Apple : Text to switch: what is it and how do I switch phone deals? |
- Text to switch: what is it and how do I switch phone deals?
- Khan vs Dib live stream: how to watch the fight online from anywhere
- Sprint 5G arrives where people actually live
- macOS 10.14 Mojave release date, news and features
- AMD Processors: the best AMD CPUs in 2019
- The next Amazon Echo may be a high-end speaker, followed by an Alexa home robot
- Vodafone's super cheap fibre broadband deals just got even cheaper
- Marvel’s Avengers game: release date, news, trailers and first impressions
- New 13-inch MacBook Pro teardown finds improved battery and non-upgradable SSD
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake: trailers, release date, news and features
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare release date, trailer and news
- The best cheap Amazon Kindle sale prices and deals on Amazon Prime Day 2019
- Windows 10 May 2019 Update now ready for more PCs as major issues are resolved
- Best HR outsourcing services of 2019
- African Cup of Nations 2019 live stream: how to watch semi-final football online from anywhere
- Cricket World Cup 2019 live stream: how to watch the final online from anywhere
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 release date, price, news and leaks
- Get up to £120 in pre-paid credit cards with BT's fresh fibre broadband deals
- Best free iPad apps 2019: the top titles we've tried
- The best free iPhone apps of 2019
| Text to switch: what is it and how do I switch phone deals? Posted: 12 Jul 2019 11:51 AM PDT Text to switch is a name that aptly describes an initiative thataims to make switching phone provider - while keeping your number - easier than ever. The text to switch system must be used by all networks after regulator Ofcom announced the new way of changing networks. The idea is to make it easier than ever to switch phone network so the best mobile phone deals are available to everyone, with no fears about switching hassles. As the name suggests, text to switch is a system that uses SMS messaging to give customers their vital details to make switching simple, without needing to wait around on a call like the old days – or put up with attempts to convince you to stay. So what exactly does text to switch offer you, how does it work and can you get a phone saving with a new deal? Read on to find out everything you need to know then check out our phone deals guide to see if you're due an upgrade. What is text to switch?To switch network and keep your phone number you previously had to call your provider, often with a long wait on the phone, to get your unique PAC (porting authorisation code). This essentially lets the company know when your number has been added to a new network legitimately so it can release your number over there. The new text to switch system makes accessing that PAC code as simple as sending a text to your provider for an instant reply with the code that you need to switch network. How do I switch phone providers with text to switch?All you need to do is text "PAC" to 65075. Your provider will then be required to message you back within a minute. This message is also required to include any early termination charges or pay as you go balance charges, so you know exactly where you stand. The code will be valid for 30 days, leaving you plenty of time to make the switch to a new provider. Once you give your PAC code to the new provider, it is required to make the switch over and activation of your number within one working day. How do I keep my mobile number with text to switch?To keep your mobile number, despite switching networks, all you need to do is follow the above process. That basic text to switch system is devised to make it easy to switch while keeping your original phone number, so you don't need to worry about telling anyone to change your number – they won't even know you've changed network. Can I text to switch and change my mobile number?It is possible to also use text to switch but to get a new number, if you fancy a fresh start (aka an escape from all those annoying sales callers that somehow have your number). To switch, but still get yourself a new number, you simply follow a similar process. Send a text with the letters "STAC" to 75075 and you will get a service termination authorisation code. Give this to your new provider and they'll take care of everything for you. How long does it take to text to switch?The process should only take a day. You can text to get your PAC or STAC code within a minute. This can then be given to the new network provider and they are required to have you up and running within one working day. So, realistically, that could mean you go into a store and leave on a new network with your same number up and running, or you may have to wait until the next day rolls around. If you're a business user this is a bit different as the response time with a PAC code can take up to two working days. Can you swap phones during a contract?You can potentially swap phones even if you're still in a contract. When you send that text for your PAC code you'll be notified if you have any outstanding fees to pay. If you have time left on your contract you may have to pay the balance after which time you'll own your current phone outright. Then it's easy for you to get a totally new phone deal on your fresh contract. Or go for a SIM only option and buy the new phone outright. Of course you now also have the option to trade-in your current phone to make a bit of a saving on the new handset too, so don't forget to factor that in, especially if you're aiming for a pricey handset. What are today's best mobile phone deals?All of the mobile phone deals can be found at that link. These include big names on both Apple iOS and Android operating systems. To get you to the best contract tariffs on the biggest handsets even quicker, follow the below links and go from there: This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Khan vs Dib live stream: how to watch the fight online from anywhere Posted: 12 Jul 2019 11:15 AM PDT Amir Khan will be hoping for a confidence boosting win tonight, in this his first fight since suffering a demoralising defeat to WBC welterweight champion Terence Crawford back in April. You can watch all the boxing for free and from anywhere with this Amir Khan vs Billy Dib live stream guide. Tonight should on paper be an easy night's work for Khan - Australia's Billy ‘The Kid’ Dib having been elevated from the undercard as stand-in for Neeraj Goyat, who was forced to pull out after being injured in a car crash. With continuing question marks over the Bolton boxer's chin, Khan needs to impress tonight to show the boxing world his career isn't yet over. Now 32-years-old, Khan has something of a battle on his hands to prove he's still a welterweight contender following accusations that he had "quit" against Crawford after the fight was stopped for a low-blow that appeared to hit him on the hip. Nothing less than a swift KO for Khan will likely satisfy critics here tonight, with the likely reward for the former unified light-welterweight world champion likely to be another fight in Jeddah at the end of the year against Filipino senator Manny Pacquiao. Dib, 32, announced he was calling an end to his boxing career in the aftermath of his last bout - an IBF super-featherweight clash with Tevin Farmer in Sydney last August which saw him lose on points. Having come out of retirement to join the undercard, he's effectively moving up three weight categories for tonight's fight. Also looking to rebuild his career tonight will be Tyson Fury’s cousin Hughie who makes his return to heavyweight action on the undercard. Having lost on points to Kubrat Pulev back in November, Fury will be out to get things back on track against former champ 38-year-old Samuel Peter. It all adds up to an intriguing night of entertainment for fight fans, and we're here to help you find the best way of watching with our Khan vs Dib live stream guide.
Live stream Amir Khan vs Billy Dib from outside your countryIf you've been looking forward to this fight and already know where to watch, your plans may be scuppered if you're out of the country when it's on. That's because broadcasters geo-block their coverage if you try to watch from abroad. But there's a clever workaround for this, which is perfectly legal (assuming the broadcaster's Ts&Cs allow it) and it involves using a piece of software called a VPN - better that than trying to get some dodgy stream from Reddit.
How watch the Amir Khan vs Billy Dib fight in the UK
How to watch Amir Khan vs Billy Dib in PakistanWe've looked and we've looked (and we've looked) and we can't find any news of a broadcaster in Pakistan showing Amir Khan in all his mean, lean glory tonight. If that changes, we'll be sure to let you know. The only alternative is to use one of our best VPNs as described above, set your location to a country on this page that is broadcasting and go from there. But do bear in mind that most paid streaming services do require a credit card based in the country the service is from.
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| Sprint 5G arrives where people actually live Posted: 12 Jul 2019 10:03 AM PDT Sprint’s 5G network for phones just went live yesterday in what’s becoming the biggest competitive market for 5G: Chicago. And, it’s offering a very different package from what we’ve seen from Verizon’s 5G network. The rollout makes Sprint’s 5G network massive. In Chicago alone, it’s estimated to cover as many as 700,000 people. That’s because it’s available in many areas of the city. From the center of downtown Chicago (“The Loop”) out to Humboldt Park, north past Montrose Beach, and south beyond Chinatown, the signal is available. There are limited devices that can connect to the network right now. Two smartphones, the LG V50 ThinQ and Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, and the HTC 5G Hub. A difference in 5G technologyThe new Sprint 5G service does substantially more to coat Chicago in signal than Verizon’s mmWave 5G signal, which is also available in the city. This is the result of Sprint relying on a 2.4GHz frequency to transmit its 5G network. The 2.4GHz spectrum has a long range and can pass through some materials. Verizon’s mmWave 5G technology, meanwhile, has severely limited potential to pass through materials, though beam-forming can allow the signal to transmit over long distances, but it requires more ideal conditions than 2.4GHz needs to transmit the same distance. That different bit of spectrum does come with some other trade-offs, though. It may not offer the same 5G speeds as mmWave can offer. In our testing, we’ve seen Verizon’s 5G network deliver 1.4Gbps speeds. That let us download the entire first season of Stranger Things from Netflix in 38.78 seconds. In the short time we’ve had the LG V50 up and running on Sprint’s 5G network, we’ve been able to conduct a few speed tests that saw some speeds as high as 216Mbps. While that’s a far cry from the 1.4Gbps we got on a mmWave connection, it’s still strong performance. And, we didn’t have to stand still to get it. While strolling to catch the train, we decided to do an unscientific experiment, starting a huge download before crossing a bridge and seeing how far it got when we reached the other side. This was not a long bridge, and the download had reached 822MB by the time we were to the other side. It took maybe a minute.
This was the bridge we tested across | Image Credit: TechRadar That’s certainly fast, but not insanely fast. What’s impressive about that test is that we got those speeds with the phone in our pocket while we were on the move. Moving around even in the slightest proved troublesome with mmWave 5G connections. Sprint is currently focused on building a 5G network that is consistent. That means the carrier wants it to be available indoors, outdoors, when you’re stationary, and when you’re on the move. So far, it’s looking like it may be doing just that. The typical speeds Sprint is aiming for are around 150Mbps, though it says there’s potential for Gigabit speeds. And, 5G upload speeds are also possible now, as Sprint has just enabled 5G uplink in Chicago with more regions to follow. Sprint hopes to see the network grow even stronger through the possible merger with T-Mobile, which would allow the two carriers to combine their available spectrum to deliver even broader 5G coverage. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| macOS 10.14 Mojave release date, news and features Posted: 12 Jul 2019 09:53 AM PDT Now that macOS Mojave has made it on our Macs, bringing key iOS apps like News and Stocks to the fold, Apple’s OS is better than ever. But that’s not all: Mojave also stocked with awesome new and improved features like the system-wide Dark Mode and increased productivity through Finder. In the coming years, we should see more iOS apps coming to the best Macs. Apple confirmed this at WWDC 2019 with Project Catalyst, which makes it easier and more seamless for developers to bring their iPhone and iPad apps to mac. Moreover, Project Catalyst has been available to developers as of June 3 with the beta version of macOS Catalina, so we can expect app developers to be rolling out more macOS versions of iOS apps soon. Yet even now, there’s already a lot to love in macOS 10.14. And, despite macOS Mojave having ts own fair share of security issues, most notably KeySteal, the operating system is generally safe and secure. Apple’s macOS Mojave has been on our Macs for more than eight months at this point and most, if not all, of the problems have been addressed. Plus, any problems that do remain are outweighed by the benefits this new OS brings to the table. Let’s dive into all of its benefits, alongside any new features that are added, so you can decide for yourself whether or not the upgrade is for you.
Cut to the chase
macOS 10.14 Mojave release dateApple unveiled macOS Mojave back in June 2018 at WWDC 2018, where most of its features were detailed. This was followed by a public beta launch back in July, and finally a full launch on September 24, 2018. Apple is keeping macOS Mojave updated with all the latest features. The latest of these updates, macOS 10.14.4, brings Dark Mode to Safari, alongside the new Apple News+ service. Past updates included a fix for the FaceTime Bug, which allowed people to access your camera without you answering their call, and a supplemental update to boost reliability for the 2018 MacBook Air. Apple has also released macOS 10.14.5, which will likely be one of the last major updates to the operating system before macOS 10.15 is unveiled. This update focuses on stability, and is still very much worth downloading despite the lack of marquee features. Keep it tuned as well, as we will keep this section updated with all the newest updates as they’re made available.
macOS 10.14 Mojave featuresNow that macOS Mojave has been out for a while, there are a lot of new features to look forward to, if you haven’t yet upgraded. We’re going to dive into a detailed run-through of everything your Mac can do. From Finder improvements to more rigid security, the best Macs are about to become a lot better. Read on to uncover all the new features macOS Mojave has on offer, whether or not you’ve updated your computer yet, so you can take full advantage.
Dark ModeFirst and most exciting of all, Apple’s macOS Mojave brings in a system-wide dark mode, which extends to every first-party program on your Mac. Even Xcode gets a full makeover, completely in black, making those extended programming sessions easier on your eyes. Third party programs are also adopting this new theme, with changes happening automatically for any app that uses standard colors through AppKit. Even developers that don’t use AppKit are working on bringing Dark Mode to their applications. For example, in a recent bug report, Google Chrome developers confirmed they’re working on a way to implement Dark Mode into the massively used web browser – just as soon as they iron out some issues first. Group FaceTimeInitially shown as part of the initial release of MacOS Mojave, Group FaceTime is released as part of macOS 10.14.1. This feature allows you to have FaceTime conversations with up to 32 people across iOS and macOS devices. Group FaceTime is implemented in a way that makes it remarkably intuitive in macOS Mojave. You can start a group FaceTime chat from any group iMessage thread, and invites are sent via a ringless non-disruptive notification. Once you’re in a Group FaceTime Chat, it automatically detects whoever’s speaking then brings them front and center so that everyone’s always looking at the person actively speaking.
StacksThe days of cluttered desktops are now a thing of the past, thanks to macOS Mojave. Whenever your desktop starts looking like a virtual hurricane blew through it after a full day’s work – like ours does, simple use Stacks. With Stacks, macOS Mojave sorts similar files together so that you have a less cluttered desktop, organizing photos with photos, pdfs with pdfs and so on. You’re even able to go through thumbnails using a two-finger scroll, so that you can make sure the file you’re looking for is actually in the stack.
Gallery ViewIn macOS 10.14 Mojave, Apple has added a new Gallery View to Finder. This view lets you quickly browse through, annotate and edit files. No matter what kind of file you select, you are able to quickly and easily find exactly what you're looking for. This is made even better, thanks to the very detailed metadata display in the Preview pane. This feature makes it easier than ever before to take note of all the information of any file on your Mac. Finally, thanks to the inclusion of Quick Actions in the Preview pane, you won’t even need to leave Finder to work on files, whether you’re edit images or add protection to files. You can even assign Automator tasks as Quick Actions to make browsing through files all the more effortless.
Continuity CameraIf you often find yourself needing to implement a document or a photo on a project you’re working on, you’re in luck. With Continuity Camera, it’s easier than ever to do exactly that. Across a multitude of different apps - Numbers and Pages, for example – you’ll be able to simply Control + Click in the body of the document, and select “Take Photo” or “Scan Documents.” It’ll then open the camera on your iPhone or iPad so you can take a photo that instantly pop it right into what you’re working on. It’s easy to use, it’s convenient, and it’s going to be a boon for anyone that needs to save some time while doing schoolwork or that next big work project.
Markup in Quick Look and ScreenshotsQuick Look is already a quick and easy way to look at files, but macOS Mojave takes that accessibility even further. With this update, you are also able to quickly and efficiently use Markup to edit files you open in Quick Look. Markup is also implemented into screenshots, which means that you can bring up any screenshot and instantly edit any content within. Being able to swiftly crop screenshots in macOS Mojave without any third-party photo-editing software is going to be a huge time-saver. When you capture a screen, you’ll see a preview image open up, similar to iOS 12, that you can click on to preview and edit your screenshot. That's not all. Screenshots are still a simple shortcut away, but with macOS Mojave, a new easy-to-use menu includes screen-recording tools that allow you to capture animated content. Perhaps most importantly, you can choose to save the screenshot to your clipboard, saving time – not to mention space – if you just need to send someone a quick screenshot, but don’t want that screenshot taking up space in your storage.
AppsApple News, Stocks, Voice Memos and Home are all brought over from iOS to macOS Mojave, with special care given to optimize them to fit your computer. These apps leverage the power of the best Macs to deliver an awesome experience. Voice Memos, for instance, will automatically transfer any memos you take between your iOS and macOS devices – rewarding anyone who relies on the ‘Apple Ecosystem’ for a more seamless workflow. This isn’t a full iOS app migration. In fact, since these apps are specifically redesigned for macOS, they feel like new Apps. Plus, the new Apple News+ service is available on Mac the same day as iOS. Apple did say that it’d be bringing more iOS apps to Macs this year, but we’ll have to wait until the later part of 2019.
SecurityAs proof that Apple is just concerned about your device security as you are, the macOS Mojave now asks for permission with more features, including the camera and microphone. Mojave’s security also gives more robust protection for your file system. That’s not all: Safari also has its own share of security enhancements. Those include shutting down cookies that track you across websites, and making sure that Safari asks permission before it allows cookies of any kind to access your browsing data. Among these are those annoying social buttons that mysteriously appear on every page – Facebook and Twitter can’t track your activity outside of their own websites unless you grant them permission.
New Mac App StoreAnd, finally, the App store, which has been a crucial part of macOS for years now, but has also always felt a little out of place. That all changes with macOS Mojave. Apple has completely redesigned the Mac App Store, and it’s now made exclusively for the best Macs. Not only does it look great, but it also lets you browse through apps depending on what you’re trying to install. If you’re currently seeking an affordable alternative to Logic Pro X or Adobe Photoshop, for example, it’s organized so that you can easily find the best Mac apps to fit your needs. The new Mac App Store also adopts the iOS App Store’s approach to editorializing its content. It’ll now have a much more modern interface with featured apps getting tutorials, spotlights and other such content. It really does bring the Mac App Store into the modern age. What’s even more exciting is that a ton of third-party developers, like Adobe and Microsoft, are bringing their apps to the Mac App Store, so you won’t have to go through not-so trustworthy websites to get the apps you need.
macOS 10.14 Mojave specificationsUnfortunately, with all these new features, some older Macs will have to go without updating to macOS Mojave. This is a departure from macOS High Sierra, which basically had the same system requirements as macOS 10.12. macOS 10.14 requires at least 14.3GB of hard drive space for the installation, as that’s what was required last year. To be on the safe side, have at least 20GB of free space. However, macOS Mojave does have more powerful hardware requirements than High Sierra. macOS 10.13 required at least 2GB of RAM and OS X 10.8 or later – that’s not the case anymore. These are the Macs supported by macOS 10.14 Mojave.
Unfortunately, while the required models rarely change year after year, they have with macOS 10.14. If you have an older MacBook, you might need to upgrade your device to enjoy this new version of the OS. Images Credit: Apple
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| AMD Processors: the best AMD CPUs in 2019 Posted: 12 Jul 2019 09:10 AM PDT In the last few years, the AMD vs Intel battle has been heated up considerably, thanks in large part to the best AMD processors that have been Intel a run for its money. While Intel has traditionally taken the CPU crown in the past, AMD has slowly been getting to the top of the pile, even outselling Intel in the desktop space because of its Ryzen 2nd Generation chips. AMD isn’t stopping anytime soon, either. It’s definitely looking to continue this trend with its Ryzen 3rd Generation processors, led by the Ryzen 9 3950X which will be the first 16-core processor to hit the mainstream market when it hits the streets in September. Luckily, the rest of the mainstream Zen 2 lineup is already out. So among all the generations available right now, we gathered all the best AMD processors you can buy, from the budget Ryzen 3 2200G to the incredibly powerful Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX. We’ve tested all of these AMD processors ourselves as well, so you can be sure that you’re getting your money’s worth. We even included our exclusive price comparison tool, so you know you’re getting the best deal.
The Ryzen 9 3900X is the most powerul mainstream processor in AMD’s lineup – or at least it will be until the Ryzen 9 3950X comes out. Without stepping up to the HEDT market, this processor absolutely destroys everything in its path with its multi-threaded performance, beating Intel at the same price. That is, despite this chip’s single core performance, which is still marginally slower than Intel. If you’re looking for the absolute best processor money can buy on the mainstream market, you’ve found it. Read the full review: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
If you need a processor that will let you play the best PC games without breaking the bank, the AMD Ryzen 5 2600X will take you a long way in gaming. With 6-cores, 12-threads and a boost clock of 4.2GHz, it should be more than powerful enough to handle most AAA games at any resolution. You won’t be able to play something like Battlefield V at 200 fps, but when you’re saving this much cash on one of the best AMD processors on the market, it’s hard to complain. Just make sure you pair it with a decent cooler, because it can get pretty toasty. Read the full review: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
Building a home theater PC? The trick is to find affordable parts that won’t require a lot of power. With just a 65W TDP and a very approachable price tag, the AMD Ryzen 3 2200G is, without a doubt, among the best AMD processors for HTPC builds. This is a single-threaded chip, and doesn’t have the highest clock speeds, so it’s definitely not ideal for gaming. But, at this price point, it doesn’t need to be. Plus, if you’re just playing PC games in 1080p, you should be fine. Read the full review: AMD Ryzen 3 2200G
Any burgeoning PC hardware enthusiast is going to want to pay attention to this AMD processor. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950WX is probably the best intro to HEDT hardware you could ask for. It’s affordable too – for an HEDT chip, and its 4.4GHz boost clock across 16-cores and 32-threads means that it will give you formidable single and multi-threaded performance. It doesn’t come with a CPU cooler out of the box, but when you’re getting into this realm of PC hardware, you’re expected to bring your own cooler, anyway. Read the full review: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X
This is it, the big one. The Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX is the fastest of the AMD processors you can buy today, without dropping stacks on an Epyc chip. This absolute beast of a processor is furnished with 32-cores and 64-threads – not to mention, a boost clock of 4.2GHz. Combine all that with the massive 64MB of cache, and you’ve got in your hands one of the most powerful chips on the market on your hands. Just keep in mind, that with its 250W TDP, you’re going to need some serious cooling to keep temperatures in check. Read the full review: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX Michelle Rae Uy also contributed to this article Images Credits: TechRadar This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The next Amazon Echo may be a high-end speaker, followed by an Alexa home robot Posted: 12 Jul 2019 08:20 AM PDT Amazon is said to be working on a higher-end Echo smart speaker, according to a new report today, and that's no surprise given how successful Sonos and Google have been with more powerful versions of their smart speakers. This high-quality Echo packs more audio components into a wider frame than prior models, reports Bloomberg, yet it should still retain its signature cylindrical shape. It will include at least four tweeters, said people familiar with the product. It's an obvious move for Amazon, which has already cornering the smart speaker market at other price points. But it's left a void at the top, one that the Sonos Play:1 and Google Home Max have filled. The Echo line of Alexa-powered speakers are frequent best sellers, especially during major sales seasons, like the upcoming Amazon Prime Day 2019. High-end audio...and a home robot?The bigger Echo is being developed by Amazon’s hardware R&D division Lab126, which had previously reported to be working on an Alexa-controlled home robot called Vesta. Today’s news affirms that work continues on the domestic ‘bot, which was expected to be at least introduced this year, but is reportedly not ready for mass-production. Just what Vesta can do is still a mystery, but today’s Bloomberg report sheds more light on the product: prototypes are around waist-height and get around thanks to computer-vision cameras. That sounds like the kind of computer-assisted navigation that Amazon has left to Google’s Waymo and Apple’s self-driving car experiments, which is intriguing territory for a company that made its bones on hardware basics. Details are still scarce about both projects, and neither are seemingly far enough along to have release dates.
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| Vodafone's super cheap fibre broadband deals just got even cheaper Posted: 12 Jul 2019 07:43 AM PDT Update: As if this price drop from Vodafone wasn't impressive enough in its own right, the ISP has made it EVEN better again by adding a FREE Amazon Echo Plus smart speaker to the mix. Get the cut price fibre and freebie from Vodafone here. For those who have been scouring the internet market and are now considering cashing in on Vodafone's super cheap fibre broadband deals, the offer at hand just got even better. Offering up some of the cheapest fibre prices on the market, Vodafone was already comfortably sat in the position of the cheapest well-known internet provider. But now, after cutting the price down by an extra pound a month, its deals just improved again. You can see this cut price Vodafone broadband deal down below, or check out our guide to the best broadband deals to compare it to the rest of the options when it comes to internet.
