Apple : Google Assistant can now make restaurant reservations in 43 states

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• Google Assistant can now make restaurant reservations in 43 states
• Sonos One is getting an upgrade – but it's not as exciting as you think
• Entry-level Surface Book 2 may receive quad-core power boost
• Best home security systems of 2019
• Google launches new AI hardware development tools
• Human error still a major security risk
• Five Eyes "needs major 5G vendor"
• March Madness TV deal: the TCL 55-inch 4K Roku TV is $220 off at Amazon
• Nintendo tells mobile partners to rein in micro-transactions
• Best stereo speakers: the best bookshelf, floor and Hi-Fi speakers in 2019
• How to make a robot with a real personality
• Denon unveils travel-friendly noise-cancelling headphones
• Sensor sizes explained: what you need to know
• Fitbit CEO confirms it'll make an Ionic 2, but it won't be launching soon
• BT uses LPWAN IoT to connect smart water network
• Barclays combines bPay and Pingit contactless services
• 3 barriers to cloud adoption for SMBs and why they shouldn’t matter
• The best Android apps to download in 2019
• OLED vs LCD vs LED: which TV technology should earn a place in your living room?
• Best Fitbit 2019: which is right for you?

Google Assistant can now make restaurant reservations in 43 states Posted: 06 Mar 2019 01:50 PM PST The Google Assistant feature built on Duplex tech that makes restaurant reservation calls for you is expanding. Now you’ll be able to use it in 43 US states and, in the coming weeks, it’s expanding to non-Pixel Android and iOS devices, as per a Google blog post. Sure, the feature’s current capability is more of a cute trick (and lovely for those of us who hate speaking to other humans over the phone), but it represents the first possibilities of what Google’s Duplex technology can do: interface with other humans on our behalf, whether it’s making inquiries or using Google Assistant as a more complex secretary to phone out requests. That’s all in the future. For now, it’s exciting that this tech is finally coming to more users, especially to those who don’t have Pixel phones. Our list of the best Android phones out there Could Duplex come to the long-rumored Google Pixel Watch? Here's all we know Missed MWC 2019? Here's everything we saw Duplex possibilities When Google debuted Duplex tech at Google IO 2018, the feature – again, simply live-demonstrating its ability to make phone reservations – wowed the crowd. Not just by doing a menial task, but by imitating human speech idiosyncrasies on the fly, inserting “umm” and “yeah” like American English speakers are wont to do. At the event, we tried to put Duplex through its paces by throwing it curveball questions, and while we didn’t succeed in tricking the vocal Assistant feature, we did understand a bit more about its limits... or, rather, how tricky it was to find them. Google claimed then that its Duplex tech made accurate requests 80% of the time, and it’s only improved since then. Google introduced Duplex to Pixel owners in select cities back in November, and in a stroke, it’s now available to most of the US, expanding to users in Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, and Texas, as you can read on the features' FAQ page here.  It's a good bet Duplex is coming to the Samsung Galaxy S10, the latest Android flagship Via Android Police This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Sonos One is getting an upgrade – but it's not as exciting as you think Posted: 06 Mar 2019 01:05 PM PST Sonos One is getting an upgrade this week ... but it's not worth tossing out your old speaker for.  According to Sonos, the second-generation Sonos One will feature a few new improvements like an updated processor and increased memory, but it will still look and act a lot like its predecessor. To that end, a Sonos representative confirmed that there would be no difference to how the speaker functions or looks.  These are the best stereo speakers in 2019 Denon has three new noise-cancelling headphones for 2019 Here's our list of the best Bluetooth speakers Why upgrade at all then? Sonos has noted that a lack of memory and processing power prevented some of its oldest speakers from receiving the AirPlay 2 update that came to the Sonos One and Sonos Beam. There’s potential that this could eventually happen to the Sonos One, where the 2nd generation speaker might receive an update and the first will not, but that's unlikely to happen any time soon. In fact, Sonos explicitly stated in an email that “the original Sonos One will continue to be supported through regular updates." Apparently, this upgrade is more about future-proofing the speaker more than anything else. Sonos One (Gen. 1) at a discount  The second part of today’s news is that Sonos will drop the price of the Gen. 1 speaker as it transitions to the updated hardware, which means you can expect to see the original Sonos One on sale for around $179 (£179) while Gen. 2 picks up the previous price tag of $199 (£199). Interested in buying a Sonos One but can’t figure out which one is which? Sonos says that the 2nd Gen. speaker will have a label to help differentiate it.  The Gen. 2 Sonos One will be on sale officially starting March 7. But, if you're lucky, you might be able to find them out in the wild today at the time of writing.  