Apple : Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime to retire in April |
- Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime to retire in April
- This exclusive Samsung Note 8 deal is the perfect alternative to a pricey new S10
- HTC has a new standalone VR headset that's still not for you
- Why the Nintendo Switch VR support rumor is a genius idea
- 5G could solve major 4G congestion
- Google launches hybrid cloud beta
- See the best special offers and freebies you can get with new Galaxy S10 deals
- Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music finally gets Spotify support
- The best Xbox One X prices, bundles and deals in February 2019: where to buy the 4K Xbox
- iD Mobile is offering 50GB data boosts on Samsung Galaxy S10 pre-order deals
- The best free personal finance software 2019
- What is 5G? Everything you need to know
- OnePlus 7 may gain pop-up selfie cam, leak suggests
- Hi-Res Audio: everything you need to know about the lossless music codec
- The Samsung Galaxy Fold has just made foldable-screen laptops more likely
- Huawei Mate 30 Pro: what we want to see
- The best free Android apps of 2019
- The best free Android games 2019
- Samsung Galaxy Fit release date, price, news and features
- The best PS4 Pro prices, deals and bundles in February 2019
| Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime to retire in April Posted: 21 Feb 2019 01:47 PM PST In April of this year, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime will retire. Fils-Aime shared a goodbye message via the company’s Twitter profile and in it announced that upon his departure, the US branch will be helmed by Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Doug Bowser. Fils-Aime, who has worked at Nintendo for the last 15 years, helped launch the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo 3DS, as well as the Wii U and Nintendo Switch – four consoles that represent the highs and lows of Nintendo’s hardware history. In the time since, Fils-Aime has re-shaped Nintendo’s culture, being a face for a company that hid behind mascots and directly presenting information to audiences around the world in Nintendo Directs.
“In April I’ll be dropping the title that’s meant so much to me, President of Nintendo of America,” Fils-Aime said in his video sendoff, “But I’ll retain one that means even more: Nintendo fan. From the bottom of my heart, thanks again for everything. You are the best.” In a statement to coincide with Fils-Aime’s departure announcement, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa thanked Fils-Aime for all that he’s done and said that the former face of the company’s US branch would be sorely missed: “While we will miss him and we wish him the very best in his retirement, we are also pleased to have such an able successor ready to step into that role. Doug Bowser and the rest of the team will ensure a seamless transition and continued momentum for Nintendo.” A new era for the Mushroom KingdomFor years, Reggie Fils-Aime was the face of Nintendo of America. He appeared frequently in press conferences and videos alongside President Satoru Iwata and distinguished Creative Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto - even when the company hit a rough patch with the Wii U. But Fils-Aime leaves behind a legacy, one that includes the revitalization of the Nintendo World Championship and three of the most successful consoles of all-time including the Wii, Nintendo 3DS handheld and Nintendo Switch. What will Nintendo of America look like now that Bowser is at the helm? Despite the ironic name, Bowser has been working alongside Fils-Aime for the last four years and seems intent to build on the legacy Fils-Aime leaves: “It has been my great fortune to work with and be mentored by Reggie for four years at Nintendo of America,” Bowser said. “And rest assured, we will continue to build on his work to evolve and expand our brand, furthering Nintendo’s global mission of creating smiles. There are millions more of those to come.” This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| This exclusive Samsung Note 8 deal is the perfect alternative to a pricey new S10 Posted: 21 Feb 2019 10:50 AM PST Unless you've been cut off from the internet for the past couple of days, you've probably heard that Samsung has released a few new devices in, what is currently, the biggest phone launch of 2019 so far. You may have also heard that these phones aren't exactly cheap, which is why we think this new TechRadar exclusive Note 8 deal is the best choice when it comes to a new Samsung phone deal. For just £28 a month you can get this 9GB data Note 8 from Fonehouse, no upfront costs, no catches, just a great tariff. It blows the rest of the market's best Galaxy Note 8 deals to kingdom come. You can see all the details of this deal down below or, if you're feeling like splashing out on Samsung's new releases after all, check out our Galaxy S10 deals or Galaxy S10e deals pages. This cheap Note 8 deal in full
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| HTC has a new standalone VR headset that's still not for you Posted: 21 Feb 2019 10:37 AM PST HTC has been a busy bee today, announcing not only new touch controllers for the upcoming HTC Vive Cosmos, but also a new standalone headset. Meet HTC’s newly announced headset is the Focus Plus and its main focus *rimshot* is it now comes with dual six-degrees of freedom (6DoF) controllers for a much more immersive, completely untethered VR experience. The original HTC Vive Focus only came with a single three-degrees of freedom (3DoF) controller that only offered rotational tracking (i.e. up, down, left and right). This new headset’s controllers will allow for a full transitional movement, which includes tracking whether the user has stepped forward, backward, side-to-side or shifted vertically. Other than those new ultrasonically tracked controllers, not much has changed on the virtual reality headset itself. The Vive Focus Plus still features a 2,880 × 1,600 (1,660 × 1,600 per lens) resolution AMOLED display. You'll also find the same underlying Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor power this headset to deliver completely self-driven VR experiences.
Engadget reports the Vive Focus Plus will feature "next-gen" lens for “no more god rays." However, we’ve also seen a conflicting article from Road to VR that speculates HTC will stick to the same Fresnel lenses as found on the original Vive Focus. We’ve reached out to HTC for more clarity on the lenses and will update this article as soon as we hear back. The HTC Vive Focus Plus is slated to launch in Q2 of 2019, but has yet to announce pricing. We'll also have to see and wait about whether this headset will come to mass market as it's currently only marketed to the enterprise sector.
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| Why the Nintendo Switch VR support rumor is a genius idea Posted: 21 Feb 2019 10:13 AM PST The Nintendo Switch is the most versatile home console ever created. To call it a home console even is to do it an injustice, as its battery-powered handheld mode allows it to act as a supercharged portable games machine too. But its detachable controllers and central tablet-like core processing-and-display unit might make it even more versatile still – the Nintendo Switch could be getting VR support. It’s a rumor that’s been doing the rounds for few years now. Back in 2016, a patent was uncovered suggesting that the Nintendo Switch could be getting an accessory that would turn it into a mobile VR viewer, in much the same way that the Google Daydream View works. Data miners also discovered a screen splitting mode, ideal for VR, hidden within the Switch’s firmware. Image Credit: TechRadar While we’ve been yet to corroborate the report ourselves, Nintendo World Report cites “multiple sources” who claim to have knowledge of soon-to-be-revealed Nintendo Switch VR details – including talk of first party franchises getting a VR mode. Its rumor lands close to news of the formation of a VRM Consortium, which sees 13 Japanese companies teaming up to develop VR business opportunities – and Nintendo acting as an observer. Pair this with comments from Reggie Fils-Aime, President and COO of Nintendo of America, confirming that Nintendo is tinkering with VR projects, and the stars seems to be aligning for a Nintendo Switch VR mode and accessory. The perfect VR fitThere’s lots to love about this idea. The Nintendo Switch’s unique form factor, with its detachable central unit, makes it easy to house within a portable, wire-free headset for VR, with the aforementioned VR screen-splitting mode ensuring that you’d get a 3D ‘screen-per-eye’ view of the action. But what sort of headset would this be? How about a DIY one? Google Cardboard proved years back that a few bits of cardboard and some goggle optics, paired with a mobile screen, was all you needed for convincing VR on the go. And Nintendo has been planting the seeds for build-your-own toys for close to a year now with its Nintendo Labo sets – pop-out cardboard build kits that have turned the Switch into everything from a fishing game (complete with rod) to a cardboard costume that turns you into a stomping robot – complete with pulleys that help the Switch track your movements. It’s something that third party manufacturers have already seen the potential for – just take a look at the NS Glasses for instance (pictured up top, and below) – with only middling success, primarily because the software support just isn’t there yet. Image Credit: Exklim NS Glasses Mario World VRBut, though few have tried it outside of Japanese arcades, it wouldn’t even be the first time Nintendo has toyed with VR software. Mario Kart VR has been in arcades for over a year now, co-developed by Namco. And while the experience is limited to a single track, it’s exhilarating to sit right inside the Mario universe, lobbing shells and banana skins at your racing rivals. The colorful nature of many first party Nintendo titles are perfectly suited to VR too. Just as Switch classics Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda: Breath of the Wild lean on a lavish cartoony art style rather than aiming for photo-realism, so too could Switch VR titles, taking the strain off the underpowered hardware. There’s no need for 4K ray-tracing in the Mushroom Kingdom. And oh boy: can you imagine the Mushroom Kingdom in VR? If any readers have had the joy of trying the superbly inventive Astro Bot: Rescue Mission on the PlayStation 4, you’ll know that VR can be transformative for platformers. Image Credit: Sony In the PlayStation VR title, the space-bound hero runs all around levels that render all around you, with the game hiding secrets around corners, and room-filling bad guys looking to make mincemeat out of your avatar. Nintendo has a knack for re-inventing the wheel when it tries its hand at a new format or genre, and the mind boggles at what would happen if a mini Mario was running around at my feet, or I was given the opportunity to don Samus Aran’s visor for a Metroid VR title. That’s not to say Nintendo hasn’t made missteps in a similar arena before – the Virtual Boy is a cautionary tale for anyone considering strapping a gaming device to their faces. But this time around, it feels like all the pieces are in place, as if Nintendo has had a genius plan for unleashing Nintendo Switch VR all along. If that’s the case, I can’t wait to strap myself in.
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| 5G could solve major 4G congestion Posted: 21 Feb 2019 10:07 AM PST Ahead of 5G's global rollout, mobile analytic company Opensignal has published a new report analyzing 4G speeds worldwide to better understand how 5G will solve the congestion problems of today's 4G networks. The firm's analysis of 77 countries has revealed the enormous extent to which 4G speeds drop during peak hours when the highest amount of users are on the smartphones. Today's 4G networks suffer from huge fluctuations in speed throughout the course of a day and depending on the country, the 4G download speeds a user experiences at one hour could be as much as 30 Mbps faster than what they experience just a few hours later.
The most consistent countries of those analyzed by Opensignal formed a diverse list that included several countries in Asia and Europe as well as Qatar, South Africa and Canada. Regional differencesIn general, European countries landed higher in the ranks of the firm's consistency charts with fast average speeds and smaller fluctuations. The Czech Republic was the most consistent country in Europe and the difference between the best 4G download speed and worst speed over a 24 hour period was 20 percent. In North America, the US and Canada differed greatly when it came to 4G speeds. Canada was among the fastest countries worldwide in terms of average speed and it was also among the most consistent while the US landed in the middle of Opensignal's consistency rankings. The greatest differences in download speeds were seen in the Asia Pacific region with South Korea at 47.1 Mbps and Singapore at 45.4 Mbps while India (6.5 Mbps), Thailand (8.2 Mbps), Indonesia (9.6 Mbps), Cambodia (8.6 Mbps) and the Philippines (9.4 Mbps) struggled to reach even double digits. Opensignal argues that 5G will provide a blanket of capacity that will help mitigate 4G congestion so that consumers can experience the best mobile download speeds possible. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Google launches hybrid cloud beta Posted: 21 Feb 2019 09:20 AM PST Adopting a hybrid cloud traditionally means committing to a cloud vendor and purchasing new hardware but Google has taken a different approach with its Cloud Services Platform (CSP) by offering customers a software-based, hybrid offering. The new platform, which was announced at Google cloud Next last year, brings Google Cloud services into your existing on-prem infrastructure using the power of Kubernetes and Istio. CSP, which is launching into beta today, simplifies building, running and managing services both on-prem and in the cloud.
Google's new platform gives businesses the freedom to modernize their applications at their own pace while innovating faster and improving operational security and governance. Google Kubernetes EngineCSP is built on top of the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and the platform includes a managed Kubernetes service called GKE On-Prem that provides remote lifecycle management to your on-prem clusters in order to help keep them updated and secure. GKE On-Prem also saves businesses time and money by allowing them to use their existing hardware. Users will be able to write once and deploy to the cloud or on-prem. CSP was designed in such a way that organizations can integrate their existing networking, storage and identity capabilities so that they can move to the cloud at their own pace. Additionally, the introduction of CSP Config Management allows users to create multi-cluster policies out of the box. These configurations can be rapidly deployed across all of your clusters whether they reside on-prem or in the cloud. The GCP Marketplace even gives organizations access to a variety of enterprise-ready, open-source and commercial Kubernetes applications. Google Cloud's Vice President Eyal Manor explained how CSP fits into the company's hybrid strategy in a blog post announcing the beta, saying: “CSP represents a foundational element of our hybrid strategy, which integrates with our build, deployment, and monitoring tools to provide a modern DevOps environment that accelerates development velocity.”
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| See the best special offers and freebies you can get with new Galaxy S10 deals Posted: 21 Feb 2019 09:17 AM PST Buying new stuff makes you feel good. That's just science. It's about endorphins...or something. And when it comes to tech, there's nothing newer or more impressive to buy right now than the Samsung Galaxy S10 that was launched to much pomp and circumstance on Wednesday. If you simply want to know what the best tariffs out there are, then we'll point you in the direction of our dedicated Galaxy S10 deals page. Or if you want to know where to buy the handset outright, our Samsung S10 SIM-free price page will cater to those needs. It can be quite bewildering seeing all those offers from different retailers. Everybody seems to have an angle on why they are the best place to order your new S10. So if you're somebody who loves an added perk with their purchase, then we've collated the most eye-catching special offers here. Keep reading to see what's out there and start preparing for that endorphin rush. Free Galaxy BudsSave up to £350 from Samsung with a trade-inMobiles.co.uk £1,000 voucher prize drawUp to £400 cashback50GB data boost from iDAll-you-can-eat dataThis posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music finally gets Spotify support Posted: 21 Feb 2019 08:28 AM PST If you're a Spotify Premium subscriber, you can now download and listen to playlists on the Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music. Since the reworked Garmin Vivoactive 3 was announced in the middle of 2018, users have been limited to your own MP3 files or a Deezer subscription to listen to music away from your phone. Now that Spotify support has landed on the watch, you can download and listen to playlists, albums, tracks and podcasts directly from the watch using Bluetooth headphones.
The update matches support that we've seen included on the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus range as well as the Garmin Forerunner 645 Music. We also hope to see it come to future watches produced by Garmin. The Vivoactive 3 Music comes with enough space for up to 500 songs so you should be able to upload even the heftiest running playlist directly to your wrist to get you through a couple of marathons without having to replay tracks. You'll have to sync your playlists over Wi-Fi before you head out on your run to be able to listen away from your phone though. To get it set up, you can download the Spotify app directly from the Garmin Connect IQ store and sign in with your Premium account details.
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| The best Xbox One X prices, bundles and deals in February 2019: where to buy the 4K Xbox Posted: 21 Feb 2019 08:09 AM PST After a quiet start to the year we've found some excellent Xbox One X prices. We're talking brand new bundles with the hottest games like Metro: Exodus, Red Dead Redemption 2, Forza Horizon 4, Battlefield V and more. Gamers looking for the most powerful console ever made have have been keen to pick up Xbox One X deals since release but there was a high cost to pay in the early days. Until recently, prices have been high at most stores if you weren't sure where to look. That's where we come in as our dedicated team of Deal Hunters cut through the chaff to bring you only the very best Xbox One X deals every day, and we've got some excellent ones for you today. In this article you'll find a comparison chart with the lowest prices on where to buy the 4K HDR Xbox One X console from a wide range of the best retailers. After the comparison chart we've put together a collection of the latest bundles in the States and UK. These Xbox One X bundles will save you money over buying the items separately. If you're after information on the latest Australian deals, head over to our Australian page. The best Xbox One X pricesUS Xbox One X bundles are really stepping things up now after a quiet few months. there's never been a better time to buy actually as you're getting genuine discounts and free content for the first time in ages. What is the Xbox One X price?The Xbox One X MSRP is $499 in the US and the UK RRP currently sits at £449. So sure, it looks like UK gamers are paying considerable more as the direct currency conversion would have it at £390. On the plus side, retailers are starting to cut prices and we're seeing games bundled in too. So you should never pay those costs for the console alone today. Why should I buy an Xbox One X?Just to be clear, this is not what you'd call a 'next-gen' console. Instead it's a powerful upgrade over the current Xbox One lineup. To simplify things, it's akin to Sony's PS4 Pro. Both consoles are aimed at gamers with a 4K HDR TV who want the best graphical performance possible on their favored console. There will be modest performance boosts on non-4K TVs too, but you're kind of missing the point without a 4K HDR TV. As things stand the Xbox One X will play all Xbox One games and we're not expecting to see any games released exclusively for the Xbox One X (or so we've been told), so there's certainly no reason to throw away your Xbox One S yet. The Xbox One X is the most powerful console ever made though, even outshining some of the specs of the PS4 Pro. But given the huge asking price, you'd hope as much. The Xbox One X is making bold claims about true native 4K gaming though with its upcoming titles and if you have a 4K TV with High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology, the Xbox One X is ready to seriously impress with the likes of Forza Motorsport 7, Metro: Exodus and Anthem set to be true jaw-droppers in the graphics department. Where can I buy an Xbox One X?Most of the usual big name retailers are stocking the Xbox One X. Prices this close to launch are all very similar for now, but as we move forwards, we'll start to see stores chipping away at the price to try to get an edge over the competition. Keep an eye on the highlighted Xbox One X bundles above and our comparison chart, which we'll keep up to date on the latest prices for the Xbox One X on its own. So feel free to bookmark us and check in again soon to see if we've found the deal that's right for you. Fingers crossed the bundles get better soon, especially in the US where we're not seeing massive software discounts so far. What is the Xbox One X release date?It's here now! The Xbox One X came out on November 7 2017. That was a worldwide release date too. Will there be Xbox One X deals are Christmas?Unlike the first Xbox One X's first Christmas, we do expect there to be some deals this year. The 4K console was seemingly too new to discount last year, but Microsoft will be keen to catch up the the PS4 Pro this year and we're hoping for some decent discounts in what has been a slow year for deals in all honesty. In all likelihood, the PS4 Pro prices and bundles are still going to be much cheaper. What if I don't care about 4K or want to save money?The standard Xbox One S is a fantastic games console and you'll easily be able to get one with a few games for around $250/£250 or less. There are cheap deals all year round on our Xbox One deals and PS4 prices, deals and bundles pages. Only kidding. I want 4K HDR in my face right now.4K TVs with HDR are nowhere near as expensive as you'd think. The prices have come down much faster than the original HD TVs, so you can get a decent model for a low price. Hell we've seen some nice ones for less than the price of the Xbox One X itself (what a ridiculous world we live in). For the best of the best, take a look at our best TV article. We've also rounded up the best cheap 4K TV deals too in the UK, and also a collection of US TV deals. How big is the hard drive in the Xbox One X?For now, the only option available is the 1TB option, that's 1000GB of storage. There are no official plans for larger versions, but we wouldn't be surprised to see these come along in 2018. With some 4K-friendly update patches to games coming in at over 100GB, we certainly wouldn't hold out for a cheaper 500GB Xbox One X, as it'd be a bit pointless to be honest. We think gamers are going to fill up the 1TB Xbox One pretty soon. Thankfully the Xbox One X is compatible with external hard drives using USB 3.0. So if you need some extra storage, check out our list of the best external hard drives. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| iD Mobile is offering 50GB data boosts on Samsung Galaxy S10 pre-order deals Posted: 21 Feb 2019 08:09 AM PST So it finally happened, Samsung went and released its brand new trio of phones - the S10, S10 Plus and S10e. That was already enough to get us excited, but then iD Mobile - Carphone Warehouse's very own network - went and declared that it would be offering an almighty 50GB data boost on all its Galaxy S10 deals and now, our excitement is palpable. Okay, that may sound a tad dramatic but this is a seriously intriguing offer and let us tell you why. iD is notorious for offering affordable mobile phone deals with low data, which is great considering some S10 and S10 Plus deals are a little...pricey. So in theory, with these data boosted plans you could opt for a more affordable 1GB of data S10 contract and end up with an effective 3GB each month overall. When you hit your data limit each month your data boost will kick in and carry you through to the end of the month. That way you don't have to compromise on price or data. And the data boost is available for the duration of the contract and beyond. If this sounds like the ideal offer for you then scroll down to see our picks of the best boosted data deals and find out a bit more about who iD is.
Our pick of iD's data boosted S10 deals in full:What is iD Mobile?iD Mobile is a sub-section of Carphone Warehouse so you can rest assured that it is a trustworthy source for your new phone deal. It piggybacks off the Three network's coverage, so pretty good for most parts of the UK. And you can use roaming in 50 destinations around the world. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The best free personal finance software 2019 Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:49 AM PST Whether you have a lot or a little, everyone needs to manage their money. Like so many areas of life, you can do things entirely by hand, or you can turn to software to make your life easier. There's a wealth – if you'll pardon the pun – of personal finance tools out there, but many of them involve having to put your hand into your pocket, dig deep and part with some hard-earned cash. You could, of course, pay an accountant to take care of your money for you, but this involves and outlay that you might well prefer to avoid. Take a look through the selection of free tools we've collected together, and you should find something that suits your personal finance needs, making it easier to keep track of your money. This free personal finance software could hopefully save you some money too or, at the very least, see where you're currently spending it. Image credit: The GnuCash Project GnuCash is simple enough to be used for home finances, but flexible enough to be put to use by small businesses as well. While the software is easy to use, the fact that it's suitable for small business accounting is thanks to the inclusion of a number of extra features that you would not necessarily expect to find – support for payroll management and double-entry accounting, for instance. Although relatively easy to use, this free personal finance software does really require some familiarity with accounting software, and it's simple to migrate from another program because you can import data in QIF and dOFX formats. Support for expense tracking makes this ideal software for preparing for tax season, and there are a huge number of reporting options to help you to make sense of your cashflow. The software is available for macOS, Windows and Linux, as well as Android, and it's highly recommended that you try out this great tool before you consider any of the paid-for alternatives. Image credit: Wyatt Olson Proving that free personal finance software doesn’t have to be complicated, Buddi keeps things about as simple as they can be. In a matter of minutes, you can set up all of the accounts you need and start keeping track of your incomings and outgoings. Money can be easily pulled from and moved between different accounts, and Buddi can generate all sort of reports about your spending and earnings broken down in a variety of ways. If you're looking to save money, the program can help you to stick to a budget and for anyone who is completely new to the concept of accounting, the Buddi website has a number of helpful guides to help get you started. On the downside, Buddi requires you to have Java installed which is not going to be to everyone's liking, and the software itself has not been updated for a little while. Neither of these two factors are enough to stop us from recommending that you take a look at the program – it could well be just what you've been looking for. Image credit: MechCAD Software Billing itself as an alternative to Quicken sets a high bar for AceMoney, but it's a target it manages to reach, even in its free, cut-down iteration. There's only support for two accounts in AceMoney Lite, but this should be enough for many people – and the full edition of the program is only $40 (around £30, AU$50) anyway. You can even use the program to keep track of your PayPal account. Managing accounts in different currencies is no problem, but you'll have to enter data into this free personal finance software rather than having your transactions pulled in from your bank account. That said, if you download statements from your online bank account, these can then be imported to saved time with manual entry. AceMoney Lite also makes it easy to track your spending and investments, making it a great financial tool for anyone looking to take control of their finances. Image credit: HomeBank HomeBank will appeal if you work on multiple platforms, or don't use Windows by default. Available for Windows, macOS and Linux (there's also an Android app in development) HomeBank can be installed normally or as a portable app, and it makes the topic of personal finance easily accessible. If you've been using another program – such as Quicken or Microsoft Money – to manage your finances, you can import data to save having to start from scratch. You can add an unlimited number of accounts to the program, and they can be linked to each other to allow for easy money transfers – it is all entirely dependent on manual editing, though. With enough data entered, it's possible to generate all manner of reports, including helpful predictive reports for car ownership and the like. Very much designed with the average person in mind, this is a personal finance app for people who hate personal finance apps. Image credit: Buxfer Inc Buxfer is an online tool that makes it easy to manage all of your accounts in one place – although there is also an Android app available. There's support for over 15,000 online bank accounts from all over the world, so you should find that yours is there, and then you can pull in all of your transactions without the need for manual entry. Buxfer can also pull in data in from the likes of Quicken and Mint, help you manage budgets and forecast costs and earnings, and track investments with ease. You will have to spend time categorizing transactions manually if you upload them from your statements, but this isn't too much of a chore. You can set up alerts, track bills, and predict spending patterns; it's a highly versatile tool. There is a free version of service available, but there are also three paid-for tiers ranging in price from $1.99 to $4.99 per month. It's worth taking the free version for a spin to see if it could do the job for you – this will let you work with up to five accounts, which is likely to be enough for most people.
