Apple : Huawei's P30 series are on sale directly in US, and at great prices |
- Huawei's P30 series are on sale directly in US, and at great prices
- DC Universe: DC's new TV and comic book streaming service explained
- The best cheap 4K TV deals and sale prices in the US - April 2019
- Microsoft may have Surface-branded AirPods killers in the works
- Best cloud logging services of 2019
- Leaks show Intel Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs have T-Series models incoming
- Foldable phones: all the rumored and confirmed foldable handsets
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- Computex 2019: what to expect from the world’s biggest computer show
- Three UK launches new mobile offering for SMBs
- The best iPad games of 2019
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- Amazon sale: Prime Day prices today on the 4K Fire TV stick, Cube and more
- OnePlus 7 details may be officially revealed on April 17
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| Huawei's P30 series are on sale directly in US, and at great prices Posted: 15 Apr 2019 02:03 PM PDT The US government and Huawei have a shaky relationship right now, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Huawei's smartphones have become truly impressive. The Huawei P30 Pro's camera is particularly exciting, yet for US shoppers it's been hard to buy this Huawei phone or any flagship handset. The good news today is that B&H is offering pre-orders for all three phones in the Huawei P30 line: Huawei P30, Huawei P30 Pro, and Huawei P30 Lite. Prices for the unlocked phones range from $319 for the P30 Lite up to $899 for the P30 Pro. Considering Huawei's phones aren't always easy to buy in the US without going through often-unverified resellers, these are good prices to see and actually considerably lower than the UK and Australian costs converted to US dollars. At $599, the standard P30 could give the OnePlus 6T some serious competition. The P30 Lite positions itself as a mid-range phone with some toned down features and a lower-end chipset compared to the other versions, but it still has some premiums, like a 6.1-inch OLED display and dual wide-angle cameras on the rear paired with a 32MP selfie camera. The P30 and P30 Pro, meanwhile, are full flagship phones. The P30 Pro is a larger version of the P30, with slight upgrades to the camera, battery, display size, and internal storage, though the standard P30 offers a 3.5mm headphone jack that's missing on the Pro version. Both phones run on Huawei's top-end Kirin 980 chipset with an octacore chipset and 8GB of RAM. The P30 has 128GB of storage while the P30 Pro doubles that to 256GB. The P30 has a 6.1-inch OLED display while the P30 Pro has a 6.47-inch OLED display, though both have the same 1,080 x 2,340 resolution. The 32MP selfie camera on each phone is the same, but there are slight differences to the triple camera system on the rear. Both phones have a 40MP wide-angle camera and an 8MP telephoto camera, but the Pro offers 5X zoom versus the P30's 3X zoom. They each have ultra-wide cameras on the back as well, but the P30 Pro's is 20MP, topping the P30's 16MP sensor. All of the phones come in multiple colors and include a SIM card for Mint Mobile with 3 months of prepaid service and 8GB of monthly data. Via: Liliputing This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| DC Universe: DC's new TV and comic book streaming service explained Posted: 15 Apr 2019 01:07 PM PDT DC Universe has arrived – but what is it, and why should fans of DC comics, TV shows, and films be excited? We've seen a wave of streaming services based on individual channels or network families, from HBO Now to CBS All Access and even ESPN+, but soon we'll be seeing more content and company-centric offerings – Disney's long-teased streaming service that will arrive on November 12, 2019, packing exclusive Star Wars shows and more, is a prime example. DC has now officially launched its own subscription-based service for fans of the legendary comic book company, and this one has a twist: it's not only a streaming video service for movies and TV shows based on their comics, but also a comic-reading app along the lines of Marvel Unlimited or comiXology Unlimited. Here's what you need to know about it. [Updated: DC Universe will be available on the Xbox One family of devices starting in April 2019. The service will roll out starting on April 15, around the same time as the premier of Justice League vs. The Fatal Five. Like other platforms, DC Universe on Xbox One will cost you $7.99 per month or $74.99 per year, and includes all 20,000 of the comics available on the service.]
What content will DC Universe have?DC Universe will debut five brand new, exclusive TV shows during its first year of existence, beginning with Titans. The first trailer was revealed at Comic-Con, and depicts an intensely dark and gritty adaptation, complete with rampant gore and a shot of Robin saying "F--- Batman" while laying into a gang of street thugs. Later in that first year, we'll see live-action shows Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing (not the 1990-93 version), as well as exclusive animated series Young Justice: Outsiders and Harley Quinn. The service will also house new HD versions of Batman: The Animated Series and the Wonder Woman TV series, along with animated movies like Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter, and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Live-action films like Batman, Superman: The Movie, Batman Returns, and Batman Forever have also been spotted on the website and in the first trailer. Unfortunately, there's no sight of newer flicks like Wonder Woman and Justice League, let alone The Dark Knight Trilogy, while TV series like the current Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow seem to be MIA. Those ongoing series are all on Netflix, however. As far as comic books go, The Verge reports that DC Universe will include some 2,000-3,000 digital comics, with images suggesting a scattered mix of books old and new highlighting well-known characters. The site's report claims that you'll be able to zoom into a single panel on a 4K TV set to view the artwork with incredible clarity.
Where can I access DC Universe?DC Universe hopefuls can access the streaming service on a variety of different devices and media players. There's a simple online browser, for one – as well as corresponding apps to watch DC content on Roku streaming devices, Android TV, Apple TV, Android and iOS mobile devices, and now Amazon Fire TV devices too. You can also add Xbox One to that list starting in April 2019. You'll only be able to access the service in the US, though. There's no word on when DC Universe could roll out to other territories – it's only a few months old, to be fair – though with the live-action TV show Titans coming to Netflix UK, we hope DC are keeping an eye on the potential audiences they could find worldwide. How much does DC Universe cost?When DC Universe goes live this fall, the service will set you back $7.99 per month. If you choose to go big and commit to a full year, you'll save a solid chunk of change: the annual fee is $74.99, which saves you 20% over the month-to-month approach. Already sold on the service? If you pre-order an annual subscription now, they'll toss on three free months to sweeten the deal, plus you'll be entered into a contest to win two tickets to the Aquaman movie premiere later this year. And if you'd rather wait, DC Universe will offer a free 7-day trial once it's live.
How does DC Universe differ from other streaming services?The hybrid nature makes it distinct from other services. There are plenty of streaming video services, of course, but Netflix and CBS All Access don't feature comic books. Likewise, there are all-you-can-read comic book services like Marvel Unlimited and comiXology Unlimited, but those apps don't have a lick of video on them. It always seemed surprising that DC didn't launch its own take on Marvel Unlimited and open up the vault for a monthly fee, but now we know why. That said, the comics selection in DC Universe is much, much smaller: its expected haul of 2,000-3,000 books is a fraction of Marvel Unlimited's 20,000+ comics. But you're getting half of one service and half of another, essentially. Netflix starts at $7.99 and Marvel Unlimited goes for $9.99 a month, whereas DC Universe sort of splits the difference. Ultimately, we suspect that DC Universe won't be viewed primarily as a streaming video app or a comics app. Instead, it's the quintessential, all-in DC experience app for serious fans, offering movies, TV shows, comics, conversation, info, and merch on demand.
Should I subscribe to DC Universe?Do you absolutely love Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and the rest of DC's top-tier heroes and villains? Do you follow the myriad DC TV series airing these days and still wish there was more to watch each week? Are you eager to loop back on old-school DC animated and live-action series? If you answered "yes" to any of those points, then you will most likely want to subscribe to DC Universe. Granted, we haven't used the app yet and we don't know how well it'll perform as a streaming service or comic-reading experience, but assuming the technical benchmarks are cleared and it delivers the amount of content that's been promised so far, then we have to imagine that DC fans are going to eat it up. Of course, the downside with such a focused service is the possibility of running out of compelling content at some point. Is DC prepared to to continue these original shows for multiple seasons? Will the company bring the more recent films to the service as well? And will the curated comics selection grow, or at least see frequent turnover? It's too early to know for sure, but with five potentially compelling shows anchoring the service and plenty of other past content alongside, DC Universe looks like the real deal for the DC faithful.
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| The best cheap 4K TV deals and sale prices in the US - April 2019 Posted: 15 Apr 2019 12:57 PM PDT March Madness might be over, but you can still find cheap TV sales and deals from top retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and more (we've also got a roundup of UK retailers). You can find Black Friday like prices on a variety of best-selling 4K TVs from brands such as Samsung, Sony, LG and more. You'll find discounts on 4K TVs, smart TVs, different model sizes, and a variety of prices that will fit any all TV viewing needs. Whether you want a small TV with a price tag to match or something to show all the colors of the rainbow (and a few million more) with HDR, we've found plenty of options. Read on to find the TV you want at a great price!
TechRadar's cheap TV deal of the weekCheap TV deals (40-49 inch)Cheap TV deals (50-59 inch):Cheap TV deals (60-85 inch):More cheap TV sales:Not found the right cheap TV for you today? Or maybe you'd prefer to directly browse the TVs at your favourite retailers instead of our highlights of the best cheap TV deals? We're updating this page on a regular basis, so you may have better look another day. If you want to take a look for yourself now though, here are the direct links to a the full collection of TV deals at multiple stores. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Microsoft may have Surface-branded AirPods killers in the works Posted: 15 Apr 2019 12:49 PM PDT A new report indicates that Microsoft is hard at work developing a pair of true wireless earbuds under the Surface lineup to rival the latest Apple AirPods. The true wireless earbuds are codenamed Morrisson (likely after The Doors’ famous frontman) and are tipped to include both noise-cancellation and Microsoft’s voice assistant, Cortana.
The source of these new rumors is Thurrott’s Brad Sams who spoke to multiple people familiar with Microsoft’s plans who say the primary motivation is to expand the Surface lineup of headphones from the over-ear Surface Headphones to a new in-ear model that could, in all likelihood, be called the Surface Buds. Thurrott's sources weren't able to provide a release date for the headphones, but say that 2019 is definitely a possibility if the project isn't delayed. The AirPod adversaries keep on comingWhile Microsoft is the latest tech company in the spotlight for aping Apple's true wireless earbuds, others like Amazon and Libratone are also rumored to be working on a similar style of headphones. In its defense, however, the transition from the over-ear Surface Headphones to an in-ear model makes more sense for Microsoft than it does for Amazon – a company that really hasn't done much work in the headphone space despite its recent investment in smart speakers like the Amazon Echo. The counterpoint is that Microsoft's earlier audio hardware projects, like the Zune, have crashed and burned. So it may want to be careful before it dives headfirst back into the world of bitrates and Bluetooth codecs.
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| Best cloud logging services of 2019 Posted: 15 Apr 2019 10:46 AM PDT While most servers maintain detailed logs of system events, connection attempts and application errors, it takes a lot of time and skill to go through each one manually. Cloud logging services try to make life easier for network admins by automatically monitoring your chosen servers and displaying log alerts via a dedicated dashboard or API. In this guide, you’ll discover some of the very best cloud logging services online today. We've specifically chosen platforms which emphasis easy setup and consolidated information, so even moderately IT literate users can get started immediately.
Image Credit: Splunk Splunk produces software for searching, monitoring and analyzing machine-generated big data. They were founded in 2007. The software offers a wide range of log management tools such as log consolidation, retention, IT operations troubleshooting, application troubleshooting and compliance reporting. Users can collect, store, index, search, correlate, visualize and report on any machine-generated data. Subscribers can then resolve operational and security issues. Searches are turned into real-time alerts, reports or dashboards in an easy to use manner. The software is truly cross-platform and operates on the cloud. It can also operate as a hybrid, integrating on-premise and cloud software. All data collated is presented on the interface. Users can view data analysis easier, export and import faster for charting purposes. Splunk is geared towards businesses of any size. It can be adjusted according to a variety of configurations evolving as your organization grows. The ‘Cloud’ plan offers users a 15-day free trial to search, analyze and visualize 5GB of data. Subscribers need to contact the sales team directly to receive a quote. The ‘Free’ package includes one users, scale up to 500MB per day, index any machine data, real-time search and analysis. 'Splunk Lite’ starts at $87 per ingested GB per month and is billed annually. This includes up to 5 users, scale up to 20GB of data per day, unlimited searches, deployment on-premises or in your cloud and base support. The ‘Enterprise’ package starts at $175 per ingested GB per month and is also billed annually. This includes unlimited users, unlimited data scaling, mission critical performance, scale and reliability. Online reviewers have noted that the free trial is minimal and the paid price plans being expensive compared to other products.
Image Credit: Rapid7 InsightOps from Rapid7 (formerly Logentries) aim to make cloud logging management easy by centralizing data, allowing easy visualization of metrics for monitoring, and using natural-language questions to identify problems for troubleshooting. InsightOps collects logs across all cloud services, as well as directly from servers, not least for applications, DNS requests, VPNs, databases, and firewalls. It then normalizes even unstructured data into a consistent format. You can then monitor how much CPU and memory each asset is using to ensure smooth performance. Auditing logs makes it easier to ensure compliance, and InsightOps can easily integrate into your DevOps stack for automation. There are visualization options for drilling down through data, and the Endpoint Interrogator allows the user to ask specific questions about what resources each asset is using. There are also alerts available, and the dashboard refreshes automatically in real-time. Overall, InsightOps is easy to deploy across any network, and because it monitors the entire system, it's easy to spot malicious activity on any part of the network, even at file level. InsightOps is available with a free trial.
Image Credit: Papertrail Solarwinds is a company that develops software for businesses to help manage their networks, systems and information technology infrastructure. They acquired the log management service ‘Papertrail’ in 2014. Papertrail allows users to log all apps, text log files and Syslog from one location. Searches and reports are done in real-time. Users can use a command line, browser or API. Alerts are sent instantly to users which can then be used to detect trends. Papertrail is easy to setup and implement. Users can gain visibility across all their systems quickly. Users can aggregate MySQL, cloud hosting, Apache, Tomcat, Heroku apps, routers and firewalls. The lowest pricing tier starts at $7 for 1GB per month. This includes 1-week search and 1-year archive. The mid-range tier starts at $75 for 8GB per month including 8 weeks search and 1-year archive. The top tier weighs in at $230 for 25GB data per month and includes an additional 16GB for the first month, 2 weeks search and 1-year archive. Papertrail forces users to save all searches.
Image Credit: Sumologic Sumologic is a cloud-based log management and analytics service. It was founded in 2010. The platform provides real time dashboards. Users can manage and monitor all data logs, metrics, assess graphs and generate reports from here. Dashboards can be customized with pie, bar, map and line charts. Sumologic’s machine learning uses algorithmic support to arrange the patterns in data and establish any inconsistencies. Users can quickly establish and eliminate any issues that are identified. There is no need to set predefined rules or policies. The platform allows users to build, run and secure their AWS, Google Cloud Platform or any hybrid applications. Users can monitor key security metrics and indicators of compromise in real-time. Problems can be resolved faster as a result of this. ‘Sumo Free’ is geared towards individual users and teams undergoing smaller projects. This includes log storage of 4GB and max 500MB of log ingest. The ‘Professional’ plan is $99 per GB per month for an annual commitment. This includes free metrics, 30GB storage and min 3GB log ingest. It also offers a 30-day free trial. The ‘Enterprise’ package offers a 30-day free trial. It is $165 per GB per month for an annual commitment. Users have noted that Sumo is slow compared to other logging programs.
Image Credit: Sematext Sematext builds cloud and on-premises systems for application performance monitoring, log management and analytics. They were founded in 2007. The platform uses Elasticsearch API and integrated Kibana. It claims to be the first true Hosted ELK (Elastic Stack) Stack. Log can be inspected via the user interface or Elasticsearch API. They are also kept in one centralized location. ELK maintains and scales everything. Alerts can be sent via email, ChatOps or WebHooks. Logsense has built-in integrations for PagerDuty, Slack and HipChat amongst others. Users can save all queries as a ‘Saved Search’ or an ‘Alert Query’. Saved searches can be custom tagged with labels or colours. Sematext Logsense offers users a 30-day free trial. Prices are metered and based on plan, daily volume and data retention. Your plan is chosen based on the features you need. The higher volume you choose the lower the cost per GB. All prices are based on a monthly rate. Users need to contact Logsense directly for more information. Users have complained of some issues when trying to contact support. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Leaks show Intel Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs have T-Series models incoming Posted: 15 Apr 2019 10:43 AM PDT It's been just over a year since Intel's 8th-generation Coffee Lake processors (CPU) got low-powered T-Series variants. Now, with the Coffee Lake Refresh in full swing, it makes sense to expect low-power versions. It appears that may be exactly what is coming, according to leaks compiled by Hexus. A series of leaks detailed the names, specs and thermal design power (TDP) levels of various T-Series processors. An important aspect for low-power builds is that TDP, which all of the new T-Series processors appear to share at a low 35W. This is identical to what the 8th-gen T-Series processors offered, allowing for smaller desktop builds with lower-wattage power supplies and less robust cooling.
Lower power is lower powerThe trade-off that's made for a lower TDP is readily apparent when considering the other key specs. According to the leaks, the T-Series will have core counts and cache equal to the non-T-series CPUs, but will have largely reduced base and boost clock speeds. The leak shows the following CPUs with details on specs: Core i9-9900T, Core i7-9700T, Core i5-9600T, Core i5-9500T, Core i5-9400T, Core i3-9300T and Core i3-9100T. For a comparison between the standard variety and T-Series, we'll put the Core i9-9900T next to the Core i9-9900K. The Core i9-9900T is suggested to have a base clock of 2.1GHz and boost clock of 4.4GHz. That compares to the Core i9-9900K's 3.6GHz base clock and 5.0GHz boost clock. So, while the T-series in this case has a TDP of about 36% that of the K-Series, its base performance will be significantly lower. Still, these processors can be a strong pick for computer builders looking to create compact machines with power and cooling requirements closer to laptops than traditional desktops. All of the new T-Series processors are listed as coming with Intel UHD Graphics 630 included, so desktops built using these CPUs won't need dedicated graphics cards. Of course, computer builders looking for efficient CPUs may also consider waiting for Intel's long-anticipated 10nm CPUs, which could come in the form of Cannon Lake or Ice Lake this year.
