They automatically run, and so must be guided using arrow tiles, while also dealing with buttons, switches, and hazards, like mysterious shadowy spacemen that devour anyone they touch.
Portals complicate matters further, flinging spacemen through time so they can assist their earlier selves. It takes a while to grasp the nuances of this concept, but Causality lets you experiment, moving back and forth through time until you find a solution to any given problem, whilst quietly grumbling that, if anything, that bloke in Doctor Who has it easy.
Harking back to classic side-on platformers, Traps n' Gemstones dumps an Indiana Jones wannabe into a massive pyramid, filled with mummies, spiders and traps; from here he must figure out how to steal all the bling, uncover all the secrets, and then finally escape.
Beyond having you leap about, grab diamonds, and keep indigenous explorer-killing critters at bay, Traps n' Gemstones is keen to have you explore. Work your way deeper into the pyramid and you’ll find objects that when placed somewhere specific open up new pathways.
But although this one’s happy to hurl you back to gaming’s halcyon days, it’s a mite kinder to newcomers than the games that inspired it.
Get killed and you can carry on from where you left off. More of a hardcore player? Death wipes your score, so to doff your fedora in a truly smug manner, you’ll have to complete the entire thing without falling to the game’s difficult challenges.
There’s more than a hint of Zelda about Oceanhorn, but that’s not a bad thing when it means embarking on one of the finest arcade adventures on mobile.
You awake to find a letter from your father, who it turns out has gone from your life. You’re merely left with his notebook and a necklace. Thanks, Dad!
Being that this is a videogame, you reason it’s time to get questy, exploring the islands of the Uncharted Seas, chatting with folks, stabbing hostile wildlife, uncovering secrets and mysteries, and trying very hard to not get killed.
You get a chapter for free, to test how the game works on your device (its visual clout means fairly powerful Android devices are recommended); a single IAP unlocks the rest. The entire quest takes a dozen hours or so – which will likely be some of the best gaming you’ll experience on Android.
Some people argue programming is perhaps the best ‘game’ of all – and a brilliant puzzle. Those might be people you’d sooner avoid at parties, but Human Resource Machine suggests they could have a point. In this compelling and unique puzzle game, you control the actions of a worker drone by way of programming-like sequences.
The premise is to complete tasks by converting items in your inbox to whatever’s required in the outbox – for example, only sending zeroes. Like much programming, success often relies on logic, with you fashioning loops, and using actions such as ‘jump’, ‘if’ statements, and ‘copy’. These are arranged via drag and drop on a board at the right-hand side of the screen.
That might all sound impenetrable, but Human Resource Machine is in fact elegant, friendly, and approachable, not least due to developer Tomorrow Corporation’s penchant for infusing games with personality and heart.
Somewhat akin to The Room in space, _PRISM is all about manipulating floating mechanical geometric shapes, trying to get at the gem buried within.
Each of the structures before you is ridiculously intricate, with all manner of switches to flick, patterns to match, and components to twist and rotate. At any given moment, a seemingly innocuous action may entirely change the setup of what’s before you, unveiling further puzzles to wrap your head around.
Although we mentioned The Room earlier, _PRISM isn’t in the same league when it comes to difficulty.
Instead, _PRISM’s challenge is fairly slight, even if you sometimes require finger gymnastics in order to succeed. But its atmosphere and cleverly designed challenges make it well worth seeking out for puzzle fans – especially if you’ve a larger Android device to play on.
Coming across like a sandbox-oriented chill-out ‘zen’ take on seminal classic Boulder Dash, Captain Cowboy has your little space-faring hero exploring a massive handcrafted world peppered with walls, hero-squashing boulders, and plenty of bling.
Much like Boulder Dash, Captain Cowboy is mostly about not being crushed by massive rocks – you dig paths through dirt, aiming to strategically use boulders to take out threats rather than your own head. But everything here is played out without stress (due to endless continues) and sometimes in slow motion (when floating through zero-gravity sections of space).
The result feels very different from the title that inspired it, but it’s no less compelling. Tension is replaced by exploration, and single-screen arcade thrills are sacrificed for a longer game. As you dig deeper into Captain Cowboy’s world, there are plenty of things awaiting discovery, and even tackling the next screen of dirt and stones always proves enjoyable.
In the fantasy world of Solitairica, battles are fought to the death by way of cards. The foes barring the way to your quest’s goal set up walls of cards before them, which you smash through by matching those one higher or lower than the one you hold.
Then there are spells you cast by way of collected energies. Meanwhile, the creatures strike back with their own unique attacks, from strange worm-like beings nibbling your head, to grumpy forest dwellers making your cards grow beards.
In short, then, a modicum of fantasy role-playing wrapped around an entertaining and approachable card game. And on Android, you have the advantage of the game being free – a one-off IAP only figures if you want to avoid watching adverts, and have access to alternate decks to try your luck as a different character.
There’s a sweetness and a beauty about Samorost 3 that’s rare in a world of gaming so often obsessed with gore, blood, grittiness, and guns.
It features a little gnome trying to thwart the machinations of an evil wizard who largely obliterated a tiny universe with his steampunk dragon.
The gnome explores tiny planetoids, unearthing objects, interacting with the locals, and solving puzzles to move his quest towards a heroic conclusion.
Samorost 3 harks back to classic point-and-click fare. You tap about the place, and have your brain smashed out trying to find sometimes almost unreasonably obscure solutions.
But the magic here is in the lush visuals, lashings of personality (the little gnome bobbing about and gleefully punching the air during one music-oriented sequence), and gorgeous animations and audio that are integral to the entire production.
For a game that eventually pushes your observation skills, precision and nerve to breaking point, Linia is almost absurdly easy at first. At the top of the screen, you’re given a small selection of colors. The aim is to spear them in order, by slicing through shapes below.
This is simple enough when the shapes are static. It’s more than a tad tougher when the little blighters won’t stay still, or when they unsportingly evolve and mutate, doing everything they can to try and make you fail.
The end result is kind of a minimal, artistic, exactness-obsessed take on Fruit Ninja. And for our money, it’s an essential download – especially on devices with larger displays.
Anyone expecting the kind of free-roaming racing from the console versions of this title are going to be miffed, but Need for Speed: Most Wanted is nonetheless one of the finest games of its kind on Android. Yes, the tracks are linear, with only the odd shortcut, but the actual racing bit is superb.
You belt along the seedy streets of a drab, gray city, trying to win events that will boost your ego and reputation alike. Wins swell your coffers, enabling you to buy new vehicles for entering special events.
The game looks gorgeous on Android and has a high-octane soundtrack to urge you onwards. But mostly, this one’s about the controls – a slick combination of responsive tilt and effortless drifting that makes everything feel closer to OutRun 2 than typically sub-optimal mobile racing fare.
The original and best of the GO games, Hitman GO should never have worked. It reimagines the console stealth shooter as a dinky clockwork boardgame. Agent 47 scoots about, aiming to literally knock enemies off the board, and then reach and bump off his primary target.
Visually, it’s stunning – oddly adorable, but boasting the kind of clarity that’s essential for a game where a single wrong move could spell disaster. And the puzzles are well designed, too, with distinct objectives that often require multiple solutions to be found.
If you’re a fan of Agent 47’s exploits on consoles, you might be a bit nonplussed by Hitman GO, but despite its diorama stylings, it nonetheless manages to evoke some of the atmosphere and tension from the console titles, while also being entirely suited to mobile play.
Based on cult web hit Gimme Friction Baby by Wouter Visser, Orbital has you fire orbs into a tiny galactic void. Each bounces, comes to rest, and expands until touching something else. If one crosses the danger line above your cannon, well, it's game over.
It’s much harder to explain this game than to play it, but we’ll do our best. The screen rapidly fills, but you can obliterate existing orbs by firing others at them. During collisions, the numbers within static orbs decrease by one. Should any orb's number hit zero, it explodes, the wake depleting nearby orbs.
See, we told you.
Density of explanation aside, this is a beautiful game of dazzling neon and increasing tension. Larger balls create huge explosions and the potential for combos and higher scores, but leave you less room to maneuver.
Varied modes test your timing (Pure's oscillating gun), aim (Supernova's manual cannon), and whether you're Brian Cox (Gravity's orbs that arc around those already on the screen).
You've got to love a game developer that figured it would be a smart move to mash together the swipe-based navigation from dating app Tinder and a strategy title about ruling a kingdom. The danger, perhaps, is Reigns could be seen as simple and throwaway – yet it's anything but.
Sure, the basics are extremely straightforward: you deal with a never-ending stream of requests from your subjects by swiping left or right to respond. But your decisions affect how content the church, people, army, and treasury are. If any get too miffed (or even too happy), your reign comes to an abrupt end.
Cleverly, you then continue on as your heir, and Reigns' true genius becomes apparent. While you can blithely swipe your way through the ages, there are missions to complete, solutions to which may only become apparent over a great many years. Want to beat the Devil? You'll have a few centuries to prepare!
You have to feel for the little beastie in Badland 2. Having somehow survived all manner of horrors last time round, the winged critter is now hurled into an even deadlier circle of hell. As before, the aim is to reach an exit, avoiding traps such as massive saw-blades, bubbling magma, and flamethrowers belching toasty death in all directions.
Your means of survival is mostly to flap a bit. This time, though, rather than prod the screen to flap rightwards, you can flap left or right, which comes in handy for navigating deranged levels that now scroll in all directions.
There's perhaps a lack of freshness in this sequel, despite such new tricks and a smattering of unfamiliar traps, but Badland 2 remains a visually stunning and relentlessly cruel arcade experience among the very best on Android. (Do, though, buy the IAP – the atmosphere and momentum is obliterated when ads appear.)
One of the most exhilarating games on mobile, Impossible Road finds a featureless white ball barreling along a ribbon-like track that twists and turns into the distance. The aim is survival – and the more gates you pass through, the higher your score.
The snag is that Impossible Road is fast, and the track bucks and turns like the unholy marriage of a furious unbroken stallion and a vicious roller-coaster.
Once the physics click, however, you’ll figure out the risks you can take, how best to corner, and what to do when hurled into the air by a surprise bump in the road.
The game also rewards ‘cheats’. Leave the track, hurtle through space for a bit, and rejoin – you’ll get a score for your airborne antics, and no penalty for any gates missed. Don’t spend too long aloft though - a few seconds is enough for your ball to be absorbed into the surrounding nothingness.
There’s a disarmingly hypnotic and almost meditative quality to the early stages of Mini Metro. You sit before a blank underground map of a major metropolis, and drag out lines between stations that periodically appear.
Little trains then cart passengers about, automatically routing them to their stop, their very movements building a pleasing plinky plonky generative soundtrack.
As your underground grows, though, so does the tension. You’re forced to choose between upgrades, balance where trains run, and make swift adjustments to your lines. Should a station become overcrowded, your entire network is closed. (So...not very like the real world, then.)
Do well enough and you unlock new cities, with unique challenges. But even failure isn’t frustrating, and nor is the game’s repetitive nature a problem, given that Mini Metro is such a joy to play.
A massive upgrade over the developer’s own superb but broadly overlooked MegaCity, Concrete Jungle is a mash-up of puzzler, city management and deck builder.
The basics involve the strategic placement of buildings on a grid, with you aiming to rack up enough points to hit a row’s target. At that point, the row vanishes, and more building space scrolls into view.
Much of the strategy lies in clever use of cards, which affect nearby squares – a factory reduces the value of nearby land, for example, but an observatory boosts the local area. You quickly learn plonking down units without much thought messes up your future prospects.
Instead, you must plan in a chess-like manner – even more so when facing off against the computer opponent in brutally difficult head-to-head modes. But while Concrete Jungle is tough, it’s also fair – the more hours you put in, the better your chances. And it’s worth giving this modern classic plenty of your time.
There are varied mobile takes on limbless wonder Rayman's platform gaming exploits. The 1995 original exists on Android in largely faithful form, but feels ill-suited to touchscreens; and Rayman Adventures dabbles in freemium to the point it leaves a bad taste.
But Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman Fiesta Run get things right.
They rethink console-oriented platformers as auto-runners – which might sound reductive. However, this is more about distillation and focus than outright simplification.
Tight level design and an emphasis on timing regarding when to jump, rebound and attack forces you to learn layouts and the perfect moment to trigger actions, in order to get the in-game bling you need to progress.
Both titles are sublime, but Fiesta Run is marginally the better of the two - a clever take on platforming that fizzes with energy, looks fantastic, and feels like it was made for Android rather than a 20-year-old console.
A decidedly dizzying take on platform games, Circa Infinity exists in a sparse world of concentric circles. Your little stick man scoots around the edge of the largest, and a prod of the action button when he's atop a pizza-slice cut-out flips him inside the disc.
He can then make a leap for the bobbing circle within, at which point the process repeats.
Only the next disc may be patrolled by any number of critters intent on ejecting the stick man from their particular circle.
The net result is an odd-looking, disorienting arcade title that proves fresh and exhilarating. With 50 levels and five boss fights, making it to the end of Circa Infinity is a stern challenge; getting there quickly should test even the most hardened mobile gamer.
The Room is a series about mysteries within mysteries. It begins with a box. Fiddling with dials and switches causes things to spring to life elsewhere, and you soon find boxes within the boxes, layers unravelling before you; it's the videogame equivalent of Russian dolls meets carpentry, as breathed into life by a crazed inventor.
The Room's curious narrative and fragments of horror coalesce in follow-up The Room Two, which expands the 'boxes' into more varied environments – a séance room; a pirate ship. Movement remains restricted and on rails, but you're afforded a touch more freedom as you navigate your way through a strange clockwork world.
The Room Three is the most expansive of them all, featuring intricate, clever puzzles, as you attempt to free yourself from The Craftsman and his island of deranged traps and trials.
Get all three games, and play them through in order, preferably in a dark room when rain's pouring down outside for best effect. It's a terrifying and - ultimately - infuriating experience that will have you toying with the idea of having to go online for walkthroughs until you finally crack the mystery.
There are some clues, but generally these are very gentle hints at best.
The developers of Osmos HD call it an 'ambient arcade game'. It's a strange description, but apt, since Osmos is often about patience and subtlety. You guide a 'mote', which moves by expelling tiny pieces of itself. Seemingly floating in microscopic goop, it aims to munch motes smaller than itself, expand, and reign supreme.
This is easy enough when other motes don't fight back, but soon enough you're immersed in a kind of petri dish warfare, desperately trying to survive as various motes tear whatever amounts to each-other's faces off.
And then occasionally Osmos throws a further curveball, pitting you against the opposite extreme in scale, dealing with gravity and orbits as planet-like motes speed their way around deadly floating 'stars'.
In Her Story, you find yourself facing a creaky computer terminal with software designed by a sadist. It soon becomes clear the so-called L.O.G.I.C. database houses police interviews of a woman charged with murder.
But the tape's been hacked to bits and is accessible only by keywords; 'helpfully', the system only displays five search results at once.
Naturally, these contrivances exist to force you to play detective, eking out clues from video snippets to work out what to search for next, slowly piecing together the mystery in your brain.
A unique and captivating experience, Her Story will keep even the most remotely curious Android gamer gripped until the enigma is solved.
You probably need to be a bit of a masochist to get the most out of Snakebird, which is one of the most brain-smashingly devious puzzlers we've ever set eyes on. It doesn't really look or sound the part, frankly - all vibrant colors and strange cartoon 'snakebirds' that make odd noises.
But the claustrophobic floating islands the birds must crawl through, supporting each other (often literally) in their quest for fruit, are designed very precisely to make you think you've got a way forward, only to thwart you time and time again.
The result is a surprisingly arduous game, but one that's hugely rewarding when you crack a particularly tough level, at which point you'll (probably rightly) consider yourself some kind of gaming genius.
It's always the way: you're minding your own business when - BOOM! - you're suddenly propelled into a gargantuan space maze. At least it's the way if you're Captain Cowboy. This smart arcade title comes across like seminal classic Boulder Dash in space. You dig through dirt, grab diamonds, and avoid being crushed by boulders within the asteroid.
There are also floaty space bits, nasty space laser turrets, space bus stops and a space disco. At least, we're told that's the case, because we've never found the last of those things; but we'll keep trying, because Captain Cowboy is superb.
(The trailer is also one of the best we've seen, so watch it and then buy the game.)
One of the most gorgeous games around, FOTONICA at its core echoes one-thumb leapy game Canabalt. The difference is FOTONICA has you move through a surreal and delicate Rez-like 3D vector landscape, holding the screen to gain speed, and only soaring into the air when you lift a finger.
Smartly, FOTONICA offers eight very different and finite challenges, enabling you to learn their various multi-level pathways and seek out bonuses to ramp up your high scores. Get to grips with this dreamlike runner and you can then pit your wits (and thumbs) against three slowly mutating endless zones.
You might narrow your eyes at so-called 'realism' in mobile sports titles, given that this usually means 'a game that looks a bit like when you watch telly'. But Touchgrind Skate 2 somehow manages to evoke the feel of skateboarding, your fingers becoming tiny legs that urge the board about the screen.
There's a lot going on in Touchgrind Skate 2, and the control system is responsive and intricate, enabling you to perform all manner of tricks. It's not the most immediate of titles - you really need to not only run through the tutorial but fully master and memorize each step before moving on.
Get to grips with your miniature skateboard and you'll find one of the most fluid and rewarding experiences on mobile. Note that for free you get one park to scoot about in, but others are available via IAP.
The bar's set so low in modern mobile gaming that the word 'premium' has become almost meaningless. But Leo's Fortune bucks the trend, and truly deserves the term. It's a somewhat old-school side-on platform game, featuring a gruff furball hunting down the thief who stole his gold (and then, as is always the way, dropped coins at precise, regular intervals along a lengthy, perilous pathway).
The game is visually stunning, from the protagonist's animation through to the lush, varied backdrops. The game also frequently shakes things up, varying its pace from Sonic-style loops to precise pixel-perfect leaps.
It at times perhaps pushes you a bit too far — late on, we found some sections a bit too finicky and demanding. But you can have as many cracks at a section as you please, and if you master the entire thing, there's a hardcore speedrun mode that challenges you to complete the entire journey without dying.
At its core, Forget-Me-Not is Pac-Man mixed with Rogue. You scoot about algorithmically generated single-screen mazes, gobbling down flowers, grabbing a key, and then making a break for the exit.
But what makes Forget-Me-Not essential is how alive its tiny dungeons feel. Your enemies don't just gun for you, but are also out to obliterate each other and, frequently, the walls of the dungeon, reshaping it as you play.
There are tons of superb details to find buried within the game's many modes, and cheapskates can even get on board with the free version, although that locks much of its content away until you've munched enough flowers.
If there was any justice, Forget-Me-Not would have a permanent place at the top of the Google Play charts. It is one of the finest arcade experiences around, not just on Android, but on any platform - old or new.
Giving you a sense of the emptiness and vastness of space, and the risks in exploring the void, isn't easy for a bite-sized survival game, but Last Horizon somehow succeeds.
The idea is to leave your broken world behind, roam the galaxy in your rocket, and 'harvest' living worlds. Doing so loads information into your terraforming kit, for when you reach your destination.
During your journey you battle massive suns, asteroids, black holes, alien lifeforms, and lots of gravity. This is simple fare - more Lunar Lander than EVE Online - but it has a great sense of atmosphere. And although repeating the first three flights can be a little tiresome if you keep dying (hint: be more patient), Flight X mode's procedurally generated maps provide great replay value.
If you're fed up with racing games paying more attention to whether the tarmac looks photorealistic rather than how much fun it should be to zoom along at insane speeds, check out Horizon Chase. This tribute to old-school arcade titles is all about the sheer joy of racing, rather than boring realism.
The visuals are vibrant, the soundtrack is jolly and cheesy, and the racing finds you constantly battling your way to the front of an aggressive pack.
If you fondly recall Lotus Turbo Esprit Challenge and Top Gear, don't miss this one. (Note that Horizon Chase gives you five tracks for free. To unlock the rest, there's a single £2.29/US$2.99 IAP.)
Old-school 8-bit platformers just don't work on touchscreens, due to pixel-perfect gameplay that demands tight, tactile controls. I Am Level's genius is in fusing the core elements of such games (Spectrum-style graphics, single-screen puzzle-oriented challenges, and an explorable map) with modern mobile thinking.
Thus, each of your efforts builds on the previous one, and your rotund avatar gets about by you tilting your device or pinging him across the screen using springs and flippers. It's essentially Jet Set Willy meets pinball and it's fantastic.
Sadly, developer Stewart Hogarth passed away in 2015, at the far too young age of 34. So snap this one up before it vanishes forever, and play a few games in tribute of a talented games creator.
There's a great sense of freedom from the second you immerse yourself in the strange and futuristic world of Power Hover. The robot protagonist has been charged with pursuing a thief who's stolen batteries that power the city.
The droid therefore grabs a hoverboard and scythes across gorgeous minimal landscapes, such as deserts filled with colossal marching automatons, glittering blue oceans, and a dead grey human city.
In lesser hands, Power Hover could have been utterly forgettable. After all, you're basically tapping left and right to change the direction of a hoverboard, in order to collect batteries and avoid obstacles. But the production values here are stunning.
Power Hover is a visual treat, boasts a fantastic soundtrack, and gives mere hints of a story, enabling your imagination to run wild. Best of all, the floaty controls are perfect; you might fight them at first, but once they click, Power Hover becomes a hugely rewarding experience.
(On Android, Power Hover is a free download; to play beyond the first eight levels requires a single £2.29/$2.99 IAP.)