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| What is 5G? Everything you need to know Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:36 AM PST What is 5G?5G networks are the next generation of mobile internet connectivity, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices than ever before. Combining cutting-edge network technology and the very latest research, 5G should offer connections that are multitudes faster than current connections, with average download speeds of around 1GBps expected to soon be the norm. The networks will help power a huge rise in Internet of Things technology, providing the infrastructure needed to carry huge amounts of data, allowing for a smarter and more connected world. With development well underway, 5G networks are expected to launch across the world by 2020, working alongside existing 3G and 4G technology to provide speedier connections that stay online no matter where you are. So with only a matter of months to go until 5G networks are set to go live, here's our run-down of all the latest news and updates. 5G - the latest news21/02 - DEVICES - Gemalto makes 5G SIM card available to operators - Gemalto pitches "world-first" 5G SIM card... 21/02 - NETWORKS - O2 5G confirmed to launch in these four cities in 2019 - O2 5G will go live in UK capitals this year... 20/12 - NETWORKS - 5G will account for a quarter of UK mobile data traffic by 2022 - UK will be second only to the US in 5G... 20/02 - NETWORKS - Vodafone 'world-first' connects smartphones to 5G network - Vodafone connects handset in Barcelona ahead of MWC next week... 19/02 - DEVICES - You may want to hold off buying a 5G phone until 2020 - This second generation 5G modem will make a difference... 19/02 - NETWORKS - Three trials cloud core 5G network with staff - Full rollout expected later in 2019... 19/02 - ANALYSIS - Does sports content hold the key to 5G adoption? - Tokyo Olympics and Euro 2020 could be first time many experience 5G... 18/02 - NETWORKS - UK 'doesn't need to ban' Huawei 5G kit - Huawei's 5G equipment is a 'manageable risk', NCSC apparently claims... 18/02 - NETWORKS - Vodafone UK switches on first 5G airport - Manchester Airport upgraded to superfast speeds for consumers to try out 5G... 15/02 - NETWORKS - Three brings 5G to the catwalk and its flagship store - Three shows off 5G to consumers at London Fashion Week... 13/02 - NETWORKS - UK switches on first 5G factory trials - Worcestershire 5G testbed goes live... 11/02 - NETWORKS - Sprint sues AT&T over '5GE' claim - Rivals clash in 5G row... 11/02 - ANALYSIS - AI, 5G and the race to completely autonomous vehicles - Now is the time to implement a data-centric architecture... 08/02 - NETWORKS - Trump anticipated to ban 5G networks from using Chinese tech - An executive order is expected to come before MWC... 07/02 - DEVICES - Vodafone trials 5G form factor device with Ericsson and Qualcomm - Operator takes step forward in 5G development... 06/02 - NETWORKS - US urges EU to reconsider role of Huawei in 5G - US ramps up pressure on Huawei with stark warning... 05/02 - NETWORKS - Ericsson joins O-RAN to drive intelligent 5G radio development - Ericsson extends commitment to open standards... 04/02 - NETWORKS - GSMA suggests Huawei 5G talks at MWC - Industry concerned at Huawei 5G exclusion following long-term controversies... 01/02 - DEVICES - Huawei 5G foldable phone teased in MWC 2019 press conference invite - Our first look at the world's first foldable 5G phone... 31/01 - ANALYSIS - Investing in a 5G future: The role of MNOs - 5G's 2020 rollout is fast approaching... 31/01 - NETWORKS - Nokia predicts staggered demand for 5G kit in 2019 - Nokia reports increased revenue and profit in Q4... 31/01 - DEVICES - 5G phones: these are going to be the first next-gen handsets - The new 5G phones of 2019 and beyond... 31/01 - DEVICES - LG hints strongly at 5G foldable phones for 2019 - Taking the fight to Samsung's Galaxy X... 28/01 - NETWORKS - Chinese EU Ambassador says Huawei 5G ban would be 'self-defeating' - Senior diplomat dismisses security fears as fabrications... 25/01 - DEVICES - Huawei says it'll show off a foldable 5G phone at MWC 2019 - The world's first 5G phone with a foldable screen... 24/01 - HARDWARE - Huawei reveals 5G modem and base station chips - Huawei chips will ease deployment and widen support... 22/01 - NETWORKS - Vodafone and O2 team up on 5G network sharing - Two operators look at options for mast infrastructure as they extend network sharing deal to cover 5G... 17/01 - NETWORKS - Huawei faces US probe as Germany considers 5G options - US DoJ reportedly accuses Huawei of trade secret theft... 14/01 - NETWORKS - US government shutdown is threat to 5G rollout - Industry body warns about impact of FCC shutdown... 14/01 - HARDWARE - Intel wants to be your one-stop shop for 5G - Intel VP tells us that “5G runs on Intel”... 14/01 - DEVICES - Apple looks at Samsung and MediaTek modems for 5G iPhone - Latest revelations from Qualcomm's antitrust trial... 12/01 - DEVICES - iPhone 11 tipped to have faster Wi-Fi, but 5G might have to wait - Better speeds for the 2019 iPhones? 11/01 - NETWORKS - Ericsson tests strengthen wireless backhaul's suitability for 5G - Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom trials achieve 'fibre-like' performance... 10/01 - NETWORKS - T-Mobile continues US 5G crusade with 600MHz call tests - T-Mobile completes multi-band call tests with Ericsson and Intel... 09/01 - DEVICES - 5G and fixed displays to drive smartphone sales in 2019 - Research suggests 5G might be silver bullet... 09/01 - NETWORKS - AT&T claims advanced 4G is '5G' - Software update claims advanced 4G is 5G Evolution... 08/01 - DEVICES - 5G can be tonic for smartphone saturation - GSMA Intelligence finds 80 per cent of developed world owns a smartphone... 08/01 - HARDWARE - Intel targets 5G base stations with 'Snow Ridge' chips - Intel hopes edge computing advantage will pay off... 08/01 - NETWORKS - The Galaxy S10 isn't at CES 2019, but Samsung's 5G plans are here - Samsung Galaxy S10 is here in pieces if you look closely... 06/01 - DEVICES - Byton confirms M-Byte car will be available in 2019 with AI, 5G and 48-inch display - That's a whole lot of screen... 04/01 - ANALYSIS - What to expect from 5G at CES 2019 - 5G could be the star of the show at CES 2019... 24/12 - ANALYSIS - Three CEO: Capacity, not speed is the true 5G revolution - Dave Dyson talks up Three's 5G strategy... 21/12 - NETWORKS - O2 confirms 5G tests will use Huawei kit - London 5G tests will be carried out using Huawei equipment, O2 confirms... 19/12 - NETWORKS - 'Strong' business demand for 5G could be tempered by network transformation - Gartner says operator focus is on consumer applications... 19/12 - NETWORKS - AT&T is second US operator to launch 5G - AT&T gears up for limited 5G launch... 19/12 - DEVICES - Top Samsung Galaxy S10 could have a massive screen and support 5G - But it might not be available everywhere... 17/12 - ANALYSIS - The coming 5G revolution - How the next generation of mobile connectivity will bring emerging technologies to life... 17/12 - NETWORKS - Rivals claim Three's spectrum variation will hand it 5G advantage - Three now has 100MHz of continuous 3.6GHz spectrum... 14/12 - NETWORKS - 5G could add billions to world GDP - Unlocking the right 5G spectrum will make all the difference... 13/12 - NETWORKS - Huawei will do 'anything' to be trusted 5G partner - Huawei says if there's anything it can do to ease security concerns, it will do it... 10/12 - NETWORKS - Vodafone to use manhole covers to improve 4G and 5G - Vodafone hopes street level infrastructure will improve network... 10/12 - ANALYSIS - 5G is just the beginning for the future of smartphones - The future of mobile looks promising... 06/12 - ANALYSIS - Vodafone Business rebrand highlights strategic focus in 5G era - Vodafone Enterprise is now Vodafone Business... 06/12 - POLICY - EU approves new regulations to boost 5G rollout - EU passes new code despite industry opposition... 06/12 - PRODUCTS - OnePlus CEO confirms its 5G phone will cost $200 to $300 more than OnePlus 6T - But it isn't done with 4G devices... 06/12 - NETWORKS - We need rigorous 5G testing before we get in the driverless car - Autonomous vehicles will rely heavily on next generation networks... 05/12 - PRODUCTS - OnePlus will be the first to release a 5G phone in Europe - It's all thanks to some help from EE... 05/12 - NETWORKS - How 5G technologies can be implemented more efficiently - Knowing where to place 'small cells' will make all the difference... 05/12 - DEVICES - This Samsung 5G prototype phone has a notch... but it's in the corner - Updated with an official comment from Samsung... 04/12 - DEVICES - Here's the first 5G smartphone and, no, you can't buy it - It's a reference device from Qualcomm, but it promises a lot... 04/12 - NETWORKS - Nokia and Qualcomm complete 5G call interoperability tests - Another 5G testing hurdle is cleared ahead of launch... 04/12 - NETWORKS - Arqiva and CityFibre to build 5G small cell network in London - Hammersmith & Fulham will host UK's largest pilot to date... 04/12 - ANALYSIS - 2019 telecoms forecast: the year of 5G and open source - Canonical takes a look at some of the most important trends for next year... 04/12 - NETWORKS - MI6 chief warns UK on role of China in 5G networks - Alex Younger says there needs to be a conversation about Huawei's role... 03/12 - NETWORKS - Three Korean operators launch 5G networks - Operators bring forward South Korea 5G launch... 03/12 - DEVICES - Verizon and Samsung to launch 5G smartphone in 2019 - Companies will show off PoC this week... 29/11 - PRODUCTS - Toyota's new humanoid robot can be controlled remotely via 5G - A helping hand from afar... 29/11 - NETWORKS - 5G will require mobile operators to rethink the role of Wi-Fi - Operators may need to de-prioritise Wi-Fi in 5G era... 28/11 - NETWORKS - New Zealand 'blocks' use of Huawei 5G kit - Spark application rejected by New Zealand government... 27/11 - NETWORKS - 5G will have 'fastest ever' global rollout - Ericsson Mobility Report says Europe will fall behind without market changes... 23/11 - NETWORKS - O2 gears up for 5G with Massive MIMO trial - O2 trials technology in London head of 5G launch... 22/11 - NETWORKS - Huawei boasts of 22 5G commercial contracts - Head of Huawei carrier business touts end-to-end capabilities of its equipment... 22/11 - NETWORKS - Nokia creates Access Networks Division for end-to-end 5G - Nokia hopes organisational changes will give it 5G advantage... 21/11 - NETWORKS - EE and BT Sport plan UK's first 5G sport broadcast - EE Wembley Cup will be transmitted via 5G... 20/11 - HARDWARE - Huawei urges operators to trust its 5G vision as it shifts 10,000 base stations - Huawei Chairman Ken Hu details 'Cloud X' vision... 20/11 - NETWORKS - Three: 5G wireless broadband can be genuine alternative to fibre - Three-commissioned report touts price-saving benefits of 5G FWA... 20/11 - DEVICES - OnePlus could charge a high price for its upcoming 5G phone - Price tag for superfast device could be up to $100 more... 19/11 - NETWORKS - Faroese Telecom wants to bring 5G to Shetland - Shetland confirms talks with Faroese mobile provider... 16/11 - ANALYSIS - The week that UK 5G transformed from hype into reality - UK operators detail more about 5G launches in 2019... 16/11 - ANALYSIS - 2025: the year of 5G entertainment - Intel's Alex Gledhill tells us how 5G can benefit all areas of work and life... 15/11 - RESEARCH - Samsung invests $22bn in AI and 5G - Korean tech giant aims to control 20 per cent of the network equipment market... 15/11 - NETWORKS - US begins auction of 5G spectrum - US operators bid for high range spectrum to power mobile broadband services.. 15/11 - HARDWARE - German government 'urged' to consider Huawei 5G ban - Reports suggest push could have come too late... 14/11 - DEVICES - Verizon connects a smartphone to its 5G network - Verizon is currently the world's only commercial 5G operator... 13/11 - PRODUCTS - Intel will launch 5G modem next year - Chipmaker speeds up plans for 5G modem launch in 2019... 13/11 - NETWORKS - EE to launch 5G as 'premium' mobile experience in 16 UK cities in 2019 - Operator to upgrade 1,500 sites in the busiest parts of its network... 12/11 - DEVICES - OnePlus 7 may not be the upcoming 5G phone from the brand - Is a whole new OnePlus line on the way? 09/11 - NETWORKS - What role will 5G play in NBN's gigabit broadband vision? - 5G can boost FWA broadband to gigabit levels... 08/11 - POLICY - Ofcom CTO: Spectrum and security are biggest 5G challenges - Ofcom CTO Mansoor Hanif discusses the barriers to fulfilling 5G potential... 07/11 - NETWORKS - EE announces UK 5G trial expansion - Nine east London sites are now linked up to EE's 5G trial network... 07/11 - NETWORKS - How 5G will enable the next generation of IoT deployments - Canonical head tells us why next-generation networks are the key to innovation... 07/11 - NETWORKS - Three reveals £2bn UK 5G investment - 5G set to be a "game-changer" in the UK says Three CEO Dave Dyson... 06/11 - DEVICES - UK operators urged to 'consider' 5G equipment suppliers - Government aims to ensure UK's telecoms infrastructure is secure... 06/11 - NETWORKS - GSMA: Operators need prime spectrum to fulfill 5G potential - Industry body publishes paper ahead of WRC-19... 05/11 - NETWORKS - 5G operator revenues to reach £230bn by 2025 - Research suggests £46bn in 5G R&D will be well spent... 03/11 - DEVICES - Apple tipped to launch a 5G iPhone in 2020 - Super-fast speeds on the way... 31/10 - NETWORKS - BT CTO: Convergence of fibre, 5G and Wi-Fi will create 'one network to rule them all' - Howard Watson believes convergence will be a key differentiatior in telecoms... 30/10 - DEVICES - Oppo wants to release the first 5G smartphone - Oppo wants to beat LG to the punch after successful 5G tests... 30/10 - NETWORKS - Budget 2018: More funding for rural fibre but no new 5G commitments - Digital infrastructure largely a footnote in 2018 Budget... 26/10 - NETWORKS - Trump lays out US 5G strategy - Order looks to ease progress towards 5G network deployment in the US... 25/10 - PRODUCTS - Qualcomm works with Samsung on 5G small cells - Qualcomm and Samsung look to establish 5G leadership... 25/10 - NETWORKS - Vodafone switches on 'full 5G' trial in Manchester - Salford's MediaCity UK gets 5G coverage as Vodafone shapes up next-gen network... 23/10 - DEVICES - OnePlus 7 or OnePlus 7T will be first from company to support 5G - 2019 is the year OnePlus adopts 5G... 22/10 - NETWORKS - EU could back Wi-Fi over 5G for connected cars - Draft proposals could see Wi-Fi rules set before 5G... 19/10 - DEVICES - Operators may have to subsidise 'expensive' 5G smartphones - Early 5G smartphones could be too expensive for consumers... 19/10 - PRODUCTS - Huawei 5G folding phone could take on the Samsung Galaxy X in 2019 - Huawei knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em... 18/10 - NETWORKS - Ericsson sales boosted by early 5G adoption - Ericsson feels flush from operator investment... 17/10 - PRODUCTS - Samsung buys Zhilabs to power 5G analytics - Samsung's 5G efforts continue with purchase of analytics experts... 16/10 - NETWORKS - European mobile giants urge pro-5G investment policies - Leading CEOs urge EU regulators to consider importance of connectivity... 15/10 - PRODUCTS - US senators urge Canada to 'ban' Huawei from 5G deployment - US senators fear Huawei kit could harm US national security... 12/10 - PRODUCTS - New Nokia kit promises more rapid and effective 5G FWA deployments - Operators can get new high gain antennas and gateways... 12/10 - NETWORKS - Deutsche Telekom plots 99 per cent 5G coverage by 2025 - German operator details plans for 5G rollout... 08/10 - ANALYSIS - Differences in early 5G services will make it a 'marketing headache' - Analysts predict difficulties in 5G marketing as mobile broadband will be key adoption driver... 05/10 - NETWORKS - EE switches on 'UK's first' 5G trial network at Canary Wharf - EE gears up for 2019 5G launch... 04/10 - NETWORKS - Huawei tells FCC that US ban could mean country falls behind in 5G - Huawei hasn't given up hope in playing US 5G role... 01/10 - INNOVATION - Samsung partners with AT&T to build a 5G tech lab - Facility will research ways 5G could improve manufacturing... 01/10 - NETWORKS - Verizon turns on the world's first 5G network - Launch across four US cities could be a major landmark in the development of 5G... 28/09 - NETWORKS - Digital Catapult switches on Brighton 5G testbed - UK's latest 5G testbed goes live on the South Coast... 26/09 - ANALYSIS - Could 5G networks herald the arrival of a four-day work week? Increased productivity as a result of 5G powered technologies could disrupt the traditional work week... 25/09 - DEVICES - Manufacturers hope 5G and foldable displays will drive smartphone growth - Analysts believe the smartphone will be unrecognisable by 2027... 24/09 - NETWORKS - WIG raises £220m for 5G infrastructure - WIG to use additional funding for small cells and fibre... 21/09 - NETWORKS - Vodafone targets cities and rural areas for 2019 5G launch - Cornwall and the Lake District will be first to get Vodafone 5G... 12/09 - NETWORKS - T-Mobile signs $3.5bn 5G network deal with Ericsson - T-Mobile secures second major 5G equipment deal... 11/09 - NETWORKS - EE could launch the UK's first 5G network in 2019 - EE reallocates 3G spectrum ahead of 2019 5G launch... 11/09 - NETWORKS - European mobile operators bring forward 5G plans - Global 5G connections to reach 340m by 2021 as European optimism increases forecasts... 11/09 - GAMING - Nvidia shows how GeForce Now 5G streaming could make high-end gaming hardware irrelevant - Hitting 60 fps in Full HD resolution with no need for a beefy gaming laptop... 10/09 - NETWORKS - CityFibre SDN rollout to speed up 5G deployments and enable 10Gbps - CityFibre agrees deal with Calix to smarten its network.. 10/09 - NETWORKS - Ericsson radio updates and transport partnerships to accelerate 5G deployments - Ericsson says a series of developments will make it easier and quicker to deploy 5G... 08/09 - NETWORKS - How 5G will make our streaming dreams come true - Zero buffering, no waiting. Will 5G lead the way? 07/09 - FEATURE - Inside the 5G factory: How Nokia's research aids its own production - Nokia's Oulu facility has been involved in every generation of mobile technology... 05/09 - NETWORKS - San Marino will have Europe's first 5G network - Microstate will be a testbed for TIM... 05/09 - NETWORKS - China considers merging two major mobile operators in 5G push - Merger would create world's second largest mobile operator... 04/09 - PRODUCTS - UK''s 'first' large-scale 5G hub to test digital health apps in 2019 - West Midlands will become UK's first 5G hub... 31/08 - ANALYSIS - Golf's digital ambitions make it an unlikely 5G pioneer - Golf looks to new technologies - including 5G... 31/08 - NETWORKS - German operators will have no rural obligation for 5G - 5G spectrum auction will take place in 2019... 30/08 - DEVICES - Larger screens and 5G to drive smartphone growth through to 2022 - Smartphone market 'generally healthy' despite recent dip... 28/08 - NETWORKS - German regulator calls for fourth operator for 5G - Competition chief believes new entrant will kickstart German 5G... 28/08 - NETWORKS - Nokia secures €500m EU loan for 5G research - New funding will accelerate 5G technology R&D... 23/08 - NETWORKS - Major 5G trends become more apparent as first network launch nears - The past seven days have been a long time in the world of 5G... 23/08 - ANALYSIS - Huawei & ZTE banned from Australia 5G networks - Australian government says 5G architecture makes it too risky... 22/08 - PRODUCTS - Qualcomm to start shipping its 5G modems - However chipmaker says it doesn't expect 5G phones to launch this year... 22/08 - NETWORKS - Speed takes centre stage as operators ramp up 5G testing - Report suggests 82 per cent of mobile operators worldwide are testing 5G... 22/08 - DEVICES - Nokia expects to make €3 from every 5G smartphone - Finnish giant sets rate for its essential 5G patents... 20/08 - NETWORKS - Government to test 5G on UK railways - DCMS invites participants for pilot to see how 5G can improve transport sector... 20/08 - NETWORKS - Verizon and Nokia test 5G with a moving vehicle - Partners make progress in mobile broadband and connected car apps... 17/08 - NETWORKS - 5G network slicing could be worth £51bn to mobile operators - Researchers say efforts by operators and vendors could bear fruit... 16/08 - NETWORKS - Cisco posts healthy revenues ahead of 5G push - Cisco is happy with innovation roadmap as it prepares for next generation networks... 16/08 - NETWORKS - Telstra switches on 5G for the Gold Coast, but wider availability remains murky - Australian telcos Optus and Vodafone say there’s a long road ahead... 15/08 - NETWORKS - O2 tests light-based wireless transmission ahead of 5G tests - Li-Fi is pitched as a Wi-Fi alternative... 15/08 - DEVICES - LG to launch 'first 5G smartphone' in 2019 - LG and Sprint will release a 5G-ready device in the US next year... 13/08 - NETWORKS - Ericsson hopes US 5G investments will speed up deployments - Ericsson makes investments in 5G R&D... 08/08 - NETWORKS - Samsung invests billions in 5G and AI - Samsung's £17bn investment programme looks to guard against smartphone slowdown... 07/08 - NETWORKS - US set to lose out to China in 5G race - Deloitte report urges policymakers to promote investment... 02/08 - DEVICES - Moto Z3 is the world's first 5G-upgradable smartphone, say Motorola and Verizon - The first 5G-almost-ready smartphone... 02/08 - OPERATORS - Three focuses on 5G after revenue and customer rises - Three now boasts 10.1m customers across the UK... 31/07 - DEVICES - Lenovo says it'll be the first to launch a 5G smartphone - Could be here before the end of the year... 30/07 - NETWORKS - Nokia and T-Mobile ink $3.5bn 5G network deal - US operator presses ahead with 5G rollout plans... 27/07 - OPERATORS - Mobile helps BT Q1 results ahead of 5G trials - Consumer division continues to offset BT business decline... 26/07 - OPERATORS - O2 invites FTSE 500 to trial its 5G - O2 presses ahead with 5G tests as it adds more customers... 26/07 - OPERATORS - Nokia looks to 5G after sales slowdown - Nokia says drop is to be expected but is confident for second half of 2018... 26/07 - OPERATORS - Sky Mobile extends O2 MVNO agreement to cover 5G - Sky Mobile now has 500,000 customers across the UK... 23/07 - REGULATION - UK Government promises new regulations and investment for full fibre and 5G - Government report outlines plans to deliver fibre to entire UK by 2033... 23/07 - PRODUCTS - Qualcomm's mmWave antennas pave way for first 5G smartphones - The first 5G smartphones should arrive in 2019... 20/07 - NETWORKS - Barriers to 5G could stop UK being a global leader - BSG report identifies issues and resolutions... 18/07 - NETWORKS - South Korea plans 2019 5G launch - "Korea 5G Day" will see new networks introduced a year ahead of schedule... 10/07 - NETWORKS - China Mobile, Intel and Huawei complete 5G interoperability testing - Tests pave way for China Mobile 5G launch next year... 09/07 - NETWORKS - SSE Enterprise Telecoms unbundles BT exchanges to boost broadband and Three 5G - SSE Enterprise Telecoms doubles its reach... 03/07 - NETWORKS - Samsung, Cisco and Orange hold multi-vendor 5G FWA trial - FWA will deliver a fixed-like broadband experience when 5G launches... 29/06 - DEVICES - OnePlus 7 could support 5G and be sold by US carriers - But don't expect it for a while... 28/06 - NETWORKS - "World's first" 5G network launches - Finnish operator Elisa claims global first in launching a commercial 5G network... 27/06 - ANALYSIS - The World Cup and 5G: the trials you need to know about - 5G will change how you watch football forever... 25/06 - NETWORKS - UK 'needs shared spectrum' for 5G - Ofcom urged to rethink 5G spectrum auction to ensure fairer rollout... 20/06 - NETWORKS - Vodafone launches 5G trials in seven UK cities - Vodafone to hold trials later this year with plans for a 2020 5G launch... 19/06 - NETWORKS - Mobile signal woes 'strengthens' business case for 5G - Only half of mobile users in the UK are happy with their speeds, but willing to pay more for faster service... 15/06 - NETWORKS - First standalone 5G network standard approved - 3GPP finalizes 'Release 15' of 5G after three years of work, meaning networks are on the way this year... 14/06 - ANALYSIS - Three CEO: 5G capacity is a 'big opportunity' to lead UK market - Dave Dyson says Three's spectrum holdings mean it could be the UK's 5G leader... 13/06 - NETWORKS - Vodafone: 5G smartphone uncertainty means focus on core network and IoT - Vodafone UK CTO says 5G will be a gamechanger, but smartphone innovation in the 4G era won't be matched... 12/06 - NETWORKS - 5G networks still set to arrive this year - Ericsson report suggests Europe will fall behind US and Asia on 5G adoption... 11/06 - NETWORKS - 'First ever' UK 5G report paints rosy picture - UK's 5G ambitions rely heavily on startup and research community... 06/06 - ANALYSIS - EU telecoms rule changes will hinder rather than help 5G, claim industry - Telecoms groups label the new EU code a "missed opportunity"... 06/06 - NETWORKS - EE to switch on 'UK's first' 5G trial in London - Residents and businesses in Tech City will get chance to try out 5G... 05/06 - PRODUCTS - 5G PCs coming from Intel and Sprint next year - US telecoms giant Sprint has joined the race to bring 5G to the masses, announcing at Computex 2018 to start shipping Intel-powered 5G computers next year... 01/06 - ANALYSIS - 5G UK - How far away are we really? - 5G will deliver immediate benefits in 2019, but the true mobile revolution will take time... 25/05 - POLICY - Mobile industry 'shouldn't wait' for 5G to roll out small cells - Small cells will be essential for delivering the 5G vision but industry warns there is no time too wait... 25/05 - POLICY - Nordic Prime Ministers reach agreement to support 5G - Joint agreement is welcomed by Nokia, Ericsson and regional operators... 22/05 - NETWORKS - Qualcomm details 5G small cell platform - Qualcomm wants to help operators and network equipment manufacturers densify 5G networks... 18/05 - NETWORKS - Verizon to bring 5G to Los Angeles in 2018 - Verizon says America's second largest city will be its next 5G location... 16/05 - NETWORKS - Mobile IoT networks to be a 'core component' of 5G - GSMA says NB-IoT and LTE-M deployments are paving the way for massive IoT powered by 5G... 14/05 - NETWORKS - 5G and network convergence drives growth of carrier-grade Wi-Fi market - Fixed and mobile operators look to densify network infrastructure... 08/05 - PRODUCTS - Why self-driving vehicles could be the biggest winner in a 5G world - Telefónica tells us why autonomous vehicles are set to be a key 5G use case... 08/05 - NETWORKS - Verizon and Samsung get 5G regulatory boost - Verizon and Samsung make major headway towards 5G... 03/05 - NETWORKS - Deutsche Telekom holds live 5G NR trial in Berlin - German operator says test will see how 5G NR behaves in real world... 02/05 - ANALYSIS - Why T-Mobile and Sprint merger would give the US a 5G lead - A truly national 5G network could ensure the US retains its advantage... 01/05 - NETWORKS - Three futureproofs backend infrastructure for 5G - Three and SSE Enterprise Telecoms deal with start with data centre connectivity... 30/04 - NETWORKS - T-Mobile and Sprint merger promises 5G progress in the US - America's third and fourth largest mobile operators are to merge... 18/04 - NETWORKS - Huawei dampens 5G expectations - Huawei CEO says consumer might not notice the differences... 17/04 - NETWORKS - China has narrow lead over US in 5G race - Government support and industry momentum gives China slight advantage, report says... 16/04 - DEVICES - 5G anticipation set to slow smartphone sales - Manufacturers hope for 5G boost as worldwide smartphone demand slows... 13/04 - NETWORKS - What does the Ofcom 5G auction mean for the UK mobile industry? - The long-awaited auction is over, paving the way for 5G...so what next? 12/04 - NETWORKS - Vodafone hits major UK 5G milestone - Vodafone is first UK operator to test 3.4GHz spectrum in preparation for 5G... 09/04 - NETWORKS - Europe set be left behind in 5G race - US and Asia will lead the way in 5G development, claims report... 05/04 - NETWORKS - Mobile networks fork out £1.4bn for 5G spectrum - Ofcom publishes the results of its 5G spectrum auction, revealing that the UK's biggest mobile network operators spent almost £1.4 billion... 28/03 - NETWORKS - 'World's first' 5G public trial switched on in Australia - Australian telco Telstra flips the switch on the world's first public trial of 5G at the Gold Coast... 28/03 - NETWORKS - 5G RuralFirst looks at smart farming, spectrum sharing and broadcasting - Government funded project will use Cisco tech to help transform rural lives... 28/03 - POLICY - UK5G group makes bid for global 5G leadership - Government and industry backed UK5G looks to establish UK 5G community... 27/03 - NETWORKS - GSMA: 5G will be dominant mobile tech in USA by 2025 - Mobile industry body report shows US will be a 5G leader... 27/03 - NETWORKS - Telefonica tests tech that could boost 5G broadband - Telefonica spectral efficiency trials hope to pave the way for better fixed wireless access (FWA)... 23/03 - NETWORKS - 5G networks are now just a year away - Korea Telecom plans commercial 5G launch next March... 20/03 - NETWORKS - UK 5G spectrum auction gets underway - Five bidders will battle it out for more of the UK's airwaves... 19/03 - NETWORKS - UK university makes major 5G breakthrough - University of Kent-based iCIRRUS consortium says Ethernet equipment can help deliver 5G networks... 16/03 - NETWORKS - O2 kickstarts the UK's 5G charm offensive to consumers - 5G hypetrain moves from industry into the mainstream... 15/03 - NETWORKS - Digital minister pledges to eliminate barriers to 5G deployment - Margot James says she wants to work with mobile operators and local government on 5G... 14/03 - NETWORKS - O2: 5G will save local councils and households £6bn a year - Report details how smart technologies powered by 5G can improve society... 12/03 - NETWORKS - Ofcom 5G spectrum auction will start next week - Ofcom confirms that bidding for 5G frequencies will begin on 20 March... 12/03 - NETWORKS - Government reveals £25m prize fund for UK 5G - £25m competition will see 5G testbeds located across the UK... 11/03 - DEVICES - 5G a key factor to seamless VR experience, says Lenovo EMEA President - Lenovo wants to create memorable experiences for its customers, but is that enough? 09/03 - NETWORKS - Ofcom plans new rural coverage obligations for 700MHz spectrum - Ofcom says 700MHz is an important opportunity to improve rural coverage as it plans for 5G future... 05/03 - NETWORKS - EU Parliament and US Congress take steps to accelerate 5G legislation - EU chambers reach provisional agreement while US Congress to vote on spectrum auction... 05/03 - DEVICES - HTC CEO: 5G will turn any VR device into the most powerful in the world - Cher Wang says the smartphone still has a role to play in VR... 03/03 - NETWORKS - Qualcomm hopes 5G vision will stand out from the hype - Qualcomm's influence in the industry is significant, so its 5G roadmap is worth listening too... 02/03 - NETWORKS - BT CEO: EE convergence even more important ahead of 5G - Gavin Patterson says BT never really left mobile and is preparing for converged network era... 28/02 - NETWORKS - Intel and NTT DoCoMo prepare 5G plans for Tokyo 2020 Olympics - After success at PyeongChang 2018, Intel is stepping up plans for next Olympics... 27/02 - NETWORKS - Satellite-supported UK 5G testbed will trial mission critical apps - Juniper Networks and Satellite Applications Catapult say satellite cannot be ignored... 27/02 - MOBILE - Qualcomm looks to make it easier to make 5G phones - Launch will help OEMs build 5G connectivity into more devices... 27/02 - NETWORKS - Ofcom confirms six bidders for 5G spectrum - All four mobile operators have been approved, with small cell operator and Hull fixed wireless firm joining... 27/02 - NETWORKS - Ericsson tells operators: 5G is ready - Ericsson has agreements with 38 operators around the world as 5G moves from idea to reality... 27/02 - PRODUCTS - Get ready for a 5G Internet of the Sky - Drones like the Ehang 184 will usher in a 5G-powered autonomous airspace... 26/02 - NETWORKS - Telstra plans to ramp up 4G speeds in the lead up to its full 5G rollout - Major cities in Australia to get increased bandwidth... 26/02 - NETWORKS - Cisco targets mobile operators with '5G Now' - Cisco wants to help operators prepare for the next era of networks... 25/02 - MOBILE - Huawei reveals 5G-ready modem - Test beds for 5G networks will be launched this year, Huawei reveals... 23/02 - NETWORKS - Why PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics are a 5G milestone - Athletes are making history at the Winter Olympics, but it's an important event for 5G networks too... 22/02 - NETWORKS - O2 reveals UK 5G test bed - Operator will test 5G applications at iconic London venue later this year... 19/02 - NETWORKS - Vodafone and Huawei successfully test IP Microwave backhaul for 5G - Vodafone and Huawei achieve 2Gbps on IP microwave link, claiming it shows the tech is viable for 5G... 16/02 - NETWORKS - Why startups and research can make the UK a 5G leader - Does the UK really need to be first to the mark or be an industry powerhouse to be a 5G leader? 16/02 - OPINION - No time to waste now 5G legal challenges are over - For an industry keen to avoid a repeat of the 3G and 4G auctions, Three's failed appeal removes a barrier to 5G... 14/02 - MOBILE - Fiber-like internet and a glimpse of our 5G future are coming to smartphones in 2019 - Qualcomm's new mobile modem offering speeds of up to 2Gbps... 14/02 - NETWORKS - 5G spectrum auction to go ahead after Three's legal challenge fails - Three's bid to decrease an overall spectrum cap falls on deaf ears and prevents further delay... 12/02 - NETWORKS - China Mobile plans 5G launch in 2019 - China Mobile joins a select few number of operators planning to beat original 2020 target... 08/02 - MOBILE - The first 5G smartphones are coming in 2019 - But you won't see 5G service everywhere by next year... 07/02 - MOBILE - 5G set to push mobile data use sky-high - Giffgaff research estimates customers will use nearly 100GB of mobile data a month by 2025... 05/-2 - NETWORKS - Telstra joins Optus on 5G bandwagon, also aiming for 2019 rollout - Australian carrier Telstra will trial new tech during Commonwealth Games... 05/01 - NETWORKS - AT&T set to run 5G trials - Company to adopt new 3GPP guidelines as it continues push for next-generation networks... 04/01 - NETWORKS - Samsung teams up with Verizon on 5G - New service to be launched in Sacramento later this year... 02/02 - NETWORKS - Optus 5G network rollout set to begin in early 2019 - Australian telco Optus announces its plans for 5G rollout... What will 5G networks mean for me?