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| Foldable phones: all the rumored and confirmed foldable handsets Posted: 15 Apr 2019 09:43 AM PDT Update: we've gotten our hands on the Samsung Galaxy Fold and shared our thoughts about the first huge foldable phone of 2019 in our hands-on. Foldable phones will be the big new smartphone trend of 2019 (aside from 5G phones, of course, though some will be both). In fact, plenty have been announced - and we've gotten our hands on the first. These include the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, both of which you'll find information about below. But there are also rumored handsets, such as the Motorola Razr V4, so there’s plenty to get excited about and you can read about all of these foldable phones in one place here. So settle down, read on, and start saying goodbye to your old rigid handset, because the future is flexible. Samsung Galaxy Fold
Image credit: Samsung The Samsung Galaxy Fold - which for a long time was rumored to be called the Samsung Galaxy X - has been announced and we've even gotten our hands on the device. Announced alongside the Samsung Galaxy S10 range, the Galaxy Fold has both a 4.6-inch HD+ Super AMOLED screen on the front and a foldable 7.3-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED display on the inside, essentially letting you use the device as both a phone and a tablet. It supports three-app multi-tasking and allows you to seamlessly move from one screen to the other, with whatever content you were viewing switching between them as you open or close the larger display. It has a 4,380mAh battery, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and a high-end Snapdragon 855 chipset. Cameras? The Galaxy Fold has six: a 16MP lens and a pair of 12MP lenses on the back, a 10MP camera on the front, and a dual-lens 10MP and 8MP pairing on the inside, visible when using the large foldable screen. You can't buy the Samsung Galaxy Fold yet, but it's landing on April 26 in the US and May 3 in Europe. However, it's not cheap, coming in at $1,980 / €2,000 (around £1,515 / AU$2,760). This could be the first of many foldable Samsung phones, as the company has also patented a number of others, including one that you wear. Huawei Mate X
Image credit: TechRadar Announced hot on the heels of the Samsung Galaxy Fold, the Huawei Mate X is a slightly different take on foldable phones. The phone technically has one rather than two screens, but it can be folded down from an 8-inch screen to a pair of smaller ones, with a 6.6-inch screen on the front and a 6.4-inch one on the back. That means the displays are larger than the ones offered by the Galaxy Fold, and the small screens also have less bezel than Samsung's take. The Mate X also has a 4,500mAh battery with fast charging, a triple-lens camera, a high-end Kirin 980 chipset, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and it supports 5G. It looks set to be even more expensive than the Galaxy Fold though, coming in at €2,299 (around $2,600 / £2,000 / AU$4,770). As with Samsung, Huawei looks to be fully embracing the foldable future, as it has said that half of its flagship phones could be foldable in two years.
Motorola Razr V4
Image credit: Motorola Motorola is rumored to be rebooting the Razr brand with the Motorola Razr V4, and rather than an old-fashioned clamshell design, it will apparently fold. Patents have shown how it might look, which is to say, basically like you’d expect a modern take on the Razr to, with a flexible screen rather than a hinge. The handset was rumored to be landing sometime in February, but that didn't happen. However, during a press briefing at MWC, Motorola's vice president and general manager Anthony Barounas, said: “If you go around the stores today, for me the phones all look the same. It’s difficult to see if it’s a Motorola, or [another brand]. How we differentiate to the consumer, show them something really different, that’s where foldables comes in. "And that’s where Motorola also has a very big investment. I can’t say much but we have one franchise that will have a very big impact there.” So that's close to a confirmation that something foldable is coming at some point. However, like most foldable phones it will probably be expensive, with a rumored starting price of roughly $1,500 (around £1,170, AU$2,010). While that's expensive it significantly undercuts some others, and we might know the reason for that, as according to one report it has a mid-range Snapdragon 710 chipset (along with 6GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of storage). LG
Image credit: TechRadar The latest news on a foldable LG phone comes from Kyle Yoon, senior product manager for LG Mobile, who, during a briefing, said: “When it comes to foldable, [the day will come] when we’ll all have a foldable device. That’s only if the Play Store has [apps in] a native resolution in those ratios, if the price of foldables will come down - we want to deliver a device more people can use that’s affordable and [offers] more content with 5G. We’re focused on that first but foldables… yes, we will have those devices.” Prior to that, we'd heard rumors that LG has a foldable phone in the works, and that’s on top of the company having mentioned "smartphones featuring different form factors" in a recent set of financial results, and having patented a foldable phone concept. The company has also made a foldable TV already, so it seemingly has the expertise. In short then, while nothing is yet confirmed it seems like the question of a foldable LG phone is 'when' not 'if'. Though the company doesn't seem in any hurry to launch one. In the meantime, it has announced the LG DualScreen, which is a device that can clip on to the LG V50 ThinQ to add a second 6.2-inch screen. This is far from a true foldable phone, but it's better than nothing. TCL
Image Credit: TechRadar TCL might not be a name you'd expect to be among the first to launch a foldable phone and, well, you'd be right, because it's probably not going to sell a foldable handset under any of its brands (which include BlackBerry and Alcatel) until next year. But the company has shown off a foldable concept device at MWC. This has a 7.2-inch 2048 x 1536 AMOLED display and four rear cameras, but we're not convinced the final foldable will have those specs, as one of the key features appears to be a relatively affordable price. The company didn't get into specifics, but for it to substantially undercut the likes of the Galaxy Fold and Mate X, we'd expect worse specs than that. Apple
Image credit: TechRadar While not likely to arrive as imminently as some on this list, Apple could well have a foldable phone of its own in the works. Rumors of one first emerged in late 2017, with the claim that it would launch in 2020. We’ve also seen Apple patents for a folding screen more than once, so Apple is clearly at least exploring the idea. If folding phones prove practical then we’d expect Apple will get involved eventually, but the company usually waits for tech to be polished rather than aiming to be first, so we might not see one for a while. Sony
Image credit: TechRadar As with Apple, Sony also looks to be working on – or at least toying with – a foldable phone. Evidence for this comes from a Sony patent, detailing both foldable and rollable smartphones. Of course, patents don’t always become products, but with much of the rest of the industry looking in this direction it would be no surprise if Sony is too. However, we wouldn't expect one imminently, as the company has just announced a bunch of new phones at MWC 2019 and a folding handset wasn't among them. Instead, it seems focused on 21:9 screens, as seen on the likes of the Sony Xperia 1. Royole FlexPai
Image credit: TechRadar The first foldable phone to be announced was actually the Royole FlexPai. Currently you can only buy it in China (unless you’re happy with a developer version), and it’s not cheap at $1,300 (around £1,000 / AU$1,825). You might want to hold off on that import too, as in our hands-on review we found that it was both very slow and had a very slow camera. In short, it seems like little more than a proof-of-concept. Xiaomi
Image credit: Xiaomi A Xiaomi folding phone has been teased in several brief videos. They show a device with two folding hinges, rather than a single central fold. Don't get too excited just yet though, as this is little more than a concept device for now. As while Lin Bin, the co-founder of Xiaomi, has posted on social media that the "Xiaomi double folding mobile phone is coming," he also said "if you like it, we will consider making a mass production machine in the future." Xiaomi was at MWC 2019, showing off devices such as the Xiaomi Mi 9, but its folding phone was nowhere to be seen.
Image credit: TechRadar Google could also be getting into the foldable game, as the company has patented several foldable designs. These are likely a long way off being finished products, but show for example a screen that would fold down on itself when not in use, and a phone with three folds, which allows the screens to stack on top of each other when folded. Oppo
Image credit: Brian Shen Oppo has shown off a foldable concept device that looks a lot like the Huawei Mate X, as you can see in the image above. However, we don't know anything about the specs yet and you probably won't be able to buy this any time soon if at all, as the company has said it will wait and see whether consumers take to foldable phones before mass producing one. ZTE Nubia Alpha
Image credit: TechRadar ZTE isn’t being left out of the folding action either, as the firm has announced the Nubia Alpha, a phone with a 4-inch foldable screen that you can wrap around your wrist. The phone lands in China on April 8 and is set to cost €449 (about $510, £390, AU$710). A release in other parts of the world is expected on or soon after that date. Additionally, ZTE has patented another foldable device, this time with a more conventional clamshell design, so if you don't want to wear your phone then ZTE may have a more suitable option for you sooner or later.
Energizer Power Max 8100S
Image Credit: TechRadar Energizer is not a company we'd have expected to be among the first to launch a foldable phone, but it is, at least in prototype form. Shown off behind glass at MWC 2019, the Energizer Power Max 8100S has a smartphone-sized screen when folded and a tablet-sized one when unfolded. Folds aside, the highlight of this phone is likely its 10,000mAh battery, but it also has a 48MP main camera, a 12MP secondary lens and a 24MP selfie camera, plus a Snapdragon 855 chipset and 8GB of RAM. However, it's not currently clear if or when you'll be able to buy it. Vivo iQOOVivo has launched its own sub-brand, iQOO, in order to hit the foldable phone market. It's early days for the device, with the only hint of its existence being several renders leaked online, but that's a lot more than some other foldables. One edge the iQOO foldable phone has, if the leak is to believed, is that it will launch at around CNY7,000, or roughly $1,000, £800, AU$1,450. If this is correct - which is a big if, of course - it will be a lot cheaper than the prices of most other similar devices.
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| Barcelona vs Manchester United live stream: how to watch Champions League online from anywhere Posted: 15 Apr 2019 09:35 AM PDT To the neutral football fan, Barcelona vs Barcelona is undoubtedly the draw of the 2018/19 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals. Two of the very biggest names in world club football meet in the second leg of their 180 minute encounter on Tuesday and we're here to tell you how to live stream Barcelona vs Manchester United from absolutely anywhere in the world. So which way is this huge tie going to go? Manchester United's renaissance under Ole Gunnar Solskaer has slowed down a little in recent weeks - culminating in that 1-0 loss at Old Trafford a week ago. But they will still be buyed by their impossible comeback win against PSG in the last 16. Paul Pogba's Premier League form may have dipped, but the likes of Marcus Rashford, Romelu Lukaku and Jesse Lingard should be on hand to offer the fire power. Barcelona's superstars don't require much of an introduction - Luis Suarez, Ousmane Dembele, Sergio Busquets, Ivan Rakitic...oh yeah, and a guy called Lionel Messi. Between them, they'll be licking their lips at United's defensive frailties and very hopeful indeed that they grab capitalise on their away goal advantage and reach the semi-finals. They have had the liberty of resting players in La Liga, too, with their massive points advantage at the top. We honestly can't predict who's going to come out of this on top - we're just hoping for an absolute feast of football. To ensure that you don't miss a minute, read on to see how to get a Barcelona vs Manchester United live stream no matter where you are in the world.
Use a VPN to watch Champions League football outside your countryIf you try to watch your domestic coverage of this Champions League game away from your home country, then you'll inevitably find that it's geo-blocked. Thankfully, there's a way around this, namely via a VPN. That allows you to tune in no matter where you are in the world. And best of all, it's really easy to do, especially if you use our number one recommended provider ExpressVPN.
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| Computex 2019: what to expect from the world’s biggest computer show Posted: 15 Apr 2019 09:32 AM PDT Each year, Computex is the place to go for all the year’s biggest computing announcements. From svelte Ultrabooks to all the juiciest PC components, Computex 2019 is going to be a must-watch for any computing enthusiast out there. However, because it’s such a daunting event, it can be hard to know what to look out for. Luckily, we here at TechRadar have applied our tech and computing expertise to try and forecast what the biggest computing manufacturers will have to offer at Computex 2019. So, sit back, relax and we’ll dive into some educated speculation, informed by the latest industry rumors. Cut to the chase
AMDAt CES 2019, AMD announced its 7-nanometer (nm) Zen 2 architecture, which will be behind its Ryzen 3rd Generation, Threadripper 3rd Generation and even its upcoming Epyc processors for servers. AMD didn’t announce any specific processors at that event, however, instead showing off an 8-core, 16-thread processor. However, rumors suggest we may get as many as 16 cores and 32 threads in a new Ryzen processor – we expect that beefy piece of silicon to make an appearance at Computex 2019 (assuming it’s real.) But, AMD doesn’t just make processors. There has also been speculation that AMD Navi 10 graphics will show up at Computex 2019. This is a little less certain, as AMD’s next graphics cards have seen all kinds of rumors that point to an October release. We could see AMD show Navi off – it will be 7nm, too – but wait to release it until a later date. This would be similar to what Team Red did with AMD Vega at CES 2017, as well as Zen 2 earlier this year. No matter how you slice it, Computex 2019 is going to be big for AMD. The underdog chip maker has risen to the top of the processor world, more than doubling Intel’s sales, so we expect a celebratory Computex.
AsusAsus is hands-down one of the biggest computing companies in the world. From gaming laptops to Ultrabooks; from motherboards to the best graphics cards, Asus does it all. However, Asus has been relatively quiet for the last couple months, after announcing a slew of Ultrabooks and gaming laptops at CES 2019. We expect Asus to deliver the goods. Last year, Asus announced its ZenBook Pro 15, a unique mobile workstation with a touchscreen built into its touchpad – something that’s been present in many of its subsequent products. We always expect Asus to deliver something unique, and we have no reason to expect anything different this time around. We might even get some hands-on time with the Asus ROG Mothership.
Gigabyte and AorusGigabyte’s Aorus brand is behind some of the best gaming laptops and components on the market. So, at Computex 2019 we could see anything from new motherboards to new gaming laptops. For example, Gigabyte refreshed its Sabre gaming laptops with Intel Optane drives – the first gaming laptops to do so. All we know is that Gigabyte will be there. Beyond that, your guess is as good as ours.
IntelEver since AMD Ryzen first hit the market, Intel has been in a rough spot. It is still manufacturing some of the fastest processors in the world, like the Core i9-9900K, but the value just isn’t there. That’s why we think Intel is going to come out of the gate swinging at Computex 2019. Last year, Intel made a huge show out of a 28-core, 56-thread monster of a processor, clocked at 5GHz. We learned later that it was both a $2,999 Xeon chip, and it was overclocked. But, that’s still impressive. We don’t think something like that will be enough this time, though. Intel has been making a lot of headlines over the last few years for pushing back its 10nm silicon. Cannon Lake was supposed to come out five years ago, after Skylake. Intel has announced both Sunny Cove and Ice Lake at CES 2019, so we expect these 10nm processors to take center stage. These 10nm processors need to take center stage.
MSIAt CES 2019, MSI launched some juicy gaming laptops, including the new GS75 Stealth. We expect MSI to continue this trend at Computex 2019. Last year, it revealed the MSI GF63, a budget-minded gaming laptop. But, there were plenty of high-end products, like the MSI Trident A and the insane MSI Pro 24X all-in-one. We’re not sure what MSI is planning, but PC gamers should pay attention, MSI consistently brings the most flamboyant PC hardware on the market. Computex 2019 will be no different.
NvidiaWe know Nvidia is going to be at Computex 2019, but we’re not sure what the focus is going to be. Team Green has been pumping out Turing graphics cards at a rapid pace since September 2018. With so many new consumer graphics cards at every price point, we think Nvidia’s Computex 2019 presence will focus on the professionals this time. We’ve seen some rumors for a while that Nvidia might reveal 7nm Ampere graphics cards. These graphics cards could be consumer models, but that would be a little too quick, considering Nvidia’s problems with sales earlier this year. Instead, Nvidia Ampere may end up being the follow-up to Nvidia Volta, powering the next line of workstation-class GPUs. Or, Nvidia could spend Computex 2019 focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), like it did at GTC 2019.
What else?Computex 2019 is still weeks away at this point, and we’re sure we’ll see more manufacturers show up. Microsoft, HP, Dell and Samsung aren’t on the list of exhibitors at the time of writing, and all of these manufacturers are Computex mainstays. We’re sure all of these companies will be there to show off some new hardware and software. That’s not to mention all of the smaller manufacturers that will be there. Lian Li will surely be delivering some beautiful PC cases, G.Skill will probably show off some new RGB memory sticks and BenQ will show off some new monitors for professionals and gamers. There are more than 100 exhibitors this year, so get ready for a smorgasbord of new hardware. Be sure to keep this page bookmarked until the conference begins, as we’ll update it with any new rumors and exhibitors. Not to mention all the news from the show floor.
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| Three UK launches new mobile offering for SMBs Posted: 15 Apr 2019 09:25 AM PDT In effort to better serve the UK's growing number of entrepreneurs and small businesses, Three UK has announced the launch of its new mobile offering Three Means Business. The telecom has partnered with WeWork, Wix, Moo and FreshBooks to bring the cheapest mobile contracts in the market to SMBs alongside discounts and free subscriptions to useful services. Businesses of any size from freelancers to established small businesses can take advantage of Three Means Business which provides them with the cheapest business tariff in the market.
Three is also the first mobile operator to offer unlimited data bundles for businesses to address the growing reliance on mobile in day-to-day business operations. In a recent survey of small business owners by the telecom, more than three quarters (78%) admitted that being online was all they needed to run their business. Three Means BusinessesIn addition to low costs and unlimited data, Three also brought a number of partners on board who will provide special offers for Three Means Business customers. Wix will provide a free six month subscription to its 'unlimited' website and logo creator package, FreshBooks will give customers a free six month subscription to its accountancy package, WeWork will provide a free six month digital membership and two credits a month for workspace and finally Moo will give Three Means Business customers 25 percent off all products including business cards and other branded stationary. Businesses that sign up for the new offering can also enjoy all the same perks Three's customers receive including free roaming in over 70 destinations, free upgrades with easyJet as well as unlimited use of apps including Netflix, Snapchat, Soundcloud and Apple Music with its Go Binge offer. Three UK's CEO Dave Dyson explained why the network decided to launch a new offering for entrepreneurs and small businesses, saying: “The existing mobile offering to businesses in the UK doesn’t address the new reality of work. There’s a growing number of budding entrepreneurs and start-ups whose needs have so far not been met by mobile networks. Businesses’ growing reliance on mobile phones as part of their daily running is particularly overlooked, reflected by limited data allowances and tariff options being offered at a mark-up in comparison to their consumer counterparts. “We’re introducing Three Means Business to give small businesses an affordable mobile offering, but also to give them a leg up with a range of partner offers. We want to help entrepreneurs by covering the admin, so that they can focus on their passions and reasons why they decided to set up their business.”