It turns out what makes a good snowman is three very precisely rolled balls of snow stacked on top of each other. And that's the core of this adorable puzzle game, which has more than a few hints of Towers of Hanoi and Sokoban about it as your little monster goes about building icy friends to hug.
What sets A Good Snowman apart from its many puzzle-game contemporaries on Android is a truly premium nature. You feel that the developer went to great efforts to polish every aspect of the production, from the wonderful animation to puzzles that grow in complexity and deviousness, without you really noticing — until you get stuck on a particularly ferocious one several hours in.
This one's all about the bling - and also the not being crushed to death by falling rocks and dirt. Doug Dug riffs off of Mr Driller, Boulder Dash and Dig Dug, the dwarf protagonist digging deep under the earth on an endless quest for shimmering gems. Cave-ins aren't the only threat, though - the bowels of the earth happen to be home to a surprising array of deadly monsters.
Some can be squashed and smacked with Doug's spade (goodbye, creepy spider!), but others are made of sterner stuff (TROLL! RUN AWAY!). Endlessly replayable and full of character, Doug Dug's also surprisingly relaxing - until the dwarf ends up under 150 tonnes of rubble.
There are plenty of great pinball games for Android, but Pinball Arcade is a bit different. Rather than reworking an old PC hit or going nuts with animatronics and effects that simply wouldn't work in the real world, this app seeks to become a fully playable digital museum - essentially (legal) MAME for pinball.
You get Tales of the Arabian Nights for free, and one other table is regularly unlocked for unlimited play. They all look superb and work especially well on 7-inch tablets and above. Importantly, the tables also play like the real thing, whether you grab old-school classic Black Hole, the creepy and weird Bride of Pin•Bot, or more modern fare like The Addams Family.
This is one of those 'rub your stomach, pat your head' titles that has you play two games at once. At the top of the screen, it's an endless runner, with your little bloke battling all manner of monsters, and pilfering loot. The rest of the display houses what's essentially a Bejeweled-style gem-swapper. The key is in matching items so that the running bit goes well - like five swords when you want to get all stabby.
Also, there's the building a boat bit. Once a run ends, you return to your watery home, which gradually acquires new rooms and residents. Some merely power up your next sprint, but others help you amass powerful weaponry. Resolutely indie and hugely compelling, You Must Build a Boat will keep you busily swiping for hours.
If you're of a certain age, the words 'Pro Pinball' will bring a huge grin to your face. In the 1990s, it was the pinball simulation series for your PC, featuring amazing physics, great table designs, and stunning visuals.
Pro Pinball for Android is a remastered take on Timeshock!, bringing the original table bang up to date with high-quality graphics and lighting, touchscreen controls, and a top-notch soundtrack. It still plays wonderfully, and we can only hope loads of people buy it, enabling the developer to bring other Pro Pinball tables to mobile.
The term 'masterpiece' is perhaps bandied about too often in gaming circles, but Limbo undoubtedly deserves such high praise. It features a boy picking his way through a creepy monochrome world, looking for his sister. At its core, Limbo is a fairly simple platform game with a smattering of puzzles, but its stark visuals, eerie ambience, and superb level design transforms it into something else entirely.
You'll get a chill the first time a chittering figure sneaks off in the distance, and your heart will pump when being chased by a giant arachnid, intent on spearing your tiny frame with one of its colossal spiked legs. That death is never the end — each scene can be played unlimited times until you progress — only adds to Limbo's disturbing nature.
People who today play mobile classic Canabalt and consider it lacking due to its simplicity don't understand what the game is trying to do. Canabalt is all about speed — the thrill of being barely in control, and of affording the player only the simplest controls for survival. ALONE… takes that basic premise and straps a rocket booster to it.
Instead of leaping between buildings, you're flying through deadly caverns, a single digit nudging your tiny craft up and down. Occasional moments of generosity — warnings about incoming projectiles; your ship surviving minor collisions and slowly regenerating — are offset by the relentlessly demanding pressure of simply staying alive and not slamming into a wall. It's an intoxicating combination, and one that, unlike most games in this genre, matches Canabalt in being genuinely exciting to play.
From a gaming perspective, the most important aspect of touchscreen devices is that they give you new ways to play, but relatively few developers take full advantage, instead choosing to ape traditional controls. Framed is an exception, flinging you headlong into an animated comic of sorts. Your aim is to improve the fortunes of a spy, fleeing from the cops — and worse.
Panels are dragged about and rotated, and new ideas regularly appear, including you having to carefully shift scenes on the page at exactly the right moment. This is a stylish and finite affair that ends before it gets old, leaving you satisfied but nonetheless hoping for more.
It's not often you see a game about the "joy of cultivation", and Prune is unlike anything you've ever played before. Apparently evolving from an experimental tree-generation script, the game has you swipe to shape and grow a plant towards sunlight by tactically cutting off specific branches.
That sounds easy, but the trees, shrubs and weeds in Prune don't hang around. When they're growing at speed and you find yourself faced with poisonous red orbs to avoid, or structures that damage fragile branches, you'll be swiping in a frantic race towards sunlight.
And all it takes is one dodgy swipe from a sausage finger to see your carefully managed plant very suddenly find itself being sliced in two.
A very, very pretty game, this. Monument Valley is based around the weird sort of impossible geometric shapes popularised by artist M. C. Escher, with its colourful maps bending and rotating in ways that appear to defy the laws of nature. You walk on walls, flip them, turn them into floors, avoid crows and marvel at how beautiful it all looks.
It's a short journey, but a joyful one. If you hanker for more when protagonist Ida's quest is complete, further adventures are available via IAP.
If you're not already familiar with Blizzard's Hearthstone then consider this a warning: it gets very, very addictive. A card game from the makers of World of Warcraft, Hearthstone sees you building decks from won or purchased cards to then battle against friends and strangers.
It's a surprisingly complex game that demands meticulous strategy. You can play and enjoy without paying a penny, but there are options to buy booster packs and add-on quests should you want to.
This is the good stuff. So many mobile games make the claim of being console-quality, but Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions is a rare title that fully delivers. Like its predecessors, this is a twin-stick shooter, a fight for survival against waves of deadly neon foes.
But as its name alludes to, Dimensions dispenses with flat arenas, instead wrapping play areas around geometric shapes. It's disorienting as a cube in space you're traversing lurches about, and exhilarating as you barely avoid the legions of ships lurking beyond an edge.
With 15 grids and 12 modes, along with an extensive single-player quest, Dimensions easily manages to be the finest game of its kind on mobile.
Of all the attempts to play with the conventions of novels and story-led gaming on mobile, 80 Days is the most fun. It takes place in an 1872 with a decidedly steampunk twist, but where Phileas Fogg remains the same old braggart. As his trusty valet, you must help Fogg make good on a wager to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. This involves managing/trading belongings and carefully selecting routes.
Mostly, though, interaction comes by way of a pacey, frequently exciting branched narrative, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book on fast-forward.
A late-2015 content update added 150,000 words, two new plots and 30 cities to an adventure that already boasted plenty of replay value — not least when you've experienced the joys of underwater trains and colossal mechanical elephants in India, and wonder what other marvels await discovery in this world of wonders.
Lara Croft games have landed on Android to rather variable results. The original Tomb Raider just doesn't work on touchscreens, and although Lara Croft: Relic Run is enjoyable enough, it's essentially a reskinned Temple Run.
Lara Croft GO is far more ambitious and seriously impressive. It rethinks Tomb Raider in much the same way Hitman GO reimagined the Hitman series.
Croft's adventures become turn-based puzzles, set in a world half-way between board game and gorgeous isometric minimalism. It shouldn't really work, but somehow Lara Croft GO feels like a Tomb Raider game, not least because of the wonderful sense of atmosphere, regular moments of tension, and superb level design.
If you've played Laser Dog's previous efforts, PUK and ALONE…, you'll know what you're in for with HoPiKo. This game takes no prisoners. If it did take them, it'd repeatedly punch them in the face before casually discarding them. HoPiKo, then, is not a game to be messed with. Instead, it feels more like a fight. In each of the dozens of hand-crafted tiny levels, you leap from platform to platform via deft drags and taps, attempting to avoid death.
Only, death is everywhere and very easy to meet. The five-stage level sets are designed to be completed in mere seconds, but also to break your brain and trouble your fingers. It's just on the right side of hellishly frustrating, meaning you'll stop short of flinging your device at the wall, emerging from your temporary red rage foolishly determined that you can in fact beat the game on your next go.
Quite possibly one of the best uses of the mobile phone accelerometer tech there's ever been, this, with motion control sending your fishing line down to the depths of the sea while you avoid fish. Then, on the way up, it's how you catch them. That's when it goes ridiculous, as the fisherman chucks them up in the air - and you shoot them to bank the money. Silly, but a must play.
The sort of silly maths game you might've played in your head before mobile phones emerged to absorb all our thought processes, Threes! really does take less than 30 seconds to learn.
You bash numbers about until they form multiples of three and disappear. That's it. There are stacks of free clones available, but if you won't spare the price of one massive bar of chocolate to pay for a lovely little game like this that'll amuse you for week, you're part of the problem and deserve to rot in a freemium hell where it costs 50p to do a wee.
The build 'em up phenomenon works brilliantly well on Android, thanks to the creator of the desktop original taking the time to do it justice.
It's a slimmed down interface you see here with on-screen buttons, but the basics are all in and the Survival and Creative modes are ready for play -- as is multiplayer mode over Wi-Fi.
Since Pac-Man graced arcades in the early 1980s, titles featuring the rotund dot-muncher have typically been split between careful iterations on the original, and mostly duff attempts to shoe-horn the character into other genres. CE DX is ostensibly the former, although the changes made from the original radically transform the game, making it easily the best Pac-Man to date.
Here, the maze is split in two. Eat all the dots from one half and a special object appears on the other; eat that and the original half's dots are refilled in a new configuration.
All the while, dozing ghosts you brush past join a spectral conga that follows your every move. The result is an intoxicating speedrun take on a seminal arcade classic, combined with the even more ancient Snake; somehow, this combination ends up being fresh, exciting and essential.
Telltale has made a name for itself with story-driven episodic games and The Wolf Among Us is one of its best. Essentially a hard boiled fairy tale, you control the big bad wolf as he hunts a murderer through the mean streets of Fabletown.
Don't let the fairy tale setting fool you, this is a violent, mature game and it's one where your decisions have consequences, impacting not only what the other characters think of you but also who lives and who dies. Episode One is free but the remaining four will set you back a steep £9.59 / $14.99 / around AU$18. Trust us though, you'll want to see how this story ends.
Large, deep games are still relatively rare on Android, but you can add one more to the list with The Banner Saga. This Viking-inspired tactical RPG gives you control of over 25 different characters across 7 different classes as you battle your way through beautiful hand drawn environments and make decisions both in and out of combat which affect the story.
There's a lot to it, but its turn-based nature means controls are never a problem and you can take it at your own pace.
Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 joins the all-electric car bandwagon
Luxury German auto maker Mercedes has announced its first all-electric car, the all-wheel drive Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 4Matic SUV.
This production-ready EV (electric vehicle) is just the latest in a line of electric cars from premium manufacturers to launch this year, with the likes of BMW, Audi and Jaguar also unveiling gas-free options.
Tesla remains the most well-known electric car maker, but with more and more premium manufacturers launching rivals to the Model S, Model X and Model 3, it'll likely be looking nervously over its shoulder.
Still over a year awayWhile the production car has been officially announced - after a concept of the EQC 400 was shown off at the 2016 Paris Motor Show - you won't actually be able to get your hands on one until 2020.
When the EQC 400 4Matic finally does roll off the production line, you can expect a top speed of 180km/h (around 110mph), a 0-100km/h (0-62mph) time of 5.1 seconds and a range, Mercedes claims, of over 450km (280 miles).
The car also comes with a range of smart features including navigation that bases its calculation on the fastest route taking into account the shortest charging time, and the MBUX multimedia system - Mercedes-Benz User Experience - which has numerous EQ-specific functions such as the display of range, charge status and energy flow.
BMW's new all-electric SUV is the first of its kind from the automakerVia Pocket-Lint
Roku Express reduced to just £23.99 - the perfect Amazon Fire TV Stick alternative
The tiny yet mighty Roku Express streaming stick has always been a bargain at £29.99, but today marks the lowest price we've ever seen at just £23.99. Better yet, it comes with a free movie in the shape of the 2017 version of Flatliners. Even without the free flick though, this is an excellent deal.
The Roku Express is a relative newcomer on the UK, but has been a popular alternative to Amazon's Fire TV Stick in the US for a while now. And with , this Roku deal is considerably cheaper.
Simply plug the Roku Express into the back of your TV in one of the HDMI slots, get it signed into your Wi-Fi and enjoy the rich selection of streaming apps. Netflix, Amazon Video, Rakuten TV, Now TV, BBC iPlayer, 4OD and more are all good to go.
When all's said and done, you won't find a cheaper way to turn your regular TV into a smart TV. If you have a slightly older TV that's missing a few modern apps (maybe it doesn't include Amazon Video?) then this is much cheaper than getting a new TV and it uses considerably less electricity than running the apps on a gaming console too.
Roku Express + Flatliners £23.99 at RakutenIf you fancy checking out some other streaming device deals you could take a look at our extensive Roku deals page, or see the latest Amazon Fire TV prices.
Best free Android apps of 2018: 100 you must download
It's been ten years since Android was first outed by Google, and back then it was hard to imagine the sheer number of apps we'd have today.
There are apps for everything, and many of them are completely free, meaning you're just a few downloads away from supercharging your smartphone at no extra cost.
What's the best phone of 2018?Admittedly, the huge quantity of apps doesn't mean they're all quality - far from it in fact, and finding the good ones can be tough.
There are tools and techniques to help, with various lists in the Play Store providing you with Editor's Picks across a range of categories, new releases and even apps that are specifically recommended for you based on your previous installs.
You can also hunt out apps that are similar to your favorites by searching for an app you have and seeing what else comes up.
And checking out user reviews and ratings can save you from downloading a dud of an app.
But even with all that, the sheer number of apps on Google Play means many of the best can often get lost, while weaker ones sometimes rise to the top.
So to make sure you never install a duff app here's our selection of the best you should install right now - each one carefully chosen to ensure you'll have a whole suite of fun, engaging and, dammit, useful apps on your phone or tablet.
New this week: Khan Academy Kids
Khan Academy Kids is packed full of games and activities designed to entertain and educate young children.
From sorting objects based on their color, to selecting the right letter to complete a word, to drawing and a whole lot more, there are apparently thousands of activities in here, and while we haven’t tested that many, the ones we have tested are varied and well put together, with colorful drawings, songs and sound effects.
Most of the interactions use simple tap and swipe gestures, so most children should be able to navigate the app comfortably. A colorful character sits in the corner, and can be tapped whenever help is needed.
There’s a lot here, and Khan Academy Kids should be suitable whether you want something your kid can do on their own, or something they can play through together with you.
Notes by Firefox is a very simple note-taking app, ideal if you just want to jot down basic notes without wrestling overbearing interfaces and unwanted options.
The look is minimalist, with a mostly white screen housing all your current notes. You can tap on one to open and edit it, tap the plus button to make a new note, or tap the minus next to a note to delete it. There are a few formatting options – you can create bullet points or numbered lists, add headings and use bold and italics, but that’s about it.
However, Notes by Firefox does have a few tricks up its sleeve, as it syncs between your Android device and the Firefox browser on your desktop, so you can access your notes from multiple devices, and they’re secured with end-to-end encryption.
Other than that, this is a basic app, but if you’re not a power user it should be all you need, and it’s completely free.
Emma helps you keep a close eye on your money. Link all your bank accounts (including credit cards) and you’ll be able to see all their balances in one place.
But that’s just the beginning. Emma also tells you how much money you have in total across all your accounts, as well as how much debt you have, and how much money you gain or lose in total each month.
It also lists all transactions and has a good stab at putting them into categories, such as shopping, transport or bills. This also means you can see at a glance how much you’re spending in each category, which is a good way to make you more aware of your spending and potentially reduce it.
You can change any miscategorized spends, see a list of recurring payments, get a weekly breakdown of spending and income, and more.
Of course, Emma is secure too. It uses SSL 256-bit encryption, supports fingerprint locking and doesn’t store your banking credentials.
Emma is an essential app if you have accounts with more than one bank, but even if you don’t, chances are that it gives you a lot more insight into your money than your bank does. The only real downside is that it’s UK-only.
There are a lot of language learning apps on Android, but when it comes to languages such as Japanese, Mandarin and Korean, which have different alphabet systems, most apps fall a bit flat in teaching you to read and write in the language.
But that’s where LingoDeer excels, with various exercises designed to teach you the alphabet and grammar, as well as more conventional lessons focused on speaking and hearing the language.
LingoDeer can feel a bit intimidating at times, especially if you’re a complete beginner, as these alphabets can look completely alien, but we’re not sure there’s any way around that. Learning one of these Asian languages is going to be hard, and LingoDeer is a good way to get started.
There are so many words in the English language, including all sorts of weird and wonderful ones that you might never have come across. But how do you come across them? Browsing a dictionary is inefficient, so instead you could try Orphic, an app dedicated to the more unusual and interesting parts of English.
The app contains hundreds of words and will highlight a new one for you every day, even sending you a push notification for it if you want, so you can constantly learn new words.
You can also head into the app and explore its library of language at your own pace. For every word you can see definitions, example sentences and even hear an audio clip, so you can be sure you’re saying it right.
You can also add words to a list of favorites, so you can easily return to them later, and Orphic promises to add new words regularly, so the app should get better over time.
Space Nation Navigator is an oddity. Part game, part learning tool, part fitness app – the only thing uniting it all is a focus on space.
There are various ‘missions’ including mini games, such as memorizing codes to repair a spacecraft, quizzes, and even physical exercises designed get you ready for an outer space adventure.
There are also videos and articles that teach you more about space and the people exploring it, while leaderboards give you extra incentive to carry out the various activities.
There’s the slightly annoying need to buy ‘coins’ or watch adverts if you want to replay missions, but otherwise Space Nation Navigator is an interesting app for anyone with even a passing interest in space. A bit more focus might help, but there’s a lot of content here.
Mei: Messaging with AI promises a lot, but at the moment – at its core – it’s primarily an SMS app that can also analyze the messages you send and receive to show you a personality profile for you and the people who message you.
It will tell you your top five characteristics, and assign a percentage score to your openness, emotional control, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
You can tap on any of these to dig deeper. For example, tapping on openness will show how adventurous, emotionally aware and imaginative you are in Mei’s opinion, among other things.
You can also use the app to see how similar you are to the people you message and what traits you have in common.
As well as standard SMS messages, if you’re talking to someone else who also uses Mei you get end-to-end encryption and free international messaging (due to messages then being sent over the internet), along with other tools such as expiring messages and the ability to unsend messages.
The app’s in beta, and more features are coming, including additional AI abilities, such as the app being able to detect if you’re not texting as you normally would, perhaps because you’re in an unusual state of mind, and alerting you to that fact.
Being in beta, Mei might not be totally bug-free, but it’s an interesting upgrade to your standard SMS app.
Wherever you are, chances are there are hundreds of different plant species within walking distance, and most of us have no idea what all but the most common are called.
PlantNet aims to make identifying them easier – simply snap a photo and the app will attempt to identify what kind of plant or flower you’re seeing using visual recognition software.
Assuming you’ve taken an in-focus shot with just a single type of plant in it you’ll probably get one or more suggestions, complete with names and pictures.
This is probably the main thing you’ll use PlantNet for, but you can also view pictures submitted by other users and browse plants by a number of categories, such as where in the world they’re found. In many cases there are also links to Wikipedia pages about the plants, so you can learn more about them.
As an identification tool PlantNet isn’t perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing, and even if it can’t always identify the plant you’re looking at with 100% accuracy, chances are it will highlight some other interesting species in the process of trying.
There are plenty of podcast apps already but when Google makes one it’s worth paying attention, and Google Podcasts doesn’t disappoint, instantly reaching the heights of the best free ones.
It’s got a minimalist design that’s light on color, but the app’s not light on features, as it automatically syncs podcasts across devices, so you can start listening on one and finish on another, it works with Google Home and you can launch straight into podcasts from Google Assistant and the Google Search app.
Google Podcasts also gives you recommendations based on your listening history and preferences, so it’s a decent way to find new content, and there are other tools, such as the ability to change the playback speed.
None of which would matter if it didn’t get the basics right, but it does, letting you subscribe to podcasts and highlighting new episodes on the main screen, letting you stream or download podcasts, and providing lists of the top podcasts in various categories.
Quip is an office suite built for teams, as not only can you create documents and spreadsheets, you can also share them with others and work on them collaboratively.
It supports real-time messaging too and while this app will mostly be of use for teams of people who work together it could also be used for other things, such as shared grocery lists and to-do lists.
You can access it all from your phone, tablet or computer, so you’ll never be far from the work and information you need, and Quip is quite full-featured when it comes to actually creating documents and spreadsheets, as for example it supports over 400 spreadsheet functions.
You probably won’t want to make much use of them from a phone, but if you’re on a tablet then Quip is a great way to work on the move, and even on a phone it can be good for reading, editing and commenting on work.
If you like to have relaxed background music on while working, reading or anything else, then Loffee is definitely worth a download.
The app contains a handful of curated playlists, all featuring lo-fi music that’s ideal for relaxing to or having on while you do something else.
To our mind, the music choices are great, as well as often featuring little known bands and artists, so you’re sure to find things that you like and haven’t heard before.