How fast will 5G be?It’s still not exactly known how much faster 5G will be than 4G, as much of the technology is still under development. That being said, the networks should provide a significant upgrade to current download and upload speeds - with the GSMA proposing minimum download speeds of around 1GBps. Most estimates expect the average speed of 5G networks to reach 10Gb/s, and some even think transfer rates could reach a whopping 800Gb/s. This would mean that users could download a full-length HD quality film in a matter of seconds, and that downloading and installing software upgrades would be completed much faster than today. Will I be able to get 5G networks on my phone?Existing smartphones, tablet or other devices that were released when 4G networks were the standard may not be able to connect to 5G to begin with, or may incur extra costs to do so. However following the 2020 deadline for the initial rollout, we should soon see devices coming with 5G connection as default. Don't worry though - although 5G should represent a major step up from current 4G and 3G networks, the new technology won’t immediately replace its predecessor - at least, not to begin with. Instead, 5G should link in with existing networks to ensure users never lose connection, with the older networks acting as back-up in areas not covered by the new 5G coverage. So-called “4.5G” networks (also known as LTE-A) are set to fill the gap for the time being, offering connections that are faster than current 4G networks, although only certain countries such as South Korea can benefit from them right now. Once launched however, implementing 5G may be a slower process. Much like the gradual takeover of 4G networks from the previous generation, existing network infrastructure may need to be upgraded or even replaced in order to deal with the new technology, and homes and businesses may also need to get new services installed. It’s not yet known how 5G networks will take over from existing networks, but again, much like the rollout of 4G, you may not be able to immediately connect to the new networks without upgrading your technology. What will a 5G network need?The GSMA has outlined eight criteria for 5G networks, with a connection needing meet a majority of these in order to qualify as 5G:
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| OnePlus 7 may gain pop-up selfie cam, leak suggests Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:30 AM PST Images purporting to show the OnePlus 7 have leaked online, which suggest the upcoming phone could have a pop-up selfie camera instead of the static front-facing snapper found on the OnePlus 6. Two photos, posted on Twitter by @Steven_Sbw, are claimed to show the device. Both show it from the front, so we can’t tell a whole lot about the device, but there are a few significant differences from the OnePlus 6 that, if the images are genuine, would mean the OnePlus 7 is a big step up from its predecessor.
Notable features of the images are the minimal bezel and lack of a notch on the display – instead, the screen is an unbroken rectangle. It appears the display has been flipped in one photo, judging by the sizes of the bezels above and below the screen being reversed from what you’d expect on any device and the side buttons being on the opposite side of the device. The images do seem suspiciously similar to the Oppo Find X – the only differentiating factor between the device in the images and the Find X is the side buttons seem slightly lower, and the bezel below the screen looks a little bigger. OnePlus and Oppo are owned by the same firm, so it would be no surprise if the devices shared a similar look, but take the leak with a mountain of salt anyway. The lack of a notch brings with it the absence of any kind of visible front-facing camera on the device. Of course it’s inconceivable that the phone wouldn’t have a selfie camera – there would be no quicker way for OnePlus to halve its audience – instead the device likely has a pop-up camera as other Oppo devices do. While the leak seems a little suspicious, both because of the unproven nature of the leaker and the device’s undeniable similarities with the Find X, many of the features it shows back up rumors and leaks we’ve already heard. We’ve heard that it’ll have no notch or bezel, and use a slide-out camera, and OnePlus itself has confirmed the phone will run a Snapdragon 855 processor. Compared to other phones (we’re looking at you, LG G8 ThinQ and Samsung Galaxy S10) the OnePlus 7 hasn’t been the subject of many leaks, so there’s still a lot we want to find out about the device. Hopefully we’ll know more after MWC 2019, as we’re expecting the OnePlus 7 to launch mid-2019. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Hi-Res Audio: everything you need to know about the lossless music codec Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:23 AM PST As UHD TVs become more popular, consumers increasingly expect high-resolution content to match, whether they’re streaming from Netflix in glorious 4K, or upscaling old films on a state of the art Blu-Ray player. Visual quality clearly matters. But can the same be said for audio? When you take the number of people on the hunt for fantastic televisions, audiophiles on the lookout for Hi-Res Audio seem rare by comparison. However, that could be about to change, with developments in the world of hi-res audio like Sony’s new LDAC technology and music-streaming websites like Tidal, making quality audio more attractive than ever. Here's why, and how, Hi-Res Audio could be the upgrade that makes perfect sense for superior sonics across all your devices, including your phone. What is Hi-Res Audio?Hi-Res Audio (HRA) is lossless audio capable of reproducing the full range of sound from recordings that have been mastered from better-than-CD quality music sources, a sound that closely replicates the quality that the musicians and engineers were working with in the studio at the time of recording. Despite HRA recently gaining popularity, it isn't new. It has actually been around for over a decade and has a growing number of dedicated fans willing to fork out a bit more cash for the privilege of listening to Hi-Fi quality tunes both at home and on the go. The difference is that it’s becoming more accessible than ever. Despite sounding pretty amazing, it's not hard to understand the slow update of HRA – after all, the music files are a fair bit larger than MP3 or iTunes' AAC so they take longer to download and can gobble storage on mobile devices like penguins tucking into a fish supper. Compared with iTunes and Amazon MP3 files too, HRA tracks are more expensive to buy and most popular digital music vendors don't even sell Hi-Res Audio tunes (yet). Image credit: Burst / Pexels There's also the fact that to listen to HRA you need the right hardware and software, with most playback devices including mobile phones, portable music players and laptops not equipped as standard to get the full benefit. Even the world's most dominant multi-room music provider Sonos resolutely refuses to embrace Hi-Res Audio - because it says it's not mainstream enough - but others including the likes of Bose do. But the barriers are starting to crumble. Fuelled by increasingly more affordable storage, better-quality playback hardware and faster, more affordable broadband and 4G downloading, HRA is arguably no longer prohibitively too expensive, nor are its files too large to download and store when compared with MP3. Of course, it's important to choose your equipment carefully and to understand what it is that makes HRA different. Oh, and if you're put off by the nay-sayers who claim humans can't hear anything beyond 20kHz just take the opportunity to listen to some HRA tracks and see – or hear – for yourself what a difference it makes. What difference does Hi-Res Audio really make?Let's look at some numbers: the highest quality MP3 track has a bitrate of 320kbps, CDs are transferred at 1,411kbps and a 24-bit/192kHz file is transferred at a rate of 9,216kbps - the latter being the level now considered HRA. The increased bit depth of HRA improves the dynamic range, basically giving you a greater breadth of things to actually hear from the recording. The best way of describing it is to imagine looking at a beautiful countryside scene on a sunny day through a smeared window. That's the MP3 version. Clean the windows and you have the CD with much greater detail and clarity. But open the window and you’ve got the Hi-Res version, where the eye can pick out pinpoint detail that you didn't realize was missing with the windows shut. Once you're equipped with some decent Hi-Res gear the thing most likely to spoil the party will be poorly recorded or mastered music, like a great black cloud blocking out the sunshine. Play your favorite tracks however and expect to be taken to unprecedented levels of enjoyment and make emotional connections you never imagined possible. How can I stream/download Hi-Res Audio?There are more options for streaming and downloading HRA than ever, and while these subscriptions and files will cost more than standard audio, the difference in quality is astounding. Click through the gallery below to see some of the best places to stream and download HRA: What equipment do I need to play Hi-Res Audio?The Samsung Galaxy S9 Choosing the right file type/streaming service for you really depends on how you listen to your music. For example, an Apple Mac can play most HRA files in iTunes but it won't accept FLAC. For this you need audio player software like VLC, which is free to download and, according to Home Theatre Review, it's "capable of 24/96 and 24/192 native Hi-Res output". If you're looking for something less 'bare-bones', check out Audivarna Plus, which costs $74 (about £55 / AU$100) and comes with Tidal, Qobuz, and other Hi-res streaming services integrated. Using a PC? Check out JRiver Media Center, which costs around $60 (£45 / AU$80) and works on Windows, Linus, and Mac OS. If you’re taking your music on the go, you’ll need a Hi-Res supporting smartphone or portable music player. The Samsung Galaxy S9, S9 Plus and Note 9 all support HRA, as well as Dolby Atmos. iPhones unfortunately don’t support Hi-Res Audio out of the box, but you can get around this by downloading a Hi-Res Audio app like Onkyo Music and using an external DAC (digital-to-analogue converter). DACs (digital-to-analogue converters)The Chord Mojo Any device that outputs music contains a DAC in some form. This is what allows your digital music file to be converted to the analogue signal that ends up driving your speakers or headphones. But in order to get the most out of your music, you'll want to buy an external DAC to replace the low-quality audio chip contained within your device. This will need to be 'asynchronous' if you want your hi-res audio to really sing. Without an asynchronous DAC the chances are you'll have timing errors, or jitter, present in your audio. Good examples include the Chord Mojo ($599 / £399 / AU$899), which bypasses the computer's built-in DAC and converts the files to analogue at high resolution to massively improve your computer's tinny output. For smartphones like the iPhone, try the Chord Hugo 2 . Portable music playersThe HiFiMan SuperMini If your phone doesn't support Hi-Res Audio, you could get yourself a portable music player. While MP3 players aren't as popular as they were a decade ago, that doesn't mean the technology is outdated. In fact, modern MP3 players do a significantly better job at storing your entire music library at a higher bitrate than your 2009 iPod Shuffle ever could. One of the best portable music players is the Onkyo DP-X1A, which supports a range of music formats, including FLAC, OGG, WAV, MP3, ALAC, and more. In terms of hardware, the device has two chipsets, one to power the overall device, and one to handle the DAC and amplifier – resulting in a noise-free experience. It's by no means cheap however, and the $799 (£559 / AU$649) price tag may be enough to put off even the most seasoned audiophile. If you're looking for something cheaper, you could try the HiFiMan SuperMini. With a price tag of $399 (£400 / AU$399), it doesn’t have any onboard storage – you’ll have to buy a microSD card separately. It does, however, support a pretty huge range of audio formats, including FLAC, DSD, WAV, MP3, and AIFF, and audio with a sample rate of up to 192kHz. HRA HeadphonesThe Sony WH-1000MX3 If you're taking your Hi-Res Audio out and about, you'll of course need a fantastic pair of headphones. Currently, our favorite pair are the Sony WH-1000XM3, a dominant noise-cancelling pair of headphones that can beat out anything Bose has with both arms behind its back. That’s because, while Bose has done a tremendous job working out its noise-cancellation algorithm over the years, Sony has spent that time perfecting audio playback while simultaneously creating an adaptability algorithm that doesn’t just create a single sterile sound barrier, but multiple kinds that can adapt to whatever situation you’re in. Beyond being exceptional at keeping external noises at bay, Sony's headphones are Hi-Res Audio-ready, sporting aptX, aptX HD and LDAC codecs, plus offer will offer Google Assistant support right on-board. If you need a headphone that can live up to any challenge and excel in any environment, these are them. They are a bit more expensive than your average non-noise cancelling headphone at $349 (£300 / AU$499), but they do make great commuting headphones. The Grado GW100 Wireless headphones If you do most of your music listening at home, you could try some open-back cans like the Grado GW100 Wireless headphones. The GW100s feature an open-back design, which means the grilles are completely exposed on the outside of the earcups, allowing the drivers to direct sound both in and out of the cups. In closed cup headphones, this sound is trapped inside the cup, which is fantastic for noise isolation, but can lead to a narrow soundstage that makes it feel as if your music is coming directly from your own head – not exactly a natural mode of listening. In contrast, the free movement of sound in and out of the cups of open-backed headphones means the soundstage feels far wider, as if you’re listening to a musician play in a normal room. This is heightened by the supra-aural design of the GW100s, which further reduces the closed-off feeling you can get from closed-back headphones. With the GW100s, the effect of the open-backed design is to deliver a stunningly natural representation of your music, with a warm, expansive soundstage - and with aptX Bluetooth, the audio is of high quality. Again, they aren't cheap at $249.99 (£199.95 / AU$365), but they are less expensive than the Sony WH-1000MX3s. HRA stereo speakersThe KEF LSX Wireless System Now onto speakers; while there are lots of fantastic smart speakers on the market right now, you can't beat a stereo speaker setup for high quality sound. You can of course spend $4000 dollars on our favorite stereo speakers, the Definitive Technology BP9080xs. Right off the bat we want to make it clear that this stereo pair is a luxury item that is made only for the most avid audiophile on the market – most of us will likely be looking for something a little cheaper. One fantastic set of stereo speakers is the KEF LSX Wireless System, which is available at a recommended retail price of $1099 (£1000 / AU$1895). When we tested them, we were impressed by the separation among the different frequencies , and the well-balanced sound. If you're really looking after the pennies, check out the Edifier R1280T speakers. These compact desk/bookshelf style speakers back an impressive sonic punch and look good doing it, all while keeping the price tag under $100 (£90 / AU$140) for the pair. HRA Streamers and Hi-Fi SystemsThe Ruark R5 H-Fi System If you're really dedicated to high quality audio, you could invest in a state of the art Hi-Fi system like the Ruark R5, which features a multi-format CD player, DAB/FM and internet radio tuners, as well as support for aptX HD Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi streaming. You can even hook it up to your turntable thanks to a dedicated RIAA turntable input, or charge your devices using the USB playback/charging port. There’s no word yet on an official release date, but Ruark says the R5 will be available to buy in the next few months for £999 (around $1300 / AU$1800 based on current conversion rates.) Another option is to get yourself a dedicated music streamer like the Cambridge Audio CXN. A review of the streamer by What Hi-Fi? says "All digital inputs on the CXN are capable of playing high-resolution files of up to 24-bit/192kHz, and they can be upsampled to 384kHz, too. That includes the USB type B input for your laptop, and the optical and coaxial inputs. There’s also a pair each of RCA and balanced XLR outputs, along with two digital outputs." Like the Ruark M5, it doesn't come cheap at $899.99 (£700 / around AU$1275), so you might want to stick to streaming from your laptop, smartphone, or tablet – which, thanks to the increasing accessibility of Hi-Res Audio, can still sound fantastic. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The Samsung Galaxy Fold has just made foldable-screen laptops more likely Posted: 21 Feb 2019 07:13 AM PST Despite making a smartphone that could one day replace our laptops with the Galaxy Note 9, there wasn’t a huge amount to get excited about for us computing folk at Samsung's Galaxy S10 launch event. However, the Samsung Galaxy Fold, the company’s first foldable phone, could have huge ramifications for the future of laptops and tablets. We’ve been hearing so many rumors lately of all kinds of manufacturers – from Dell to Lenovo and even Microsoft – looking at creating foldable laptops with flexible screens, but the Samsung Galaxy Fold is the first time we’ve seen a foldable device that appears to work as well as it promises, while remaining a desirable bit of kit. Of course, every laptop by its very nature is foldable, but could we soon see laptops with a single, bendable, screen that acts as both a traditional display and a keyboard? With Samsung proving that it can be done, I think we’re now even closer than ever before to seeing foldable-screen laptops. Working it outWhile we’ve seen plenty of patent drawings that show vague sketches of foldable devices, Samsung’s reveal of the Galaxy Fold showed us that it’s possible to design a stylish-looking foldable device. Of course, Samsung isn’t the first company to produce a working foldable device, but others, such as the Royole FlexPai that we saw at CES 2019, felt more like early proof of concepts, rather than fully-fledged devices that you’d be able to buy (or want to show off). The Royole FlexPai is a foldable tablet that's more of a proof of concept than a final product (Image Credit: TechRadar) With the Galaxy Fold sporting a 4.6-inch HD+ Super AMOLED (21:9) display that folds out into a 7.3-inch QXGA+ (QHD+) Dynamic AMOLED (4.2:3) Infinity Flex display, it shows that this is a form factor that is viable and could conceivably be used for larger screens. Samsung has also packed in batteries that offer a total of 4,380mAh over the two halves of the device, again showing how it could be possible for laptop makers to split batteries in a foldable laptop. A number of laptops have the ability to run off two batteries – for example the Microsoft Surface Book 2 has a battery both in the keyboard and behind the screen, for when the keyboard detaches and it’s used in tablet mode. SoftwareIt’s not just the hardware of the Samsung Galaxy Fold that proves that foldable laptops can exist. As Samsung explained at its launch event, it has worked with a number of developers to bring compatible apps to the Galaxy Fold, including WhatsApp, YouTube, and perhaps most interestingly of all, Microsoft Office. The fact that Microsoft is working with Samsung to make its products compatible with a folding device, along with rumors that the company is working on ways to make Windows 10 work on foldable devices, means it appears very likely that we’ll be seeing foldable Windows laptops in the not too distant future. We've seen patents for foldable laptops from the likes of Dell ( Image Credit: USPTO) The price of flexibilityThe final hint we can take from the Galaxy Fold’s launch in relation to possible foldable laptops is the price. When Samsung makes a premium product, it usually comes with a very premium price tag, and the Galaxy Fold is no different, with a staggering asking price of $1,980 (around £1,500, AU$2,800). That’s hugely expensive for a smartphone – no matter how innovative it is – and if a lot of that price is down to the foldable tech, then I imagine that any foldable laptop, which will come with a larger foldable display, along with more powerful components, could see the price climb even further. The bottom line is, when these foldable laptops do emerge, they are likely to be very expensive indeed. Foldable laptops coming soonSo, while we were never in any doubt that foldable laptops are eventually coming, Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy Fold gives us a tantalizing glimpse of what a foldable laptop would be like. Even if you’re not interested in Samsung’s expensive flexible smartphone, it points to exciting times ahead for a new generation of laptops.
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| Huawei Mate 30 Pro: what we want to see Posted: 21 Feb 2019 06:47 AM PST While we're still waiting for the Huawei P30 range, it's the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, set to land later in 2019, that's likely to be the company’s biggest, best and most exciting handset. Not much is known about it yet but a few rumors are starting to roll in, all of which you’ll find below. We’ll also be sure to update this article any time we hear any credible new information. In the meantime, we’ve also come up with a wish list of things that we want from Huawei’s phablet flagship. Things that it might need if it’s going to compete with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S10. Cut to the chase
Huawei Mate 30 Pro release date and priceThere aren’t any Huawei Mate 30 Pro release date rumors yet, but we have a pretty good idea of roughly when we’ll see it. Huawei always announces new entries in its Mate range towards the end of the year, and more specifically it announced both the Huawei Mate 20 range and the Huawei Mate 10 in October of their respective launch years. So an October announcement is our best guess. There’s no guarantee of that, especially as the Huawei Mate 9 was announced in November 2016, but at the very least the Mate 30 Pro will likely be announced in the last few months of 2019, alongside the standard Huawei Mate 30. The Mate 30 Pro is likely to land in October. Image Credit: TechRadar There aren’t any price rumors yet either, but the Huawei Mate 20 Pro cost £899 / AU$1,599 (around $1,150) at launch, so it’s likely that the Mate 30 Pro will cost at least that much. It’s worth noting also that given Huawei’s ongoing issues in the US, the Mate 30 Pro probably won’t be available there. Huawei Mate 30 Pro news and rumorsThe only real Huawei Mate 30 Pro rumor so far comes from a Huawei patent, which shows a phone case with space on the back for extra camera lenses. You can see the image below and based on that it looks like there could be room for five rear lenses, up from three on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Of course, patents don’t always become real devices, and even if this does get used it might not make it to the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, but it would make sense for Huawei to increase the number of lenses on its flagship, given that a number of other phones are rumored to be doing the same. This could point to extra lenses on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. Image Credit: Mobielkopen Beyond that, we can be confident that the Mate 30 Pro will have a new generation of the company’s top-end in-house chipset. The current top version is called the Kirin 980 and made its debut in the Huawei Mate 20 range. Based on previous names we can guess that the next one will be called the Kirin 990. The Mate 30 Pro might also support 5G. It won’t be the company’s first 5G handset – that’s coming at MWC 2019 in late February and is set to also fold, but by late 2019 a number of 5G networks will be starting to launch, so it could make sense to add 5G to a major flagship. What we want to seeThe Huawei Mate 30 Pro is likely to be a powerful, impressive phone, but for it to really stand out it could do with the following things. 1. An improved cameraThe cameras on the Mate 20 Pro are generally very good, but in our review we found that shots taken with the ultra-wide-angle lens would sometimes have warped edges. We also noted that the phone’s HDR skills weren’t a match for some of its top rivals, such as the Google Pixel 3 and iPhone XS, so these are two things that we’d like to see improved for the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. 2. More lensesThree is good, more is better. Image Credit: TechRadar While we’re on the subject of the camera, we’d also like more lenses. The three on the back is a good start, but with the likes of the Nokia 9 thought to be getting five lenses there’s always room for more. This may well happen too, as early rumors suggest that extra rear lenses could be a feature of the Mate 30 Pro. Similarly, we’d like to see an extra lens on the front of the phone, especially if it can be used to power Apple-calibre facial recognition. 3. No notchThe Huawei Mate 20 Pro is a good-looking phone, but one element that could start to look dated in 2019 is its notch, since phones are starting to arrive with punch-hole cameras instead. But ideally we don’t even want that for the Mate 30 Pro, what we’d like to see is a truly all-screen design with the camera and sensors somehow built into the screen. That might not be possible, but Huawei is often among the first to show new technology in handsets, so you never know. 4. A slicker interfaceOne ongoing issue with all of Huawei’s phones is the heavy EMUI overlay the company sticks on top of Android. We’d like to see the Huawei Mate 30 Pro stay closer to stock Android. Better yet, ditch EMUI entirely and use Android One – which would also ensure software updates could be offered rapidly. 5. An improved in-screen scannerThe Mate 20 Pro's scanner needs work. Image Credit: TechRadar The Huawei Mate 20 Pro has an in-screen fingerprint scanner and it was among the first phones to sport one. It’s a cool feature but in the Mate 20 Pro’s case it’s not perfect. It’s only on a small area of the screen, so can be hard to find without first turning the screen on (which brings up an icon). It also isn’t perfect at recognizing prints. That’s all forgivable since it’s the first generation of the tech, but by the time the Mate 30 Pro launches, Huawei will have had another year to perfect it, so let’s hope it will use the time wisely. 6. A 3.5mm headphone portLike many phones, the Mate 20 Pro lacks a 3.5mm headphone port, but we’re still not convinced that it’s time to abandon wired headphones. There are lots of arguments for the convenience of wireless headphones and the fact that the space used for the port could better be used for other things. This is all valid, but many of us still have wired cans that we don’t want to bury just yet. Some of us also don’t want to have to charge our headphones, and when it comes to sound quality wired can still have the edge. 7. Something newMost of the things listed above are focused on perfecting the Mate 20 Pro, but what we really want to see for the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is something completely new and exciting. Some sort of futuristic feature perhaps or a completely new, completely dazzling design. We’ll leave the specifics to Huawei, but in the face of the Samsung Galaxy S10 and the iPhone 11 it’s likely to take more than impressive basics for the Mate 30 Pro to truly stand out.
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| The best free Android apps of 2019 Posted: 21 Feb 2019 06:42 AM PST It has been over ten years since Android was first outed by Google, and back then it was hard to imagine the sheer number of apps we'd have today. There are apps for everything, and many of them are completely free, meaning you're just a few downloads away from supercharging your smartphone at no extra cost. Admittedly, the huge quantity of apps doesn't mean they're all quality - far from it in fact, and finding the good ones can be tough.