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| Posted: 15 Apr 2019 09:08 AM PDT The iPhone revolutionized gaming through multitouch, but the iPad provided a larger canvas and power for fully immersive and expansive experiences. Apple’s tablet remains a powerful, engaging gaming device, whether you delve into innovative touchscreen games, or use a controller for a more console-style experience. Whatever you prefer, the very best games are found in our lists. Check back weekly for our latest favorite. iPad game of the week: Pipe Push Paradise ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)
Pipe Push Paradise is a puzzle game about pipework. You’ve arrived on a desert island that has some seriously dodgy plumbing. The aim is to get the water flowing, albeit not in the usual manner. Here, the pipes are massive and strewn about claustrophobic grid-based rooms. The only way to get things working is to shove them into place. There’s more than a hint of box-shifting games like Sokoban here, but Pipe Push Paradise adds some twists of its own. Move pipes in a certain way and they rotate. Other times, they must be dumped into pits. These new ideas radically shake things up, and complicate puzzles that might otherwise have been simple. Although the controls are occasionally a touch fiddly, Pipe Push Paradise proves to be a superb, sunny brain-smasher. Our favorite iPad immersive adventures, point-and-click games, and story-led narratives.
Thimbleweed Park ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)Thimbleweed Park is a love letter to classic point-and-click adventures, designed by two of the industry’s most devious minds. Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick were the brains behind classics Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island, and Thimbleweed Park is no less tricksy as you ostensibly attempt to solve a murder mystery. We say ‘ostensibly’ because the dead body you quickly find is the least of your problems. Over the game’s length, you end up playing several characters, including feds, an aspiring game developer and a vulgar, down-on-his-luck clown. The interface is a bit of a 1980s throwback, as is the difficulty level. Thimbleweed Park can be absurdly obtuse, and a little awkward. But there are few iPad adventures that match this one’s humor, heart and cunning – and no others that feature plumbers who happen to be paranormal investigators who dress as pigeons.
Subsurface Circular ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Subsurface Circular exists in a gray area between novella, short film and videogame. Set in a single carriage within an automated transit system, it features a cast of Teks – androids that have replaced humans in many of society’s roles. You play a detective Tek, which spends its life interrogating other robots on the Subsurface Circular, and are immediately embroiled in a mystery. To say more would spoil things, so take it from us that the story entrances, twists and turns over its few hours. Despite the single-scene setup, the game looks superb, with a cast of varied Teks and a familiar messaging-style interface that has a distinctly futuristic sheen. And if you’re concerned about the game’s brevity, be mindful you’d spend as much renting a film, and probably wouldn’t have nearly as much fun.
Adventures of Poco Eco – Lost Sounds ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Adventures of Poco Eco – Lost Sounds is as much an exploratory experience as a game. The hero discovers a ‘lost cassette’, which enables him to speak with spirit guides. They charge him with a musical quest: to bring sounds back to the land. That might sound pretentious and ‘worthy’, but Poco Eco is more like a cartoon. One of your early guides is a massive bear, and Poco Eco jauntily scoots about the larger-than-life landscapes packed full of color and giant musical kit, bobbing his head to a soundtrack that evolves as puzzles are solved. Said puzzles are, admittedly, dead simple. Poco Eco isn’t a game to fire up if you want your brain smashed in with a stiff challenge. It is, however, perfect for when you want to relax and immerse yourself in an album reimagined as an explorable world.
Starman ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Starman is an atmospheric adventure featuring a little astronaut trying to bring light to a monochromatic world. Its composed, unassuming air at times echoes Monument Valley. But the puzzles and slow, considered movement recall classic 1980s isometric puzzlers like Head Over Heels. Regardless of its influences, Starman is a treat. Every puzzle you try offers something new – and some of them are really clever. The mechanics are never complex, but how they’re combined will often trip you up. Yet Starman is never unfair – when you hit upon a solution, it will seem so obvious. The only real downside is there’s a chance the slothful pace will put off some players. It can be tiresome in some puzzles to watch the astronaut trudge back and forth. But for players who aren’t in a tearing hurry to blaze through every game, Starman’s a reflective, smart, memorable experience.
Flower ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Flower is a game that revels in bombing along as a petal on the wind, scything your way through fields of lush grassland, and soaring into the air above mountains and windmills. Each environment starts with you playing as an individual petal. As you collide with other flowers, they bloom and offer a petal of their own to join yours, which soon becomes a spinning, swooping conga of color, wheeling above Flower’s tiny, beautiful worlds. There’s a smattering of exploration and light puzzling in Flower, primarily to unlock more parts of each level, and discover secrets. But mostly this game is about enjoying an immediate, accessible, beautiful journey that has an emotional core and an exhilarating edge.
Voyageur ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Described by its creator as a literary RPG, Voyageur mixes text adventure with space trading. Imagine seminal classic Elite combined with Lifeline and you’re on the right track. The story begins with you having bolted an alien ‘Descent Device’ to your ship, enabling faster-than-light travel – but only towards the center of the galaxy. You embark on a one-way journey, stopping off on planets to trade, explore, and become embroiled in side quests. With the game being text-oriented and algorithmically generated, descriptions and events tend to repeat quite often. Still, if you at any point feel you’ve seen a planet before, you can leave with a few taps – and there are always new things waiting to be found. For anyone armed with an imagination, Voyageur becomes a unique, captivating experience.
Milkmaid of the Milky Way ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)This old-school adventure game is all the more impressive when you realize it’s the work of one man. From the delicate pixel art to the smart story – all delivered in rhyme – you’d think a team of clever people had beavered away on Milkmaid of the Milky Way rather than a sole individual. The star of the show is Ruth. Her tools have vanished in a storm, and she needs to make cheese and butter to sell. It’s all very slow and relaxing – until a spaceship abruptly shows up and rudely steals her cows, propelling her into a rather more out-of-this-world experience. If you’ve played this kind of game before, you’ll know what to expect – explore your surroundings, find objects, and figure out where to use them. But the difficulty curve is gentle enough to snare newcomers, while the feel and polish of the game should help it appeal to anyone who spent years taking on Lucasfilm fare on a PC.
Samorost 3 ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)From the creators of Machinarium and Botanicula, Samorost 3 is an eye-dazzlingly gorgeous old-school point-and-tap puzzler. It follows the adventures of a gnome who sets out to search the cosmos and defeat a deranged monk who's smashed up a load of planets by attacking them with a steampunk hydra. The wordless tale primarily involves poking about the landscape, revealing snatches of audio that transform into dreamlike animations hinting at what you should do next. Although occasionally opaque, the puzzles are frequently clever, and the game revels in the joy of exploration and play. It's also full of heart – a rare enchanting title that gives your soul a little lift.
Love You to Bits ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Love You to Bits has a heart as big as a thousand iPads. It's a tap-based adventure that finds a little space explorer trying to retrieve pieces of his android girlfriend that have been scattered across the galaxy. The mechanics are right out of classic point-and-click gaming, essentially having you amble about 2D locations, unearth items and then drop them in the right spot. But the game is so relentlessly creative and inventive with its environments — full of dazzling visuals, references to movies and other games, and increasingly clever mechanics and ideas — that you can't help but love it to bits yourself.
Device 6 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Device 6 is first and foremost a story — a mystery into which protagonist Anna finds herself propelled. She awakes on an island, but where is she? How did she get there? Why can't she remember anything? The game fuses literature with adventuring, the very words forming corridors you travel along, integrated puzzles being dotted about for you to investigate. It's a truly inspiring experience, an imaginative, ambitious and brilliantly realised creation that showcases how iOS can be the home for something unique and wonderful. It's also extremely tough at times. Our advice: pay attention, jot down notes, and mull away from the screen if you get stuck.
Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP has in its DNA the essence of point-and-click classics, and is infused with a substantial sense of adventure. It’s a game that very much wants you to explore and interact with its mysterious and atmospheric world. It also happens to be a concept album. That might sound weird, but you soon find your time within this game’s world is anything but usual. The delicate pixel art has many surprises and strangeness buried within, and the evocative soundtrack is a high point on the platform. The storytelling is sparse and smart (if sometimes too knowing), and combat is rhythmic (if a touch clunky). In all, the mixture of music, occasional swordplay, and exploration is not to be missed. Our favorite iPad arcade titles, including retro games, pinball, slice ’em ups, multiplayer party games, and innovative touchscreen creations.
Microbian (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Microbian is an atmospheric auto-runner, featuring a spider darting through creepy underground caverns. Your aim is simply to survive, which requires not being horribly killed by the many hazards on your path. You can tap to jump, and tap in mid-flight to switch to the ceiling or back to the floor. Right from the off, the arachnid’s journey is quite tricky, placing your tapping digit under severe duress. The screen whirls around, ravenous creatures suddenly give chase, and you may find yourself abruptly hurled into the air by something springy. It’s worth persevering though, because you soon get a rhythm for the game. At that point, you can improve your gaming prowess, but also get a chance to more fully breathe in Microbian’s gorgeous, moody visuals.
Silverfish DX ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Silverfish DX is an unashamedly old-school arcade romp, albeit one with shiny modern visuals. You take the role of the titular silverfish, which finds itself surrounded by aquatic and very hungry enemies. To survive, you must weave your way through the swarms, grabbing power pods that obliterate anything nearby. Max out your power – depleted during collisions – and you can briefly turn the tables on your foes by eating them. This is a mix of Robotron’s claustrophobia (but without the shooty bits) and those moments in Pac-Man where you get to eat the ghosts. Like those titles, Silverfish DX is perhaps a bit one-note, and so won’t keep you glued for hours at a time, but the game’s purity and compelling, exciting gameplay ensures it’s always worth a quick dip.
Helix ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Helix has the appearance of a rough-and-ready 1980s arcade game. Your character, a chunky blinking eye, scoots about as adversaries rapidly appear from screen edges. The aim is survival, but fortunately you can do more than dodge (albeit less than shoot). Move around an enemy and a line begins to encircle them. If the line is closed, the enemy explodes, giving you some breathing space. Some enemies require more orbits, or for you to encircle them in a specific direction, and that’s about it. But Helix’s simplicity isn’t to its detriment. This is a focused, brilliantly conceived arcade blast that’s ideal fodder for iPad. The touchscreen controls are responsive, the lurid visuals are captivating, and the hard-as-nails gameplay has that one-more-go factor that will have you clamoring for more.
Trick Shot 2 ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Trick Shot 2 at its core is a game that has you lob a ball into a box. At first, despite its ultra-chic minimalist visuals, it all seems a bit simple – even dull. But this game’s charms win you over rapidly. In part, this happens as the levels become increasingly ridiculous. You end up bouncing the ball off of giant bananas, or figuring out how to get it into one box within a sea of the things – all, of course, positioned at awkward angles. Each time you think you’ve cracked it, something new arrives to test your lobbing abilities: levers; teleporters; power connectors. And even when you emerge victorious from the final challenge, that’s not the end of it, since Trick Shot 2 has its own built-in level editor.
Alto’s Odyssey ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Alto’s Odyssey is a one-thumb side-on endless survival game. It features the titular Alto, who has a thing for sandboarding on huge dunes, hurling himself into the air, performing all manner of tricks, and then trying to not land (i.e. crash) in a manner that results in a face full of sand. This is perfect iPhone fodder, and perhaps not the kind of game you’d usually associate with iPad. But like its predecessor – the similarly impressive Alto’s Adventure – Alto’s Odyssey is a gorgeous game that’s deeper than it first appears. Visually, it’s a treat, with arresting weather effects and day/night cycles. As you complete challenges, you slowly unlock new goals, environments, and abilities, but if at any point it all feels too much, you can switch off with the zero-risk Zen Mode, which leaves you with a serene soundtrack and endless desert.
FROST ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)FROST is a thoughtful, tactile game that feels like a living piece of art. Across dozens of scenes, sparks and barriers scythe across the screen while you direct flocking neon creatures towards orbs. Once the orbs fill, you can move on to the next challenge. Ultimately, FROST is a path-finding puzzler. You use logic to understand the conditions before you, and how to meet your goal. But FROST feels very different from its contemporaries. The abstract visuals are exciting and fresh, but also it really wants you to play, experiment and discover. Most of the puzzles tend to be simple, and you could probably blaze through the entire game in a few hours. But doing so would miss the point, because FROST is an iPad experience to bask in and savor.
Osmos for iPad ($4.99/$4.99/AU$7.99)Osmos for iPad is an ‘ambient’ arcade game, and although it started life on PC, it’s a game that only really makes sense on a touchscreen. Across eight distinct worlds, you control a tiny ‘mote’, propelled by ejecting pieces of itself, its direction of travel determined by your taps. Collide with a smaller mote and it’s absorbed. Your aim is to ‘become the biggest’. When other motes are stationary, victory’s relatively easy – although very crowded levels require careful taps and judicious use of a time-warp slow-down feature. But when levels feature ferocious motes intent on your demise, or the game shifts from microscopic warfare to motes speeding around a central giant – like celestial bodies orbiting a sun – brains and fingers alike will suddenly find Osmos a much sterner test. At every point in the journey, Osmos is magnificent. Convince a friend to buy the game and engaging multiplayer arenas await too.
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)You might balk at Pac-Man appearing in a best-of list for iPad games, but this isn’t your father’s arcade game. Sure, the basics remain: scoot about a maze, eating dots, avoiding ghosts, and turning the tables on them on eating a power pill. But Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is significantly faster, has neon-clad mazes and a thumping soundtrack, and the gameplay’s evolved in key areas. First, the maze is split in two. Clear one side and a special object appears on the other, which refills the cleared side when eaten. Secondly, snoozing ghosts can be brushed past to fashion a spectral conga to shepherd, contain, and not blunder into – until you eat a power pill, reverse course, and eat your pursuers to amass huge points. In short, this game is superb, transforming an ancient classic into something fresh and exciting. And importantly, it works best on the large iPad display, because your fingers don’t get in the way of your frenetic dot-gobbling.
INKS. ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Pinball games tend to either ape real-world tables or go full-on videogame, with highly animated content that would be impossible on a real table. INKS. tries something different, boasting a modern 'flat design' aesthetic, and having coloured targets on each table that emit an ink explosion when hit with the ball. Each of the dozens of tables therefore becomes a mix of canvas and puzzle as you try to hit targets while simultaneously creating a work of art. Neatly, as the ball rolls through ink splats, it creates paths across the table, which is visually appealing and also shows when your aim is off. Because each level is short — usually possible to complete in a minute or so — INKS. manages to be both approachable enough for newcomers and different enough for experts to get some enjoyment out of.
Badland 2 ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)The first Badland combined the simplicity of one-thumb 'copter'/flappy games with the repeating hell of Limbo. It was a stunning, compelling title, pitting a little winged protagonist against all kinds of crazy ordeals in a forest that had clearly gone very wrong. In Badland 2, the wrongness has been amplified considerably. Now, levels scroll in all directions, traps are deadlier, puzzles are tougher, and the cruelty meted out on the little winged beast is beyond compare. Still, all is not lost - the hero can now flap left and right. We're sure that comes as a huge consolation when it's sawn in half for the hundredth time.
ALONE... ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Because of the nature of touchscreen controls, there's a tendency to slow things down on iOS. ALONE… throws such caution to the wind, flinging you along at Retina-searing speed as you try in vain to save a little ship hurtling through rocky caverns of doom. This is a game that's properly exciting, and where every narrow escape feels like a victory; that all you're doing is dragging a finger up and down, trying in vain to avoid the many projectiles sent your way, is testament to you not needing a gamepad and complex controls to create a game that genuinely thrills.
Power Hover ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)It turns out the future will involve hoverboards, only it'll be robots piloting them. In Power Hover, all the humans are gone, but so too are the batteries that power your robot village. So you hop on your flying board and pursue a thief through 30 varied and visually stunning levels. Whether scything curved paths across a gorgeous sun-drenched sea or picking your way through a grey and dead human city, Power Hover will have you glued to the screen until you reach the end of the journey. And although it's initially tricky to get to grips with, you'll soon discover the board's floaty physics and controls are perfectly balanced. Our favorite iPad games where you find objects cleverly hidden on-screen and use them to escape from virtual prisons.
Little Things Forever ($0.99/49p/AU$0.99)Little Things Forever is the purest example of a hidden object game you’re likely to find on the App Store. There’s no overarching quest – no desire to be a sort-of adventure. Instead, you’re presented with a jumble of objects (that, when you squint, form cartoonish artwork), and things to find. Depending on the challenge you’re tackling, you either get a full list, and aim to get through it as quickly as possible, or a timer and one item at a time to discover. Sporadically, the game has you complete basic jigsaw puzzles, in order to unlock new levels. On the iPad’s larger screen, the game shines. It’s full of charm, and although the timers add some incentive for those who need it, Little Things Forever is perfectly relaxed if you feel like taking 'forever' on a single puzzle.
realMyst ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)realMyst is a new take on Myst, a Mac classic from the early 1990s. It dumps you on a strange island, giving you no clear ideas what to do next. The idea is to explore, check out every nook of the island, find clues, solve puzzles, and find new places in which to poke around. To say realMyst is obscure is putting it mildly. Its puzzles can be baffling and cryptic, and smart players will arm themselves with a notepad – and a huge amount of patience. However, this iPad version is a fantastic way to experience a gaming classic, with a more free-form approach to movement, beautiful revamped graphics, and the simple fact you can play it anywhere.