Vodafone's cheap fibre broadband deal in full:Want more with your broadband?While this is one of the best, affordable fibre broadband deals around, you can technically go even cheaper. Thanks to a reward card offer from Plusnet, you can knock monthly bills down from £23.99 to an effective price of £20.65, putting it just below Vodafone. Or for the absolute cheapest price on fibre, Onestream is offering monthly costs of just £18.99. However, this deal does also offer the lowest average fibre speeds on the market at 17Mb. Onestream also has the UK's cheapest internet at a monthly price of £13.99 Finally, for those who want an added extra with their internet, BT could be the way to go. It costs £31.99 a month but comes with a £30 BT reward card and a £80 M&S voucher on top of its 50Mb fibre speeds. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Marvel’s Avengers game: release date, news, trailers and first impressions Posted: 12 Jul 2019 07:29 AM PDT After two years of secrecy, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics are nearly ready to talk about their first Avengers game - or, as we know it, Marvel’s Avengers. At Square Enix's E3 2019 press event, we finally got our first look at the game in a story trailer that seems to riff on some of the biggest moments from the Avengers comics. You'll play as your favorite Avengers in an all-new story set in the Marvel universe featuring many Avengers throughout the game (with the exception of Hawkeye) as you save the day from an evil force. According to Crystal Dynamics, the game has 'an all-star cast' that includes Laura Bailey, Nolan North and Troy Baker, some of the most preeminent voice actors in the videogame industry. It was at this year's E3 that we also learned that the game will have a multiplayer component alongside a single-player campaign, though it wasn't shown off during the event. What we've heard from Crystal Dynamics in a closed-door briefing is that you'll assemble into teams of four online, customize your characters and fight online together through new scenarios. Crystal Dynamics says this content will be free and will come at a constant clip. Last, but not least, we got a confirmed release date: May 15, 2020. Here's everything we know about Square Enix’s big foray into the Marvel universe. [Update: There will be a Marvel's Avengers panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 18 but it’s been reported that while gameplay will be shown at the event, it will only be for the eyes of attendees. Read on to find out more.] Cut to the chase
Image credit: Crystal Dynamics Gameplay impressionsWhile no one was allowed to play the game at E3 2019, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics were allowing attendees to stop by and see an in-depth hands-off demo. The way the game works is that you'll control each Avenger individually and control switches automatically between segments – a flying sequence you might play as Iron Man while a battle scene might use Hulk, for example. Each character has their own set of abilities that mirror what we've seen from comics, movies and other games, and combat largely looks like Marvel's Spider-Man, full of fluid dodging, combo attacks and Quick-Time Events. It's a real cop-out to end the comparison at Marvel's Spider-Man, but that seems to be the look and feel Crystal Dynamics is going for – something that's easy to pick up and makes you feel powerful. The problem here is that, while all the characters have their own skills in combat (activated by the trigger buttons), there really wasn't a ton of variation in the actual gameplay. Most times, characters are shuffled into a battle arena, brawl for a few minutes with some fodder enemies, and then control shifts to the next Avenger in the sequence. It feels safe, but not all that exciting. What Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal (who's co-developing the game) did get right are the massive set-pieces that serve as the main stage for the action. In the demo we saw, The Avengers were fighting to save civilians on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco from terrorists led by (spoilers!) Taskmaster. The segment of gameplay we saw involved all five of the game's playable Avengers and culminated in a boss battle. The pacing leading up to the battle felt great, as did some of the Quick-Time Event segments that emulated the movies' big-budget action. Marvel’s Avengers trailers and screenshotsOutside of the logo tweeted out by the game’s Twitter handle, there hasn’t been much in the way of official art. What we do have, however, is the game’s first teaser trailer that came out last year. Check it out below: The big unveiling for the game came at E3 2019, when Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics really let loose a lot of details and clips. We've embedded the Avengers E3 2019 trailer below: We've also got a number of screenshots from the trailer, embedded below: Marvel’s Avengers news and featuresSan Diego Comic-Con On July 18 there will be a Marvel’s Avengers panel held at San Diego Comic-Con but recent details have been revealed (via ComingSoon) which suggest that while there will be gameplay of the game shown at the event, it will be for the eyes of Hall H attendees only and won’t be shown to the wider public via a livestream. The panel will be hosted by creative director Shaun Escayg and the game’s voice cast. Offline and solo gameplay It's been confirmed that Marvel's Avengers will offer players the chance to play offline and alone, despite its focus on the online multiplayer experience. In an interview with GamesIndustryBiz, Crystal Dynamics boss, Scott Amos, said that players "can have a complete experience and have fun" even if they never go online. No paywalls or Loot Boxes It's also been confirmed by Scott Amos that paywalls and Loot Boxes will not be a feature of the game. It seems that monetization will come from entirely optional cosmetic purchases. These will allow players to invest in their favorite heroes and make them look exactly as they want them to. "The idea, from the beginning, is that we want you to be able to customize your hero; how they look, how they play, the gear they have and how they use it," Amos said. "Your Black Widow could be different to my Black Widow – just a little, maybe a lot – depending on what you favor and how you unlock things." Of course, players will also be able to earn customization items as they play as well. Official reveal Marvel’s Avengers was finally revealed at the Square Enix E3 2019 press conference on Monday evening, giving us our first real look at the game since it was announced back in January 2017. A "tribute to Stan" Crystal Dynamics has revealed that the Marvel's Avengers game is a tribute to Stan Lee, who passed away in 2018. When we asked if Stan would be making in appearance in the game, the developer seemed coy but hinted we will be seeing the legend make a appearance.
Image credit: Crystal Dynamics Gameplay The most important thing we saw was the gameplay, which looked to be a third-person adventure in the same vein as Marvel's Spider-Man. We know we'll get the chance to play as almost all of the most famous Avengers at some point, with the exception of Hawkeye who sadly wasn't part of the unveiling. Marvel’s Avengers will feature “continuous single-player and co-operative gameplay”, and that players can “assemble in teams up to four players, master extraordinary abilities…and combine powers” – i.e. an online multiplayer component that Crystal Dynamics has yet to reveal, but we're hoping we'll hear more about that later. Focus on story Marvel’s Spider-Man blew us away last year with a story full of heart, characters we cared about, and some sensational performances to boot. Square Enix and developer Crystal Dynamics have a wonderful opportunity to deliver a narrative befitting the unbelievable roster of Marvel characters they have inherited. Thankfully, it looks like they're doing just that with Avengers. We know the game takes place after A-Day, the day the Avengers get honored for their service to the community. This day of jubilation is quickly ruined, however, and our heroes our ripped apart – which gives us real Disassembled vibes. Apparently the heroes come back together and will have to face a new threat that wasn't revealed in the trailer. Continuous content? Crystal Dynamics emphasized the idea of a “continuous” game in an “ever-expanding world”. All this content may come first to PS4 thanks to a deal between Square Enix and Sony, but all of it will be free on every platform. Recent games-as-a-service titles such as Destiny, Anthem, and The Division 2 aren’t exactly lauded for their top-tier narratives, so we’re hoping the reveal will confirm the experience won’t be diluted in favour of ever-lasting revenue.
Screenshot taken from the E3 Colosseum website. Fresh, diverse range of playable heroes Decades of comics, and 22 movies over 11 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ensure fans are well versed on many classic Marvel heroes. While we love Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor, we think it’s time to introduce some fresh, lesser-known faces in Marvel’s Avengers. Unforunately, for whatever reason, Hawkeye wasn't part of the presentation and Hank Pym – a.k.a Ant Man – only got a supporting role. We’d love to see Khan take centre stage, perhaps even alongside other more recent Avengers, such as Iron Heart, Miles Morales, and Squirrel Girl. Why not? It's Crystal Dynamics' biggest game ever In a recent interview, Crystal Dynamics studio head Scott Amos told GamesIndustry.biz that this is the developer's biggest game to date, requiring five studios from around the globe to make: "We've had to change how we work, how we are organised as a team, the number of people we need to do this, the number of external partners... We've had to go hire experts like Shaun Escayg, who is our creative director. He told stories for Uncharted and The Last of Us [at Naughty Dog], we needed him to help tell this story. Dave Fifield was a game director who worked on Halo and Call of Duty, we needed him to help us with multiplayer," Amos said. The five studios working on the title are Crystal Dynamics at Redwood Shores, a new studio in Bellevue called Crystal North West, Crystal Dynamics' partners in the Netherlands, Nixxes, Eidos Montreal and even Square Enix Japan. Five teams to bring the five Avengers to life? Sounds about right.
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| New 13-inch MacBook Pro teardown finds improved battery and non-upgradable SSD Posted: 12 Jul 2019 07:25 AM PDT Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro has been given the teardown treatment over at iFixit, with some interesting revelations concerning the battery, keyboard, SSD and more. We’re talking about the new entry-level MacBook Pro which witnessed some impressive upgrades, including the introduction of the Touch Bar – which wasn’t previously on the base 13-inch model – and a more powerful 8th-gen Intel quad-core processor (as well as True Tone tech for the Retina display, plus Apple’s T2 security chip).
So when you hear that the battery inside this refreshed machine is bigger than the previous entry-level MacBook Pro, with a 58.2Wh capacity compared to 54.5Wh, you probably won’t be surprised. Because those hardware upgrades like the Touch Bar are going to sap more power, and Apple needs to maintain the same (claimed) 10 hour battery life. Indeed, iFixit notes that this battery is actually just a tad more capacious than the 58Wh effort in the more expensive 13-inch MacBook Pro, which has a beefier processor still to drive. The teardown also confirmed that this refreshed laptop now carries the same improved third-generation butterfly keyboard seen in the more expensive models of the MacBook Pro 2019, as we already reported. Soldering on…Good news aside, a blow for those who like to consider upgrading their notebook comes with the fact that the SSD is now soldered in, whereas in the previous non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro, it was removable. On the plus side, at least the speakers are removable, as is the modular Thunderbolt board (although that’s not really full compensation for the SSD – but it’s better than nothing). A further interesting point to note is that Apple has trimmed a little bit off the heat pipe to fit in the Touch ID sensor alongside the Touch Bar. This leads iFixit to speculate about whether this chipping away at the cooling solution on the laptop is really a wise idea (given that these ultra-thin portables can potentially struggle more on the heat management front, given the power packed into a very slight frame). As for the overall ‘repairability’ score iFixit awarded the new entry-level MacBook Pro, well, it was predictably low: 2/10. The laptop was marked down for the fact that the battery is glued in with copious amounts of adhesive, as ever, as well as the soldered down RAM, and the now also soldered in place SSD. Via Mac Rumors This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Final Fantasy 7 Remake: trailers, release date, news and features Posted: 12 Jul 2019 07:07 AM PDT First released in 1997, Final Fantasy 7 immediately cemented its place as one of the best JRPG titles around and introduced millions of gamers around the world to the genre. Now, due to the success of Final Fantasy 7 over 20 years ago (and the pleads from die hard fans), Square Enix is releasing a remake. Unfortunately, those high expectations have been both a blessing and a curse for the game as the path to release hasn’t been smooth. But now, four years after it was announced at E3 2015, we finally have a Final Fantasy 7 Remake release date: March 3, 2020. We've now seen the game a half-dozen times in trailers but, with news and rumors still churning around the great wide web, we’ve gathered up everything we know has been confirmed, what we've played and everything fans suspect right here for your perusal. [Update: Reports of an Xbox One release have been greatly exaggerated after Square Enix has confirmed that the Final Fantasy 7 remake will be a PS4 exclusive at launch.] Cut to the chase
Final Fantasy 7 Remake trailersThe first trailer for the game was released upon the remake's announcement at E3 2015. The trailer is largely cinematic and you can watch it for yourself below: A further trailer (this time featuring gameplay) was revealed at PSX in 2015: There's also the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trailer that was revealed during Sony's May 9 State of Play event. In it, we got a great look at what the action-heavy combat would look like (think Kingdom Hearts and you'll be on the right track) and one of the series most well-remembered protagonists, Aerith. Check it out below: The most important trailer we have is the one that was unveiled at a Final Fantasy 7 concert held in Los Angeles, where the game's director, Tetsuya Nomura, unveiled Remake's official March 3, 2020 release date. It's only a minute long but it's important. Final Fantasy 7 Remake release dateThe Final Fantasy 7 remake has had something of a troubled development, which makes it all the more surprising that we'll be seeing the game as early as we are. The date Square Enix has given us is March 3, 2020 – but it's unclear if that's for all of the episodes (remember, FF7R is an episodic game with more than two Blu-rays worth of content) or if that's just the release date of episode one. For some, that date is much sooner than expected considering the game's recent setback, but others will likely say it's arriving later than they wanted. For what it's worth, the game has been in the works since 2014 but there have been few significant official updates since the E3 2015 reveal. In that time, development of the game has moved from external developer CyberConnect2 to Square Enix’s in-house team. Overhauls like this can cause big delays to a game’s progress but according to Square Enix's Naoki Hamaguchi the decision was made out of a desire to maintain “control quality as well as keeping the schedule stable.” The good news is now that release date is set in stone. We also know is that the game will be available to PlayStation 4 players “first” as was promised at its E3 reveal. Saying “first” suggests this isn’t an outright exclusive and that the game will eventually come to Xbox One and PC. However, there was no indication as to how long the agreed exclusivity period would be. We're also expecting Final Fantasy 7 remake to be a cross-generation release, likely releasing on both PS5 and the next Xbox alongside current generation consoles.
Image credit: Square Enix Final Fantasy 7 Remake news and rumorsThose Xbox One rumors After the Xbox Germany Facebook account posted a video which suggested that the Final Fantasy 7 remake would be coming to Xbox One on March 3 2020, the same date it will hit PS4, fans were left with some pressing questions. However, Square Enix has now confirmed in a statement to IGN that Final Fantasy 7 will only release on PS4 on March 3 2020 and that there are “no plans for other platforms”. Whether this means there are no plans for other platforms just on March 3 or whether there are no plans for other platforms for good is unconfirmed but so far it seems like the game will be a PS4 exclusive. Microsoft has deemed the Facebook video which was quickly removed an “internal mistake”. Preview Midgar Cast change
Image credit: Square Enix Deeper into story and characters Tactical Mode FF7 Remake is based around core values E3 2019 news - Two Discs and new ATB system So what's worth pointing out here is that the sedentary turn-based combat you may remember from the original has been replaced with a FF15-style approach that allows you to control the characters and move them around the battlefield. You'll still have some familiar options in combat - like Limit Breaks - but expect combat to be a bit more engaging this time around. During E3 2019 we also learned that Final Fantasy 7 Remake is not only episodic, but actually requires two Blu-ray discs to hold all the content. The first disc, released on March 3, 2020, will actually only take place in Midgar - that futuristic city you've seen so much of in the trailers. Nomura admits an announcement was premature "I am well aware of the fact that we announced it too early," Nomura told Italian gaming mag Multiplayer (translated by Kingdom Hearts Insider) . "But even in the industry, word was beginning to spread that we were working on the game, so we just decided not to keep it more secret and officially reveal it."
Image credit: Square Enix It’s a reconstruction, not a shot-for-shot remake Considering it’s so beloved there’s a lot of pressure on Square Enix to not stray too far from the original source material but according to director Tetsuya Nomura it won’t be a completely direct recreation. In an interview with Wired, Nomura said “We're not intending for this to become a one-to-one remake, or just the original Final Fantasy VII with better graphics.” Nomura has said that he wants the remake to "apply to the current era" and "the current generation of players." He added the caveat that he doesn't "want to change it so much that it's unrecognizable" but it has to be offering something "fresh and new." To accommodate modern consoles and gamers, changes will naturally have to be made to the game both in terms of gameplay, mechanics and perhaps even to some elements of the story. For starters, early trailers show a game more akin to Final Fantasy XV mechanically, with fixed viewpoints and static backdrops swapped out for full-3D terrain, and a turn-based battle system removed in favour of a real-time action-orientated one.
Image credit: Square Enix It’s episodic The reasoning behind the decision, according to series producer Yoshinori Kitase is that “a proper HD remake” just wouldn’t fit into one instalment and maintain the “same feeling of density of the original.” “We've seen everyone's comments and reactions to the news that Final Fantasy 7 remake will be a multi-part series and many have speculated correctly as to the reason why we have made this decision,” he said, “If we were to try to fit everything from the original into one remake instalment, we would have to cut various parts and create a condensed version of Final Fantasy 7. We knew none of you would have wanted that. “I hope that by explaining a little more about our design decisions that you can appreciate the size of this project and what we have planned for this remake. Going beyond the scale and depth of the world, narrative and gameplay from the original to deliver something that feels familiar yet new. As I said before, we like delivering surprises.” Each episode will apparently be its “own unique experience” but as yet we don’t know how many episodes there will be or how they’ll be structured in relation to the original story.
Image credit: Square Enix No more turn-based battles In an interview with Famitsu, Nomura said that battles in the remake will be “action-based” rather than command-based. Nomura didn’t go into much more detail with regards to the game’s combat system but it’s widely expected that we’re going to see a formula more similar to Kingdom Hearts and FFXV. This would mean a more active and seamless style of battling involving party members whom the player will be able to switch between. Though the loss of turn-based combat will be mourned, a move towards a system like Kingdom Hearts will be more accessible to new players. A PS5 release? For Sony, it'd be a system seller right out of the gates for the new console generation, and for the developers you'd imagine it'd offer more processing grunt and a little longer in terms of the development window. This is speculation at this point, but as the sun sets on the PS4, and titles like Final Fantasy 7's remake being no closer to even having a release date, it starts to seem like the looming next generation machines may be now what they're being aimed at. (Image credits: Square Enix) This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare release date, trailer and news Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:42 AM PDT Call of Duty Modern Warfare is going back to the series' roots. Forget the zombies. Forget the WWII battles. Forget the jetpacks, exo launchers and all the other future weaponry – Call of Duty is going back to one of the most beloved series within the franchise with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a reboot of the highly-lauded 2007 first person shooter that's set in today's battlefields. It’s all about the gritty realities of war this time out, with the ‘modern’ of the ‘Modern Warfare’ title referring to the high-tech gear of today, the cutting-edge killing machines employed in combat right now in places like the Middle East and Russia, rather than the far-flung fantasies of science fiction. With the battle royale genre taking up many shooter fans’ spare gaming time, Call of Duty’s crown as the king of competitive shooters has slipped in the past few years. Can a return to its most-popular roots bring it back to glory? Read on for what we know so far. [Update: Infinity Ward has revealed Gunfight, a brand new multiplayer mode for Modern Warfare, and has confirmed a date for the game's full multiplayer reveal. Read on to find out more.] Cut to the chase
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare release dateAnnounced right before E3 2019, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare leaked ahead of the event but a trailer gave us our first glimpse and a variety of details for the game. It included the release date, which is set for October 25, 2019. You're already able to pre-order the game on the official site too. Call of Duty Modern Warfare screenshotsCall of Duty: Modern Warfare trailersSo far the first and only trailer we've seen for Modern Warfare was the release trailer that debuted on May 30. In it, we can see series protagonist (and all-around badass) Captain Price light up, and some intense - and dare we say great-looking - nightvision sequences. You can watch it below: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare newsFull Multiplayer Reveal While fans have had a first look at Gunfight, Modern Warfare’s new 2v2 multiplayer mode, a more full reveal has been announced for August 1. On a Twitch livestream, Infinity Ward is expected to show how the game’s story will continue into its online play and how progression across modes will play out. Gunfight Infinity Ward gave fans their first peek at multiplayer gameplay via Twitch. Four players streamed Modern Warfare live on the streaming platform, debuting Gunfight, the brand new 2v2 multiplayer mode that will be in the game. Gunfight is a mode for four players where two teams will play in “multi-round cage matches” across three small custom maps. Every two rounds, teams will swap to opposite sides of the map. All four players will have the same loadout which will typically be comprised of a primary and secondary weapon as well as a tactical Grenade and a piece of Lethal Equipment. The first team to win six rounds are the winners. This is going to be a mode for players that like fast rounds, with each round counting down on a 40 second timer. If one team hasn’t wiped out the other by the time the 40 seconds is up, a flag will appear on the map. The first team to control the area around the flag for more than three seconds is them the winner of the round. Each round, overall, will last for around a minute so speed is key. Aim Down Sight reload Infinity Ward has confirmed in a blog post that Modern Warfare will have Aim Down Sight reload, the first time the feature has appeared in a Call of Duty game by default. Aim Down Sight reload will mean that, while aiming down the sight of your weapon, your view won't be pulled away to watch an animation when you reload. Instead, you'll stay on target. Animation director Mark Grigsby offered some details on the feature in the post: “One other thing we added this year is the ADS [Aiming Down Sight] reload. In the past, if you're ADS, and you're shooting and you reload, the weapon would go off to the side, and you'd have to retrain to get to your target. This time if you reload, it stays on the target, so you can stay in the battle.” "Ripped straight from the headlines" This mission sees you tracking down the instigator of the terrorist attack (AKA The Wold) to a townhouse in North London. As a member of the SAS, the player creeps up a ladder and into the back of the dimly lit home where they methodically assassinate the plain-clothes terrorists occupying the residency. There's even an unsettling situation involving a woman using her baby as a shield. It's pretty rough but Infinity Ward claims the new Modern Warfare sees missions "ripped straight from the headlines" and investigated the "civilian collateral damage" that comes hand-in-hand with war. What was peculiar was that our presentation was shorter than those who had attended earlier in the week. We were only shown the London townhouse mission, whereas other journalists were shown an extra - more controversial - segment which seen players taking on the role of a child soldier in an unspecified war-torn country.
Image Credit: Infinity Ward Is this a reboot of the classic Modern Warfare? Instead, Infinity Ward is using the Modern Warfare name here to evoke a similar feeling, and some of the same characters will return but this is an entirely new storyline set in a different timeline. It's totally separate to what we've seen in the previous games as here those events haven't occurred. We'll still follow Captain Price in this different timeline, and it may mean we see over returning characters throughout too. Price features heavily in the trailer above, and he ends it by saying there's a team of his "old comrades" so it may well be that we see the return of other fan favorite characters such as Soap or Gaz. This new timeline is also why the game isn't called Modern Warfare 4. It should mean it's a good place for new entrants to the series to pick up the game, but there's sure to be a few nods to the original series for die-hard fans. Narrative director at Infinity Ward, Taylor Kurosaki, also noted that the game's storyline is still being tweaked but it's anywhere between five and nine hours long. That means it's not set to be very long, but at least this time there is a storyline. Call of Duty: Blacks Ops 4 opted to drop the storyline in favor of focusing on online play, which is something we've heard very little about so far for this game.
Image credit: Activision/Infinity Ward No Zombie mode for Modern WarfareZombie mode might be a staple of the over-the-top Black Ops entries into the Call of Duty series, but the undead horde will not be being reanimated this time around in Modern Warfare according to Campaign Gameplay Director Jacob Minkoff. In an interview with PlayStation Lifestyle, Minkoff said that the team's goal is to create something on par with today's battlefields - which, unfortunately, don't include any undead wandering around. "We don't have the flexibility to do something like put zombies in the game. That would compromise the feeling of playing in a world that feels realistic and authentic and relative to today's conflicts and things we face," Minkoff said. If you want Zombies, you'll just have to wait for the next Black Ops game.
Image Credit: Activision / Infinity Ward Return of the JuggernautWhile Call of Duty Modern Warfare didn't have a huge presence at E3 2019, it did pop up at an E3 Coliseum event where Activision had the first two multiplayer screenshots. One shot shows a sniper in a ghillie suit, while the other shows a juggernaut suit – one of the most powerful pieces of gear from the original game. A whole new engineThis title will be the first to use a whole new engine for the series, and that should allow for some drastic graphical improvements over previous titles including Black Ops 4. It's the first time the games will use a new engine in 14 years. We've yet to learn the name of the engine, but we know that the franchise has been working on it for five years. We expect to learn more about it in the coming months, but we can expect some more detailed environments, improved volumetric lighting and ray tracing technology too. Expect controversyAccording to ComicBook.com, the game be "heavy on troubling, realistic emotions, very much inspired by the controversial 'No Russian level" That mission is in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. It was highly controversial at the time for depicting an undercover CIA agent who takes part in a mass shooting of civilians. The trailer suggests other terrorist attacks may feature in the story, and children also feature so it may be these elements are used to stir up controversy.
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| The best cheap Amazon Kindle sale prices and deals on Amazon Prime Day 2019 Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:42 AM PDT A cheap Kindle sale is never that far away in these parts as Amazon is keen to stay atop of the ereader pile. Kindle prices on most of the devices are already great value given the high quality you get in your hands. We really want to help you beat those standard Kindle prices and given Amazon Prime Day is almost here, you're bound to see huge discounts on multiple models. So hang on for the big sale July 15-16 if you don't see a discount today. Fingers crossed we see the latest 2019 Kindles getting involved. We're rounding up all the cheapest Kindle deals as various retailers throw down to try to offer your the best bargains. We've covered every readily-available model including the basic Kindles, the excellent all-rounder Paperwhites and the super fancy Kindle Oasis luxury ereader. If you're interested in more than just reading ebooks, the Fire tablet range is covered in our full roundup of the best Amazon Fire Tablet deals too - they're a much cheaper alternative to those pricey iPad deals. Naturally, we'll explain the differences between the various Kindle devices too so you can make the most informed decision about which one suits you best. We've provided a quick overview of the latest deals directly below, keep scrolling though and you'll see an extensive list of Kindle prices for each model. What makes a good Kindle price?These ereaders don't have LCD screens or powerful internal components. So you'll find Kindle sale prices are far cheaper than tablets and phones. The screens are fantastic for glare-free reading and an immediate improvement over using the Kindle app on your phone or tablet too. If you can find the Kindle Paperwhite for under US$129/£120/AU$199 you're getting a good price. The new entry-level Kindle 2019 model will surely see some discounts soon on its $89.99/£69/AU$139 price. The top of the line Kindle Oasis model prices start at $269/£229/AU$389 and rarely drops lower. What do 'Special Offers' mean on the Kindle listings?When looking at a Kindle ereader listing, whether it's on Amazon's website, or on a different retailer's site, you'll often see 'includes special offers' in the title or item description. Choose without special offers and the price will jump up £10/US$20. Essentially, these Special Offers act as Amazon-based screensaver-style advertisements on your Kindle device. So when you pop your Kindle on from sleep mode you'll see an ad for a book on Amazon's Kindle store, or maybe a third party ad. Annoying right? Actually, I opted for with Special Offers (I do love a cheap deal), and it's not bothered me one bit. You can swipe the ad away easily (no trying to find the tiny X icon here) and get on with your reading straight away. When in sleep mode, the ads cycle on the screen, but they're not illuminated and they don't seem to consume any power. They don't slow anything down when powering on the device after shutdown either. Seeing as they don't interfere with the experience at all, I'm glad I didn't spend the extra money to block them. Hey, some of them (sales ads etc) have been worth clicking through to. If you really don't like them though, you can always pay the difference at a later date to get them removed. So we'd opt for the cheaper 'includes special offers' option first. Here are the best cheap Kindle prices currently available...
Amazon has an updated version of the excellent Kindle Paperwhite and it's just been released. And this is no mere by-the-numbers update with a deep dive on internal spec sheet required to spot the differences (let's leave that to the MacBooks right?). The 2018 version of the Paperwhite is so good you might be tempted to ditch the previous version, which we still love very much. The backlit screen is now flush with the bezel, meaning no more places for dust or hair to get stuck. And part of the reasoning behind this upgrade is to ensure the Kindle Paperwhite is now a waterproof ereader, just like the far more expensive (but absolutely beautiful) Kindle Oasis. The cheapest model now has double the storage capacity at 8GB which is handy if you you're reading image-heavy books like graphic novels/comics. And it's 20 grams lighter. That extra space is also handy for audiobooks, a new addition to the Paperwhite that you can take advantage of via bluetooth speakers/headphones. We expect prices to drop on the older model to clear stock out, so you could get a decent discount there (see further down this page for the older Paperwhite prices). As for the new Kindle Paperwhite 2018, prices start at $129.99/£119.99/AU$199. The 2018 Kindle Paperwhite is well on its way to surpassing the previous model, which was already the best value ereader on the planet.
Amazon's latest take on the entry-level Kindle was given a boost for 2019 by including a built-in light, meaning you don't have to get the Kindle Paperwhite if you want to read your Kindle at night without any extra lighting in the room. It's a neat upgrade, but it has pushed the starting price up a little compared to the 2016 starting Kindle. The Amazon Kindle with a built-in light starts at $89.99 / £69.99 / AU$139. The screen itself though is still only 167 ppi, opposed to the Paperwhite's higher resolution of 300 ppi. The Paperwhite (which is now waterproof and designed with a flush screen against the bezel) does get some chunky discounts at multiple points of the year, so if you time it right, you may not have to pay much more to get that instead of this basic (if improved) Kindle. For the full rundown, check out our latest Kindle review.