There are tools and techniques to help, with various lists in the Play Store providing you with Editor's Picks across a range of categories, new releases and even apps that are specifically recommended for you based on your previous installs. You can also hunt out apps that are similar to your favorites by searching for an app you have and seeing what else comes up. And checking out user reviews and ratings can save you from downloading a dud of an app. But even with all that, the sheer number of apps on Google Play means many of the best can often get lost, while weaker ones sometimes rise to the top. So to make sure you never install a duff app here's our selection of the best you should install right now - each one carefully chosen to ensure you'll have a whole suite of fun, engaging and, dammit, useful apps on your phone or tablet. We've sorted them into categories so you can more easily find what you're looking for. But make sure to check back weekly for our free Android apps of the week, which you'll find below. Best free Android apps of the weekEach week we add two apps to this list and you'll find these two latest additions below. Radio by DeezerRadio by Deezer is a slick if slightly basic radio player app, and although it comes from Deezer (a company known primarily for its Spotify-like subscription service) it’s free to use. The app has around 30,000 FM and online radio stations sorted into various categories, such as ‘pop’ and ‘rock’. So you can browse them that way, or search for a specific station. Stations that you recently played or play the most often will be added to lists on the ‘My Stations’ tab, though in a weird omission there’s no way to manually add stations to your favorites. You can however favorite songs that are being played, but unless you have a Deezer subscription this will just show you a list of them, rather than actually letting you listen to them again. It’s an app that needs work, but it looks good, is easy to navigate and makes for a great companion to the main Deezer service. SoonSoon describes itself as a social bucket list app. What that means in this case is an app that lets you create lists of books you want to read, movies you want to watch, restaurants you want to try and more. You can select from a number of categories, including games, shops, bars, museums and TV shows, then make a list of the ones that interest you. To make a list, just type the name of the thing or place and Soon will usually be able to find it in its database, complete with information like the address if it’s a place or the cast if it’s a movie. Once you’ve read, watched, visited or otherwise interacted with a thing on a list you can tap ‘Done’, then rate and share your experience. Soon also has a trip planner, where you can select a destination and make a list of all the things you want to see and do. You can also share this list with anyone else you’re traveling with, so you can collaborate on it. All in all, Soon is a great app for anyone who struggles to remember the things they want to watch, visit, read, play and listen to, or just for anyone who likes making lists. Our favorite free Android apps for painting, drawing, sketching, design and animation. OverOver could be the app to take your social media game to the next level, as it has all the tools you need to create stylish designs full of photos, images and text, fit for Instagram, Facebook and most other social sites or even for use on posters and flyers. The app lets you select from a range of canvas sizes, many of which exactly line up with the sizes used by popular social sites, then lets you add images and text to them, with various options available, including a range of fonts, the ability to adjust colors and positioning, and more. Over also includes plenty of pre-made graphics to spice up your projects, and when you’re done creating you can easily share your design to other apps or save it as a JPG or PNG. The basic tools are mostly free, but power users might want to pay for the Pro subscription, as this gives you access to more of everything: more fonts, more graphics, plus a database of templates, so you don’t have to build up your designs from scratch. HouzzRedecorating or improving your home can be a daunting prospect, but Houzz could make it a little bit more manageable. It could do that by inspiring you through its library of millions of photos, showing exteriors and interiors of various styles. It could also do that by giving you a single storefront to find and buy all the furniture and other items you need, even going so far as to let you see products in your home, using augmented reality. And it can do that by helping you find experts – such as architects and builders – to do the hard work for you. If you’re planning to take on the task yourself then there are also plenty of articles on hand to help, as well as the ability to ask the Houzz community for advice. Sticker MakerIf you use WhatsApp, you’re probably aware that the service has finally added support for stickers, so as well as emojis and GIFs you can now send larger emoji-like images. But while there are plenty of sticker packs to choose from there’s also – thanks to Sticker Maker – the option to make your own. The app first has you create a new ‘sticker pack’ which you can name, then simply load up an image on your phone and cut out the part of the image that you want to use as a sticker. You can do this freehand or use tools in the app to cut a perfect square or circle. You can also rotate the image if you want and then save it to your pack when you’re happy. Packs can contain up to 30 stickers, but need at least three. Once you’ve made at least three you’ll be able to send the pack to WhatsApp, where you can use your custom stickers just like any others. If you later want to add or remove stickers from the pack, you can do that. You can also make additional packs if you have more than 30 sticker ideas or just want to keep the packs themed. Sticker Maker is a slick app, and a useful one for anyone who likes WhatsApp stickers but just wishes they were more personalized. PexelsPexels is a database of photos that you can use for free for any purpose, including commercial uses, with no attribution needed (though it notes that attributions are still appreciated). You can search using keywords or browse trending images, while tapping the photographer behind a photo will show you their other work on Pexels and let you follow them, so you never miss anything new that they upload. You can also ‘like’ and collect photos within Pexels and if you want to take them outside the app you can easily share them with Instagram or other apps, save them as your wallpaper, or simply download them. But Pexels also lets you become one of the photographers, as you can upload any of your own photos to the app for other people to use. However you choose to use Pexels though, it’s a slick, beautiful app. SketchBookSketchBook isn’t a new app, but while many of the features used to cost money, it’s now completely free, making it worth revisiting. The features that are now free include more than 130 brush presets, customizable canvas sizes, various rulers, high quality image imports and more. And that’s on top of all the basic tools that were already free, such as a layer editor and pen mode, all of which combine to make this one of the most generous free sketching apps available on Android. Coming from Autodesk, the power of SketchBook should come as no surprise, but it’s an app that seemed worth the money previously and is now utterly essential if you’ve even toyed with the idea of digital sketching. DIY ProjectsWikiDIY is a website that’s packed full of DIY projects, with guides for everything from making unicorn cupcakes to making a willow whistle. But it’s not all about making things, as WikiDIY also has guides for things like how to clean rubber on shoes or how to take good photos at night. All of these guides can now be found in its new DIY Projects app, and they come with step by step instructions, diagrams, and in some cases videos. The guides also have questions and answers supplied by readers, along with lists of what you’ll need and any warnings that it’s worth being aware of before you start. You can search for specific guides, browse by category, and bookmark your favorites. And while the app itself isn’t the best we’ve seen (it often feels like little more than a web wrapper) it’s hard to argue with the quality and quantity of the content. BitmojiEver wanted your own custom emoji and stickers that star you, rather than a generic face? Then you should definitely download Bitmoji. This lets you recreate your likeness in cartoon form, with loads of tools available to make the look as perfect as possible. Then you can choose an outfit and get access to dozens if not hundreds of stickers, each of which feature you. These can be shared to various chat and social apps, but Bitmoji has deeper integration with Gboard, letting you share its stickers direct from the keyboard. It can also be linked to your Snapchat account, making your Bitmoji your Snapchat avatar. You can alter the look of your Bitmoji at any time, so if you change your own hairstyle you can change theirs to match, or just give them a new outfit, and new stickers and customization options are being added over time, so you shouldn’t get bored. CanvaCanva was a hit on iOS and now it’s arrived on Android, giving you a simple yet powerful way to create posters, collages, flyers, cards, Instagram posts, banners and headers for blogs or other social media, and more. It’s a graphic design app, and one that’s intuitive from the moment you launch it. Start by choosing the type of content you want to design, then take your pick from a wide selection of ready-made templates (or search for something specific). Once that’s done, you’re ready to get editing. You can tap on any part of a template to change it with context-sensitive tools. Tap on text, for example, and you can write something new, or change the font, size, color and spacing. Select an image to change the color, add a filter, adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, or switch it for a different picture altogether – either one of the many in Canva or one from your gallery. You can also drag and rotate things, and there’s unlimited undo, so you can go back as many steps as you want if you make a mess of the whole thing. When you’re done, you can save your creation to your phone or share it online. It’s also saved in the ‘Your designs’ section of the app, which you can access from the web and other devices, so you’ll never lose a design you’ve made. Our favorite free Android apps for shooting, sorting and editing photos and videos. CuratorCurator claims to be the first gallery app that organizes your photos using AI entirely offline, giving you the search power of something like Google Photos, without compromising on your privacy. It works well too. The first time you launch the app it will analyze and assign tags to all of your photos (which can take a long time), then if you search using a keyword, such as ‘beach’ or ‘cat’, it will show you every image containing that. Curator has a nice interface too, with two themes and the ability to view albums, all images, or all of the tags that have been assigned. Albums can be renamed and favorited, photos can be moved between albums and there are gesture controls, to help you navigate the interface faster. There are also new features on the way, such as private folders and shared albums. If you don’t care about the added privacy offered by Curator, then Google Photos is still the better app. Not least because it backs up your images and gives you access to them from other devices, but Curator is a strong alternative for those who prefer to keep their online presence to a minimum. Photo MapPhoto Map is simply a world map that displays your photos over the parts of the world that you took them in. Zoom out and you’ll likely just see a single thumbnail of one of your images over each country that you’ve snapped shots in, but zoom further in and you will see photos grouped into much smaller areas too. The thumbnails also have a number on them, telling you how many photos are in that gallery. You can easily see them all and enlarge them with a tap. There are a few options, such as the ability to change the look of the map or add terrain or satellite imagery to it, but mostly it’s just a great and simple idea – a visual way of separating your photos based on where they were taken. This is definitely one for those who like to travel! Photo Map is free to use, but a one-off $1.49/£1.29 IAP will get rid of adverts. PicaiIf you love slathering filters all over your photos then there’s a good chance you’ll love Picai, as it makes the process a lot smarter than most apps. But this isn’t just a tool for sticking filters on photos you’ve already taken (though you can do that too). Rather, it’s a camera app. Simply point it at something you want to photograph and it will use AI to detect what you’re looking at, even going so far as to provide a text pop-up telling you what it sees. From there it will automatically choose filters that it thinks would be a good fit and overlay two of them on the viewfinder – one on the left half, the other on the right. That means you can see what a filter will look like before you even take a photo. If you’re happy with one, you can swipe horizontally across it to select it, or you can swipe up or down to cycle through filters. It’s a clever idea, well implemented and completely free. Google LensYour phone might already have Google Lens built in, but if not you can now download it from the Play Store, and that’s worth doing. Once you’ve launched the app you can point your camera at almost anything and get information on it. Point it at a book and it will give you links to reviews of the book and places to buy it. Other products also produce store links, or if Google Lens can’t definitively identify something it will suggest similar products. You can also point it at a landmark to get information on it, at foreign text to translate it or at an event to add it to your calendar. You can even point it at plants or animals to identify them. The results aren’t perfect. In our experience Google Lens will regularly incorrectly identify something or fail to come up with any suggestions for what something might be, especially with more unusual items, but it works often enough to be genuinely useful, especially once you get used to the kinds of things it’s likely to work with – so you know whether to even bother booting it up. PhotoDirectorPhotoDirector is one of the more powerful and polished photo editing apps available on Android. It’s got you covered for fun filters, frames and effects, but it gives you more control than some of its peers. For example, you can adjust the strength of effects and choose to apply them globally or selectively. You get a lot of control over the core image too, as you can adjust the white balance, saturation, hue, sharpness, tone and more. You can also rotate, crop or mirror the image, cut out sections, adjust the perspective, and if you’ve taken a portrait remove red-eye. There’s more here, too much to list, but suffice it to say, PhotoDirector is a comprehensive app. You’re not limited to just editing photos you’ve already taken either; there’s also a camera component, allowing you to take new shots and see how effects and filters will look before you’ve even taken a picture. PhotoDirector is free to download and use. There’s an optional subscription for £2.59 (around US$3.70) per month if you want to unlock additional tools, remove adverts and improve the output quality, but the core app is already far more generous than most free offerings. Just a LineJust a Line is a simple example of the creative potential offered by AR (augmented reality). It lets you view the world through your phone camera and draw on scenes by touching the screen. You can see your drawings from multiple angles as you move the phone around, and you can film your creations to save them or share them with others. There’s not a whole lot more to it than that, and Google (which built the app) describes Just a Line as an experiment, so you should go in expecting a curiosity rather than a full-featured app, but it’s a fun introduction to AR that can be enjoyed by all ages. LightX Photo EditorThere are loads of filter apps and photo fixers on Android, but LightX Photo Editor is one of a much smaller number of comprehensive editing apps. It has plenty of filters, as well as tools for sharpening images and removing blemishes, and much more besides. You can tweak the hue, saturation and tone, adjust the focus, add a frame, sticker or text, merge images, create collages, flip, crop and rotate, draw on pictures and change the perspective. All of that is free, though there’s an optional IAP to remove adverts and add a few extra features. Whether you opt for the free or paid version, LightX is a powerful, feature-packed app that should suit most mobile photo-editing needs. Motion StillsIt’s not often that Google’s apps come to iOS before Android, but Motion Stills did, as it was designed to stabilize Live Photos, so they’d come out smoother. Now though it’s out on Android too, letting you shoot a short video clip which the app stabilizes. Clips that you shoot can be saved as a video or a looping GIF and then shared on social media, and Motion Stills also lets you use a ‘Fast Forward’ mode, which will condense up to a minute of footage into a shorter clip. This too is stabilized, to keep it smooth, and you can pick the playback speed. Motion Stills only works for new footage – so you can’t import and stabilize anything you’ve already shot (though if you just want to turn old footage into a GIF there are plenty of other apps that will do that). But for anything new you shoot Motion Stills is a great way to make a GIF or short video and ensure footage remains smooth. It’s fast too, as footage is stabilized in real time, so you don’t need to wait for it to process your clip, and it’s completely free. Google PhotosThere are probably hundreds of photo apps around, but Google Photos stands out as it gives you unlimited storage for photos and videos, all for free. That's reason enough to jump on board, especially as it works not just on Android but on iOS and computers too. But with basic editing tools and the ability to make collages and albums this is more than just photo and video storage, it aims to be your first and last stop after taking a picture. To achieve that it will need a few more features, but it's well on its way. Our favorite free Android apps for learning new things, from history to music to coding and beyond. StudySmarterStudySmarter aims to help you do just that. When you first launch the app, you can pick your area of study from numerous categories, such as law and mathematics, then you get access to various flashcards aimed at teaching you the subject. But better yet, you can create your own flashcards and optionally share them with the rest of the StudySmarter community. Speaking of the community, there’s also an area where they can ask and answer questions related to subjects. StudySmarter users can also upload documents related to a subject, ensuring they have access to all their study materials within the app and also giving access to other users, and users can even add their own subjects to the app. The result is an app with a whole lot of potential, because as the user base grows, so will the number of study aids. Right now, the content is somewhat limited, meaning it’s most useful just as a way to create and use flashcards, but as a free download that’s enough to recommend it and if enough people take to it then StudySmarter could one day be a very smart way to study. StorySignStorySign is designed to help deaf children learn to read, by translating children’s books into sign language. To do this you need not just the app but supported books too, which at the time of writing in the UK is limited to just Where’s Spot?, but more are expected to be added. With book in hand, just point your phone’s camera at the page and an animated character in StorySign will read the page in sign language. And children will know which words are being signed as the word will be highlighted. As such they’ll both be able to enjoy the books unsupervised and learn to read in the process. While the content of StorySign is somewhat limited so far, there’s a lot of talent involved, with Aardman Animations (the company behind Wallace and Gromit) designing it and Huawei AI powering it, while Penguin Random House has partnered with it to supply classic children’s books to the app. Even in its limited form, StorySign is well worth trying if you have a deaf child young enough to appreciate it, but we expect that this is one app that will just keep getting better as its library grows. ScriptsScripts is a language-learning app focused specifically on learning to write and read in Chinese, Japanese or Korean. These languages are among the trickiest to learn as each one has a unique alphabet, but Scripts gives you a fighting chance. It does this by showing you letters from the language you choose to learn, and then taking you through short exercises which see you swipe across your screen to draw the letter yourself. Initially you’ll be swiping across an outline of the letter, but it quickly moves on to just showing the letter at the top of the screen or not showing it at all, so you really have to learn to progress. You’ll repeat the same letter a lot, but the exercises are all bite-sized, and so is your study, as you can only practice for five minutes each day unless you pay. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as everyone should be able to fit in five minutes of learning, but if you do want more you can pay $10.99/£10.49 per month, with discounts if you commit to a year. That gives you unlimited time, removes adverts, lets you access Scripts offline and gives you full access to Drops. We’ve covered Drops previously but it too is a language learning app, but it’s broader, rather than just being focused on the alphabet. Khan Academy KidsKhan Academy Kids is packed full of games and activities designed to entertain and educate young children. From sorting objects based on their color, to selecting the right letter to complete a word, to drawing and a whole lot more, there are apparently thousands of activities in here, and while we haven’t tested that many, the ones we have tested are varied and well put together, with colorful drawings, songs and sound effects. Most of the interactions use simple tap and swipe gestures, so most children should be able to navigate the app comfortably. A colorful character sits in the corner, and can be tapped whenever help is needed. There’s a lot here, and Khan Academy Kids should be suitable whether you want something your kid can do on their own, or something they can play through together with you. LingoDeerThere are a lot of language learning apps on Android, but when it comes to languages such as Japanese, Mandarin and Korean, which have different alphabet systems, most apps fall a bit flat in teaching you to read and write in the language. But that’s where LingoDeer excels, with various exercises designed to teach you the alphabet and grammar, as well as more conventional lessons focused on speaking and hearing the language. LingoDeer can feel a bit intimidating at times, especially if you’re a complete beginner, as these alphabets can look completely alien, but we’re not sure there’s any way around that. Learning one of these Asian languages is going to be hard, and LingoDeer is a good way to get started. OrphicThere are so many words in the English language, including all sorts of weird and wonderful ones that you might never have come across. But how do you come across them? Browsing a dictionary is inefficient, so instead you could try Orphic, an app dedicated to the more unusual and interesting parts of English. The app contains hundreds of words and will highlight a new one for you every day, even sending you a push notification for it if you want, so you can constantly learn new words. You can also head into the app and explore its library of language at your own pace. For every word you can see definitions, example sentences and even hear an audio clip, so you can be sure you’re saying it right. You can also add words to a list of favorites, so you can easily return to them later, and Orphic promises to add new words regularly, so the app should get better over time. Space Nation NavigatorSpace Nation Navigator is an oddity. Part game, part learning tool, part fitness app – the only thing uniting it all is a focus on space. There are various ‘missions’ including mini games, such as memorizing codes to repair a spacecraft, quizzes, and even physical exercises designed get you ready for an outer space adventure. There are also videos and articles that teach you more about space and the people exploring it, while leaderboards give you extra incentive to carry out the various activities. There’s the slightly annoying need to buy ‘coins’ or watch adverts if you want to replay missions, but otherwise Space Nation Navigator is an interesting app for anyone with even a passing interest in space. A bit more focus might help, but there’s a lot of content here. PlantNetWherever you are, chances are there are hundreds of different plant species within walking distance, and most of us have no idea what all but the most common are called. PlantNet aims to make identifying them easier – simply snap a photo and the app will attempt to identify what kind of plant or flower you’re seeing using visual recognition software. Assuming you’ve taken an in-focus shot with just a single type of plant in it you’ll probably get one or more suggestions, complete with names and pictures. This is probably the main thing you’ll use PlantNet for, but you can also view pictures submitted by other users and browse plants by a number of categories, such as where in the world they’re found. In many cases there are also links to Wikipedia pages about the plants, so you can learn more about them. As an identification tool PlantNet isn’t perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing, and even if it can’t always identify the plant you’re looking at with 100% accuracy, chances are it will highlight some other interesting species in the process of trying. Today in HistoryToday in History is exactly what it says on the tin, telling you what happened today in history, and as it turns out there’s usually a lot that happened. The Today in History app will tell you about events, births, deaths, holidays and just about everything else significant that ever happened on the current day, and it includes pictures, text and links to Wikipedia articles (which is where it pulls its data from). It’s an attractive app and even better if you use the widget, which shows you events from this day in history on your home screen. Today in History also lets you download content for offline use, get notifications and – for anyone who’s not a native English speaker – switch to one of 50 different languages, a switch which cleverly will also affect the events you see, with those relevant to the culture associated with that language being prioritized. GrasshopperLearning to code isn’t easy, but learning the basics is easier in recent years than it ever used to be, and that’s partially because apps like Grasshopper exist, guiding you through the first steps (of JavaScript, in this case) with exercises and quizzes. The exercises are often presented a bit like puzzles. For example, very early examples task you with completing flags of countries by selecting the right code in the right order. This can feel almost like a game, and is engaging and enjoyable as a result. Achievements can be gained to further motivate you, and while the app will never make you an expert it does aim to leave you with fundamental JavaScript skills, so you’re ready to take on something more advanced. Life HacksDid you know that the best time to buy a car is at the end of the month, since salespeople have quotas to hit and are more likely to cut you a deal? Or that you can get gum out of hair by dipping it in coke? If you had Life Hacks you would. This appropriately named app has hundreds of hacks spread across various categories, such as ‘Money Savers’ and ‘Study Boosters’. Tap on a category and you’ll be shown a selection of cards, each of which has a life hack on it. The bottom of each card also has the option to favorite, copy or share it, so you can easily build up a library of useful hacks or share them with your friends. New hacks are also regularly added, so you won’t run out of things to learn. Some of the hacks are clearly aimed specifically at US users as they’re related to businesses like Walmart and Wendy’s, but most of them could be useful wherever you are. Duolingo: Learn Languages FreeIf you fancy learning a foreign language then make sure you download Duolingo: Learn Languages Free, as it's one of those rare apps that manages to be both educational and fun, ensuring that you'll keep coming back for more to brush up on your language skills, with bite-sized, genuinely useful lessons and tests. Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Esperanto, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Welsh, English, Swahili and Romanian can all be learned, it's mostly free and it's one of the best ways you can learn a new language with your Android device. Our favorite free Android apps for having fun on your phone or tablet, through watching videos, reading, socializing and more. LIKEtoKNOW.itEver seen a picture of someone in an outfit and wondered what they were wearing or where to buy it? With LIKEtoKNOW.it you won’t have to wonder any more. The app lets you take screenshots of photographs and can then tell you what’s being worn, as well as providing links to buy the clothes online. Or at least, it can sometimes. For any guarantee that it’s going to work, you should look out for captions containing ‘#liketkit’, the LiketoKNOW.it website link, or the LIKEtoKNOW.it logo in the bottom right-hand corner. Those things won’t exist on most images, but a growing number of fashion influencers will make posts compatible with the service. And that’s just one part of the app. LIKEtoKNOW.it also lets you browse images and follow influencers from within the app, and all the images of course also have links to buy the products contained within them. By following people, you can create a feed full of content that you like, but you can also browse other feeds for specific categories, such as ‘fitness’ or ‘weddings’. Most of the content is aimed at women, but there is a men’s category too. There’s also some kids clothes and some décor – it’s not all just outfits. If you’re female and into fashion, it’s definitely worth a look. Amazon AlexaThe Amazon Alexa app is essential if you have an Echo device, but previously it was an app you probably wouldn’t spend much time in. That’s all changed now though, thanks to an update that aims to make it the only app you need to control your smart home. It’s a similar overhaul to the one Google Home got, allowing you to turn lights on and off, control your thermostat and more. You can also control and set up aspects of Alexa from the app, of course, such as adding skills to it, managing timers and alarms and setting up Routines. The last of those is perhaps the most interesting, as these allow you to set a custom command that will cause Alexa to carry out a custom set of actions. For example, you could set the command “Alexa, time for bed” to turn off all your lights and turn down the thermostat. Blizzard EsportsEsports still have a long way to go before they’re as popular as conventional sports, and part of what’s holding them back is accessibility, but that’s something the Blizzard Esports app could help with. The app makes it easy to keep up to date with activity in Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, StarCraft, StarCraft II and World of Warcraft, offering schedules, scores, news and the option to set alerts reminding you to tune in when an event kicks off. When it’s time to tune in, you can do so via the Blizzard Esports app, so it’s a great companion for anyone into esports for the games above, or anyone who thinks they might want to get into them. Blizzard Esports is a little limited in that it only covers esports under the Blizzard banner. It won’t do much to help you understand the games being played if you’re completely new to them either, but for anyone with a bit of understanding and interest it’s a great addition to your app arsenal. For years Pocket has been helping people find the time to read all the articles they find online that would otherwise go ignored. You know the situation: you’re idly browsing but don’t have much time or should be doing something else, when you happen across an article that looks interesting. Maybe you plan to read it later and then forget, maybe you just resign yourself to the knowledge that it will go unread. But with Pocket, you can save it to a reading list so it won’t be forgotten, and make it available both offline and on just about any device with an internet connection, so you can read it wherever and whenever. It’s a great app, but as of recently Pocket has got even better, as now you can also listen to articles you’ve saved, so you don’t even need to read them. Pocket’s look has also been updated in an attempt to make it more pleasant to read from for long periods. So if you’re not already using it there has never been a better time to start. Google HomeGoogle Home isn’t a new app, but it has recently been overhauled, making it now perhaps the best solution for managing your smart home, particularly if you have smart home devices from a number of different brands. That’s because Google Home now lets you control them all from within the app. Or, at least, it does with most things. Inevitably some devices probably won’t be supported, but thousands are from hundreds of brands. You simply link them up to the Google Home app, then you can assign them to a room in your house, so that for example every smart device in your living room is grouped together. You can see all your devices from the main screen though, divided into these groups, and you can interact with some of them in a limited way from there (for example turning lights on or off) or tap on the device to do more with it (such as adjusting the brightness). You can also invite other members of your household to the app, so they can also manage smart devices from it, and the only real limitation is that some functionality isn’t supported. For example, with LIFX lights you can’t currently adjust the colors from Google Home, and with our Honeywell thermostat we can’t adjust schedules. But for the basics it’s a lot easier – and smarter - than jumping between multiple apps for all your smart devices. SlowlyWhen was the last time you sent a letter? It’s probably been a while. It’s probably been even longer since you sent one that wasn’t a birthday card! That’s probably by choice – after all, why would you when texts and calls are so much faster? But there is something potentially appealing about the simple act of waiting for a letter to arrive. It helps make them feel less disposable and more important. Slowly aims to replicate that. It doesn’t see you putting pen to paper, but it does make you wait when sending and receiving messages. The result – if you’re anything like us – being that you value them and look forward to them more. Slowly isn’t really for sending messages to people you already know though. Rather, it’s for getting to know new people. It lets you send messages either to a random recipient, or to ones filtered based on metrics such as age and interests. Once you send a message, the amount of time you’ll be waiting for them to receive it depends on where in the world they are. It’s not quite as slow as snail mail, generally taking between a few hours and a day, so it’s a nice middle ground between an old-fashioned letter and an instant message. UntappdIf you’re serious about your beer then you need Untappd on your phone. It not only has a database of beers for you to discover and rate, but also highlights nearby beer-related events and shows the beer menus in local bars. Add a venue to your favorites, and you’ll get alerts when it starts selling a new beer. There’s a social element too, which lets you follow friends to see what they’re drinking (and what they think of it). Whether you want to make a wish list to help you keep track of all the beers you want to try, keep a log of what you’ve already tried so you can remind yourself whether you liked something, or just keep abreast of all the beer-related happenings in the area, Untappd is for you. Mei: Messaging with AIMei: Messaging with AI promises a lot, but at the moment – at its core – it’s primarily an SMS app that can also analyze the messages you send and receive to show you a personality profile for you and the people who message you. It will tell you your top five characteristics, and assign a percentage score to your openness, emotional control, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. You can tap on any of these to dig deeper. For example, tapping on openness will show how adventurous, emotionally aware and imaginative you are in Mei’s opinion, among other things. You can also use the app to see how similar you are to the people you message and what traits you have in common. As well as standard SMS messages, if you’re talking to someone else who also uses Mei you get end-to-end encryption and free international messaging (due to messages then being sent over the internet), along with other tools such as expiring messages and the ability to unsend messages. The app’s in beta, and more features are coming, including additional AI abilities, such as the app being able to detect if you’re not texting as you normally would, perhaps because you’re in an unusual state of mind, and alerting you to that fact. Being in beta, Mei might not be totally bug-free, but it’s an interesting upgrade to your standard SMS app. Google NewsGoogle News replaces Google Play Newsstand, and it’s a strong substitute. Throughout the day it will highlight the top five current stories that it thinks you’ll care about, based on the sources and topics that you tell the app you like, but if you keep scrolling down you can also see other news. The best bit about Google News though, might be the option to see ‘perspectives and context’. It’s a little button next to stories, which when tapped shows the same story as reported by various different sites and inevitably from various different perspectives, including some that you might never find on your own. As such it can give you a more rounded look at the news than you’d get if you’re always just using your preferred news source. Other features of Google News include the ability to filter headlines by subject or source, and subscribe to paid news sources with a single tap. Steam LinkSteam Link allows you to stream your Steam games from your PC to your Android phone or tablet, so you can play them from anywhere in your house. You are limited to your house though, as your computer needs to be on and using the same Wi-Fi network as your Android device for this to work. No Steam streaming on the train, then, but it’s quite freeing if you’re usually tethered to a desk. You also need a fairly fast and stable internet connection and most games will need you to pair your phone with a Bluetooth controller, though some simpler ones can be controlled purely touchscreen. Still, if you’re big on gaming but wish you could play your ‘proper’ PC games from the couch, bed or bath, then Steam Link is well worth trying. NeverthinkNeverthink is an app that aims to give you interesting things to watch, without you ever having to think or decide on them for yourself. All you actually have to decide is the general category of content you’re in the mood for, be it learning something new, comedy, news, food videos, or one of dozens of other categories. Once you’ve selected one a relevant video starts playing. These are sourced from the internet and it’s all subscription-free stuff that you could find yourself, except now you don’t