If you do, you can follow links to the artist’s Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitter and Instagram pages, while other tools in the app include a timer (which shuts the music off when it finishes counting down), and the ability to listen to songs offline.
The Loffee app itself is also something you’ll want to spend time in, as each playlist has a custom illustration that’s almost as soothing as the music. You can’t cast music to other devices and the actual selection of songs is small, so this won’t replace your main music apps, but it could definitely complement them.
Your phone might already have Google Lens built in, but if not you can now download it from the Play Store, and that’s worth doing.
Once you’ve launched the app you can point your camera at almost anything and get information on it. Point it at a book and it will give you links to reviews of the book and places to buy it. Other products also produce store links, or if Google Lens can’t definitively identify something it will suggest similar products.
You can also point it at a landmark to get information on it, at foreign text to translate it or at an event to add it to your calendar. You can even point it at plants or animals to identify them.
The results aren’t perfect. In our experience Google Lens will regularly incorrectly identify something or fail to come up with any suggestions for what something might be, especially with more unusual items, but it works often enough to be genuinely useful, especially once you get used to the kinds of things it’s likely to work with – so you know whether to even bother booting it up.
Starling Bank is more than just an app. In fact, it’s a bank account, but it’s a modern one that’s entirely app-based. That means there are no branches and there’s no web access.
That could sound daunting, if the prospect of changing bank account isn’t already off-putting enough, but in fact having everything in an app keeps things simple, and there are some powerful tools here not offered by most conventional banks.
For example, it has zero ATM withdrawal fees or transaction fees when using your card abroad, it lets you temporarily or permanently lock your card in-app, and you can enable or disable contactless payments, ATM withdrawals and online payments, for extra security.
You can also send in-app requests to friends and family who owe you money (and who don’t need Starling themselves to pay you back), receive instant notifications for income and outgoings, and a whole lot more.
As for changing your bank to take advantage of all this, well, you don’t necessarily have to. After all, there’s no real downside to having two bank accounts, but if you do decide you want to go all-in with Starling Bank that’s simple too, as there’s an account switching service that does all the hard work for you.
This one’s for UK users only, but there are similar app-based banks elsewhere, such as Simple in the US.
Today in History is exactly what it says on the tin, telling you what happened today in history, and as it turns out there’s usually a lot that happened.
The Today in History app will tell you about events, births, deaths, holidays and just about everything else significant that ever happened on the current day, and it includes pictures, text and links to Wikipedia articles (which is where it pulls its data from).
It’s an attractive app and even better if you use the widget, which shows you events from this day in history on your home screen.
Today in History also lets you download content for offline use, get notifications and – for anyone who’s not a native English speaker – switch to one of 50 different languages, a switch which cleverly will also affect the events you see, with those relevant to the culture associated with that language being prioritized.
Google News replaces Google Play Newsstand, and it’s a strong substitute. Throughout the day it will highlight the top five current stories that it thinks you’ll care about, based on the sources and topics that you tell the app you like, but if you keep scrolling down you can also see other news.
The best bit about Google News though, might be the option to see ‘perspectives and context’. It’s a little button next to stories, which when tapped shows the same story as reported by various different sites and inevitably from various different perspectives, including some that you might never find on your own.
As such it can give you a more rounded look at the news than you’d get if you’re always just using your preferred news source.
Other features of Google News include the ability to filter headlines by subject or source, and subscribe to paid news sources with a single tap.
Pet’s Diary is a fairly simple but potentially very useful app for keeping track of when your pet needs feeding, cleaning, walking or whatever else.
Essentially, it’s like a calendar or to-do list, where you can set up events and reminders, but they’re all focused on your pet, and if you have more than one pet you can set up individual profiles for each, where you can see every upcoming event and reminder, as well as previous ones.
You can also add comments to each reminder, as well as assigning a category, such as ‘food’ or ‘veterinary care’.
Pet’s Diary is probably most useful if you have a high-maintenance pet or multiple pets with their own schedules and needs, but if you ever find yourself putting pet-related things in your calendar, or forgetting to do them, then it’s definitely worth having.
The core app is free, but for US$2.99/£3.99 you can unlock the pro version, which removes adverts and lets you create an unlimited number of pet profiles, among other things.
If more than one person in your household buys groceries, then Bring! is an app that you should really look into.
It’s a grocery list app, as you might have surmised, but it lets you share and collaborate on lists, so everyone who might buy something can see the current list, and anyone else in the household can see it and add to it. Whenever someone does buy things from the list they can tick them off with a tap, so there’s no danger of the same thing being bought twice.
Bring! also lets you add photos to each entry, which is handy if you want to add something very specific, such as a certain brand of item, or if you just want to add some color to the list. But Bring! also has its own database, with images for hundreds of items.
You can create and share multiple lists if, for example, you have a general grocery list and another one for a party. There’s even a recipe section, designed to inspire you to cook, and making it easy to add all the ingredients to your shopping list.
Technically there’s no reason you couldn’t use Bring! for other types of shopping lists as well, or even for to-do lists, but it’s designed for – and excels at – groceries.
Privacy is increasingly hard to come by, especially if you live much of your life online, but Signal Private Messenger can at least ensure no one snoops on your messages.
The app uses your normal phone number and address book, so as with WhatsApp, you don’t need to set up a separate account or anything, making it convenient to use.
Signal is more secure than WhatsApp or most other messaging apps. Not only does it use advanced end-to-end encryption, but it’s also open source, meaning anyone can audit the code to verify how secure it is.
Signal lets you set messages to delete anywhere from five seconds to one week after they’ve been seen – or you can have them remain forever if you’d prefer.
The app also promises that its server never has access to your messages or any other data, plus it offers password or fingerprint protection and it’s not light on general messaging features, as it also supports group chats, voice calls and attachments.
In all, it’s a decent enough messaging app that it could be a strong choice even if privacy and security are only of secondary concern.
Steam Link allows you to stream your Steam games from your PC to your Android phone or tablet, so you can play them from anywhere in your house.
You are limited to your house though, as your computer needs to be on and using the same Wi-Fi network as your Android device for this to work. No Steam streaming on the train, then, but it’s quite freeing if you’re usually tethered to a desk.
You also need a fairly fast and stable internet connection and most games will need you to pair your phone with a Bluetooth controller, though some simpler ones can be controlled purely touchscreen.
Still, if you’re big on gaming but wish you could play your ‘proper’ PC games from the couch, bed or bath, then Steam Link is well worth trying.
Neverthink is an app that aims to give you interesting things to watch, without you ever having to think or decide on them for yourself.
All you actually have to decide is the general category of content you’re in the mood for, be it learning something new, comedy, news, food videos, or one of dozens of other categories.
Once you’ve selected one a relevant video starts playing. These are sourced from the internet and it’s all subscription-free stuff that you could find yourself, except now you don’t have to.
There’s Chromecast support, and if you see something you like you can favorite it to return to later, and that’s about it.
It’s worth noting also that the content is all hand-picked by actual people. There aren’t any algorithms here, and Neverthink promises that hours of new content is added every day, so there should always be so mething to watch.
There’s a lot more to the weather than you’ll generally see in a typical forecast, and it can be a lot more interesting – and beautiful – than a simple temperature reading.
Ventusky knows this, as it makes forecasts more engaging by including an attractive weather map and wind animation, complete with the current temperature shown on the map, so you can see exactly which areas are what temperature at a glance.
Hourly forecasts let you see how the weather will change over the day and tapping on any hour or day will adjust the weather map accordingly.
You can also view weekly charts of the temperature, precipitation and wind, so you can see how much it varies over time.
Sunrise and sunset times are also available, so there’s a lot to sink your teeth into, but really Ventusky is all about that weather map and wind animation, which shows the motion and direction of the wind in a mesmerizing way.
From the name you might think ChefsFeed is a recipe app, or maybe a social network for chefs, but while there’s an element of both it’s so much more than that.
ChefsFeed, really, is for anyone who loves food. It has articles and videos about food and restaurants, and yes, some recipes, but most of it’s not so much about cooking your own dishes as it is about food culture, with articles titled ‘why restaurants are a refuge for the restless’, and ‘sourcing sustainably is a way of life’, for example.
The app also helps you find new places to dine out, with a section highlighting interesting and recommended restaurants near you, complete with their opening hours and contact details.
You can filter these suggestions by price, distance and type of food, among other things, and save your favorites, so you’ll never forget a place you planned to try.
SketchBook isn’t a new app, but while many of the features used to cost money, it’s now completely free, making it worth revisiting.
The features that are now free include more than 130 brush presets, customizable canvas sizes, various rulers, high quality image imports and more.
And that’s on top of all the basic tools that were already free, such as a layer editor and pen mode, all of which combine to make this one of the most generous free sketching apps available on Android.
Coming from Autodesk, the power of SketchBook should come as no surprise, but it’s an app that seemed worth the money previously and is now utterly essential if you’ve even toyed with the idea of digital sketching.
Facebook Local is all about finding events and attractions nearby. It links to your Facebook account then shows a bunch of events listed on Facebook that are near your current or home location, or another place of your choice.
Some of these will be from friends and pages that you follow, but it will also dig up other local public events, so you’re likely to discover things that you wouldn’t have found on your main Facebook feed.
You can filter events and attraction by type, date, location or time, view them on a map and add them to your Facebook calendar, so it’s simple to control what you see and keep track of what you’re interested in. You can also add your phone calendar to the app, so you can see and manage everything in one place.
More or less all of this stuff can be found on Facebook itself, but Facebook Local is a much more focused way to find out what’s going on around you, without all of Facebook’s many distractions, so it’s worth having on your phone even if you already have the main Facebook app.
Ever wanted your own custom emoji and stickers that star you, rather than a generic face? Then you should definitely download Bitmoji.
This lets you recreate your likeness in cartoon form, with loads of tools available to make the look as perfect as possible. Then you can choose an outfit and get access to dozens if not hundreds of stickers, each of which feature you.
These can be shared to various chat and social apps, but Bitmoji has deeper integration with Gboard, letting you share its stickers direct from the keyboard. It can also be linked to your Snapchat account, making your Bitmoji your Snapchat avatar.
You can alter the look of your Bitmoji at any time, so if you change your own hairstyle you can change theirs to match, or just give them a new outfit, and new stickers and customization options are being added over time, so you shouldn’t get bored.
Opera Touch is a browser that’s designed to be used with one hand, with a ‘Fast Action Button’ that’s always visible and easy to reach at the bottom of the screen. Tapping it launches you straight into a web search, where you can type or speak your query.
There’s even a barcode scanner here, so you can quickly look items up online without having to type their names.
Gesture controls ensure you can navigate the rest of the interface with one hand, letting you switch to recent tabs, reload or close the current page or send it to your computer.
That last one is powered by Opera Flow, which lets you share links, videos and the like between your phone and computer with a single tap or click – though of course to enable this you’ll also need to be running Opera on your PC.
Opera Touch is also fairly secure, with features such as an ad blocker and even cryptocurrency mining protection, which reduces the risk of malicious sites using your phone to mine cryptocurrency in the background – an act that can drain your battery or even cause your phone to overheat.
There are some missing features, most notably private browsing and a desktop mode. Hopefully they’ll be added at some point, but considering Touch’s focus on simplicity, they might not.
Learning to code isn’t easy, but learning the basics is easier in recent years than it ever used to be, and that’s partially because apps like Grasshopper exist, guiding you through the first steps (of JavaScript, in this case) with exercises and quizzes.
The exercises are often presented a bit like puzzles. For example, very early examples task you with completing flags of countries by selecting the right code in the right order. This can feel almost like a game, and is engaging and enjoyable as a result.
Achievements can be gained to further motivate you, and while the app will never make you an expert it does aim to leave you with fundamental JavaScript skills, so you’re ready to take on something more advanced.
You probably didn’t realize that you can save the world while browsing the net, but you can make a small difference by using Ecosia Browser, which uses its ad revenue to plant trees.
Ecosia has already planted over 26 million trees thanks to its users, and for roughly every 45 searches you make another one will be planted.
Beyond its environmental credentials, Ecosia is also a very competent browser. It’s based on Chromium so the look and feel is a lot like that of Google Chrome, meaning it’s likely to be familiar to you.
It supports tabs, private browsing and bookmarks, lets you view your history, allows autofill of forms and has various privacy controls, so you don’t have to sacrifice a feature-packed browsing experience to help the Earth.
PhotoDirector is one of the more powerful and polished photo editing apps available on Android. It’s got you covered for fun filters, frames and effects, but it gives you more control than some of its peers. For example, you can adjust the strength of effects and choose to apply them globally or selectively.
You get a lot of control over the core image too, as you can adjust the white balance, saturation, hue, sharpness, tone and more.
You can also rotate, crop or mirror the image, cut out sections, adjust the perspective, and if you’ve taken a portrait remove red-eye. There’s more here, too much to list, but suffice it to say, PhotoDirector is a comprehensive app.
You’re not limited to just editing photos you’ve already taken either; there’s also a camera component, allowing you to take new shots and see how effects and filters will look before you’ve even taken a picture.
PhotoDirector is free to download and use. There’s an optional subscription for £2.59 (around US$3.70) per month if you want to unlock additional tools, remove adverts and improve the output quality, but the core app is already far more generous than most free offerings.
Seven – 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge promises to get you fit in just seven minutes a day, and while a longer workout might do you more good, we can’t deny that this got our hearts racing.
There’s a wide variety of exercises and workouts, with an animated man or woman showing you how to do each one, along with an optional text explanation.
So far, so standard, but Seven also doles out achievements, lets you add friends for some friendly competition and has specific training plans for different goals. For example, if you tell the app you want to lose weight, it will give you different workouts to if you want to increase your mobility.
The exercises in Seven don’t require any equipment, so you can do them from home or even your office if you have a bit of space, and you can create your own workouts too if there are specific exercises that you like.
Seven is partially free, but there’s an optional US$9.99/£9.99 monthly subscription which unlocks additional workouts, exercises and personalized workout plans. If you like the free version, it could be worth considering.
ESPN has all the sporting news and scores you need (probably) all in one place. While not all sports are covered by the app, many are, including soccer, golf, tennis, basketball, F1, baseball and loads more, and you can select your favorite teams and leagues to have them highlighted by the app.
You can see the latest scores, any breaking news, and drill down into more detailed stats for specific players, teams and games.
There’s also video content, usually surrounding the latest news and results, which you can cast to a big screen.
You can get push notifications sent to your device too, so you’re always up to date on the latest goals and wins.
Drum Pads – Beat Maker Go is a drum machine which lets you easily make beats on the go. There are numerous sound packs split across various genres, such as dubstep, EDM and hip-hop, and once you select one you can get tapping on the drum pad.
There are various effects that you can apply to your track, such as distortion and delay, you can create loops and save your finished pieces, then share them with friends.
Drum Pads is accessible enough that beginners should be able to have fun with it (though some trial and error will be required), but there’s enough here to appeal to more advanced users too.
Otter Voice Notes is a voice recorder, but that’s just the beginning. It also uses AI to automatically turn the recordings into written text so you can read them back rather than having to listen to them.
The app also lets you search for keywords, so you can find exactly the piece of information you’re looking for in seconds, even in long recordings. This all makes it a great tool for recording meetings, lectures and the like, especially since Otter can be trained to recognize voices and you can tag who’s talking, so that even in text form you can see the true flow of a conversation.
You can also create groups with other Otter users if you want to share recordings, and all of your recordings are saved in the cloud so you can access them anywhere and don’t have to store them on your Android device.
The text transcription isn’t perfect (though Otter claims it will get better over time if it’s you talking, as it gets to know your voice better), but it’s reasonably accurate in our experience and you can always go in and make changes to the text manually.
Just a Line is a simple example of the creative potential offered by AR (augmented reality). It lets you view the world through your phone camera and draw on scenes by touching the screen.
You can see your drawings from multiple angles as you move the phone around, and you can film your creations to save them or share them with others.
There’s not a whole lot more to it than that, and Google (which built the app) describes Just a Line as an experiment, so you should go in expecting a curiosity rather than a full-featured app, but it’s a fun introduction to AR that can be enjoyed by all ages.
If your phone battery isn’t lasting as long as you’d like then deleting Facebook could help, as the app tends to use a lot of life, but what to do if you also want to keep using Facebook on your phone? Get Facebook Lite.
This is a lightweight version of the Facebook app, with most of the core features, including your timeline, the ability to post status updates and photos, comments, events, notifications and more, but it uses a lot less power and a lot less data.
Facebook Lite also works even if you only have a 2G connection, so you’ll be able to use Facebook in places that you wouldn’t have been able to before, and it takes up less space on your phone.
The main downside to it is that the interface is much less attractive than on the standard Facebook app, but if you can get used to that it could be a worthy replacement.
RememBear is a simple, surprisingly cute password manager full of bears. Simply add all your passwords to it, lock them behind a master password or fingerprint, and RememBear can auto-fill login forms with them so you never have to remember them or type them again.
RememBear can also generate new secure passwords, so you won’t have to think them up, and the data is synced across devices, so if you don’t have your phone to hand you can access your logins from a computer or other device.
You can also store credit card details, there’s end-to-end encryption and there’s a built-in browser for secure web browsing.
RememBear lacks some features offered by rivals like LastPass, such as favorites, but more features are likely to be added over time. It’s also free to use on a single device, though there’s a paid version that you’ll have to upgrade to for $35.99/£30.49 per year if you want to access your account on multiple devices.
It’s probably fair to say that most ringtones that come with phones aren’t very exciting, and while you can easily set a locally stored song as your ringtone, you won’t necessarily want the whole thing. That’s where Ringtone Maker & Music Editor comes in.
First, you can get this app to scan your device for any stored audio files, sort them by track, album or artist, then select the one that you want to turn into a ringtone and you’ll be able to choose a start and end point – handy for cutting boring intros.
You can type out exactly what point in the music you want to start and end the ringtone down to the millisecond, and you can also cut parts of the music, copy and paste parts, or even meld multiple audio files together. There’s also a basic recording feature built in, so you can record your own ringtones and then edit them.
Once done, you can save your ringtone and assign it either system-wide or to a specific contact.
Ringtone Maker is easy to use and supports various file types, including MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, AAC, M4A, MP4 and 3GPP/AMR, and the only real issue it has is the number of adverts, but there’s a pro version that gets rid of them for US$3.99/£3.29.
Moovit is the only app you need to navigate public transport wherever you might be in the world.
Simply enter a destination and it will tell you how to get there from your current location (or you can set a different start point).
Moovit will give you various route options using different forms of transport by default, but you can tell it to only include certain kinds of public transport, or to minimize walking or transfers.
Select a route to see full step by step instructions or get live navigation. The app will tell you exactly where to go and even alert you when you’re nearing your stop so you don’t need to stare at your phone screen the entire journey.
There are also timetables for buses and trains and you can save your favorite destinations or transit lines to quickly get directions and timetables in future.
Moovit also has widgets, offline maps, and transport information for thousands of cities in over 80 countries. We weren’t kidding when we said it’s the only public transport app you’ll need.
Trips by Lonely Planet is a visually beautiful way to share your travel experiences or view those shared by others.
It’s essentially a journaling app designed for globetrotters. Create a new trip in the app, give it a title, subtitle and cover photo, then add your choice of photos, text and maps.
Your trips can be kept private or shared publicly, you can edit them after posting, and of course you can view and favorite other people’s.
There’s a slight social element in that you can follow other users, so you’ll always see any new trips they post, but mostly this is just about seeing the world from your phone and sharing your own trips with the world.
TouchPal is a truly feature-packed keyboard, and an enormously customizable one at that. Not only can you select from thousands of free themes, you can also create your own, picking a key color and adding a background image or color.
All the usual settings are also available, letting you customize the keyboard height and width, change the key layout, enable or disable auto-correct and much more.
There’s also a ‘Curve’ mode, which lets you swipe across keys to select them rather than tapping, and more uniquely a ‘Wave’ setting that builds on predictive text by putting AI-driven next word suggestions under the keys as you type.
You can also access various emoji and GIFs from the keyboard, bring up a Google search and use voice typing. None of that would matter if TouchPal was slow or inaccurate, but in our tests it works well – just as long as you take the time to get it set up how you want it.
Bandcamp is a service that highlights and sells music from numerous artists, mostly of the independent variety, and with the Bandcamp app you can access all of its content from your phone.
As well as buying music, you can stream or download music you already own, and in many cases stream songs that you haven’t yet bought.
You also get access to a weekly podcast that highlights music you might not have come across before, so it’s a good way to discover your next favorite musician.
You can also search, browse, add things to your wishlist and comment on releases, sharing your thoughts with the wider Bandcamp community.
It’s a handy app if you’re into music (and who isn’t?) and a great way to support up and coming artists.
Zomato (formerly Urbanspoon) is probably all you’ll ever need to find and choose restaurants. From the main screen you can see a list of nearby restaurants, each of which has a user rating out of five. You can also search using filters, such as whether you can book, whether the place is currently open and whether it has Wi-Fi, then sort the results by distance, cost, rating or popularity.
There’s also a tab for viewing collections, which are restaurants sorted into categories such as ‘newly opened’ or ‘romantic’.
Tap on a restaurant and you can see photos and reviews added by other users, along with details about what it costs, opening times, an address and map and in many cases menus and lists of pros and cons. From here you can also call the restaurant or add your own photos or review. In some cases you can even book a table direct from the Zomato app.
You can also bookmark your favorite restaurants and follow other users, so you can see where they’ve been and what they like.
If you’re reading this then chances are you could probably stand to spend less time on your phone – we know we could. If so, THRIVE could be just what you need to stay focused and in the moment.