Amazon has just updated the previous-gen Kindle Oasis to an all-new version. The Kindle Oasis (2019) prices start at $249.99/£229.99/AU$399. It isn't all that different to the 2017 model in all honesty, but at least prices on that one will start to drop now. The main new feature is an amber-shade option for the screen background. This 'warm' light has a much more natural feel, like an old paperback. It looks rather lovely and is less of a strain on your eyes, especially if you're reading at night and wanting to wind down. Otherwise, this is the same beautifully-designed waterproof luxury e-reader as last time out. So the best e-reader money can buy has actually improved a little. There's no getting around the initial asking price is seriously high, meaning the Paperwhite is still much easier to recommend.
The second iteration of the Kindle Oasis costs US$249/£229/AU$389 for the cheapest Wi-Fi version. This is an upgrade over the older Oasis (which is no longer available) and a huge improvement. It's 15% cheaper, bigger and also the first waterproof kindle, arguably justifying the top end price-tag. The Kindle Oasis is also the first kindle to support Aubidle audio books, although you'll need a pair of bluetooth wireless headphones to use this feature as there's no built-in speaker or 3.5mm headphone port. This new Kindle ereader's 7-inch screen makes it the largest in the current Kindle range and tempting for readers wanting to view a larger page, meaning you won't have to turn pages as often. The page turn buttons are given a wider bezel on the side than the now-discontinued Kindle Voyage, making it easier to hold one-handed - the screen will flip over to accommodate left-handed readers too. The considerably cheaper Paperwhite models are excellent alternatives and feature the same screen resolution. That larger screen and waterproofing for peace of mind are pretty tempting though. On the plus side, prices should start to drop now that there's a newer model available (see above).
The older 2016 Kindle (aka the ‘Kindle Touch 2016’ in Australia) has recently been discontinued, so stock will eventually run out. It's been superseded by a newer 2019 version that comes with a built-in light, which bumped up the price a tad too. This 2016 model is also available in white (the 2014 was black only), it's lighter, thinner, has double the RAM speed and double the storage capacity at 4GB than the older version. The lack of a back-lit screen is the only thing holding it back really which is why we'd be tempted to spend a little more and opt for the newer version or the Paperwhite instead. We check our Kindle deals every day to make sure they're always up to date and available! This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Windows 10 May 2019 Update now ready for more PCs as major issues are resolved Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:41 AM PDT The Windows 10 May 2019 Update has had three blocks lifted which were preventing the upgrade from being delivered to some PCs – the upshot being that you may now be able to get the latest update if it was being held back due to one of these compatibility issues. The problems which have been cured, and marked as resolved on the May 2019 Update health dashboard, are as follows:
The last one is the biggie, and it prevented the May 2019 Update from being installed on PCs which had an external USB device plugged in (or an SD memory card). Obviously it’s good to see these issues banished into non-existence, and according to the health dashboard, there are only two flaws which Microsoft hasn’t resolved or mitigated.
Those are the Windows Sandbox failing to start and producing an error code (file not found) on certain devices, and an issue with screen brightness not responding to the user’s adjustments (affecting certain Intel display drivers). Remaining gremlinsHowever, Ghacks, which spotted this development, did note that there have been a few issues which popped up recently that Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged yet, or at least aren’t yet documented on the health dashboard. These unaddressed issues include a problem with Microsoft Remote Desktop whereby users are encountering a black screen due to flaky display drivers, as well as the SFC/Scannow option failing to work properly. And, in the latest patch for Windows 10 May 2019 Update, KB4507453, some devices are being affected by a restart notifications loop: meaning even after the update is installed, and your PC is rebooted, you still get a pop-up stating that a restart is required (and this persists indefinitely). If the latter gremlin is literally bugging you, then there is a potential workaround as documented by Günter Born. Still, the May 2019 Update has run pretty smoothly, especially compared with the debacle that was the previous October 2018 Update. We don’t anticipate any problems with the next update for later in 2019, either, given that it’s a more low-key affair that will focus on making small tweaks and improving performance.
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| Best HR outsourcing services of 2019 Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:32 AM PDT Handling employee paperwork can be a nightmare maze of tax and legal compliance issues. It's time consuming work that offers little obvious reward, and takes your attention from simply growing your business. For small business owners, it can be an unwelcome headache to tackle it directly, but even with larger businesses this means having to invest in HR managers and software which may not necessarily seem cost-effective, especially in the short-term. Luckily, there are a number of HR outsourcing options available. Some are full service providers, and cover everything from recruitment to payroll, to tax deductions and legal compliance. This can be especially beneficial for businesses that lack HR expertise or might find it expensive to build and accommodate their own HR team. Outsourcing allows another company to deal with all those complexities and liabilities for you. Others providers allow you to pick and choose which HR service you'd like to outsource. This is especially the case where a business may want to provide extra support for its existing HR department. After all, HR isn't all about tax and insurance, but also about employee recruitment and providing training provision. Third parties may be able offer these services to add another layer of expertise without having to introducing an administrative burden on your business. Some HR outsourcing companies are certified by the IRS or accredited by the Employer Services Assurance Corporation (ESAC), which can provide guarantees to the level of service, not least for avoiding double-taxation penalties. This can be especially important for large businesses. However, smaller HR outsourcing companies may not come with either credentials, but that doesn't mean they may be any less capable, especially when dealing with less complex small business needs. To help you choose between HR outsourcing providers, we've featured the five best below.
Image Credit: ADP ADP Comprehensive Services is designed for larger businesses that want to focus more on strategy, or else could benefit companies undergoing a merger or acquisition. The Comprehensive Services package allows a business to outsource either all of its HR services to ADP, or just selected HR services. The services available include employee recruitment, retention, and engagement, with performance management and compensation benchmarking. ADP can also handle all aspects of benefits administration, from carrier connections and eligibility reporting, to open enrollment administration, as well as new hire and life event enrollments, and all administrated under COBRA guidelines. ADP can also ensure compliance with legal frameworks, not least ACA and FMLA. Of course, ADP can also take on board payroll administration to reduce compliance risk, not least in dealing with managing time and attendance, but also with regards to federal and state tax changes, as well as offering proactive guidance on best practices. Overall, ADP is one of the biggest names in HR outsourcing, yet the Comprehensive Services package for HR outsourcing is designed for businesses with anywhere between 1-1000+ employees.
Image Credit: G&A Partners G&A Partners' Full-Service HR Solution provides an outsourced alternative for businesses to manage and administrate HR services, payroll, and employee benefits. They run this using their own HR technology platform, Worksight, which offers SaaS (Software as a Service) that works with SSO (Single Sign On) technology. Using Worksight, G&A are able to cover all aspects of recruitment, onboarding, time and attendance, performance management, benefits enrollment, and performance management. For recruitment, G&A use an applicant tracking system (ATS) which allows them to search online applicant databases in order to create job descriptions and compensation packages suitable to the post. G&A can screen applicants, and allow them to communicate through the recruitment process. The Worksight platform allows all employment forms to be signed and stored directly in the system, and provides real-time updates on the employee onboarding process. The time and attendance system allows for employees to clock in digitally, and also manage all aspects of creating and managing schedules, as well as vacations and sickness. G&A Partners also provides expert guidance on a range of other issues, not least safety at work compliance, healthcare reform, and benefits administration tailored to weighting these to the most needed positions as required. Overall, G&A Partners provides a wide range of services, which can be packages together as a single solution or worked with individually depending on which actual HR services you need.
Image Credit: Insperity Insperity offers HR outsourcing solutions according to two main plans: the first being 5-149 employees, and the second for 150-5000 employees. Both cover all the HR basics, not least HR admin and payroll, risk-management and compliance, benefits, as well as employee training and management. The main difference between the programs is a case of where the put the focus of the service, and of course the price. The first plan for small businesses is a full-service solution focused on providing a strong, stable, and supported HR management plan in the first place, while being able to offer insurance benefits normally expected with a Fortune 500 company. Insperity also uses its own software platform to manage all aspects of payroll, accounting, and cost administration, not to mention tax filing. As expected, they also provide support and advice for compliance and liability issues, as well as performance management. The second plan for medium to large businesses provides the same services while putting the focus on productivity and profitability, not least to work to prevent IT sprawl and inefficiencies that necessarily plague business systems the larger they get. The aim is to provide detailed cost inventory and manage them to ensure budget certainty. This is especially relevant where a business may be involved in a merger or acquisition and needs to integrate employees from different payroll systems into one. In all, Insperity provide a wide-ranging solution, and although two different plans have been mentioned, Insperity also provide individual HR services as required.
Image Credit: Paychex Paychex offers both human resources consulting as well as HR outsourcing and PEO services. This means you can look at different levels of service according to your business needs, from simply asking for guidance on how to better streamline your existing HR workflows, to completely outsourcing all of your HR and employment needs to Paychex. As expected, Paychex provides all the expected services in terms of HR management, payroll and benefits administration, as well as compliance and legal services. Where Paychex differs from the competition is its focus on digital streamlining where possible, in order to ensure maximum efficiency and productivity in all aspects of human resources management. For example, with Paychex Flex you can easily manage your business health insurance, section 125 plans, 401(k) and other employee benefits from a single online platform. Changes can be made in real-time, and set up so that employees can easily access the information without having to ask for it. The whole process means less time is spent on low-value administrative tasks, while streamlining existing procedures. Additionally, it's also easier to search for actionable insights to improve efficiency, with analytics automated to work through the Paychex HR management system to reveal trends and provide custom reporting. Altogether, Paychex is another strong company with a strong suite of services, and even better in that you can easily select the right level of service for your business.
Image Credit: TriNet TriNet offers a range of HR services, including HR consultancy, benefits management, payroll services, risk mitigation, all run through a single software platform. They can also provide mobile apps for employee expenses, time management, wages and benefits statements. These services can be taken packaged together, as individual outsourced services, or even a full-service PEO (Professional Employer Organization) as required. What makes TriNet standout a little more from its competition is that its advisers have specialist industry experience, not least in architecture & engineering, consulting, financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, marketing, retail, technology, and nonprofits. The aim is to make sure this expertise translates into actionable insights specific for your business, and therefore help improve some aspect of efficiency, workflows, or productivity. Another advantage of TriNet is that it charges on a per-employee basis, rather than as a percent of payroll. This means your HR costs are predictable and consistent, which can be especially advantageous to small businesses who need to have a very clear idea of costs. TriNet is also able to work comfortable with businesses of different sizes, tailoring plans accordingly, though some services may require an employee minimum to make them financially worthwhile. Overall, TriNet is a flexible provider that could offer industry insights while providing a comprehensive range of HR outsourcing services. More HR outsourcing optionsThere are a large number of different HR outsourcing providers out there, more than we've been able to cover here so far. Some of these companies cater more for small businesses, but others focus on larger businesses and so have a minimum number of employees to work with. Therefore to help you find the HR service to suit you, we've listed below other notable HR outsourcing companies that it's worth you checking out: XcelHR provides a range of outsource HR solutions including human resources management, payroll and tax administration, talent acquisition, benefits administration, retirement services, and risk management. Justworks is a full service HR company that can provide support and consulting as required. Their main service provisions include payroll, benefits, and compliance, on top of routine HR tasks. Abel HR is a HR provider that can offer a full service provision as a PEO, or support specific needs with services available for payroll, insurance and other benefits, as well as other outsourced solutions. Acadia HR can provide a full range of HR support and management services for companies of all sizes, covering everything from payroll and compliance, to hiring and training. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| African Cup of Nations 2019 live stream: how to watch semi-final football online from anywhere Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:21 AM PDT We're down to just four teams remaining in the 2019 African Cup of Nations with a series of semi-final matches now on the menu to see who advances to next Friday's final. Regardless of where you are on the planet, our guide below for getting an African Cup of Nations 2019 live stream will ensure you don’t miss a kick. First held in 1957 with just three countries taking part, the 32nd biannual African Cup of Nations will see 24 sides go for glory this year. Notable for the often end-to-end attacking styles of its participating teams, there's rarely a dull match during AFCON. Possibly the biggest shock so far came in the round of 16 Mohamed Salah and hosts Egypt were knocked out of the competition by South Africa. At least Liverpool teammate Sadio Mane's Senegal have made it through unscathed. Senegal have never won the AFCON but are one of the favourites this year, with many tipsters expecting a side that feature's Mane and Napoli's towering centre-back Kalidou Koulibaly to do well. Elsewhere, Nigeria are also are good bet to go far in this year's tournament. Minnows of Madagascar - possibly the story of the tournament - are finally out, but previous winners Algeria and Tunisia make up the semi-final quartet. Cameroon came to Egypt as the reigning champions but lost 3-2 to Nigeria in a round of 16 thriller. As well as shifting to the summer, this year's tournament is a much longer competition having been expanded to host 24 teams for the first time. Its a change which may play a factor for some of the star players on show who will have had lengthy seasons in Europe. If you want to know where you'll be able to watch every single match, we'll tell you exactly where you can catch them online with our African Cup of Nations 2019 live stream guide.
How to watch the African Cup of Nations 2019 from outside your countryBelow we have a full rundown of your watching options in different countries - check out how to watch in the UK, US (where Fubo can help you watch with a free trial) Canada and Australia. The problems start when you try to watch your domestic coverage online while out of the country. Give its a go...you'll quickly find your stream in geo-blocked. That's super annoying, but not unavoidable. We've found that using a Virtual Private Network - or VPN - to be a handy solution. You select a server in your home country and then watch as if you were sat back at home on your couch. 2019 African Cup of Nations 2019 fixturesSunday July 14 – Semi-finals Senegal v Tunisia (5pm BST) Algeria v Nigeria (8pm BST) Wednesday July 17 – Third-place play-off SF1 loser v SF2 loser (8pm BST) Friday July 19 – Final SF1 winner v SF2 winner (8pm BST)
How to stream the African Cup of Nations 2019 live in the UK
How to watch the African Cup of Nations 2019: US live stream- Discover our pick of all the US's best sports streaming sites
How to watch the African Cup of Nations 2019: Canada live stream
How to live stream the African Cup of Nations 2019 in Australia
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| Cricket World Cup 2019 live stream: how to watch the final online from anywhere Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:12 AM PDT Two of the 2019 Cricket World Cup's teams have made the final - it's all down to England and New Zealand at Lord's on Sunday. And you've come to the right place to find out how to live stream Cricket World Cup final action regardless of where you live. Although most countries have paid-for TV viewing only (including hosts England) some nations are luckier - for example, Australians can watch on Channel 9, while Pakistan have every match free in the English language on the state-owned PTV. 10 of the world's elite cricket-playing countries are competing title of best ODI team on Earth with only one to be left standing by the end on July 14. It's the 12th incarnation of Cricket World Cup and hosts England went into it as pre-tournament favourites but only just squeezed through to the latter stages - thanks largely to some big hitting from the likes of Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow. From there, Eoin Morgan's men absolutely decimated Australia on Thursday at Edgbaston to reach the final. The Kiwis had a similar run of bad form in this World Cup with three losses on the bounce. But they overcame that to make - and win - a semi-final against India. Martin Guptill's exhilarating run out turned the match in the Black Caps' favour, but it was yet another lynch-pin innings from captain Kane Williamson that really won the game for New Zealand. If you want to know where you'll be able to watch the final match, we'll tell you exactly where you can catch it online with a Cricket World Cup live stream.
How to watch the 2019 Cricket World Cup from outside your countryYou don't have to miss a single minute of Cricket World Cup - even if you're abroad and discover that your home broadcaster's online coverage is geo-blocked (we hate it when that happens). If that happens to you and you're desperate to watch that domestic coverage, there's still a way to get it that doesn't involve putting your security at risk with some dodgy, illegal stream from Reddit. You can simply use a VPN to login back to your country that is broadcasting the actions, and it's really easy to do: 2019 Cricket World Cup fixturesSunday July 14 FINAL - Lord's, London (10.30am BST)
How to stream Cricket World Cup 2019 live in the UK
Live stream the Cricket World Cup in Australia for FREE
How to watch the Cricket World Cup 2019: New Zealand live stream
How to stream 2019 Cricket World Cup online in India
How to get a FREE Cricket World Cup live stream in Pakistan
How to watch the Cricket World Cup: US live streamWhat is the format of the 2019 Cricket World Cup?The Cricket World Cup is a ten-team tournament. Each country plays each other in a round-robin format, after which the top four teams qualify for the semi-finals. The two winning semi-finalists then get to face off in the final on Sunday, July 14. How long do Cricket World Cup matches usually last?Most 2019 Cricket World Cup matches will start at 10.30am BST and end early evening – around 6.30pm BST. A number of day/night games will start at 1.30pm BST and finish under floodlights at around 9pm BST. Cricket World Cup matches broadly follow the rules of One Day Internationals, with each side facing 50 overs within a 210-minute time limit. Add in drinks breaks for each side and a 30 to 40 minutes innings break and matches can run up to nine hours in length. Some matches are much shorter however - England’s capitulation to New Zealand in the 2015 World Cup saw play wrapped up within four-and-a-half hours, with the Kiwis reaching their 123-run target in just 12 overs. What teams are competing in this year's Cricket World Cup?Afghanistan Australia Bangladesh England India New Zealand Pakistan South Africa Sri Lanka West Indies What grounds are being used for the Cricket World Cup?The Oval, London Trent Bridge, Nottingham Home of Nottinghamshire CCC, the 17,500-capacity ground will host five World Cup matches, including England vs Pakistan. Bristol County Ground, Bristol Hampshire Bowl, Southampton The County Ground, Taunton Old Trafford, Manchester Edgbaston, Birmingham Headingley, Leeds Lord's, London The Riverside Ground, Chester-le-Street Cardiff Wales Stadium
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| Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 release date, price, news and leaks Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:10 AM PDT Update: Another Galaxy Watch Active 2 render has leaked, matching the design of previous leaks and further suggesting that we might see the Active 2 at the same time as the Galaxy Watch 2 - if not before. The Samsung Galaxy Watch is one of our favorite wearables. In fact, at the time of writing it tops our best smartwatch list, but it’s also coming up on a year old, so it’s just about due an update. Not only that, but we’ve heard rumors of a new model and even have a good idea of when it might arrive. Below you’ll find all the leaks and news that we’ve heard so far and further down there’s a wish list of all the things we want from the Galaxy Watch 2, to make it a worthy upgrade and a real rival to not just the Apple Watch 4, but also the inevitable Apple Watch 5. Cut to the chase
Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 release date and priceOur best guess for the release date of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 is alongside the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 on August 7. For one thing, the original Galaxy Watch was launched alongside the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, but beyond that Samsung has suggested that we’ll see devices beyond a phone at the launch event. It hasn’t specifically named the Galaxy Watch 2, but it’s an obvious candidate. Plus, leaked timeline documents also suggest the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 will land in quarter 3 of 2019, meaning any time between now and the end of September, so August 7 would comfortably fit within that. As for price, there aren’t any rumors there, but the original Galaxy Watch started at $329 / £279 / AU$499 (for the smaller 42mm version), so the Galaxy Watch 2 will probably cost at least that much. Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 news and leaksThere aren’t many Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 rumors yet, but one source suggests that the wearable will come in two different sizes – a 44mm one and a 40mm one. The original Galaxy Watch also came in two sizes, but they were 46mm and 42mm, so if true then the Galaxy Watch 2 might have been shrunk down a little, which is no bad thing, as the original was a hefty device in the larger size. It has also been reported that the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 is codenamed ‘Renaissance’. One definition of that is ‘rebirth’ or ‘revival’, which – while we might be reading too much into the name - could suggest big changes are coming to the design or features of the watch.
Will the Galaxy Watch 2 sport a new design? Image credit: TechRadar We’ve also heard some rumors about the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2, which we mention here because it’s possible that the rumored features could actually be headed for the standard Galaxy Watch 2 as well or instead, especially as the original Galaxy Watch Active didn’t launch all that long ago, so we wouldn’t really expect a new model for a while. The most exciting Galaxy Watch Active 2 rumor is that it will have an ECG (electrocardiogram), a feature which would let it monitor your heart’s rhythm and alert you to possible atrial fibrillation. In other words, it could be a life-saving feature. It’s something the Apple Watch 4 already offers, so it would make sense for Samsung to launch a rival device. The same source suggests fall detection could also come to the Galaxy Watch Active 2. This is another feature we’ve previously seen on the Apple Watch 4, and it would apparently let you call emergency services with a single tap if it detects a fall, and if the wearer doesn’t call or cancel the alert after a set period, it would automatically place the call, as well as sending a message to their emergency contacts. We’ve also seen leaked images supposedly showing the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2, and they come complete with some specs. The design itself looks very similar to the original Galaxy Watch Active, just with a slightly different look to the power and back buttons. The specs are more interesting though, with the wearable apparently coming in 40mm and 44mm sizes (as has been rumored for the standard Galaxy Watch 2 above), as well as apparently coming in both LTE and Wi-Fi-only varieties. The LTE model supposedly has a 340mAh battery, while the Wi-Fi version is said to be 237mAh. This information probably does genuinely refer to the Galaxy Watch Active 2, rather than the Galaxy Watch 2, assuming it’s accurate, as the design is closer to the Watch Active, and those battery sizes would be a downgrade on the 472mAh of the 46mm Galaxy Watch. Still, with the rumored sizing of the Galaxy Watch 2 and Watch Active 2 being the same it seems Samsung might be looking to bring the two ranges closer together. Since then an official-looking render of the Galaxy Watch Active 2 has also leaked, matching the design above. You can see this below. Given how much the Active 2 is leaking it looks increasingly likely that we might see it at the same time as (or before) the Galaxy Watch 2, despite it being less due a refresh. Finally, in the realms of unlikely but possible features, there’s a patent (spotted by Patently Mobile) for a Samsung wearable with a body composition feature that would use electrodes built into the strap to measure body fat percentage. We doubt we’ll see this on the Galaxy Watch 2 though, as that isn’t specifically named in the patent, and patents often take a long time to turn into products – if they ever do. What we want to seeWhile we don’t know a huge amount about the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 yet, we do know what we want from it. 1. More third-party apps
Tizen is good, but its app situation isn't. Image credit: TechRadar The Samsung Galaxy Watch runs Tizen, rather than one of the big-name wearable operating systems, and one downside of that is that there are fewer apps available than you’ll find on Wear OS or watchOS. So by the time Samsung launches the Galaxy Watch 2 we’d like to have seen it work with developers to get more apps on the platform, especially big name ones. 2. Better stress trackingThe Samsung Galaxy Watch tracks a lot of things and mostly does a good job, but stress tracking is definitely a weak link. While it’s available, it required us to manually measure our stress levels rather than tracking them automatically in our tests (despite claiming that it can do it automatically), and its accuracy could be questionable, since the data seems mostly based just on heart rate. So we’d like to see this feature overhauled for the next model. 3. Group challengesCompeting with friends can be a big motivator to get more active and handily the Samsung Galaxy Watch lets you do this. Your friends don’t even need a Galaxy Watch of their own – a Gear watch or the Samsung Health app will do just fine. However, you can only challenge friends individually, rather than having a group competition. It seems like this would be an obvious and easy feature to add, so hopefully Samsung will. 4. Compatibility with more wireless chargers
There shouldn't be a need for proprietary chargers. Image credit: TechRadar The Samsung Galaxy Watch charges wirelessly, but not just any wireless charger will do, you need a proprietary one that comes with it. This is inconvenient and if you’re ever without your charger means you’re likely to soon have a dead watch (though the Galaxy Watch at least has good battery life). So for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 we want it to work with standard, everyday wireless chargers. That way if you’re at the office or a friend’s house without yours there’s at least a chance someone will have one you can borrow. 5. Big improvements to BixbyAnother downside of using Tizen rather than Wear OS is that the Samsung Galaxy Watch is reliant on Bixby rather than Google Assistant. This is a problem, because Bixby is nowhere near as good as Google Assistant (or Siri or Alexa for that matter), with one particularly major issue being that it simply struggles to understand us on the Galaxy Watch. While you don’t have to use Bixby to interact with the Galaxy Watch, it has the potential to be a major feature, but until it gets a lot better it won’t be. 6. An ECG
The Apple Watch 4 already has an ECG. Image credit: Apple One of the big new features Apple added for the Apple Watch 4 was an ECG, a feature that lets it check for atrial fibrillation. It’s a major upgrade and one we’d love to see Samsung match with its rival device. There have been rumors of just such a feature, so this may well happen either on the Galaxy Watch 2 or the Galaxy Watch Active 2. 7. Wider LTE availabilityThere are versions of the Samsung Galaxy Watch that support LTE, but only on select networks, which won’t suit everyone. For the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 we’d like to see an LTE model available on more or less all networks, so it’s an option for everyone.
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| Get up to £120 in pre-paid credit cards with BT's fresh fibre broadband deals Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:02 AM PDT With Amazon Prime Day now just a few days away, we've kicked into full deals hunter mode and we've just spotted an absolute bargain from BT. Offering up fast fibre speeds with a £100+ reward - BT's making it hard to say no. So if you pair all of that with BT's added incentive - BT reward cards - BT's feeling like a strong contender for your internet. These BT reward cards are pre-paid Mastercards and depending on which package you choose, the bigger the value - there are more details below. Our personal favourites are the Superfast Fibre 1 and Superfast Fibre 2 packages or for TV fans, BT's Starter Bundle. But you can head over to our guide to the best BT broadband deals to see the whole range.