The Room: Old Sins ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)The Room: Old Sins pits you against devious puzzle boxes. Like previous games in the series, Old Sins is obsessed with the impossible. This time, you’re investigating the disappearance of an engineer and his wife. You spot what appears to be a corpse in a gloomy attic and are abruptly swept inside a doll house. At this point, it’s all tap, swipe and drag, manipulating objects using your very best logical deduction until things happen. At one point you’ll discover a seemingly unending number of hidden compartments in a tiny model train. Elsewhere, something horrific and otherworldly will scream before forcibly ejecting you from a room. If you’re a newcomer and puzzle fan, Old Sins is a no-brainer – a superb, coherent title with multiple-location challenges and none of the tedious walking around found in the likes of Myst. As for existing fans, you’ve probably already bought and finished the game anyway. If not, what are you waiting for?
Hidden Folks ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Hidden object games are often dull and can be heavy on the pocket, demanding you spend lots of money on IAP. Hidden Folks isn’t either of those things, and has the added bonus of being hugely charming. You’re presented with hand-drawn scenes, each of which has a strip across the bottom, depicting objects to find. You can tap any of them for a clue, but the scene can also be interacted with, for example to rustle bushes to find someone lurking behind them. Cute mouth-originated sound effects pepper proceedings, and the pace is varied with differing map sizes, and the odd playable scene, such as helping someone to a destination by adjusting the landscape. Thus, with its wit and smarts, Hidden Folks very much stands out from the crowd – unlike some of the tiny critters it tasks you with locating.
Grim Legends: The Dark City ($6.99/£6.99/AU$AU$10.99)Grim Legends: The Dark City lobs you in at the deep end. You’re the member of a secret organization tasked with guarding a powerful artifact – but a rogue agent stole it and unleashed an evil monster. Also, your mind was wiped in a recent mission. You must find the relic, fix the damage the monster’s causing, all while recovering your lost memories. That sounds like a lot of work, but The Dark City’s fairly gentle in terms of challenge. The puzzles are straightforward – if varied – although the game does shake things up with Rune Battles. These find you fighting with runes, selecting symbols that don’t match your opponent’s ones. This is a nice change of pace, and nicely augments the lashings of atmosphere provided by very smart visuals, and a solid underlying storyline.
The Lost City ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)The Lost City broadly echoes Myst, in that it places you in a fantastical location, and challenges you to explore. In this case, you’ve discovered the titular city recounted to you by an elderly relative that no-one else believed. As ever, the game involves examining locations, finding useful-looking objects to stash in your inventory, and using them to unlock pathways to further your adventures. But The Lost City has an intriguing hook: you can change the seasons. So if you can’t get past a river, perhaps you might be able to at a different time of year… With lush (if static) visions, and a journal that handily automatically tracks symbols and clues, The Lost City proves to be a compelling and atmospheric experience.
All That Remains ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)All That Remains starts off in a harrowing manner, with you waking up in your father’s bunker. An old two-way radio crackles into life, and your distressed sister explains that the world has gone to hell, and that you’ve been locked up for your own safety. You resolve to rescue her from the chaos. Unfortunately, your father turns out to be part sociopath, part crazy inventor. Rather than furnish you with a serviceable door handle with which to escape, you must figure out the convoluted path to an exit. Cue: lots of poking around, finding clues, figuring out the meaning behind symbols, and piecing everything together. At its best, this is tense, challenging stuff – ideal if you find your existing hidden object games something of a pushover.
Agent A ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Agent A combines an escape game with the swagger of a spy movie. It starts with you following Ruby La Rouge, who obliterates a boat – and your boss. Deciding that’s rather out of order, you break into Ruby’s house – and she locks you in. Presumably the glass is very tough, because you can’t smash through it. Instead, you must figure out an absurdly convoluted path to make your escape. This game has a pleasingly spiky, angular art style, and breezy responses when you interact with objects. The actual puzzles are perhaps a bit pedestrian, but the game frequently neatly ties together details and clues across multiple locations. Also, rather generously, Agent A has expanded from its initial sole chapter to a five-part episodic tale, offering plenty of espionage bang for your bucks.
Forever Lost ($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)The Forever Lost series (three games, available separately if you don’t want the bundle) begins with you waking up in an unfamiliar room. Freaky as though that is, getting out is simple; the scary bit is it’s clear others have been here before you. Also, when you do escape your confines, you merely find yourself in the bigger prison of an abandoned asylum. The game then follows a familiar pattern of scanning rooms for objects and clues, using them to move your quest onward. Although visually bleak and drab, Forever Lost’s atmosphere and weirdness keeps you gripped. And you can’t help but love a game with its own in-game camera, to snap objects for later reference, so you don’t have to manually make notes elsewhere. Our favorite iPad platform games, including free-roaming adventures, retro-infused titles, and modern console-style classics.
Linn: Path of Orchards ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Linn: Path of Orchards is an unconventional platform game, which takes place in a world of dynamic, rotating surfaces. You must help protagonist Aban to each level’s exit, grabbing bling along the way. Although you can sort of brute-force your way through the game, making use of gestures to dash left and right, and mid-air jump, you’re better off embracing the elegance and thoughtfulness that exists at the heart of Linn. Think of each challenge as a turn-based test, and figure out the optimum sequence of moves to your goal. Multiple challenges per level, stylish visuals, and a lovely soundtrack further ensure Linn is something special – an engaging mash-up of Monument Valley-style visual minimalism, clockwork structures, and parkour-like sliding and leaping.
see/saw ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)see/saw is a platform game that features a sadistic professor (whose credentials we’re extremely skeptical of) putting a speedy protagonist through ostensibly scientific tests. Said tests mostly involve the subject collecting coins, but also avoiding hazards. Increasingly frequently as you explore each single-screen room, your untimely demise is the key to reaching the last coin. Its basic controls – hold the left or right of the screen to head in that direction – mean see/saw works really nicely on the iPad’s large display, but this stripped-back approach to platform gaming doesn’t make for dumbed-down level design. In fact, as you progress, challenges become devious, with you having to figure out how to impale the hero just so, in order to reach that final target.
Spitkiss ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Spitkiss is unique in the App Store, what with it featuring tiny creatures that communicate by lobbing bodily fluids at each other. But how you get spittle and the like from one to the other plays like Angry Birds became a single-screen platformer, and then had Matrix-style slo-mo welded to it. To get started, you aim and fling some spittle, and then direct it from surface to surface until the blob reaches its goal. Hold the screen and time slows, allowing you to prepare your next shot – essential given the claustrophobic and hazard-strewn screens you face. This all works particularly well on iPad. You’ve plenty of space to move your finger, and can be far more accurate on the larger screen. The vibrant visuals are arresting, too, even if you might feel squeamish about flinging spit.
Suzy Cube ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Suzy Cube is a platform game set in a world with a thing for straight edges. Assuming you’ve played a platformer before, you know the drill: explore; grab gold; unsportingly jump on the heads of enemies to obliterate them. But Suzy Cube goes beyond the stripped-back 2D fare we often see on iOS for something akin to Super Mario 3D Land. This means you may find yourself quickly swapping between skidding down icy mountains in 3D, following Suzy Cube as she runs side-on around a tower, and then delicately leaping between floating platforms, as seen from above. Bar some duff boss battles, it’s ambitious, entertaining fare, with tight touchscreen controls, and a great sense of pace and variety as you delve into the world and discover its many hidden secrets.
Oddmar ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Oddmar is a Viking who’s not good at being a Viking, but he’s forced into action when his village vanishes and an evil takes over the land. Cue: swiftly munching a magic mushroom to get some special powers, followed by quite a lot of platforming action. And what platforming action! Oddmar looks and feels like nothing else on iPad. Although the gameplay mechanics are familiar (leap about, explore, collect bling, hack up enemies, don’t get killed), the production values here are something else. Oddmar’s world feels alive, and each level has been painstakingly constructed, imbuing the game with smarts and pace. Peppered with set pieces, survival-oriented ‘dream’ levels, and varied challenges, and blessed with pitch-perfect touchscreen controls, Oddmar is only to be missed if you can’t stand this kind of game. And even then, we suggest taking a look anyway – just in case.
VVVVVV ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)VVVVVV is an old-school twitch platformer. It strings a bunch of single-screen challenges together, gives them silly names, peppers restart points about, and then sits back with an evil grin as you blunder into traps time and time again. The main twist is VVVVVV’s use of gravity. Instead of jumping, your running man can switch between ceiling and floor. Most rooms within the game cleverly play with this gravity mechanic. There are bounce pads, roaming enemies, and columns of screens where you weave your way down through columns of spikes, and then head back, all because some nutcase didn’t think to install a small bridge. Visually, the game is odd – 1980s-style graphics, which also look blurry on iPad. The virtual controls are occasionally slippy too. Mostly, though, it’s a joy (albeit sometimes a head-bangingly frustrating one), with smart writing and clever puzzle-infused level design.
Thomas Was Alone ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Thomas Was Alone is a platform adventure that tells the tale of a self-aware artificial intelligence. Said AI is represented as a little red rectangle, charged with leaping about blocky environments, and reaching the exit. Along the way, other AIs appear, each with its own distinct abilities, which you must make best use of to get everyone to their goals. What sets Thomas Was Alone apart is its storytelling. The little rectangles are imbued with big personalities, and a voiceover gives you a window into their thoughts, which is often meta and frequently entertaining. After all, it’s hard not to love a game that finds the hero peering at certain doom, before the voiceover notes: “Something about the boiling, toxic, glowing water intimidated Thomas. He didn’t like it, and he certainly didn’t want to swim in it.” Still, you’ll want to swim in this game, because it’s a beautifully realized production.
Mushroom 11 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Mushroom 11 finds you controlling a living pile of green gunge that gloops its way around a post-apocalyptic world. Its mission appears to be hoovering up whatever life is desperately clinging on in this harsh landscape, from tiny spiders to mutated plants that spit fire. If you had to label it, Mushroom 11 is a fairly traditional side-on platform puzzler, but the manner in which it’s controlled proves transformative. There’s no virtual joystick here – instead, you touch to ‘erase’ bits of the green blob, which then rapidly grows back. This mechanic is used inventively throughout the game, whether you’re figuring out how to zoom through tunnels, make the blob ‘jump’, or split it in two, so one part can trigger a switch while the rest moves onward. On iPad, the game is one of a kind and a tactile joy.
INSIDE (free + $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 IAP)INSIDE is a puzzle-heavy platform game that charts a boy’s adventures in a chilling dystopia. It begins with him fleeing from armed men. You must duck behind trees and flee from ferocious dogs or end up dead, face-down in the dirt. But death is not the end; like INSIDE’s predecessor, the equally disturbing LIMBO, the hero here seems doomed to repeat every failure until it becomes a victory. It’s trial and error time, then. You run through a building, get horribly killed, take some mental notes, and then try again. Occasionally, this gets old; some sequences in the game are too long, and a couple have a margin of error that’s too tight. For the most part, though, this is a game of intriguing puzzles and a mesmerizing – if extremely dark – world, packed full of surprises, horror and tiny victories.
Mos Speedrun ($0.99/99p/AU$1.99)Mos Speedrun is an engaging speed-run Mario-ish platform game, featuring a little bug zooming through 25 hand-crafted levels. The crude visuals feel decidedly old-school, featuring the usual floating platforms and patrolling enemies that mostly lack even the slightest hint of intelligence. But Mos Speedrun turns out to be one of the finest games of its kind on iPad. First, the level design is really smart, forcing you to learn the precise position of every platform, gap, and enemy, if you want to beat the speed-run target. Secondly, each level has alternate targets – finding a hidden skull, and collecting all the loot – that boost replay value, but also force you to shake up your approach. Finally, Mos Speedrun amusingly subverts the idea of ‘ghost’ replays. Die a lot and you end up battling your way through a level alongside the spirits of the fallen from your previous failures. It’s bonkers – and humbling – when dozens of the things are skittering about.
Kalimba ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Kalimba is an inventive and compelling platform game for people bored with controlling just one character at once. Here, you help two colored totem pieces avoid deadly pits and roaming enemies – and you control both simultaneously. Initially, you’re eased in by way of a split-screen set-up where the totems don’t meet. At all times, you must be mindful that when one totem’s on safe ground, the other may be seconds from doom. And then the game really starts shaking things up. You’re soon faced with color barriers that force you to repeatedly swap the totems around, the prospect of ‘stacking’ and double-jumping to reach gems, gravity flipping, totems that fly through the air while their partners very much don’t, and chase sequences featuring massive, terrifying bosses. If it’s all a bit much alone, there’s a superb two-player single-device mode – although how much actual co-operation there’ll be when you’re juggling four totems and your friend hurls you into a lava pit, it’s hard to say.
Traps n' Gemstones ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Traditional platform games often fare poorly on iPad, but Traps n' Gemstonesbucks the trend. Its approach is resolutely old-school, from the on-screen controls to the Metroid-style gameplay that involves exploring a huge interconnected world, opening up new passageways by finding and correctly using objects. The theme, though, is more Indiana Jones. A little chap, armed with a whip and with a fedora on his head, leaps about a pyramid, grabs loot, and gives mummies and snakes a good whipping. Interestingly, the game simultaneously manages to appeal to casual and hardcore gamers. Progress doesn't reset, meaning you can keep getting killed but gradually work your way into the bowels of the pyramid. But your score reverts to zero when you come a cropper; getting into the thousands is therefore a big challenge for those who want to take it.
Drop Wizard ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Drop Wizard is a single-screen effort that initially resembles a tribute to arcade classics Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros – but it turns out Drop Wizard is a very different beast. It's part auto-runner, which might infuriate retro-gamers, but this proves to be a brilliant limitation in practice. Your little wizard never stops running, and emits a blast of magic each time he lands. You must therefore time leaps to blast roaming foes, and then boot the dazed creatures during a second pass. This is a vibrant, fast-paced, engaging game. And since you you only ever move left or right, it’s nicely optimized for touchscreen play. Our favorite iPad brain-teasers, logic games, sliding puzzlers, match-three games, and path-finding titles.
Tiny Bubbles ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Tiny Bubbles is a match puzzler set in an underwater world of colorful bubbles. The aim is to match and pop four bubbles of the same color; with luck, this will set off a chain reaction. Things can never be quite so easy for long, and so Tiny Bubbles lobs various hurdles into its warm bath of delights, such as fish that dart about and inconveniently add new bubbles, and color-mixing. Eventually, you’ll unlock the arcade mode, which tests your reflexes as well as your brain, for example having you keep bubbles within a boundary as new ones are created. Great-looking, mostly relaxing, and always engaging, Tiny Bubbles is an excellent buy. Also, there are few things more satisfying than popping loads of bubbles – even if they’re on a screen.
Where Shadows Slumber ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Where Shadows Slumber has a lush, minimalist art style with more than a whiff of Monument Valley about it, but instead of having you manipulate impossible architecture, Where Shadows Slumber has you rework the landscape by casting shadows across it. This all happens by way of your lamp. Position yourself just so and structures will shroud an area in darkness; when it’s subsequently lit, what was a hole may become a bridge, or an impassable doorway may be opened. It’s a captivating organic adventure, where you figure out the rules as you go along.There’s also darkness in this world beyond the shadows, with villainous creatures who’ll seemingly stop at nothing to rob you of your light.
Blask ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Blask is a world of laser beams and mirrors. Your goal is to direct each laser beam to a target. One brief light show later, it’s on to the next test. This in itself is nothing new – there are loads of games for iPad where you bounce lasers around – but Blask transforms each level into a set of puzzle pieces. As you manipulate what appears to be a single ‘room’ beneath your fingers, it breaks into pieces, lasers refracting within. There’s a tactile joy in experimenting with recombining shapes, moving those that aren’t fixed down, and figuring out the precise setup that allows you to complete your goal. It’s perhaps a touch finicky and twitchy at times, but otherwise Blask is a game that feels perfectly suited to sit-down iPad play.
Chuchel ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Chuchel is part puzzler, part interactive cartoon - and a decidedly strange one at that. It features an angry ball of fluff who’s determined to eat a cherry, but every time he gets the fruit, it’s snatched away by a giant hand seemingly on loan from Monty Python. Your part is to help Chuchel get the cherry, mostly by tapping hot-spots to decide his next action. These unleash canned animations, most of which – in classic cartoon fashion – result in Chuchel falling over or otherwise failing at his task. This isn’t the most cerebral of puzzle games – far from the brain-smashing fare you might expect from creators Amanita Design – and it can be a grind if you have to play through a section a number of times before cracking the correct sequence. Nevertheless, Chuchel is full of so much charm and weirdness that it’s easily worth the outlay.
7 Billion Humans ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)7 Billion Humans takes place in a world run by benevolent robots who do all of the work. But, of course, the humans still aren’t happy, and so the robots give them jobs – stupid, pointless jobs. In effect, doddering folks become parts of a living computer, and you’re tasked with ‘programming’ them to pick up boxes and put them down somewhere else. It sounds dull, but it’s actually riveting. Like predecessor Human Resource Machine, this is a game that takes real-life programming concepts and infuses them into a turn-based puzzler. On the iPad particularly, the drag-and-drop interface for crafting coding logic works wonderfully, and the screen’s big enough that you can spot precisely what’s going on with your work. The larger display doesn’t hurt when taking in the bitingly satirical (but generally good-natured) cut-scenes either.
Golf Peaks ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Golf Peaks might look a lot like a mini-golf game, but it’s really a strategic turn-based puzzler that takes place on tiny angular golf courses hewn into rectangular hillsides. Each round has you try to get the ball in the hole, only instead of aiming and firing, you use movement cards, and only state the direction in which you want the ball to travel. This is child’s play when your ball’s one square from the hole and you have a ‘move one square’ card, but when you’ve all manner of jumping and movement cards and are staring at a complex course packed will hills and hazards, this seemingly simplistic golfing puzzler takes on new dimensions.