have to. There’s Chromecast support, and if you see something you like you can favorite it to return to later, and that’s about it. It’s worth noting also that the content is all hand-picked by actual people. There aren’t any algorithms here, and Neverthink promises that hours of new content is added every day, so there should always be so mething to watch. LetterboxdIf you’re a movie lover then you might already know about Letterboxd, and if you don’t you should. It lets you keep track of movies you’ve watched, add them to your list with a single tap, review them, give them a star rating, and say when you watched them. It also lets you keep track of what you want to watch, thanks to a comprehensive film database and the ability to add films to a watch list – again with a single tap. Letterboxd helps you discover films by highlighting what’s currently popular, and offering thousands of lists created by users of the app. These lists all have a theme, and while that’s sometimes as simple as someone’s favorite movies, usually it’s a lot more interesting than that, for example one list is titled “They aren’t films, they’re experiences”. Of course, you can also make lists of your own, and Letterboxd is a bit of a social network too, letting you follow other users and comment on their lists. Our favorite free Android apps for working out, reducing stress and crafting meals. Cocktail FlowCocktails aren’t the simplest drinks in the world to make, especially if you want to go beyond the basics, but Cocktail Flow helps make them more approachable. The app includes recipes for a number of cocktails (complete with lists of the ingredients and equipment you’ll need). And if you’re not sure what you want to make you can also browse based on the spirit you want to use or the type of cocktail, such as ‘creamy’ or ‘tropical’. You can also save any favorites, and if you’re intimidated by some of the skills needed to master them (such as making crushed ice and citrus twists), there’s a tips library to help. Cocktail Flow is a nicely designed, easy to navigate app too. It’s not new, but it has recently had a makeover, so if you’ve tried it before it’s worth revisiting. All of the basics are free, but you can massively expand the app’s cocktail library and add extra features – such as the option to add your own cocktails to the app – with a monthly $5/£4.49 subscription. WoebotWoebot was selected by Google as one of the best apps of 2018 and with good reason, as it could make a real difference to your life, especially if you’re struggling with mental health issues. The app is basically a chatbot, but one which checks in with you daily to assess your mood and helps you work through any problems you might have, using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy principles. It tells stories with a message behind them, and provides tools and exercises to help you change your thinking, so you’ll hopefully end up feeling more positive in yourself, even if you can’t change what’s going on around you. As well as daily check ins you can also message Woebot any time you want to chat or feel down, and while it won’t replace actual therapy it’s a handy, always available tool that you’ll likely be thankful for when you need it. EndomondoEndomondo is one of the oldest Android fitness apps and it’s still one of the best, thanks in part to regular updates. It’s packed full of features, letting you track not just running, cycling and walking but also more than 60 other activities -, so if there’s a sport you do, chances are Endomondo has some tools to help you monitor it. GPS monitoring lets you track statistics such as distance and pace, but you can also manually log indoor workouts or anything else where GPS won’t be much use. Additionally, Endomondo can be paired with other accounts and wearables, such as the Fitbit app and heart rate monitors, allowing it to sync data with them. With custom goals, challenges (that in some cases even have prizes) and the ability to compete with friends, there’s a lot to keep you motivated and the app itself is slick and easy to use. All of these features are free, but you can unlock various extra tools such as personal training plans and advanced statistics if you subscribe to Endomondo Premium, which costs £9.99 (around $13) per month, though it’s only around a third of that price if you commit to a year. Google FitGoogle’s official health and fitness app, Google Fit has been around for a while, but it’s now been overhauled and is better than ever as a result. At the heart of the overhaul there’s ‘Move Minutes’ and ‘Heart Points’. The former records your general movement throughout the day and aims to encourage you to make small changes, such as walking up stairs rather than taking the elevator. Heart Points reward you not just for the amount of time you’re active but for how much you raise your heart rate - a feature which really helps the app stand out. In line with most fitness apps, the core features are still available; you can track various workouts, monitor and adjust your goals, and even get some basic customized tips and coaching, based on the activity that you do. Bring! Grocery Shopping ListIf more than one person in your household buys groceries, then Bring! is an app that you should really look into. It’s a grocery list app, as you might have surmised, but it lets you share and collaborate on lists, so everyone who might buy something can see the current list, and anyone else in the household can see it and add to it. Whenever someone does buy things from the list they can tick them off with a tap, so there’s no danger of the same thing being bought twice. Bring! also lets you add photos to each entry, which is handy if you want to add something very specific, such as a certain brand of item, or if you just want to add some color to the list. But Bring! also has its own database, with images for hundreds of items. You can create and share multiple lists if, for example, you have a general grocery list and another one for a party. There’s even a recipe section, designed to inspire you to cook, and making it easy to add all the ingredients to your shopping list. Technically there’s no reason you couldn’t use Bring! for other types of shopping lists as well, or even for to-do lists, but it’s designed for – and excels at – groceries. ChefsFeedFrom the name you might think ChefsFeed is a recipe app, or maybe a social network for chefs, but while there’s an element of both it’s so much more than that. ChefsFeed, really, is for anyone who loves food. It has articles and videos about food and restaurants, and yes, some recipes, but most of it’s not so much about cooking your own dishes as it is about food culture, with articles titled ‘why restaurants are a refuge for the restless’, and ‘sourcing sustainably is a way of life’, for example. The app also helps you find new places to dine out, with a section highlighting interesting and recommended restaurants near you, complete with their opening hours and contact details. You can filter these suggestions by price, distance and type of food, among other things, and save your favorites, so you’ll never forget a place you planned to try. Seven – 7 Minute Workout Training ChallengeSeven – 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge promises to get you fit in just seven minutes a day, and while a longer workout might do you more good, we can’t deny that this got our hearts racing. There’s a wide variety of exercises and workouts, with an animated man or woman showing you how to do each one, along with an optional text explanation. So far, so standard, but Seven also doles out achievements, lets you add friends for some friendly competition and has specific training plans for different goals. For example, if you tell the app you want to lose weight, it will give you different workouts to if you want to increase your mobility. The exercises in Seven don’t require any equipment, so you can do them from home or even your office if you have a bit of space, and you can create your own workouts too if there are specific exercises that you like. Seven is partially free, but there’s an optional US$9.99/£9.99 monthly subscription which unlocks additional workouts, exercises and personalized workout plans. If you like the free version, it could be worth considering. Our favorite free Android apps for making music, listening to music, finding podcasts and everything else to do with audio. BBC SoundsBBC Sounds brings all of the BBC’s live radio content and podcasts to one app, so you can listen live on your phone, and subscribe to and stream podcasts. BBC Sounds also lets you pick up where you left off on another device, so if you get halfway through a podcast on your phone, you’ll be able to start from that point on your tablet automatically. It can also recommend content based on what you’ve been listening to, so it’s a good way to discover new things. It’s basically iPlayer for radio (in fact the plan is for it to ultimately replace BBC iPlayer Radio) and if you listen to a lot of BBC content it’s arguably a smarter, better choice than listening on a radio or using another podcast app. At the moment the BBC Sounds app is UK-only, but given that the iPlayer Radio app is available globally we wouldn’t be surprised if BBC Sounds is one day too. SW True-Fi BetaSW True-Fi Beta aims to maximize the potential of your headphones by tuning sound settings specific to the headphones you have plugged in. You do this by selecting yours from a long list of supported headphones, then True-Fi does the rest. But you can also adjust the sound according your age and make manual tweaks to aspects of it, such as the bass. The adjustments only work when playing music through the SW True-Fi Beta app, but that needn’t be a problem, as not only can it play local music files, it can also connect to Spotify and play music from there. Not all headphones are currently supported, which is the main limitation of the app, but if yours aren’t then you can contact the company to ask them to be added. 1lyrics1lyrics is designed to show the lyrics to songs as you listen to them, but handily you don’t need to play the songs in 1lyrics itself, instead it supports numerous music players, including ones that use locally stored songs, and streaming players, such as Spotify. Just start listening to a track on your player of choice then open 1lyrics and it should show the lyrics to the current song. In some but not all cases it will even scroll them in time with the music. Lyrics that you’ve viewed in the past are saved, so you can access them at any time, even if you’re not currently listening to the song in question, and it’s quite an attractive app, pulling in artwork for the songs it provides the lyrics to. There are some caveats here. For one thing, it doesn’t currently work with all music players, though more are set to be supported over time. It also doesn’t have lyrics for every song, though we tried some semi-obscure stuff and it found lyrics without any issue, so you should be able to get lyrics for most things. AnchorAnchor is both an app for both listening to podcasts, and creating and sharing your own. It’s that second part that’s the most interesting. You can record audio straight from the Anchor app, or import recordings. You can also add friends to a recording, even if they’re elsewhere in the world, allowing you to have a recorded conversation that you can use as a podcast. You can add various sound effects, and rearrange and edit parts of the podcast, so you’re not limited to a single audio file. Once you’re done you can share your podcast, not just on Anchor itself, but also on the likes of Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts. When it’s out in the world, you can use Anchor to track how many listeners it has, and which parts of the podcast are most played. If all you want to do is listen to podcasts then there are other apps that do the job just as well or better (Pocket Casts is always a favorite), but Anchor is a slick, simple way to get into podcasting yourself. ClockGoogle Clock (or simply ‘Clock’) is a fairly ordinary clock app in many ways, but it has the polish you’d expect from Google and is now better than ever, thanks to Spotify integration, meaning you can set a Spotify song or playlist as your alarm. That instantly gives it an advantage over many clock apps, and the fact that Google Clock is free doesn’t hurt either. Beyond that you get a timer, a stopwatch, the ability to create and save multiple alarms, and the option to view times for other parts of the world. Of course, it also has Wear OS integration, so all of your alarms and timers can be synced with your wrist, and there are several options to tailor the app to your preferences, such as being able to change the clock style and the snooze duration. Google PodcastsThere are plenty of podcast apps already but when Google makes one it’s worth paying attention, and Google Podcasts doesn’t disappoint, instantly reaching the heights of the best free ones. It’s got a minimalist design that’s light on color, but the app’s not light on features, as it automatically syncs podcasts across devices, so you can start listening on one and finish on another, it works with Google Home and you can launch straight into podcasts from Google Assistant and the Google Search app. Google Podcasts also gives you recommendations based on your listening history and preferences, so it’s a decent way to find new content, and there are other tools, such as the ability to change the playback speed. None of which would matter if it didn’t get the basics right, but it does, letting you subscribe to podcasts and highlighting new episodes on the main screen, letting you stream or download podcasts, and providing lists of the top podcasts in various categories. LoffeeIf you like to have relaxed background music on while working, reading or anything else, then Loffee is definitely worth a download. The app contains a handful of curated playlists, all featuring lo-fi music that’s ideal for relaxing to or having on while you do something else. To our mind, the music choices are great, as well as often featuring little known bands and artists, so you’re sure to find things that you like and haven’t heard before. If you do, you can follow links to the artist’s Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitter and Instagram pages, while other tools in the app include a timer (which shuts the music off when it finishes counting down), and the ability to listen to songs offline. The Loffee app itself is also something you’ll want to spend time in, as each playlist has a custom illustration that’s almost as soothing as the music. You can’t cast music to other devices and the actual selection of songs is small, so this won’t replace your main music apps, but it could definitely complement them. Drum Pads – Beat Maker GoDrum Pads – Beat Maker Go is a drum machine which lets you easily make beats on the go. There are numerous sound packs split across various genres, such as dubstep, EDM and hip-hop, and once you select one you can get tapping on the drum pad. There are various effects that you can apply to your track, such as distortion and delay, you can create loops and save your finished pieces, then share them with friends. Drum Pads is accessible enough that beginners should be able to have fun with it (though some trial and error will be required), but there’s enough here to appeal to more advanced users too. Ringtone Maker & Music EditorIt’s probably fair to say that most ringtones that come with phones aren’t very exciting, and while you can easily set a locally stored song as your ringtone, you won’t necessarily want the whole thing. That’s where Ringtone Maker & Music Editor comes in. First, you can get this app to scan your device for any stored audio files, sort them by track, album or artist, then select the one that you want to turn into a ringtone and you’ll be able to choose a start and end point – handy for cutting boring intros. You can type out exactly what point in the music you want to start and end the ringtone down to the millisecond, and you can also cut parts of the music, copy and paste parts, or even meld multiple audio files together. There’s also a basic recording feature built in, so you can record your own ringtones and then edit them. Once done, you can save your ringtone and assign it either system-wide or to a specific contact. Ringtone Maker is easy to use and supports various file types, including MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, AAC, M4A, MP4 and 3GPP/AMR, and the only real issue it has is the number of adverts, but there’s a pro version that gets rid of them for US$3.99/£3.29. BandcampBandcamp is a service that highlights and sells music from numerous artists, mostly of the independent variety, and with the Bandcamp app you can access all of its content from your phone. As well as buying music, you can stream or download music you already own, and in many cases stream songs that you haven’t yet bought. You also get access to a weekly podcast that highlights music you might not have come across before, so it’s a good way to discover your next favorite musician. You can also search, browse, add things to your wishlist and comment on releases, sharing your thoughts with the wider Bandcamp community. It’s a handy app if you’re into music (and who isn’t?) and a great way to support up and coming artists. Backing Track Play MusicIf you play an instrument then you probably sometimes need backing tracks, and Backing Track Play Music can provide them. It has thousands of backing tracks designed for guitarists, bassists, drummers, keyboardists and singers, and you can filter by instrument, genre, artist, or just perform a general search. The selection is decent and varied, covering many big hits from artists of various genres. You’ll also find lyrics and tablature for many songs, and the app claims new backing tracks are added every day. The core app is free, but if you want to get rid of adverts and be able to download backing tracks for offline use, you can grab Backing Track Play Music Pro for $1.49/£1.29. Scout FMNeed more podcasts to listen to and not sure where to start? You could do a lot worse than Scout FM. This is a podcast discovery app with various ‘stations’ of podcasts focused on a particular theme, be it mindfulness, the latest news, entertainment, and many other topics. These stations work like playlists; rather than just giving you a list of podcasts in each category, it plays one automatically and lets you move to another with a swipe of your finger. You can pause with a tap, and there are options for skipping, changing playback speed. It’s a fairly basic player, but all the essentials are there. You probably won’t use Scout FM as your main podcast app – not least because you can’t actually choose a specific podcast to play – but if you’re open to hearing something new and just aren’t sure what to start with, it can help you find a whole new selection of favorites. Phonograph Music PlayerWhile many of us have moved to streaming music, there is still a place for locally stored music on Android, and Phonograph is one of the better players. Phonograph puts aesthetics and ease of use first, so it’s always pleasant to operate. The app has a Material Design look that fits with Google’s vision of Android, but it’s also packed full of album art and color, so there’s never a dull screen. You can also customize the colors and overall theme and look of the app, while the color of the main ‘now playing’ screen will change based on the album artwork of the current track. The layout is simple too, with your music library sorted by song, album, artist or playlist, and you can switch between views with a swipe, while most other options are no more than a tap away. Although not as feature-packed as some players, Phonograph has a number of handy extras and toggles, like gapless playback, information and images pulled automatically from Last.fm, a sleep timer, widgets and lock screen controls. TimbreTimbre’s full name is ‘Timbre: Cut, Join, Convert mp3’, and that tells you almost everything you need to know about it: this is an app for cutting, joining and converting files. But the MP3 bit in the name rather undersells it, because Timbre can also work its magic on WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC, PCM, AIFF, Ogg, WMA, ALAC, MP4, AVI, FLV, MOV, WebM, MKV and MPEG files. You can convert from one file type to another, which is handy if, for example, your music or video player doesn’t like a specific file type. You can also trim down audio and video files, or combine several files into one, which you might want to do if you’re editing together a video with multiple scenes, or making a mixtape. Those are the headline features of Timbre, but there are also tools to remove audio from a video file, split a single audio file into two parts, and change the bitrate of an audio file. All of these things are simple to do, with Timbre sporting a clear interface, and it’s completely free as well. Our favorite free Android apps for taking notes, writing and editing documents and generally working on the move. HiHello Contact ExchangeBusiness cards are a somewhat dated concept but they still serve a purpose, so in an attempt to bring them into the 21st century, HiHello Contact Exchange makes them digital and even easier to share than the physical kind. The app lets you create multiple different cards containing different information. You might for example have a work card that contains your work email and job title, while a personal card could have your personal email and Facebook link. Lots of different things can be added to each card though, including your phone number, website, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. To share a card you just launch the HiHello app, tap on the card you want to share, tap the share button to display a QR code and then the person receiving it simply points their phone camera at the QR code to get it. Alternatively you can email or text the card to someone, so unlike a conventional business card they don’t need to be physically present to receive it. And the card can be saved to their phone’s address book, meaning they don’t need the HiHello app themselves. Notes by FirefoxNotes by Firefox is a very simple note-taking app, ideal if you just want to jot down basic notes without wrestling overbearing interfaces and unwanted options. The look is minimalist, with a mostly white screen housing all your current notes. You can tap on one to open and edit it, tap the plus button to make a new note, or tap the minus next to a note to delete it. There are a few formatting options – you can create bullet points or numbered lists, add headings and use bold and italics, but that’s about it. However, Notes by Firefox does have a few tricks up its sleeve, as it syncs between your Android device and the Firefox browser on your desktop, so you can access your notes from multiple devices, and they’re secured with end-to-end encryption. Other than that, this is a basic app, but if you’re not a power user it should be all you need, and it’s completely free. QuipQuip is an office suite built for teams, as not only can you create documents and spreadsheets, you can also share them with others and work on them collaboratively. It supports real-time messaging too and while this app will mostly be of use for teams of people who work together it could also be used for other things, such as shared grocery lists and to-do lists. You can access it all from your phone, tablet or computer, so you’ll never be far from the work and information you need, and Quip is quite full-featured when it comes to actually creating documents and spreadsheets, as for example it supports over 400 spreadsheet functions. You probably won’t want to make much use of them from a phone, but if you’re on a tablet then Quip is a great way to work on the move, and even on a phone it can be good for reading, editing and commenting on work. Otter Voice NotesOtter Voice Notes is a voice recorder, but that’s just the beginning. It also uses AI to automatically turn the recordings into written text so you can read them back rather than having to listen to them. The app also lets you search for keywords, so you can find exactly the piece of information you’re looking for in seconds, even in long recordings. This all makes it a great tool for recording meetings, lectures and the like, especially since Otter can be trained to recognize voices and you can tag who’s talking, so that even in text form you can see the true flow of a conversation. You can also create groups with other Otter users if you want to share recordings, and all of your recordings are saved in the cloud so you can access them anywhere and don’t have to store them on your Android device. The text transcription isn’t perfect (though Otter claims it will get better over time if it’s you talking, as it gets to know your voice better), but it’s reasonably accurate in our experience and you can always go in and make changes to the text manually. TouchPal KeyboardTouchPal is a truly feature-packed keyboard, and an enormously customizable one at that. Not only can you select from thousands of free themes, you can also create your own, picking a key color and adding a background image or color. All the usual settings are also available, letting you customize the keyboard height and width, change the key layout, enable or disable auto-correct and much more. There’s also a ‘Curve’ mode, which lets you swipe across keys to select them rather than tapping, and more uniquely a ‘Wave’ setting that builds on predictive text by putting AI-driven next word suggestions under the keys as you type. You can also access various emoji and GIFs from the keyboard, bring up a Google search and use voice typing. None of that would matter if TouchPal was slow or inaccurate, but in our tests it works well – just as long as you take the time to get it set up how you want it. Files by GoogleChances are you already have some kind of file manager on your phone, but Files by Google is still worthy of attention, as it’s made by Google and has many rivals beat. There’s two parts to it. First, the ‘Storage’ section which highlights all the ways you might be able to clear space on your device, such as by deleting duplicate or large files, moving files to your SD card and deleting rarely used apps. Then there’s the ‘Files’ section, which is a file explorer, letting you dive into the folders on your phone so you can find, open, rename, delete or share specific files. The whole app is colorful and easy to navigate as well, with an interface seemingly inspired by Google Now’s cards. EvernoteEvernote is an excellent app for your Android device that lets you stash and sync all your text notes, voice memos and files on your phone and access them through a desktop computer. It's a brilliant productivity tool that lets you organize and search your notes so you always have exactly what you need at your fingertips. The paid premium version unlocks offline access and use on an unlimited number of devices, among other things, but for free you still get a vast, feature-packed digitial notebook that's easy to navigate. Our favorite free Android apps for improving productivity, whether through to-do lists, focus timers or other tools. WishlistIf you ever have trouble remembering people’s birthdays then Wishlist is for you, as it lets you create a list of important dates for the people you care about. Other apps do this too, but with Wishlist you can set a notification to go off in advance of the date, so you have warning that it’s coming up. That too can be handled by some other apps, but Wishlist does it automatically. Just set how many days before a date you want a notification and that setting will be applied to all dates in the app. Ideally, we’d like to be able to set multiple notifications – one in advance and one on the date, for example, but this is a good start. Wishlist isn’t just for dates, either. As the name suggests, it can also be used to build up lists - in this case of present ideas for people - so each contact saved to Wishlist can have their own list of potential presents. That means if you ever see something that you think someone might like, you won’t have to buy it months in advance of their birthday or hope you remember it, you can just add it to a list. There are fields for not just the name of a gift idea, but also website links, the price, any notes, an image, and a priority rating out of 10. Beyond all that you can also add a phone number to any contact you add to Wishlist and can then message or call them from the app. The idea is presumably for Wishlist to become your main dialer app, though we’re not convinced you’ll want to make that change right now as the interface is quite bare bones. But for its date and list features it could make a good companion to your existing apps. InboxItInboxIt doesn’t try to do everything. Rather, the app does one thing, but does it very well. That one thing is emailing things to yourself, be it photos, videos, URLs or text. You might not think that you need a separate app to send yourself an email, but InboxIt speeds up the process. Once you’ve set the app up you simply tap the ‘Share’ icon on the content you want to send, then select InboxIt and the content will automatically be emailed to you. No need to select an email address, type out a subject or anything else. And if you’re in the habit of emailing yourself reminders, you can do that from InboxIt too. Just launch the app, select ‘New reminder’, type one out and hit ‘Save’. You can set the free version of InboxIt to send things to a Gmail address, which will probably suit most people just fine. But if you want to use a different email you can pay $0.99/£0.99 to unlock premium features, which also include the ability to use Gmail labels and a custom email subject prefix. HoldIf you’re anything like us then you probably open Facebook or Twitter about 600 times a day on your phone, even when you know nothing has changed and that you should be doing something far more important. But if you’re anything like us then you’re also motivated by rewards, and Hold gives you them for not using your phone. Simply activate it and put your phone down, and you’ll receive 10 points for every 20 minutes that you resist the lure of your apps and messages. These points can then be exchanged for rewards. These change over time and depend on what country you’re in, but examples include free popcorn at the cinema and free contact lenses. You don’t have to bank very many points for some of the rewards either, with many being available for as little as 20 points. And if free and discounted stuff isn’t enough incentive to stay off your phone, how about a little friendly competition? You can link up with your pals in the app and compete to get the most points. Your Phone CompanionYour Phone Companion is a companion app for a PC app called – you guessed it – Your Phone. The companion app itself doesn’t do much, other than allowing the main desktop app to do its job of showing your phone’s photos and SMS messages on your Windows 10 PC. Both can be browsed, photos can be downloaded, and messages can even be sent and received on your desktop, so you don’t have to keep turning back to your phone. While that’s ‘all’ the app does, those two features could be very useful for anyone who spends a lot of time at their computer, or who tends to email themselves photos to get them onto their PC. It’s worth noting that Google Photos does the photo part too, and is better at it, since it’s a full-featured gallery app, but this is a good alternative for anyone not already using that. OnedoxOnedox describes itself as a digital P.A. for your household bills, and that’s fairly accurate. The app lets you link accounts for your household bills, such as gas, electricity, internet, Netflix, Spotify and more, then shows you details of each billing, all on one screen. The app also shows you renewal dates – so you’ll know when prices might be changing and when you can shop around for a new deal. Tapping on any account will show additional details, such as previous bills, price changes, and any notes you’ve added to the account. It makes staying on top of your bills a lot easier and ensures you can always have a clear idea of exactly how much you’re spending. The only downside – other than the fact that this is UK-only right now – is that not all accounts are supported. For example, some gas companies can’t currently be added. However, Onedox is adding new companies and categories of bill all the time, so one day you really will be able to manage all your bills from one screen. Right now you’ll have to make do with managing most of them, which is still pretty handy. DatallyDatally is probably not one of Google’s best-known apps, but it deserves to be, especially if you have any interest in monitoring or conserving your data. The app lets you see how much data you’ve used in the last day, week or month, as well as telling you which apps are using the most data. It also has some clever extra features, two of which were added recently – so even if you’ve used Datally before it could be worth revisiting. There’s ‘Bedtime mode’, which disables data on your phone between two times that you set, which means that apps won’t be using data in the background while you sleep. Futhermore, ‘Emergency bank’ lets you set aside a portion of your monthly data allowance for emergencies. You decide how much and Datally will make sure you don’t use it accidentally. These join existing features such as the data saver mode, which blocks apps of your choice from using data when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi, plus you can view a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks, including information on whether you need a password for them. If you ever find yourself running low on data, then Datally is the app for you. InwareInware does one thing and does it well: it tells you about the device you’re running the app on. More specifically, it tells you just about every hardware detail, from the screen size and resolution, chipset, RAM amount and battery size, to far more in depth information, like the current speed each core is running at and the serial number. Inware can also tell you how much RAM is currently in use, how healthy the battery is, how hot the battery is, how much storage there is in total and in use, the build number, what security patch your device has, what GPU it has, the aspect ratio of the screen and plenty more besides. It goes way more in depth than your phone’s settings screen likely will, so if you’re ever curious about an aspect of your handset’s hardware or software, this is the app for you. Envision AIVisual impairments are one of many things that technology has made slightly easier to live with, and Envision AI is a prime example of how tech can help. Point your phone’s camera at whatever’s in front of you, press a button, and the AI will examine it and say out loud what it thinks it’s seeing. Descriptions can be moderately detailed, taking in multiple objects in a scene (for example a computer monitor and the desk it’s sat on). With common objects it all seems quite accurate, though testing it on more unusual things, such as a wooden sculpture of an elephant, led to more mixed results. As well as scenes, Envision AI can also read out text, even if it’s handwritten (though unclear handwriting will again lead to mixed results). So it’s not perfect, but Envision AI could make a big difference to anyone who struggles to see or read on their own. EmmaEmma helps you keep a close eye on your money. Link all your bank accounts (including credit cards) and you’ll be able to see all their balances in one place. But that’s just the beginning. Emma also tells you how much money you have in total across all your accounts, as well as how much debt you have, and how much money you gain or lose in total each month. It also lists all transactions and has a good stab at putting them into categories, such as shopping, transport or bills. This also means you can see at a glance how much you’re spending in each category, which is a good way to make you more aware of your spending and potentially reduce it. You can change any miscategorized spends, see a list of recurring payments, get a weekly breakdown of spending and income, and more. Of course, Emma is secure too. It uses SSL 256-bit encryption, supports fingerprint locking and doesn’t store your banking credentials. Emma is an essential app if you have accounts with more than one bank, but even if you don’t, chances are that it gives you a lot more insight into your money than your bank does. The only real downside is that it’s UK-only. Starling BankStarling Bank is more than just an app. In fact, it’s a bank account, but it’s a modern one that’s entirely app-based. That means there are no branches and there’s no web access. That could sound daunting, if the prospect of changing bank account isn’t already off-putting enough, but in fact having everything in an app keeps things simple, and there are some powerful tools here not offered by most conventional banks. For example, it has zero ATM withdrawal fees or transaction fees when using your card abroad, it lets you temporarily or permanently lock your card in-app, and you can enable or disable contactless payments, ATM withdrawals and online payments, for extra security. You can also send in-app requests to friends and family who owe you money (and who don’t need Starling themselves to pay you back), receive instant notifications for income and outgoings, and a whole lot more. As for changing your bank to take advantage of all this, well, you don’t necessarily have to. After all, there’s no real downside to having two bank accounts, but if you do decide you want to go all-in with Starling Bank that’s simple too, as there’s an account switching service that does all the hard work for you. This one’s for UK users only, but there are similar app-based banks elsewhere, such as Simple in the US. Pet Care DiaryPet Care Diary is a fairly simple but potentially very useful app for keeping track of when your pet needs feeding, cleaning, walking or whatever else. Essentially, it’s like a calendar or to-do list, where you can set up events and reminders, but they’re all focused on your pet, and if you have more than one pet you can set up individual profiles for each, where you can see every upcoming event and reminder, as well as previous ones. You can also add comments to each reminder, as well as assigning a category, such as ‘food’ or ‘veterinary care’. Pet Care Diary is probably most useful if you have a high-maintenance pet or multiple pets with their own schedules and needs, but if you ever find yourself putting pet-related things in your calendar, or forgetting to do them, then it’s definitely worth having. The core app is free, but for US$2.99/£3.99 you can unlock the pro version, which removes adverts and lets you create an unlimited number of pet profiles, among other things. Opera TouchOpera Touch is a browser that’s designed to be used with one hand, with a ‘Fast Action Button’ that’s always visible and easy to reach at the bottom of the screen. Tapping it launches you straight into a web search, where you can type or speak your query. There’s even a barcode scanner here, so you can quickly look items up online without having to type their names. Gesture controls ensure you can navigate the rest of the interface with one hand, letting you switch to recent tabs, reload or close the current page or send it to your computer. That last one is powered by Opera Flow, which lets you share links, videos and the like between your phone and computer with a single tap or click – though of course to enable this you’ll also need to be running Opera on your PC. Opera Touch is also fairly secure, with features such as an ad blocker and even cryptocurrency mining protection, which reduces the risk of malicious sites using your phone to mine cryptocurrency in the background – an act that can drain your battery or even cause your phone to overheat. There are some missing features, most notably private browsing and a desktop mode. Hopefully they’ll be added at some point, but considering Touch’s focus on simplicity, they might not. Ecosia BrowserYou probably didn’t realize that you can save the world while browsing the net, but you can make a small difference by using Ecosia Browser, which uses its ad revenue to plant trees. Ecosia has already planted over 26 million trees thanks to its users, and for roughly every 45 searches you make another one will be planted. Beyond its environmental credentials, Ecosia is also a very competent browser. It’s based on Chromium so the look and feel is a lot like that of Google Chrome, meaning it’s likely to be familiar to you. It supports tabs, private browsing and bookmarks, lets you view your history, allows autofill of forms and has various privacy controls, so you don’t have to sacrifice a feature-packed browsing experience to help the Earth. Microsoft LauncherYour phone is probably your most used device, so it’s understandable if you get a bit bored of it sometimes and want a change. Rather than buying a whole new handset you could just change your launcher, and Microsoft Launcher is one of the best around. Formerly known as Arrow Launcher, it’s been around for a while and it keeps improving, most recently thanks to the addition of Cortana, which you can activate by tapping an icon or long-pressing the home button. Cortana isn’t any better than Google Assistant (or arguably even as good), but it’s a change and you can still use Google Assistant as well. The rest of the app has a lot to offer, including loads of customizable gesture controls. For example, you can open the app drawer with a two-finger swipe up, but if you’d rather that gesture launched your favorite app, you can set it to do that instead. You can also make Microsoft Launcher your own by customizing the theme, icons and accent colors, and if you’re not feeling inspired when it comes to wallpaper then you can set it to automatically change daily. Got your old home screen exactly how you like it? Then when setting up Microsoft Launcher you can choose to import the old layout, bringing all your folders with you. There’s also a clever unified search bar on your home screen that can search both the contents of your phone and the web. For the latter it uses Bing of course, but you can’t have everything. Our favorite free Android apps for customizing and improving the security of your device. RedPapersThere are loads of wallpaper apps, but surprisingly few that will automatically cycle through designs so you can get new wallpapers on your phone without having to lift a finger. And those which do offer that service are often quite limited in terms of content. Not so with RedPapers. This app lets you pull images from any subreddit and have them set as the wallpaper for your home or lock screen. You simply type the subreddit name, pick how often you want the wallpaper to change (with a range of options from every 10 minutes to every 1 week), pick whether to sort the wallpapers by what’s hot or what’s new, and away you go. RedPapers itself is just a single screen where you select those options, so there’s not much to the app, and it’s not much of a looker in itself, but it’s really useful if you get bored of staring at the same wallpaper every day. SAFESAFE (which stands for Security Assessment Framework for Everyone) shows you at a glance how secure your Android device is, giving it several scores out of five – one for its configuration settings, one for connectivity, one for applications and one for the operating system. Higher is better and it factors in all kinds of things, including whether your SIM card is locked, to whether you allow installation from unknown sources, and whether you allow notifications to show their content on your lock screen. As well as the overall score for each category you can see a list of all these factors, with ones in red being ones that aren’t secure (in the app developer’s opinion). You can tap on each of these things for more details as well as a guide to making them secure. You probably won’t be aiming for a perfect score, especially as some things that SAFE puts in red will be intentional things that you want or need. For example, it considers location services and Bluetooth to be insecure. Still, it’s a good way to quickly and easily assess the security of your device and tighten it up if you feel the need. SAFE might even end up highlighting some vulnerabilities that you didn’t know about or hadn’t considered, which should be enough to make it worth a download. 