BT's fibre broadband dealsWhat is a BT Reward Card?The Reward Card that BT sends out is a pre-paid credit card that you can use anywhere that accepts Mastercard. In short, that's around a million shops, cafes and restaurants around the world, so you shouldn't find it difficult to find places to spend, spend, spend. It's an old-fashioned chip and pin card, rather than contactless. But do make sure that you claim your Reward Card within three months of installation, otherwise you'll lose out on all that cash. Today's best broadband dealsThis posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Best free iPad apps 2019: the top titles we've tried Posted: 12 Jul 2019 05:47 AM PDT Free apps sometimes have a bad reputation, but many are gems that are so good you won’t believe they’re free. We’ve scoured the App Store to find the very best, and sorted them into handy categories, which you can find on the following pages. On this page you'll find the app of the week - our top new selection to try out, and check back every seven days where you'll find a new option to test. After that, it's the best entertainment apps (surely the best reason to own an iPad...) and a variety of categories on the following pages to tickle your fancy. Free app of the week: Lake: Coloring Books
Image credit: TechRadar Lake: Coloring Books seems ideally suited to iPad owners who like dabbling in coloring – especially if they also own an Apple Pencil. The One A Day feature provides a daily freebie for 60 days, and each of the varied coloring books also offers you a free image to try your hand at. The coloring experience is solid. Friendly tool panels sit at the side of the screen. You can quickly swap palettes or switch from a brush to a spray can. If you don’t want to go over the lines, a single button press gives you a hand there, too. Beyond scribbling inside of someone else’s lines, you can make your own with a blank canvas option, and your masterpieces can be saved to a gallery, so you can later show them off online. The best free entertainment apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether shopping, coloring, reading, watching TV or using Twitter.
Image credit: The Iconfactory TwitterrificTwitterrific is a client for Twitter that wants you to use the social network on your own terms. This means you get a slew of customization options – and a much richer user experience – compared to when using the official Twitter app. On iPad, this is very apparent on exploring the tabs at the top of the screen. You get five. Home returns you to your main feed, but the other four can be set to open anything from mentions to lists – it’s up to you. As is how the app looks, given its range of built-in themes. Twitterrific excels elsewhere, too. Next to the search field is a Center Stage button, which you press to browse through media tweets. Muting and sync are fully supported. All of this is free, in return for a single unobtrusive always-on ad banner.
Infuse 6Infuse 6 enables you to watch your video collection – without first loading any of it on to your iPad. Instead, the app streams footage from files stored on local PCs, Macs, or network drives. Should you want to store some content on your iPad, though, Files integration makes that a cinch. In fact, the interface throughout is superb – usable and sleek. It serves up not only your videos, but also cover art and background information – assuming you’ve named your files reasonably sensibly. Subtitles can be downloaded with a tap. The free version doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles. Library/progress sync, streaming from cloud sources, AirPlay, and HD audio require a pro account, or the purchase of the standalone Infuse Pro 6. But even without these, you won’t find a better or more feature-packed free video player on your iPad.
FeedlyFeedly bills itself as a smart news reader. However, rather than attempting to second-guess what you’d like to read, based on you having tapped a few vague category buttons, Feedly takes a more old-fashioned approach: subscriptions. In short, using the magic of RSS, you (for free) subscribe to the newsfeeds of your favorite websites – anything from news corporations down to the most niche of blogs. New articles are then sent to Feedly, and can be read in-app. If you fancy discovering content beyond what you usually read, there’s an Explore tab; but Feedly’s best when you’re curating what you end up checking out, through focusing primarily on sources you trust. As an added bonus, if you like the idea but not the interface, a Feedly account can be used to power other RSS readers such as TechRadar favorite Reeder.
Pocket is a read-later app. What this means is that rather than ending the day staring at dozens of unread browser tabs, you fling items of interest in Pocket’s direction. It then converts them into a streamlined personalized magazine you can peruse at your leisure. The default iPad interface is an appealing grid, and individual articles are stripped back to words and images. This can be a major improvement over the original websites, letting you delve into content without distractions. A night mode flips colors late in the day, to ensure you don’t get eye strain, but Pocket also allows you to ‘read with your ears’. This turns your reading list into an on-the-fly podcast. It’s an odd experience, but it can be nice to work through your reading list while cooking, walking or driving.
Infuse 5Infuse 5 is a video player that lets you get at video from pretty much anywhere. This means if you have a massive video collection, you needn’t load it all on to your iPad. Instead, you can quickly copy across items as and when you want to play them – or just stream from local network storage. This app isn’t unique in the field, but it’s friendly and sleek. Set-up is a breeze, and even when streaming from your local network, metadata (cover art; item information) is automatically downloaded. It’s also possible to download subtitles on the fly. The free version has restrictions that require an annual subscription to unlock: some video/audio formats; AirPlay and Google Cast support; background playback; library sync. But as a freebie for anyone who wants to stream videos to their iPad, Infuse 5 really can’t be beaten.
Fiery FeedsFiery Feeds is a full-featured RSS reader. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, it enables you to subscribe to almost any website’s content. You’ll then in Fiery Feeds get a list of headlines whenever you open the app, ensuring you don’t miss articles from sources you trust. Most free RSS readers are clunky, but Fiery Feeds bucks the trend with a sleek two-pane interface, and a slew of customization options. It feels modern, but gives you very direct control over what you read, unlike the likes of News or Flipboard. There’s a paid tier, too – US$9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 per year – which unlocks additional features, including a ‘must read’ folder, a text view mode (which loads full articles for sites that otherwise only send you synopses), and custom actions. Whichever flavor you plump for, Fiery Feeds is well worth installing on your iPad.
VLC for MobileVLC for Mobile is an iPad take on the popular open source media player. On iPad, it has two main uses. The first is offline playback. You can load up VLC with videos, and – broadly speaking – be secure in the knowledge it’s actually going to be capable of playing them. During said playback, you can fiddle with the picture and audio, and use gestures to skip through boring sections – or backwards if you missed a bit. VLC is also good for streaming. You can stream movies from a PC or Mac right to your iPad, rather than having to sit in front of a computer like it’s 2005. The interface throughout is sleek and minimal (irritating zooming to the options sidebar aside), and impressive for a video streaming app that’s entirely free.
JustWatchJustWatch solves one of the biggest problems with the way we consume television and movies. With streaming services and on-demand increasingly rendering traditional schedules redundant, the key is usually finding out where and how to watch something, not when. JustWatch asks you to confirm your location and the services that interest you. If you’re still into the big screen, there’s a tab for currently showing movies, which makes it a cinch to access local showtimes. But this app’s mostly about TV, providing filterable feeds that list popular shows and bargains – and where to find them. Select a show, tap on an icon, and you’re whisked away to the relevant app. Whatever you want to see, JustWatch makes reaching it a whole lot easier.
LetterboxdLetterboxd is an iPad take on a social network for film lovers. Sign up, and you can do all the usual following friends and bellyaching, only here you’re complaining about whether Blade Runner 2049 is 2049 times worse than the original, and who’s the best James Bond. If that sounds awful but you’re a film lover, Letterboxd has another use: the ability to log everything you’ve ever watched. You can quickly assign ratings and ‘likes’ to your personal favorites, which are subsequently displayed as a grid of artwork that can be sorted and filtered. Beyond that, you can add tags, a review, and the date when you last watched the film. On the iPad’s large display, the entire app looks great – not least when you start checking out trailers of those films you’re keen to see.
Attenborough Story of lifeIf you’ve any interest in wildlife films, Attenborough Story of Life is a must-have. It features over a thousand clips picked from Attenborough’s decades-long journey through what he refers to as the “greatest story of all…how animals and plants came to fill our Earth”. The app is split into three sections. You’re initially urged to delve into some featured collections, but can also explore by habitat or species, unearthing everything from big-toothed sharks to tiny penguins skittering about. Clips can be saved as favorites, or grouped into custom collections to later peruse or share with friends. Some of the footage is noticeably low-res on an iPad – there’s nothing here to concern your Blu-Rays, and that’s a pity. Still, for instant access to such a wealth of amazing programming, this one’s not to be missed.
Chunky Comic ReaderThe majority of comic-book readers on the App Store are tied to online stores, and any emphasis on quality in the actual apps isn't always placed on the reading part. But with many more publishers embracing DRM-free downloads, having a really great reading app is essential if you're into digital comics. Chunky Comic Reader is the best available on iOS. The interface is smart, simple and boasts plenty of settings, including the means to eradicate animation entirely when flipping pages. Rendering is top-notch, even for relatively low-res fare. And you get the option of one- or two-up page views. For free, you can access web storage to upload comics. A single $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99 pro upgrade adds support for shared Mac/PC/NAS drives.
MelodistPart meditative relaxation tool, part sleep aid, Melodist is all about creating melodies from imagery. All you have to do is load something from your Camera Roll, and the app does the rest. On analyzing your photo or screen grab for changes in hues, saturation and brightness, a music loop is generated. You can adjust the playback speed, instrument and visual effect (which starts off as a lazily scrolling piano roll), along with setting a timer. Although occasionally discordant, the app mostly creates very pleasing sounds. And while it’s perhaps missing a trick in not displaying your photo as-is underneath the notes being played (your image is instead heavily blurred as a background), you can export each tune as audio or a video that shows the picture alongside the animation. These free exports are a pretty generous gesture by the developer; if you want to return the favor, there’s affordable IAP for extra sounds, animation and MIDI export.
WWF TogetherWith a noodly soundtrack playing in the background, WWF Together invites you to spin a papercraft world and tap points of interest to learn more about endangered species. 16 creatures get fuller treatment - a navigable presentation of sorts that hangs on a key characteristic, such as a panda's charisma, or an elephant's intelligence. These sections are arranged as a three-by-three grid, each screen of which gives you something different, be it statistics, gorgeous photography, or a 'facetime' movie that gives you a chance to get up close and personal. Apps that mix charity and education can often come across as dry and worthy, but WWF Together is neither. It's informative but charming, and emotive but fun. Rather neatly, stories can be shared by email, and this screen further rewards you with origami instructions to make your own paper animal; once constructed, it can sit on the desk next to all your technology, reminding you of the more fragile things that exist in our world. Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!
The best free art and design apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, graphic design and animation.
Universe – Website BuilderUniverse – Website Builder suggests you should be able to create a website in 60 seconds. That time scale’s a bit of a stretch, but Universe’s building-blocks system does make getting something online dead easy. Each page is a grid. You drag out a section, and then decide what should fill it – a photo, text, social media buttons or video. You can start from scratch, or work with a theme. When you’re done, prod a button and your efforts are uploaded. Should you want more pro-oriented features – analytics; a store; a proper domain – you’ll need to pay $9.99/£8.99/AU$14.49 per month. But for free, Universe is a usable, smart, simple way to get a personal website online, with little effort, and in a manner that feels entirely suited to the touchscreen.
Autodesk SketchBookAutodesk SketchBook is a drawing and sketching app. Toolbars sit at the screen edges, providing quick access to a slew of editable brushes, a comprehensive layers system, and tools for drawing shapes, adding text and manipulating selections. Flow and size sliders sit on the brushes palette, so you can easily adjust your brush’s properties. Tap the full-screen button and most of the interface falls away, leaving you with your canvas, but brushes, color pickers and layers always remain within easy reach, accessed by pressing a small on-screen switch. This means that with a little time spent getting used to the interface, SketchBook provides as much power as you need – and for no outlay whatsoever. That makes it a good bet whether you’re an occasional doodler, or a jobbing artist wanting something powerful yet usable for working on their iPad.
VectornatorVectornator is a professional-quality vector illustration app, which bafflingly lacks a price tag. We say bafflingly because this is no half-hearted freebie. Vectornator is packed with tools and polish, whether you want to sketch a vector doodle whose lines can always be tweaked and adjusted, or work on a new app design using a built-in template. On iPad, the app feels almost effortless in use. Tools sit at the screen’s edges, enabling fast access, and a settings pane can be opened as needed. Buttons and sliders are finger-friendly, rather than aping the fiddly setups you’d find in desktop fare. With a bunch of built-in examples to help you find your way, a range of export options, and stylus support, Vectornator would be a bargain at a tenner. As a freebie, it’s a must.
Atlas WallpaperAtlas Wallpaper does pretty much what you’d expect: turns maps into background wallpapers for your iPad. That might sound like an odd idea, but abstract imagery based on road systems and waterways can work really well on your Lock or Home screen. The app includes a modicum of customization. You can select a location, zoom in, and choose a color scheme from a range of options. The resulting image can then be exported to Photos, ready for applying as a background. For a one-off $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99, you can unlock the app’s premium features, including custom styles (useful if you want some really subtle grey-on-black), and desktop/Apple Watch export sizes. But even for free, this is a great option for having something a bit different behind all your app icons.
UnsplashUnsplash is an app that gives you fast access to many thousands of images generously gifted to the Unsplash website by the photographic community. These photographs can be used entirely for free, for any purposes you wish, and can be modified as you see fit. The app and available photographs are both rather good. You can search for something specific, browse new photos, or explore by themes. The large iPad display is the perfect lean-back way to look through dozens of images, flicking between them in full-screen mode. It’s a pity there’s no download option, nor a means to follow specific photographers. But then this one’s all about effortlessness and immediacy, and knowing that whenever you do find something that inspires you, it can be downloaded to your iPad’s Photos app with a single tap.
Artomaton - The Motion PainterArtomaton - The Motion Painter is a little like Prisma, in that it uses AI to transform photos into something that looks like it was painted or sketched. However, this isn’t a single-tap filter app; Artomaton wants to afford you at least some control over your creations. To start with, you paint in the natural media effects to the degree you’re happy with. Do so lightly and you get the subtlest of sketches; cover every inch of the canvas and you end up with a more complete piece of art. Beyond that, there are plenty of settings to fiddle with. The resulting images aren’t always entirely convincing in terms of realism, but they always look good. And although many materials are locked behind IAP, you get plenty for free.
Autodesk SketchBookWe tend to quickly shift children from finger-painting to using much finer tools, but the iPad shows there's plenty of power in your digits — if you're using the right app. Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll. The core app is free, but it will cost you $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 to unlock the pro features.
Brushes ReduxThe original Brushes app was one of the most important in the iPhone's early days. With Jorge Colombo using it to paint a New Yorker cover, it showcased the potential of the technology, and that an iPhone could be used for production, rather than merely consumption. Brushes eventually stopped being updated, but fortunately went open source beforehand. Brushes Redux is the result. On the iPad, you can take advantage of the much larger screen. But the main benefit of the app is its approachable nature. It's extremely easy to use, but also has plenty of power for those who need it, not least in the layering system and the superb brush designer.
CanvaThe idea behind Canva is to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating great-looking layouts based on your photos. Select a layout type (presentation, blog graphic, invitation, and so on) and the app serves up templates to work with. These are mostly very smart indeed, but the smartest thing about Canva is that these starting points can all be edited: swap out images for your own photos, adjust text boxes, and add new elements or even entire pages. Because of its scope, Canva isn't as immediate as one-click automated apps in this space, but the interface is intuitive enough to quickly grasp. Our only niggle is the lack of multi-item selection, but with Canva being an online service, you can always fine-tune your iPad creations in a browser on the desktop.
Pixel art editor - DottableDespite being lumbered with an awkward name, Pixel art editor - Dottable is a usable and nicely-conceived app. Choose a canvas size and then the interface is split between your drawing area, layers, and tools. The basics are all there for creating old-school pixel art, but beyond brushes and fills, Dottable adds some fairly sophisticated shapes and transform tools. If you want to trace an image, it can be imported, and optionally converted to pixel art form. Exports are also dealt with nicely, either exporting your image as a PNG, or converting each layer into a single frame of an animated GIF. None of this is enough to trouble the pro-oriented Pixaki, but as a freebie for pixel artists, Dottable is mightily impressive.
FolioscopeOne of the great things about the app revolution is how these bits of software can help you experience creative fare that would have previously been inaccessible, unless you were armed with tons of cash and loads of time. Folioscope is a case in point, providing the basics for crafting your own animations. We should note you’re not going to be the next Disney with Folioscope – the tools are fairly basic, and the output veers towards ‘wobbling stickmen’. But you do get a range of brushes (of differing size and texture), several drawing tools (pen, eraser, flood fill, and marquee), and onion-skinning, which enables you to see faint impressions of adjacent frames, in order to line everything up. The friendly nature of the app makes it accessible to anyone, and there’s no limit on export – projects can be shared as GIFs or movies, or uploaded to the Folioscope community, should you create an account.
MediBang PaintMediBang Paint feels like one of those apps where you’re always waiting for the catch to arrive. Create a new canvas and you end up staring at what can only be described as a simplified Photoshop on your iPad. There are loads of drawing tools, a layers system (including photo import), and configurable brushes. Opening up menus reveals yet more features – rotation; shapes; grids – but palettes can also be hidden, so you can get on with just drawing. Judging by the in-app gallery of uploaded art, MediBang is popular with manga artists, but its tools are capable enough to support a much wider range of digital painting and drawing styles – all without costing you a penny.
PicsArt Animated Gif & Video AnimatorYou won’t trouble Hollywood with PicsArt (or PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator to use its unwieldy full name). However, it is a great introduction to animation and also a handy sketchpad for those already immersed in the field. A beginner can start with a blank slate, paper texture, or photo background, on to which an animation frame is drawn. Add further frames and previous ones faintly show through, to aid you in making smooth transitions. Delve further into the app to discover more advanced fare, including brush options and a hugely useful layers system. When done, export to GIF or video – or save projects to refine later. That this all comes for free (and free from ads) is astonishing. The best free education apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for learning new things – from coding to astronomy.
Big Bang ARBig Bang AR is an AR experience that blazes through 13.8 billion years of history in a matter of minutes. It begins with your outstretched hand, which you turn into a fist, and then open up, only for the Big Bang to explode out of it – a neat trick, if a bit awkward when you’re holding an iPad in the other hand. After that point, though, it’s all rather wondrous as you find yourself surrounded by the earliest components of the universe, which eventually form into our solar system. With narration by Tilda Swinton, the odd bit of interactivity, further reading sections, and a nice ‘we are all made of stars’ selfie at the end, Big Bang AR is a rather lovely example of an immersive, immediate educational experience for iPad.
Night SkyNight Sky puts the planets and stars inside your iPad. More importantly, it goes above and beyond in the ways you can explore them. Like many other astronomy apps, you can drag to adjust the view or explore the heavens by holding your iPad in front of your face and physically moving around. Chill-out music burbles away in the background, and there’s visual bling in the form of illustrated constellation overlays. But here, constellations and celestial bodies can be pulled from the main view. They can then be moved with a finger or walked around in AR. With constellations in particular, this provides a great understanding of depths and distances. Beyond that, you get Siri support, a moon map, advice on local planetariums, and many more features – and that’s before there’s even a hint of monthly IAP to access the Grand Orrery and live sky tours.
Civilisations ARCivilisations AR is an augmented reality app that puts over 30 historical artifacts in front of your face, ranging from an ancient Egyptian mummy to iconic modern art. It feels like a thoroughly modern way of exploring the past, enabling you to check out every nook and cranny of these famous objects. Spin a globe to see where the items are from, then tap to select one and it will appear before you, ready to be resized and spun around. Discoverable hot-spots offer up more information by way of voiceovers. Surprisingly, even paintings work really nicely in this app, enabling you to put your nose right up to the virtual canvas and inspect individual paint marks. An iPad display is big enough for you to truly appreciate these works of wonder.
JigSpaceJigSpace uses augmented reality (AR) to educate, by way of 3D models you can fiddle about with before your very eyes. Although the range isn’t exactly in Wikipedia territory, you get quite the variety of ‘jigs’ for free. There’s the anatomy of a trebuchet, a floating eye to fiddle around with, a manual car’s transmission, and many more. JigSpace rapidly finds a flat surface onto which your object is projected. You can then pinch to resize it, or spin it with a swipe. Objects aren’t static either – many animate, and are gradually disassembled across a series of slides. For example, an alarm clock opens to show its gears and mechanisms – and because this is AR, you can check everything out from any angle.
Khan AcademyMaybe it's just our tech-addled brains, but often we find it a lot easier to focus on an app than a book, which can make learning things the old fashioned way tricky. That's where Khan Academy comes in. This free app contains lessons and guidance on dozens of subjects, from algebra, to cosmology, to computer science and beyond. As it's an app rather than a book it benefits from videos and even a few interactive elements, alongside words and pictures and it contains over 10,000 videos and explanations in all. Everything is broken in to bite-sized chunks, so whether you've got a few minutes to spare or a whole afternoon there's always time to learn something new and if you make an account it will keep track of your progress and award achievements.
PyPy wants to teach you to communicate with computers. You provide some information about the kind of coding you fancy doing, and it recommends a course – anything from basic HTML through to delving into Python. Lessons are very reminiscent of those in language-learning freebie Duolingo. A colorful, cartoonish interface provides questions, and you type out your answer or select from multiple choice options. Py could be more helpful when you get something wrong, but its breezy, pacy nature gives it a real energy and game-like feel that boosts focus and longevity. Unlike Duolingo, Py doesn’t have any interest in being free forever. A premium tier locks a chunk of content behind a monthly fee (along with access to mentors, who can help you through tough spots via an integrated chat). But for no outlay, there’s still plenty here for budding website - and app - creators to get stuck into.
Swift PlaygroundsSwift Playgrounds is an app about coding, although you’d initially be forgiven for thinking it a weird game. Early lessons involve guiding oddball cartoon cyclops Byte about an isometric landscape by way of typed commands, having him trigger switches and grab gems along the way. This is, of course, sneakily teaching you the fundamentals of logic and programming, and the lessons do then gradually become more involved. However, at no point does Swift Playgrounds become overwhelming. And the split-screen set-up – instructions and code on the left; interactive world based on your work on the right – feels friendly and intuitive. It’s not Xcode for iPad, then, but perhaps a first step in that direction. More importantly, Swift Playgrounds can act as a first step for people who want to start coding their own apps, but for whom the very idea has, to date, simply been too daunting.
WikipediaOften, third-party apps improve on bare-bones equivalents provided as the ‘official’ take on a product, but Wikipedia is an exception. This freebie app for browsing the online encyclopedia is excellent on iPad – and probably the best option on the platform. The Explore page lists a bunch of nearby and topical articles; after a few uses, it’ll also recommend things it reckons you’d like to read. Tap an article and the screen splits in two – (collapsible) table of contents to the left and your chosen article to the right. Articles can be searched and saved, the latter option storing them for offline perusal. It’s a pity Wikipedia doesn’t rework the Peek/Pop previews from the iPhone version (by way of a long-tap), but otherwise this is an excellent, usable encyclopedia for the modern age.
YousicianLearning a musical instrument isn't easy, which is probably why a bunch of people don't bother, instead pretending to be rock stars by way of tiny plastic instruments and their parent videogames. Yousician bridges the divide, flipping a kind of Guitar Hero interface 90 degrees and using its visual and timing devices to get you playing chords and notes. This proves remarkably effective, and your iPad merrily keeps track of your skills (or lack thereof) through its internal mic. The difficulty curve is slight, but the app enables you to skip ahead if you're bored, through periodic 'test' rounds. Most surprisingly, for free you get access to everything, only your daily lesson time is limited.
TEDTED is a video app designed to feed your curiosity, by watching smart people talk about all kinds of subjects. Although the organization’s name stands for ‘Technology, Entertainment, Design’, it’s fundamentally interested in ideas. Example talks we watched during testing included a piece about screen time for kids (and why related fears are not true), not suffering in silence from depression, and mind-blowing magnified portraits of insects. What we’re saying is: this app has range. It also has smarts. Along with a standard search, you can have the app ‘surprise you’ with something courageous, beautiful, or fascinating, and revisit favorites by delving into your watch history and liked talks, which sync across devices. TED’s perhaps not an app you’ll open daily, but it’s a breath of fresh air when you desire brain food rather than typical telly. The best free health, food and exercise apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for cooking, relaxing and keeping fit.
Oak - Meditation & BreathingOak - Meditation & Breathing is an app that wants you to relax. It’s split into sections for meditation, breathing, and sleeping. A stats area provides the means to track progress, with you gaining streaks and winning badges through regular use. Meditations can be guided or unguided, catering for all skill levels, and although you don’t get the wealth of options available in some apps, you can adjust instructor gender, session duration, and background noise. The three breathing exercises cover relaxation, focus, and invigoration. And the Sleep section offers guided breath exercises designed to help you unwind. On iPad, the interface betrays the app’s iPhone origins and could do with optimization for the larger display. Other than that, Oak’s pleasing and effective – and won’t surprise you a few weeks in with a stressful demand for IAP.
TastyTasty is a cookery app that wisely reasons modern-day cookbooks need to move beyond being digital equivalents of paper-based tomes. It achieves this by way of fast, filterable searches, and judicious use of video. Rather than opening with a photo, your selected recipe instead initially shows the dish being made by way of a tightly edited video. Below that, you get an ingredients list (which can be exported), tips and step-by-step instructions. Tap a button below the last of those and each step’s text and video loop is isolated – a great way, when cooking, to sanity-check you’re doing the right thing, and aren’t on the road to a culinary disaster.
Breathe+Many of us are caught in high-stress environments for much of our lives, and electronic gadgets often do little to help. Apple has recognized this on Apple Watch, which offers a breathing visualization tool. But Breathe+ brings similar functionality to your iPad. You define how long breaths in and out should take, and whether you want to hold your breath at any point during the cycle. You then let Breathe+ guide your breathing for a user-defined session length. The visualization is reminiscent of a minimalist illustrator's take on a wave rising and falling on the screen, but you can also close your eyes and have the iPad vibrate for cues. For free, there are some ads, which aren't pretty, but don't distract too much. For $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99, you can be rid of them, along with adding themes and usage history stats.
Kitchen StoriesAs you launch Kitchen Stories, you catch a glimpse of the app's mantra: "Anyone can cook". The problem is, most cooking apps (and indeed, traditional cookery books) make assumptions regarding people's abilities. Faced with a list of steps on a stark white page, it's easy to get halfway through a recipe, look at the stodge in front of you, reason something must have gone terribly wrong, and order a takeaway. Kitchen Stories offers firmer footing. You're first met with a wall of gorgeous photography. More importantly, the photographs don't stop. Every step in a recipe is accompanied by a picture that shows how things should be at that point. Additionally, some recipes provide tutorial videos for potentially tricky skills and techniques. Fancy some Vietnamese pho, but not sure how to peel ginger, prepare a chilli or thinly slice meat? Kitchen Stories has you covered. Beyond this, there's a shopping list, handy essentials guide, and some magazine-style articles to peruse. And while you don't get the sheer range of recipes found in some rival apps, the presentation more than makes up for that — especially on the iPad, which will likely find a new home in your own kitchen soon after Kitchen Stories is installed.