Persephone ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Persephone looks like a pretty run-of-the-mill isometric puzzler. There’s an exit you have to reach, which requires you to do things like shove boxes about and flip switches. But then you fall into a ditch, die, and the game… carries on going, with you controlling your resurrected self. Your corpses (you can have up to three) are then used to great effect, in the sense of adding to the complexity of the puzzles, but also in being darkly comic. It’s hard to think of any other iOS puzzler where you must shove a line of dead ‘yous’ along, in order to trigger a switch. This is another great example, then, in how a twist can shake up a well-worn format, making it new, interesting, unique, and – in this case – more than a little macabre!
ELOH ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)ELOH is a chilled-out puzzle game that wants you to find your inner groove. Each single-screen level has you send blobs from loudspeakers to goals, bouncing them off of various objects. Some of those objects are masks, which can be used to change blobs’ colors, so they match their target goals. This is a game of order, played to a background beat, and with precise 90-degree bounces. But the game also wants you to gradually carve out a solution by playing the puzzle live. This is especially useful when you find yourself facing increasingly complex layouts that demand labyrinthine paths to be constructed. On iPad, this all works particularly well – the larger display makes everything a lot clearer, and objects are easier to work with. Having the music pump out of louder speakers doesn’t hurt either!
In the Dog House ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)In the Dog House is a sliding puzzler that has a cute veneer yet plenty of bite. It features a mutt in an oddball house with moving rooms and lifts aplenty. Its only goal in life is to get to a bowl of dog food, irritatingly (from the pooch’s standpoint) situated on the far side of the dwelling. Your job is to slide corridors, elevator shafts and other bits of building around, using a bone to urge the ravenous canine onwards. As ever with this kind of game, you must think several moves ahead because the space you have to work in is extremely limited. Linear level unlocking can be frustrating when you get stuck, but In the Dog House is otherwise a furry good game that will give you paws and hound your brain until you complete the entire tail. (Sorry.)
Evergarden ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Evergarden is a strategy-oriented match game set in a fantastical forest of geometry and surprisingly demanding wildlife. Every game begins as a hexagonal grid on which flowers of varying sizes are arranged. Each of your limited turns has you work through the flowers, deciding whether they should spit a seed into an adjacent space, or combine with a matching bloom. It comes across like a glossy and noodly gardening take on Threes! But there’s more to Evergarden than these basics. Creature guide Fen makes demands that hugely ramp up your potential for high scores when achieved, and a narrative plays out alongside the puzzles. This adds extra heart to the game, but also depth – things you find on your journey unlock new strategies, and provide added impetus for doing even better during your next go.
Donut County ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Donut County is a story-led puzzle game where you play as a hole in the ground. As you consume items, you get bigger; so whereas at first you might be able to gulp down a tin can, you’re eventually guzzling vehicles, houses, and mountains. All of this happens alongside an oddball storyline featuring a naughty raccoon who’s been sending people the hole rather than the donuts they’ve ordered. Everyone’s now underground, figuring out how to get back to the surface. The game doesn’t take more than a few hours to complete, not least because only a few levels tease the brain beyond the simplest of challenges. However, the journey is wonderful, especially on the iPad – the bright visuals shine, and the larger canvas makes dragging the hole around, gobbling everything in sight, all the more pleasing.
Scalak ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Scalak is all about matching shapes, finding patterns in objects, and spatial awareness. It begins easily enough: you’re asked to drag a square piece to a square hole – hardly the toughest challenge you’ll have faced on iPad! But across Scalak’s dozens of levels, the game gradually increases the complexity of the objects you face, which eventually resemble exploded 3D jigsaws. You start rotating and moving the central section, and must place pieces that have been bent across multiple planes. Elsewhere, you construct frameworks on to which other pieces connect. With no score nor timers, Scalak becomes all about interaction – a tactile, stress-free game of exploration and puzzle solving that’s ideal on the iPad’s large display.
Bring You Home ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Bring You Home is a puzzler featuring rotund alien, Polo, who’s on a mission to rescue a kidnapped pet. The snag: the ‘petnappers’ have a habit of darting through portals. What follows are dozens of single-screen scenes where you figure out how to reach an exit, but instead of controlling Polo, you rearrange and swap out sections of the scene, before pressing a button to see how things then play out. If you’ve played Framed, Bring You Home is in similar territory, but is far more varied – Polo at various points ends up in living paintings, a bizarre alien circus, and a graveyard where you deal with spooky adversaries. It’s adorable, silly, and relentlessly imaginative, and the failure animations are entertaining to the point you’ll want to go back and screw things up should you chance upon the correct solution first time round.
Gorogoa ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Gorogoa is a perplexing puzzle game that plays with your perception of space, and challenges you to find links between images that aren’t remotely obvious on an initial glance. The entire thing takes place in a two-by-two grid, within which comic-book panes can be opened up and manipulated. Often, part of an image can be separated and overlaid on another. For example, a stairs overlay may enable the protagonist to reach a previously inaccessible space, or what appears to be a star-like decorative element might be a cog in an impromptu machine. Occasionally, Gorogoa baffles; later on, you may hit mental dead-ends, juggling various components, locations and possibilities in your head. But as a tactile, novel, engaging puzzler, there’s little else like Gorogoa on iPad – and you’ll feel like a genius when you reach its conclusion.
GNOG ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)GNOG is bonkers. It features nine floating heads, which are gateways to miniature worlds of interactive animated madness that you poke, prod, tap and swipe to make things happen. Your tasks are often quite mundane: fix a spaceship; feed some birds; recover chests from the ocean depths. But the presentation disarms - all bold shapes, primary colors and bloopy audio, like a children’s toy hopped up on sugar. It goes even more psychedelic when you complete a level and the head starts mooing. If you’re making a face yourself at that particular thought, just grab GNOG and delve deep into an entertainingly madcap game of exploration that revels in the joy of discovery. Fire up the AR mode, plonk GNOG’s strange toys on a table, and you’ll wish real toys were even half as much fun to play with.
Campfire Cooking ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Campfire Cooking seems to simulate the joy of cooking around a campfire – if everyone wanted to make the process as awkward as possible. Fires are set about a grid. Move your stick left or right and your marshmallow flips upside down. You must toast both sides just once – burnt treats will not be tolerated. The campfire’s set-up rapidly increases in complexity, too, giving you multiple sticks that can nudge others, sticks that spin, meals in pots that must also be cooked, and magnets to drag the metal pots around. It’s totally ridiculous but hugely compelling, and the game looks superb on the iPad’s display. The larger device also works well with Campfire Cooking’s ‘physicality’ – although you will at times want to yell: “Just point your stupid marshmallow at the fire already.”
Monument Valley 2 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Monument Valley 2 echoes its predecessor in having you explore isometric Escher-like worlds packed full of optical illusions. The aim in each level is to reach a goal, which is often achieved by manipulating the landscape, creating pathways that in the real world simply could not exist. It’s a visually stunning game, with tiny levels crammed with vibrancy and details, making it ideal for the iPad’s larger display. The narrative featuring a mother and daughter also satisfies, but is careful to leave the experience with a sense of mystery. The levels are diverse in feel, demands, and structure. If there’s any downside it’s that Monument Valley 2 is short and largely bereft of challenge. But treat it as a couple of hours immersed in a unique and beautiful universe and you’ll find it’s well worth the outlay.
Causality ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Many path-finding puzzlers have you use arrow tiles to direct auto-running critters to goals. (Long-time gamers may fondly remember ChuChu Rocket! as a shining example). Causality is in similar territory, only you also get to control time itself, by dragging up and down the screen. Early on, this primarily allows you to fix errors – going back to try again when a sprinting astronaut is eaten, or when you run out of your limited number of steps. Before long, though, you’re hurling people through time portals, so they can assist their past selves. It’s mind-bending stuff, but also one of the finest puzzle games of modern times. It’s also perfect for iPad, due to its visually dazzling and tactile nature.
Splitter Critters ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)The basic mechanics of Splitter Critters resemble 1990s arcade puzzler Lemmings, in that you guide marching creatures to a goal. But whereas you armed lemmings with tools, Splitter Critters has you slice up the screen with a finger, so you can adjust the landscape to create new pathways. This is clever, but Splitter Critters isn’t done. The undo button reverts your last cut, but not the position of critters. Undo therefore becomes a device vital for completing levels, rather than merely a means of reverting errors. Throughout its length, the game keeps adding new elements, such as ocean worlds and a grim underground base full of critter-frying lasers. And although the challenge never rises above slight, the charm and tactile nature of Splitter Critters makes it a joyful journey, especially on the iPad’s larger display.
Twisted Lines ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Twisted Lines is another great iOS puzzler with simple rules, but also level design seemingly created to drive you to despair. Each of the 100 levels involves you directing a little colored block that leaves a trail of two colors, but should you cross over the trail, your block changes color to match the first line it hits. This is pretty important, given that your task is to scoop up colored blocks littered about claustrophobic, deviously designed single-screen puzzles. From the start, Twisted Lines is a pleasingly tricky challenge, and it keeps adding further complications – trail erasers; teleporters – to keep you on your toes. If there’s any drawback to the game, it’s the strict linear unlock of levels (presumably, this is designed to urge you to grab hint IAPs if you get stuck). But other than that niggle, Twisted Lines is a brain-teaser among the very best on iPad.
Telepaint ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)In Telepaint, a semi-sentient wandering paint pot wants nothing more than to be reunited with a brush. The tiny snag: it appears to be stuck in a world of brain-bending maze-like tests, comprising single screens of platforms and teleporters. Your goal is to figure out a route, avoiding pot-puncturing spikes and a clingy magnetic 'friend' - a task that becomes increasingly baffling and complex. You're helped along a little by VCR-style controls that let you pause for breath, and these often become key to solving puzzles, enabling you to switch teleport triggers while everything else on-screen remains static. Even then, the going's tough. Still, while Telepaint has the propensity to make your head hurt like having a paint can dropped on it, this is a colorful, unique and enjoyable iOS puzzling classic that's not to be missed.
A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)The little monster at the heart of A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, wants some friends, and so sets about making them from crisp snow covering the ground. But as the game's title states, making snowman is hard — largely because of strict rules governing the monster's universe. Snowmen must comprise precisely three balls of gradually decreasing size, and any snowball rolled in the snow quickly grows. A Good Snowman therefore becomes a series of brain-bending puzzles - part Soko-Ban, part Towers of Hanoi - as you figure out how to manipulate balls of snow to build icy friends for a monster to hug. Our favorite iPad 3D, space, retro, top-down, and on-rails racers.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit [US store] | [non-US stores] is an old-school high-octane racer that echoes pursue-and-smash classic Chase HQ. You tear along in your police car, aiming to batter nasty criminals into submission. Then, during your downtime, you and your cop chums partake in dangerous high-speed races. Visually, Hot Pursuit is sometimes a touch crude, with background pop-up betraying the original game’s age, but the cars and roadside objects still look nice enough on a Retina iPad. Most importantly, the game feels really good – not least during moments when you fire up the nitro, drift round a bend, and smash the baddie into a roadblock. And if you don’t fancy being the fuzz? You can leap into your sports car in a parallel storyline and become mouse rather than cat.
Grid Autosport ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)Grid Autosport feels like the first of a new breed of iPad games, where a claim of ‘console quality’ isn’t hyperbole. This really is a pretty much direct conversion of the hit PC and PlayStation racer, squeezed into your iPad. There’s no messing about with grinding and currencies here – you can immediately delve into everything the app has to offer, choosing from its huge range of challenges, cars, and circuits. Everything from a quick race in an open-top to a full Touring Cars season is just a few taps away. With a range of control options and difficulty settings, the game manages to cater to arcade fans and simulation nuts alike; and when armed with an iPad and an MFi controller, the only thing betraying the fact you’re not playing on a console is the size of the screen.
Fluid SE ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)Fluid SE appears to have arrived from the unholy union of Pac-Man and a brutally difficult time-trial racer set in a hostile underwater world of black fish and deadly red ghosts. Each test has you zoom about, scooping up dots, and attempting to beat time targets. If you’re fast enough, you get the stars needed to unlock new levels; if not, you’ll need to work on shaving fractions of a second off of your best times. The snag is levels rapidly increase in complexity, and dots you eat spawn the aforementioned ghosts, which relentlessly chase you around the screen. There are ways of dealing with them, but often that involves slowing down. Fluid SE therefore becomes a thrilling game of risk versus reward, where everything plays out at breakneck speed – right up until you’re devoured by an angry ghost.
Reckless Racing HD ($0.99/49p/AU$0.99)Reckless Racing HD is a top-down racer that first graced the App Store way back in 2012. It’s different from its contemporaries in having you coax battered vehicles around ramshackle tracks. There’s no slick tarmac – bar a mall parking lot that forms part of a course. More often, you’re zooming about the likes of a wrecker’s yard, or dirt roads near an old church that rises majestically out of the screen like it’s about to poke you in the eye. Given a 64-bit reprieve in mid-2017, Reckless Racing HD is a fantastic blast from the past. The cars have a great sense of weight – the physics when racing is just about perfect. And although it now looks a bit rough and ready, it’s decidedly more reckless (and fun) than its overly polished sequel, and includes the online multiplayer that the most recent entry in the series lacks.
AG Drive ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)In the future, it turns out people have tired of racers zooming about circuits on the ground. In AG Drive, tracks soar into the air – akin to massive roller-coasters along which daredevil racers of the day speed, gunning for the checkered flag. This is a pure racing game – all about learning the twists and turns of every circuit, and the thrill of breakneck speed. The only weapons you have available are strategy and skill. And this suits the kind of stripped-back controls that work best on iPad – tilting to steer, and using thumbs to accelerate, brake, and trigger a turbo. Also, while some slightly irksome IAP lurks, there’s little need to splash out. The game’s difficulty curve is such that you can gradually improve your skills and ship, working your way through varied events until you become an out-of-this-world racing legend. (Or, if you’re a bit rubbish, an ugly stain on the side of a massive metal building.)
Go Rally ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)It’s ‘maniacally yet methodically skidding through dirt tracks time’ in Go Rally, an overhead arcade-oriented take on zooming along like a lunatic, against the clock. Aside from some nicely rendered courses, Go Rally’s a winner through its controls, solid physics, and relatively short tracks. Playing doesn’t feel like an ordeal to be overcome – instead, the brevity of the courses makes Go Rally akin to a Trials title, where you can conceivably master every turn. The career mode eases you in gently, gradually unlocking access to new cars and tougher races. And if you get fed up with what the game throws at you, it’s even possible to scribble on your iPad’s screen to fashion new tracks of your own. The tracks of your dreams – and everyone else’s nightmares – can then be inflicted on the world at large.
Rush Rally 2 ($0.99/79p/AU$1.99)Rush Rally 2 claims to be the most authentic rally simulation on your iPad, although it initially comes across as a bit picky and stiff. It’s very easy to find yourself skidding off the track, or having unfortunately embedded your car in a tree rather than skillfully navigated a turn. Once the controls click, though, Rush Rally 2 does the business. Your best bet, oddly, is not to rush – at least at first. Figure out the handling, learn the courses, and only then properly put your foot down. Rush Rally 2 will then reveal itself to be an entertaining and exciting racer, whether you’re deep in a full-on championship, or getting a bit smashy while vying for the lead in a Rally Cross race.
Riptide GP: Renegade ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Riptide GP: Renegade is the third entry in the Riptide series, and again finds you in a souped-up jetski called a hydrojet, bombing along watery circuits flanked by futuristic metal skyscrapers. But unlike its (equally impressive) predecessor’s official racing championship, Renegade’s splashy racing involves illegal bouts set in flooded ruins and deadly factories – playing for reputation rather than an adoring TV audience. The racing is still superb, with its mix of insane speed and ridiculous stunts – hit a ramp and it’s expected you’ll show off by spinning your hydrojet around or performing a handstand on top of it. Despite some dodgy story bits and a slightly grindy upgrade path, Renegade is an exhilarating racer – and one that also gets away from tarmac and gleaming metal tracks.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Need for Speed: Most Wanted [US store] | [non-US stores] thumbs its nose at simulation racing, but still parks itself somewhat in the real world. Mostly, it’s all about speeding along like a maniac, with arcade-style controls reminiscent of classic console and arcade title OutRun 2. You’ll drift for miles, soar through the air in a manner cars are most definitely not designed for, and smash into other road users with merry abandon. But being that this is a Need for Speed title, all this happens in a grim and gritty city, packed with cops. It’s a bit too drab at times – we’d love to see a bit of blue sky – but is nonetheless a tremendous iOS racer that feels great to play. Our favorite iPad twin-stick shooters, FPS titles, precision shooting games, and scrolling shoot ’em ups.
Backfire ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Backfire features an exorcist trying to cleanse an ancient curse; for some reason, this is achieved by piloting a neon-green ship around hellish arenas. From the viscous walls come demons, emitting guttural growls as they close in for the kill. Naturally, the plan is to shoot them, but your ship only fires from behind. You must therefore forget everything you’ve learned about arcade blasters, and figure out how to obliterate ravenous foes while firing from your ship’s bottom. Although hard as nails, Backfire is a delight, with smart design, and a great ship upgrade path. The controls, note, are odd – tap where you want to head – meaning on iPad you’re best off playing on a table. But that merely means your thumbs won’t obscure an enemy desperate to tear you to pieces.
ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun is a murderously difficult yet gripping auto runner/shooter. Like the mutant offspring of ALONE… and Jetpack Joyride, it has you blast your way through neon-soaked corridors packed with enemies, spikes, bullets and massive saw blades. The tiny snag is the protagonist is a massive idiot. Rather than pick his way through the carnage, he belts along, using a gun to blast ahead (whereupon he loses altitude) or downward (in order to gain height). Juggling these minimal options while figuring out a route – and getting the timing right to stay alive – is extremely tricky. Amusingly, levels also contain collectables – a gift for ‘self-hating completionists’. If that all sounds a bit much, there is a slightly less deranged Shield mode, which will only leave you 50% of a nervous wreck.