1.1.1.1: Faster & Safer InternetIf you ever use public Wi-Fi networks, then 1.1.1.1: Faster & Safer Internet is for you. That’s because public Wi-Fi is notoriously lacking in privacy and security. There’s a chance the provider will sell your browsing data and it also allows other people – if they have the skills – to snoop on your browsing data. But 1.1.1.1 helps stop either of those things from happening by changing your DNS resolver to one managed by Cloudflare (the company that makes this app). It promises never to sell your data or use it to target adverts, and by browsing through Cloudflare you’re also hiding your data from any other potential snoopers. As an added bonus, you might even get a speed boost, as Cloudflare’s DNS resolver is the fastest public one. The app is also completely free and easy to use – there’s just a single toggle to turn 1.1.1.1 on or off. That’s it. Google Family LinkThere are various Android apps designed to help monitor or control your child’s smartphone use, but now finally one has come from a big name, specifically Google. Google Family Link is actually two apps. There’s Google Family Link for Parents, which you’d be installing on your device, and Google Family Link for Children and Teenagers, designed to be installed on the devices of family members under 13. Once both are installed and set up, you can use your device to view your child’s smartphone activity, choose which apps to allow, set screen time limits, lock their device, control in-app purchases and locate their device. Google Family Link is a useful set of tools for making sure your child isn’t accessing content they shouldn’t, using their phone when they shouldn’t, or spending money, or it can be used as more of a safety feature to locate them when they’re not with you. It’s also completely free. Signal Private MessengerPrivacy is increasingly hard to come by, especially if you live much of your life online, but Signal Private Messenger can at least ensure no one snoops on your messages. The app uses your normal phone number and address book, so as with WhatsApp, you don’t need to set up a separate account or anything, making it convenient to use. Signal is more secure than WhatsApp or most other messaging apps. Not only does it use advanced end-to-end encryption, but it’s also open source, meaning anyone can audit the code to verify how secure it is. Signal lets you set messages to delete anywhere from five seconds to one week after they’ve been seen – or you can have them remain forever if you’d prefer. The app also promises that its server never has access to your messages or any other data, plus it offers password or fingerprint protection and it’s not light on general messaging features, as it also supports group chats, voice calls and attachments. In all, it’s a decent enough messaging app that it could be a strong choice even if privacy and security are only of secondary concern. RememBearRememBear is a simple, surprisingly cute password manager full of bears. Simply add all your passwords to it, lock them behind a master password or fingerprint, and RememBear can auto-fill login forms with them so you never have to remember them or type them again. RememBear can also generate new secure passwords, so you won’t have to think them up, and the data is synced across devices, so if you don’t have your phone to hand you can access your logins from a computer or other device. You can also store credit card details, there’s end-to-end encryption and there’s a built-in browser for secure web browsing. RememBear lacks some features offered by rivals like LastPass, such as favorites, but more features are likely to be added over time. It’s also free to use on a single device, though there’s a paid version that you’ll have to upgrade to for $35.99/£32.49 per year if you want to access your account on multiple devices. ProtonVPNTwo of the main reasons for using a VPN are accessing geo-restricted content and maintaining your privacy and security online. ProtonVPN can help with both of those, and costs a lot less than most rivals. In fact, the core service is totally free, and there are no bandwidth restrictions, so you can use it as much as you want. There are no ads either, because it’s fully funded by optional paid subscriptions (starting at around $5/£3.50 per month). These unlock higher speeds, VPN servers in more countries and the ability to use ProtonVPN on more than one device. But for free you still get access to VPNs in three countries, and a whole lot more security than you’ll have without a VPN, as your activity will be encrypted and protected by Swiss privacy laws, and it won’t be logged. Norton App LockAlmost unavoidably there will be times when you have to hand your phone to someone else, be it to show them some pictures or let them make a call, but what you probably don’t want is the risk of them rummaging through your other apps. Or, equally, you might not be in the habit of handing out your phone, and not really want to have to unlock it every time you use it either, but still want security for your most sensitive apps. Either way, Norton App Lock can help, by, well, locking the apps of your choice, behind a PIN, pattern or fingerprint scan. The app itself is easy to use – just set up the security options you want, then tap the padlock next to any app you want to lock. Once done, you’ll get Norton’s lock screen whenever you (or anyone else) tries to launch the app. While Norton App Lock isn’t the only option for this it is the best we’ve come across, as it’s fast, loading the instant you tap on a secured app, rather than keeping you waiting. It’s also smart enough not to re-lock an app until you turn the screen off, and it has other handy features too, like one-tap locking of all the apps it thinks you should be securing. Our favorite free Android apps for planning a holiday, checking the weather and getting around without getting lost. PolarstepsThere are all sorts of apps designed for journaling your travels, but Polarsteps can do much of the work automatically. The app will track where you’ve been and add photos from your travels, giving you a map and gallery of all your trips, simply by having the app running in the background on your phone. You can make trips manually and add any photos it missed, but creating trips automatically means you’ll have at least a partial record of your adventures without doing anything. This might sound like it would hammer your phone’s battery, but in fact Polarsteps is designed to only use around 4% each day and it doesn’t even need to be connected to the internet, which is ideal if you’re traveling somewhere where data costs extra. You can keep your trips private or share them with friends and family, and by following people in the app you can see their journeys as they happen. Polarsteps is also nice to look at, easy to use and completely free, making it near essential for anyone who wants a visual record of their trips. OverdropOverdrop is yet another weather app, but it stands out more for its widgets than its forecasting skills. It has quite a lot of them, and many are beautifully designed, showing some combination of the weather, time, day, date and battery level. We’d be surprised if you can’t find one you like, and while some are reserved for the paid Overdrop Pro app, many are free. Beyond that, Overdrop is a perfectly accomplished weather app, with seven-day forecasts, nice animated illustrations, and information on things like cloud cover and humidity. Ventusky: Weather MapsThere’s a lot more to the weather than you’ll generally see in a typical forecast, and it can be a lot more interesting – and beautiful – than a simple temperature reading. Ventusky knows this, as it makes forecasts more engaging by including an attractive weather map and wind animation, complete with the current temperature shown on the map, so you can see exactly which areas are what temperature at a glance. Hourly forecasts let you see how the weather will change over the day and tapping on any hour or day will adjust the weather map accordingly. You can also view weekly charts of the temperature, precipitation and wind, so you can see how much it varies over time. Sunrise and sunset times are also available, so there’s a lot to sink your teeth into, but really Ventusky is all about that weather map and wind animation, which shows the motion and direction of the wind in a mesmerizing way. Facebook LocalFacebook Local is all about finding events and attractions nearby. It links to your Facebook account then shows a bunch of events listed on Facebook that are near your current or home location, or another place of your choice. Some of these will be from friends and pages that you follow, but it will also dig up other local public events, so you’re likely to discover things that you wouldn’t have found on your main Facebook feed. You can filter events and attraction by type, date, location or time, view them on a map and add them to your Facebook calendar, so it’s simple to control what you see and keep track of what you’re interested in. You can also add your phone calendar to the app, so you can see and manage everything in one place. More or less all of this stuff can be found on Facebook itself, but Facebook Local is a much more focused way to find out what’s going on around you, without all of Facebook’s many distractions, so it’s worth having on your phone even if you already have the main Facebook app. MoovitMoovit is the only app you need to navigate public transport wherever you might be in the world. Simply enter a destination and it will tell you how to get there from your current location (or you can set a different start point). Moovit will give you various route options using different forms of transport by default, but you can tell it to only include certain kinds of public transport, or to minimize walking or transfers. Select a route to see full step by step instructions or get live navigation. The app will tell you exactly where to go and even alert you when you’re nearing your stop so you don’t need to stare at your phone screen the entire journey. There are also timetables for buses and trains and you can save your favorite destinations or transit lines to quickly get directions and timetables in future. Moovit also has widgets, offline maps, and transport information for thousands of cities in over 80 countries. We weren’t kidding when we said it’s the only public transport app you’ll need. Trips by Lonely PlanetTrips by Lonely Planet is a visually beautiful way to share your travel experiences or view those shared by others. It’s essentially a journaling app designed for globetrotters. Create a new trip in the app, give it a title, subtitle and cover photo, then add your choice of photos, text and maps. Your trips can be kept private or shared publicly, you can edit them after posting, and of course you can view and favorite other people’s. There’s a slight social element in that you can follow other users, so you’ll always see any new trips they post, but mostly this is just about seeing the world from your phone and sharing your own trips with the world. Day One JournalWhile there’s still something to be said for keeping a paper journal, going digital gives you a lot more convenience, security and features, and Day One Journal is one of the best tools for the job. Having enjoyed years of popularity on iOS, it’s finally arrived on Android, bringing with it a slick interface that lets you see your journal entries by date, as a gallery of attached images, or on a map of the world with pins that take you to an entry made at each location. Making a new entry is as simple as tapping the big plus or camera icons on the main screen, depending on whether you want to start with a photo or text. Day One Journal adds the time and current weather to each entry automatically. You can also set reminders to help you get into the journaling habit, star your favorite journal entries to easily return to them, add tags, and get alerts for entries you made on this day in previous years, or at nearby locations. With optional fingerprint or passcode security, no unauthorized eyes will be able to access your memories. That’s all free, but there’s also an optional $24.99/£22.49 yearly subscription that lets you back everything up to the cloud, access your journal on multiple devices, keep multiple journals and more. It’s not cheap, but could be worthwhile if you get really into journaling. CitymapperArriving in a brand new city is always exciting but it can also be a little daunting, especially if you need to get around using public transport. Citymapper is a brilliant app that brings you real-time information on public transport for cities around the world. You can easily plan your route using all kinds of transport, from buses to ferries, and you can be kept up to date with real-time data, including any disruptions or cancellations. An essential app for any city-bound traveller. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The best free Android games 2019 Posted: 21 Feb 2019 06:36 AM PST What’s better than a free game? Pretty much nothing. Except when it’s terrible and you’ve wasted time on downloading and playing it. Fortunately, there are loads of fantastic free games for Android – and we list the very best here. Whether you’re into word games, endless runners, platformers or puzzles, there’s something here for you. Click through to the next pages to see each category or read on below for our pick of the week. And check back weekly for our latest pick. Free Android game of the week: PifflePiffle is a shooting game where you fling strings of balls at blocks, depleting their face numbers until they explode. The backstory is that the nefarious Doc Block is doing something suitably evil with the blocks, hence why you’re trying to eradicate them. Okay, that’s not the deepest of stories, but it doesn’t matter when the cartoonish action is so inviting and immediate. Flinging balls around the colorful levels is lots of fun, not least because they resemble tiny meowing cats. There’s some grind here, and you’re going to hit levels that urge you to open your wallet. In the main, though, this is a bright and breezy arcade treat, with nice surprises as you work your way to the ultimate goal of stopping the blocks – and Doc Block – for good. The best free racing games for AndroidOur favorite free Android 3D, retro, 2D and on-rails racers. Disc Drivin’ 2Disc Drivin’ 2 is the turn-based driving game which was presumably created when someone reimagined shuffleboard as Mario Kart and shoved that strange concoction online for web-based multiplayer contests. The concept of a turn-based racer is bonkers and it shouldn’t work, but it really does. As you flick your little disc about tracks suspended in space, the tension ramps up as you home in on your opponent. You will learn to master shortcuts, zip past hazards, and also how to make best use of bonus powers afforded to your little disc. It’s absurd to think that one of the best mobile racers on Android is about flicking a coin around a race track, but there we have it. Miss this one at your peril. Asphalt 9: LegendsAsphalt 9: Legends, like its predecessors, is a decidedly nitro-happy, larger-than-life take on arcade racing. It has you belt along at insane speeds, regularly soaring into the air, your car spinning and pinwheeling in a manner that’d have your car insurance company angrily tear up your policy documents. This racer also differentiates itself by streamlining controls to the point you needn’t steer. The car moves on rails, with you swiping between lanes, and timing actions like boosts and drifts. That might sound reductive, but this doesn’t detract from the racing feel, it gives you a keen sense of focus on timing, and there’s a manual option if you really want that. Being an Asphalt game, there’s some grind, but this is offset by you being immersed in the most outlandish and eye-dazzling arcade racing on Android. Asphalt Xtreme: Rally RacingAsphalt Xtreme: Rally Racing takes Asphalt off-road. It ditches its collection of sports cars and larger-than-life city circuits for jeeps and trucks – and an awful lot of mud, dirt, rocks, and grime. Another thing there’s an awful lot of is freemium mechanics. As is seemingly law for an Asphalt game, exciting racing is sadly gunked up by all manner of timers and IAP gates. But put that aside and you’ll find Xtreme an entertainingly daft addition to the series. Blasting through deserts, canyons and jungles, with your off-roader soaring into the air in a manner that’s almost certainly not covered by insurance, never really gets old. And although the basics – loads of nitro; floaty physics; crazy tracks – might be familiar, the new environments alone make this one worth a download. CarmageddonCarmageddon is a blast from the past of PC gaming. It masquerades as a racer, but often feels like you’re hunting prey – albeit while encased in a suit of speeding metal. The game’s freeform ‘arenas’ are networks of roads in a dystopian future. People and cows blithely amble about while deranged drivers smash each other to pieces. Victories come by way of completing laps, wrecking all your opponents, or mowing down every living thing in the vicinity. In the 1990s, this was shocking to the point of Carmageddon being banned in some countries. Today, the lo-fi violence seems quaint. But the game’s tongue-in-cheek humor survives, sitting nicely alongside bouncy physics, madcap sort-of-racing, and deranged cops attempting to crush you into oblivion should you cross their path. Asphalt 8: AirborneAsphalt 8: Airborne is a high-octane racer that gave a cursory glance towards realism. It then decided against bothering with such a trifling issue, and decided it’d much prefer you to pelt along at insane speeds under the power of glorious nitro, which frequently sends your car soaring into the air. Not one for the simulation crowd, then, but this racer is perfect for everyone else. The larger-than-life branched courses – hyper-real takes on real-world locations – are madcap and exciting. Rather than doing laps around a boring circuit surrounded by gravel traps, you blast through rocket launch sites, and blaze through volcanos. There are downsides – cynical IAPs and timers abound, welding a massive comedy tailfin to this otherwise sleek racer’s stylings. But for dizzying speed, mid-air barrel rolls, and loads of laughs, this racer is tough to beat. Sonic Forces: Speed BattleSonic Forces: Speed Battle reimagines Sonic The Hedgehog as an into-the-screen lane-based auto-runner. Which probably sounds a lot like Sonic Dash – but here, you battle it out against online opposition. With trap-laden courses and pick-ups you can regularly grab as you belt along, Speed Battle has hints of Mario Kart about it. Races are packed with tense moments as you unleash a fireball, in the hope of taking out a distant leader, or have the checkered flag in sight, but know your opponents are only fractions of a second behind. There is some grind – chests with timers; multiple currencies; glacially slow leveling up. But Speed Battle puts a colorful, entertaining spin on auto-runners that’s fun even if you keep your wallet firmly closed. Data WingData Wing has the appearance of a minimal top-down racer, but it’s far, far more than that. That’s not to say the racing bit isn’t great - because it is. You guide your little triangular ship around neon courses, scooting across boost pads, and scraping track edges for a bit of extra speed. But there’s something else going on here – an underlying narrative where you discover you’re, in fact, ferrying bits of data about, all under the eye of an artificially intelligent Mother. Initially, all seems well, but it soon becomes clear Mother has some electrons loose, not least when you start getting glimpses of a world beyond the silicon. With perfect touch controls, varied racing levels, a few hours of story, and plenty of replay value, Data Wing would be a bargain for a few dollarpounds. For free, it’s absurdly generous. One Tap RallyThis game does for racing what auto-runners do for platform games. One Tap Rally is controlled with a single finger, pressing on the screen to accelerate and releasing to brake, while your car steers automatically. The aim is to not hit the sides of the track, because that slows you down. Win and you move up the rankings, then playing a tougher, faster opponent. In a neat touch, said opponents are recordings of real-world attempts by other players, ranked by time. In essence, this is a digital take on slot-racing, then, without the slots. But the mix of speed and strategy, along with a decent range of tracks, makes you forget about the simplistic controls. If anything, they become a boon, shifting the focus to learning track layouts and razor-sharp timing. Top stuff. Splash CarsIn the world of Splash Cars, it appears everyone's a miserable grump apart from you. Their world is dull and grey, but your magical vehicle brings colour to anything it goes near. The police aren't happy about this and aim to bring your hue-based shenanigans to a close, by ramming your car into oblivion. There's also the tiny snag of a petrol tank that runs dry alarmingly quickly. Splash Cars therefore becomes a fun game of fleeing from the fuzz, zooming past buildings by a hair's breadth, grabbing petrol and coins carelessly left lying about, and trying to hit an amount-painted target before the timer runs out. Succeed and you go on to bigger and better locations, with increasingly powerful cars. The best free strategy games for AndroidOur favorite free Android RTS and turn-based games, board games and card games. HearthstoneHearthstone is a head-to-head card game that immerses you in a world populated by hunters, mages, warriors, and other fantasy types. Players take it in turns to try and batter their opponent’s health down to zero, playing cards that represent minions, spells and other skills. This genre is often baffling to the newcomer, but Hearthstone is an accessible and balanced game. Although IAPs lurk – cards can be bought with bling won in-game, but also by using actual cash – veterans have proved that you can blaze through the leaderboards without spending a penny. However you choose to play, this is a game that rewards those in it for the long haul. Have patience and learn its mechanics, and you may eventually become a master of this fantastical world of character and chance. The Battle of PolytopiaThe Battle of Polytopia is a turn-based game akin to a stripped-back Civilization designed specifically for one-thumb mobile play. Each game has you start with a single city, the aim being to dominate a little isometric world. You either race to be the best within 30 turns, or emerge victorious when you’re the only tribe still standing. Wisely, Polytopia focuses more on approachability than depth. The tech tree is abbreviated, stopping short of guns. The maps are small. Cities can be conquered, but you can’t found new ones with settlers. Each of these decisions helps the game flow, but despite its compact nature, Polytopia affords plenty of opportunities to strategize. That’s especially true when venturing into online multiplayer with other people – a mode open to anyone who buys one or more extra tribes. First StrikeFirst Strike is Risk with nuclear weapons. You command a nuclear power, and set about taking over the world. Mostly, this involves lobbing missiles at neighbors before invading, and researching the technology to stop your enemies turning your country into radioactive rubble. This is a sobering game. Futuristic graphics are joined by a sombre soundtrack, and clinical casualty readouts appear when a major population center is destroyed. Fittingly, victory doesn’t come with a fanfare, but the game asking: “You win?” The free version contains ads that somewhat disrupt the experience, but this is an otherwise, thoughtful take on land-grab strategy, with a message that we really don’t want to see a devastating first strike – or even a single nuclear missile launched in anger – in the real world. South Park: Phone DestroyerSouth Park: Phone Destroyer marries real-time strategy with the cartoon mayhem found in the popular TV show. If you’ve played Clash Royale, it’s a bit like that, only with swearing, juvenile jokes, and lots of cartoon cowboys and Native Americans stomping about shooting at each other. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll appreciate the entertaining single-player story with the show’s famous faces sending each other messages, and occasionally phoning you. The battles are enjoyable, too – the basics are accessible, but there’s plenty of depth for the long-term. The usual freemium monetization mars things a touch, as does enforcing online player-versus-player match wins for progression. But for the most part, you’ll be yelling RESPECT MA AUTHORITAH! until everyone in the vicinity demands you stop. Brave HandBrave Hand is a card game that starts off with a basic solitaire at its foundation, welds that to a game of ‘higher or lower’, and dispenses with the ‘lower’ bit. Your aim is to clear the table of cards, by beating the top card in any given pile. The snag is most cards start off face down. You can use a low card as a ‘scout’ that forces two cards to flip. But beyond that, it’s chance that dictates your fortunes as you dig into successive cards in a pile, hoping one won’t beat you. Despite being very reliant on luck, Brave Hand is compelling. It perhaps won’t dislodge the likes of Sage Solitaire from your home screen, but it should appeal to card game fiends who fancy something fresh. Really Bad ChessThis game flips chess on its head in brilliant fashion, by messing around with the pieces rather than the board. During your first go at Really Bad Chess, you might examine what’s in front of you and quickly come to the conclusion you have a few too many queens. Your opponent, by contrast, will have a suspicious lack of decent pieces. This is intentional. In Really Bad Chess, the AI’s capabilities never change, but the pieces do. As you improve, the setup shifts. Get really good and you’ll have to take on the computer with a pile of pawns while it attacks you with as many queens as it can feasibly get away with. For free, you also get a daily puzzle and two attempts to beat it. A $2.99/£2.89 IAP unlocks local multiplayer and removes the ads. Train Conductor WorldYou might moan about trains when you're - again - waiting for a late arrival during your daily commute, but play this game and you'll thank your lucky stars that you're not in Train Conductor World. Here, trains rocket along, and mostly towards head-on collisions. It's your job to drag out temporary bridges to avoid calamity while simultaneously sending each train to its proper destination - it's exhausting. From the off, Train Conductor World is demanding, and before long a kind of 'blink and everything will be smashed to bits' mentality pervades. For a path-finding action-puzzler - Flight Control on tracks, if you will - it's an engaging and exciting experience. Sage SolitaireHaving been mercilessly ripped off by a pretender (who cynically thanked the original's developer for "inspiration"), Sage Solitaire finally made it to Android. It rethinks solitaire for mobile, mostly by smashing it into poker. Cards are removed using poker hands, with the added complication each hand must use cards from at least two different rows. Clearing the deck and amassing points requires careful strategy and a little luck, not least given how rapidly the lower stacks empty. Win three times and you unlock Vegas mode, where you can try your luck making bets on your skills (and, in all likelihood, lose a boatload of virtual money). Regardless of the mode you favour, Sage Solitaire's one of those seemingly throwaway casual games that manages to take hold to the point of obsession. Clash RoyaleThere's always a whiff of unease on recommending a game from a developer nestled deep in the bosom of freemium gaming, but Clash Royale largely manages to be a lot of fun however much money you lob at it. The game is more or less a mash-up of card collecting and real-time strategy. Cards are used to drop units on to a single-screen playfield, and they march about and duff up enemy units, before taking on your opponent's towers. The battles are short and suited to quick on-the-go play, and although Clash Royale is designed for online scraps, you can also hone your strategies against training units if you're regularly getting pulverised. There are the usual timers and gates for upgrades, but the game largely does a good job of matching you against players of fairly similar skill levels, meaning it's usually a blast and only rarely a drag. Radiant DefenseRadiant Defense is a fantastic tower defence game, given a dazzling modern look. You do all the usual tower defence stuff like building up your weapon strengths and deciding how best to stop the endless marching enemy, with some "super weapons" to unlock and hundreds upon hundreds of waves to beat. And it all looks astonishingly pretty on a big screened device. In this age of austerity and scrimping, we've all long since sold our last set of dominoes and melted down our Monopoly counters for scrap. The best free shooting games for AndroidOur favorite free Android FPS titles, twin-stick blasters and vertically-scrolling retro shoot ’em ups. PewPewPewPew is a twin-stick blaster in the classic mold. It has no time for storylines. Instead, it dumps you in a ship, hurls countless enemies your way, tasks you with blowing them to pieces, and dresses the entire thing in gorgeous old-school neon vectors. From the off, this is a tense, exciting game. The arena you’re within is claustrophobic and frequently packed with ships and projectiles. Surviving for any length of time requires mastery of the controls, and learning how different enemies behave. But there’s depth here, too. Once you’ve suitably honed your shooty skills, you can take on a mode with giant space rocks, and a version of PewPew that removes your weapons entirely, presumably making the ships pilot really wish they’d added ‘bring a really big gun’ to their to-do list. AZ RocketsAZ Rockets is the follow-up to 99 Rockets, an insanely hard precision shooter featuring little triangular ships on rails. The aim was to blast objects as the ships moved along a pre-defined path. One miss and your game instantly ended. AZ Rockets initially seems very similar, but this time the game’s ‘merely’ hard – a timer has replaced ‘one error means game over’. Also, your targets are now letters, which when all shot often spell out a message of encouragement. You’ll probably need it, but this combination of the whimsical and tough-but-fair gameplay makes for a compelling concoction. And given the clockwork nature of the levels, this is a game you can potentially master – without being the kind of one-thumb gaming genius necessary for success in 99 Rockets. Shadowgun LegendsShadowgun Legends is a first-person shooter with tongue firmly in cheek. Set in a world where mercenaries are rock stars, and aliens are so much cannon fodder, this is a bold, brash, noisy slice of wanton arcade violence. If you’re looking for nuance, head elsewhere. The story and characters here are wafer thin. But if you’re after action, Shadowgun Legends does the business. Missions are linear in nature, challenging you to be fast and accurate. Combat is responsive and fluid, and you soon find yourself amassing a pile of cash, upgrading kit, and adding to your fame. Get good enough and your adoring fans will build a statue in your honor. It still won’t be enough to convince you this is a console-quality shooter, but this game feels perfect for mobile: streamlined, bite-sized, free-flowing, and fun. Tower FortressTower Fortress is a semi-randomized, hard-as-nails shoot ’em up. It takes place in a mysterious tower infested with strange creatures. And if you don’t ascend to the top, everyone is doomed, for some reason. Getting to the top isn’t easy. Your hero dodders about, shoots his gun, and can double-jump in a Sonic-style spin attack. Which sounds fine until you realize even the most innocuous foe can trip you up, such as seemingly-benign frogs. But then you reach the end of a section, nip into a secret area with a key, grab a power-up, and feel like a boss. Until you meet an actual boss, who’ll kick your face off. One to persevere with, then – and once your arcade thumbs are in tip-top condition, give each of the four zones a thorough blasting. Drag'n'BoomDrag'n'Boom shows that you should never encourage a teenage dragon. Here, the rebellious fire-breather zooms about minimal landscapes, belly-sliding down hills, soaring into the air, barbecuing soldiers, and generally being a menace. Fortunately, you get to be the dragon, rather than the put-upon army rather wishing it had better weapons. The game recalls Angry Birds in how you ping your dragon along, but also borrows from twin-stick shooters, Sonic the Hedgehog (super-fast tunnel bits), and even The Matrix (slo-mo as you aim). Although there’s admittedly not masses of variation across the game’s 50 levels and endless mode, it’s hard to be too critical. Drag'n'Boom looks great, and has the kind of grin-inducing breezy gameplay that’s perfect for slotting into the odd moment when you feel the need to unleash your inner dragon. Time LockerThis vertically scrolling shooter plays with convention in a manner that messes with your head. The basics are familiar – you’re dumped within a vertically scrolling environment and must shoot ALL OF THE THINGS. Occasionally, obliterated foes drop bonus items that boost your weaponry, providing the means to unleash major destruction while yelling YEEE-HAA – if that’s your sort of thing. However – and this is a big ‘however’ – everything in Time Locker only moves when you do. The temptation is to blaze ahead, due to bonus points being won for covering greater distances, and because you’re being pursued by the sole thing that doesn’t freeze when you do – an all-devouring nothingness. But careening on isn’t always a good strategy, because blundering into a single foe or projectile ends your game. Risk versus reward, then, in this fresh and great-looking blaster that dares to try something different. AirAttack 2Bad news! It turns out the Axis of Evil needs overthrowing immediately, on account of having access to a ridiculous number of planes and tanks, some of which are the size of small villages. Sadly, we've had some cutbacks, which means our air force is now, er, you. Still, we're sure you're going to love your time in AirAttack 2, cooing at gorgeous scenery shortly before bombing it, surviving bullet-hell, and puffing your chest to a thumping orchestral soundtrack. Sure, you might have to turn down the graphic effects a bit on older hardware, and it's a bit of a grind to reach later levels, but you're not going to get better freebie shooting action this side of World War III. The best free puzzle games for AndroidOur favorite free Android brain-smashers, logic tests and path-finding games. Friday the 13th: Killer PuzzleFriday the 13th: Killer Puzzle bucks the trend in Android horror games. Instead of traipsing about a rickety building that may as well hang ‘Enter to be horribly murdered!’ above the door and getting the odd jump scare, you instead face a sliding puzzler. Think Sokoban – but with buckets of cartoon gore. The aim in each level is to slide horror icon Jason Voorhees into unsuspecting campers, who are then summarily dispatched. The required pathways become increasingly convoluted; hazards and move limits also act as barriers to your desire to get all stabby. The puzzles are well designed, and the horror neatly straddles the line between icky and ridiculous. After all, it’s hard to take things seriously when your mother’s decapitated head, levitating in the corner, is offering sagely wisdom. Tiny BubblesTiny Bubbles is a mostly meditative match game set in a world of gloopy bubbles. A premium app in its previous life on iOS, it comes across intact to Android in free form, merely dropping in the odd ‘commercial break’ if you don’t fancy splashing out on IAP. The game itself is delightful, having you figure out how to match four bubbles of the same color, which then pop, ideally in an explosive chain reaction. Complications come by way of color mixing demands, troublesome bubbles to remove, and the machinations of a bubble-blowing fish. If that all sounds a bit too sedate, the game ramps things up some in the arcade mode. But however you take on this puzzler, it’s bursting with fun! Flipflop SolitaireFlipflop Solitaire is at its core spider solitaire. The aim is to remove every card from the table. Cards can be built on the tableau in rank, and in-suit sequences can be moved between columns – but Flipflop shakes things up by messing with the rules. First, it’s primarily designed for smartphones, and you get just five columns of cards. This is trickier than the standard spider layout, and so the game allows you to stack cards in both directions – enabling dizzying sequences like 9876787654543. You only have to stop stacking when you run out of space. These changes might seem paltry, but they have the effect of making almost every hand technically possible to win. Throw in endless undos and this transforms Flipflop from yet another throwaway card game into a deviously clever mobile puzzler. A Way to SlayA Way to Slay turns epic and extremely bloody sword fights into a kind of turn-based puzzle. You start each bout surrounded by angry foes with a penchant for getting all stabby and head-choppy. Double-tap on any enemy and your hero zips his way over, before painting the screen red with their insides. On making a move, your opponents also get a chance to adjust their positions – and they are vital to keep track of. For if you venture too near to anyone, it’s your innards that end up decorating the sparse landscape. The key to victory, then, rests in figuring out the combination of moves that will see you tap your way to victory, a lone survivor surrounded by a sea of corpses. Top stuff, assuming you’ve the stomach – and brains – for it. redred is a puzzle game that challenges you to make the screen go red– though given the intentionally obtuse nature of many of the 50 challenges, you might be the one turning crimson after a few hours pitting your wits against some of the more devious puzzles. It starts simply. A big red button sits in the center of the screen, inviting you to press it. Do so and a chunky red line fills part of the background. Keep pressing and soon enough the entire screen is filled. Job done. Next! Explaining any more of the game would spoil things, so you’ll just have to take our word for it that red is relentlessly inventive, frequently vexing, and something of a minimal masterpiece. AquaviasAquavias is a sedate path-finding puzzle game. The aim is to deliver water to cities, which will otherwise suffer from drought. Unfortunately, a buffoon has decided the means of moving said water is by way of elevated and fragmented aqueducts. Each section – most being a single line or quarter circle – can be individually rotated, the idea being to gradually fashion a solid path for the water to follow. Naturally, this is where you come in. Each tap rotates a piece 90 degrees clockwise. Depending on the level, you’ll either have a limited number of moves, or a rapidly draining reservoir. Over time, the complexity of the required pathways increases – notably when T-junctions enter the fray; but the game never becomes overbearing, and its pleasing visuals and soundtrack further add to the charm. Calculator: The GameCalculator: The Game is a puzzler geared towards sums, featuring a sentient, snarky calculator who’s relentlessly eager to show you its buttons. The aim in each level is simple: use whatever buttons are provided to reach a goal number, within a limited number of steps. So if you need to get to 9 and see +3 and x3 keys, that’s pretty simple. The thing is, this calculator likes playing you as much as you’re playing it. Before long, it’s gleefully adding buttons that enable you to knock digits off of your total, reverse them, or hurl numbers through portals. This one’s not your standard desktop calculator, then, but all the better for it. And it’s a surprisingly entertaining game, given that you’re ultimately doing math. CubwayOne of the more abstract games you’re likely to install on your Android device, Cubway comprises over 50 minimal scenes you traverse as a tiny red square. The aim is simply to reach a goal, but all kinds of objects block your path and respond to your presence in varying ways. You must figure out how to get past them all, despite being restricted in terms of movement – forward or backward are your only options, although you can (and will often have to) stop, move slowly, or backtrack, depending on the hazard before you. As you travel, a story of sorts is revealed, although the text reads like a strange self-help guide. Otherwise, Cubway is a success – it’s intuitive, the mechanics are fresh and clever, and the aesthetics are unfalteringly atmospheric. OutfoldedOne of the most sedate, forgiving puzzle games you’ll ever play, Outfolded also manages to do something interesting with minimal blocky environments and trundling shapes. For each of the game’s scenes, the aim is to reach a goal by ‘unfolding’ one or more shapes. Each move you make, one of the shape’s faces disappears, leaving you with whatever’s left for further turns, and you can only move in a direction if you have an intact face pointing that way. Early on, you can make all kinds of blunders and still reach the goal. But before long, the shapes become complex many-sided things reminiscent of Tetris blocks, requiring you to think carefully about the order in which their sides are unfolded and the routes you take. Mess up and you can undo as many moves as you like. Even this isn’t galling, the rewind animation being pleasing even when you’ve already watched it several times on a particularly tough level. Does Not CommuteThis superb arcade puzzler finds you directing traffic about a small town. A vehicle enters the screen, and you’re told where it needs to leave, steering it by way of directional arrows. Easy. Only, this town is afflicted with strange temporal oddness that means subsequent journeys overlap previous ones. Before long, you’re making all kinds of detours to avoid collisions with cars you’d a minute ago driven to safety, which would otherwise wipe seconds off the timer as you wait for damaged vehicles to limp towards their exit. Adding to its smarts, Does Not Commute includes a storyline with multiple characters, playing out across its varied environments. The only snag on mobile: you must complete the entire game in a single sitting. If that sounds like too much, a one-off IAP unlocks checkpoints. KerfluxIt's rare even in mobile gaming – frequently full of innovation – to find a fresh take on puzzling, but Kerflux surprises with a simple, original concept that's perfectly executed. A crunchy chip-tune plays and you're presented with three waveforms. The music dulls, as if you're underwater, and that's your signal to start manipulating two of the waveforms so they combine to form the third. Achieving this goal is straightforward, and you can initially blaze through the game's levels – even if a more leisurely pace is perhaps more rewarding. Before long, though, any complacency about Kerflux's apparent ease evaporates when additional waves appear and you're juggling four of them, trying to find the perfect combination that unlocks the next challenge. OrbitAlthough you play games, few of them are about play itself, in the sense of experimenting with a set-up or situation and seeing what happens. Orbit, though, while presenting itself as a puzzle game, is more a minimalist sandbox where you immerse yourself in the delights of creating tiny solar systems. The game is played by slingshotting celestial bodies around black holes. They then proceed to leave colored trails in their wake, while gravity does its thing. Soon, you have planets clustering together, wheeling around one or more black holes, creating minimalist modern art while they do so. It's all rather gorgeous and mesmerizing. The only snag is ads periodically wrecking the mood, although they can be eradicated with a single IAP. RGB ExpressIn RGB Express, your aim is to build up a delivery company from scratch, all by dropping off little coloured boxes at buildings of the same colour. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Only this is a puzzler that takes place on tiny islands with streets laid out in a strict grid pattern, and decidedly oddball rules regarding road use. Presumably to keep down on tarmac wear, roads are blocked the second a vehicle drives over them. Once you're past the early levels, making all your deliveries often requires fashioning convoluted snake-like paths across the entire map, not least when bridge switches come into play. Despite its cute graphics, then, RGB Express is in reality a devious and tricky puzzle game, which will have you swearing later levels simply aren't possible, before cracking one, feeling chuffed and then staring in disbelief at what follows. The best free arcade games for AndroidOur favorite free Android arcade titles, fighting games and retro fare. Don’t Trip!Don’t Trip! is an endless runner with a unique vantage point, given that it’s played from above. You plant a massive foot on the ground, aiming to avoid stepping in anything gruesome or deadly, and then twist your phone around to find free space for your other foot. There’s a great physicality about the game that comes from this oddball control method, which can only really work on a handheld touchscreen device. Also, the distinctly zoomed-in nature of the viewport quickly makes Don’t Trip! surprisingly challenging. This is especially true when you suddenly find yourself facing rooms packed full of deranged automated vacuum cleaners armed with massive spikes, knives and swinging axes. So much for robots reducing the hassle of housework… Super FowlstSuper Fowlst is the follow-up to claustrophobic high-octane avoid ’em up Fowlst. In this sequel, demons from the first game have overrun the world, and they can only be stopped by a head-butting chicken. So, yeah, this isn’t your typical arcade game. As you dart left and right, like a refugee from Flappy Bird, you must line up your arc-like paths with fire-spitting enemies, and make use of the local environment to, for example, unsportingly crush foes under massive boulders. There’s a lot to like here, including the procedurally generated stages, plentiful secrets and unlockable characters. And although we’d say the boss battles are a bit too difficult, Super Fowlst is so good you’ll keep on clucking until those giant demons are toast. Candies 'n CursesCandies 'n Curses is a great warning that when all of your friends start properly freaking out about that haunted house down the road, perhaps you should listen. Molli Pop didn’t, and now she’s stuck in tiny rooms packed with spirits, ghosts, and all manner of spooky critters. Fortunately, she can zap them with her torch. This is a speedy one-thumb affair, with you swiping to make Molli leap between platforms and change direction. Because of the claustrophobic nature of the game, you must constantly have your wits about you, to avoid life-force-depleting collisions – especially with tricky end-of-level bosses. There are only six rooms to visit, but the game’s challenge is such that it’ll take a while before you see them all. In the meantime, you’ll get plenty of fast-paced ghostbusting fun for free. Train PartyTrain Party is a collaborative or competitive game for between two and 12 players. It features a little train happily chugging along, about to have a rather nasty surprise, given that no-one’s thought to lay some tracks. You and your friends must therefore avert a derailing disaster, figuring out the best place to drop sections of track, dealing with stubborn local wildlife, and ensuring a rogue track bomber doesn’t scupper your plans with a bang. When collaborating, the train automatically heads to whoever’s device has a completed section of track; but in competitive mode, it always goes around in order. The last player to not cause an accident wins, and – presumably – is then qualified for a combined job in rail transit, zookeeping, and counter-terrorism. BaconBacon is an entertaining and lightly satirical arcade game, poking fun at food hacks. They say bacon makes everything better, and so Bacon puts that to the test, by having you flick the tasty foodstuff on to nearby foods – at least at first. You tap to drop your slice of meaty goodness into a sizzling pan. Another deft tap should be enough to flip it on to a nearby cheeseburger. Next up: pancakes. And then it all goes a bit weird. The game will ask you to put bacon in a glass of red wine, atop the Chinese character for pleasure, and – brilliantly – on Francis Bacon. The physics and controls are pitch-perfect, and some levels are surprisingly tough – but almost always very silly indeed. Sneak OpsSneak Ops is a retro-infused stealth game where every day brings a new mission. The goal is to get to the chopper by stealthily moving through an enemy compound without being spotted. The game utilises intuitive top-down gameplay - initially, you can freely scamper about the tiles, but when deeper into your mission, it’s vital to carefully time runs past cameras – and regularly use your ability to smack guards over the head. Getting to the chopper is tough, but if you don’t fancy starting from scratch on being captured, you can ‘buy’ restart points with floppy disks that litter the compounds – an odd quirk we suspect a real spy would give up their best attaché case for. Fun gameplay and a fresh daily challenge keep Sneak Ops feeling fresh. SpaceteamSpaceteam is a superb multiplayer game that deftly showcases your ability (or lack thereof) to work as part of a (space)team. With between two and eight players connected in local multiplayer, you’re informed that your spaceship is fleeing an exploding star, and you must perform actions to stave off your transport being blown up in a manner that would be a major downer for everyone on board. The snag is the controls were designed by a lunatic. They’re spread between everyone’s screens, and demands simply show up as text-based prompts, so you’ll be searching for the Dangling Shunter switch and Spectrobolt slider, while pleading with everyone to “please turn on the Eigenthrottle”. Captain Kirk never had it this tough. HeliHopperHeliHopper is a helicopter game that involves quite a lot of hopping and an awful lot of crashing. In part, this is probably because helicopters are primarily designed for zooming through the air rather than jumping around like frogs, but there you go. The aim of HeliHopper is simple: using a basic slingshot mechanism (think Angry Birds), you must direct your helicopter to another landing pad. Depending on the particular level you’re tackling, you might be able to nudge the helicopter mid-flight, collect bling, or complete several painstakingly precise ‘flights’ in a row. An ideal arcade blast for quick sessions, HeliHopper provides a set of defined missions and nine endless modes. Although if you never want to set foot in a helicopter after smashing hundreds of the things here, don’t blame us. JodeoJodeo features a cycloptic blob being put through the grinder by a sadist. A claw-like contraption lifts the jelly-like critter above an ‘experiment’ and lets go. Your aim: to move it left and right, squelching over every edge of geometric shapes lazily rotating on the screen – without falling off. With standard 2D forms, Jodeo might have been entertaining, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting. Here, you’re tackling 3D objects moving in and out of a 2D plane, along with other ‘scientific’ conditions, such as someone unhelpfully hurling meteors your way, or turning off a shape’s lines so you can’t see them. The experience is short, but it’s hard to gripe about a freebie – not least given the protagonist’s seemingly permanent expression of sheer terror. Beat StreetBeat Street is a love letter to retro brawlers, echoing the likes of classic arcade title Double Dragon. Yet here you duff up all manner of evil gang members by way of using only a single thumb. This is quite the achievement. Old-style scrolling beat ’em ups might not have had a modern-day gamepad littered with buttons and triggers, but they still had a joystick and two action buttons. Here, though, you drag to move, tap to punch, and use gestures to fire off special moves. It works wonderfully. Beat Street gradually reveals new abilities and features – not least weapon pick-ups, one of which rather unsportingly has you smack opponents over the head with what’s described as an ’80s brick. Stranger Things: The GameStranger Things: The Game re-imagines the Netflix TV show, set in 1984, as a 1980s videogame. How meta, you might think… but it works. You take on the role of gruff Officer Hopper, trying to uncover a mystery at the heart of Hawkins, Indiana. As you work your way deeper into the game, you gradually find new characters, each with individual powers that are vital for further progression. This pixelated adventure game looks the part (despite not being quite as retro as games of the period), and offers an entertaining mix of straightforward puzzling (find an object; put it somewhere specific), and gleefully punching local security forces when they get in your way. Well, it is set in the 1980s – you’re not supposed to solve mysteries with brainpower alone. iHUGUiHUGU is an arcade game that reckons everyone should get along and hug – just not too often. The bulk of the title is a quick-fire arcade memory test, where you hug each character you come across precisely once. If they’ve been hugged before, flick them by – or your game’s over. Once you’ve powered up your hug bar, iHUGU provides a brief diversion in the form of a mini-game, which can be anything from darting about and grabbing leaves, to whatever the hug equivalent of a beat ’em up is (a ‘hug fight’, apparently). The entire thing’s endearingly daft. With eight locations, 100 characters to unlock, and a character editor to create terrifyingly freaky monsters with which to hug, there’s longevity here, too. iHUGU also proves there are still new things to say in single-finger Android gaming. We hug it. Up The WallUp The Wall is suitably named given that it probably will drive you mad. It’s an autorunner with a vicious streak, but also some serious design smarts. You start out by selecting a character from the claw machine, and that determines which world you’re dropped in. You might be a rubber duck blazing along bathroom tiles, or a skull skidding through a fiery hell. The aim: get to the end of a hand-crafted level to add the character to your collection. Even the so-called ‘easy’ levels are tough, and the swipe controls are sometimes a bit iffy. But the trippy visuals, head-bobbing audio, and varied isometric worlds peppered with devious traps will keep drawing you back. Silly Sausage: Doggy DessertIn Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert, the world’s stretchiest canine finds himself trying to worm his way through a land of cake, chocolate, ice cream, and a worrying number of spikes, saw-blades, and massive bombs. Rather than walk like a normal pooch, the furry hero of this game stretches as you swipe, until his front paws can cling on to something. His bottom then snaps back into place. It’s quite the trick – but also a hazard if one end of his body ends up in danger when the other end is worryingly distant. There are 50 scenes in all, along with tricky bonus rooms to try and beat. And although some of the later bits of the game are perhaps a bit too testing, this one as a whole is a very tasty, satisfying arcade treat. Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game EverThis one’s far from the worst game ever, but it does feature an amusingly grumpy cat. It’s actually a set of simple mini-games, reminiscent of Nintendo’s WarioWare series, only here, they feature a miffed moggie that’d sooner be somewhere – anywhere – else. Each miniature challenge in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever can be understood in an instant – stamping a paw on a laser pointer by tapping the screen; firing the cat upward to secure a cardboard box of dreams; pressing shaped buttons to traverse a path and reach a fish. The variety of mini-games keeps it fresh and interesting, and the game is often smile inducing thanks to its mix of colorful art, ludicrous concepts and eternally irritated feline. The longer you survive, the faster and more demanding everything becomes. Fail and the grumpy cat scowls, but you’re also awarded coins to acquire new games by way of stickers won from a prize machine. Naturally, every one of them features the grumpy cat. Hammer BombTake an early 1990s FPS, smash it into an auto-runner, add a dash of Pac-Man, and you'd end up with Hammer Bomb. You're dumped in dank mazes and dungeons full of hideous beasts and must stomp along, finding keys, loot, weapons and the way out. Levels are randomised, adding a Roguelike quality to proceedings, and the entire game's underpinned by a levelling up system. This means XP being awarded for killing loads of monsters, rapidly finding the exit, or performing other tasks, such as completing quests (which, in a nod to Ms. Pac-Man, involves hunting down roaming foodstuff). Every few levels, you face off against a massive screen-high boss, darting towards it with whatever weapon you have to hand, before fleeing like a coward. Survive long enough and you can swap coins for upgrades. Top tip: as soon as you've 150 coins and level 3 status, grab the radar, because Hammer Bomb is much friendlier when you can spot monsters on the top-down map. The best free match games for AndroidOur favorite free Android games where you swap gems and match tiles, aiming for a high score. Six MatchSix Match is a new take on match games. Instead of swapping gems, you switch coins by having the suitably named Mr Swap-With-Coins barge past them. The twist: a number on the cuboid hero’s head denotes how many moves he has left before he freezes to the spot – six at most before he must make the next match. This twist makes for a very different match experience – one that’s far more strategic than swiping at the screen like a maniac. You can’t afford to waste moves – particularly when Six Match introduces new concepts to help and hinder. These include bombs, coin-shifting cages that assist and frustrate in equal measure, deadly skulls, and poker-style card hands that boost your score. The combination of factors proves clever and engaging, and offers scope for long-term play as you work out strategies to improve your score. Push & PopPush & Pop is a sliding tiles puzzler, with mechanics not a million miles away from Threes! (or low-rent knock-off 2048), but this is no mere clone. Instead, it builds on the basics of shifting tiles or blocks around a limited space by also borrowing ideas from Sokoban and Pac-Man, before stripping everything right back again. Play occurs on a five-by-five grid, around which you slide a cuboid. On every move, a new block appears somewhere on the grid. Arrange five into a solid line by pushing them and they disappear, freeing up space, and leaving behind gems the blocky hero can collect by eating or shoving blocks through them. Further complications are added when immovable blocks appear. Your game’s over when you become stuck. With its neon visuals and ethereal soundtrack, Push & Pop takes simple foundations and runs with them, fashioning an intriguing, engaging, and surprisingly novel title. Laps – FuseLaps – Fuse is a match-three game based around numbered discs. If three or more of the same meet, they fuse into a new disc with twice the face value. The tiny snag: you’ve limited slots to hurl discs into. The other tiny snag: the discs you hurl zoom about the edge of a circle. The other other tiny snag: you’ve only 20 laps to secure your high-score – and thereby Laps bragging rights. This isn’t a thoughtful Threes-style outing, then – more an arcade puzzler on fast-forward. You at every moment you must plan ahead, trying to set up matches and chain reactions that fling your circling disc back a little way, buying you a few seconds of extra time. It’s a tense, clever take on what’s become a tired genre. And should you master the main mode, you can unlock ‘endless’, ‘furious’ (faster), and ‘extreme’ (fewer slots – presumably for masochists). Wilful KittyWilful Kitty is a sliding tile puzzle game on a four-by-four grid. But before you yawn and assume it’s another 2048 knock-off (which itself was a Threes! knock-off), guess again. Because this game features cats. And all the things that cats really like. The twist here is a little kitty moves about the grid as you swipe, and objects that enter the grid are combined into consumables and toys. For example, milk and a bowl becomes a kitty drink, and a plate and some fish makes a hearty lunch. This shift in mechanics shakes up everything you knew about this kind of game – as does you being able to charge up a ‘satisfaction bar’ that when full unleashes a ‘Hyper Kitty Dash’, clearing a chunk of the playfield in double-quick time. It’s entertaining serving the tiny cat’s every need – and surprisingly challenging, too. Because it turns out this Wilful Kitty has bite. Age of 2048Age of 2048 is effectively a reskin of popular swipe-based tile puzzler 2048. Now, 2048 was really a low-rent knock-off of the far superior Threes! (which has its own free version), but it had the advantage of being open source, therefore opening itself up to all kinds of variations on the basic theme. In the original 2048, you swipe to slide numbered tiles about a four-by-four grid. Merged pairs then double their face value. But Age of 2048 is all about buildings. Initially, you swipe bits of rock together, until you’re fashioning tents and stone monuments. Build a ‘wonder’ – the largest building type and the equivalent of the 2048 tile in the original – and you unlock the next stage. Ultimately, Age of 2048 is still a slightly limited game, lacking the nuance and charm of Threes!. But its concept, design, and the addition of some useful power-ups, ensures it’s worth a download, and that it manages to stand out from the crowd. TopsoilWith its four-by-four grid and penchant for rapidly restricting the playfield, Topsoil comes across a bit like a horticultural Threes! There’s no sliding cards about, though – instead, you’re presented with a string of things to plant, and prod open spaces to plonk them down. After three, you get a chance to harvest – and this is where things become more complicated. You get more points for harvesting many plants at once, which requires them to be on adjacent squares. But on harvesting anything, the soil beneath is turned over. Soil cycles between blue, yellow, and green, and groups of plants cannot cross different soil colors. The net result is a clever game where you must plan ahead, and where you keep digging for strategies to last longer and discover new plants to grow and harvest. ImagoThere are a lot of Android puzzle games that involve you sliding blocks about, but Imago is one of the best, even giving Threes! a run for its money. You drag numbered tiles around a grid, merging those of the same colour and shape. On doing so, their numbers combine, but when merged groups reach a certain size, they split into smaller tiles, each retaining the score of the larger piece. Successful games require careful forward planning, with only a few moves it can be possible to ramp up scores dramatically, into the millions or even billions! The game's relative complexity is countered by a smart modes system that gradually introduces you to Imago's intricacies. There's also a Daily Flight mode that provides a regular influx of new challenges, for when the standard modes begin to pall. On Android, we noticed a few minor visual glitches here and there, but otherwise this is a must-download puzzle game that's among the best on the platform. Threes! FreeIn Threes! Free, you slide numbered cards around a tiny grid, merging pairs to increase their values and make room for new cards. Strategy comes from the cards all moving simultaneously, along with you needing to keep space free to make subsequent merges, forcing you to think ahead. On launch, it was a rare example of a new and furiously compulsive puzzle-game mechanic. Within days, it was mercilessly ripped off, free clones flooding Google Play. Now, though, you can get authentic Threes! action entirely for free, and discover why it's 2048 times better than every freebie 2048 game (personality; attention to detail; music; small elements of game design that make a big difference). You get 12 free games to start. Add groups of three more by watching a video ad. And you can always upgrade to the paid version if you get suitably hooked. BejeweledThere are loads of freebie Bejeweled knock-offs on Google Play, and so if you fancy a bit of gem-swapping, you may as well download the original. For reasons beyond us, Android owners don't get the multitude of modes available on some other platforms, but there's the original match-three 'classic', the can't-lose 'zen', and the superb 'diamond mine'. In the last of those, matches smash a hole into the ground. You're playing against the clock, and over time uncover harder rock that needs special moves to obliterate. It's a frenetic, intense experience considering this is a match-three title, although high-score chasers might cast a suspicious eye over the offer to extend the time limit by watching an advert. The best free platform games for AndroidOur favorite free Android platformers, from classic retro 2D fare to full-on console-style adventures. Turn Undead 2: Monster HunterIn stills, Turn Undead 2: Monster Hunter looks like an action-packed platform game. Its heavily armed, cloaked hero can be seen performing all manner of monster-killing feats with two massive guns that fire stakes the size of a small tree. Only Turn Undead 2 – as the name hints at – is in fact turn-based. This means you get all the trappings of a classic platform game, but within the framework of a clockwork turn-based puzzler. You get time to plan every move you make, but with the ongoing realization that you might not make it to the exit if you put a foot wrong. Arguably, it’s a little too tough at times, which can frustrate. Even so, this game’s well worth hunting down, purely because of how well the mash-up of genres works. Super Cat Tales 2Super Cat Tales 2 follows in the feline footsteps of its superb predecessor. All chunky retro-style visuals and leapy gameplay, this high-octane platformer finds a ragtag gang of moggies trying to save their world from an alien invasion. Like the original, this sequel cleverly rethinks platform game controls for the touchscreen – tapping or holding the left or right of your device’s display is all that’s required for running, leaping, wall-jumping like a furry ninja, and obliterating robot foes when you chance upon a massive yellow tank. Smartly, this time round you can switch cats on the fly, making use of each one’s special power to blaze through tricky sections, or unearth sneaky secrets. For a fiver, we’d recommend this one; for free, it’s a total no-brainer. It’s Full of SparksIt’s Full of Sparks is a speed-run platformer where sentient firecrackers must find a body of water to hurl themselves into before their fuses make them explode all over the shop. The first level is a sprint to the finish line, but the game immediately makes things more complicated. You first don some red shades, which give you a button for turning on and off chunks of red landscape. Two more colors soon join the show. As the levels increase in size, you end up with a crazed, tense dash for survival, juggling bits of landscape via delicate finger choreography that’d impress even the finest flautist. The game can be frustrating, and larger levels need quite a bit of trial and error, but this game’s charm and innovation ensures its spark won’t die for the duration. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 ClassicSonic The Hedgehog 2 arrived on consoles in 1992 and, like its predecessor, is a super-fast side-scrolling platform game. The aim is to zoom through levels, grab gold rings, and avoid the enemies and spikes liberally sprinkled about. This sequel also adds a Super Dash Attack to help Sonic obliterate foes, and 3D special stages, which recall newer Sonic fare on mobile. The game is rightly regarded as a classic, and the mobile version is a rare example of retro done well. Rather than giving you a bog-standard emulator, Sega has fully ‘remastered’ the game in widescreen, added enhancements and secrets, and provided touchscreen controls that are actually pretty good. There are obnoxious ads here and there, but they’re a small price to pay to get Sonic 2 on your Android for nothing; and if they bug you, a one-off IAP removes them forever. Cat BirdCat Bird is another in a long line of platform games where a cute protagonist has somehow found themselves in a kind of videogame hell, surrounded by danger and death. The hero is an oddball combination of cat and bird - although Cat Bird is a bit rubbish at the ‘bird’ bit, only being able to glide rather than fly. Level layouts are largely built around this ability, with the furry affront to evolution often gliding past saw blades by a hair’s breadth, before snagging keys and taunting doddering enemies. Really, it’s all very familiar territory, but the delicate pixel art is lovely, with subtle animations like Cat Bird’s twitchy ears, and tiny hopping birds in the background. Also, the level design manages to smartly make use of the hero’s flappy nature, meaning success requires the use of your brain alongside twitchy thumbs. Download it meow. (Sorry.) Flat PackFlat Pack rethinks platform games by wrapping levels around 3D shapes. The aim is to dodder or fly about, grab six sides of a golden cube, and make for the exit. But each level has its own twist, forcing you to think on your feet – or rotors if you’re careening through the air, heading for some spikes. Early on, for example, you contend with ‘flipping gravity’. This requires moving around a cubic section of level in a specific way, so you can enter from another direction. One level is two huge blocks that smash together at regular intervals, squashing slowpoke adventurers who dawdle. And it only gets more disorienting from there. This could so easily have been a gimmicky offering, but it’s the smart level design that transforms Flat Pack into a must-have freebie. Hoggy 2Hoggy 2 is a platform puzzler that feels like it’s escaped from a Nintendo console. The premise involves the evil Moon Men kidnapping the children of the blobby heroes. You must find where the kids have been hidden, somewhere inside a massive maze full of jars. Each jar houses a bite-sized challenge packed full of platforms, enemies, traps, and fruit. Eat all the fruit and you’re awarded a key. Collect enough keys to unlock new areas of the maze. The platforming bits are frequently deviously fiendish. Early levels ease you in, but you’re soon facing tests that seem impossible until you spot something crucial – a block you’d previously not noticed, or a different order in which to approach things – whereupon you feel like a genius. Should you best all 200 hand-crafted levels, you can make your own in a level editor, or take on those the Hoggy community’s created. That this all comes for free is astonishing. Download it now. Drop Wizard TowerDrop Wizard Tower is a superbly crafted love letter to classic single-screen arcade platform games like Bubble Bobble. You dart about, knocking out enemies, grabbing gems and fruit, and duffing up bosses, working your way towards a final confrontation. However, there’s a twist in that Drop Wizard Tower fuses old-school platforming with auto-running. Your little wizard never stops moving, and can only be directed left or right. And he only shoots the instant he lands on a platform. You’ll likely fight against this at first, cursing Drop Wizard Tower for straying from traditional left/right/jump/fire controls. But the game really works on mobile, and when it clicks you’ll be zooming about, stunning foes with your magic wand, and booting them away to create tumbling ‘avalanches’ of enemies. Sonic The HedgehogSonic The Hedgehog hasn’t fared as well as one-time rival Mario. Whereas Nintendo’s mascot still features in first-rate platformers, Sega’s blue hedgehog is more often mired in freemium rubbish. With Sonic The Hedgehog, though, you’re getting the original Genesis/Mega Drive classic. In fact, you’re getting more. This is no lazy emulator, but a fully remastered game, with improved performance and widescreen 60fps visuals. Although a touch fiddly at times, care’s been taken with customizable on-screen controls, and there’s gamepad controller support, too. Most importantly, the game itself remains compelling, with Sonic zooming about colorful landscapes filled with platforms, traps, gold rings, patrolling enemies, dizzying loops and tunnels, and the occasional boss. Retro-gaming’s often a disappointment, but Sonic stands the test of time. If only all old games were reworked for mobile with such care. Circle AffinityA brutal, brilliant platform game, Circle Affinity finds its protagonist in a literal take on the circles of hell – only here there are considerably more than nine. He scoots about the edge of each disc, leaps into it, and then must jump to the outer edge of the next circle, which bobs about in the air. All the while, massive teeth-like daggers close in, and demons march back and forth, waiting for you to blunder into them. Games are initially short, and Circle Affinity almost taunts you on death, as you try to master the inherently-disorienting nature. Over time, you'll begin to survive a little longer, whereupon you'll be rewarded with new eye-searing color schemes and additional play modes. Leap DayTouchscreens should be a poor fit for platform games, which typically require the kind of precision that only comes from a physical controller. This is why so many mobile titles opt for auto-running, distilling platform gaming to its core essence of timing jumps. In Leap Day, your little yellow character is tasked with getting to the top of a tall tower. You can jump, double jump and slide down walls, but that's it. You must therefore carefully leap past cartoon foes and gigantic spikes, grabbing fruit along the way. At various points on your climb are checkpoints, which can be bought with 20 fruit or by watching an ad. This means you don't have to start from scratch on coming a cropper. And when you do reach the summit, you can come back the next day for an entirely new level to try. Bean DreamsAlthough there are exceptions, traditional platform games rarely work on touchscreens. Fortunately, canny developers have rethought the genre, stripping it back to its very essence. In Bean Dreams, you help a jumping bean traverse all kinds of hazards, by sending the bouncing hatted seed left or right. Each level is cleverly designed to offer optimum paths, boosting your points tally when hitting the goal having made the fewest bounces. Timing is everything, then, but there are further challenges that reward exploration. To find the pet axolotls spread across the map, or collect all the fruit, you must use different approaches, which adds plenty of replay value. Cally's Caves 3Poor Cally. It's like she can't go for five minutes without her parents being kidnapped. It's third time unlucky for her in Cally's Caves 3, but lucky for you, because you get an excellent old-school platformer that costs nothing at all. Cally leaps about, shooting and stabbing enemies in a gleeful manner you might consider unusual for a young girl with pigtails. The game's brutal, too, with a checkpoint system that will have you gnashing teeth when you die a few steps before a restart point. But the weapon upgrade system is clever (keep shooting things to power up guns!), there are loads