TaoMix 2There's a tendency for relaxation aids to be noodly and dull, but TaoMix 2 bucks the trend. You get the usual sounds to aid relaxation (wind, rain, birds, water), but also an interface that nudges the app towards being a tool for creating a kind of ambient personal soundtrack. The basics are dead simple: tap the + button, select a sound pack, and drag a sound to the canvas. You then manually position the circular cursor within the soundscape, or slowly flick so it lazily bounces around the screen, your various sounds then ebbing and flowing into the mix. This makes TaoMix 2 more fun to play with than its many rivals. Of course, if you just want to shut the world out, that option exists too: load a soundscape you've previously created, set a timer, and use TaoMix 2 to help you nod off. Should you want something other than what's found within the generous selection of built-in noises, packs are available for purchase (including whale sounds, 'Japanese garden' and orchestral strings); and if you fancy something entirely more custom, you can even import sounds of your own.
White Noise+There are quite a few apps for creating ambient background noise, helping you to focus, relax, and even sleep. White Noise+ is perhaps the best we’ve seen – a really smartly designed mix of sound and interface design that is extremely intuitive yet thoroughly modern. It works through you adding sounds to an on-screen grid. Those placed towards the right become more complex, and those towards the top are louder. Personalized mixes can be saved, or you can play several that are pre-loaded. For free, you do get an ad across the bottom of the screen, only five sounds, and no access to timers and alarms. But even with such restrictions, White Noise+ is pretty great. Throw $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 at it for the extra features and noises, and it borders on exceptional.
7 Minute Workout7 Minute Workout is designed to give you a complete fitness workout in just seven minutes. It’s far from alone on the App Store, but we like this take because it’s straightforward – and also properly free (rather than being riddled with IAP). The exercise screens are basic, but bold. It’s always obvious where you are in a routine, and if you’re unsure about the next step, you can tap a video playback button to view a demonstration. Beyond the exercises, the app enables you to track your weight and set the gap between exercises, which are regularly switched during the routine. The only downside is not being able to block specific exercises if, for example, you don’t have access to a chair, or cannot perform them due to accessibility reasons.
EpicuriousEpicurious is a massive recipe book for iPad. It provides access to over 35,000 recipes, and offers a magazine-like presentation. The entry screen is awash with new recipes with vibrant photography; you can quickly flick between that and dedicated pages for themed recipes and new videos. The app’s search is excellent. You can select by meal type, and filter available recipes by selecting specific ingredients, cuisine types, and dietary issues (such as low-fat and wheat-free). Flicking back and forth between filters and results can irk, but the app at least does so quickly and efficiently. The actual recipe pages are a touch basic – there’s no hand-holding like the step-by-step photos you get in Kitchen Stories. Still, if confident in your abilities, it’s a great app to broaden your culinary horizons. The best free kids apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps, learning tools, and games for toddlers and children.
Noah’s Ark AnimalibriumNoah’s Ark Animalibrium might have the famous tale in its name, but this take on the story breaks with convention, to say the least. There’s no ark here – merely what appears to be a large wooden bowl. And rather than the animals heading in two-by-two, the colorful critters must all balance atop the wobbling craft. It’s an amusing slice of interactive entertainment, and should help young players to improve their coordination and (virtual) stacking powers. Beyond the balancing act, there are buttons to prod to change the weather, and snap a photo. And for those kids who fancy a trip back in time, a one-off IAP ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99) unlocks a pack of dinosaurs to save from a prehistoric flood.
TankeeTankee lets kids watch other people playing and talking about video games. If you’re of a certain age, that might seem baffling, but it’s something kids really like to do. Where Tankee differentiates itself is in curation: every video on the system has been watched by an actual human.This avoids issues found in certain other online video networks, where kids may suddenly find themselves viewing unsuitable fare. Tankee also deals with another big concern: comments. It achieves this by omitting such functionality entirely, although some barebones ‘networking’ remains. Create an account and your kid can stash favorite videos for later and follow specific creators. If they particularly enjoy a show, they can madly hammer smiley stickers in real time to let everyone know.
Wonderbly Story Time BooksWonderbly Story Time Books is an iPad take on personalized illustrated story books for children. The premise is the protagonist has forgotten their name, and must go on an adventure to collect it, one letter at a time. The story is nicely presented, and the app deftly deals with multiple instances of the same letter by providing variations for each one. (In fact, this works to an entertaining degree – we tried using the name ‘Aaaaa’ and were presented with five non-repeating vignettes!) Part of the point of the app is you’ll get to the end, and then buy a real copy of the actual book. But even if you resist those papery, spendy charms, the app’s a blast – and it even lets you store previous adventures, so none are ever lost.
Lego Creator IslandsLego Creator Islands is for fans of the popular construction toy when there are no plastic bricks close at hand. It starts you off with a little island, on which you build a house. Construction is simple: tap piles of bricks and they magically combine into pieces of a finished Lego set, which you drag into place. Rinse and repeat a few times and your kid will beam as they watch their island increasingly come alive, populated with Lego minifigs and bounding Lego animals, and dotted with buildings, trees and vehicles. The experience is, admittedly, not that deep, and you can see most of what it has to offer in an hour or so. But it’s always fun to return to, and certainly beats treading on a Lego brick while barefoot.
Sago Mini FriendsSago Mini Friends is a sweet-natured collection of adorable mini-games, ideal for young children. After selecting a character to play, you visit a neighborhood of colorful houses. Knock on a door and you’ll be invited inside for a playdate. The activities are varied and smartly designed. There’s a birthday party, where gifts are gleefully unwrapped, and a birdhouse to fix by hammering in nails. Our favorite, though, is a cleverly conceived snack time that finds two friends sitting side-by-side. Feed one and the other looks a bit glum, which encourages the young player to learn to share. Entirely lacking IAP and advertising, Sago Mini Friends is a no-brainer for any parent who wants a safe, free, fun, educational app for their youngster to spend a bit of quality time with.
LEGO AR-StudioLEGO AR-Studio is the app we first thought of when Apple started banging on about augmented reality. After all, who wouldn’t want a bunch of virtual Lego bricks to play with, which could magically integrate with the real world? Well, it turns out Lego wouldn’t, because that’s not what this app offers. Instead, you get a small selection of AR Lego kits, which you can mess about with, take videos of, and thereby try to trick your friends into wondering why their own Lego doesn’t zoom about the place on remote control. It’s admittedly a bit shallow, and feels a touch proof-of-concept. But here’s hoping this is just the app equivalent of a Lego baseplate on which to build, rather than a completed set.
Zen StudioAccording to the developer's blurb, Zen Studio is all about helping children to relax and focus, by providing a kind of finger-painting that can only exist in the digital realm. Frankly, we take issue with the 'children' bit, because Zen Studio has a welcoming and pleasing nature that should ensure it's a hit with every iPad user. You start off with a grid of triangles and a column of colored paints. Tap a paint to choose your color and then tap individual triangles or drag across the grid to start drawing. Every gesture you make is accompanied by musical notes that play over an ambient background soundtrack. Bar the atmosphere being knocked a touch by a loud squelch noise whenever a new paint tube is selected, the mix of drawing tool and musical instrument is intoxicating. When you're done, your picture can be squirted to the Photos app, ready for sharing with the world. This is, however, a limited freebie in some ways. You get eight canvases, which can be blank or based on templates. If you want more, you can buy an IAP to unlock the premium version of the app. Still, for no outlay at all, you get a good few hours of chill-out noodly fun — more, if you're happy drawing over the same canvases again and again.
Doctor Who: Comic CreatorDoctor Who: Comic Creator does what you’d expect from its name. When you’re between seasons of the hit sci-fi show, you can satisfy yourself by fashioning custom adventures about everyone’s favorite regenerating time traveler, who goes everywhere and everywhen in a beaten-up old time machine. Creating comics is akin to slapping down stickers – only you can move things around later. And you get a pleasingly diverse range of page layouts, along with a monster maker, so you can combine parts of the Doctor’s enemies into something suitably horrific. The main downside is most foes lurk behind various IAPs – would it have killed the BBC to throw in a Cyberman for free? Sadly, there’s no way to use the app to get all timey-wimey and change people’s minds when the app was being made.
Lego LifeLego Life is a social network for kids whose lives revolve around plastic bricks. Once you’re signed up, you explore feeds and follow themes, to become a better builder, or just see what’s current in the world of Lego. Unsurprisingly, there’s a nod towards advertising of a kind, in new product videos being liberally sprinkled about. But mostly, this is an app about inspiration. You’re regularly offered building challenges and knowledge tests; during lazy days, you can slap stickers all over a virtual Lego kit, or build a mini-figure for your profile. Given that it’ll mostly be kids using the app, it’s worth noting usernames are anonymized. You can’t type your own, and instead select from semi-random word lists. EmpressSensibleMotorbike, meet ElderSupersonicJelly!
Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for BabyLaugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby is a two-part game designed for children as young as six months old. In Level 1, your youngling – now armed with a worryingly expensive piece of technology – can tilt and tap the screen to make shapes appear and bounce around. But Level 2 ramps things up considerably. “Let’s put on a show,” chirps the app as the five shapes wiggle and jig about on the screen, lurking above a colorful keyboard. And you know what’s next: maddeningly jaunty earworms, augmented by a deliriously happy baby smacking the huge piano keys. Your slow descent into madness will be worth it for the smile on their little face.
Toca Tailor Fairy TalesToca Tailor Fairy Tales is a dressing up app. You choose from a male or female customer, and then set about giving them a new and exciting outfit. As with other Toca Boca fare, this is a tactile, immediate app. Tap a garment to adjust its type; drag and you’ll change its length. Accessories can be added from an expanding box, if you decide your appreciative on-screen ‘manakin’ needs a trendy hat. The best bit, though, is the materials section. For each part of the garment, you can drag and drop materials onto it. This isn’t a question of merely recoloring either – you can pinch/rotate to make all kinds of crazy patterns, and even import photos or snap a texture using the iPad’s camera. Great stuff for tiny wannabe fashion designers. The best free music and audio apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for listening to podcasts, making music or being a virtual DJ.
Image credit: Ultimate Guitar TonebridgeTonebridge Guitar Effects has a different spin on the whole ‘turning your iPad into an amp’ thing. Rather than you painstakingly setting up a set of stomp-boxes, and pairing your creation with an amp, Tonebridge offers thousands of presets. Moreover, each one mimics the guitar sounds from an existing song. This means whether you fancy being Clapton, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, or Led Zeppelin, all you need to do is prod a recommended option, or have a quick search of the catalog. About half of the presets let you preview the sound using some of the original song’s melody or chords. All can be tweaked to suit, if you know better than the preset when it comes to the precise level of echo a pedal should be emitting – or how much the chosen amp has been cranked up!
djaydjay once existed in various forms on iOS, but is now a free, universal app that invites budding DJs to pay for the level of features that they want. If you’re not willing to splash out, there’s still plenty to enjoy. You get the full two-deck classic mode, featuring a pair of virtual record decks to spin, a crossfade mixer, scrolling audio waveforms, and a bunch of effects. The interface is intuitive and tactile, although you can delve into AI-driven auto-mixing when manual control seems like too much effort. Paying subscription IAP unlocks a slew of extra features, including a four-deck pro view, video, MIDI, and high-end mixing. For jobbing DJs, that’s perhaps the only option; for bedroom deck-spinners, the free app’s more than enough – and rather generous, given its high quality.
BeatwaveBeatwave makes it easy to create music. You select a voice and tap out notes on a grid. The grid can be set to various scales, ensuring the notes you use always sound good. Go deeper into the app and you can layer/arrange multiple loops, each of which can have a unique sound assigned. The app looks great, with an explosion of color bursting from each note as the playhead hits it. This is a welcome hangover from the app’s previous incarnation as a simplified digital take on the Yamaha Tenori-on. The more conventional redesign elsewhere robs Beatwave of some immediacy and playfulness regarding the play surface, although accessing all of its features is now a lot more coherent. Overall, it’s a good bet for beginners but also musicians looking for a fun sketchpad.
AudioKit Synth One SynthesizerAudioKit Synth One Synthesizer is an iPad synth bursting at the seams with dials to twiddle, buttons to push, and all kinds of exciting noises that blast forth from your speakers. Even if you’re not overly musically inclined, there’s fun to be had here by selecting presets - many of which use a built-in user-friendly sequencer, so you can fire off a melody by holding down a single key. There’s loads for musicians to delve into, including Audiobus and IAA support, customizable filters, and touchpad play surfaces. It’s hugely impressive and the sort of thing you’d usually expect to set you back north of 30 bucks, so it’s all the more surprising that Synth One is entirely free from ads and IAP - and that will always be the case, given that it’s also an open-source project.
Novation LaunchpadNovation Launchpad is about remixing electronic music using a grid of loops. For the beginner, it’s a friendly, intuitive introduction to music-making. You load a genre and just tap away, safe in the knowledge everything will always sound great. You can even record live mixes and share them with friends. There’s depth to Novation Launchpad as well – effects to apply, filters to experiment with, and the option to mix and match pad sounds. If you’re prepared to dip into your wallet, you can take things much further, importing your own audio files and working with a larger range of effects. On iPad, you can buy all of these things – and a MIDI sync feature – for a one-off $14.99/£14.99/$AU22.99 IAP. But even if you stick to the free version, Novation Launchpad proves to be suitably noisy fun.
Auxy Music StudioThe thinking behind Auxy Music Studio is that music-making - both in the real world and software - has become too complicated. This app therefore strives to combine the immediacy of something like Novation Launchpad's loop triggers with a basic piano roll editor. For each instrument, you choose between drums and decidedly electronic synths. You then compose loops of between one and four bars, tapping out notes on the piano roll's grid. Subsequent playback occurs on the overview screen by tapping loops to cue them up. For those who want to go a bit further, the app includes arrangement functionality (for composing entire songs), along with Ableton Link and MIDI export support. Auxy's therefore worth a look for relative newcomers to making music and also pros after a no-nonsense scratchpad.
GaragebandOn an iPhone, music-making app GarageBand is mightily impressive, but on iPad, the extra space proves transformative. In being able to see more at any given time, your experience is more efficient and enjoyable, whether you’re a beginner tapping the grid view to trigger loops, a live musician tweaking a synth on stage, or a recording artist delving into audio waveforms and MIDI data. Apple’s app also cleverly appeals to all. Newcomers can work with loops, automated drummers, and piano strips for always staying in key. Pros get seriously impressive track controls with configurable effects, multi-take recording, and Audio Unit support for bringing favorite synths directly into GarageBand. If you don’t feel terribly creative sitting in front of a PC, GarageBand’s the perfect way to unleash your Grammy-winning songwriter in waiting.
OvercastPodcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone. We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right. The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values. Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.
SeaquenceThere are two ways to approach Seaquence, where the first is as a really bizarre interactive album. Select a track and a bunch of little creatures swim about on the screen, which results in spatialized sound mixes. (Stick some headphones on to hear how their movements affect the placement of sounds being played.) You can manually fling the creatures about, or tap-hold to remove them. But Seaquence also enables you to edit. Add a new creature and it’ll instantly change the track. Tap a creature and you can delve into a scale editor, sound designer, and a sequencer for adjusting the notes of the current loop. A $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 IAP opens up a bunch of pro features; but for free, Seaquence is entertaining whether you’re just listening and occasionally bothering the digital sea life, or figuring out how to construct your own tunes.
BeatwaveBeatwave is a grid synthesizer/sound toy, loosely based on Yamaha’s Tenori-on. This means you tap notes by turning on the grid’s lights. When the endlessly looping playhead collides with one, you get an explosion of color, and a sound plays. Notes towards the top of the grid are higher, and those at the bottom are lower. Some instruments use the bottom two rows for drum sounds. Most importantly, though, Beatwave is designed to always make output listenable. It’s actually quite difficult to create anything horribly discordant, short of filling every square on the grid. For those who fancy more depth, the app offers plenty of alternate sounds, automated morphing, and the ability to save patterns to the sidebar, which you switch between with a tap. So it’s fun whether writing songs or just playing with sound and color. The best free office and writing apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for writing, email, spreadsheets, presentations and calculations.
Paper by WeTransferPaper by WeTransfer is the latest version of a much-loved iPad sketching app. It now echoes its earlier incarnation, in giving you a set of virtual journals that you then scribble pictures inside of. The tools are straightforward, and designed for getting ideas down quickly. But although you’re not deluged with options, the look of pen strokes and dabs of watercolor is spot-on. When you’re done, you can export a page to share with others. It all feels rather sleek and elegant. It’s worth noting that quite a few features are locked behind IAP: multiple image import; freeform cut; paste between pages; iCloud sync; multiple brush sizes. But the free take – despite its limitations – feels really nice to use, not least when you’re doodling with an Apple Pencil.
Otter Voice NotesOtter is a voice memos app with a fine line in automatic transcription. Talk to your iPad, and the app should do an excellent job of getting your words down (punctuation and all), so you don’t have to bother typing them out later. You get 600 free minutes per month – 6000 if you move to a paid tier. Notes can have imagery added inline, and you can highlight words or entire lines. Usefully, the app attempts to extract meaning from longer passages, giving you summary keywords to scan. Should you need to edit transcribed text, that’s possible, too. Ultimately, the app’s perhaps less useful for recording on iPad – although it works well enough. But with cloud sync, and features for working in teams, it’s an excellent option for getting at and using content you've recorded on your iPhone.
DuckDuckGo Privacy BrowserDuckDuckGo Privacy Browser wants the internet to leave you alone. Specifically, it doesn’t want you being tracked. It comes across like a stripped-back alternative to Safari that’s determined to have you leave no trace. Third-party trackers won’t follow you as you browse, meaning no relentless and suspiciously targeted adverts because you several days back happened to check out a nice new TV online. Sites are forced to use encrypted connections where available, and your searches are not tracked. The app grades sites you visit, too; and so even if you usually use Safari, DuckDuckGo gives you insight into any site’s underlying privacy measures. Also, if all of that doesn’t go quite far enough, and you want your DuckDuckGo browsing history to be nuked from orbit, a tap is all that takes!
Documents by ReaddleDocuments by Readdle has quite a lot of overlap with Apple’s Files, in the sense it’s designed as a place to stash, organize, and preview documents. However, it’s worth grabbing for its wealth of features. The app can import from a range of cloud services, but also local shared network drives, so if you want to get at documents on a Mac or PC, this is the cheapest way to do so. Imports can be arranged and archived as ZIP files, media can be previewed, and PDFs can be annotated. Documents also integrates with Files, thereby providing widespread system-level access to whatever you’ve stored. This and the app itself can sit behind Face ID/Touch ID, thereby turning it into an off-limits space for more secure files. In all, for free, it’s a no-brainer install.
LastPassLastPass in some ways echoes iCloud Keychain, in giving you a central repository for storing passwords and payment details. You might therefore wonder what the point is in using such a system. First and foremost, LastPass is fully cross-platform, so if you also work with Windows and Android, it means you can take your passwords with you everywhere, securely. But there are other advantages, such as secure notes and form fill options, all of which seamlessly integrate with devices running iOS 12 or later. There is a premium tier; US$24/£23/AU$38 per year adds sharing options, 1GB of encrypted file storage, and premium multi-factor authentication. For most users, though, the extremely generous free version should be enough.
Drafts 5Drafts 5 describes itself as the place where text starts. That might be a lofty claim on the iPad, given that Apple’s tablet has plenty of top-notch text editors, but Drafts has some pretty amazing tools to help you capture ideas faster and work on lengthy texts. The main writing view gives you a live word count, and a custom keyboard row for quickly getting at useful formatting options and actions. Texts can be tagged for grouping and retrieval purposes, and the app includes a large range of actions for processing and exporting missives. If you want to make your own custom actions you’re into subscription IAP territory, which also gives you custom workspaces, superior share extension options, URL automation, and themes. But even in its free incarnation, Drafts is extremely generous and a first-rate install.
ScanbotScanbot is a scanner with a sense of humor. No, you read that right – it starts off urging you to try a tutorial ‘challenge mode’. In AR, you chase documents around the floor, trying to scan them as quickly as possible. All this has a point: teaching you how to best to position your iPad when scanning, and to showcase how streamlined Scanbot makes the process. Once the scan’s been done, you can adjust crop and contrast levels, append more pages, and upload the end result to a cloud service of your choice. The app includes page size settings and integrates with iOS’s Shortcuts app. And if you upgrade to the pro version, you gain OCR text recognition, one-tap actions extraction for things like triggering phone calls, and robust document editing. But even if you stick with the free version, Scanbot’s an excellent choice.
BearA halfway house between full-fledged writing tool and capable note-taker, Bear provides a beautiful environment for tapping out words on an iPad. The sidebar links to notes you’ve grouped by hashtag. Next to that, a notes list enables you to scroll through (or search) everything you’ve written, or notes matching a specific tag. The main workspace – which can be made full-screen – marries sleek minimalism with additional smarts: subtle Markdown syntax next to headings; automated to-do checkboxes when using certain characters; image integration. There’s not enough here for pro writers – they’d need on-screen word counts, customizable note column ordering, and flexibility regarding notes nesting. Also, for iCloud sync, you must buy a $1.49/£1.49/AU$1.99 monthly subscription. But as a free, minimal note-taker for a single device, Bear more than fits the bill.
NumbersWith Numbers, Apple managed to do something with spreadsheets that had eluded Microsoft in decades of Excel development: they became pleasant (even fun) to work with. Instead of forcing workmanlike grids of data on you, Numbers has you think in a more presentation-oriented fashion. Although you can still create tables for totting up figures, you’re also encouraged to be creative and reader-friendly regarding layout, incorporating graphs, imagery, and text. On iPad, it’s all tap - and finger - friendly, too. With broad feature-parity with the Mac version, iCloud sync, and export to Excel format, Numbers should also fit neatly into most people’s workflow. And although updates robbed the app of some friendliness (whoever removed the date picker needs a stern talking to), it still excels in that department, from nicely designed templates through to the handy action menu, ensuring common tasks are only ever a tap away.
PCalc LitePCalc Lite's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us. For anyone who wants a traditional calculator, it's pretty much ideal. The big buttons beg to be tapped, and the interface can be tweaked to your liking, by way of bolder and larger key text, alternate display digits, and stilling animation. Beyond basic sums, PCalc Lite adds some conversions, which are categorised but also searchable. If you're hankering for more, IAP lets you bolt on a number of extras from the paid version of PCalc, such as additional themes, dozens more conversions, alternate calculator layouts, a virtual paper tape, and options for programmers and power users. The best free photo and video editing apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for editing photos, working with filters, adding text to photos and editing video.
Image credit: TechRadar DarkroomDarkroom is a premium photo editing experience for iPad, but one that bafflingly lacks a price tag. On launch, it immediately invites you to open one of your pictures. Do so and you gain access to a wealth of options, including superb cropping tools, a range of adjustment sliders, frames, and one-tap filters. The app feels sleek and professional, but also immediate and usable. On first use, tools briefly explain what they’re for. The built-in help center provides added assistance for newcomers to editing. Should you want to take things further, a one-off $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 IAP unlocks curves and color tools, along with many more filters. But even in its free incarnation, Darkroom is a no-brainer install if you want to make your digital snaps sing.
sok-editsok-edit is a collage app with a decidedly old-school and scrappy outlook. Whereas the likes of (the admittedly excellent) Pic Collage are all about clean lines and grids, sok-edit invites you to roughly cut out bits of photos and stick them to other photos. It’s a fun app, with a gleefully tactile interface packed full of chunky buttons. Items can quickly be cut, flipped, and cloned, sound effects playing as you do so. Individual elements can be further reworked, rotated, and resized, and you can then slap text all over everything. The free version limits you to three images/text layers, although you can view an ad for more. Alternatively, the pro IAP is a mere $0.99/99p/AU$1.49 – ideal if you go a bit collage crazy.
VisionistVisionist echoes Prisma in having you load a photo that’s then transformed into something resembling a painting. However, you get more control in this app. There are 10 free styles to choose from (a one-off $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP unlocks 60 more), but Visionist doesn’t stop the second you select one. Along with adjusting the effect’s strength, you can define how abstract it is, adjust the manner in which it interacts with the original image, and mix styles together. Some labels on the styles would be useful, not least those based on real-world artists; also, the end results do look rather digital in nature, rather than like they’ve appeared from the hands of an actual painter. But the important thing is they’re arresting, adding interest to even the most mundane of snaps.
InfltrInfltr stands for ‘infinite filters’. The app isn’t quite packed with endless options (there are ‘only’ around seven million), but feels limitless as you drag a finger across a photo and watch it change. But this is only one tool packed into a versatile, usable editor. You can crop, make adjustments to temperature and hue, fix perspective, mess around with blurs, and more. Edits are non-destructive, so you can always update or remove a setting. You can save up to three favorites for one-tap application as well. That limitation goes away if you pay for the subscription IAP - which also gives you HD export and additional tools, including color shift and selective HSL - but as a freebie, Infltr ably does the business. A no-brainer download for iPad users keen on fixing their snaps.
Enlight PixaloopEnlight Pixaloop wants photographs to get animated – in a literal sense. Load one up and you can draw paths to denote the direction of your flowing, looping animation, and use anchors and masks to make everything else stay put. The effect is like a cinemagraph, but you only need a single still, rather than a sequence of shots or a video. On iPad, Pixaloop benefits from the larger screen, and the accuracy an Apple Pencil affords. You can create some seriously intricate and eye-dazzling effects, even from fairly mundane source material. If you’re short on snaps, the app enables you to grab something from Pixabay. And when you’re done, you can export your work to video (although, alas, not animated GIF). It’s smart, sleek, and even though optional IAPs lurk, offers plenty of functionality for zero outlay.
Pic CollagePic Collage is a powerful app for creating photo collages. You can start with a freeform canvas or a card template, but the pre-defined grids are better. Select some photos and a grid, and the app will automatically arrange everything. Many apps stop there, but Pic Collage goes much further. You can tweak the frames, and perform adjustments on individual images. Movement can be added through importing up to three videos and later exporting your creation as a GIF. And if you’re feeling arty, you can scribble all over your grid-based masterpiece. Pic Collage hits that sweet spot of unlocking creativity in an immediate, usable manner. You get results fast. The only real negative is exports have a watermark, but if that bugs you, they can be gone forever with a one-off US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP.
PlotaversePlotaverse is an image editor and social network very much of the opinion that photographs are a bit rubbish unless they move. The meat of the app is Plotagraph+, which provides tools for animating your pics. The process is simple: mask parts you want to remain static, and then drag arrows to denote movement. Plotagraph+ then does its thing, resulting in an endlessly looping animation. Naturally, there are limitations. The system tends to work well with flowing subjects (such as water or clouds) and geometric patterns. Still, you can create amazing videos with a minimum of effort. The social networking bit is less impressive, as are cheesy effects overlays (free and paid) that are available for download. But in bringing a touch of Harry Potter to even the most mundane of snaps, Plotaverse feels like a little piece of magic on your iPad.