Holedown ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Holedown has you fire strings of balls at numbered blocks to obliterate them and dig deeper toward a planet’s core. You have limited shots and a set number of balls per shot, so you must carefully aim and strategize, prioritizing ‘fixed’ bricks that won’t fall if those beneath them are destroyed. The basic premise may be familiar – plenty of freebies are broadly similar – but whereas they ruin things with difficulty gates and IAP, Holedown is a premium, polished game. Upgrades come by way of gems found during digs, rewarding skill rather than your ability to open your wallet. Although the game is repetitive, it’s more hypnotic than grindy, and fun when you nail a perfect shot, sending a group of balls through a tiny gap for them to bounce around like wasps trapped in a jar.
Jydge ($8.99/£8.99/AU$13.99)Jydge plonks you in a grubby, neon-lit dystopia, with nasty ideas about law enforcement. As the titular ‘jydge’, you go on missions that largely involve shooting bad guys, ‘confiscating’ loot, and rescuing the odd hostage. The anything-goes nature of Jydge initially wrong-foots, because the viewpoint and setup scream stealth shooter. You think you’ll be sneaking about, like a ninja with a gun. In reality, it’s often more like a brains-free twin-stick blaster. That said, Jydge does have some tactical nous when it comes to challenges that are initially impossible. Actions can affect levels permanently, meaning with a little thought – and quite a lot of violence – you can by way of a few ‘stacked’ attempts in fact clear a tricky scene in 20 seconds, assuming your thumbs can keep up as you revel in the mayhem.
Space Junk ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)Space Junk is what happens when someone rethinks classic arcade blaster Asteroids and goes all-out, souping it up for the iPad. The basics remain: you’re floating in space, blowing everything around you to smithereens. Big things, when blasted, split into smaller things. UFOs take occasional pot-shots. Anything that hits you kills you. But everything’s handled with such grace and good humor that you can’t help but be enthralled. The controls – despite being dreaded virtual buttons – work nicely, aided by subtle inertia on your little spaceman. For those who prefer precision over random blasting, there’s a bonus for careful shots. And even the varied level names and themes raise a smile, such as ‘So Long, Space Shuttle’ (blowing NASA’s finest to bits) and ‘Victorians Got Here’, with its steampunk space stations.
No Stick Shooter ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Mobile gaming’s early days featured all manner of straightforward shooters that had you desperately fending off hordes of aggressors coming from above. No Stick Shooter recalls Space Invaders, in enemies heading downwards towards your defenses, but also Missile Command, in that your weapon’s rooted to the spot, and success depends on precision shooting. However, unlike those games, No Stick Shooter is a resolutely modern affair. On selecting a weapon, shots are unleashed by tapping the display. For a very brief period, this is quite a leisurely process, picking off asteroids. But the game soon bares its teeth, flinging all manner of neon foes your way, which must be defeated by deft fingerwork and tactical weapon selection, including crackling lightning and gigantic red laser beams. On an iPhone this is a terrible game because it’s too fiddly; but on an iPad, No Stick Shooter is a wonderful, vibrant, thrilling shoot ’em up that’s not to be missed.
Steredenn ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Steredenn is an endless horizontal shooter, infused with the beating heart of the best retro blasters around, topped off with a head-nodding guitar-laden soundtrack. Unlike most games of its ilk, it works brilliantly on iPad. The responsive controls have you drag the left of the screen to move your ship, and tap the right to fire at incoming waves of enemies. A flick of your right thumb switches weapons, and if your ship darts beneath a digit, crosshairs pinpoint its position. And you’ll need that knowledge at all times, because enemies come thick and fast in all their chunky-pixel glory. But so too do power-ups – and learning the effectiveness of weapons against specific opponents boosts your long(er)-term survival. Well, that and sometimes bolting a massive whirling saw blade to your ship, like some kind of space lunatic. It’s superb, raucous, shooty fun.
Death Road to Canada ($13.99/£13.99/AU$21.99)Zombies have taken over the USA, and so it’s road trip time in Death Road to Canada, the aim being to flee to the safety of the land of the moose. The tiny snag: the aforementioned zombies, and the fact you start out in Florida. The game itself is an action-oriented role-playing title, switching between top-down shooting/scavenging scenes, choose-your-own-adventure text sections, and claustrophobic and downright terrifying sieges that lock you for a set time in a confined space with hundreds of the undead. Actually, it’s not that terrifying, given that Death Road to Canada looks like a game from the 1990s. But it is excellent fun, despite some slightly slippy virtual controls. (If you’ve an Made for iPhone controller, use that to boost your zombie-killing prowess.)
Darkside ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)In the inky blackness of space, humans have started mining massive space rocks, and it turns out aliens have a big problem with that. Enter: the hero of Darkside, who has to blow up said aliens and, for some reason, all the rocks the humans are supposed to be mining. Videogame logic! It all comes across like someone gleefully mashed together two classic arcade titles – Asteroids (shoot rocks until they’re tiny enough to obliterate) and Robotron (the original twin-stick shooter) – and wrapped the result around beautifully rendered planetoids. Although there’s a free version, splash out for the paid release and you get smart bombs in the arcade mode, and two extra modes to try: one being mission-based, and the other being a tough endless mode for cocky veterans. The end result is tons of shooty fun that’s accessible enough for newcomers, but that provides a stern test for even the swiftest of trigger fingers.
Tanks! - Seek & Destroy ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)One of the earliest 3D games was Battlezone, a tank warfare title at the time so realistic the US military commissioned a version from Atari to train gunners. iOS tribute Vector Tanks was subsequently gunned down by Atari lawyers, but its DNA survives in Tanks! - Seek & Destroy. Like Battlezone, Tanks pits you against an endless number of vector tanks, on a sparse battlefield. But this is a much faster, tougher game, with tilt-and-tap controls that put you more in mind of console racing games than a stodgy tank 'em up. The result is a relentlessly thrilling 3D shooter that marries the best of old-school smarts and modern mobile gaming.
AirAttack 2 ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)You get the feeling creators of classic vertically scrolling shooters would sit in front of AirAttack 2 in a daze, dumbfounded at what's possible on modern home-computing devices. That's not down to the gameplay, though: like its predecessor, AirAttack 2 is a straightforward shooter - you're piloting a fighter in World War II, downing enemies while optionally yelling "tally ho" at an annoyingly loud volume. But this World War II is decidedly different from the one that occurred in our reality: Germans own limitless squadrons and building-sized tanks (versus the Allies, seemingly relying on a single nutcase in a plane to win the war). It's the jaw-dropping visuals that really dazzle, effortlessly displaying swarms of enemies to down, colossal bosses to defeat, and a destructible environment to take out your frustrations on. For the low price (not least given that there's no IAP whatsoever), it's an insane bargain. Our favorite iPad extreme sports, soccer, tennis, golf, and management games.
Football Manager 2019 Touch ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)Football Manager 2019 Touch brings the bulk of the famous PC game to your tablet. You take the reins of a real-world soccer club, and try to ensure they don’t get a kicking – all by way of your tactical savvy and cunning player transfers. If you’ve not played before, this game has depth. It’s easy to feel swamped and overwhelmed as you work your way through the menus and options. But this is complexity married with friendliness – there’s some optional automation, and the overall experience feels more streamlined than the PC original. The main niggle is there aren’t many changes from 2018’s release. If you own last year’s game, don’t put in for a transfer just yet; but if you’re new to Football Manager on iPad, there’s no more compelling soccer management to be found on an Apple device.
Desert Golfing ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Desert Golfing is about the most minimal take on golf imaginable. The side-on game gives you a tee and a hole to reach. You drag to aim and set power, and then take your shot. Smack your ball out of bounds and you start from scratch; make the hole with one or more shots and you can continue. It feels never-ending, as you find yourself dozens and then hundreds of holes in, and it should get boring – but it really doesn’t. Your scorecard builds but ceases to have meaning as you relax into a hypnotic chill-out take on a sport that wasn’t exactly frenetic in the first place.
Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a racing game that has you holding the purse strings rather than the steering wheel. So instead of coaxing your car around complex turns, and blasting along straights, you manage your drivers (and their egos), plan HQ and car upgrades, and figure out when during races they should push their engines or change their tires. The game’s sense of balance is very smart. It’s immediate and intuitive enough for newcomers, with a gentle first season, but gradually unlocks complexity, depth, and challenge to make you stick around for the long term. And although races merely feature colored discs whizzing round diorama-like circuits, they are nonetheless tense, exciting affairs – not least when one of your drivers is vying for a podium finish.
Super Stickman Golf 3 (free + IAP)If you find golf a bit dull, Super Stickman Golf 3 offers a decidedly different take on the sport. Instead of rolling greens, a sprinkling of trees and the odd sandpit, golfers in this bizarre world pit their wits against gravity-free space-stations, floating islands, and dank caverns with glue-like surfaces. The game's side-on charms echo Angry Birds in its artillery core, in the sense that careful aiming is the order of the day. But this is a far smarter and more polished title, with some excellent and imaginative level design. With this third entry, you also get the chance to spin the ball, opening up the possibility of otherwise impossible shots. And once you're done with the solo mode, you can go online with asynchronous turn-based play and frenetic live races.
Table Tennis Touch (free + IAP)Table Tennis Touch brings ping pong to your iPad in glorious fashion. You get a set of training mini-games, to hone your aim and power, after which point you can delve into a full career mode. Matches involve you taking on a levitating bat rather than an actual person on the other side of the table. The places in which you play, though, are beautifully rendered, although your focus will mostly be on the tiny white ball being belted around as you smash and spin your way to the big leagues. This aspect of the game feels the part, capturing the speed and intensity of a properly gripping ping pong rally – and all without those moments where you subsequently step on and crush the ball like an idiot.
Touchgrind Skate 2 ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)Touchgrind Skate 2 presumably had a development process that began with someone realizing fingers look like legs if you put a tiny skateboard underneath them. And that’s what you get here – a virtual board, which you control with two digits. Although that might feel gimmicky, it’s intuitive. But don’t mistake Touchgrind Skate 2 for an arcade pushover. As you roam urban locations, tasked with performing gnarly stunts, you’ll wipe out – often. What you must do is learn to master the board, and then slowly chain together tricks. Only then will you get enough points to unlock new parks. On iPad in particular, this works very well, the larger screen giving you space to breathe. And it’s a great example of touchscreen innovation and physical interaction — Touchgrind Skate 2 just wouldn't be the same with a gamepad. Our favorite iPad card games, turn-based strategy titles, and digital board games.
Tropico ($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)Tropico is a dictator simulator masquerading as a strategy game. Well-known to PC players, Tropico finds you in control of a Caribbean island – and aiming to stay in power at all costs. The free-form nature of the game affords you various routes to dealing with your people. Resources must be carefully balanced, so you can build the structures that will make hard cash, and keep people entertained and healthy. And if everything kicks off, you must quickly figure out the best way to deal with uprisings. On iPad, this could all have been a complex mess, but the interface has been cleverly redesigned for touch, providing fast access to key commands through your ‘Dictator’s Desk’. It’s a great addition to a classic title – one that fully showcases the power that’s in the hands of any gamer armed with an iPad.
Kingdom Rush: Vengeance ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Kingdom Rush: Vengeance is the latest iteration of the best tower-defense game on mobile. This time, you get to play bad guy Vez’nan – a wizard tired of getting repeatedly beaten, and determined to conquer the kingdom. How conquest and tower defense align is hard to say, but it makes for a great game. As ever, you drop towers in pre-defined spots, unleash special powers, and send a mighty hero into the fray for ad hoc smashing. Like other entries in the Kingdom Rush series, Vengeance looks great, is finely balanced, and keeps things interesting with new surprises. There is one bad surprise, though, in IAP stinking up the place a bit. However, have patience, learn from your mistakes, and avoid temptation, and you’ll find there’s no need to pay more – right through to Vez’nan’s final victory.
Twinfold ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)Twinfold is a procedurally generated dungeon-crawling survival game, masquerading as a sliding puzzler. Or perhaps the reverse. Anyway, it’s really very good, although it does have an awful lot going on. The basic goal is to keep merging golden idols to increase their value, while simultaneously avoiding angry faces and/or smashing them into walls. Eat an idol and your XP and health go up, but then all the walls in the maze change, holes appear, and new enemies join the fray. Twinfold is quite the juggling act, but one with a cleverly conceived mix of immediacy and depth. The basic concept is easy to grasp, but in order to master the game and have any chance of relatively long-term survival, you must figure out all its quirks. Doing so is well worth the effort.
Reigns: Game of Thrones ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Reigns: Game of Thrones marries a swipe-based card interface, kingdom management and a hit TV show. Taking the role of a claimant to the Iron Throne, you rule the Seven Kingdoms with a single digit. Swipe left or right to respond to what’s asked of you, and your fortunes with the bank, people, army and church shift and change accordingly. Fail to balance them, and you’ll be brutally killed. Given that Reigns: Game of Thrones was designed for one-thumb play on a phone, it’s interesting to discover that it’s excellent on iPad. Instead of a blown-up iPhone interface, you instead get a visually arresting ‘widescreen’ take; and the game’s surprising depth makes it suitable for longer gaming sessions while you’re sitting on your own iron throne (or, if you prefer, a nice comfy chair).
Euclidean Skies ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Euclidean Skies is the follow-up to the superb Euclidean Lands, a turn-based strategy game that takes place on floating constructions akin to Rubik’s Cubes. In that title, manipulating the landscape is as important as the physical moves the protagonist makes – and that’s even more overt in this sequel. In Euclidean Skies, each individual ‘block’ within the landscape has the potential to be spun about any axis. This provides scope for brain-bendingly complex solutions, whether battling a gigantic monster by obliterating its spine with rotating chunks of land, or gradually unraveling what was once a flat surface, creating ‘arms’ to prod switches and fashion bridges to doors. This isn’t an easy game, but it is hugely satisfying when you crack one of its puzzles. And, like the original, it also feels unique, which alone makes it worthy of consideration.
FTL: Faster Than Light ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)FTL: Faster Than Light is a real-time strategy game that finds you hurtling through space, trying to get essential data to the safety of the federation. Unfortunately, you’re being pursued by shooty rebels, and so must keep jumping to new sectors. Every time you do, surprises await – you might make some cash, or end up in a frantic scrap with pirates. During action scenes, you direct your crew to make repairs, and fling explosives and lasers in your enemy’s general direction. At any point, you can pause to take a breather and strategize a bit. The game is procedurally generated, and so every mission is different. But there are some constants: pitch-perfect controls, a sense of immersion, and palpable tension when half your ship’s on fire but you know one carefully aimed shot will obliterate your foe.
Infinite West (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP)Infinite West casts you as a cowboy in the wilderness, taking down a gang that murdered his family. That hackneyed scenario might put you in mind of a shoot ’em up, and so it’s a surprise to find Infinite West is more like chess – only with pieces shooting each other. The turn-based play across semi-randomized levels forces you to consider every action. Your gunslinger can only move one space horizontally or vertically at a time, and each foe has unique weaponry ranges. Further complexity comes from a health counter, a ‘dash’ power and an ongoing upgrades system. There are echoes of Square Enix’s GO games, but if anything Infinite West has more depth and brains. You’ll certainly need your wits about you when, many levels into a mission, you suddenly find yourself faced with a dozen gang members intent on your untimely demise.
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (free + $59.99/£54.99/AU$89.99 IAP)Sid Meier’s Civilization VI properly showcases the iPad’s potential as a gaming device. Previous takes on Civilization for iPad have been weirdly cartoonish and simplified. Not Civilization VI – this is the game you get on PC, with all its inherent depth and complexity. This means you get one of the finest 4X (eXplore; eXpand; eXploit; eXterminate) games around. You aim to make your civilization dominant by becoming a trading giant, heading to the stars, or getting all stabby/shooty until no-one else is left standing. The game demands time and attention, is hugely rewarding, and should keep you going for months. Just as well, given its price tag. Still, you get 60 moves for free, and ‘proper’ games cost real money. Bar some slightly blurry visuals on iPad Pro, this is the real deal – one of the best games in existence, carefully optimized for the touchscreen.
Freeways ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Freeways explores interchange design for autonomous vehicles, which sounds deathly dull. It isn’t. Just as Mini Metro coaxed something gorgeous and essential from underground railway maps, so too does Freeways create a hugely entertaining game from the drudgery of urban planning. Each map sector provides you with highways that must be connected to each other. Hold a sign and you get an idea of traffic flow and the links you must make. You then scribble roads down, adding overpasses and increasingly complex routes when the realization dawns about how tough this task can be. The drawing tools and visuals are crude, and there’s no undo – mess up and you must start that particular section of the map from scratch. But the underlying gameplay is enthralling, not least when you tap ‘simulate’ to watch your layout’s traffic move in fast forward, hoping to avoid a dreaded traffic jam.
Card Thief ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)It takes quite a lot to make a solitaire game tense, but Card Thief manages, mostly by smashing dealing out cards into turn-based stealth-oriented puzzling. As the titular villain, you map out pathways across the cards on the screen, figuring out how to grab loot without losing too many stealth points, which are depleted on battling adversaries. Repeat play is rewarded by improving your strategies, unlocking new kit to help increase your score, and eventually finding your way to new missions with different foes. Like any take on solitaire, Card Thief does get a bit repetitive, but this is also a game you’ll be able to happily play a round of a day for many weeks, gradually improving your ability to sneak about and become a master pickpocket.
Concrete Jungle ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Most city building games are about micro-management – juggling budgets, people’s demands, and limited space. But Concrete Jungle rethinks the genre as a brilliant brain-bending puzzler. And here, restrictions regarding where you can build are of paramount importance. At any point, you have seven rows with six lots where you can place a building. Said buildings are served semi-randomly from a card deck. Each column needs to have enough housing points for it to vanish and unlock more space on which to build. The snag: other buildings boost or reduce the points allocated to adjacent lots. You must therefore take great care to place your factories (bad) and parks (good), realizing that any complacency may be severely punished several moves down the line, when you suddenly find yourself faced with a slum of your own making.