The app lets you block all apps, notifications, calls and texts for a set duration, though you can set up a VIP list of people whose calls and texts will still get through, and you’ll always be able to call emergency numbers.
That’s the default mode in THRIVE, though you can deactivate it if you decide you need to use your phone after all.
If you really want help staying off your phone there’s also a ‘Super Thrive Mode’, which – short of rebooting your phone – can’t be deactivated before the allotted time runs out.
If anyone tries to contact you while you’re using one of these modes, you can set an auto-reply message that will let them know when you’ll be available again.
There’s also an App Blocking mode, which will block access to apps of your choice after you’ve used them for an amount of time that you can set. So, for example, it might block Facebook after you’ve used it for 30 minutes. You then can’t access it again until 12am the next day.
THRIVE isn’t the only app designed to keep you off your handset but it could be one of the most useful, as while most try to incentivize you, THRIVE simply stops you.
If you play an instrument then you probably sometimes need backing tracks, and Backing Track Play Music can provide them.
It has thousands of backing tracks designed for guitarists, bassists, drummers, keyboardists and singers, and you can filter by instrument, genre, artist, or just perform a general search.
The selection is decent and varied, covering many big hits from artists of various genres. You’ll also find lyrics and tablature for many songs, and the app claims new backing tracks are added every day.
The core app is free, but if you want to get rid of adverts and be able to download backing tracks for offline use, you can grab Backing Track Play Music Pro for $1.49/£1.29.
Your phone is probably your most used device, so it’s understandable if you get a bit bored of it sometimes and want a change. Rather than buying a whole new handset you could just change your launcher, and Microsoft Launcher is one of the best around.
Formerly known as Arrow Launcher, it’s been around for a while and it keeps improving, most recently thanks to the addition of Cortana, which you can activate by tapping an icon or long-pressing the home button. Cortana isn’t any better than Google Assistant (or arguably even as good), but it’s a change and you can still use Google Assistant as well.
The rest of the app has a lot to offer, including loads of customizable gesture controls. For example, you can open the app drawer with a two-finger swipe up, but if you’d rather that gesture launched your favorite app, you can set it to do that instead.
You can also make Microsoft Launcher your own by customizing the theme, icons and accent colors, and if you’re not feeling inspired when it comes to wallpaper then you can set it to automatically change daily.
Got your old home screen exactly how you like it? Then when setting up Microsoft Launcher you can choose to import the old layout, bringing all your folders with you.
There’s also a clever unified search bar on your home screen that can search both the contents of your phone and the web. For the latter it uses Bing of course, but you can’t have everything.
Yummly is a super customizable recipe app for picky eaters and cooks. It’s packed with over a million recipes, and you can add various filters to dictate which ones you see.
These include basic dietary and allergy options, such as vegetarian, pescatarian and gluten-free, but you can also add specific disliked ingredients that you want to avoid, filter by taste such as sweet or bitter, choose the nutritional values you’re interested in (such as low-carb), and pick which cuisines you do or don’t want to see.
There are also filters for prep time and techniques required, such as baking or blending, so you can tweak the requirements exactly to your liking, or those of your guests.
All that aside, Yummly has many of the same features as other recipe apps, including a built-in shopping list, personalized recommendations, the ability to save favorites, and videos that teach you cooking techniques.
Most Android users probably opt for Chrome as their web browser, and it’s a solid choice, but there are more interesting – if not necessarily better – options, such as Cake Web Browser.
This attractive browser will instantly load the most relevant result when you search for something, which can save precious time if what it’s loaded is useful or slow things down if it isn’t.
From that first page you can swipe left to get to the search results and pick a different site, or swipe right to instantly load the next result, then keep swiping right to keep moving through the results.
You can customize and reorder the sources it uses for web, video, image, news and shopping searches to improve the accuracy of its search results, but this is otherwise a fairly basic browser – you can open multiple tabs, view your history, bookmark pages and the like, but if you want things like desktop sites or privacy and accessibility controls you should look elsewhere.
Still, if you want a refreshingly different, stripped back browsing experience then Cake Web Browser is well worth a look.
Two of the main reasons for using a VPN are accessing geo-restricted content and maintaining your privacy and security online.
ProtonVPN can help with both of those, and costs a lot less than most rivals. In fact, the core service is totally free, and there are no bandwidth restrictions, so you can use it as much as you want.
There are no ads either, because it’s fully funded by optional paid subscriptions (starting at around $5/£3.50 per month). These unlock higher speeds, VPN servers in more countries and the ability to use ProtonVPN on more than one device.
But for free you still get access to VPNs in three countries, and a whole lot more security than you’ll have without a VPN, as your activity will be encrypted and protected by Swiss privacy laws, and it won’t be logged.
If you’re a movie lover then you might already know about Letterboxd, and if you don’t you should. It lets you keep track of movies you’ve watched, add them to your list with a single tap, review them, give them a star rating, and say when you watched them.
It also lets you keep track of what you want to watch, thanks to a comprehensive film database and the ability to add films to a watch list – again with a single tap.
Letterboxd helps you discover films by highlighting what’s currently popular, and offering thousands of lists created by users of the app. These lists all have a theme, and while that’s sometimes as simple as someone’s favorite movies, usually it’s a lot more interesting than that, for example one list is titled “They aren’t films, they’re experiences”.
Of course, you can also make lists of your own, and Letterboxd is a bit of a social network too, letting you follow other users and comment on their lists.
If you have an Amazon Echo then you’re probably familiar with the Amazon Alexa app. It’s where you can set up skills for the device, check back on previous queries, look at your shopping list, manage other smart devices and get more information on certain things you’ve asked Alexa about.
Even if you don’t have an Amazon Echo, you can use the Alexa voice assistant from within the app itself. That means you can tap a button and talk to Alexa, asking her to control smart devices, look things up online, play music and more.
Most of this stuff can already be done by Google Assistant, which you probably have on your phone, but Alexa makes a nice change and you may even find you prefer it if you can get over the extra step of having to launch the app first.
Your calendar can already create reminders, but you need to be in the calendar to make them. With Remindee you can create a reminder from within almost any app, and not just within an app, but with the reminder itself linked to the content you’re viewing.
For example, if you’re on a web page and want to read something later, you can use Remindee to remind you about it at a more convenient time. Or if you want to watch a YouTube or Netflix video when you get home, you can do the same for that.
Hit the share button, select Remindee and a box pops up letting you set a time and date when you want to be reminded. The box is automatically populated with a link to the content you were viewing, but you can add additional details if you want.
Head into Remindee itself and you can see upcoming and past reminders, and if you plan to use it a lot you can add a persistent Remindee option to the notifications dropdown.
It’s a simple idea, but a useful one. Achieving the same with your calendar would mean first opening it and then copying the link across manually, so if your reminders tend to be content-focused then Remindee could be a slick alternative to whatever you’re using now.
There are loads of filter apps and photo fixers on Android, but LightX Photo Editor is one of a much smaller number of comprehensive editing apps.
It has plenty of filters, as well as tools for sharpening images and removing blemishes, and much more besides.
You can tweak the hue, saturation and tone, adjust the focus, add a frame, sticker or text, merge images, create collages, flip, crop and rotate, draw on pictures and change the perspective.
All of that is free, though there’s an optional $1.99/£1.79 IAP to remove adverts and add a few extra features.
Whether you opt for the free or paid version, LightX is a powerful, feature-packed app that should suit most mobile photo-editing needs.
Keeping up with the news can be hard work, but Nwsty aims to make it easier – and faster.
The app uses AI to choose between six and ten of the day’s biggest stories and present them in a concise, digestible manner.
Each story is only around a paragraph long, which is usually enough to get the key details, but means you can read them all in the time it would take to read one full-length story. If you want extra information, each snippet includes a link to a longer version of the article on the web.
There’s not much else to Nwsty. You can share stories on social media and scroll back to previous days to catch up on older news, but that’s about it. It’s a great way to stay in the loop and only takes a couple of minutes.
While there’s still something to be said for keeping a paper journal, going digital gives you a lot more convenience, security and features, and Day One Journal is one of the best tools for the job.
Having enjoyed years of popularity on iOS, it’s finally arrived on Android, bringing with it a slick interface that lets you see your journal entries by date, as a gallery of attached images, or on a map of the world with pins that take you to an entry made at each location.
Making a new entry is as simple as tapping the big plus or camera icons on the main screen, depending on whether you want to start with a photo or text. Day One Journal adds the time and current weather to each entry automatically.
You can also set reminders to help you get into the journaling habit, star your favorite journal entries to easily return to them, add tags, and get alerts for entries you made on this day in previous years, or at nearby locations.
With optional fingerprint or passcode security, no unauthorized eyes will be able to access your memories.
That’s all free, but there’s also an optional $24.99/£22.49 yearly subscription that lets you back everything up to the cloud, access your journal on multiple devices, keep multiple journals and more. It’s not cheap, but could be worthwhile if you get really into journaling.
Exercise should be its own reward, but if it’s not then you might want to check out Winwalk Pedometer.
As well as doing the important job of counting your steps, Winwalk also rewards you with a coin for every hundred you take. Save these coins up and you can ultimately cash them in for vouchers at the likes of Tesco and Starbucks.
The rewards – which appear to be UK-only for now – do take a while to earn. You’ll need 9,450 coins for a £5 Starbucks voucher for example, but you can get a scratch card for just 65 coins, and these have a chance of unlocking the same vouchers.
You can also top up your points faster by inviting friends to join Winwalk and completing ‘missions’, which tend to involve installing and using other apps.
Rewards aside, Winwalk is a basic but competent pedometer. You can have it permanently visible on your lock screen or notification shade, showing how many steps you’ve taken and how far you’ve walked, and it will take a stab at estimating how many calories you’ve burned.
Once you’ve used it for a while, Winwalk will also tell you your average seven-day and 30-day step counts, and how many steps you took on your best day.
It seems reasonably accurate, but although you can set your gender, age and weight, you can’t set your stride length, so if it’s mis-measuring yours there’s not much you can do to fix it.
One way or another shows and movies usually cost money, but Viewster gives you access to a library of streamed content at no cost.
There is a catch of course, and that catch is adverts, coupled with limited content compared to something like Netflix. If you can look past that, you’ll find a good range of anime series, along with documentaries, old sci-fi movies and shows about games.
Content is added regularly and the app is pleasant to navigate, with options to favorite videos so you don’t lose track of them and subscribe to specific channels to get alerts when they publish new content.
You can’t download videos, so you’ll need internet access to watch them. Viewster’s content also makes it a bit niche, but if you’re into anime or video games then it’s worth having, even if you already have a subscription to a different service.
Canva was a hit on iOS and now it’s arrived on Android, giving you a simple yet powerful way to create posters, collages, flyers, cards, Instagram posts, banners and headers for blogs or other social media, and more.
It’s a graphic design app, and one that’s intuitive from the moment you launch it. Start by choosing the type of content you want to design, then take your pick from a wide selection of ready-made templates (or search for something specific). Once that’s done, you’re ready to get editing.
You can tap on any part of a template to change it with context-sensitive tools. Tap on text, for example, and you can write something new, or change the font, size, color and spacing.
Select an image to change the color, add a filter, adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, or switch it for a different picture altogether – either one of the many in Canva or one from your gallery.
You can also drag and rotate things, and there’s unlimited undo, so you can go back as many steps as you want if you make a mess of the whole thing.
When you’re done, you can save your creation to your phone or share it online. It’s also saved in the ‘Your designs’ section of the app, which you can access from the web and other devices, so you’ll never lose a design you’ve made.
Need more podcasts to listen to and not sure where to start? You could do a lot worse than Subcast: Podcast Radio.
This is a podcast discovery app with various ‘stations’ of podcasts focused on a particular theme, be it mindfulness, the latest news, entertainment, and many other topics.
These stations work like playlists; rather than just giving you a list of podcasts in each category, it plays one automatically and lets you move to another with a swipe of your finger. You can pause with a tap, and there are options for skipping, changing playback speed. It’s a fairly basic player, but all the essentials are there.
You probably won’t use Subcast as your main podcast app – not least because you can’t actually choose a specific podcast to play – but if you’re open to hearing something new and just aren’t sure what to start with, it can help you find a whole new selection of favorites.
Ever wonder where all your mobile data is going? Datally can help answer that. It’s an app made by Google that not only tells you how much mobile data you’ve used over the last day, week or month, but also breaks down which apps are using it and how much they’re consuming.
That’s handy, but it’s something that a lot of other data monitor apps do too. Datally has a few extra features though. For one, there’s a data saver mode, which blocks apps of your choice from using data when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi. That’s especially handy if you find one is a big drain and you don’t need constant access to it.
There’s also a list of nearby public Wi-Fi networks. The app shows you how far away they are, pinpoints their position on a map, and tells you whether they’re password-protected, so you can more easily seek out a suitable connection.
Datally is a Google app, so it’s unsurprisingly polished and simple to navigate, all of which makes it a very worthwhile freebie.
Did you know that the best time to buy a car is at the end of the month, since salespeople have quotas to hit and are more likely to cut you a deal? Or that you can get gum out of hair by dipping it in coke? If you had Life Hacks you would.
This appropriately named app has hundreds of hacks spread across various categories, such as ‘Money Savers’ and ‘Study Boosters’.
Tap on a category and you’ll be shown a selection of cards, each of which has a life hack on it. The bottom of each card also has the option to favorite, copy or share it, so you can easily build up a library of useful hacks or share them with your friends.
New hacks are also regularly added, so you won’t run out of things to learn. Some of the hacks are clearly aimed specifically at US users as they’re related to businesses like Walmart and Wendy’s, but most of them could be useful wherever you are.
Hitlist is designed to both find cheap flight deals and give you ideas of where to go. You start by selecting your home airport, then you can select a destination and the dates you want to travel, then get results sorted by price.
So far, so familiar, but Hitlist lets you select a range of dates rather than a specific flight day if you’re prepared to be flexible in order to save money, or you can even enter no dates at all if you’re happy to travel at any time.
And that’s just half of the app. The other half is about discovery. Hitlist will highlight various locations and events, such as the best cities for New Year’s Eve, and the best places for photography. Tapping on any of these will let you drill down to specific locations and then look for flights.
If you save a location you can also get alerts from Hitlist whenever the flight prices drop, so there’s a lot here, whether or not you know where you want to go.
Smiling Mind is a meditation app for everyone, and when we say everyone, we really mean it, as there are meditations specifically designed for various age groups and situations, from kids of 7 through to adults, from office workers to athletes, from those new to meditation to those who’ve been doing it for years.
There’s also resources for anyone trying to teach meditation in the classroom, and whatever your age or situation you’ll find meditations of varying lengths, from as little as around one minute, to around half an hour.
The app will also keep track of how many meditations you’ve done, the total duration and on what days, and if you want to share the app you can set up sub profiles, so everyone has their own accounts.
Unlike many meditation apps, Smiling Mind is also completely free. There’s no subscription, no in-app purchases and not even any adverts.
Sticking with the same wallpaper for too long can get boring, but if you’re anything like us you rarely bother to change it.
With Smart Wallpaper you can set up a selection of wallpapers to cycle between, so once it’s set up there’s little to no need to ever manually change your wallpaper again.
Smart Wallpaper can change your wallpaper after a set time period, but it can also do it based on the day of the week, the month, the weather or even the Wi-Fi network you’re on.
The app itself has a number of wallpapers to choose from, but they’re not sorted into categories so it’s not the best way to browse for wallpapers.
However, you can also import them from your gallery, so just find a collection you like from whatever source you like and then send them over to Smart Wallpaper, so you’ll never again have to look at the same picture for too long.
Replika is a hard app to categorize. It’s an AI that you can talk to, but it’s more than just a gimmick and there’s purpose to the conversations.
It will often ask you things like how your day’s going, how you feel and what the highlight of your day has been, and by answering these questions you can build up a sort of journal, which you can then search through, as there’s a part of the app that sorts your responses by date.
Of course, you could just use a journaling app, but we found the prompts of the AI and the feeling of having an actual conversation more appealing than just writing things down.
Many of the questions asked will also prompt you to focus on positives, which in turn could help you be more positive.
Replika can also act as a confidant - ‘someone’ you can talk to about anything, at any time.
And the more you talk to Replika, the smarter it gets. It learns your responses and becomes a bit more like you over time, as well as allowing you to upvote or downvote anything it says.
Chances are you already have some kind of file manager on your phone, but Files Go is still worthy of attention, as it’s made by Google and has many rivals beat.
There’s two parts to it. First, the ‘Storage’ section which highlights all the ways you might be able to clear space on your device, such as by deleting duplicate or large files, moving files to your SD card and deleting rarely used apps.
Then there’s the ‘Files’ section, which is a file explorer, letting you dive into the folders on your phone so you can find, open, rename, delete or share specific files.
The whole app is colorful and easy to navigate as well, with an interface seemingly inspired by Google Now’s cards.
Zyl claims to be the first photo gallery managed by an in-app AI. We don’t know whether that’s true or not, but it’s certainly a useful way of managing your photos.
Zyl is especially handy if you want to clear space on your device, or just get rid of rubbish shots, as that AI we mentioned can find and delete blurry shots, as well as duplicate or similar photos, even choosing to keep the one that it thinks is best.
And its judgement is generally quite good, but you get to confirm before deleting anything, and even then photos can be recovered for thirty days in case you change your mind, so there’s no danger of losing your favorite shots.
Other features of Zyl include the ability to create collaborative albums that several people can access and add to, and for Zyl to automatically create albums from your pictures – though this didn’t work very well in our tests, as while some of the suggested pictures were similar, others seemed quite random.
Still, Zyl’s ability to clean up your gallery is enough to make it worth a download if your photo collection is getting out of control.
Having been around on PC for a while now, Microsoft Edge has finally arrived on Android, albeit in beta.
Microsoft’s replacement for Internet Explorer is surprisingly polished, and especially useful if you run it on both Android and a Windows 10 computer, as you can send content between your phone and your PC.
You first need the Fall Creator’s update on your computer, but then you can simply tap a button at the bottom of each webpage on your phone (or hit ‘Share’ then ‘Continue on PC’) and have the page load on your desktop.
Your favorites and reading list are also automatically synced between devices, giving you further incentive to make Microsoft Edge your one and only browser if you’re going to use it at all.
There are also handy features such as voice search, and a ‘Reading View’ which reorganizes pages to make it easier to focus on the main text.
If you already use Edge on your computer then the Microsoft Edge app is worth having, but if not there’s probably not enough here to convince you to switch browsers.
That said, it’s worth a look if you’re not getting on with your current one - just be aware there might be a few bugs while it’s still in beta.
And yes, you can switch your search engine from Bing to Google.
Live wallpapers can look great, but they can also drain your battery and hog your RAM… the good news is Material Islands - Wallpapers does neither.
That’s because rather than being constantly animated it’s just updated several times a day, showing a minimalist island changing from dawn to dusk.
And there’s more than one island in this app. You can choose from the mysterious ‘Isle of Easter’, the frosty ‘Isle of Ice’ and around 10 others, or choose ‘daily random isle’ and get a new one every day.
More islands are likely to be added over time, and you can customize the experience to an extent – choosing the time period during which each version of an island is shown, or just setting a static wallpaper if there’s a particular scene you want at all times.
The world is full of weird and wonderful fonts, but identifying them isn’t always easy. That is, unless you have WhatTheFont.
Then you can simply take a photo of the font you’re curious about, or grab an image from your gallery, and WhatTheFont will analyze it and show you a selection of similar fonts.
The fonts it shows you may or may not include the actual font that you photographed - we’ve had slightly mixed results on that f(r)ont - but all the selections are usually close to it.
You can type out any word or phrase in any of the fonts it comes up with to get a better idea of how they look, and then if you really like them there’s a link to buy.
Other than the fact that WhatTheFont seemingly doesn’t have every single font in its database, our main complaint with it is that it won’t save your previous searches and nor can you favorite fonts to return to later, so if you want to remember one you’ll have to write the name down.
But as a freebie – at least until you succumb to the urge to splash out on the fonts you find – it’s a handy app.
Messenger Lite is designed to minimize the amount of data you use when sending and receiving messages on Facebook.
It’s an official app and likely designed with developing countries in mind, but could be useful anywhere if you have a restrictive data limit or an iffy connection.
Messenger Lite works on all networks, even 2G, and if there’s no signal when you send a message it will automatically be sent as soon as there is one.
It uses less data than the main Facebook Messenger app and also loads faster and takes up less storage space. All this efficiency should also mean it’s lighter on battery usage, and indeed it was in our tests, though the difference is small, yet Messenger Lite has many of the core Messenger features included.
You can send messages, including pictures and stickers, have group chats, see who’s online and make or receive voice calls.
Some features are absent, most notably video calls, but for the basic Facebook messaging experience this should have you covered, and it’s got a less cluttered interface than the main app too.
If you’re a user of Amazon’s ebook store then you probably already have the Amazon Kindle app, but if not it’s worth getting, especially as it’s just been overhauled to make it slicker than ever.
As before, the app gives you access to your Kindle books on your phone or tablet, as well as access to the store - so you can buy more digi-tomes - but it’s now got a new look, with larger cover art and a re-designed interface that makes it faster to get into your books.
There’s also a new light theme joining the dark one, and the app will soon be improving further, as Goodreads integration is on the way, which will allow you to rate your books and interact with that community from the Kindle app.
You probably already have some sort of news aggregator on your device, but if you like sharing interesting stories with other people then Squid could have it beat.
That’s because Squid lets you annotate stories before you share them. You can underline, circle and highlight sections in various colors, add text of your own and even add stickers, then send the story off in an email or social media message.