ClipsClips is a video editor designed for people who don’t want to spend a great deal of time editing – or even shooting. Unlike Apple’s iMovie, Clips is intended for impulsive shoots, and super-fast clip arrangement – a video editor for the social media generation. On iPad, you might question its relevance. After all, you’re not going to whip out an iPad Pro to quickly shoot someone larking about on a skateboard. But the iPad’s larger screen is superb for editing, making it easy to rearrange clips on the timeline and get a proper eye for the many included filters. There’s more lurking here too, including automatic animated subtitles, posters with customizable text and iCloud sync. Clips won’t make you a Hollywood legend, but it might just propel you towards Instagram stardom.
Photoshop FixIt's become apparent that Adobe - creators of photography and graphic design powerhouses Photoshop and Illustrator - don't see mobile devices as suitable for full projects. However, the company's been hard at work on a range of satellite apps, of which Photoshop Fix is perhaps the most impressive. Built on Photoshop technology, this retouching tool boasts a number of high-end features for making considered edits to photographs. The Liquify tool in particular is terrific, enabling you to mangle images like clay, or more subtly adjust facial features using bespoke tools for manipulating mouths and eyes. Elsewhere, you can smooth, heal, color and defocus a photo to your heart's content, before sending it to Photoshop on the desktop for further work, or flattening it for export to your Camera Roll. It's particularly good when used with the Apple Pencil (still a funny name) and the iPad Pro, such is the power and speed of that device and input method.
MuseCamThe App Store's awash with alternate cameras with editing smarts, but MuseCam warrants a place on your iPad's home screen nonetheless. As a camera, it's fine, with an on-screen grid and plenty of manual settings. But on Apple's tablet, it's in editing that MuseCam excels. Load a photo and you can apply a film-inspired filter preset (based on insight from pro photographers), or fiddle around with tone curves, color tools, and other adjustment settings. The interface is bold, efficient, and usable, making it accessible to relative newcomers; but there's also enough depth here to please those wanting a bit more control, including the option to save tweaks as custom presets. IAP comes in the form of additional filters, but what you get for free is generous and of a very high quality, making MuseCam a no-brainer download.
QuikFormerly known as Replay, Quik is a video editor primarily designed for people who can't be bothered doing the editing bit. You select photos and videos, pick a theme, and sit back as Quik pieces together a masterpiece that can subsequently be saved and shared. For tinkerers, there are styles and settings to tweak. Post-Replay, the app offers its 28 varied styles for free, and you can delve into the edit itself, trimming clips, reordering media, adjusting focal points, and adding titles. Alternatively, the really lazy can do nothing at all and still get results - every week, Quik will serve up highlights videos, enabling you to relive favorite moments. These videos are quite random in nature, but are nonetheless often a nice surprise. Still, anyone willing to put in the slightest additional effort will find Quik rewards any minutes invested many times over.
SnapseedApple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image. You get all the basics — cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative. There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength. Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.
The best free productivity apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for being more productive with cloud storage, timers, iPad keyboards, automation and more.
AuthyAuthy is a system designed to house two-step verification tokens. If you’re not already using two-factor authentication, you should be. It helps protect accounts from hackers by adding an additional layer of security – a regularly updating token linked to a specific device. A major benefit of Authy is how easy it is to synchronize tokens across multiple devices, rather than having to set things up on each one. This speeds things along when you, say, buy a new iPad or iPhone. The app can also generate tokens offline, rather than you having to wait for an SMS. On iPad, the app makes good use of screen real estate, with tappable buttons for accounts in a sidebar, and token text you could probably see from across the street, meaning you’re definitely going to locate it when you need to.
Launch Center ProLaunch Center Pro is similar in concept to your home screen, but with a greater degree of flexibility and customization. This makes it a good bet if you often work with the same apps, websites, or contacts. Setting things up is simple, and there’s a wide range of apps and actions to work through. Although you’ll need paid IAP to unlock location-based actions and scheduling – along with removing the actions limit – there’s still plenty you can do for free. Even if you don’t use the app that much, Launch Center Pro’s widget makes getting at commonly used items a lot easier. But the app is really where it’s at, bringing to your iPad a speed dial for your favorite things to launch, which you can easily rework whenever you feel the need.
CopiedCopied is a ‘shelf’ app – a means of saving snippets so you can use them later. This is advantageous over the iOS clipboard, which only offers a single slot. Text, images, and web page links can be sent to Copied from the clipboard or Share sheet, and the app is also drag-and-drop aware. In Split View or Slide Over, Copied can be used alongside other apps while researching and writing. Items within Copied can be formatted prior to pasting them elsewhere, too (to extract a web page photo’s source URL rather than the image itself, for example). Some features sit behind a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP, notably clip organization (lists/rearrangement) and sync, but even in its free version, Copied is worth a download if you spend time copying words and images between iPad apps.
Speed Test SpeedSmart InternetSpeed Test SpeedSmart Internet might have a name that appears to have sprung forth from an annual meeting of search-engine optimization experts, but the utility itself proves a useful install on your iPad. Prod a button and it checks your internet speed, providing readings on latency (response time), download speed, and upload speed. These tests don’t necessarily show the full speed your router is getting, but if you’re having connectivity issues over a period of time, SpeedSmart can be a useful way of logging results. Not only do you get a full history, but also a handy details pane that shows your location, offers extended information about each test, and lets you add notes. All good stuff to send your internet service provider’s way.
ShortcutsShortcuts is Apple’s revamp of automation utility Workflow. Its main goal is to save you time by performing complex tasks with simple interactions (such as a button tap), rather than going through a list of steps manually in multiple apps and websites. There are two ways to approach Shortcuts. The first is to delve into the gallery’s dozens of premade actions. These include everything from calculating tips to saving documents as PDFs. Everything you download can be experimented with, or you can start from scratch and construct your own workflows in the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. This proves particularly effective on the iPad’s larger display, which gives you plenty of room to work. And this latest revamp makes workflows even easier to access, because you can trigger them using Siri voice commands.
Cheatsheet WidgetCheatsheet Widget is a notes app for all those little things that you need to remember – but never do. Its items are designed to be quick, glanceable fare (like phone numbers, codes and combinations and a few words) and are made easier to spot by twinning them with icons. Your list is created in the Cheatsheet Widget app, but the list can also be displayed as a Today view widget. Items within the widget can be deleted, or their content copied to the clipboard – ideal for things like open network passwords. For free, the widget will display four items from your list, and you can opt to always place new ones at the top. As of iOS 12, there’s a dark mode; and if you splash out on the one-off IAP, you also get iCloud cross-device sync, a Cheatsheet Widget keyboard, and no ads.
BundlerBundler is a boon to anyone who regularly finds themselves having to collect a selection of files that then need to be sent elsewhere – a common task in many kinds of workplace. Documents are added to ‘bundles’ using the Share sheet. In any compatible app, you share selected documents (or the current one) to Bundler and choose which bundle to place them in (or make a new one). On returning to Bundler, these documents can then be previewed and renamed. (In the latter case, ensuring your files have suffixes – JPG, TXT, and so on – is a good bet, or they aren’t always included on export.) Sharing a bundle sends it to a location or app of your choosing as a ZIP archive. The process is sleek and simple, and the dual-pane view on iPad makes things even easier when you’re juggling a large number of files and bundles.
DuckDuckGo Privacy BrowserDuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is a browser designed to make the internet less creepy, preventing websites following you around the web. It blocks every hidden tracker it can find, uses the privacy-oriented DuckDuckGo for search, and rates websites you visit in terms of how much they care about your privacy. It’s a combination of educational aid and web browser, and the latter bit isn’t half bad. It’’s a bit stripped-back compared to Safari, but you can still bookmark sites, open pages in tabs, and share content with other people. When you’re done, you can nuke your session’s search history with two taps. Even if it doesn’t become your primary browser, DuckDuckGo is worth installing. It’s ideal for browsing sensitive data such as financial and medical records, safe in the knowledge you’re not being tracked by nefarious scripts.
MultiTimerGiven the acres of space you get on an iPad display, it’s a bit odd that Apple’s own clock only provides a single timer. Fortunately, MultiTimer – as its name suggests – goes somewhat further by offering multiple options. In fact, depending on the layout you choose, you can have twelve timers all ticking away at once. Each one of them can have its own icon, color and default time assigned, for those people who need to simultaneously exercise, boil eggs, and cook a turkey. Smartly, the app works in portrait or landscape, and if you want a timer you can see clearly across the room, a single button press zooms it to fill almost the entire screen. Should you want a bit more flexibility by way of multiple or custom workspaces, there’s a single IAP to unlock those features.
SlackWe're not sure whether Slack is an amazing aid to productivity or some kind of time vampire. Probably a bit of both. What we do know is that the real-time messaging system is excellent in a work environment for chatting with colleagues (publicly and privately), sharing and previewing files, and organising discussions by topic. There's smart integration with online services, and support for both the iPad Pro and the iPad's Split View function. Note that although Slack is clearly designed with businesses in mind, it also works perfectly well as a means of communicating with friends if you don't fancy lobbing all your worldly wisdom into Facebook's maw.
TunnelBearVPNs (Virtual Private Networks) are becoming very popular, due to issues people increasingly face when browsing the web. A VPN can be used to circumvent region-blocking/censorship and security issues on public Wi-Fi. Such services can baffle people who aren't technically adept, but TunnelBear is all about the friendlier side of VPNs. With bears. After installing the app and profile, you'll have 500 MB of data per month to play with. That said, TunnelBear’s exclusive TechRadar plan offers a far more generous 5GB, 10 times the amount you get if you sign elsewhere. Tunnelling to a specific location is simply a case of tapping it on the map and waiting a few seconds for the bear to pop out of the ground. Tweet about the product and you'll get an extra free GB. Alternatively, monthly and annual paid plans exist for heavier data users. The best free travel and weather apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for planning a holiday, currency conversion, weather forecasts and mapping.
Saildrone Forecast - WeatherSaildrone Forecast - Weather wants to be an app you gawp at because it’s so stunning. Even as the app delivers the news that your afternoon’s going to be ruined by freak torrential rain, it will do so in a way that at least bathes your eyes in visual bliss. The dark UI is stylish, and looks very smart as bright clouds billow across the landscape, chased by snaking animated lines on an optional wind layer. It’s good at the forecasting bit, too. There’s unfortunately no next-hour’s rainfall graph, but you can delve into graphs for the next two days’ temperatures, rainfall, and wind speeds. Given the polish and elegance here, Saildrone feels premium. It’s therefore quite the surprise to discover not only that it’s free, but also that there aren’t even any ads.
Today WeatherToday Weather is weather forecasting aimed at iPad owners with an eye for style. Launch the app and it displays a photo to represent the current weather in your location. Below that, you’ll see a brief overview of current conditions. Scroll and you get an extended forecast and further details (including rainfall, air quality and wind speed), all rendered in almost painfully cool neon tones atop a dark background. If the photo’s a bit much, you can get rid of it. Either way, this is a great weather app for a docked iPad, and even the sole ad can easily enough be scrolled off-screen. Neatly, there’s also something for when forecasts don’t quite gel with your own observations: if you don’t get on with Today Weather’s data source, you can switch it for Dark Sky, Accuweather.com, or YR.no.
Google EarthGoogle Earth is about exploring our planet. Search for somewhere specific and the app swoops and dives to its target. Important landmarks are rendered in 3D that’s surprisingly effective – if you don’t zoom in too far. This is an entertaining, tactile app that encourages investigation. You can drag and spin the screen, and flick through cards that point towards local landmarks. Fancy looking at something new? Hit the random button, or tap on the Voyager icon for stories based around anything from UNESCO World Heritage Sights to trekking about Kennedy Space Center. The app is effortless to use, and the iPad’s large screen enables you to more fully breathe in the sights; the result is armchair tourism that’s far more effective than what you’d get even on the largest of iPhones.
Google MapsGoogle Maps is an app that might seem an odd fit for an iPad, but we’d argue it’s an essential install. First and foremost, it’s much better than Apple’s Maps for figuring out journeys: Google Maps can more easily find points of interest, and ably deals with public transport information. Local areas can be explored in terms of amenities (food, drink, and sometimes entertainment), and in a more direct sense, with the road-level Street View. The latter is a great way to familiarize yourself with a place before you visit. If you always have your iPad on you, Google Maps can save maps for offline use as well, so you don’t even need an internet connection to use it. Alternatively, sign up for a Google account, and the searches you make will be synced with the app on your iPhone.
MomondoThere are two things a good flight comparison apps needs to be: easy to use, and useful results. Broadly speaking, Momondo ably does the job in both cases. Looking for flights is simple; the app allows a pleasing amount of vagueness regarding locations (including regions with multiple airports, such as ‘London’, or even entire countries, such as ‘New Zealand’), and it’ll happily enable you to search for singles, returns, or multi-city jaunts. As search results gradually load in, the app points you to the cheapest and quickest options, along with what it considers ‘best’ when taking into account price, time and convenience. For some routes, a calendar graph lets you check nearby dates to see if you can snag a bargain. Additional filters are available to further refine your results, and you can create an account to save favorites and receive fare alerts - plus hotel listing can be added in too, should you want a more comprehensive.
TownskeTownske seems to bill itself as an app akin to Foursquare – a place to find the best local cafes, restaurants, and sights in major cities. But really it’s more of a place where photo-bloggers can publish their unique take on amazing locations, thereby providing you with gorgeous photos and succinct chunks of writing to devour. You can jump right into the main feed, or focus on a specific city. You then tap on a photo to open an individual story. Every one we tried was rich in superb imagery, with just enough text to add meaningful context without interrupting the flow of the visuals. Neatly, you can tap a map icon to see where the various photos were all taken; and if you sign up for an account, favorite stories or individual images can be bookmarked for later. But even if you simply treat Townske as a regularly-updated lean-back digital take on a newspaper travel supplement, you can’t really go wrong.
Weather UndergroundWith a native weather app bafflingly absent from iPad, you need to venture to the App Store to get anything beyond the basic daily overview Notification Center provides. Weather Underground is the best freebie on the platform, offering a customizable view to satisfy even the most ardent weather geeks. Current conditions are shown at the top, outlining the temperature, precipitation likelihood, and a local map. But scroll and you can delve into detailed forecasts, dew point readings, sunrise and sunset times, videos, webcams, health data and web links. The bulk of the tiles can be disabled if there are some you don't use, and most can be reordered to suit. Although not making the best use of iPad in landscape, the extra screen space afforded by Apple's tablet makes the Weather Underground experience a little more usable than on iPhone, enabling faster access to tiles. And for free, it's a top-notch app, although you can also fling $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 at it annually if you want rid of the unobtrusive ads.
XE CurrencyXE Currency is a currency converter that’s far from the prettiest of its kind – but it is useful and has all the right features. Initially, it lists a few currencies, with the base one at the top. Tap an item in the list to select it as the new base currency; you can also adjust the base figure – tap on the number, and then enter something new in the calculator. The list of currencies can be changed at any point, and an item’s position adjusted by tap-holding and dragging it. Beyond that, you can analyze rates, by punching in an alternate exchange rate, view graphs that outline rates for a pair of currencies over the past decade, and sign up to free rate alerts, which notify you when specific points are hit. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The best free iPhone apps of 2019 Posted: 12 Jul 2019 05:42 AM PDT You've got an iPhone, and have ventured into the melee of Apple's App Store, which has well over a million apps. Great news! Many of them are free. Not so great news! You've got to sift through them to work out the very best. Fortunately, that's what we're here for, listing them here. Our selection’s sorted into handy categories, so whether you need a no-cost photo editor, translation app, sat-nav or anything else, you can just jump straight to the relevant category. Click through to the following pages for each category, but first check out our free iPhone app of the week below, and make sure you give this page a cheeky bookmark so you can keep up with our latest free iPhone app pick every seven days. Free iPhone app of the week: GIFwrapped
Image credit: TechRadar GIFwrapped is an iPhone app for the GIF-obsessed. You can check out GIFs from a small range of broad categories, such as happy or sad; but the universal search bar enables you to drill down much more rapidly. When you find something you like, it can be added to GIFwrapped’s internal library. The app enables you to quickly make your own custom GIFs, too, albeit merely by grabbing Live or Burst photos from your iPhone – if you want to add amusing text overlays, you’ll need another app for that. Still, sharing is a breeze, GIFwrapped works seamlessly in Messages, and if you grab the subscription IAP, you can turn off adverts, bookmark searches, and remove the GIFwrapped watermark. Even for free, though, this app is a great way to GIF. The best free iPhone video editors and animation appsThese are our favorite free iPhone apps for quickly editing videos, GIFs and Live Photos, and for creating stop-motion animation.
Image credit: TechRadar SpliceSplice sits in a space between traditional movie-making software and quick-fix video editors. As with products geared towards quickly fashioning something for social networking, Splice is keen to get you started. Select some videos or stills from your iPhone, drag to arrange the thumbnails, select an aspect ratio, and you essentially have an edit. However, the app gives you plenty of options for taking things further. You can add titles, effects, text overlays, and audio. Individual clips can be trimmed, cropped, and have filters added to them. Naturally, in-progress projects are saved so you can return to them later. Throughout, layout and workflow resemble the kind of thing you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ventured into desktop editing – only streamlined for mobile, and without a price-tag attached.
Enlight PixaloopEnlight Pixaloop enables you to animate your photos. This is achieved through you manually drawing ‘path’ arrows to define the direction of animation, and setting anchors to keep other areas of your image rooted to the spot. Tap the play button and you get something akin to a cinemagraph – only based on a single still image, rather than dozens of shots or a video. Whatever you create can be exported to Photos as a video (sadly, there’s no animated GIF option), but there’s plenty more you can add first, including camera wobble, overlay effects and automated moving skies. Some of those features work better than others, but the entire package is a great way to bring your photos to life. Note that there’s subscription IAP lurking, although you don’t need to pay to get a lot out of this app.
MoodelizerMoodelizer is a one-trick pony – but it’s quite a trick. It enables you to add custom soundtracks to videos – and all you need is a single finger. You select a genre, and ‘rehearse’ playback by dragging your finger around the square viewfinder. Move up to increase the music’s intensity increases and move right to adjust variation. You can perform rehearsals using the viewfinder or with an existing video loaded from your Camera Roll. Just messing about with the audio alone is fun, but it all properly comes together when making a video. Now, when you’re shooting yet another clip of your cat being mildly amusing, Moodelizer can add much-needed excitement by way of rousing club music or head-banging guitar riffs.
VueVue is a video editor whose initial incarnation was an odd mix of intriguing and ridiculous. In short, it was designed to give you six seconds of fame by snapping an ultra-short video comprising three shots. Fortunately, Vue is relaxed a bit now – and all the better for it. The app still prefers brevity, but will allow movies of up to three minutes in length and can load existing videos from your iPhone, too. Once your miniature masterpiece is done, it’s possible to add filters and stickers, overlay subtitles, and mess around with zooming and adjustment sliders. The app still feels a touch rigid compared to the likes of Clips, but Vue’s sense of focus and style – along with the sharing network that underpins everything – makes it worth checking out.
ClipsClips is a video-editing app geared towards making content for sharing on social media. To that end, it eschews convention (widescreen, standard titles, typical editing tracks) and attempts to infuse plenty of fun into a streamlined, straightforward editing process. You can record directly in the app or import existing videos. In either case, you can overlay stickers and live captions that appear as the subject speaks, and apply filters for a different look. Posters serve as a replacement for titles, helping with pacing and context in a way that’s much more interesting, animated and editable. For iPhone X users, there’s an extra treat: animated 3D selfie scenes. These can transport you into a number of stylized landscapes, including neon cityscapes and ships from Star Wars. The effect is mesmerizing to the point where the app’s worth picking up for selfie scenes alone.
Motion StillsMotion Stills aims to help you do more with the Live Photos you shoot on your iPhone. Apple’s own Photos app, of course, provides options for adjusting how these images animate – but this Google offering does far more. On giving the app permission to view your photos, it will display a scrollable feed of pictures that animate as you browse. This alone makes Motion Stills worth a download, not least because the app applies stabilization technology to your Live Photos, eradicating wobble. But with a few quick swipes you can quickly select a number of Live Photos, which can then be transformed into a tiny movie. Alternatively, you can turn Live Photos into collages, or add text and emoji to your favorites. In short, Motion Stills feels like the Live Photos editor Apple forgot to make itself.
Loop by SeedlingIf you lack the patience for working with full-on stop motion apps, but nonetheless fancy yourself as a mini-Aardman, Loop by Seedling is just the ticket. You shoot frames using your camera, and can handily overlay your previous photo in semi-transparent form, to ensure everything is properly lined up. Once you're done, you can play your photos as an animation, where tools are available to adjust the frame rate, add a filter, and mess about with grid collages, creating a Warhol-like animated GIF to share. The interface is a bit opaque – quite a lot of controls need to be 'discovered' before you become comfortable with using this app. But once you know where everything is, Loop becomes a smart and efficient way to create charming miniature animations; amusingly, it also works within Messages, so you can reply to friends with a tiny movie should you consider the written word passé.
QuikIf you like the idea of editing home movies but are a modern-day being with no time or attention span, try Quik. The app automates the entire process, enabling you to create beautiful videos with a few taps and show off to your friends without needing talent - surely the epitome of today's #hashtag generation. All you need do is select some videos and photos, and choose a style. Quik then edits them into a great-looking video you can share with friends and family. But if your inner filmmaker hankers for a little more control, you can adjust the style, music, format and pace, along with trimming clips, reordering items, and adding titles to get the effect you desire. Cementing its friendly nature, Quik offers a little pairs minigame for you to mess about with while the app renders your masterpiece. And there's even a weekly 'For You' video Quik compiles without you lifting a finger.
AnimaticIf you used to sit there at school, doodling flick-animation masterpieces in the corner of your jotter, Animatic is the iPhone equivalent. You use simple tools to scribble on a small canvas, and then build your animation frame-by-frame. The app uses a basic onion-skin approach, meaning you can see the previous few frames faintly behind the current one, ensuring whatever you draw doesn't lurch all over the place. Once you're done, you can adjust the animation speed of your creation and export it to video or GIF. Given that you're scribbling with what amounts to the iPhone equivalent of felt pens, you won't be crafting the next Pixar movie here. But Animatic is fun, a great way to get into animation, and a useful sketchpad for those already dabbling. The app also includes a bunch of demos, showcasing what's possible with a little time, effort and imagination.
The best free iPhone sketching and design appsOur favorite free iPhone apps for drawing, sketching, painting, layout and animation.
Universe – Website BuilderUniverse – Website Builder is – as its name suggests – a tool for building websites. The thought of doing this on your iPhone may make you feel queasy, but Universe works well, primarily because of the limitations it imposes. Pages are essentially grids. You drag out a section and insert a content block. This might be an image, some text, a link, or a video. Once you’re done, your efforts are uploaded to the Universe website. The app is usable, fun, and effective. With some effort, you can fashion surprisingly smart multiple-page sites; but also, with almost no effort, you can get something online. Of course, IAP’s are lurking – for $9.99/£8.99/AU$14.49 per month, you can add a domain, create a store, and view analytics. But even for free, this one’s worth checking out.
Autodesk SketchBookAutodesk SketchBook is a drawing app for iPhone. It’s of course far from alone on the App Store, but what sets SketchBook apart is the sheer range of things you can do with the app. Despite the minimal interface, there’s tons to discover. There are dozens of brushes, which mimic all kinds of real-world tools. Every one of them can be tweaked. Multiple layers afford you flexibility when working on complex compositions. And transform, shape, and text tools provide scope when you’re working on technically oriented illustrations rather than free-form doodling. You’d usually expect to pay a fair amount for this kind of quality – and once, SketchBook did have a price-tag attached. But now it’s free – and yet still superb – it would almost be an insult to not download it, even if you can barely scribble a stick-person.
VectornatorVectornator squeezes a pro-quality vector illustration app into your iPhone. Load up one of the example images, or a blank canvas, and you’ll have access to a wide range of tools and settings. The app is usable and fluid in action, whether you’re working on a template for an app or a vector doodle. Even the largest of iPhones lacks the iPad’s screen acres, and so there are some interface compromises. Some icons are perhaps a touch small, for example, but settings sit out of sight until you need them, appearing as a tabbed menu in portrait, or a slide-in panel in landscape. Even when drawing with your fingers, Vectornator proves to be friendly and sleek. With a stylus, it’s superb – and a great way to free yourself from the desktop. That it’s free is astonishing.
Clarity WallpaperClarity Wallpaper aims to get beautiful wallpapers on your iPhone’s home and lock screens. The main Featured feed houses all kinds of top-notch pics – although some sit behind a ‘magazine’ IAP of more heavily curated artwork. More custom options sit behind the editor button: Blurs and masks (gradients atop a picture) can be created without limitation for free; dozens of color-only gradients are also available for selection. Everything can be tested against a preview home screen prior to saving. Doing more (custom gradients, screens with text and custom frames) requires a one-off $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 ‘Pro’ IAP. But even if you stick with the free version, there’s no doubting this is an excellent app for quickly getting some sleek, effective wallpaper for your iPhone.
PaperPaper is a sketching tool based around jotting down ideas quickly. Your drawings are stored in little digital notebooks, which you can open and flip through. Tap a page and you can scribble with a finger or stylus using the app’s selection of brushes. There’s a smattering of additional handy tools in the free version, most notably the ability to add text notes to any picture, and the means to export a note or book. However, some features sit behind monthly IAP, including photo import, copy/paste, and auto-correct when drawing geometric shapes and lines. Despite these limitations – and the app rather oddly reorienting your sketches on iPhone when you return to browsing – Paper remains one of the most pleasing apps of its kind, not least if you retain a fondness for real-life versions of the little notepads the app depicts.
WhatTheFontWhatTheFont is a tool for identifying typefaces, and it’s extremely simple to use. You can either load an image from your iPhone or take a photo using the app. It figures out where all the words are within a few seconds, or you can drag out a selection yourself. You then tap on a selected word, and the app scoots off to find matches. The likelihood of perfect matches is slim – it depends on having a very clear image to start with, and the font being available on the MyFonts service – but during testing, the app was bang-on several times. Even when it wasn’t, it offered up something that at least captured the flavor of our original font. Whether you’re a jobbing designer or someone who puts together the odd newsletter, WhatTheFont is an excellent freebie.