of items to discover, and unlike on iOS, the free Android version has several extra unlocked modes. The best free sports games for AndroidOur favorite free Android golf, football, tennis and extreme sports games. Touchgrind BMX 2Touchgrind BMX 2 is a BMX trials sports game. In other words, it’s not enough to just be fast – you also have to be a massive show-off, catapulting your bike into the air, before performing all manner of stunts. However, unlike the majority of trials games on mobile, Touchgrind eschews a side-on view for something far more tactile and ambitious. Your bike is seen from above and behind, and you’re invited to park two of your fingers on it – one on the handlebar and one on the seat. Subtle movement allows you to steer, while flicks let you perform the aforementioned stunts. Success and high scores rely on mastery of stunt combos and committing courses to memory, and then stringing together bike-based choreography that’d make your hair curl if you were to try it in the real world. Great stuff. Rowdy WrestlingRowdy Wrestling manages what some people might consider impossible: taking a sport that’s already full of spectacle and the ridiculous, and making it even more so in every conceivable way. Bouts involve absurdly bouncy physics and fighters whose arms whirl about their person. Buttons enable you to move left and right, jump, and attack, but this isn’t a game about precision and nuance. Instead, it’s a madcap free-for-all, where you feel like you’re, in terms of control, clinging on by your fingertips. Fortunately, it’s a blast. Although it can irk when you lose because your wrestler’s seemingly doing his own thing, it’s hard to stay mad at a fighting game that’s this stupid. And it moves beyond single-bout gimmickry, too, with tag-team and career modes. Score! MatchScore! Match reimagines the beautiful game (as in, soccer – or football if you’re British and the S-word sends you into apoplectic fury) as a turn-based match of wits where you draw passes and attempts at goal with a finger. The basic premise will be familiar to anyone who’s played other Score! games,, but in this one you’re not attempting to recreate history’s greatest goals. Instead, you go head-to-head against other players online, in two-minute first-to-two-goal bouts. There’s a lot of freemium gunk lurking: currencies; timers; loot boxes. Also, the AI’s wonky, and the commentary is laughable. But the underlying mechanics are great to the point none of that really matters – not least when you’re one-nil down and have only seconds to get the equalizer that will secure a penalty shoot-out. Virtua Tennis ChallengeVirtua Tennis Challenge is based on the classic tennis game that years ago once graced the Dreamcast. Although it politely doffed a sun visor in the direction of realism, the game was very much a frantic, exciting arcade outing – and that’s just as true on mobile, as you scoot about the court, trying to better your opponent with a dizzying array of well-placed lobs and electrifying super shots. Given its console origins, the game controls as well as can be expected. And that means badly if you opt for the gestural controls, which make your tennis star look like they’ve had a few gins too many before appearing on the court. But go for the on-screen D-pad and buttons, and Sega’s tennis game is a fine example of having your own little Wimbledon nestled on your smartphone. Mad Skills BMX 2Mad Skills BMX 2 is a one-on-one racing game. You pit your skills against various opponents, racing them on tracks packed full of ramps and bumpy sections designed to make you giddy as you zoom along. And this is very much a fast game. When deep into a race, the scenery blazes by in a blur as you battle to beat your opponent and take the checkered flag. It’s a true arcade experience, with two-button/one-thumb controls making racing all about track mastery and careful timing. Somehow, it often feels like a breakneck upside down Tiny Wings. And although it does eventually spray pay-to-win freemium in your face, for a good few hours this one’s wheelie good. Battle Golf OnlineBattle Golf Online is a major revamp of the original – and hugely entertaining – Battle Golf. Once again, the golf bit is stripped right back to two players whacking balls toward holes that appear from a lake. Some of these are greens with slopes to aid the ball’s progress. Others are rather more esoteric – a lighthouse with smashed-out windows; a submarine; the Loch Ness Monster with a hat. The controls are straightforward – a tap to stop an aiming arrow and another to choose your shot’s power. And that’s just as well, because this game’s more about speed than precision – and the first to five wins. Against the computer AI, this results in frenetic, entertaining battles, but the hole-in-one comes from online multiplayer, where you battle it out against real humans. Just watch out for people performing the so-called ‘pro’ shot, hitting and hoping before holes surface from the water. TouchdownersTouchdowners is, it’s fair to say, not an entirely accurate recreation of American football. Here, two three-strong teams (usually human, but sometimes skeletons or chickens), face off, their arms spinning wildly as they move. Also, the pitch appears to be a massive trampoline. If you can wrestle your bounding trio into submission, you might get a touchdown. If the other side gets one: game over. (Unless you’re in Career mode, whereupon it’s first to three – or first to five in the final.) It’s all totally stupid, but – much like Wrassling and Dunkers, by the same team – loads of raucous, breezy fun. Just expect to be a touch disappointed next time you watch a real match, and the Miami Dolphins aren’t soaring through the air, desperately fending off an attack from a team of actual sharks. Super Stickman Golf 3This third entry in the Super Stickman Golf series is perhaps feeling a bit too familiar, but the game remains the best side-on golf to be found on Android. As ever, your little stickman is charged with smacking balls about courses comprising floating islands, laser-infested bases, and space stations. You set your direction and strength, hit the ball, and hope for the best – although this time you can also add spin. Power-ups eventually enter the mix, providing opportunities to discover new ways to lower your scores. There are also two multiplayer modes – a deranged real-time race and a more sedate turn-based affair. The free version of Super Stickman Golf 3 is a little limited regarding simultaneous multiplayer games and access to new courses, but a single IAP unlocks the premium game. Pokémon GOAlthough a far cry from classic Pokémon titles, there's no getting away from the sheer impact of Pokémon GO. It's resulted in swarms of smartphone users roaming the streets and countryside, searching for tiny creatures they can only see through their screens. In all honesty, the game is simplistic: find a Pokémon, lob balls at it, amble about for a while to hatch eggs, and use your collection of critters to take over and guard virtual gyms. But despite basic combat and the game's tendency to clobber your Android's battery, it taps into the collector mentality; and it's a rare example of successfully integrating a game into the real world, getting people physically outside and - shock - interacting with each other. The best free word games for AndroidOur favorite free Android games that are all about letters, anagrams and crosswords. Alphabear 2Alphabear 2 is the sequel to TechRadar favorite Alphabear – a word game that mixes up anagrams and large furry critters. Each game takes place on a grid, and you select letters to form words. Used letters vanish and bears then fill the gaps. But if turn-based countdowns on any letters reach zero, the tiles turn to stone, scuppering gigantobear schemes. The game shakes things up a bit with timed levels, and a fairly baffling meta-game where you collect bears to unlock a bewildering array of bonuses. There’s also a smattering of educational content lurking within, giving you an excuse when someone asks if you’re wasting all your time playing games again. Well worth bear-ing in mind, then, if you’ve a hankering for a fab new set of word puzzles. Bonza Word PuzzleBonza Word Puzzle deconstructs the classic crossword. Rather than a clue for each word, you get one for the entire puzzle. Said challenge is essentially a completed crossword that’s been hacked to bits and sprayed across your screen like a cross between a Scrabble set and tetrominoes. Early levels lead you in gently. When there are only a few pieces to manipulate, it’s not much trouble to complete the puzzle before you. But when you’re staring at a dozen or more tiny clusters of letters, figuring out how they all join up is an invigorating test. Bonza does have IAP for level packs, but you get a decent selection for free. Even better: every day, you receive a new puzzle, giving the game reason to stick around on your device for the long term. Dropwords 2Dropwords 2 brings together Boggle and Bejeweled. You sit before a five-by-five grid of letters while a timer ticks down. When you spot a word that snakes through the board, you tap it out from start to end. Submit your word and its letters vanish; gravity then has its brief moment of glory, bringing in new letters for you to use. Like in timed Bejeweled modes, fast matches are the key to high scores. However, keeping your timer bar full doesn’t just require rapidly submitting words, but also finding longer ones that’ll give you an extra second or two. If that all seems a bit stressful, there are more relaxing modes too. And the app rather neatly provides a slew of other customization options, from larger boards to alternate typefaces – just as well, given the default Chalkboard that whiffs of Comic Sans. Jumbline 2Jumbline 2 is one for anagram fiends. Its main mode starts life as a row of scrambled letters, and a bunch of empty slots awaiting any words you find. Against the clock (which is surprisingly tense and exciting), or in a more relaxed timer-free mode, you drag to rearrange letters, and then draw a line beneath relevant ones to send a word to its slot. Get them all to try the next level. There are two additional modes as well. Cloud Pop has you fashion words from letters found within clouds, using them before they vanish from the screen, but Star Tower is better, having you create the floors of a tower as it gradually scrolls downwards. Longer words make for taller floors, gaining you precious extra seconds to get your brain in gear and think of something suitably amazing with your next set of letters. LetterpressLetterpress combines the anagrams of Boggle with the territory capturing of Risk. Two players take part in a turn-based battle on a five-by-five grid of letters. Any letters used in your word turn your color – but there’s a twist: those surrounded by your tiles cannot be captured by the other player during their turn. Strategy within Letterpress is therefore not just about finding the biggest words – and certainly not if its tiles are spread about the board. You must instead cunningly eat into your opponent’s territory while safeguarding your own. Battles become like an intense tug of war, ramping up the excitement and providing the kind of edge not usually found in word games. SpellspireSpellspire finds you as a crotchety wizard, trying to climb a tower. The snag is that heavily armed monsters want to stop you. This might not sound like the premise for a typical word game, but Spellspire adds a bit of magic to the anagrams mix. On each floor, you get 10 letters to juggle and form into words that become fuel for spells. Short words only unleash a smallish magical blast, but longer words give your foes a serious kicking. Perform well on your quests and you’ll over time acquire new bling, with which to take on tougher floors. There’s a bit of grind – you’ll need to replay levels to get enough clout to duff up even the earliest boss – but Spellspire is always fun, and you’ll smile from ear to ear once you start walloping foes with seven-letter words. AlphabearAlphabear has you spell out words by selecting them on a grid, but there’s a twist: use letters that are adjacent to each other and bears fill the space. As you remove letters around them, the bears continue to expand. At the same time, you’ll notice countdowns on each of the letter tiles – when they reach zero, they turn to immovable stone, potentially scuppering any gigantobear schemes you had in mind. When your game’s done, you’ll be given a score and probably also a bear, which can act as a power-up in subsequent games. Frankly, this bit doesn’t quite click, given the bewildering array of bonuses on offer, and the rather overt nudge towards IAP to wake up tired bears. Otherwise, this one’s a furry good word game that’s well worth bear-ing in mind. TypeshiftTypeshift rethinks anagrams, word searches and crosswords. Each puzzle comprises columns of letters you can drag up and down, the aim being to make a complete word in the central row. When you do so, the word’s letters change color. To complete the puzzle, you must color all of the letters. Although completing puzzles at speed rewards you with higher scores on the leaderboard, such aspects to Typeshift are largely hidden. This is mostly a lean-back game to relax with, but should you hanker for an additional layer of brain-smashing, you can try cracking crossword-style puzzles where you match words to set clues. It’s worth noting that Typeshift’s puzzles are hand-crafted, not algorithmically generated, so they do run out - and only some of them are free. Still, there’s always a daily puzzle to try your hand (or your best swiping finger) at. ScrabbleYes, the proper Scrabble, not some copyright-infringing clone that'll be pulled by the time you read these words. EA bought the license, tidied it up and stuck it out on Android, where it's a remarkably advert and in-app purchase free experience. It's been beefed up with a few new modes, but stuff like the ability to sync with Facebook and play multiple matches is actually exactly what you need. A classic that's not been ruined. Hooray. The best free endless runners for AndroidOur favorite free Android games where you run, hop, drive or pinball towards a high score – or an abrupt end. Transformers Bumblebee OverdriveTransformers Bumblebee Overdrive is a fast-paced one-thumb arcade game, which has you direct a lone heroic Autobot to blow up a seemingly endless number of evil Decepticon bases. True to Transformers lore, your character gets to transform from vehicle to robot and back a fair bit. He starts off as a car, barreling along in gameplay that echoes arcade classic Spy Hunter. On reaching a Decepticon base, he transforms and starts blasting, dodging laser fire and explosions. With enough points, he can take on a big boss. Given its freemium underpinnings, there’s grind lurking within, but Bumblebee Overdrive is fun from the off, has smart level design, and offers varied boss battles that force you to quickly spot attack patterns – or Bumblebee gets very rapidly transformed into a pile of scrap. PAKO ForeverPAKO Forever is the third entry in a car chase series gradually leaving behind all semblance of reality. If its predecessors were a bit odd at times, Forever is decidedly nutty. It dumps you in the world’s largest car park, with a seemingly unlimited number of cop cars out for the kill. If you’re rammed just once, your game is over. Initially, that will take mere seconds. But you soon figure out how to drift and snake around obstacles to eke out some extra seconds. At that point, you can start collecting temporary bonus weapons, or chancing upon bizarre ‘events’ like UFOs and volcanic eruptions. The game’s a touch crude, and should arguably be more forgiving; but for a quick blast of high-octane racing survival, it hits the spot. Alto’s OdysseyAlto’s Odyssey finds the titular board-obsessed protagonist move from the snowy slopes of Alto’s Adventure to sandy dunes. Again, he’s on an endless journey, zooming through eye-dazzling scenery, and regularly flinging himself into the air for the odd bit of show-off and score-chasing stunt work. The game starts off very similar to its predecessor, to the point it might feel like you’re just getting new visuals. You prod the screen to leap, hold to somersault, and must regularly clear massive ravines. You still get chased, too, albeit by rabid wildlife rather than angry elders. But soon you discover new places to explore, and novel ideas like the ability to wall ride. And if working your way through the game’s increasingly tough achievements gets too stressful, there’s a chill-out risk-free ‘Zen’ mode that’s just you, an endless desert, and some moody music. Bendy in Nightmare RunBendy in Nightmare Run is an auto-runner set in a world of deranged 1920s black-and-white cartoons, seemingly from a place where such creative endeavors are designed to terrify rather than entertain. You spend your time running out of the screen, fleeing from some kind of hideous monstrosity with massive and very sharp teeth, and whatever minions it spews your way. You must swipe between lanes to avoid getting clobbered, and occasionally pick up weapons you can lob behind you, giving your pursuer a taste of its own medicine. This game is no pushover. The battles become increasingly tough, with careful timing and deft swiping required if you’re to have any chance of survival. But the unusual viewpoint and superb aesthetics make Bendy very much worth a download, even if the core gameplay is ultimately rather familiar. Will HeroWill Hero is a superb, daft, frenetic one-thumb platform game featuring a bunch of squares. Perhaps it’s easier to animate such creatures, but a lack of torsos and limbs hasn’t made Will and his enemies any less violent. Instead, they’re intent on hacking each other to pieces. Initially, you largely spend your time prodding the screen to move forward and attempting to jump on bouncing enemy heads, like a simplified geometric Mario. But grab a chest and all bets are off. You might find a massive sword or missiles within. Will Hero then becomes a blast – a glorious minute or two of gore and destruction, before you lose your concentration for a moment and are sliced in half by an inconveniently placed and surprisingly dangerous windmill. This one’s great – install it immediately. Power Hover: CruisePower Hover: Cruise is a spin-off from futuristic hoverboarding game Power Hover. Whereas that game mostly featured heavily choreographed levels punctuated by the odd boss battle, this one’s all about endless challenges that involve the robot protagonist eventually becoming a pile of scrap metal. The journey, though, is wonderful. Several of Power Hover: Cruise’s modes could lay claim to being among the best endless runners on Android, and you get over half a dozen here, each with its own distinct feel, hazards and challenges. As you arc across the screen, learning to master the board’s heavy inertia, you’ll be thrilled when dodging dancing lasers inside a pyramid by a hair’s breadth, whirling around a track snaking through the sky, and avoiding projectiles hurled your way by a psychotic monster living deep in an underground tunnel – and who everyone probably should have left alone. Glitch DashGlitch Dash is a premium auto-runner. It’s also really, really hard. It essentially dumps you in an abstract world of checkerboard corridors peppered with traps. You must swipe to dodge, leap and slide, avoiding walls, laser grids, and massive scythes that some nutcase has left swinging from above. The high-octane gameplay is augmented by an intense electronic soundtrack that broadly matches the moves you must make in order to survive. And unlike the majority of entries in this genre, Glitch Dash’s levels are hand-crafted. This means when you fail (and you will – often, and sometimes when tantalizingly close to your goal), it’s down to your lack of mastery and an inability to make your thumbs do what you want them to. But you’ll try again right away. After all, you’re not going to let a game beat you. HoppenhelmHoppenhelm has an air of the familiar with its chunky pixelated graphics and tap-to-move mechanics, but this mix of twitch gaming, one-thumb action and arcade fare turns out to be surprisingly compelling and a little bit different. The backstory finds the titular knight lost in dungeons that are filling with lava. With each step he takes, the lava drops back a touch – but you can’t simply hammer the walk button and escape a fiery death because the dungeons are packed full of hazards and monsters. This is where the other two buttons come in. The sword is used to kill enemies, and the shield can protect from fireballs. Because Hoppenhelm is played at speed, the result is a thrilling combination of fast reactions, timing, prioritization, and swearing at your thumbs when the knight is devoured by a goofy floating head. InfiniroomInfiniroom is Canabalt in a box, infused with the sadistic nature of Super Hexagon. You prod the screen to make the auto-running protagonist leap to avoid electrified boxes that appear from every surface of a room you’re trapped in. And like a certain superhero, he happily runs up any wall he reaches, then along the ceiling and back down again. It’s dizzying and chaotic, but Infiniroom further ramps up the tension by continually chopping and changing the play field. At any moment, you may get a second’s warning before a chunk of space disappears (don’t be there when it does), or a new area opens up. And then the game starts gleefully lobbing saw blades and lasers at you. Not a relaxing game, then, but one you’ll want to play again and again. And given how short Infiniroom games are, you can pack plenty into the shortest break. Flipping LegendFlipping Legend is a demanding endless runner smashed into an RPG-like upgrade system. The protagonist embarks on an orgy of destruction atop a chessboard-like pathway, and can only leap diagonally. This initially makes your head spin, not least because the path is a wraparound one. This means if you leap off of its left-hand side, you reappear on the right – something you frequently have to make use of, to avoid the many hazards in your way. To further complicate matters, your health bar drains at an alarming rate, and only refills when you biff enemies. Grab enough bling and you can unlock power-ups for taking out multiple foes. With an energetic soundtrack, a bunch of alternate characters, and a very smart chunky art style, Flipping Legend shows there’s still life left in endless runners (albeit as the hero is busy killing everything in this one). Binary DashZero points for innovation in Binary Dash, which is another side-scrolling auto-runner where you tap to jump, and tap somewhere else to flip upside-down. But many points for the combination of super-fast gameplay, superb level design, and a visual aesthetic that thumbs its nose at the modern-day penchant for mid-80s pixel art, instead hurling you back to the lurid charms of late 1970s gaming. Yes, Binary Dash more looks like it’s been vomited out of an ancient Atari console, but it nonetheless has a quirky charm. And the game itself is great. It eases you in gently, helping you get to grips with flipping above and below the horizon, thus turning game-ending pillars into pits to leap over when you’re upside-down. Before long, though, your thumbs will be seriously challenged by the tight choreography required to jump and flip your way to the ends of later levels. Sky DancerYet another into-the-screen endless runner, channeling Temple Run. Yawn. Only Sky Dancer has a certain something that keeps you playing – and that certain something is leaving your stomach in your throat every time you jump. Much of this is down to the construction of Sky Dancer’s world, which comprises tiny chunks of land hanging in the air in a manner that rocks usually don’t have. As you hurl yourself off the edge of one, you must quickly maneuver to land on a platform below. Battling gravity and inertia is exhilarating, especially when the game speeds up and you know the slightest miscalculation will result in you meeting a splattery end on the desert floor. PinOutPinball infused with the DNA of an against-the-clock endless runner sounds like an odd combination – but it works. In PinOut’s neon world – featuring a gorgeous electro soundtrack – a massive table stretches far into the distance. Within: dozens of miniature tables comprising flippers, ramps, and more than a few traps. The basic aim at every turn is to keep moving forward to the next mini-table – and quickly. Accurate ramp shots are key, and so mastering the game’s physics and the layout of its various stages is essential. For advocates, this is a fresh take on pinball that works brilliantly in mobile form. And for newcomers, PinOut is freed from the frequently arcane rules of pinball, but loses none of its frenetic excitement. PolywarpComing across like Super Hexagon got infatuated with polygons, Polywarp is a brutally difficult arcade experience that’s also maddeningly compulsive. The basics are simple: your polygon sits at the center of the screen, and walls close in from the edges. By tapping the left or right-hand side of the screen, respectively, you reduce or increase your polygon’s edge count, to match the next shape that’s aiming to crush you. Everything moves at speed and whirls about, like you’re playing in a washing machine packed with an endless number of lurid shapes. Initially, Polywarp feels impossible, but you soon recognize patterns to commit to memory and master. Last 60 seconds and you’ll feel like a champ – until you realize a new, tougher mode’s waiting to humiliate your thumbs. Cubed Rally WorldMore or less an auto-runner on a five-lane road, Cubed Rally World is all about belting along, steering left and right to avoid anything in your path. Survive long enough in this isometric landscape and you hit the checkered flag, where cube-oriented fame and fortune awaits. But things get really interesting when you grab coins en-route and start buying new vehicles on the game’s home screen. Each vehicle shakes up the visuals and the manner in which you race - the dune buggy, for example, can leap majestically over sandy hills where the UFO bothers farmyard cows to add some variety into a older game format. More importantly, for every vehicle you buy, a new track section is added to the rally, the vehicle you control automatically switching when you reach that point. Amass a suitably large collection and there’s the potential for colossal scores – but completing the rally becomes significantly harder, which helps prolong longetivity. Magic Touch: Wizard for HireEven now, years after Android proved itself as a major gaming platform, some developers seem to barely remember the touchscreen exists. If you reckon trudging through games with virtual D-pads and buttons can be a chore, Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire will be a little slice of magic. You’re a wizard, defending a castle from interlopers attached to balloons. Cast spells by scribbling gestures to match symbols on the balloons and said flotation devices explode – much to the surprise of their owners, who then rapidly plummet towards a squishy end. Miss just one of them and your wizarding days are done. From the off, this is a fresh, frantic survival game, especially when trying your hand at the super-fast extreme mode. Stick around for long enough and you’ll be able to utilize super spells too, turning enemies into frogs, and summoning a dragon. Which we all need to do on the odd Thursday here and there. Disney Crossy RoadWe're big fans of Crossy Road, which is both a lesson in how to update a classic arcade game (Frogger), and create a free-to-play business model that isn't hateful. (In short, throw free coins at players, don't make anything pay to win, and add loads of tempting but entirely optional characters to buy.) With Disney Crossy Road, anything could have happened, but this is far from a cheap cash-in. Sure, it starts off very much like Crossy Road - just starring Mickey Mouse. But unlock a few characters (you'll have at least three within ten minutes) and you suddenly find yourself immersed in chunky takes on famous movies, such as Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph, and The Lion King. Even better, these aren't mere skins on the original. Each world has unique features, from tiny graphical details that will thrill fans, through to subtle shifts in how the game is played that force you to dramatically change your approach. Alto's AdventureYou might think there's little new in Alto's Adventure, which is essentially endless leapy game Canabalt on ice. But refined visuals best even Monument Valley, with an eye-popping day/night cycle and gorgeous weather effects; additionally, there's a delightful soundtrack, and a kind of effortless elegance that permeates throughout, propelling Alto's Adventure beyond its contemporaries. Ostensibly, Alto's Adventure is a game about collecting escaped llamas, but mostly Alto is keen on mucking about on snowy slopes. You zoom down hills, catapult yourself into the air, and try to somersault before face-planting. Extra challenge arrives in the form of chaining stunts to increase your speed, and outrunning elders, angry you're having fun rather than sitting in a stinky llama pen. Rust BucketIn Rust Bucket, a cartoon helmet with a sword dodders about a vibrant dungeon, offing all manner of cute but deadly adversaries — skittering skulls, angry armoured pigs, and spooky ghosts. This is a turn-based affair, echoing classic RPGs, but its endless dungeon and savage nature transform it into a puzzle game perfect for quickfire mobile sessions. You must learn how foes move and react, plan every step and always keep in mind a single error can spell doom. In its current incarnation, Rust Bucket cleverly balances enough depth to keep you coming back with the brevity that makes it ideal for on-the-go roguelike larks. Future plans include finite puzzle modes and expanded endless content. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Samsung Galaxy Fit release date, price, news and features Posted: 21 Feb 2019 06:31 AM PST The Samsung Galaxy Fit has now been announced alongside the smaller, lower-end Galaxy Fit E. It doesn't look like this is set to be the Samsung Gear Fit 2 Pro sequel we had all expected though. Both are far cheaper devices with less premium looking designs than Samsung's last fitness tracker. The company announced the new trackers alongside the Galaxy Watch Active and Galaxy S10 family. Below we'll run you through all of the details you need to know about both the Galaxy Fit and Fit E.
Cut to the chase
Samsung Galaxy Fit release date and priceAn exact release date for the Samsung Galaxy Fit has yet to be unveiled, but the company has said it hopes to bring the tracker to market at some point during Q2. Previous rumors have suggested a May 21 release date in the US, but we can't confirm that yet. For the price, we know it's set to cost $99 / £89 but we don't currently have information for Australia. The Galaxy Fit E meanwhile is set to cost $35 / £35, but we don't know pricing for Australia yet. Samsung Galaxy Fit design and displayImage Credit: Samsung The Samsung Galaxy Fit is a far less premium looking fitness tracker than the Gear Fit 2 Pro, but it sports a 0.95-inch Full Color AMOLED display with a resolution of 120 x 240. That's 282 pixels per inch, and should offer a clearer picture than a lot of other fitness trackers with black and white displays. The Galaxy Fit E's screen is a lot less impressive, with a 0.74-inch black and white PMOLED display and a resolution of 64 x 128. That's 193 pixels per inch. Both trackers come in black, while the Galaxy Fit also comes in a silver shade. The Fit E is available in both white and Canary Yellow, which should be suitable for you if you're after a bolder design. These have similar designs to other fitness bands, with thin straps and they're lightweight too. The Galaxy Fit is only 24g even with the silicone strap while the Fit E is 15g with its strap included. The Galaxy Fit is 18.3 x 44.6 x 11.2mm while the Fit E is a bit smaller in every way at 16 x 40.2 x 10.9mm. If you're looking for a lightweight and easy to wear fitness tracker, these are sure to be suitable for you. Both trackers are also waterproof up to 50 meters, allowing you to take them in the pool without having to worry about frying them. Samsung Galaxy Fit fitnessImage Credit: Samsung Fitness is likely the reason you're looking at this health band, and Samsung has packed it full of basic features. Both are capable of step-tracking and will automatically monitor your movements so they'll know when you've started a walk, run or bike ride. The Galaxy Fit range can also track general dynamic workouts, but they don't come with the sizable selection of automatic exercises that you'll find on the Galaxy Watch Active. Instead, you'll find 90 different types of workout within the Samsung Health app that you'll have to manually select before you start them. Samsung has also said there are both sleep analysis and smart stress management features on both trackers, but we've yet to learn exactly what they'll be able to do. Both trackers feature heart rate monitors - although we don't know what type of tech is being used here - but only the Galaxy Fit features a gyroscope. The Galaxy Fit features a heart rate tracker, but you won't get that if you opt for the Fit E. Neither of these come with GPS either, and there's no clarification on whether the Fit will include Connected GPS features. Samsung Galaxy Fit specsImage Credit: Samsung Samsung has retooled its software for the new trackers with a new design called Realtime OS, which the company believes is more intuitive. According to Samsung, the new design is "simple and intuitive". The chipset inside the Galaxy Fit is an MCU Cortex M33F 96MHz. We don't currently know what sort of power it will provide, but it's sure to power the tracker well enough to run basic services. The Galaxy Fit E has an MCU Cortex M0 96MHz. Samsung has also included a small amount of storage on the Galaxy Fit and Fit E, but this won't be for your own use so you won't be able to play music through these. The Galaxy Fit charges wirelessly and has a 120mAh cell inside that the company expects to last for "around a week". The cell inside the Fit E is a 70mAh one and the company also expects that to last for around a week.
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| The best PS4 Pro prices, deals and bundles in February 2019 Posted: 21 Feb 2019 06:20 AM PST So you're thinking about PS4 Pro deals or maybe a bundle? Well we can most certainly help you out there as we're always checking out the latest sales. Maybe you're upgrading from your older PS4 so you can dive into 4K gaming. Or maybe you've never had a PS4 and are thinking you may as well start with the best. All solid choices, especially if you're already set with a 4K TV, even better if it has HDR too. There are some fantastic-looking games out now to really make a PS4 Pro shine; Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, God of War, Detroit: Become Human are all serious lookers and jaws are bound to drop further when The Last of Us Part 2 sneaks onto our 4K TVs later this year. You'll find all of the latest and best PS4 Pro prices from the big name stores in our comparison chart below. There's not too much difference in price between retailers at this time of year, but we're constantly on the lookout for the latest deals and bundles. Looking to buy in Australia? You'll want to take a look at our AU page. If you'd prefer a standard PS4, then check out our PS4 bundles (USA) or PS4 deals (UK) pages. Don't forget to top up your subscription with one of our discounted PlayStation Plus deals too. So keep this page bookmarked to stay informed of the latest PS4 Pro bundles when they arrive. If you're looking for more information on the PS4 Pro, take a look at our handy Q&A below the bundles. PS4 Pro bundle deals (USA)Worthwhile PS4 Pro bundles have been pretty much non-existent in the US for the last few months. The PS4 Pro on its own has seemingly sold out at the regular $399 price, meaning we've only seen units for sale via third-party sellers on sites like Amazon/Walmart for prices often at least $40 more than usual. This long after release, we're not cool with that you shouldn't be either. As a bare minimum, you want at least one game with the console for $399, ideally less in the next few months. The only decent PS4 Pro bundle today is the Read Dead Redemption 2 one we've just added below, don't expect stock to last long on this one though. PS4 Pro bundle deals (UK)Need an extra controller on the cheap? Take a look at the best DualShock 4 deals. We also have a guide to the best PlayStation VR deals too. Cheap PlayStation Plus dealsIf you're buying a PS4 Pro, you'll probably need a cheap PlayStation Plus deal too. PlayStation Plus (aka PS Plus or PS+) allows you to play PS4 games online, along with access to the Instant Game Collection, a bunch of free games for PS4, PS3 and Vita each month. The default price for a year is £40. We've shopped around for you though and found a range of prices. So check out our guide of you want the best PlayStation Plus deals. What is the PS4 Pro?Essentially, the PS4 Pro is an upgrade of the PS4, rather than a 'next-gen' console. The keywords to take in from the PS4 Pro are 4K and HDR. The new machine will allow game developers to include 4K options in their games, so expect the like of Uncharted 4, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Days Gone, Horizon: Zero Dawn and more to look even better on a 4K TV. HDR, or High Dynamic Range is the other buzzword to be excited about as the PS4 Pro will allow for extra detail to be seen on a range of games and also a wider range of colors not usually displayed by traditional HD TVs. Will my old PS4 games work on PS4 Pro?Absolutely. If you're planning on upgrading to a PS4 Pro from an older PS4, all of your games will still work. Not every title will be patched to take advantage of the new 4K/HDR capabilities, but the default upscaling (if you have a 4K TV) will more than likely see some improvement to the visuals and the improved console power may give the frame-rate a boost on some titles. What else can I watch in 4K/HDR on PS4 Pro?The PS4 Pro is compatible with 4K and HDR, and the content options for both are increasing all the time on services like YouTube and Netflix. Amazon Prime video is yet to be updated for 4K content though. Does the PS4 Pro support 4K Blu-rays?No. This was a surprise if we're honest, especially as both the Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles do. It's a bit of a gamble for Sony, but at the same time, 4K Blu-rays are very expensive for now and many consumers look to digital services to provide their 4K movies and TV content instead. Do I need a 4K TV to run a PS4 Pro?No, the PS4 Pro will still work on a regular 1080p TV, you won't get the benefits of upscaling or HDR though. You may see a slim amount of extra detail, or frame-rate boost, but we wouldn't expect a massive leap. If you are thinking of buying a 4K TV soon, then it's probably a good idea to splash out on the PS4 Pro instead of the regular or new PS4 Slim as it'll future proof you for a while. Be sure to look out for a TV that supports HDR too, in order to take full advantage of the PS4 Pro's capabilities. Will PlayStation VR be better on the PS4 Pro?Early reports say yes. The PlayStation VR frame-rate is better on PS4 Pro and the resolution gets a bit of a bump too. PlayStation VR will certainly work on the older PS4s, you don't need a PS4 Pro to get involved there. Does the PS4 Pro have optical audio support?Yes! The optical audio output has been removed from the PS4 Slim though, which is a massive shame. PS4 Pro owners though will still be able to use optical connections for their soundbars and sound systems. What are the best games on PS4 Pro?We've dived through our back catalogue of PS4 games that have received a PS4 Pro update patch to see which ones look the best and have a noticeable difference. Take a look at our extensive feature - The best PS4 Pro games. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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