Other than being able to leave your mark on the stories you find, Squid is fairly conventional, but quite polished.
You can pick from a range of topics that you’re interested in, such as music, lifestyle or politics, then get a constantly updated feed of relevant stories.
You can switch to a topic-specific feed with a swipe, block sources you don’t want to see with a few taps, and switch to a reader mode (which ditches most of an article’s adverts and other unnecessary content) with ease.
Notin is a simple app, but a useful one. Simply type out something you want to be reminded of, tap the plus button and it will be sent to your notification shade, so you can always see it on your lock screen or when you swipe down from the top of the screen.
Got more than one thing to remember? Type something else out and hit the plus again to get more than one notification.
That way, rather than having a reminder pop up at what may end up being an inconvenient time, you’ll always just see it when using your phone, so you’ll never again forget that you need to buy milk or get married.
Once you’ve done the thing you need reminding of just swipe the notification away, as you would with any other notification.
There are two potential weaknesses with Notin. One is that it’s entirely too easy to swipe away a reminder without thinking, the other is that if you have lots of things on your to-do list your notifications screen could quickly become cluttered, so Notin is best just for reminding you of one or two important things, while keeping your full list elsewhere.
Still, as a completely free tool Notin is well worth remembering.
If you live in a city then chances are there’s a lot going on, and with Fever you have all you need to find the best of those things, and in many cases even get discounted entry prices.
The app, which currently covers London, New York, Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Valencia, Málaga and Bilbao, first asks you which city and what type of events you’re most interested in, then presents you with a curated feed.
Alternatively, you can head to the ‘Discover’ tab to view other event lists, focused on a specific time (for example the weekend) or type (such as dining or family).
Tap on an event and you’ll see full details of it, including a map, and have the option to share it or buy tickets, which are then stored in the Fever app itself.
There are other apps a bit like Fever, but if you’re in one of the cities it covers it’s a slick, all-in-one way to keep on top of what’s happening around you.
If you like your weather with a side of humor then you should check out What The Forecast?!!, which provides generally negative (or some would say realistic) commentary on the current weather, in the form of a short humorous sentence.
It’s reminiscent of the iOS app Carrot Weather, but it’s laughing with you, rather than at you, and more importantly is actually available on Android.
Beyond the commentary, which apparently includes over 6,657 phrases, you can get 7-day forecasts and details on humidity, sunrise and sunset times, wind speed, the moon and more.
It’s all fairly standard weather app stuff, but delivered with more personality than usual, and as the actual forecasts are pulled from Dark Sky, What The Forecast?!! should be just as accurate as your current weather app of choice.
Tinycards, from the makers of Duolingo, has taken a long time making the jump from iOS to Android, but it’s finally arrived, and is set to give you another way to improve your language skills.
Link it up to your Duolingo account and then Tinycards will give you a selection of flash cards based around the words and languages you’re already learning.
These will sometimes take the form of a picture, in which case you have to say what it’s a picture of in the relevant language. Other times the card will show a word or phrase in the language you’re learning, which you’re to translate to English, or the phrase will be shown in English, in which case you’re tasked with translating it to a foreign language.
Like the main Duolingo app answers are sometimes multiple choice, while other times they must be typed, and you can unlock new sets of flashcards as you progress.
It’s essentially a simpler, even more bite-size form of language learning than Duolingo offers and is best used in combination with that app.
But you can also create your own cards and decks if there’s something specific you want more practice at, and interestingly you’re not just limited to languages, as history, maths, science and more all have their own flashcard decks too.
While many of us have moved to streaming music, there is still a place for locally stored music on Android, and Phonograph is one of the better players.
Phonograph puts aesthetics and ease of use first, so it’s always pleasant to operate. The app has a Material Design look that fits with Google’s vision of Android, but it’s also packed full of album art and color, so there’s never a dull screen.
You can also customize the colors and overall theme and look of the app, while the color of the main ‘now playing’ screen will change based on the album artwork of the current track.
The layout is simple too, with your music library sorted by song, album, artist or playlist, and you can switch between views with a swipe, while most other options are no more than a tap away.
Although not as feature-packed as some players, Phonograph has a number of handy extras and toggles, like gapless playback, information and images pulled automatically from Last.fm, a sleep timer, widgets and lock screen controls.
Offline Survival Manual is a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know when you’re in the wilderness. And it’s saved offline, so you’ll actually be able to access it in the middle of the forest / desert / jungle / your garden.
From skills, such as how to start a fire or build a shelter, to helpful advice, such as where to look for water in various environments and which plants are poisonous, it’s all covered.
On top of that is information the things you should take with you in certain places and how to deal with different types of weather or hazards, such as crossing a river - so most things you might want to know are covered.
There’s loads more besides, split into various categories which you can jump between with a tap, and as there’s everything from the basics to more advanced things, Offline Survival Manual is a guide for everyone. It’s also completely free.
There is a lack of polish in some of the presentation – typos and long walls of text for example, with few images to break it up in many sections. Then of course there’s the fact that having a survival manual on a device that can run out of battery may not be the best idea, so you might want to bring a paper guide too.
But you’ll presumably be taking your phone with you on any adventures, and Offline Survival Manual could prove an indispensable addition - who knows, one which might even save your life.
It’s not often that Google’s apps come to iOS before Android, but Motion Stills did, as it was designed to stabilize Live Photos, so they’d come out smoother. Now though it’s out on Android too, letting you shoot a short video clip which the app stabilizes.
Clips that you shoot can be saved as a video or a looping GIF and then shared on social media, and Motion Stills also lets you use a ‘Fast Forward’ mode, which will condense up to a minute of footage into a shorter clip. This too is stabilized, to keep it smooth, and you can pick the playback speed.
Motion Stills only works for new footage – so you can’t import and stabilize anything you’ve already shot (though if you just want to turn old footage into a GIF there are plenty of other apps that will do that).
But for anything new you shoot Motion Stills is a great way to make a GIF or short video and ensure footage remains smooth. It’s fast too, as footage is stabilized in real time, so you don’t need to wait for it to process your clip, and it’s completely free.
We all know drinking water is important, but it can be easy to forget to do, especially when you’re busy with other things.
Tech has come to the rescue though, with various apps designed to give you a gentle prod to drink more, and Hydro Coach is a strong option.
You start by entering some basic details like your age, gender and weight, and from this Hydro Coach calculates how much you should be drinking.
You can log your intake with ease, telling the app the size of containers you tend to drink from and then just tapping the relevant one every time you’ve finished a drink, and the app will remind you to drink if you haven’t done so in a while.
You can see at a glance both how much you have drunk today and how much you should drink over the remainder of the day and you can also see weekly and monthly statistics.
You can pick whether to measure your intake in millilitres or fluid ounces, while a Pro version of the app gets rid of adverts and adds more detailed statistics for $4.49/£2.49. But for free, Hydro Coach offers a fast, simple way to monitor your fluid intake, and – more importantly – to actually remind you to drink more.
Apex Launcher isn’t new. In fact it’s been around for a long time, and was once one of the best launchers available. Then the developers stopped supporting it, but they’ve just given the app a big update and a new lease of life.
The changes are largely focused on bringing the look in line with modern versions of Android, as well as generally polishing the app and getting rid of bugs, but the core app remains much as it always was: namely, one of the most powerful and customizable interfaces available for Android.
It will replace whatever UI you have now – be that stock Android or a manufacturer’s skin – and give you far more control than you likely had before.
You can change the home page transition effects, make your dock scrollable, hide elements of the interface, such as the dock or status bar, choose custom icons for folders, choose between various different app drawer styles, hide apps from the drawer, set up customizable gestures and a whole lot more.
In short, if there’s any part of the look or feel of Android that you’re not entirely happy with, there’s a good chance you can change it with Apex Launcher. And almost all the features are completely free, though you can unlock some extras with Apex Launcher Pro for $3.99/£3.09.
There’s a long-standing tradition of adding beautiful text to beautiful images. Whether for a poster, presentation, advert or whatever else, text is often overlaid on an image, and for the most part Times New Roman just doesn’t cut it.
With Font Studio you can choose from over 120 interesting, unusual and generally eye-catching fonts, with more being added all the time. Then, you can change the size, color, orientation and transparency of the font, add shadows and put the result on top of an image.
If you want your text to stand out even more you can also add dozens of shapes, for example putting the text in a circle. These too can be tweaked to your liking, or if you’re lacking inspiration you can start with a pre-created template, combining a font, shapes and even sample text and images.
You can also add any of hundreds of stickers to your creations, and blend or combine images. Overall, Font Studio contains a powerful set of typography tools and it’s all completely free.
That said, while your creations might be beautiful the app itself isn’t. Rather, it’s infested with ads. We’d happily pay a small fee to get rid of them, but sadly that’s not an option.
Timbre’s full name is ‘Timbre: Cut, Join, Convert mp3’, and that tells you almost everything you need to know about it: this is an app for cutting, joining and converting files.
But the MP3 bit in the name rather undersells it, because Timbre can also work its magic on WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC, PCM, AIFF, Ogg, WMA, ALAC, MP4, AVI, FLV, MOV, WebM, MKV and MPEG files.
You can convert from one file type to another, which is handy if, for example, your music or video player doesn’t like a specific file type.
You can also trim down audio and video files, or combine several files into one, which you might want to do if you’re editing together a video with multiple scenes, or making a mixtape.
Those are the headline features of Timbre, but there are also tools to remove audio from a video file, split a single audio file into two parts, and change the bitrate of an audio file.
All of these things are simple to do, with Timbre sporting a clear interface, and it’s completely free as well.
Almost unavoidably there will be times when you have to hand your phone to someone else, be it to show them some pictures or let them make a call, but what you probably don’t want is the risk of them rummaging through your other apps.
Or, equally, you might not be in the habit of handing out your phone, and not really want to have to unlock it every time you use it either, but still want security for your most sensitive apps.
Either way, Norton App Lock can help, by, well, locking the apps of your choice, behind a PIN, pattern or fingerprint scan.
The app itself is easy to use – just set up the security options you want, then tap the padlock next to any app you want to lock. Once done, you’ll get Norton’s lock screen whenever you (or anyone else) tries to launch the app.
While Norton App Lock isn’t the only option for this it is the best we’ve come across, as it’s fast, loading the instant you tap on a secured app, rather than keeping you waiting. It’s also smart enough not to re-lock an app until you turn the screen off, and it has other handy features too, like one-tap locking of all the apps it thinks you should be securing.
You might think that working solidly for hours on end is the best way to be productive, but many people find that actually taking short regular breaks is better. It’s such a popular idea that an entire technique has been built around it, called the Pomodoro Technique, and it’s this that’s at the heart of Tide.
The idea is simple: work for 25 minutes then get a 5-minute break. After 4 work periods you get a longer, 15-minute break.
It’s a technique that you might find works, and is definitely worth trying if you ever struggle to focus, as breaking the day into smaller chunks can make it feel more manageable, and you’ll probably find that you resist opening up Facebook while working when you know you’ll be given a break shortly.
You could just use a normal timer for all this, but Tide automates the process, alerting you after each work or break period has finished, but also giving you some control, allowing you to adjust the work and break durations, or change how many work periods you need before a longer break.
When an alarm goes off you have to tap to start the next work or break period, which is more useful than it sounds, as, for example, you might not be ready to go on break after exactly 25 minutes.
Tide also has a beautifully designed interface and optionally plays relaxing nature sounds while you work. We can live without that part, but if, like us, you’d rather work in silence than to the sounds of rolling waves, you can easily turn it off.
TED isn’t a new app, but it is an enduring and regularly updated favorite. Home to over 2,000 TED Talk videos and episodes of the TED Radio Hour podcast, it has interesting content from inspiring speakers on numerous different subjects, with talks covering everything from “the emotional impact of architecture” to “what a driverless world could look like.”
The talks are usually short – taking no more than 18 minutes, so you can fit one into a coffee break, and they can be streamed, downloaded or sent to a TV via Chromecast, depending on how you like to consume them.
Alternatively they can just be favorited to watch/listen to later, so whether you’re out and about or sat in your living room they’re always accessible.
The whole app is simply laid out with a polished look and lots of images, along with tools to help you find new talks. You can check out one of the curated playlists, search by suggested themes, or just type a term of your own into the search box.
And did we mention all of this is completely free? If only school had been this interesting, we might know as much about science and history as we do about phones.
Your phone probably came with a calculator app, but we can almost guarantee that All-in-One Calculator is better. Not only does it have a basic calculator (which changes to a scientific one when you hold your phone in landscape orientation or swipe in from the right edge), it also has over 50 specialist calculators and unit converters.
These cover everything from solving equations, to converting weights and lengths, to working out percentages, averages, density and more. There’s even a currency converter, which updates to offer the current exchange rates, and a BMI calculator.
Most of these you’ll probably never need to use, but next time you need to calculate or convert anything All-in-One Calculator will ensure the answer is never more than a few taps away.
Ever wanted to bring all your old Warhammer pieces or children's toys to life? Well with Motion you can, or at least to some kind of stop motion life.
The app couldn't be simpler: you just point your phone at whatever you want to animate, press the big yellow button on the screen, then slightly move anything that you want to show in motion. From that, press the button again and continue like that until you've created your masterpiece.
Once all the footage is in place you can play it back, adjust the frame rate if needed and remove any pictures that you forgot to get your hands out of.
You can always go back and add more frames to a project at any point, so you don't need to set aside a whole afternoon to get an intricate animation done in one go. Once you finally are finished you can save it to your phone and send it to your friends/your kids/anyone else who'll still talk to you after seeing your shonky stop motion.
You might never be the next Picasso, but with Prisma you can make your photos look convincingly like an artistic masterpiece.
The app sports dozens of filters, largely based around specific painters or art styles and with a single tap (and a bit if a wait - plus you need to be online) you can apply any of these to any of your photos.
There's no shortage of photo filter apps but these are a bit more inventive than most and actually look convincingly like the art styles they're imitating.
Once you've applied your filter of choice you can lessen the effect with a swipe if it's veered too far from the source image for your liking, then you can save and share your creations with another few taps.
Evernote is an excellent app for your Android device that lets you stash and sync all your text notes, voice memos and files on your phone and access them through a desktop computer.
It's a brilliant productivity tool that lets you organise and search your notes so you always have exactly what you need at your fingertips.
The paid premium version unlocks offline access and passcode protection, but for free you still get a vast, feature-packed digitial notebook that's easy to navigate.
Boost your productivity with Pushbullet, which lets you view your Android phone's notifications and messages directly on your desktop PC. It means if you get a text message you can read it there and then without having to take your phone out of your pocket or bag.
You can also quickly send files from your computer to your phone with only a few clicks, and if you regularly find that you email links to yourself just to open them on your smartphone, then you'll never have to do that again thanks to Pushbullet's link sharing features.
There are probably hundreds of photo apps around, but Google Photos stands out as it gives you unlimited storage for photos and videos, all for free.
That's reason enough to jump on board, especially as it works not just on Android but on iOS and computers too.
But with basic editing tools and the ability to make collages and albums this is more than just photo and video storage, it aims to be your first and last stop after taking a picture. To achieve that it will need a few more features, but it's well on its way.
If you're serious about running or cycling then you should be serious about Strava. As smartphone fitness tools go it's one of the best, allowing you to track your performance, set goals and see daily progress updates.
There are leaderboards and challenges to give it a competitive edge and if you're ever not sure where to run or cycle you can find user created routes on the app, or share your own. All of that comes free of charge, while a premium version adds even more tools.
Even in 2015 there are still times and places where we can't get an internet connection, but this doesn't have to mean you can't read websites, however, thanks to the excellent Pocket app. It allows you to save articles, news stories, blog posts, videos and much more, letting you read and watch them offline.
You can also synchronise your saved articles across every device you've installed Pocket on, allowing you to pick up where you left off and continue reading. With unlimited storage you can build up a whole library of content and the app even makes recommendations of new things it thinks you might like.
Arriving in a brand new city is always exciting but it can also be a little daunting, especially if you need to get around using public transport. Citymapper - Bus, Tube, Rail is a brilliant app that brings you real-time information on public transport for cities around the world.
You can easily plan your route using all kinds of transport, from buses to ferries, and you can be kept up to date with real-time data, including any disruptions or cancellations. An essential app for any city-bound traveller.
It might not be quite as glamorous as other media players, but if you want a no-nonsense app that can play pretty much any media file under the sun, then VLC for Android is the app for you.
It spent a long time in beta, but it now delivers a stable, full-featured experience, complete with support for subtitles, multi-track audio, DVD ISOs and network streams.
That's all packaged in an easy to use player, with widgets and gesture controls. So you don't need to worry about getting your media to work, you just need to launch VLC and press play. The app will do the rest.
IF was formerly known as IFTTT, which stands for "if this then that" and handily sums up what this app does. It's a simple ethos that gives you a huge amount of options for making your Android device even smarter.
You can create simple statements such as "if any photo is taken then add them to Dropbox", or "if my location is home, send a text message to my partner saying "I'm home!"" which can also be shared with other IF users. You'll be amazed how much you can do with such a simple premise.
One of the best things about Android is how customisable it is, and there are loads of apps out there that can help you change the way Android displays and launches apps to suit your preferences.
Out of these Nova Launcher is arguably the best, giving you complete control over your home screen. You can change the icons, themes, colours and layout, completely hide apps that you don't use, set up gesture controls and add funky affects when navigating your phone.
It might sound bloated but you can use as many or as few of these features as you want, so if you want to keep your Android experience slick and minimalist Nova Launcher can do that too.
If you fancy learning a foreign language then make sure you download Duolingo: Learn Languages Free, as it's one of those rare apps that manages to be both educational and fun, ensuring that you'll keep coming back for more to brush up on your language skills, with bite-sized, genuinely useful lessons and tests.
Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, and English can all be learned, it's completely free with no ads or hidden fees and it's one of the best ways you can learn a new language with your Android device.
Endomondo - Running & Walking bills itself as the only personal trainer you'll ever need, and it's a pretty darn accurate claim. No matter what sports or fitness activity you perform, this app will track your progress and give you information on speed, distance, calories burnt and more.
You can keep a training diary to view your progress and set workout goals and challenges to help keep you motivated. Plus social features allow you to share and compete with your friends.
While Endomondo works well on its own it can also be linked up to other apps and wearables, so you can get a complete picture of your progress.
Vivo V11 has an in-display fingerprint scanner and is now launching outside China
It doesn't feature the Vivo Nex's level of next-gen technology, but the new Vivo V11 is coming to other markets outside of China for the very first time.
Vivo has announced the phone is coming to India and Thailand after being available in China for a while, and it will also come to other markets soon.
We don't currently know if those markets will include the US, UK or Australia though, and considering Vivo has yet to release any phones in these markets it probably won't happen.
The Vivo V11 has an in-display fingerprint scanner, similar to the one we saw on the Vivo Nex. There's no pop-up selfie camera like on that phone though, this is a much more traditionally designed phone.
It comes with what the company calls a Halo FullView Display, which is a 6.41-inch Super AMOLED screen with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. It has a 91.27% screen-to-body ratio, which isn't too far off from the Oppo Find X, which has 93.8%.
There's a small notch at the top of the screen, something that's commonly now being referred to as a teardrop notch.
The body of the phone includes curved glass on the rear, and it comes in colors called either Starry Night or Nebula, each of which have bold shiny effects on the rear of the phone.
Futuristic phonesThere's a dual-sensor camera on the rear of the Vivo V11 that combines a 12MP lens with a 5MP one. The front of the phone then has an even more powerful 25MP camera.
Powering the phone is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 AIE chipset paired with 6GB of RAM, plus there's 128GB of internal storage. There's no word on whether there's microSD support.
Inside the Vivo V11 there's a 3,400mAh battery that comes with fast-charging features as well.
Pricing and release date details for the Vivo V11 are currently unclear, but we expect to learn those for India very soon. We'll be sure to update when we hear about the further markets Vivo is set to bring the phone to.
Have you seen the Vivo Nex before?
A new online Lord of the Rings game is coming, set before Frodo's quest
One does not simply walk into developing a new Lord of the Rings game. But that's exactly what Athlon Games, the team behind Warframe and Gears of War 4, is doing.
Athlon, the owner of Digital Extremes and Splash Damage, has signed a deal with Middle-earth Enterprises (the license holders of JRR Tolkien's fantasy world), to develop a new online game full of orcs, hobbits and elves.
“It’s a singular opportunity to work closely with Middle-earth Enterprises to create a completely new experience for fans of the landmark fantasy work of JRR Tolkien, and we are excited about the resurgence of interest in The Lord of the Rings IP,” said Dave Miller, president, Athlon Games.
Pre-FrodoThe game is set to be a prequel to the well-known stories of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, instead taking place in the deep history of Middle-earth, conveniently avoiding any canonical issues.
Exactly what sort of game it'll be, or what platforms it will appear on, remains a mystery. But given Athlon Games' pedigree with free-to-play online titles like Warframe, it wouldn't be surprising if that's the path taken here.
Fans of the Lord of the Rings series have, surprisingly, had it quite good when it comes to games that spin off the franchise. Though its sequel Shadow of War proved controversial, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was great fun. The Lord of the Rings Online, a traditional MMO game, is still going strong, and a number of beat-em-ups and strategy games have also impressed over the years.
Beyond that, the resurgence of interest in the IP will continue with a new Amazon Prime TV show, again based on the franchise's unexplored past.
Best MMOs: live your second life online
EE now offers plans that let you upgrade anytime
Smartphone contracts typically tie you in for two years, but with new phones launching all the time that can feel like a long commitment, so with that in mind EE has just launched ‘Upgrade Anytime’ plans, which, well, let you upgrade anytime.