CanvaCanva is a graphic design tool for the rest of us. It’s not going to send professionals scurrying for the shadows, but with its mix of templates, filters, and editable design elements, it gives the average iPhone owner a fighting chance of working up an invite or poster during a lunch hour. Layouts are smartly targeted and categorized, and move beyond typical posters, greetings cards and flyers into social media territory (Twitter headers, Instagram posts and blog posts), and even business (cards, logos and presentations). You can import photos, add text, and fiddle around with a wide range of drag-and-drop elements before sharing directly to social media, or saving your work to your iPhone. For anyone who wants to design something for their burgeoning home business, or just for fun, Canva is a great place to start.
Brushes ReduxBack in 2009, Jorge Colombo did some deft iPhone finger painting using Brushes, and the result became a New Yorker cover. It was a turning point for iOS and suitably handy ammunition for tech bores who'd been drearily banging on about the fact an iPhone could never be used for proper work. The app sadly stagnated, but was made open source and returned as Brushes Redux. Now free, it's still a first-rate art app, with a simple layers system, straightforward controls, and a magnificent brush editor that starts you off with a random creation and enables you to mess about with all manner of properties, from density to jitter.
AssemblyDeveloper Pixite is best known for its eye-popping filter apps, and so Assembly was quite the surprise. The app is all about building vector art from shapes. Individual components are dropped on to the canvas, and can then be grouped or have styles applied. It feels a bit like the iPhone equivalent of playing with felt shapes, but you soon realise that surprisingly complex compositions are possible, not least when you view the 'inspirations' tab or start messing about with the 'remix' projects. For free, you get loads of stuff to play with, but inexpensive IAP unlocks all kinds of bundles with new themed shape sets to explore. The best free iPhone camera apps and photo editorsOur favorite free iPhone cameras, photo editors and filter effects apps.
Image credit: Matthieu Savary Pixel is DataPixel is Data is technically a photo editor. We say technically on the basis that this app doesn’t really play by the rules. Instead of letting you crop, mess around with levels, and the like, it instead treats each individual pixel as an element to be controlled and rearranged. What this means is that with the subtlest nudge of a slider in the app’s parameters screen, you can turn your photographic masterpiece into glitch city. A few more prods and drags, and you may well have a piece of modern art. Pixel is Data doesn’t hold your hand. It has presets, but using its parameters is opaque. However, you’ll have a lot of fun experimenting, and finding out what happens when your image’s pixels are rearranged in new and exciting ways.
sok-editsok-edit is a collage app that doubles down on immediacy. Instead of neatly aligning photos to a grid, it’s the digital equivalent of hacking photos to bits with scissors, and sticking them on other photos for purposes of amusement and creativity. The app is tactile and noisy. You drag to cut out elements, which can then be rotated, resized, cloned and flipped. Most actions come with sound effects. It’s all a lot of fun. The only minor snag is if you have too much fun – in the sense of using three layers – you have to watch an advert to add another object, or plump for the ‘pro’ IAP. Mind you, even the latter is a mere US$0.99/99p/AU$1.49, which seems like a bargain for unlimited collage larks.
VisionistVisionist has quite a lot in common with Prisma, in that it’s using neural networks to transform photos into something resembling art. The main differences with Visionist are that it affords you a level of control Prisma does not, and it doesn’t drown you in IAP and endless filters. In fact, you get just 10 (60 more sit behind a one-off US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 payment), but even those have a range that can turn the dullest snaps into something pretty amazing. This is largely because you can adjust abstraction levels and how images interact; there’s support for Portrait images (and depth data is retained during export); and styles can be mixed and merged. It’s a world away from Prisma’s more simple interaction. For bringing a little artistry to your photos, Visionist is well worth a download, then, whether you stick with the free version or plump for the IAP.
InfltrInfltr started out as a photo filter app for people who considered choosing filters too much effort. You simply dragged your finger across the screen, and the chosen filter updated live. Simple. Fast. Random. That tool still exists, but today it’s just one of several in a photo editor that increasingly has much in common with Snapseed. Now you can make all kinds of adjustments, from fiddling with brightness through to subtly altering perspective. Edits are non-destructive, and can therefore be reverted or changed later. There are some limitations unless you’re willing to subscribe: no HD export, only saving three custom filters (rather than an unlimited number), and the odd locked tool. But the free version is nonetheless a must-have for iPhone photographers who fancy a great toolset with a dash of chance.
DailyFocusDailyFocus wants you to spend five minutes every day becoming a better photographer. This is achieved by way of super-fast lessons – short videos that outline how to succeed regardless of what you face when armed with a camera. (We’re not kidding – at the time of writing, the day’s lesson was about lenses, but an upcoming one was “capturing eggs and bacon in motion”.) The app gamifies your viewing, listing a daily streak total, and offering further encouragement by way of optional notifications – although be mindful those are sent 24 hours after you last used the app. Also, DailyFocus emphasizes the ‘daily’ bit. There’s no archive – miss a video and it’s gone for good. This is likely because DailyFocus is in part a teaser for a CreativeLive subscription; but for the camera-curious and pro photographers alike, it’s a fab freebie too.
RetricaRetrica is a camera app designed to bring creativity, randomness and character to your iPhone selfies and snaps. It’s packed full of filters, which can be manually added live or to existing photos – or randomly if you want to try your luck by prodding the shuffle button. The filters are varied and interesting, and you can add blur and vignette effects. You can also quickly create multi-shot collages, which are automatically stitched together on a grid. There are GIF and video options too. Perhaps inevitably, the app has its own a social network, and may as well scream “We really want to be Instagram!” Still, even if you never sign in, Retrica is a superb freebie iPhone camera.
SnapseedSnapseed is a photo editor that marries simplicity and power. At its most basic, it can be a tool for loading a photo, selecting a filter (referred to here as ‘looks’), and exporting the result. But it’s when you delve into the app’s tools and stacks that its true potential becomes clear. The tools menu, while a bit cluttered, offers a huge range of options for adjusting your photo. You can crop, adjust perspective, edit curves, and add all kinds of filters and effects. But stacks are arguably Snapseed’s best component. The stack is where your edits live, each of which can be updated at any time. This offers far more flexibility than editors that ‘burn in’ each change you make. Furthermore, you can save any combination of edits as a custom look – and use stacks to deconstruct pre-loaded ones. Brilliant stuff.
Sticky AISticky AI is all about selfies. Shoot one (or a short video, by holding the shutter button) in the app, and Sticky AI will instantly remove its background – often with a frightening degree of accuracy. You can then get to work, resizing and rotating your beautiful face, slapping on a text label, mucking about with colors and filters, and then sharing the result to your social networks of choice. It’s naturally geared a bit towards the self-obsessed, but there’s plenty here to like: the technology’s mightily impressive, for one, but also Sticky AI neatly hangs on to your previous edits, so you can at any time peruse your collection and make a change to a favorite snap.
Famicam 64If you wonder what your iPhone would be like if graphics technology hadn’t moved on from the age of the C64, Famicam 64 can enlighten you. This camera app uses live filtering to replicate the visuals you might once have seen on a classic games system – or other old-school kit like oscilloscopes. Filters can have their properties adjusted, and you can add text, retro-oriented stickers, freeform scribbles, and borders to a photo, before sharing the results. Note that some options are limited in the free version, and output adds a Famicam 64 banner to the bottom of the image. You can get rid of all that with the PLUS IAP ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.99), but in either incarnation, Famicam 64 is a fun, quirky, usable way to do something different with your camera.
Adobe Photoshop FixAlthough creative giant Adobe doesn’t seem keen on bringing its desktop software to iPhone in one piece, we’re nonetheless getting chunks of its power reimagined as smaller, more focused apps. The idea behind Adobe Photoshop Fix is to enable you to rapidly retouch and restore photos on your iPhone – using the power of Photoshop. Some of the features aren’t anything outside of the ordinary: you get commonplace tools for cropping, rotation, and adjustments. But Photoshop Fix has some serious power within its straightforward interface, too, as evidenced by excellent vignette, defocus, and color tools. The best bit, though, is Liquify. Using this feature, you can mash a photo to bits or make really subtle changes, depending on the subject matter. And if you’re facing a portrait, you can specifically fiddle with features, in a manner usually associated with high-end PC software.
PrismaPrisma wants to turn your photos into tiny works of art. Doing so is almost disarmingly simple: shoot or select a photo, crop your image, and choose an art style. (Options in the vast library of filters range from classic paintings through to comic book doodling.) The app within a few seconds then transforms your photo into a miniature Picasso or Munch, and it’s instantly better than most of us could ever hope to achieve with Photoshop. On trying Prisma with a range of imagery, we found it almost never comes up with a duff result, thanks to some insanely smart processing. But if you find the effects jarring, a slide of your finger can soften your chosen filter prior to sharing your masterpiece online. The best free movie and entertainment apps for iPhoneOur favorite free iPhone apps for having fun, whether reading, coloring or watching TV.
TwitterrificTwitterrific is a Twitter client that wants you to tweet on your own terms. So rather than the locked-down and vanilla experience of the official Twitter client, Twitterrific offers a range of customization options. Two of the three tabs at the top of the screen can be swapped out for different kinds of content, for example providing fast access to custom lists. The way the app behaves regarding inline images (by default, huge) can be adjusted. And you can also change how it looks, through choosing a different theme. From its playful sound effects to the lovely media browser, this is an app that screams polish. And if you’re happy with the unobtrusive image banner across the top of the display, the entire thing is yours to use for free.
Infuse 6Infuse 6 is a superb, elegant video player. It makes it a cinch to stream content from computers on your network, meaning you don’t have to load the videos directly on to your iPhone (although you can, due to Files integration). Assuming your files are sensibly named, Infuse 6 can pull down cover art and movie/show info, and even grab subtitles with a couple of taps. One of the app’s big plusses is that it doesn’t need anything else. There’s no server software to install; and it will work across devices, including natively on Apple TV. Note, though, some advanced features – library and progress sync; HD audio; streaming from cloud services – require the pro version. For that, you’ll need monthly or lifetime IAP, or to grab the standalone Infuse Pro 6.
Night SkyNight Sky initially resembles every other astronomy app. Hold your iPhone in front of your face to view celestial bodies that are in a particular place, or rather more lazily scroll about the heavens with a finger. You get chill-out music, constellation illustrations, ‘time travel’, and information pages. But Night Sky differentiates itself in how you can interact with objects. Double-tap a planet and it’s plucked from the sky and can be explored in isolation on your screen, or examined more closely by moving around it in AR. This works for constellations, too, enabling you to better understand the distance between component stars. Add subscription IAP and you get an AR grand orrery, sky tours, and more; but even for free, Night Sky is an absolute must for budding astronomers.
Pocket is a read-later system – time-shifting for the web. It’s designed to stop you clicking links all day, planning to read everything later, and then realizing at some point you have dozens of unread tabs. With Pocket, you simply share pages to it from Safari (or on a desktop browser use the Pocket bookmarklet). When you have a data connection, open Pocket and it will quickly download everything. When reading, articles are stripped of cruft, leaving a mobile-optimized, reader-centric view. Should you not be keen on the default set-up, it can be tweaked: fonts and colors can be adjusted, and there’s text-to-speech when you need to delve into articles eyes-free. Archives can be searched; and should you run out of things to read, Pocket has a Recommended tab you can check out to find something new. Perfect fodder for your daily commute.
JustWatchJustWatch solves the problem of where to watch something. That might sound strange, but this is a common problem with modern television viewing – many shows are available on demand, but that’s no good if you’ve no idea what service they’re running on. When searching for something specific, the app will list where it can be streamed or bought as appropriate. If you have the relevant app installed, you can head there with a tap. If you’re looking for something new, Popular and Browse tabs give you plenty of options, which can be quickly filtered by various criteria, and individual items can be stashed in the WatchList until later. Given how decentralized television has become, JustWatch feels like a must-have install – a single, coherent tool for finding content from a range of providers.
FeedlyFeedly bills itself as a smart news reader. For old hands, it’s an RSS client. If you’re still making a confused face, it’s an app that enables you to subscribe to website news feeds, which then pipe headlines directly to your iPhone. The net result is a kind of curated newspaper. You get content from sources you know and trust, and because stories are listed in order of publication, you’re safe in the knowledge that you won’t miss anything – unlike the semi-randomized avalanche of content that afflicts social media feeds. The reading experience is clean and simple too – just text and images for sites that provide full articles within feeds, and a built-in browser for those that don’t. And when you find something that’s just too good to keep to yourself, there are plenty of sharing options.
LetterboxdLetterboxd is a social app for people who love films. Sign in and you can see what friends have been watching, bellyache about the latest Hollywood blockbuster that totally offended your viewing sensibilities, and comment on other people’s reviews. Or if that fills you with horror, you can ignore the social bit entirely, and just use Letterboxd as a really savvy movie tracker. Search for films and add them to your watch list; once you’ve seen one, give it a rating. That way, you won’t end up 30 minutes into a cinematic disaster before realizing you’d already suffered through it before. Two apps for the price of none, Letterboxd is pretty great whichever way you use it.
JigSpaceJigSpace is an education app that reasons we learn things better in 3D, on the basis that this is how we experience the real world. And that’s a good point. It’s all very well to learn how a car’s transmission works by reading about it, or even pore over an exploded illustration in a book. But being able to fiddle around with a real engine is much more helpful. This app isn’t quite that level of magical, but it does use iOS’s augmented reality smarts to project various objects onto a flat surface. These can then be explored and fiddled around with, in a manner that hints at the future of anything from repair manuals to textbooks. And even though you’ll perhaps exhaust the items on offer fairly quickly, JigSpace is a nicely immersive educational experience while it lasts. The best free health, diet and exercise apps for iPhoneOur favorite free iPhone apps for forming great habits, cooking, exercising and meditating.
Oak - Meditation & BreathingOak - Meditation & Breathing is a relaxation aid with no time for complexity and price tags – two things rivals often revel in, despite how they can (ironically) increase stress levels. Here, you choose between three options: meditate, breathe, and sleep. The three breathing exercises provide techniques for unwinding and boosting alertness. Meditation options cater for beginners and old-hands alike, with guided and unguided sessions across a range of durations. And if you can’t switch off in bed, a guided breathing session helps you fall asleep. Oak’s sense of elegance and focus is what sets it apart. This is an app that cuts to the chase, and immediately gets you on the path to a better you. And the Growth area helps keep you there, with tracking, stats, and achievements.
TastyTasty gives you a modern spin on cookery apps, through a splash of color, and a large dollop of video. It starts off much like any other iPhone app: you can filter searches to specific dish types and dietary requirements; all the while, lush photography of tasty treats attempts to lure you in. But when you open a recipe page, Tasty dispenses with convention by immediately showing how the dish is made – in super-fast fashion. These tightly edited videos are like cookery TV with all the cruft removed, and they beat photographic stills because they show elements of technique. Smartly, although you can check out vanilla step-by-step instructions, it’s also possible to view individual steps alongside a relevant video clip. This should ensure you won’t go wrong and cook up a culinary catastrophe.
Smiling MindSmiling Mind is a straightforward, approachable meditation app that wants you to slow down a bit and embrace mindfulness. It starts off with a simple exercise that introduces the concept, before getting you started with short practice sessions. But if you’re already familiar with this kind of thing, you can jump right into a range of programs. As you use the app, it urges you to input how you feel, and tracks your progress over time. Also, along with providing programs for adults, the app offers exercises designed for children. Most importantly, though, everything about Smiling Mind feels calming, from the stylish interface to its lack of a price-tag. Whereas rivals go for wallet-thumping subscriptions, Smiling Mind is by a non-profit; it’s intent only on relieving you of stress rather than money.
HabiticaHabitica is a to-do list tracker. But before your eyes glaze over, Habitica does something very different in this particular app category, transforming boring lists into a game. The idea is that you input all the things you need to sort, including one-off items and daily goals. As you check off tasks, your little on-screen avatar gets powered-up, acquiring armor, pets, skills, and quests. Get some friends suitably invested and you can battle monsters alongside them – or just keep everyone honest. In short, this app makes productivity fun. And while there’s some satisfaction deleting an item from a boring bullet-point list, it’s a lot more interesting when taking the trash out results in your tiny hero beaming with delight at their shiny new sword.
Sweat DeckSweat Deck reimagines exercise routines as a deck of cards. You assign exercises to certain suits, and lob in a couple of ‘jokers’ for good measure. The app then has you define how many cards/reps you want to try your hand at. The app’s semi-random nature keeps you on your toes (or hands and back, depending on the exercise). If you draw a three of spades, that might mean three squats; then a nine of diamonds could mean nine push-ups. It’s a novel interface that’s a bit different from other iPhone exercise apps. Sweat Deck could do with a way to switch cards other than tapping the screen (shouting perhaps), but you can always use prodding your iPhone as an excuse to rest for a few seconds, having suitably worked up a sweat by that point.
TaoMix 2There are plenty of ambient noise products on the App Store, designed to help you relax, or to distract you from surrounding hubbub. TaoMix 2 is one of the best, due to its gorgeous interface and the flexibility of the soundscapes you create. You start off with a blank canvas, to which you drag noises that are represented as neon discs. These can be recolored and resized, and positioned wherever you like on the screen. A circle is then placed to balance the mix, or flicked to meander about, so the various sounds ebb and flow over time. For free, you get eight sounds, can save custom mixes, and can even import your own recordings. Many dozens of additional sounds are available via various affordable IAP.
White Noise+If you need some ambient noise around you, White Noise+ proves an excellent app for blocking out distractions. The free version offers a small selection of sounds to soothe your soul – white noise, rain, wind, thunder, and wind chimes. To create some ambience, you simply drag one or more noise icons to an on-screen grid; the items towards the top play at a higher volume, and those towards the right become more complex in nature. Happen upon an especially pleasing combination and you’re able to save your mix for later use. The app smartly includes built-in mixes to provide a little inspiration – and to showcase a wider range of sounds that’s available via IAP. A single $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 purchase also removes the ad bar, unlocks a sleep timer, alarm, and dark mode, and allows you to fiddle with the 15 additional sounds – in both the bundled mixes and also your own creations. But whether you pay or not, the combination of excellent sounds and a modern, usable interface make White Noise+ a best-in-class product on the iPhone.
Round HealthYou might not associate taking medication with a hip and cool iPhone, but technology can be a boon to anyone with such requirements. Round Health offers great pill tracking and dosage notifications – and it doesn’t do any harm that the app also happens to be gorgeous. It’s split into three sections: in My Medicine, you add medications, and for each you can define a name, strength, individual doses, and schedules based around reminder windows of up to three hours. In Today, you view and log the day’s medication. Flexible preferences enable you to set up cross-device sync, push notifications, and to export data - and reminding users to refill will be a real help too. That the app is free is generous, given the job it does – and how well it does it. Also, the system is flexible enough that Round Health might work as a reminders system for other repeating tasks, albeit one in which jobs are labelled as ‘taken’ rather than ‘done’!
Sleep Cycle Alarm ClockThe science of sleep is something few people delve into. But you know some days that you wake up and feel awful, even if you think you've had a decent night's sleep. Sleep Cycle might be able to tell you why. It analyses you while you sleep, using sound or motion, and provides detailed statistics when you wake. Additionally, it'll constantly figure out what phase of sleep you're in, attempting to wake you at the best possible time, in a gentle, pleasing manner. That probably all sounds a bit woo-woo, but here's the thing: this app actually works, from the graphing bits through to helping you feel refreshed and relaxed on waking up.
RunkeeperRunkeeper has been around since the App Store’s earliest days, and has gradually transformed from a then-magical means of tracking runs using your iPhone’s GPS, to a combination of personal trainer and community, providing everything you need to keep yourself fit. It still does the basics very well. Head out for a run (or a walk or cycling session), and the app will provide a clear view of your training in real-time. (And we mean that: the stats are in large enough type to see from across the street.) But it’s the other features that make Runkeeper really special: training plans; iTunes integration; custom challenges for friends; and a stopwatch mode for indoor activities and workouts. Unfortunately, it can’t actually do the exercise for you – so you’ll still have to work up a sweat yourself. The best free iPhone apps for kids and toddlersOur favorite free iPhone interactive experiences and learning aids for toddlers and children.
Noah’s Ark AnimalibriumNoah’s Ark Animalibrium isn’t a typical recreation of the famous story. Instead of a massive boat, there’s a precariously wobbly water-bound bowl for the animals to balance on. Also, there are just eight critters, rather than all of that two-by-two shenanigans you’d previously heard of. Still, youngsters won’t mind as they have fun with the playful physics, flinging things about, scrolling the scene, and even dragging animals underwater – whereupon they close their eyes, and the audio appropriately dulls. You also get two buttons: one changes the weather; the other shoots a snap for posterity, should the player manage truly epic balancing. There’s a one-off IAP too, for those who fancy a trip back to prehistoric times: $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 unlocks a pack of eight dinosaurs to save from a flood. We’re pretty sure that wasn’t in Noah’s Ark either…
Big Bang ARBig Bang AR isn’t the best app if you’ve already got an ego, given that it kicks off the creation of the universe in your outstretched hand. After that explosive moment, your local environment becomes an AR swirl of building blocks, as a virtual take on the universe forms. With narration by Tilda Swinton, basic interaction, and a zippy journey through 13.8 billion years of history (finishing, naturally, with a selfie), Big Bang AR feels like a home take on an exhibit you might find at a science museum. However, brevity doesn’t detract from the experience, and there’s further reading on steps in the journey for those who want to dig deeper. Great fodder for curious kids – and any adult who wants to go a bit William Blake and hold infinity in the palm of their hand.
TankeeTankee is a video-streaming platform designed for kids who want to watch videos about gaming. It strips out social networking and comments, and also – crucially – has a real person watch every video that’s made available. The downside is that this limits Tankee to a few hundred hours of content (although this is growing all the time); but you can at least know the videos will be age-appropriate, and algorithms won’t make horrific recommendations after your kid has delved into some Minecraft tips. Everything can be browsed for free, right from the off. Create an account and your child can choose an avatar, save favorites, follow channels, and hammer smiley buttons at lightning speed when they like a particularly good bit of a video.
Wonderbly Story Time BooksWonderbly Story Time Books is an iPhone take on a personalized illustrated children’s book. The story centers on a child’s magical quest to find their forgotten name, and each letter has its own beautifully realized miniature adventure. In fact, each letter has more than one scene, which means there’s no duplication even if your kid has the unlikely name ‘Daaaaavid’. The only minor snag on iPhone is the text is sometimes a bit small. You can use a zoom gesture, but the second you let go, the page snaps back into place. Still, should you want to free your book from the confines of your iPhone, you can order a printed version. And should you want to revisit previous adventures in digital form, they remain stored inside the app.
Peek-a-ZooPeek-a-Zoo doesn’t look like much at first, given that every scene essentially features simplistic cartoon animals atop a flat slab of color, but you soon appreciate how much imagination has gone into this basic setup when you watch a child using the app. It’s all down to the questions, which challenge a toddler to find the right animal. They’ll be asked things like who’s dressed up (which character has the hat), who’s winking, or who’s trying to hide. That last one makes brilliant use of the minimalist graphics, ‘hiding’ an animal by matching its body to the game’s background. It’s all very sweet-natured, and has surprising range given how simple it is. That’s something to appreciate – a free children’s app that’s free from cruft and ads.
Toca Tailor Fairy TalesToca Tailor Fairy Tales turns your child into a designer and stylist. On selecting a character to clothe, they can then drag and swipe to give them a beautiful new outfit. Well, ‘beautiful’ might be a stretch. The mix-and-match nature of the app offers equal potential for eye-searing garish fashion disasters. This is especially true when you delve into the materials section, zooming and rotating textures, or adding new ones by way of the camera. Garments can be adjusted in other ways, too – tap to switch to a different type, or drag to change something’s length. Last of all, there are accessories to give the model a perfect final touch – or a very silly hat.
Laugh & Learn™ Shapes & ColorsLaugh & Learn™ Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby is an interactive experience designed for very young children. Level 1 should be approachable enough even for a six-month-old you’re brave enough to arm with your worryingly expensive iPhone; they can tilt and tap to make shapes appear and bounce around the screen. Level 2 is squarely designed at toddlers. The app chirps “Let’s put on a show!” as shapes dance and jump about on the screen. This is augmented by jaunty earworms that will burrow into your skull, while your tiny human makes their own live remix by prodding at a colorful piano keyboard. It’ll drive you bonkers, but the smile on that little face will be worth it. Probably.
Lego Creator IslandsLego Creator Islands might seem like an odd choice for inclusion here, since parents would most likely sooner see their children playing with plastic bricks rather than virtual ones on an iPhone. But when the real thing isn’t available, this official game does the business. It all takes place on the titular islands, which you explore to collect bricks that act as a kind of in-game currency. These can then be used to acquire Lego sets that are constructed with a few deft taps. The selection is fairly small, but even so you can over time build a rather nice set of islands, featuring houses, roaming animals and dinosaurs, and vehicles blazing about the place. Also, there’s no chance of getting a plastic brick embedded in your foot. The best free music and audio apps for iPhoneOur favorite free iPhone apps for playing songs, listening to podcasts, making music and being a virtual DJ.
SeaquenceSeaquence invites you to make living music. What this means is whatever you devise has the appearance of colorful creatures swimming in a Petri dish. The actual bones of creating music are more conventional, though. On adding a new ‘planktone’ creature, you tap out notes on a grid. If you’re not keen on its sound, you can choose from one of the four other options, and mess about with the waveform. Results tend to be a mite more abstract than, say, GarageBand compositions, but this is nonetheless a vibrant and interesting take on making music. Moreover, if you don’t feel creative, loads of built-in examples are there to listen to; or, conversely, should you get really into Seaquence, a one-off IAP unlocks pro-oriented note and sound editing features.