Mini Metro ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Traveling on underground railways can be a fairly hideous experience, which is perhaps why Mini Metro is such a pleasant surprise. The game is all about designing and managing a subway, using an interface akin to a minimal take on the schematics usually found hanging on subway walls. And it’s glorious. Periodically, new stations appear. You drag lines between them, and position trains on them, in order to shepherd passengers to their stops. All the while, movement generates a hypnotic, ambient soundtrack. Over time, things admittedly become more fraught than during these relaxing beginnings. The demands of an increasing number of passengers forces you to juggle trains and rearrange lines until you’re inevitably overwhelmed. But the nature of the game is such that this never frustrates – instead, you’ll want to take another journey - hugely unlike when suffering the real thing.
Solitairica ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)RPG combat games usually involve doddering about dungeons with a massive stick, walloping goblins. But in Solitairica, cards are your weapon; or, more accurately, cards are the means by which you come by weapons. Your aim is to trudge to a castle, defeating enemies along the way. You do so in a simplified solitaire, where you string together combos by removing cards one higher or lower than your current card. Doing so collects energies used to unleash defensive or offensive spells. Unfortunately, your enemies also have skills, and survival requires a mix of luck and planning to defeat them. This involves managing your inventory so you're always armed with the best capabilities, while probably simultaneously wondering why the hero didn't arm themselves with a bloody great sword rather than a deck of cards.
Exploding Kittens ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)High-octane card games don’t seem the greatest fit for iPad gaming, but Exploding Kittens perfectly captures the manic chaos of the Oatmeal-illustrated original. As per that version, this is Russian roulette with detonating cats. Players take turns to grab a card, and if they get an exploding kitten, they must defuse it or very abruptly find themselves out of the game. Strategy comes by way of action cards, which enable you to peek at the deck, skip a turn, steal cards from an opponent, and draw from the bottom of the deck “like the baby you are”. Local and online multiplayer is supported, timers stop people from dawdling, and a ‘chance of kitten’ meter helps everyone keep track of the odds. Large hands of cards rather irritatingly require quite a bit of swiping to peruse (although cards can be reordered), but otherwise this is first-rate and amusingly deranged multiplayer mayhem.
Warbits ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)Nintendo fans probably wonder why the big N hasn't yet brought the superb Advance Wars to iPad, but Warbits now scratches that particular itch. However, although Warbits is influenced by Nintendo's turn-based strategy title, it isn't a copy — the iOS game brings plenty of new thinking to the table and is very much optimised for the iPad. Working with 16 varied units, you conquer a series of battlefields by directing your troops, making careful note of your strengths and the enemy's relevant weaknesses. All the while, Warbits merrily has you and your opponent trading barbs, often about subjects such as whether tomatoes are fruit, because that's the kind of thing you'd go to war over. Finish the 20-mission campaign and you'll have a decent grasp of Warbits, and can then venture online to take on other human players across dozens of different maps. With superb visuals, enough new ideas over the game that inspired it, and a single one-off price-tag, Warbits is a must-buy for any iPad-owning strategy nut.
Hitman GO ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)It's great to see Square Enix do something entirely different with Hitman GO, rather than simply converting its free-roaming 3D game to touchscreens. Although still echoing the original series, this touchscreen title is presented as a board game of sorts, with turn-based actions against clockwork opposition. You must figure out your way to the prize, without getting knocked off (the board). It's an oddly adorable take on assassination, and one of the best iOS puzzlers. There's also extra replay value in the various challenges (such as grabbing a briefcase or not killing guards), each of which requires an alternate solution to be found.
Rome: Total War ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)Rome: Total War revamps a much-loved and genre-defining strategy classic for your iPad. You start the game as one of six factions, aiming to throttle enemies and conquer the known world. To succeed, you must wield your tactical brain, as well as demonstrating diplomatic and fighting skills. You might wonder whether complex battle simulators can really shine on iPad, but creators Feral Interactive fully optimized the game for touch. And there’s something special about freeing yourself from sitting in front of a PC, and instead peering at a 3D battlefield with thousands of units, all while curled up on the sofa. Our favorite iPad games that have you battle with crosswords, anagrams, and letters.
Sidewords ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)Each puzzle in Sidewords starts with an empty grid that has words along its top and left edges. You select letters from both to create new words. Each chosen letter shoots a line into the grid, and the squares where those lines meet become solid blocks, which display the words you’ve created. The idea is to fill in every square on the grid. This is easier said than done – you might consider yourself a genius on finding a massive, extremely clever word, but later find your grid peppered with tiny gaps. Completed words can be removed with a tap at any point, Sidewords clearly wanting you to experiment and try new things on your way to a solution. It’s a great concept – immediate, fresh, and also very challenging when you start tackling larger grids.
Supertype ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Supertype is a strange word game, in that it’s primarily interested in the physical form of letters and how they interact in animated 2D environments. Each puzzle tasks you with using the letters to collide with dots that are littered about – you type some characters, press the tick mark, and watch as everything starts to move. One puzzle has a dot up some stairs, and is easily dealt with by placing a lowercase l on each step, and a p to knock them all down. Elsewhere, you use letters to swing from the scenery like tiny action heroes, or roundish characters that rain down like a typographic avalanche. It’s great stuff – imaginative, original, and definitely not yet another Scrabble clone!
SpellTower ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)There’s something gleefully classic about SpellTower. It marries very old-school word games – in the sense of paper-based crosswords and word searches – with much-loved arcade puzzlers. The result is the best word game on iOS. Tower mode has you face a stack of letters, tapping out snaking words that disappear when submitted, the tiles above then falling into the gaps. A keen sense of planning is required to balance letter stacks and ensure tiles aren’t left stranded. Additional modes soon open up: Puzzle adds a new row of letters for every word you submit; Rush throws in a timer; and Debate pits two players against each other. iPad Pro owners also get Super Tower mode, offering a colossal 432 tiles and the potential for blockbuster scores – if you can find the right words lurking within the jumble.
Puzzlejuice ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)Puzzlejuice shoves Tetris and SpellTower into a blender, adds a load of power-ups, and leaves you – the somewhat bewildered player – to make sense of the chaos. It’s entirely appropriate that the game states it will “punch your brain in the face”. It starts with The Tetris bit, falling blocks being used to create lines. But complete lines don’t vanish – they turn into letters. Tapping blocks of color gets you further letter tiles. You then find words snaking through the jumble to submit, freeing up room for new shapes falling into the well. On iPhone, it’s all a bit too fiddly to be fun; but the iPad’s extra acres transform Puzzlejuice into an entertaining and quirky genre mash-up.
Scrabble Premium ($9.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)Scrabble Premium [US store] | [non-US stores] is the famous word game on your Apple tablet. You and your opponents use dished out letters to gradually build a crossword. Cleverly utilizing a combination of show-off big words and/or score-boosting board tiles will have you zoom ahead of opponents, who’ll hate you for repeatedly placing the Q in qi on a triple letter tile. On the iPad, the game works nicely, displaying the complete board without scrolling, and at a finger-friendly size. It includes a dictionary, and chat for when playing human opponents. Computer players exist, too, although they do love using bafflingly obscure words – and chastising you when you fail to do the same, which isn’t very congenial (12 points).
AlphaPit ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)AlphaPit is a cleverly designed word game based around grids of letters. The aim is to remove them all. The snag is that the letters are jumbled up, and you must therefore strategically remove words, otherwise you can end up with tiny islands of characters that are impossible to use. Fortunately, the game provides you with special powers to ease your progress: you can shuffle letters, undo an error, or merrily blow up a tile that’s getting in your way. But the smartest bit about the game is when you realize these are all hand-crafted puzzles. AlphaPit isn’t random – it’s all about you finding the best solution for any given problem.
Typeshift (free + IAP)Typeshift at its core is a mix of traditional word games that you might find in a newspaper – crosswords; anagrams; word searches. But this is all presented on your iPad in an ultra-modern mix of minimal visuals and swish tactile gameplay. The basic idea is to slide columns of letters up and down, to make complete words in the central row. Do this and the letter tiles change color. Change them all to complete a puzzle – unless you’re playing one that also requires you to match completed words to crossword clues. Each puzzle is hand-crafted, and they’re sold in sets. But even if you don’t fancy splashing out too often, TypeShift gives you a new puzzle every day. Either way, it’s a must-install. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Best website builder for musicians in 2019 Posted: 15 Apr 2019 09:00 AM PDT A host of different services will now let you put a website online, quickly and easily, no coding skills required – but if you're looking for something to show off your talents as a musician then you need a more specific set of features. Primarily, a way of uploading and sharing your tunes in a simple and secure way, even if it's just snippets of songs rather than whole tracks or indeed albums. If you're a musician for hire then it can be useful to have some kind of booking system in place as well, or at least a contact form. On top of that, there are all the extras you might be interested in, like support for your own domain name or gallery pages to show just how many people came to your last gig. Here are our picks for the best website builder for musicians to create a presence online.
Bandzoogle You won't find too many website builder services aimed specifically at musicians, but Bandzoogle gleefully jumps in to provide a bespoke service specifically for bands and artists. While it lacks some of the polish of the big names, because it focuses on the musician niche in particular, it has everything you should need. That includes, of course, the ability to upload your own tracks and let visitors stream them from your website. You can get tracks organized into entire albums if you really want to go to town, or just share single tracks. And then, as well as that, you've got simple ways to post gig dates, blog updates, and so on. Whether you need to build a contact form or a video diary, Bandzoogle makes it easy, no coding required – you can really make a site that's as simple or as complex as you like, and the end result is something that looks like you hired a specialist. You've got over 100 themes to choose from, they're all straightforward to edit and tweak, and connecting up social accounts (including the likes of SoundCloud and Bandcamp) only takes a few clicks as well. As an added bonus, you can sell merchandise and tickets right through Bandzoogle as well.
Wix Check out any list of website builders for any purpose and Wix is likely to feature on it, but not only does this service earn that high reputation, it also has some useful tools for musicians – not least the ability to upload your own tracks so visitors to your website can listen to them without any extra software or browser extensions. Platforms that you're probably already using, like Bandsintown and Songkick, can plug directly into your Wix site: you can set up integrations like these in just a few clicks. What's more, you can add on an e-commerce portal to your site, for the purposes of shifting albums, T-shirts, or whatever else you need to sell. Wix has a very solid selection of templates, with more than 500 to choose from, and if you delve into the music section you'll see there are options for solo artists, bands, DJs, producers, or anyone else connected to the industry. Have a click around these templates to see the kind of sites it's possible to create. After that you've got all the features Wix has become known for: a site editor that's a breeze to use whether or not you know what CSS stands for, custom domain name support, easy blogging and simple social media support, and a free tier that lets you work out whether Wix is for you before you part with any cash.
Music Glue Music Glue is a little different to the other website builder services we've featured here: it focuses first and foremost on the merchandise and ticketing aspects of the music business, and indeed powers the online stores for some of the biggest names in the industry. Its pricing system is unusual too, taking a 10% cut of whatever you sell rather than a flat fee. That does at least mean you won't be out of pocket if your online marketplace doesn't attract much attention to begin with. There are no additional fees for payment processing, and customers can rock up with debit or credit cards, or PayPal. Music Glue is less impressive on the website building side, although you do get the basics – a choice of themes for the site attached to your online shop, the option to bring over your own custom domain name, tools for tweaking the code and layout of your site, and so on. It's possible to plug in social media accounts and even set up a mailing list. If your priority is the mechanics of selling music and tickets to your audience, then Music Glue is a good bet, and has some very famous clients on its books, as we mentioned. If you don't really have anything to sell right now and want to spend more time fiddling with a site design and layout, then maybe look elsewhere.
Difymusic French site builder Difymusic isn't the most well-known service out there, and doesn't have the same breadth of tools and features as some of the big names – but where it really comes into its own is in getting your music online quickly and easily. If you'd rather just get your stuff up quickly with a few pictures and links, rather than spend ages choosing a theme and editing HTML, Difymusic could be for you. It relies on plug-ins – like Spotify or SoundCloud for getting your music up, for example – but it supports an awful lot of them, so you're bound to find something that works. If you want to sell merch and tickets, then you can pay to add that on your main site, with a one-time €9.99 setup fee (about £9 or $12) and then 5% commission based on sales, but the basics are free. Connect up your Facebook page and your YouTube channel and you're good to go in just a few minutes. Admittedly the choice of templates and editing options aren't very strong, but the designs you can play around with are decent enough, and certainly won't put anyone off your music. Difymusic lets you get started quickly, and scale up as required.
Tumblr Tumblr isn't a website builder in the conventional sense – it's more of a half blogging, half social media platform – but if you take a longer look at what Tumblr has to offer, it's actual very appealing for musicians. For one thing, it's completely free to use, plus it already attracts a busy community of creatives. You can post up to one 10MB MP3 file every day, as well as links, text posts, videos, photos and more. Those MP3s appear as streamable files for visitors to your site – they can listen to the tunes in their browser, no plug-ins or extra software required, so it's a great way of showcasing your talents without paying anything. If Tumblr was simply a blogging platform and that was it, we probably wouldn't recommend the service, but it also supports pages alongside your blog (for a gallery or a contact form), custom domain names (so you can pay extra for whatever URL name you like), and posting from mobile apps too. On top of all that there are a host of themes to choose from, some of which cost money, but many are free, and a lot of them would suit a musician's portfolio. If the theme isn't exactly to your liking, you can tweak it with the integrated options or your own CSS, and switching between themes whenever you like is simple, too.
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| Amazon sale: Prime Day prices today on the 4K Fire TV stick, Cube and more Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:52 AM PDT Spring is officially here and to celebrate Amazon has announced a limited-time sale on some of its most popular devices. You can find Prime Day prices on Amazon products that include tablets, streaming devices, home security cameras and more. Amazon also has the 2nd generation Fire TV stick, and the Fire TV Cube discounted today as well. The Fire TV stick is on sale for only $29.99, and while it lacks 4K streaming, it does offer an Alexa remote so you can stream your favorite content using your voice. The Fire TV Cube is a hands-free 4K streaming media player that features Amazon Alexa and a built-in speaker. The Fire TV Cube is on sale today for $79.99. Amazon deals:You can shop more Fire TV device deals with the best Amazon Fire TV deals, prices and sales that are happening now. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| OnePlus 7 details may be officially revealed on April 17 Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:46 AM PDT We’ll be getting some official details about an upcoming OnePlus device – likely the OnePlus 7 – on Wednesday, April 15, according to a tweet straight from the company’s founder and CEO Pete Lau. It’s entirely possible Lau wasn’t referring to the OnePlus 7 (which hasn’t even been officially named), as he only mentions “the new device” in his tweet. He could be referring to the company’s upcoming 5G phone, which may or may not be a 5G version of the OnePlus 7. But given that the company traditionally releases its newly-numbered phones in May or June – a leak this morning claimed that the OnePlus 7 will launch on May 14 – it’s likely Lau will share details about that phone in a full post.
Plenty of devicesPlenty of rumors and leaks have come out for the OnePlus 7, including a possible OnePlus 7 Pro arriving alongside a standard version of the phone. Presumably, it will follow convention and have a larger screen and/or higher specs and have a higher starting price than the standard version. There’s also the 5G phone, which rumors suggest may be a OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. All of this has yet to be officially confirmed - all we’ve heard (from Lau himself, no less) is that the 5G device OnePlus is cooking up will cost $200 to $300 more than the 4G version. Sit tight for the first company-approved details to come later this week.
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| The best free PDF to JPG converter 2019 Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:45 AM PDT PDFs are designed for easy access on any device running any operating system, but sometimes JPGs are more convenient. You might want to make some small changes without investing in a costly premium PDF editor, for example, or embed it within the body of a web page or email. A free PDF to JPG converter will make that task effortless – you just need to choose the right one. There are online tools for the job, but they can only convert one document at a time, and can often only handle a single page. They're slow too, and you have to entrust your documents to a third party. The ideal PDF to JPG converter should tackle as many documents as you like at once, and process them as quickly as your PC's hardware will allow. We've put the best free conversion tools to the test so you know which one will get the job done as quickly and easily as possible.
1. DocuFreezerIf you need to convert files to image formats - or PDF - DocuFreezer has you covered. Here, we are concerned with its PDF to JPG conversion capabilities, but it can also convert other file types, and you can choose from other output formats including PNG, TIFF and XPS. One of the great things about DocuFreezer is that you can convert singles files, or you can work with a number of files at once - either by adding them one by one to a list, or by adding entire folders to the work queue. Conversion is pretty fast, and there are hardly any options to worry about. After selecting your output format and where you would like to save the file, you can choose between colour or black and white output, set the quality, and configure resolution. Just enough options to get done what you need quite efficiently.
2. Free PDF to JPG converterStarting off with its name, Free PDF to JPG Converter keeps everything as simple as it needs to be; it just gets the job done with as little fuss as possible. There are virtual no options to think about in the program, and while that may seem like a bad thing, if you're just looking for quick, frill-free conversion, it's perfect. You can convert individual files, multiple files from different locations, or files stored in a single folder. There is no support for files other than PDFs, and there are no output formats other than JPEG - the name really does tell you everything you need to know. Conversion is pleasingly swift and the only real downside to the program is the ad panel that is on constant display, but you'll quickly learn to ignore it. Converted files are high quality, so you couldn't really ask for more.
3. PDFMate Free PDF ConverterLike other tools we've included here, PDFMate Free PDF Converter can be used to convert a single file, or several at once. It's worth pointing out right from the start that conversion can be a little on the slow side, but it's not so marked as to be a real issue - it's just worth bearing in mind. As an added bonus, the program can convert PDFs to a number of formats, including DOC, EPUB, HTML and TXT - it can also convert files into PDFs - but for the moment it is conversion to JPEG that we're interested in. As with other similar program, you can convert files individually, or en masse, and things are kept simple thanks to the limited number of settings you have to consider. Really, the only options are to choose between normal or high-quality images, and whether each page should be saved as a separate image. It's simple, but it gets the job done.