The upgrade is free if you trade in your existing phone and are at least 12 months into your existing contract, but you can upgrade at any point from 15 days into your plan onwards, you’ll just have to pay a fee of £200 in the first six months or £100 between months six and twelve.
If your current phone is damaged or you don’t want to trade it in you can still take advantage of upgrade anytime, but you’ll have to pay an additional fee when you upgrade, which varies depending on what device you have, as well as when you choose to upgrade or how damaged it is.
You might already be eligibleYou don’t need to take out a new plan to use upgrade anytime, but it’s only available on EE Max plans (which also give you access to the BT Sport app, EE’s fastest speeds and free roaming in regions beyond the EU).
It’s also currently only available for a handful of phones, specifically the Google Pixel 2, Google Pixel 2 XL, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, Samsung Galaxy S9, Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, but presumably more phones will be added over time.
The iPhone XS, iPhone XS Plus and iPhone 9 are all rumored to launch next week, so keep an eye out for these potentially being added soon.
Other things to note are that you have to upgrade to another 24-month plan with the same or higher monthly payments, and that if you’re in the last 45 days of your contract then you can upgrade as normal, with no cost and without having to trade in your current handset.
EE’s Upgrade Anytime initiative follows other recent plans at EE and elsewhere which aim to give customers more flexibility.
EE itself recently rolled out Flex Plans for example, which let you change your tariff from month to month, while O2 recently improved its Refresh plans by letting customers completely tailor the length and monthly cost, as well as being able to alter allowances on a month-by-month basis.
EE also offers same day smartphone delivery
Vodafone SIM only price crash! 20GB data for just £11 per month
Wi-Fi is all well and good, but if you really want to keep streaming video and music out of the house, then you'll need a big data SIM only deal on Vodafone. These prices were already super competitive, but today's new cashback offers at Mobiles.co.uk blow the competition out of the water.
There are three excellent 12-month SIM only plans to choose from and all of them come with unlimited minutes and calls. As far as data goes, you can choose from 20GB, 40GB or 50GB a month.
These are all huge amounts of data for streaming music on Spotify, catching up on Netflix, browsing the net and Facebook, downloading games or uploading images to Instagram. If you're not sure how much data you need, dive into your phone's settings (or maybe your account page with your current provider) and you can usually see how much data you use on both mobile and Wi-Fi connections. You can often break this down by individual apps too in order to see the ones that consume the most data.
This way, you should be able to see which of these big data SIM only deals is right for you. There's no point paying for 50GB a month if 20GB will do you just fine after all. We'll run through the cashback details below for you too.
We've highlighted some manual redemption cashback deals, which offer the biggest savings, and also some simpler automatic cashback SIM only deals that are still cheaper for big data than other providers.
Vodafone SIM only | 20GB | £11 (after cashback)Vodafone SIM only | 40GB | £14 (after cashback)Vodafone SIM only | 50GB | £17.50 (after cashback) How to get the cashback on these SIM only deals?Ok, so using the 20GB option as an example, you'll pay £20 a month, but the £108 of cashback you'll get back over the 12-month contract essentially brings the monthly cost down to £11.
You get the cashback initiative started by sending in a copy of your bill (by post or online) for the first time in December, and then every other month after that. Considering the overall saving it's more than worth the faff. Cashback by redemption deals are fairly standard practise now on SIM only deals and offer a fantastic way to get even cheaper deals. When you click through via the links above, press the 'i' icon for the full explainer.
Automatic cashback alternativesThe following SIM only deals don't require the sending in of any bills on a regular basis as the cashback is given back to you automatically after 38 days. The cashback amount isn't as much as the deals above, but given you don't have to worry about redeeming it every other month manually, the below offers may be a better fit for you.
Vodafone SIM only | 20GB | £13.33 (after cashback)Vodafone SIM only | 40GB | £16.67 (after cashback)Vodafone SIM only | 50GB | £20 (after cashback) More SIM only dealsIf you're looking for something different, head on over to our guide for more of the best SIM only deals where we've listed even more options on both ends of the scale. Or take a peek at some highlights below.
Nikon Z7 vs Canon EOS R: 12 key differences you need to know
Canon and Nikon were always somewhat reluctant to join the full-frame mirrorless party, and their respective EOS M and 1 systems never quite made the same dent in the market as their rivals.
It’s all change this year, however, as both companies have caved into the massive demand for full-frame alternatives to their DSLR lines, with Canon releasing the EOS R and Nikon kicking off its Z system with the Z6 and Z7.
Both systems are likely to have many early adopters, but how exactly do the flagship models compare on the spec sheet? Here, we pit the Canon EOS R against the Nikon Z7 to find out where each has the edge over its rival.
Everything you need to know about Nikon's Z6 and Z7 mirrorless cameras Nikon Z7 vs Canon EOS R: resolutionThe 31.7MP sensor inside the EOS R, which produces images with an effective 30.3MP, is no doubt perfectly adequate for many user’s needs, but on paper it’s somewhat behind the Z7’s 45MP sensor (pictured below). It is, however, a little higher in pixel count than the 24.5MP Nikon Z6, and so it ends up sitting somewhere between the two.
Another difference between the two is that Canon has opted to fit the sensor inside the EOS R with a optical low-pass filter, whereas Nikon has gone without for the Z7. This latter design has become more popular in recent years, given the extra crispness it can give images, so on top of the added sensor resolution, the Z7 is more appealing from the off in this respect.
Nikon has been keen to stress the 55mm diameter of its new lens mount, and more specifically what such a large mount allows with regards to wide-aperture lens design and image quality. Size-wise, Canon has almost managed to match this, with its RF mount measuring 54mm.
A more significant difference is that the flange depth of the EOS RF mount is 20mm, whereas on the Z7 it’s just 16mm. This allows for the body to be a little more compact, and gives the Nikon another advantage over its rival.
One of the key advantages of the Nikon Z7 over the EOS R is the presence of sensor-based stabilization, particularly as it allows you to benefit from the technology even when using older lenses. This promises up to five stops of compensation, and provides five-axis compensation when used with F-mount lenses via the FTZ adapter (and three-axis stabilization for non-VR lenses).
Image stabilization has been built into two of the four lenses released alongside the EOS R, namely the Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro and Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, but it’s clearly more convenient to have stabilization available via the body at all times – so another win for Nikon.
Nikon Z7 vs Canon EOS R: autofocusWhile not quite class-leading in number, the 493 phase-detect AF points on the Z7’s sensor sure sounded impressive when that camera was announced. The EOS R, however, trounces this on paper with a maximum 5,655 points.
Not only that, but the working range’s lower measurement of -6EV is significantly lower than the Z7’s -3EV, and this should theoretically enable it to detect subjects better in low lighting conditions. We’ve yet to test this, but Canon’s system certainly appears to have a significant advantage here on paper.
The Z7’s standard ISO range runs from ISO64 to 25,600, while Canon’s starts from a slightly higher ISO100 and tops out at ISO40,000. Extension settings on either side of these ranges see the Z7 shooting at settings as low as ISO32 equivalent and as high as ISO102,400 equivalent, while the EOS R has ISO50 and 102,400 extremes. So, while the two cameras are slightly different in what they offer here, in use it's unlikely to have a significant impact.
Nikon Z7 vs Canon EOS R: LCD screenBoth models have 2.1 million-dot LCD screens on their rears, although the Z7's is marginally larger, at 3.2 inches vs 3.15 inches. Nikon has opted to have the screen tilt up and down, whereas Canon has gone for the same vari-angle design that graces models like the EOS 6D Mark II. This enables the screen to face the front, which makes it more usable for selfie aficionados, and those intending to use the camera for vlogging, than the Nikon Z7.
Both models have been furnished with electronic viewfinders, and both have OLED panels with a resolution of 3.69 million dots.
The 0.80x magnification of the Nikon Z7’s viewfinder (pictured below) is slightly higher than the 0.76x magnification of the EOS R.
For continuous shooting you’ll find that the Nikon Z7 has a 1fps advantage over the EOS R, with 9fps (with exposure locked to that of the first frame) versus the EOS R’s 8fps.
Switch to continuous focus and the Z7 can maintain its 9fps burst speed, while the EOS R drops to 5fps. If you want both autofocus and auto-exposure enabled, the Z7 can do so at 5.5fps.
Nikon Z7 vs Canon EOS R: memory cardNikon’s decision to equip its Z7 body with just a single XQD memory card slot (pictured below) has been the source of much controversy, but Canon’s decision to go with just a single SDHC/SDXC slot may prove even more contentious.
While many current Canon users likely have a collection of SD cards, Nikon’s choice of XQD cards may prove to be the better option in the long run, particularly as Nikon has promised support for the CFexpress format, which is set to succeed XQD.
Nikon has officially unveiled three lenses alongside the new Z7, namely the NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S, NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.8 S (below) and NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S, but it has promised many more to follow.
Canon has arguably got off to a stronger start, not only by releasing four lenses but also by having more wide-aperture options among these. They are the RF 28-70mm f/2L USM, RF 50mm f/1.2L USM, RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM.
Both systems can be used with existing optics designed for Nikon and Canon DSLRs via adapters too.
Here, the EOS R has a small advantage, at least according to CIPA standards.
While the Z7 offers 330 frames per full charge, the EOS R manages 350 frames when using the EVF and 370 when using the LCD. If you enable the Power Saving mode, however, you can boost this to 430 and 450 frame respectively, and with the Eco Mode this can be increased even further to a maximum 560.
Nikon Z7 vs Canon EOS R: size and weightThere’s not a great deal to split the two cameras when it comes to weight, with the EOS R weighing 660g with its battery and memory card in place and the Z7 tipping the scales 675g.
Similarly, the 135mm width and 98.3mm height of the Canon EOS R are practically the same as the 134mm and 100.5mm of the Nikon Z7, but the EOS R is bigger overall thanks to it being 84.4mm deep against the Z7’s 67.5mm.
In short, with a higher-resolution sensor, a smaller body and the advantage of sensor-based image stabilization, Nikon’s Z7 seems to have a more solid core than the EOS R. That said, the specs of the EOS R’s autofocus, combined with the handful of lenses announced so far, show that there’s no clear winner, and potentially not enough to tempt anyone tied to one system to jump to the other.
Best full-frame camera 2018: 10 advanced DSLRs and mirrorless cameras
Best cloud phone system and PBX
PBX (Private Branch Exchanges) are used by companies to route telephone calls within their own premises. Depending on the type of PBX used people in your organization can have their own extensions, place calls and even send SMS messages and faxes.
Setting up your own PBX has traditionally been time consuming and costly. These days however, there are a number of companies offering phone systems in the cloud.
In this guide, you’ll discover some of the top cloud-based companies offering this service today. All of these providers will save you the trouble and expense of installing your own hardware, although some are compatible with existing PBX systems too. As their systems are based online, many of these providers also support video and VoIP calling as well as regular telephone calls.
We've also highlighted the best business computers of 2018
8x8
8x8 Inc. is a provider of cloud communications and customer engagement solutions. Services available include cloud –based voice, contact centre, video, mobile and unified communications for small, medium and enterprise businesses.
The platform offers a unified communications system which is easy to use. It has many features including calling, collaboration, mobile apps and tools. 8x8 is a cloud-hosted VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone system. No complicated PBX hardware is needed.
Phones can be purchased directly from 8x8. If you choose to do this, the will come preconfigured and ready to use upon arrival. However, if you purchased from an outside vendor, an 8x8 representative will help you during initial setup.
The entire 8x8 system is setup and managed via online portal. From where users have access to billing, call logs and support. Administrators can also create and setup extensions and call groups.
8x8 offers three price plans. In order to subscribe, users will need to contact the sales team directly. All plans include unlimited calling, mobile apps, auto attendant, online call management and business SMS.
Users have complained that the cost is high compared to other providers.
You can sign up for 8x8 here
RingCentral
RingCentral is a provider of cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. It was founded in 1999.
The solution includes all PBX administration functions, Android and iOS apps and unlimited calling.
Upon registration, users will be assigned an ‘implementation specialist’ to help determine the number of phones you need. They also help to either transfer over or create new numbers for you. Any phones you purchase directly from RingCentral are preconfigured and ready to use upon receipt.
RingCentral offer several pricing tiers for small businesses. These range from $19.99 (£15.56) for the ‘Essentials’ package to $49.99 (£38.89) for the ‘Ultimate’ package. All plans include unlimited phone calls, unlimited business SMS and mobile apps. They also offer unlimited video and audio meetings with screen sharing on both the desktop and mobile apps. However, the number of screen-sharing users is limited by the package you choose.
For enterprise business, subscribers can request a demo and a quote by filling out a form on the website.
Online commentators have noticed that it takes some time to get used to the interface.
You can sign up for RingCentral here
Vonage Business
Vonage is an internet telephony service which provides business and residential telecommunication services. They were founded in 2001.
Vonage Business provides users with video conferencing and online collaboration. The solution offers businesses access to a web-based console. Users can view extension numbers, the number porting tool and setup guide.
Subscribers have access to a variety of plug-ins as well as services. Some plug-ins are free such as integration with Clio, ConnectWise, Google G Suite and Microsoft Dynamics.
Vonage claim to have an easy to use service with no need to install complicated PBX hardware as everything is cloud-based.
The ‘Mobile’ package starts at $19.99 (£15.56) which includes unlimited calling and messages, mobile app, desktop app and Vonage Flow Team messaging.
The ‘Premium’ plan starts at $29.99 (£23.34) per month per user and comes with extras such as CRM integrations, multi-level auto attendant, conference calling, online meetings and video conferencing.
The top tier plan available, weighs in at $39.99 (£31.12) per month with all the first two tiers have to offer plus on-demand call recording and Vonage Visual Voicemail.
Vonage offer a 14-day free trial for all packages.
Some users have claimed that calls can disconnect at times.
You can sign up for Vonage Business here
Grasshopper
Grasshopper is a company that sells call forwarding and answering services to small businesses.
The solution is attractive for small businesses as it needs no hardware and is easy to setup. It is a virtual phone system. All calls are answered by an automated phone assistant, which then forwards them to the relevant person or department.
Users can create a unique vanity 800 number upon registration. Grasshopper integrates with Skype, LiveChat, Google Voice, Zapier and Bitium.
Grasshopper has an app for both Android and iOS. Users will be able to receive calls through their business line from the app.
The ‘Solo’ plan is $29 (£22.56) per month and includes 1 number and 3 extensions. The ‘Partner’ package is $49 (£38.12) monthly and includes 3 numbers and 6 extensions. The ‘Small Business’ plan is $89 (£69.23) per month. This includes 5 numbers with unlimited extensions.
All plans offer business texting, inbound fax, call forwarding, custom greetings, Wi-Fi calls, desktop, mobile apps and unlimited minutes.
Some users have requested an outgoing fax feature.
You can sign up for Grasshopper here
MegaPath
MegaPath is a business telecommunications provider. It was founded in 1996. The solution offers businesses internet connectivity, unified communications, security services and managed networking.
Through their ‘Unified Communications’ product, MegaPath offers users combined phone, video calling, chat and online collaboration. Users can host voice and video conferences, share their desktops or start group IM’s. This can all be done using your business number from any device. For more information and customized quote, subscribers need to contact the sales team directly.
Users can manage all features, such as conference calls and call routing, via the online portal. Support can also be accessed here.
Voicemails are transcribed and accessed through email and faxes in PDF format.
Hosted Cloud PBX package starts at $19.99 (£15.56) per month. This includes an automated attendant, audio conferencing, instant messaging, desktop, tablet and mobile apps.
MegaPath offer a 15-day free trial for both PBX and Unified Communications.
You can sign up for MegaPath hereTop Image Credit: Andy Abir Alan / Wikimedia
Best cloud firewall
If your business uses any web applications, they’re most likely connected to the internet round the clock. This makes them vulnerable to a variety of hacking attempts such as XSS (Cross Site Scripting) and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service).
You can reduce the risk of data theft and downtime by using a cloud-based firewall to protect your website and apps. This means the firewall will continue running even if you’re on-site server goes down.
In this guide you’ll discover some of the very best cloud firewalls on the market today, each of which can be setup easily with your own set of custom rules.
We've also highlighted the best cloud antivirus
CloudFlare WAF
CloudFlare is a company that provides content delivery services, DDoS mitigation, Internet security and distributed domain name server providers. It was founded in 2009.
The solution monitors the internet on a regular basis for any new updates such as attacks and vulnerabilities. Anything that is considered a threat to the majority of their clients automatically have WAF (Web application Firewalls) rules enabled. These will protect all internet properties. Constant updates ensure that CloudFlare’s protection is in place at all times.
Cloudflare deals with a huge number of requests every hour with the solution identifying and blocking new threats. Due to their large customer base, the platform is able to rely on a collective intelligence when it comes to eradicating threats. This means that when one customer creates a new WAF rule, CloudFlare decides whether it applies to all other domains on their network.
CloudFlare has a free tier. This includes unmetered mitigation of DDoS, global CDN, shared SSL certificate and 3 page rules. Additional rules can be purchased through CloudFlare’s dashboard.
The ‘Pro’ package is $20 (£15.55) per month which includes Web application Firewall (WAF) with CloudFlare rulesets, mobile optimizations with Polish and 20 page rules.
For $200 (£155.54) per month, the ‘Business’ plan comes with WAF with 25 custom rulesets, 50 page rules and custom SSL certificate upload.
The ‘Enterprise’ tier includes 24/7 enterprise grade phone, chat and email support, 100 page rules, named solution and customer success engineers.
Some users have reported delays with analytics and log systems.
You can sign up for CloudFlare WAF here
Amazon Web Services WAF
Amazon Web Services is part of Amazon.com. It provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals and businesses. As part of this subscription, users have access to AWS WAF.
AWS WAF is a web application firewall which protects web applications from threats which could compromise their security or consume resources. The solution itself is straight forward and easy to use.
Users can create custom made rules designed to block common attack patterns such as cross-site scripting. The solution has a full featured API which allows users to automate the creation, deployment and maintenance of all rules in use.
AWS WAF works by charging you for each new rule you create. You are not charged a set price every month but you do have to be subscribed to Amazon Web Services to access this feature.
Amazon Web Services include a 12 month fully featured free trial.
You can sign up for Amazon Web Services WAF here
Sophos XG Firewall
Sophos is a British security software and hardware company. It develops products for communication endpoint, encryption, network security and unified threat management.
Sophos XG Firewall is a unified threat manager which also acts as a firewall. It also acts as application security and wireless gateway.
Users can manage settings from Sophos’ ‘Control Center’. From here subscribers can access the utilities dashboard. This allows you to view your network, users and applications. You can also add Sophos ‘iView’. This provides centralized reporting across multiple firewalls.
The XG Firewall management interface gives users an overview on features such as traffic insights, system statistics and firewall rules.
Sophos offers users a 30-day free trial. This includes IPS, ATP, Sandboxing, Dual AV, Web and App Control, Anti-phishing and Web Application Firewall. Subscribers need to contact Sophos directly to receive a quote.
Some commentators have complained the UI is not intuitive and cannot be customized.
You can sign up for Sophos XG Firewall here
Akamai Kona Site Defender
Akamai Technologies is a content delivery network and cloud service provider. It was founded in 1998.
Akamai Kona Site Defender integrates DDoS protection with its web application firewall. DDoS services identify and neutralize threats from IP addresses by using a scale system from 1 to 10. These scores are based on the IP addresses ability to source suspicious traffic. Scores are then used to allow, alert or block based on the severity of the score. Users can also customize settings so they can choose which IP addresses they want blocked.
The web application firewall inspects individual traffic. Any malicious attacks are eradicated. This tool only works against web-based attacks.
Users can use the management dashboard to access information such as reports and attack rates. The utility requires very little customization.
Subscribers will need to contact Akamai directly in order to start their free trial and to get a quote.
Online commentators have said they regret more information about the product isn’t available on Akamai’s website.
You can sign up for Akamai Kona Site Defender here
Incapsula
Incapsula is a cloud-based application delivery platform. It provides web application security, DDoS mitigation, content caching, application delivery and load balancing through a global content delivery network.
Incapsula Web Application Firewall works as a gateway for all traffic coming to your online services. It filters out malicious visitors and requests such as SQL injections and XSS attacks.
The solution uses several layers of security policies to identify threats. These are maintained by a security team. Incapsula uses attack information from their network to provide protection for their users.
Incapsula has 25 data centers around the world which ensures 24/7 monitoring.
The ‘Pro’ package is $59 (£45.89) per site per month which includes bad bot protection, good bot management, web application firewall, PCI DSS compliance and custom security rules.
The ‘Business’ plan is $299 (£232.58) per site per month with extras such as application layer DDoS protection and 10-second mitigation guarantee.
Users interested in either the ‘Enterprise’ package or a free trial will have to contact Incapsula directly for more information.
Online commentators have noted that Incapsula is not as competitively priced as other firewall applications.
You can sign up for Incapsula hereTop Image Credit: Ganapathy / Wikimedia
China considers merging two major mobile operators in 5G push
The Chinese government is reportedly considering a merger of two state-run mobile operators in a bid to ensure the country assumes leadership in 5G networks.
According to Bloomberg, Beijing believes the combination of China Unicorn and China Telecom would allow it to invest more effectively than if the two did so separately.
The proposed merger would create a telco with 590 million customers, making it the world’s second largest mobile operator after domestic rival China Mobile, and provide the revenue and additional operational efficiencies to accelerate rollout.