AudioKit Synth One SynthesizerAudioKit Synth One Synthesizer is perhaps the most audacious synth you’re ever going to see on iPhone. That’s not because it’s full of knobs to twiddle, and amazing sounds – although Synth One is blessed with an abundance of both; it’s because you get all of this entirely for free. There are no catches, and no ads. This is a fully open-source project that can match the power, quality, and clout of the most pro-level software found on iOS. This means if you’re a pro, you can delve into fashioning presets, working with MIDI, wiring up the synth via IAA or AudioBus, and more besides. If you merely like making a noise, you get a superb iOS synth for no outlay whatsoever. The word ‘bargain’ doesn’t really cover it.
djaydjay is an app for budding DJs who want to spin some virtual vinyl. Launch the app and you can convince yourself that you’re a perfect mix of Martin Garrix and David Guetta, slamming amazing tunes into your ears, while fiddling with a mixer, looping, EQ, filters and effects. Alternatively, you can just fire up the app’s Automix feature and let it get on with all the tricky stuff. With Spotify and iTunes integration, it’s not hard to find things to play, although the interface on iPhone is a touch fiddly for full-on DJ work (rather than entertainment for a wannabe). On that basis, we’d exercise caution before grabbing the feature-rich pro-subscription. That said, if you’ve got an external DJ controller, djay for iPhone can feasibly become a vital – and portable – toolkit component even for the pros.
Wilson FMWilson FM reasons there an awful lot of podcasts, and it’s tricky to find great new ones to listen to. It therefore packages hand-picked individual episodes in the format of a magazine. A new issue of Wilson FM arrives every week, and each one is designed to be thematically and culturally relevant. It’s also a handy way of branching out from your usual listening bubble, and delving into the likes of entertaining science, the meaning of words, and cracking cultural mysteries. The player itself is basic, and not a patch on the likes of Overcast. But that’s not the point of Wilson FM. It’s here to help you discover new things, and if you chance across a really great show, you can always copy its link and subscribe to it elsewhere.
BeatwaveBeatwave wants to simplify the process of creating music. You tap notes on to a grid, which explode in color like digital fireworks when the playhead hits them. You can keep adjusting your loop live, or add depth by overlaying loops of different sounds, including drums. For an app that looks so simple, and with vibrant blasts of color not usually associated with music creation tools, there’s surprising depth here, with sliders to tweak sounds, drum generators, and auto-chords. Veterans, though, may miss the original’s more approachable square grid play surface, which echoed Yamaha’s Tenori-on. The only other downside is the sounds you get being a touch limited. Still, there’s enough range for what’s ultimately a musical sketchpad; and if you want more, the ‘pro’ IAP US$9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 adds several extra sets.
YousicianYousician helps you to master a musical instrument or sing, but without that feeling like a chore. To that end, it often resembles a video game. When you’re learning piano, the interface depicts scores and keyboards with bright colors to help guide your eyes and finger, but the app really comes alive when you’re learning guitar. It turns into something like Guitar Hero, only you’re using a real guitar and the app is cunningly teaching you how to play. Things start with the basics, but before long you’re strumming and picking with the best of them. The only big limit in the free version is daily play time. Grab a subscription if you fancy learning more rapidly.
GarageBandThe iPhone version of GarageBand has always been ambitious. Aiming at newcomers and professionals alike, its feature set includes smart instruments that always keep you in key, multitrack recording/editing functionality, a loops player, and superb guitar amps. But 2017’s major update takes things much further, with new synth Alchemy improving the app’s previously slightly ropey sound set. Smart piano strips have been expanded to all keyboard instruments, helping anyone to play perfect melodies. And Audio Unit support exists to load third-party synths directly inside of GarageBand, similar to how plug-ins work on desktop music-making apps. Because of these things, GarageBand is now even more suited to musicians of all skill levels – although be aware on smaller screens that the app can be a touch fiddly, what with there being so much going on.
FigurePlenty of apps claim they can get you making music in seconds, but Figure really means it. The app's heritage helps, as it comes from Propellerhead Software, creators of the legendary Reason and ReBirth. In Figure, though, working on loops and beats is stripped right back from what you'd find in those complex PC apps; instead, you tap out drums, and slide your finger around to fashion monster bass and playful leads. Sounds can be tweaked or swapped out entirely at any point. Once you're done, finished tracks can be uploaded and shared online. For serious musicians, there's even Audiobus support.
OvercastSometimes with apps, it's the seemingly little things that make a big difference. With Overcast, for example, you get a perfectly decent podcast app that does everything you'd expect: podcast subscriptions; playback via downloads or streaming; a robust search for new shows. But where Overcast excels is in attempting to save you time and improve your listening experience. Effects (which can be assigned per-podcast) provide the smartest playback speed-up we've heard, voice boost for improving the clarity of talky shows, and smart speed. The last of those attempts to shorten silences. You won't use that setting for comedy shows, but it's superb for lengthy tech podcasts. As of version 2.0, Overcast is free, and betters all the other iOS podcast apps that also lack a price tag. (Should you wish to support the app, though, there's an entirely optional recurring patronage IAP.)
Novation LaunchpadOn the iPad, Novation Launchpad is one of the best music apps suitable for absolutely anyone. You get a bunch of pads, and tap them to trigger audio loops, which always sound great regardless of the combinations used. This isn't making music per se, but you can get up a good head of steam while imagining yourself as a futuristic combination of electronic musician, DJ and mix genius. On iPhone, it shouldn't really work, the smaller screen not being as suited to tapping away at dozens of pads. But smart design from Novation proves otherwise. 48 trigger pads are placed front and centre, and are just big enough to accurately hit unless you've the most sausagey of sausage thumbs. Effects lurk at the foot of the screen — tap one and a performance space slides in, covering half the screen, ready for you to stutter and filter your masterpiece. As on the iPad, you can also record a live mix, which can be played back, shared and exported. This is a really great feature, adding optional permanence to your tapping exploits. The best free office and writing apps for iPhoneOur favorite free iPhone web browsers, calculators, password security tools and writing apps.
Otter Voice NotesOtter bills itself as the place where conversations live. Which is a lofty way of saying it’s a voice memos app. That might not sound exciting, but Otter has fantastic features for anyone in the habit of jabbering at their phone. It auto-transcribes in an intelligent manner, automatically including punctuation. You get ten hours per month for free, which seems generous. Additionally, notes are timestamped, can have inline images and highlights, and automatically get summary keywords, so you can check subjects at a glance. There’s cloud data sync, conversation sharing, and Face ID/Touch ID security, too. Although there’s a paid plan, that’s only needed if you want up to 100 transcription hours per month or bulk file export. For most people, though, looking for a zero-hassle memos app with transcription, Otter’s free incarnation can’t be beaten.
LastPassLastPass has a lot in common with Apple’s iCloud Keychain, which comes baked into your iPhone. You get a place in which to securely store website login/password details and payment information. This integrates with Safari, and also – from iOS 12 onwards – with third-party app sign-in screens. The main advantage of LastPass over Apple’s solution is that it’s available for Android and Windows, meaning you can use your passwords on whatever system you wish. But also it includes secure notes, and custom form filling options, which prove handy as well. Because LastPass can be used alongside (rather than instead of) iCloud Keychain, it’s worth a look regardless, not least given that its editing and browsing interface far betters Apple’s. And although there’s a premium tier, the free version will be enough for most.
Drafts 5Drafts 5 describes itself as the place “where text starts” on your iPhone. That’s quite the claim, but the app really does excel if you work with words. The efficient interface makes it a breeze to work on structured text with Markdown, glancing at a live word count as you go. A customizable keyboard row provides speedy access to Markdown tools – or anything else you fancy stashing there for easy access. Once you’re done, you can keep your documents in Drafts, where they remain easily searchable, and can even be added to from the Apple Watch app. Or you can send them elsewhere by utilizing a range of actions. Splash out on a subscription and you unlock even more power; but for free, Drafts 5 is an astonishing bargain for anyone in the market for a top-notch iPhone text editor.
DuckDuckGo Privacy BrowserDuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is a web browser that reasons privacy shouldn’t be an optional extra. Instead, it doubles down on giving you control over your personal information as you browse the web, regardless of what you’re doing. By default, tracker networks are blocked, encryption is forced whenever it’s available, and searches use DuckDuckGo, which never tracks you. Should you finish doing something confidential, you can prod a single button to erase your entire browsing history – easy. The browser can also give you details on any site’s privacy measures, and show improvements it’s made on your behalf. DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser’s simplicity and standalone nature mean it might not be a total replacement for Safari, but it’s worth installing as a back-up browser – or even just if you fancy checking out the privacy credentials of sites you enjoy using.
Cake BrowserCake Browser is a mobile-centric web browser that wants you to skip right to dessert. Instead of presenting you with a list of search results, Cake immediately displays what it thinks is the most relevant page, while others load in background tabs. You then swipe between them (though you can still access a traditional results list by swiping from the left). There are great ideas in Cake, not least the buttons that trigger searches specifically for video, images, news, and shopping. The downside is that the search engines and sites Cake uses aren’t configurable, and the results it provides aren’t always what you want. Even so, that sense of surprise, and not always heading to the same old places, makes Cake worth a look – even if you stick to Safari for the bulk of your browsing.
PagesPages is a fully fledged and fully free word processor for your iPhone. Word processing might not be top of your list of iPhone-related tasks, but this great app might just change your mind. Pages includes a wide range of templates, such as reports, letters, cards and posters. Although you probably won’t want to create and edit an entire magazine on your smartphone, Pages is user-friendly, with an efficient interface that’s suitable for banging out a first draft of a letter, leaflet or poster while you’re on the train. Thanks to iCloud sync, whatever you create in Pages can be opened on a Mac or iPad running the app. If you’re resolutely iPhone-only, you can export your work in a range of formats, including PDF and Microsoft Word. If you’re really rocking it old-school, you can even send it to an AirPrint printer.
PCalc LitePCalc Lite is a version of leading iOS calculator PCalc, aimed at people who aren’t keen on spending money. In terms of functionality, it’s more stripped back than its paid sibling, but the app’s guts are identical. What this means is PCalc Lite is undoubtedly the best free traditional calculator for iPhone. It’s fast, responsive, and friendly, and bundles a small set of useful conversions for length, speed, temperature, volume, and weight. If you want to bolt on something from the paid version, IAPs exist, such as for multi-line support, or extra conversion options. When iOS 11 arrived, Apple’s built-in calculator proved buggy, leading to people scrabbling around for an alternative. With PCalc Lite installed, that need never happen to you.
Documents by ReaddleDocuments by Readdle is a file manager, document reader and PDF editor. From a documents standpoint, the app wasn’t made redundant by Apple’s Files; rather, it nicely supplements it. This is because Readdle’s app can connect to remote servers, such as WebDAV, SFTP and shared network drives. In-app document management is sleek and simple, and support for Locations in Files means you can via Apple’s app access whatever you’ve stored in Readdle’s. From a productivity standpoint, Documents is handy as a reader for all kinds of files, like Microsoft Office documents, images, movies, and PDFs. With the last of those, you can also search and annotate, making this app an ideal addition to your freebie iPhone toolkit when you need to do work on the go.
Scanbot Scanner AppScanbot Scanner App is, suitably, a scanner for your iPhone. This might seem unnecessary now Apple’s Notes app includes scanning functionality; and, indeed, Scanbot and Notes do have some overlap. Even so, we reckon Scanbot is very much worth a download. First and foremost, having a separate scanning app is more efficient. Rather than fiddling around setting up a new scan in Notes, embedding imagery, and then sharing your scans, Scanbot has a sleeker user flow. It also seems faster than Apple’s app when it comes to scanning – for which you can scan single or multi-page documents, and then apply effects to the end results. Scanbot also has an upgrade path, for those who want more. Pay and you gain access to automatic cloud uploads, PDF editing, document encryption, and OCR. But even for free, Scanbot deserves a place on your iPhone. The best free productivity apps for iPhoneOur favorite free iPhone apps for being more productive with reminders, to-do lists, flash cards, timers, keyboards, conversion aids and automation.
AuthyAuthy is a sleek and usable app for managing 2FA (two-factor authentication). 2FA is increasingly commonplace, and is used to secure internet accounts. When signing in, an additional layer of security has you enter a code generated by an app – one only the owner of a linked device can access. The Authy interface is simple, humanizing this technology. Accounts are represented by big buttons with icons on. Tap one and the relevant code is shown in large, impossible-to-miss text. If necessary, you can copy the code to the clipboard by pressing a button. But where Authy really wins out is in being able to sync codes across multiple devices for almost zero effort. All you need to do is define a password; enter that in Authy elsewhere and – boom! – job done.
Launch Center ProLaunch Center Pro has a lot of crossover with the home screen and Apple’s Siri Shortcuts. It’s perhaps best thought of - as its creator says - as a ‘speed dial for apps’. In each spot on the grid, you can place buttons to launch apps, or ‘group’ buttons you hold down to access a second level of shortcuts. Some apps offer deeper links, enabling you to trigger specific actions. You can also configure what’s included in the app’s home screen quick actions, and in the Launch Center Pro widget, thereby powering up your launching outside of the app itself. For free, there are limits: a cap on actions; no location triggers; no scheduling. Naturally, these can be removed with IAP. But even for free, there’s a lot to love here, in being able to boost the power of your launching digit.
Bring!Bring! offers a new spin on shared shopping lists. Although you can create a straightforward shared text-based list in Reminders, Bring! opts for large colored buttons adorned with icons. Not only are these easier to spot when you’re in a busy supermarket with a basket on one arm and a toddler on the other, they’re also a mite simpler to tap. Beyond this, there’s all kinds of smart stuff going on. Color-coded rings on items change from green to orange to red when the product is getting closer to running out. For items where you want something very specific, you can add notes and a photo. And when you fancy letting everyone know you’ve made changes to a list shared with many people (for example, in an office), ready-made messages can be sent, saving you the hassle of crafting one yourself.
ShortcutsShortcuts is Apple’s redesign of the well-regarded Workflow app, which aims to streamline your day by automating common tasks. Apps of this ilk have a history of being geeky and impenetrable, but Shortcuts is the friendly face of automation. In the Gallery view are dozens of pre-made workflows to download, which perform actions like calculating tips, figuring out how long it’ll be before you’re home, and logging aspects of your routine. Actions can be added to your Home screen as pseudo-apps, and triggered from Today view or by using Siri voice commands. For a fully custom experience, there’s an editing view to dig into. You can tweak existing downloads, or start with a blank canvas, adding actions using a drag-and-drop interface. On an iPhone Plus models or iPhone XS Max, this works particularly well in landscape, with an iPad-like dual-pane interface.
MeteorMeteor is an internet speed tester designed for human beings. It eschews complex information – and even advertising – and instead provides you with straightforward, colorful buttons and readouts. An inviting ‘Start Testing’ button kicks things off, whereupon the app sets about checking your internet connection’s performance, a little meteor animating on-screen as it does so. Once the tests are done, speeds are scored, and are subsequently available from the History tab. Meteor also attempts to estimate how well your connection would fare with popular apps and games, six of which can be added to an ‘app performance’ bar. These values should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt, but this freebie nonetheless impresses for being a no-nonsense, user-friendly, ad-free way to check internet connectivity.
MultiTimerApple’s pre-loaded Clock app has a perfectly serviceable timer – but you only get one countdown at any given moment. MultiTimer, as its name might suggest, gives you multiple timers that you can set going simultaneously. On launching the app, you’ll find six timers already set up. Each has a different color, name and icon. Tap a timer and it starts, tap again to pause, or double-tap to reset. Easy. Long press and you open the timer’s options, so you can adjust its default time, label, color, icon and sound. You also have plenty of preferences to delve into, including adjusting the default workspace. Should you want extra workspaces – or a custom layout – grab the $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 MultiTimer Pro IAP.
TinycardsFrom the brains behind game-like language-learning app Duolingo comes Tinycards. The aim is to enable people to memorize anything by way of friendly flashcard sets. Duolingo itself offers a number of sets based around language, history and geography. Smartly, though, anyone can create and publish a set, which has led to hundreds of decks about all kinds of subjects, from renaissance art to retro computing. The memorizing bit is based around minutes-long drills. You’re presented with cards and details to memorize, which the app then challenges you on, by way of typing in answers or answering multiple choice questions. Some early teething problems with typos and abbreviations (for example, stating ‘USA’ was incorrect because ‘United States of America’ was the answer) have been dealt with by way of a handy ‘I was right’ button. Just don’t press it when you don’t really know the answer, OK?
CheatsheetThe idea behind Cheatsheet is to provide fast access to tiny chunks of information you never remember but really need to: your hotel room, your car's number plate, Wi-Fi passwords, or, if you're feeling suitably retro, the Konami code. Set-up is pleasingly straightforward. Using the app, you add 'cheats' by selecting an icon and then typing your info nugget. When you've got yourself a number of 'cheats', they can be reordered as you see fit. Once you're done, the entire lot can be displayed on the Today widget or an Apple Watch. Cheatsheet saves some features for a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 'pro' upgrade - a custom keyboard, an action extension, some of the icons, and iCloud sync. But the free version is nonetheless useful and generous, along with making really good use of the Today view on your phone.
LrnWe keep hearing about how important coding will be to the future of everything. That's all very well, unless code makes about as much sense to you as the most exotic of foreign languages. The idea behind Lrn is to gently ease you in. Through friendly copy and simple quizzes, you gradually gain confidence across a range of languages. For free, you get courses on HTML and CSS, along with introductions to JavaScript, Ruby and Python. You can complete any course for $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49; but even if you don't pay anything at all, you'll get a lot out of this app if you've an interest in coding but don't know where to start.
SwiftKeySwiftKey reasons that you could – and should – be typing a lot more quickly on your iPhone’s keyboard. Mostly, it achieves this by freeing you from the drudgery of having to tap individual keys or even bother stabbing at the prediction bar – instead, you just lazily swipe about in the vague direction of the keys you want. During your early days with the app, this occasionally results in some comical typos, but pretty soon you end up swipe-typing at speeds you’d never thought possible. And beyond the keyboard’s AI smarts, there’s customization to delve into, including custom themes and colors, enough emoji to choke a hippo, and some very handy bilingual support for when you need to quickly switch between languages.
Vert SWe're told the 'S' in Vert S stands for 'speed'. This is down to the app being an efficient incarnation of the well-regarded Vert unit converter. The older app had you browse huge category lists to pick what you need, but Vert S is keener on immediacy. There's a search, but the app's core is a Favorites page, where commonly used conversions are stored. Tap one and you enter a basic calculator, enabling you to convert between your two chosen units, which can be quickly switched by tapping the Vert button. (Note that currencies are behind an IAP paywall — $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 for 'Vert Pro' — but conversions for other units are free.) The best free iPhone weather and travel appsOur favorite free iPhone apps for mapping, sat-nav, translation, learning languages, weather forecasts, currency conversion and holiday planning.
Saildrone Forecast - WeatherSaildrone Forecast - Weather is gunning to be the most beautiful weather app on your iPhone. Its dark interface is arresting, not least when vibrant clouds billow over the landscape, forecasting whether you’re due for a soaking. With the means to add an animated wind layer, it feels a lot like Ventusky or Dark Sky, albeit without the price tags those apps command. Everything outside of the map is pretty great too. The upcoming forecast is clear and readable; a glanceable ‘what to wear’ graphic is amusing and useful; and there are temperature, rain, and wind graphs for weather geeks who like delving into detailed data. There’s the odd quirk, and the omission of an imminent rainfall graph is a pity. But given how great it looks and works (no ads!), Saildrone is well worth installing.
Google TranslateGoogle Translate is like having an entire crew of translation staff in your pocket. When online, it can translate text and conversations between dozens of languages, giving you a fighting chance at a to-and-fro in a foreign tongue when you’re stuck for other options. Favorite words and phrases can be saved, to build up a personalized phrasebook. But the real magic comes by way of the camera. Point Google Translate at some text and as long as it’s reasonably legible, it will attempt to translate it live, into your chosen language. You’re not going to be reading a book in this manner, but when you’re abroad and staring quizzically at a menu or the ingredients on a food packet, Google Translate can be a life-saver.
KoinsKoins is a rare currency converter that appears to have been designed with humans in mind. Rather than you dealing with a utilitarian ‘afterthought’ interface, you instead get something akin to a futuristic, playful calculator. Yes, we know, playful isn’t usually a word you’d associate with this kind of app, but it’s fun to hear the bloops and bleeps as you tap out numbers and choose your currencies. Naturally, Koins has more serious features, too: you can squish the keyboard for one-sided use (or use the app in landscape), and sync data via iCloud. However, if you want to check out how currencies have performed over time, you’ll need to unlock the premium version with IAP.
World Clock Time WidgetWorld Clock Time Widget does what you’d expect from its name, enabling you to set up a world clock that’s visible at a glance in Today view. Setup is straightforward. Tapping a + button gives you a list of locations. You can type a place name to rapidly filter the list, then tap an item to add it to your clocks. Locations appear in order from west to east, although you can rearrange them manually. The widget shows your first four clocks in Today view, but can be expanded to show more. Neatly, you can also move the clocks forward and backward by hourly increments. It’s a pity you only get a digital view – analog clocks are only available within the app – but otherwise this is a solid freebie.
Trips by Lonely PlanetTrips by Lonely Planet is an app for sharing travel experiences – or just reveling in the journeys made by others. It’s a bit like a travel-oriented Instagram mixed with a smattering of travel guide and blog. If you like gorgeous photography and a touch of commentary for context, it’s a must-have install. New top picks are regularly showcased on the app’s Home tab, and you can favorite those you like, and/or follow the authors. Annoyingly, there’s no search, but you can delve into themed categories, such as ‘cities’ and ‘adventure’. (Think of it more like a magazine than a website and you should be fine.) When you have an adventure of your own, you can upload your own story. The layout options are a bit basic, but the app is really easy to work with, making for stress-free sharing.
Google MapsGoogle Maps is an app that’s been a mainstay in this list for years – and it’s easy to see why. Although Apple’s own Maps app has hugely improved since launch, Google Maps retains the lead in almost every way. It’s superb at locating points of interest –whether you’re looking for a distant town or local restaurant – and offers robust public transport suggestions. Beyond that, it just proves handier than Apple’s app. Street View is great for virtually scoping out a location, looking for landmarks that might prove handy during a drive. You can draw a route to measure the distance between two places. And best of all, you can download maps to your iPhone, transforming Google Maps into a free sat-nav equivalent that works entirely offline.
Google EarthGoogle Earth simply gives you our planet in the palm of your hand, and encourages you to explore. You can manually rotate and zoom, search for specific locations, or take your chances with the dice icon, to check out somewhere random. Wherever you end up, Google Earth provides local photography and information, becoming something of a virtual tour guide. Places others have explored nearby are provided as cards, which prove genuinely useful for giving crowdsourced points of interest or recommendations. This concept reaches its logical conclusion with Voyager – a selection of journeys you can take to some of the world’s most amazing sights, from ancient wonders to modern ones like Kennedy Space Center. Google Earth’s visual majesty is lessened on the smaller screen, but it’d be churlish to scoff at an app that in an instant provides access to so much of our planet.
LingvistLingvist is a language-learning app that claims to be able to teach you at light speed. Naturally, that’s hyperbole, but Lingvist nonetheless has a methodology and interface that gets you going in your chosen language (French, Spanish, German, and Russian are supported) at serious speed. Mostly, it’s about plugging words into sentences, in a drill-like fashion. Imagine interactive flash cards thrown your way in quick-fire fashion and you’re there. The underlying algorithm tracks words you’re finding tricky, and in-context explanations for things like verbs pop up as and when they’re needed. Will Lingvist make you fluent in hours? Probably not. But as a refresher, or even a first step in learning a foreign tongue, it’s the best freebie around on iPhone.
TriposoBilled as ‘your smart travel guide’, Triposo elevates itself above the competition. First and foremost, it’s comprehensive. Whereas other guides typically concentrate on a few major cities, Triposo drills down into tiny towns and villages as well, helping you get the best out of wherever you happen to be staying. 50,000 destinations worldwide are included, complete with information on bars, restaurants, hotels, tours and attractions. Beyond that, the app is easy to use, and it optionally works offline, enabling you to download guides on a regional basis. This is perfect for when you’re ambling about somewhere new, without a data connection. And if you’re unsure where to head, Triposo can even build an editable city walk for you too.
FoursquareOne-time darling of the digital check-in crowd, Foursquare in 2014 reworked its app to focus entirely on local search. Although this irked fans who'd been there since the beginning, it's hard to criticize the app we've been left with. On iPhone, you start with a search field, beneath which sits a handy list of relatively local places of interest. Tap an item and you gain access to a photo gallery, basic details, and a slew of reviews. In the main, Foursquare is quite obsessed with food, drink and nightlife, but the 'fun' and 'more' categories house plenty of additional places to visit, from gig venues and cinemas to rather more sedate options like parks and historic sites. Filters and 'tastes' options within the app's settings enable you to further hone down recommended choices, and anything you fancy reminding yourself of on a more permanent basis can be added to a custom list.
CitymapperCitymapper is a travel aid that wants to help you get around big cities more easily. Unlike Google Maps, it doesn’t work worldwide, instead carefully selecting places that get coverage. But if you live in or visit one of the supported cities – which include London, Paris, Berlin and New York – Citymapper is an essential download. The app will quickly zero in on your location. When you need to get somewhere else, Citymapper makes it easy to compare all of your options in real time. But it’s the smaller features that properly cement its place on your iPhone: watching buses move about a live map; advice about the best train carriage to take; and real-time alerts when you should get ready to disembark – great when you’re dozing at the end of a busy day.
Weather UndergroundThe Weather Underground app (or 'Wunderground' to your iPhone, which sounds like an oddly dark Disney film) is one of those products that flings in everything but the kitchen sink yet somehow remains usable. Whatever your particular interest in the weather, you're covered, through a slew of 'tiles' (which can be moved or disabled to suit) on a huge scrolling page. At the top, you get a nicely designed tile detailing current conditions and showing a local map. Tick and cross buttons lurk, asking for input regarding the app's accuracy. During testing, we almost always tapped the tick — reassuring. Scroll, though, and you find yourself immersed in the kind of weather geekery that will send meteorological nuts into rapture. There are rainfall and temperature graphs for the next day and hour, along with simpler forecasts for the week. You get details on humidity, pressure and dew point. Sunrise, sunset and moon timings are presented as stylish animations. You can investigate local and global webcams and photos, and then head to the web if not satisfied with that deluge of data. Weather Underground is funded by non-intrusive ads (which you can disable annually for $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 if you feel the need), and is easily our favourite free iPhone weather app; in fact, it even rivals the best paid fare on the platform. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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