4. PDF to JPEGOne for fan of Microsoft Store apps, PDF to JPEG is available for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The app is free, but it is ad-supported, so this may sway your decision about whether to use it or not. Like so many Store apps, PDF to JPG has a single function and it approaches it with a minimum of fuss. There are literally no options to configure - unless you count selecting which folder you would like to save images to, that is! Simply load your PDF into the app (you can also select an entire folder full of PDFs if you want) and hit the 'Convert' button. It's as simple as that. The only thing to be aware of is that the 'Convert' button will not become available until you select a target folder - this is something that catches a few people out, as you'll see if you scan through Store reviews.
5. Boxoft PDF To JPG ConverterDespite the name, Boxoft PDF To JPG Converter can also convert your PDFs into BMP, PNG and TIFF formats, but the options are the same for each. If you only want to convert a few pages of a PDF, this is an option that is available to you, and you can choose an automatic naming system to give your files a consistent look. The focus of the program is really on batch conversion of files, but there's nothing to stop you from using to convert single files - it's pleasing quick in either case. There are a couple of very nice extras available in this software. You can use Hot Directories mode to monitor a folder for new PDFs and have them automatically converted to JPEG as soon as they are detected. There's also a command line option if you would like to create batch files to automate tasks with other tools. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The best iPhone 7 Plus deals and UK contracts in April 2019 Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:45 AM PDT This plus sized iPhone from Apple was launched alongside the iPhone 7 in September 2016. Until the iPhone X landed, we thought it was the best iPhone on the market, with big improvements on the camera and battery fronts from previous large-screen iPhones. If you're looking for a big screen iPhone that won't break the bank then the 7 Plus could be a good fit. Prices fell very nicely on the advent of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus and it is far cheaper than the big iPhones like the XS Max - if you go for the earlier iteration you could even end up paying around £300 less than it costs to get the newer massive iPhones. 7 Plus prices can now be found for less than £30 per month. If you're dead set on grabbing this huge iPhone now, then to help you navigate we've got a handy comparison tool which is designed to help you zero in on the cheapest deals. Underneath that we've chosen what we think are the best value options overall for the biggest networks out there. And if you still need some persuading, we've added a brief review of the iPhone 7 Plus to the bottom of the page. See also: iPhone 8 Plus deals | iPhone 8 deals | Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus deals | iPhone 7 deals | iPhone 6S Plus deals | Mobile phone deals
Top 5 best iPhone 7 Plus deals this month:Unlike some other sites we don't manipulate the order of these deals for commercial gain, so the handpicked deals below really are the best iPhone 7 Plus deals for EE, O2, Three and Vodafone right now. Don't forget - if you're looking for something a little different, our comparison widget above is the perfect way to sniff out your perfect deal. This page is for the best iPhone 7 Plus deals in the UK, but if you're after Australian deals, check out the best Australian iPhone 7 Plus deals page.
There's no denying the iPhone 7 Plus's brilliance - just look at the fantastic cameras, supercharged performance and waterproof design. But that doesn't disguise the fact that it doesn't build massively on the iPhone 6S. If you want true innovation, you'll have to pay the extra for 2017's iPhone X. Read more in TechRadar's full iPhone 7 Plus review This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:40 AM PDT In October 2016 DNS provider Dyn was hit by a major DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack by an army of IoT devices which had been hacked specially for the purpose. Over 14,000 domains using Dyn's services were overwhlemed and became unreachable including big names like Amazon, HBO, and PayPal. According to research by Cloudflare the average cost of infrastructure failure to businesses is $100,000 (£75,000) per hour. How then can you make sure that your organization doesn't fall victim to this kind of attack. In this guide you'll discover major infrastructure providers who have the necessary digital muscle to protect against attacks designed to flood your network capacity. You'll also discover which providers can offer protection against more sophisticated application (layer 7) attacks, which can be carried out without a huge number of hacked computers (sometimes known as a botnet).
Project Shield Project Shield is the creation of Jigsaw, an offshoot Google's parent company Alphabet. Development began several years ago under George Conard in the wake of attacks on election monitoring and human rights related websites in the Ukraine. Project Shield is able to filter potential malicious traffic by acting as a reverse proxy which sits between a website and the internet at large, filtering connection requests. If a connection seems to be from a legitimate visitor Project Shield permits the connection request. If a connection request is determined to be bad e.g. multiple connection attempts from the same IP address, then it is blocked. This system makes Project Shield extremely easy to implement simply by changing your servers DNS settings. Any power users reading may wonder how filtering traffic via a proxy will work with SSL. Fortunately, Jigsaw has thought of this and has put together a comprehensive tutorial to make sure secure connections to your site work seamlessly. Several other tutorials are also available in the support section. Currently Project Shield is only available for media, election monitoring and human rights related websites. The primary focus is also on small under resourced websites which cannot afford expensive hosting solutions to protect themselves for DDoS. If your organization doesn't match these requirements you may have to consider an alternative solution such as Cloudflare.
Cloudflare Anyone who has used the Internet in the last few years will be familiar with Cloudflare as many major websites make use of its protection. Although Cloudflare is based in the US it maintains a 165 data centers around the world: an infrastructure to rival Google's. This maximizes your sites chances of staying online. Every Cloudflare user can choose to activate the 'I'm under attack' mode which can protect against even the most sophisticated of DoS attacks by presenting a Javascript challenge. As a matter of routine Cloudflare also acts as a reverse proxy sitting between visitors and your site host to filter traffic in much the same way as Jigsaw's Project Shield. In March 2019, introduced Spectrum for UDP, which provides DDoS protection and firewalling for unreliable protocols. Visitors making connection requests have to run a gauntlet of sophisticated filters including site reputation, whether their IP has been Blacklisted and if the HTTP header seems suspicious. HTTP requests are finger printed to protect against known Botnets. As an industry giant, Cloudflare can easily leverage its position by sharing intel across the 7+ million websites it manages. Cloudflare offers a free basic package which includes unmetered DDoS mitigation. For those who are willing to pay for a Cloudflare business subscription (prices start at $200 or £149 a month), more advanced protection is available such as custom SSL certificate uploads.
AWS Shield AWS Shield protection is provided by the good people of Amazon web services. The 'Standard' tier is available to all AWS customers at no extra charge. This is ideal as many small businesses choose to host their websites with Amazon. AWS Shield Standard is available to all customers at no extra charge. It protects against more typical network (layer 3) and transport (layer 4) attacks when used Amazon's Cloud Front and Route 53 services. This should put off all but the most determined hackers. However, your bandwidth e.g. 15Gbp/s will still be limited by the size of you Amazon instance making it feasible for hackers to carry out a DoS attack if they have sufficient resources. Worse still you remain responsible for paying for the extra traffic to your instance. To mitigate this Amazon also offers AWS Shield Advanced. A Subscription include DDoS cost protection, which can save you from a huge spike in your monthly usage bill if you are the victim of an attack. AWS Shield Advanced can also deploy your ACL's (Access Control Lists) to the border of the AWS network itself giving you protection against even the largest of attacks. Advanced Subscribers also benefit from a round the clock DRT (DDoS response team) as well as detailed metrics on any attacks on your instances. The piece of mind afforded by AWS Shield Advanced is expensive however. You must be willing to subscribe for a minimum of one year for a price of $3,000 (£2,200) a month. This is in addition to data transfer usage costs which you can cover on a 'pay as you go' basis.
Microsoft Azure Like Amazon, Microsoft offers the option to rent service space via their service Azure. All members benefit from basic DDoS protection. Features include always on traffic monitoring and real time mitigation of network (layer 3) attacks for any public IP addresses you use. This is the very same type of protection afforded to Microsoft's own online services and the entire resources of Azure's network can be used to absorb DDoS attacks. For organisations in need of more sophisticated protection Azure also offers a 'Standard' tier. This has been widely praised for being very easy to enable, requiring just a few clicks of your mouse. Crucially Azure does not require you to make any changes to your apps although the standard tier does offer protection against application (layer 7) DDoS attacks via the app gateway web app firewall. Azure monitor can show you real time metrics if an attack does take place. These are retained for 30 days and can be exported for further study if you wish. Azure constantly checks web traffic to your resources. If these exceed a pre-defined threshold, DDoS mitigation is automatically launched. This includes inspecting packets to make sure they aren't malformed or spoofed as well as using rate limiting. Standard protection is currently $2,944 (£2,204) per month plus data charges for up to 100 resources. Protection applies equally to all resources. In other words you cannot tailor DDoS mitigation for individual ones.
Verisign DDoS Protection Update: Verisign's security services are transferred to Neustar, but the features and functionality mentioned in the review stayed relatively the same. Verisign is almost as old as the Internet itself. Since 1995 it has grown from a simple Certificate Authority to a major player in the Network Services industry. Verisign DDoS protection operates in the Cloud. Users can choose to redirect connection attempts with a simple change of their DNS (Domain Name Server) settings. Traffic is sent to Verisign for checking to prevent network attacks. Verisign analysis all traffic thoroughly before redirecting. As Verisign operates two of the thirteen global route name servers it should come as no surprise that the organization also maintains several dedicated DDoS "scrubbing centers". These analyze traffic and filter out bad connection requests. The combined infrastructure runs to almost 2TB/s and can block even the most overwhelming DDoS attacks. This is largely achieved via Athena, Verisign's threat mitigation platform. Athena is broadly divided into three elements. The 'Shield' filters network (layer 3) and transport (layer 4) attacks via DPI (Deep Packet Inspection), blacklists & whitelists and site reputation management. The Athena 'proxy' inspects HTTP headers for bad traffic during initial connection attempts. The 'proxy' and 'shield' are supported by Athena's 'load balancer' which helps to prevent application (layer 7) attacks. The customer portal displays detailed reports on traffic and allows you to configure your threat management, for example by creating connection blacklists. For users who are reluctant to deploy everything to the Cloud, Verisign also offers OpenHybrid which can be installed onsite. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons (Antoine Lamielle) This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The best iPhone 8 Plus deals and UK contracts in April 2019 Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:24 AM PDT Apple is the king of brilliant, yet expensive phones. With devices such as the iPhone XS Max and XR costing eye-watering prices, it can make sense to go back a models and pick yourself up one of Apple's older plus size models. This is where the iPhone 8 Plus deals come in. If you want one of the newest large screened Apple smartphones, but the price of the iPhone XS make you feel dizzy, then the 8 Plus will be the one for you. So how are iPhone 8 Plus prices looking. On average, if you shop wisely (using our price comparison chart below) you'll save yourself around £300 if you go for this handset over the iPhone X. We've seen monthly tariffs as low as the £25 region if you're prepared to stick a wedge down upfront. Still feeling a bit overwhelmed by these prices? Don't forget that iPhone 8 deals are also available if you'd prefer the smaller smartphone, along with the smaller prices. And you can save £10 on the upfront cost of any iPhone 8 Plus deal at Mobiles.co.uk by using the voucher code 10OFF at the checkout. See also: iPhone X deals | iPhone 8 deals | iPhone XS Max | Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals | Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus deals | Best mobile phone deals | Best SIM only deals The 5 best iPhone 8 Plus deals you can get in the UK right now:iPhone 8 Plus price: how much does it cost?A mighty £699. That's how much the 64GB iPhone 8 Plus will cost you in the UK according to the RRP. That might seem like a lot but that's one hundred pounds cheaper than when it first came out. Need more memory? Then your only other option is spending an extra £150 and grabbing a £849 256GB iPhone 8 Plus. If you opt to buy the iPhone 8 Plus upfront without a contract you will save money in the long run, but of course £699 is a lot of money to pay. If you can afford it though it the way to go once you pair it with a cheap SIM only deal.
This is the iPhone you want if you can't quite afford the iPhone X or iPhone XS Max. It's got the larger battery, same powerful innards and strong camera. If you don't mind the poorer screen, it's a good option - and the screen is still a beaut. And we prefer it quite a lot more to the regular iPhone 8. Read more in TechRadar's full iPhone 8 Plus review This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:22 AM PDT The easiest way to make a PDF is to design it in a program you’re familiar with (like a free word processor, desktop publishing application or photo editor), then export it in PDF format. However, that isn’t always possible. You might be using a program that doesn’t offer PDF as an option, you might want to create a PDF from a web page, or you might have several documents that you want to convert to PDFs at once. That’s where dedicated PDF makers come in. These programs act like a printer driver, and enable you to make PDFs in any application that has a ‘Print’ option. That’s not all – a good PDF maker will also include handy features like the ability to split and merge PDFs, extract specific pages, and adjust security settings. Here’s our pick of the best.
Bullzip is a superb PDF maker, and the basic version is free for personal use. Image credit: bullzip.com Bullzip PDF Printer Community Edition is a free home version of a business-oriented PDF maker. It looks smart, is well designed, and is packed with every tool you could possibly need for making your own PDFs. When you use Bullzip to make a PDF, it can tag the resulting document with customizable metadata, including author, title, subject, and keywords. You can apply a custom watermark (including variables such as the current date, page number, PC name, username, and many more), apply a digital signature, append PDFs to converted ones (ideal if you need to tack terms and conditions onto lots of documents, for example), add password protection, and adjust permissions. You can even change the initial zoom level when the PDF is opened, so you can choose a setting that will enable other people to start reading the text immediately without adjusting their PDF viewer first. A couple of options are restricted to the premium licensed software (most notably FTP upload), and your PDF will be watermarked if you use one of these settings, but you’re given plenty of warning if this is going to happen. Bullzip is hugely impressive, and although its interface isn’t as glossy as some, it’s amazingly flexible and offers everything you could need from a PDF maker.
PDFCreator is a flexible PDF printer driver that’s a pleasure to use. As with Bullzip, you can start using its default settings immediately – just select ‘Print’ in the program of your choice and select it from the list of available devices – but fire up the application itself and you’ll find a huge array of customization options. One of our favorite tools is Windows Explorer context menu integration. Once this is activated, you can right-click any text or image file to convert it to PDF format without opening it. You can also change the output settings, including metadata, watermarks, and filename. If you don’t just want to save it straight to your hard drive, your PDF can be sent straight to Dropbox, your preferred email client, or an FTP server. It’s all very well designed and easy to configure. The free version of PDFCreator is supported by ads, but is otherwise almost identical to its paid-for counterpart. While installing PDFCreator, select the ‘advanced’ option to opt out any any unwanted extras. The free PDF editor PDFArchitect is worth considering, though – it lets you tweak, rotate, and sign your documents once they’re created.
Once you've signed up for a free account, PDF24 Creator gives you a solid set of PDF creation and conversion tools. Image credit: Geek Software GmbH PDF24 Creator is another PDF printer driver that makes it easy to export documents from any other application. To use all of its features you’ll need to sign up for a free account (which will be used to manage any premium software from the same developer), then enter an activation code. It’s not much hassle, but counts against it when rival programs offer the same tools without you submitting any personal data. Once you’re in, there’s a good selection of tools, though some are very similar to one another. For example, there’s a drag-and-drop converter (though unfortunately this can’t handle DOCX files), plus a printer assistant that uses a different interface to achieve much the same end. The ability to convert documents straight from a scanner or camera is a very welcome addition, though we doubt many people will use the ‘Send to fax’ option in 2017. PDF24 Creator is a solid PDF creator, but its interface and toolkit are showing their age, and could do with some streamlining it bring it in line with the competition.
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| Security researcher exposes zero-day WordPress vulnerabilities Posted: 15 Apr 2019 08:18 AM PDT A trio of critical zero-day vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins has exposed 160,000 websites to attacks after a security researcher publicly disclosed the flaws before patches were made available. The Yuzo Related Posts and Yellow Pencil Visual Theme Customizer WordPress plugins that are used by 60,000 and 30,000 websites respectively came under attack once flaws in their code were revealed publicly online. When the zero-day posts were published, both plugins were removed from the WordPress plugin repository which led websites to remove the plugins or risk being attacked themselves. Yellow Pencil issued a patch three days after the vulnerability was disclosed but the Yuzo Related Posts plugin remains closed as no patch was developed for it.
Additionally, the plugin Social Warfare, which is used by 70,000 sites, was hit with in-the-wild exploits after security flaws in its code were posted publicly. The plugin's developers quickly patched the flaw but unfortunately it was too late as sites that used it were already hacked. Plugin VulnerabilitiesAll three of the vulnerable plugins were hacked to redirect visitors to sites that pushed tech-support scams and other types of online fraud. One thing they all shared in common though, is the fact that the exploits arrived after a site called Plugin Vulnerabilities published detailed posts disclosing the underlying vulnerabilities. These posts included enough technical details and proof-of-concept exploit code that hackers could easily use this information to attack the vulnerable plugins and to make matters worse some of the code used in the attacks had clearly been copied and pasted from the posts on Plugin Vulnerabilities. Once the Yellow Pencil Visual Theme and Social Warfare vulnerabilities were disclosed, they were exploited by hackers within hours. The Yuzo Related Posts zero-day on the other hand was out in the wild for 11 days before it was exploited. The security researcher at Plugin Vulnerabilities responsible for publishing the posts detailing the zero-day vulnerabilities explained why he had chosen to do so to Ars Technica, saying: “Our current disclosure policy is to full disclose vulnerabilities and then to try to notify the developer through the WordPress Support Forum, though the moderators there… too often just delete those messages and not inform anyone about that." Basically the security researcher decided to publish the zero-day vulnerabilities on their own site after posts they made about the vulnerabilities were removed from the WordPress Support Forum for breaking its rules. While informing developers regarding zero-day vulnerabilities is one thing, posting them publicly where anyone, even hackers, can see them is a different story altogether. Via Ars Technica
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