What is 5G? Everything you need to know China 5GBoth companies reportedly said they had no knowledge of any merger, which has been touted since early in the summer.
But the suggestion that China would consider such a move serves to show how the race to 5G is as much about politics as it is technology. 5G leadership would see a country take a disproportionate role in development, especially in fields like AI, and secure jobs and economic benefit.
Earlier this year, the US government blocked the proposed takeover of Qualcomm by Broadcom, fearing the latter’s lack of reputation for research and development (R&D) would see the initiative ceded to Huawei, which is headquartered in Shenzhen, China.
Huawei has also been effectively frozen out of the US market on national security grounds, while Australia has banned its telcos from procuring kit from the company. And that’s before you take into account the ongoing talk of a trade war between the US and China.
The first 5G networks will go live in the US later this year, serving up fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband to a number of major cities. The first 5G smartphones are set to arrive in 2019, with further deployments in Asia and Europe. The UK will see its first commercial service launch either in 2019 or 2020.
Here are the best mobile phone deals for September 2018
Canon unveils new full-frame mirrorless camera, the EOS R
Canon has finally confirmed its much-rumored new EOS R mirrorless system, with the launch of a new full-frame camera.
The EOS R is the first model in the new range, and one that appears to challenge the the likes of the Sony A7 III and Nikon’s recently announced Z6 and Z7 cameras.
The new camera has been crafted around a 30.3MP full-frame sensor equipped with an optical low-pass filter. This sensor has been designed with the familiar Dual Pixel CMOS AF technology that provides phase-detect autofocus, but unlike rival systems that typically offer a few hundred points, the system here offers a significantly higher 5,655 addressable points.
Canon also promises that this is the world's fastest autofocus system, with speeds as low as 0.05sec, and this is no doubt made possible in part by the inclusion of a DIGIC 8 processor.
New RF mount and lensesThe weather-resistant EOS R also sports a new 12-pin RF lens mount, which has a diameter of 54mm. This works with a new line of optics, four of which have already been announced.
The first is the RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, which has the advantage of a constant maximum f/4 aperture and image stabilization. This is joined by another zoom, the RF 28-70mm f/2L USM, the main draw of which is an even wider constant maximum aperture of f/2. These are accompanied by two prime lenses, the RF 50mm f/1.2L USM (below) and RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro.
While news of a new mount may not be what existing Canon users were hoping for, Canon has assured them that they will be able to continue using EF and EF-S lenses through a new EF-EOS R adapter, with full compatibility, although this won't support EF-M lenses.
The 30.3MP sensor works across an ISO range of ISO 100 to 40,000, and this can be extended to settings equivalent to ISO50 and ISO102,400. Canon’s C-Raw file option, which we first saw on the EOS M50, has also made the cut, providing users with a more efficient alternative to the standard Raw file. Canon states that files saved using the format measure around 17.3MB on average, as opposed to the 31.3MB size of standard Raw files.
The company has also equipped the EOS R with a 3.15-inch Clear View II LCD screen, which boasts 2.1 million dots and the same kind of vari-angle design as the panels found on the likes of the EOS 6D Mark II and EOS M50. With this, the user is not only free to tilt the screen to a range of positions when shooting conventionally, but can also twist it to face the front for selfies, group shots and for vlogging.
Just above this display is an electronic viewfinder, which features an OLED panel with 3.69 million dots, and to its side on the top plate lies a small display that shows key shooting information, much like those on Fujifilm’s X-H1 and Nikon’s Z-series models.
Just beneath this on the back plate is a control we’ve not seen before, which Canon calls the M-Fn Bar. This responds to touches and swipes, and can be used to adjust settings of the user's choosing, such as ISO and white balance.
4K video and Dual Pixel RAWThe EOS R also becomes Canon’s latest model to be capable of 4K UHD video recording, at frame rates of 30fps, 25fps and 24fps. Full HD video can be captured at a maximum 120fps for slow-motion output.
Other features include 8fps burst shooting, which drops to 5fps with continuous focus enabled, as well as the same Dual Pixel RAW option that we first saw on the EOS 5D Mark IV. Among other things, this allows the user to adjust the point of best sharpness in an image post capture using the company’s DPP software. Canon's Digital Lens Optimizer feature has also made the cut.
The EOS R accepts SDHC and SDXC cards, with support for the UHS-II standard, but only through a single card slot. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are also on board, which allows the EOS R to be controlled remotely from a smart device, in addition to wireless image transfer.
The LP-E6N battery, meanwhile, can be charged in the camera through the USB port at its side. Battery life itself ranges from around 350 frames when using the EVF to 370 frames with the LCD screen, although these figures can be boosted with the camera's Power Saving and Eco modes.
Canon’s existing EOS M system has spawned eight models since its 2012 launch, but these have all featured APS-C sensors. Calls for full-frame models have intensified in recent years, particularly with Sony’s growing dominance among enthusiast and professional users.
The EOS R comes less than two weeks after Nikon launched its new mirrorless Z system with the Z6 and Z7. Panasonic is also rumored to be launching a rival model with a full-frame sensor.
Canon EOS R price and release dateThe EOS R is available to pre-order from September 12 and will go on sale from October 9 onwards.
In the UK, the camera will cost £2,349.99 for the body and mount adapter, while a kit with the mount adapter and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens will be priced at £3,269.99. In the US, the EOS R will be available in its own for $2299 and $3399 with the RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. Middle East pricing is expected to be Euro 2,499 for the body and Euro 3,499 with 24-105 lens kit.
The RF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens will arrive at £2,349.99 while the RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM will come with a £1,119.99 price tag. The RF 28-70mm f/2L USM and RF 35mm f/1.8 MACRO IS STM lens, meanwhile, will be launched at £3,049.99 and £519.99 respectively, although they won’t be available until December.
We’ll update this with prices for the US and Australia once we have them – Canon says pricing for Australia will be confirmed on September 12.
Will the Canon EOS R make it onto our list of the best full-frame DSLRs and mirrorless cameras?
iOS 12 release date, news and features
There are a lot of new iOS 12 feature to get excited about, and we're going to hear all about them again (and the release date for the final software) on September 12.
One week from today, Apple's iPhone XS and Apple Watch 4 launch event will take place. Based on the event timing, we have a very good on when the final software will come to your iPhone and iPad.
What's new? When will you be able to get iOS 12? New features like Memoji, Group Notifications, and better overall performance will likely launch September 18.
Of course, you can get the iOS 12 beta right now and it's already better than iOS 11. It also gives us preliminary insight into iPhone XS and Apple Watch 4.
Good news: Apple is already up to iOS 12 developer beta 9 and we've tested features like the Measure app, Siri Shortcuts, and created a Memoji of ourselves. Our older iPhones are also faster, while Grouped Notifications make the UI easier to navigate.
Bad news: Group FaceTime was delayed, and it won't launch as part of the software on (or around) September 18. Expect it in iOS 12.1, maybe sometimes in October.
Apple is making its mobile operating system reliable and competitive with Google's Android Pie. That much is obvious.
Here's what we know about iOS 12 based for your older iPhone and iPhone XS.
Update: Here are our first impressions of the iOS 12 beta after going hands-on!
See also: the 25 new iOS 12 features that Apple didn’t tell us about iOS 12 release date June 4 – Developer beta launched (to paid Apple Developers)June 25 – iOS 12 public beta launched (it's free)Tuesday, September 18 (or close to it) – the final iOS 12 software (still free)You can now test it early, as there are three iOS 12 release dates: one for developers, one for public beta testers, and one final version coming soon for everyone else.
The developer beta is available now and gets more frequent refreshes. But it's early software and you must be a registered Apple developer. That costs money: $99 for the annual membership. It's for people who like to tinker with software weekly, and so far Apple is on iOS 12 developer beta 11.
The iOS 12 public beta is the one most people will want to test out, and it's also now available to download. It launched on June 25 and is completely free. It's also likely to be less problematic than the developer beta. Expect more stable updates every two to three weeks. The downside? Apple's public betas are always one step behind what the developers have access to.
Both versions of the iOS 12 beta will be unfinished software, so we advise you to proceed with caution before deciding to install iOS 12 beta on your primary device. For example, the iOS 12 beta 1 was great for us, but we had minor reset problems with iOS 12 beta 2. Waiting for the final iOS 12 version is a safer choice if you rely on your iPhone daily.
The release date for a stable iOS 12 version should be in mid-September, alongside new iPhones XS and iPhone XS Plus. No guarantees, but that's how it seems to work every year. History has told us that it's the Tuesday after the iPhone 9 and iPhone XS launch event, so on or around September 18 seems likely.
iOS 12 reliability Apple's looking to put the problematic iOS 11 behind itOlder iPhones will be 40% to 70% faster at certain tasksiOS 12 will focus on reliability and performance with this update, and support all of the same iPhones and iPads that iOS 11 worked with.
Apple called out the iPhone 6 Plus, specifically, saying iOS 12 makes this phone 40% faster at launching apps, 70% faster at launching the camera app, and 50% faster at displaying the keyboard. Keyboard typing and other routine features on older iPhones can slow down with every new iOS update, and Apple is looking to change these pain points with iOS 12.
This makes your existing iPhone and iPad more reliable, and your older devices can be used by family members or be sold now that they'll be more function with iOS 12. They don't have to sit in a draw because they're too slow.
Here's a concrete example already: for us, the public beta has been reliable enough to download. There's the occasional iPhone reset or hangups, but we actually found it to be more reliable than the problematic iOS 11 in some instances. So far, so good.
iOS 12 hints at Apple Watch 4Apple is readying an Apple Watch 4, at least according to an iOS 12 developer beta 2 update that references Watch4,1, Watch4,2, Watch4,3 and Watch4,4.
That indicates two sizes and both LTE and non-LTE versions of the smartwatch. It's just like we saw from the Apple Watch 3, originally referenced as Watch3,1 to 3,4.
Apple Watch 4 rumors indicate a 15% larger screen (by reducing the bezel) and a larger battery, hopefully for sleep tracking and an always-on display.
(Photo Credit: 9to5Mac)
We've seen the first official-looking Apple Watch 4 photo leak (above), ahead of the big September 12 launch event, and sure enough, the larger screen is the highlight.
iOS 12 doesn't confirm these new features for the iPhone compatible smartwatch, but it does appear as if Apple actively tweaking its software for new Watch hardware.
iOS 12 is 200% less annoying on iPhone XHere are two irksome features we hated about iOS 11 on the iPhone X that iOS 12 is going to fix. The final software is going to feel 200% less annoying when it launches.
Closing app windows in iOS 12 is now easier thanks to the fact that all you have to do is slide up on an open app to dismiss it from the multitasking menu. iOS 11 had us press down on the app until red close icons appeared over top of each app, and then to tap those little red icons to dismiss the app. That was unpleasant.
Second, whenever we picked up our phone, we'd always pressed the volume up and power button accidentally, which is the new 'take a screenshot' button combination. Apple has disabled this action whenever the phone screen is off. Our iOS 12 Photos app is no longer going to be filled with errant screenshots on the daily.
iOS 12 compatibility Compatible with iPhone 5S, iPad mini2 and iPad Air and newer11 iPhones, 10 iPads, 1 iPod touch – the broadest iOS update yetiOS 12 will run on all devices that have its 64-bit chipset, which was first introduced in 2013. It'll work on the iPhone 5S and newer, while the iPad Air and iPad mini 2 are the oldest iPads that are compatible with iOS 12.
That's means this update is supporting 11 different iPhones, 10 different iPads and the sole iPod touch 6th generation still clinging to life. It’s the broadest support for a software update Apple has ever offered, and this is one of the biggest advantages Apple has over Android phones.
ARKit 2 and multiplayer gaming ARKit 2 allows for 'shared experiences' (multiplayer potential)LEGO, Fender, Adobe and Pixar are all working on AR with AppleiOS 12 cements Apple as a leader in augmented reality (AR) with the arrival of groundbreaking multiplayer capabilities it calls Shared Experiences in ARKit 2.
These multi-user virtual environments are coming to ARKit, allowing for multiplayer gaming and experiences through iPhones and iPads. iOS 12 is going to create a more collaborative (and competitive) way of experiencing AR.
LEGO demoed a four-player game, pledging that it was in when it came to Apple's “creative play possibilities.” Players were involved in building up an AR town. It was like The Sims was reimagined for the future.
ARKit 2 opens up AR to hundreds of millions of users, according to Apple, and that makes iOS 12 the broadest AR platform in the world. We got a taste of AR last year, but multi-user virtual environments bring more advanced tools and gameplay.
iOS 12 pinpoints 911 calls in the USYou won't have to worry about reciting your exact location when calling 911 in the US thanks to iOS 12. It'll pinpoint your whereabouts during emergency calls.
Apple says it'll "automatically and securely" share your iPhone location with first responders, but only with them and only during such emergencies. It's an effort to reduce response time, yet maintain your privacy.
New 'Measure' app and USDZ file format New USDZ file type dedicated at augmented realityMeasure app for iOS 12 to replace your measuring tape'Measure' is getting its own AR app. It uses the iPhone's and iPad's advanced sensors to measure objects in front of you, including suitcases, as shown in the first iOS 12 demo. All it takes it just tap-and-drag along the edges of the object on the screen.
It can also automatically detect the approximate dimensions of a photo – we can imagine that will help when you go to buy a photo frame, but can't find the old-fashioned tape measure. iOS 12 to the rescue.
For AR developers, Apple has created a new file type called 'USDZ.' The company worked on USDZ with Pixar, and Adobe is supporting it, too. The file format can be shared across FIles, Mail, Messages and Safari. This is an important step forward for developers working on AR apps.
Camera app changesApple didn't announce big camera changes at its WWDC 2018 keynote, but later said that the default camera app will get tweaked with iOS 12.
The Portrait Lighting mode on newer iPhones with a dual-lens camera will look more natural. The software will be able to define crisper edges by more effectively separating a person from a background scene. Apple is also allowing third-party apps to use the software to separate the foreground and background.
It'll be the end of an era for our how to scan a QR code from your iPhone and iPad guide. The default camera in iOS 12 makes QR code reading automatic.
And while not part of the camera app, RAW photos can be imported and managed on an iPhone and iPad, with the bonus ability of editing RAW photos on an iPad Pro.
Photos app is now smarter with iOS 12 Betters search and a new 'For you' tabSuggestions on who to share photo collections withShare back suggestions nudge friends to send their photosThe Photos app is expanding search in an effort to compete with Google Photos. It recognizes photos by event and indexes them accordingly. Apple says it takes into account over four million events, citing the Aspen Ideas Festival as a niche example.
This lets you search by event without any thankless manual tagging. Searching by event joins other smart suggestions, including filtering by people, places, and relative dates (searching via Siri works with all of these and is quiet handy).
The iOS 12 Photos search capabilities have also been broadened to let you use multiple search terms at once. Seeking "dog, animal" should weed out all of your gourmet hotdog results (this is a real problem we just tested on iOS 11).
A new tab 'For you' is coming to the iOS 12 Photos app, filled with personalized suggestions on how to improve and share your pictures. Sharing has gotten smarter, letting you share at full-resolution and suggesting who to share these photos with.
Share back suggestions is a neat feature that lets you send photos to a friend, and it uses machine learning to poke them to send photos they took to you. iOS 12’s photos sharing uses iMessage's end-to-end encryption.
iPad switches to iPhone-like gesturesIt's confusing owning both an iPad and a new iPhone X right now because returning to the home screen and opening Control Center are executed by different gestures.
The iPad takes cues from the iPhone X with the iOS 12 update: swipe up from the bottom to return home and check Control Center by pulling down from the top right-hand corner.
This may be a prelude to the iPad Pro 2018 that's rumored to include Apple's True Depth camera for Face ID, Animoji and Memoji.
Siri Shortcuts can find your lost keys, more Siri Shortcuts allows you to assign phrases to tasks'I lost my keys' can ring your Tile tracker to find keys'Heading home' sends ETA notification to roommate, sets thermostat and fan, and brings up the fastest route through Apple MapsGallery and library full of pre-configured Siri ShortcutsSiri is getting smarter. It‘ll know that “I lost my keys” means to ring your Tile tracker. Tile is a handy gadget, but getting to the app is a pain, and having Siri integrated is a game-changer for both Tile and our peace of mind.
Siri is going to be filled with shortcuts, so much so that Apple is creating a shortcuts app for iOS 12. It’ll suggest coffee orders from the place you always order from and message contacts to tell them you're running late, and there's also Kayak-based flight information you can call up via voice. By pressing the add to Siri button, you can then say “Travel plans” and Siri will read back information such as your hotel address.
Right now, the IFTTT-like Siri Shortcuts app is in beta testing via Apple's TestFlight app and meant for selected third parties. It's one of the few features that hasn't made it to the iOS 12 beta for developers or for the public yet.
Siri translates new languages, learns motorsport scores Siri can now translate over 40 language pairsMotorsports scores, schedules and stats knowledgeFood and celebrity facts knowledge expanded uponPassword search not part of Siri's duties in iOS 12Try asking Siri to translate something into Spanish. It works, and with iOS 12 it'll be even more robust with over 40 language pairs to aid your international travels.
We really hope Siri will be able to translate foreign words into English (that's not possible with iOS 11 at this time when asking Siri what 'hola' means in English).
Siri will also learn the language or motorsports, per se. Asking for Formula One and NASCAR information will have Siri recite live standings, schedule, roster and stat info.
Food knowledge and celebrity facts are also part the Siri update. Right now, asking "How healthy is fish" gives a smatter of search results and requires opening up Siri. In the future, a specific answers about food will come from the USDA database, citing calories, vitamins, and how healthy the food is overall.
Password hunting is now within Siri's grasp, letting you search any saved passwords, according to Apple. This applies to both apps and websites.
Apple News, Stocks, Voice Memos and CarPlay Apple News: new Browse tab and sidebar navigationStocks: robust chart design and stock news integrationVoice memos: easier menus, iCloud support, on iPad (finally)CarPlay: third-party app support, like Google News and WazeApps are indeed getting updates with iOS 12, starting with Apple News. There’s a new Browse tab and a sidebar for better navigation. Stocks is finally being rebuilt with a helpful news design, complete with charts and Apple news headline integrated into into stocks. The top stories will be business news curated by Apple News editors.
Voice Memos is coming to iPad (as well as macOS), and it’ll get iCloud support, long overdue changes. Now you won't have to AirDrop conversations between devices in order to listen back. It'll also be easier to assign names to voice clips thanks to an overhauled Voice Memos redesign.
Apple Books is the new name for iBooks, allowing you to pick up reading where you left off and a new store interface to browse buy ebooks and audio books.
CarPlay is going to support third-party applications, with Waze and Google Maps appearing on-screen. Apple didn’t call out the Google-owned apps by name, but they were there on the screen. This was a major highlight of iOS 12.
Apple is expanding its Do Not Disturb capabilities with a cleaner 'Do Not Disturb During Bedtime' mode. It'll silence not just the notification delivery sounds, but also the visual notifications clutter that can distract you when you're trying to sleep.
The lockscreen remains clear until you unlock your iPhone in the morning. You can allow certain apps to break through, just like with DND mode right now. Apple refers to these as critical alerts, and they're opt-in.
Do Not Disturb options aren't one-size-fits all, either. It can now automatically end in an hour, at the end of the day, when you leave a certain location, or at the end of a meeting in your calendar. iOS 12 even makes the DND moon icon in Control Center have 3D Touch support to act as a shortcut to all of these options.
Instant Tuning is an iOS 12 feature you'll love if you've ever gotten a notification from an app you always seem to dismiss (HQ trivia, breaking news alerts, etc), but don't have time to turn off future notifications in the many submenus of Settings. Apple is allowing you to control individual app notification profiles right from the lockscreen, without making you leave what you're doing.
Deliver Quietly is an option within Instant Tuning, and it'll allow you to choose to have notifications delivered silently Notification Center by default so you’re not interrupted by alerts on the lockscreen. It's a nice in between option.
Siri can help clean up your messy lockscreen with notification delivery suggestions based on how you interact with notifications. Siri will understand which notifications it should deliver prominently and which ones to send to Notification Center. It's like IOS 12's version of 'clean up your desktop' system nudges.
Screen time is Apple's take on limiting your iPhone use – how much time you're spending on apps, which apps you use the most, and which apps are sending you the most notifications.
To give you a little extra help, Apple has created app limits. You can set your own limit, with a notification letting you know when time is almost up. A 'Time is up' message will display when you've reached your self-imposed-Siri-assisted limit.
Parents can create limits for kids with Allowances, time-of-day-based downtime controls, and category controls. Education and essential message apps can also be green lit thanks to an always-allowed settings.
The best part? Setting limits for your kids uses Family Sharing, so you can manage it all remotely from your parental device – no need to get hold of your 12-year-old kid's phone to execute on these new iOS 12 controls.
Thinking of buying the iPhone X? Watch our overview video below:
iOS 12 grouped notifications Grouped notification on iOS 12 to clean up individual notifications messSmartly grouped by app, topic, thread. Tap in to look at a particular groupCan clear a whole group of notifications with a single swipeGrouped notifications are coming to iOS 12. This is a small, but important update (maybe the most important iOS 12 update) announced at the Apple WWDC keynote.
It binds together notifications by message threads and topics, making it easier to see everything at a glance. Right now, individual notifications in the morning are a big pain to check as they pile up.
Animoji is expanded, not just with new masks, but with tongue detection (as seen on stage) and wink detection (not announced, but confirmed for iOS 12 afterward). Ghost Koala, Tiger and T-Rex will be joining the cast of Animoji masks.
Memoji is a thing, too. It's a customizable mask that can look like you – or the real you, according to Apple. It still resides in Messages. You can select hairstyles, eye color and accessories like earrings and sunglasses. Like Animoji, this is an iPhone X only feature due to requiring Apple's True Depth front-facing camera.
Group FaceTime (now launching later) Group FaceTime for up to 32 people with dynamic UICan use Animoji and Memoji in FaceTimeWon't launch with the final software on day oneGroup FaceTime is coming to iOS 12 with up to 32 participants, and you go directly from a group chat to a group FaceTime in the Messages app.
Update: Apple has delayed the launch of iOS 12 Group Notifications, indicating in the latest iOS 12 beta release notes that it'll come out this 'fall'. To us, that sounds like an iOS 12.1 launch – like Apple Pay, Apple Cash, AirPlay 2 and other features didn't make it live on day one in previous operating system updates.
People can drop in and drop out at any time. The interface is filled with tiles that can expand, and 'the roster' along the bottom for everyone else in the Group FaceTime chat. When people start to speak, their window gets bigger, even if they're in the bottom roster of participants. It works on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and you can even answer on the Apple Watch and HomePod with just audio.
Animoji is coming to FaceTime and Group FaceTime. You'll of course need to update to iOS 12 and an iPhone X to make that magic happen.
That's a wrap for new iOS 12 features at Apple's WWDC. The two biggest highlights were Grouped notifications and Group FaceTime with Memoji. We'll test out the iOS 12 beta and report back when it becomes available to the public.
Previous reporting...
Apple's iOS 12 update for your existing iPhone and iPad will be announced today at 10am PT at the company's WWDC 2018 keynote. We're here reporting on it live.
You'll be able to test it early, too, as there will likely be three iOS 12 release dates: one for developers, one for beta testers, and one final version for everyone else.
None of this should surprise you by now. Apple launches its software updates at the same time every year. It'll run through all the iOS 12 changes in about 24 minutes, according to past Apple keynote history.
What should surprise you are the features. iOS 12 has become a big mystery, with Apple reportedly pulling back front-facing features in order to fix iOS 11 problems.
Don't worry, you can still anticipate at least some groundbreaking ideas and design adjustments due to the launch of iPhone X last year and theoretical iPhone X2 and iPhone 9 release date later in 2018.
Apple has a chance to make meaningful changes as it adapts to all-screen displays. Here's our list of what we expect from iOS 12, according to rumors and leaks.
Cut to the chase What is iOS 12? Apple's next big iPhone and iPad software update When is the iOS 12 release date? Announcement next week, June 4 with a subsequent beta, September launch How much will iOS 12 cost? Nothing. iOS 12 will remain free. iOS 12 release date and beta schedule iOS 12 to fix what was wrong with iOS 11"iOS 12 just works," may be Apple's big message about its next iPhone update, as it's reportedly focusing on reliability and shelving many exciting features.
It's okay to be torn about this news if you were looking forward to iOS 12 with a fresh face. Then again, it's hard to argue with experiencing fewer bug-filled random resets on your iPhone.
Apple's iOS 12 plans are going to be a godsend if you've been experiencing issues with iOS 11 – even the iOS 11.4 update has new, ongoing problems. It's been bad PR for Apple.
Which features won't be in iOS 12?
Apple was reportedly planned, but delayed:
Those may have to wait until iOS 13, if you are to believe the rumors about the Apple teams new mission. It's all in an effort to make iOS 12 stabilization impeccable.
iOS 12 and macOS cross-platform appsApple is thought to be bringing first and third-party iOS apps to your Mac, making one of the biggest iOS 12 features for your computer instead of your phone.
It's a long-overdue upgrade. We've always asked: Why can't you control your smart home with the Home app via that all-powerful iMac Pro? You can't do it today. It's a ridiculous notion.
Apple is rumored to be allowing developers to expand their app ecosystem to the forthcoming macOS 10.14 update. Apple's own apps, like Home, are also said to be finally making the jump, according to recent reports.
Don't get too excited. This feature may also be saved for iOS 13 and macOS 11.5 in 2019, says a new report. It's supposedly being worked on, but how quickly it comes to the table may leaving you waiting for a while.
We're giving this one a good shot at being at WWDC on our speculation scale – we're at least expecting Apple to lay the groundwork for such a feature in 2018.
More Animoji (in more places)Animoji – whether you demanded it or vehemently opposed it, Apple is due to bring more Animoji to iOS 12 for use with the iPhone X Face ID camera. iOS 11.3 just gave us four new Animoji faces to play with, but why stop there?
The navigation of these animated character masks should get easier, too, according to Bloomberg. That's important, because to get better use, they need to break out of their Apple Messages confines, where Animoji are currently buried.
Apple's Animoji character may make two jumps in 2018. First, the natural jump to FaceTime for video chats behind a virtual panda, robot, and poop mask.
Second to what may be a new iPad Pro 2018 with a TrueDepth camera for Face ID and Animoji. We've seen evidence of an updated iPad recently, beyond the cheap new iPad 2018. But we don't foresee new iPad Pros until later this year.
Way better autocorrectMaybe we could have lumped this iOS 12 change under fixes, but it deserves its own mention. Everyone wants better autocorrect from the built-in iOS keyboard.
Currently, it can be downright terrible. Why? It may be due to Apple's commendable stance on privacy, with all of the smarts happening on the device itself or masked so that individuals aren't identifiable.
Apple says it's not mining your data like you may find on some Android phones. But we also want a smarter keyboard that doesn't autocap and autocorrect randomly.
iOS 12 is Apple's perfect opportunity to balance differential privacy with our typings needs. With the focus on reliability this should be near the very top of the list.
Flexible Face IDFace ID isn't better than Touch ID. There. We said it. It's a neat party trick and makes the iPhone X feel like it's from the future, but we're typing our passcode multiple times a day whenever Face ID fails. That's unacceptable.
iOS 12 will fix Face ID so that it works when your device in landscape orientation, rather than only in portrait, according to Macotakara's supply chain source. This change should go a long way to fixing our biggest Face ID problems.
We'd also like to see a "try again" button when Face ID fails the first time. Having to put the iPhone X to sleep and wake it up again just to re-engage Face ID is annoying and design nonsense. Apps that use Face ID for passwords, like our banking app, have this "try again" feature. Expect to see this in iOS 12.
The better Face ID is with the iOS 12 update, the sooner we'll forget that we miss the Touch ID fingerprint sensor that's likely to have had its last hurrah in the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.
More iOS 12 features we want to seeWhile nothing is known for sure about iOS 12 yet we have a clear idea of some of the things we want to see, such as the following.
System-wide password managerWe'd also like to see a system-wide password manager built into iOS 12, not just username and password saving in Safari. That's not helpful if you apps on iOS.
With Face Unlock and Touch ID securing our phones, there's little fear in relying on a password manager on mobile devices. And remembering passwords to so many different apps seems like a wasteful second layer of security.
Always-on display hints?Look out for tiny always-on display hints in iOS 12, as Apple could easily squeeze this useful feature into the iPhone X2 OLED screen in September. The software may have hidden hooks for an always-on screen in the iOS 12 beta code.
OLED essentially 'turns off' black parts of the screen in an effort not display the bare minimum without eating up battery life. Phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9, the Google Pixel 2 and even the rumored LG G7 have shown off this idea to great effect.
Apple does have a raise-to-wake feature that's been a big hit among new iPhones. But a true always-on display would help differentiate the iPhone X2 OLED from the rumored iPhone 9 LCD.
New iOS 12 wallpaperEvery new version of iOS seems to get new wallpaper, and we expect iOS 12 to be no different in 2018. It should allow Apple to further exhibit its iPhone X OLED screen.
Specifically, we could see more dynamic wallpapers from Apple. iOS 12 needs more moving backgrounds besides a bunch of moving bubbles in various colors.
New iOS 12 concept videos show the iconic Earth wallpaper spinning, for example. Right now, that's a flat image, and that doesn't put OLEDs to full use at all.
Grouped notificationsiOS 12 may finally bring a fix to having so many notifications in chronological order. Every morning, our iPhone is littered with so many ungrouped alerts.
Grouping notifications together would make life easier, as long as it's not differently than what we had in iOS 9 with lots of spacing between important alerts. Android Oreo does this nicely, and iOS 12 could easily lift this feature.
We've seen iOS 12 concepts include grouped notifications and also small notification icons on the lockscreen for things like weather and activity ring progress. That would take up less space and provide data at a glance right under the time and date.
Group FaceTimeSpeaking of grouped things, we're keen on opening up the FaceTime party to more than just 1:1 chats. iOS 12 should welcome group FaceTime to iPhones and iPads.
We've had 1:1 video chats long enough
Conference call software, from Hangouts to Skype, can already do this, so it's natural to expect Apple to open up FaceTime to groups eventually. iOS 12 may be it.
Sound familiar? This was supposed to already be a feature in the current version of iOS, but it didn't actually happen last year. Either that rumor was wrong or was shelved until iOS 12. We'll find out more in June.
Camera controls in the camera appFile this under: Why is this still a problem? Apple's camera app is very barebones compared to its competitions, to the point that you can't change video resolutions within the camera app. It has to be done through Settings > Photo & Camera > Record Video. All of this requires exiting the camera app. That's very unhelpful.
We'd also like to see other settings become easier to use. Android phones do a good job at letting you switch between the rear- and front-facing camera with a swipe up or down on the screen, and the white Timer numbers (3s, 10s) can be hard to see in landscape mode when you're focusing on a subject that's white.
While some app redesigned have been shelved for iOS 13, we're hoping these small tweaks make it into the iOS 12 beta this month.
Having iOS 11 problems? Here's how to fix them
iPhone XS release date, price, news and leaks
Apple is expected to launch the iPhone XS one week from today, and we have all of the leaks including the first official photo (below) ahead of the September 15 event.
The new iPhone 2018 will come in two sizes: an iPhone XS with a familiar 5.8-inch screen and an iPhone XS Plus with a monster-sized 6.5-inch screen, according to a convincing leak from 9to5Mac. It's the first time we're seeing the new phones with OLED screens up close, albeit shrouded in some artful shadow.
Update: There may be a lot of newness to the iPhone XS specs and Plus-sized screen, but you shouldn't hold out hope for an in-screen fingerprint sensor, note analysts. Apple is sticking with Face ID for its new smartphone in 2018.
iPhone XS (top) and iPhone XS Plus (bottom), both in gold (Photo Credit: 9to5Mac)
This critical leak comes just before Apple is expected to a announce its new smartphones at the Steve Jobs Theater on Wednesday, September 12. We'll be there to report on it all live.
We're actually anticipating three new iPhones in 2018: the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Plus, and a 'cheaper' 6.1-inch iPhone with an LCD screen. That last one may simply be called 'iPhone'.
Previously, iPhone rumors called these phones the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Plus, and the cheaper iPhone 9. That's all going to change if the newest report is correct.
iPhone XS release date Wednesday, September 12 – iPhone XS launch event dateFriday, September 14 – iPhone XS pre-order (estimated)Friday, September 21 or 28 – (likely) iPhone XS release dateThe iPhone XS and iPhone XS Plus launch and release date will likely happen all within September, and we have some specifics for you – finally.
Wednesday, September 12 is when Apple's is poised to announce the iPhone XS at its 'Special Event' for 2018, and there will be a live stream of this launch event.
We'll get our first glimpse (and hands-on time) of the phones at the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park in San Jose, California – and yes, that's where the iPhone X was launched last year on the same exact date.
This launch event date means the actual iPhone XS release date is likely to be Friday, September 21, or Friday, September 28. Apple typically launches new iPhones on a Friday, one to two weeks after CEO Tim Cook unveils everything on stage. We're betting on September 21 if Apple doesn't have inventory issues.
Here's another date: September 14. That's when, at midnight in your country, you can expect iPhone XS preorders to begin. This thing will sell out fast, and we predict the new 6.5-inch iPhone XS Plus size will be a big seller. In the US, pre-orders will start at 3am Eastern simply because Apple launches preorders at midnight Pacific, its home time zone.
Keep in mind that the iPhone X came out on Friday, November 3, 2017. This is going to cause some people, especially in the US, a problem when trying to upgrade on a year-long plan. However, Apple and carriers may announce a solution on September 12, with incentivized iPhone trade-in options. There're not going to turn down your desire to give them more money over the next year.
iPhone XS price iPhone XS price estimate: $1,000 (£1,000, AU$1,579)iPhone XS Plus price estimate $1,199 (£1,199, AU$1,714)Cheapest iPhone 2018 may cost $699 (£699, AU$1,079)The iPhone XS price may be $999 (£999, AU$1,579), inheriting the iPhone X 64GB price tag, while the iPhone XS Plus will undoubtedly be more expensive. Apple likes to tack on $100, so this could be the first iPhone that costs $1,199 (£1,199, AU$1,714) or more. The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 goes all the way up to $1,250 (£1,099 / AU$1,799 / AED 4,599) for the 512GB version, so Apple may see this and think 'why not?'
There have been rumors that not all iPhone 2018 models will ship in September – the cheaper LCD 6.1-inch iPhone may slip to October. The price of this LCD iPhone is said to be around the price of the iPhone 8, which launched at $699 (£699, AU$1,079).
New iPhone XS color: gold iPhone XS and XS Plus in gold (new), black and white6.1-inch iPhone LCD in white, black, red, blue and orangeThe iPhone XS photo depicts two phones, and both appear to be in the new gold color that's been rumored for several weeks. We're expecting the new iPhones to have three color options: gold, white, and black.
Photo Credit: MacRumors
Surprise: we've actually seen a gold iPhone in 2018, but that was an iPhone X that Apple is said to have canceled at some point prior to the iPhone launch last year. It showed up in some government regulatory filings, so we have a good idea of what a gold iPhone XS will look like.
Besides the Plus size and the fresh color choice, you won't instantly notice other differences between the iPhone XS and the current iPhone X. It's expected to have an identical stainless steel frame, while the cheaper iPhone for 2018 may have a aluminum frame, like the current iPhone 8, and it may come it as many as five colors: white, black, red, blue and orange.
iPhone XS size and design iPhone XS may be the same width and height as the iPhone XiPhone XS Plus may match (or be smaller than) the iPhone 8 PlusBoth phones may be thicker due to camera upgradesGet ready to use your iPhone with two hands again, because the iPhone XS Plus is going to be a monster phone with a 6.5-inch screen. But it won't be too big.
Apple has shaved away the needless bezel at the top and bottom (and axed the home button) in the upgrade to the iPhone X. So the screen size is a bit misleading if you're moving from the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus or iPhone 8 Plus – it's not a full inch bigger.
A bigger screen, but smaller body for the iPhone 11 Plus? Credit: Forbes / Ghostek
In fact, the dimensions we've seen rumored point to an iPhone XS Plus size that's either matching or smaller than the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus. One schematic (above) suggests dimensions of 157.2 x 77.1mm.
An older rumor puts the iPhone XS Plus at 158.4 x 78.1 x 7.7mm, only 0.2 inches thicker than the iPhone 8 Plus.
The same rumor claims the smaller iPhone XS will be the same size as the iPhone X, except again that it will be slightly thicker. This is thought to be because of a larger rear camera sensor and lens, so expect camera improvements.
iPhone XS specs Apple A12 chipset likely to provide a speed boost512GB of storage may be the new max size (and a maxed out price)Some models may see 4GB of RAM, others may stay at 3GB of RAMAll three new iPhones are thought to have the A12 chip, a natural upgrade on the A11 Bionic chip that appeared in all three of last year's iPhone models. See the pattern?
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said the iPhone XI might support faster mobile data speeds and come with a dual-SIM card slot, and 4GB of RAM.
That dual-SIM claim is backed up by lines of code found in the upcoming iOS 12 software update, and it means iPhone users could finally be able to benefit from two SIMs in one phone.
Kuo has also claimed that Apple will probably exclusively use Intel modems for 2018's models, rather than splitting the order between Intel and Qualcomm.
Apple could launch these three phones this year. Credit: KGI Research/MacRumors
We've also had other hints at the iPhone XI's power from a benchmark, which shows an unnamed iPhone as having 4GB of RAM and a 2.49GHz hexa-core chipset.
Apple never details the RAM in its phones, but we could see an upgrade here, too, from 3GB in last year's iPhone to 4GB in the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Plus. The company historically leaves one model behind, so we expect 3GB of RAM on the cheapest iPhone. We won't know this information until someone does a teardown on the release date.
Apple may add to the existing internal storage sizes, giving us 64GB, 256GB, and a new 512GB option for the iPhone XS – that's bigger than most laptop solid-state hard drives. The cheaper 6.1-inch iPhone may stop short of that, with 64GB and 256GB sizes.
iPhone XS cameraThe iPhone XS camera may be a big highlight, but we don't know much about it. Kuo predicts that both sizes will have a dual-lens rear camera, while the cheaper iPhone (the one with an LCD screen) will be the one with a single-lens rear camera.
Photos from the dual-lens camera are expected to be 12MP, with one telephoto lens and one normal lens, both with optical image stabilization (no change here). The difference may come from the backend software. Samsung, Google, and other Android phone makers have given us cameras that use machine learning to enhance photos, and Apple's iPhone X camera has fallen behind in our tests, especially in low-light situations.
On the front, all of the new iPhones are undoubtedly going to sport a TrueDepth camera – we know that because none of them will have a Touch ID home button. The last iPhones to use Touch ID will be the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.
We could see more depth-sensing features in the front-facing selfie camera, with a recent Apple patent pointing to a single-lens camera system that has dual-lens-like features. The question is whether this tech will be ready for the iPhone 2018 or iPhone 2019.
iPhone XS and iOS 12 iPhone XS to launch with iOS 12 out of the boxiOS 12 may launch on older iPhones on Tuesday, September 18Expect features exclusive to the larger iPhone XSOn September 12, in addition to seeing the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Plus, we're due to find out the official iOS 12 release date. Both phones will run this software.
We know all about iOS 12 thanks to WWDC 2018, but Apple almost always holds onto software surprises – usually ones that have to do with hardware and sensors that would tip off observers about new iPhone models in the works (Animoji was a secret until the iPhone X launch event).
With the introduction of the iPhone XS Plus we could see some exclusive changes that give the larger 6.5-inch phone tablet-like powers. There are some large-screen app interfaces reserved for the iPad, namely Mail and Messages, that give you more information on the screen (like messages threads).
iPhone XS battery Analysts predict a 10% and 25% larger battery iPhone XS Plus could go to 3,300mAh or 3,400mAhFast charger may finally be included in the boxYour next iPhone may have longer battery life, especially if you opt for the larger 6.5-inch iPhone XS Plus. Ming-Chi Kuo says the battery in that phone will be 25% bigger than the one in the iPhone X.
That puts the 6.5-inch iPhone XS battery capacity at 3,300mAh or 3,400mAh, a sizable increase over the iPhone X (which sits at just 2,716mAh). The 5.8-inch iPhone XS may see a smaller increase of 10%.
Charging your iPhone may be easier too, as iPhone XS leaks suggest Apple will include a fast charger in the box. Right now, this is a separate purchase (and we've been using our MacBook Pro charger with a Lightning-to-USB-C cable).
We've now heard that more than once, but the latest reports suggest you won't be able to buy it separately – so if you want Apple's new fast charger you might have to buy a new iPhone to get it.
iPhone XS: Five features we’d love to seeThere are a few features currently missing from the iPhone that are already present on competing handsets and ones that could technically be easily implemented on an iPhone.
Dual SIM supportApple has long neglected the dual SIM band-wagon, which has almost become a standard on Android phones and is a required feature for many in markets such as India and China.
Flagship phones from Huawei and Samsung have been supporting dual SIM cards for a few years now. It certainly makes travelling with your phone a lot more convenient and affordable. Many people also use it at home by paying one telco for calls and the other for data.
There are strong rumors that Apple might be releasing an iPhone with dual SIM this year, thanks to code found on beta versions of iOS, though it's not clear which models of the iPhone will get this feature.
A 120Hz ProMotion displayRemember when you first saw the retina screen on the iPhone 4 and everything else paled in comparison? Moving to a panel with higher refresh rates has a similar effect and Apple has already done that on the 10.5-inch iPad that features a “ProMotion” display.
The fluidness of scrolling web pages or the animation effects in iOS really stand out, and would make it into a great feature on the iPhone. Apple could possibly restrict this to the larger iPhone XS Plus to differentiate between the two models and maybe even include support for Apple Pencil.
Launch camera with a hardware buttonLaunching the camera on the iPhone requires a tap or swipe on the screen, whereas many Android manufacturers allow launching the camera by double pressing the power or volume buttons.
This action lets you get to the camera app in the time it takes for you to hold the phone up to take a picture.
Always on displayDo you find yourself double tapping the iPhone X every few minutes just to see the time or any notifications? An always-on display is becoming increasingly common on Android phones equipped with an OLED panel and we'd love to see this feature on an iPhone.
OLED screens are quite efficient when it comes to selectively powering up the phone's screen. With Apple switching to OLED last year on the iPhone X, there is little reason to not support this feature and would give us less reasons to pick up or double tap the iPhone.
Replace Lightning port with USB-C PortThis is one of those things that will never happen, but it would be extremely convenient to charge your Mac and your iPhone with the same cable. However, other than that, there’s no reason for Apple to switch to a USB Type-C port on the iPhone, especially with the incompatibilities that Android users have faced connecting headsets to that port.
One can dream though, right?
We’ll only know which (if any) of the these features make it to the new 2018 version of the iPhone at Apple's iPhone 2018 launch event, scheduled for September 12.
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