If you're after cheap speakers, we've rounded up the best cheap Sonos deals This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Entry-level Surface Book 2 may receive quad-core power boost Posted: 06 Mar 2019 01:02 PM PST Microsoft will reportedly issue an upgrade to its entry-level, 13.5-inch Surface Book 2 in the middle of its product cycle, according to several leaked retailer listings in the US and Europe. First picked up by a German outlet, WinFuture, this beefier version will swap out the current model’s 7th-generation Intel Core i5-7300U dual-core processor for a new, 8th-generation Intel Core i5-8350U quad-core processor. At the time of writing, the only way to get quad-core processing in the 13.5-inch Surface Book 2 is to undertake a massive, $850 (about £650, AU$1,185) upgrade for more storage and an Intel Core i7 processor you may not need. What will the Surface Book 3 bring? Microsoft’s looking to make Surface Pen more accurate These are the best 2-in-1 laptops to date Now, WinFuture reports – and US online retailer MacConnection corroborates – that this new version will be priced exactly like the $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$1,899 version with 256GB of storage. However, it’s unclear right now whether the 128GB version will be updated with this fresh processor. Also unclear is when – or if – this not-so-mild upgrade will be available. At the time of writing, all listings simply state that the product is available for pre-order. We’ve contacted Microsoft for comment and will update this story should we receive a response. These are the best laptops the world over This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Best home security systems of 2019 Posted: 06 Mar 2019 12:09 PM PST The one crime statistic that is falling across the US year-on-year is burglary, and that's because homeowners are turning to home-based security systems that can help prevent crime. It's not just about trying to deter opportunists, but also making sure that even determined burglars will have difficulty forcing their way into your home without being caught. Yet there's such a wide array of home security options available to the homeowner, from CCTV and security cameras, to monitoring solutions, it can all seem overwhelming. Luckily, there are an increasing number of all-in-one solutions that use the latest technology to bring together different aspects of surveillance, monitoring, and prevention, to help homeowners feel safer. What's even better is that you no longer need a complicated setup of monitoring cameras, as most modern security systems are unobtrusive, easy to install and use, and even stylish. So we have done the legwork for you – we're good like that – to present this list of five of the best home security solutions. We think these products bring together the best in security, safety, and technology, to help give you peace of mind and better protect you, your family, and loved ones, from unwelcome intruders. We've also chosen the best security camera systems for businesses Want your company or services to be added to this buyer’s guide? Please email your request to desire.athow@futurenet.com with the URL of the buying guide in the subject line. Image Credit: Ring The Ring Alarm Security Kit is an all-in-one security solution that's simple to set up, and doesn't require a service subscription to use. The standard Alarm Security Kit is priced at just $199 – cheaper than most competitors – yet comes with a base station, keypad, contact sensor, motion detector and range extender. You can buy additional components individually to extend your protection, or purchase one of the larger Alarm Security Kit bundles. The Ring Alarm Security Kit uses smart sensors and motion detectors that send mobile alerts when triggered. Everything is managed from the Ring app, which allows you to monitor everything from a single panel on your phone or tablet. It can also be integrated with other security devices from other brands, and you can even operate it using Amazon's Alexa. A backup battery in the kit ensures that even in the event of a power failure, the Ring kit will continue to run for up to 24 hours, using your cellular network to keep connected. As mentioned, there is no need for a subscription plan, though there are contract-free Ring Protect Plans available, for either $3 or $10 a month, which allow you to store more video using the Ring app, as well as access member benefits and discounts on additional security product purchases. These might be useful if you plan to buy other equipment from Ring, such as its video doorbell, sirens, smoke detectors, cameras, and more. You can sign up for Ring Alarm Security Kit here Image Credit: Canary Those with more modest homes, such as a rented apartment, may want a simpler plug-and-play solution, such as the Canary All-in-One which retails for $169. One plastic canister provides a 1080p HD camera with night vision, a 90dB siren, an integrated temperature, air quality and humidity monitor, and the device is available in white or black to match a variety of decors. Setup can be completed in a few minutes as the device just needs to be connected to electrical power and the internet for protection to kick-off. While the Canary All-in-One can be used with free access, a membership plan of $9.99 monthly is needed to get the most out of it. Features included are full length videos that are stored for 30 days, unlimited video downloads, and two-way Canary talk. You can sign up for Canary All-in-One here Image Credit: Nest Nest made its name in home technology with its thermostat which debuted in 2011. These days, Nest is part of Google, and the company has expanded into home security with Nest Secure. This is sold as the Nest Secure alarm system, commanding a premium fee of $399, and it includes a base station, two Nest Tags, and two sensors. The Nest Tag is a key fob-style device that can arm or disarm the system when in proximity with the base station – other options for arming include a passcode, Google Assistant, and the Nest App. The sensor is Stick Nest Detect, which is a versatile piece of hardware, as each one can be used to secure a window, door, or even a wall, as it detects motion, with additional sensors available for $49. All of these sensors feed their information through the base station to the Nest App. Nest Secure works over Wi-Fi, but cellular access as a backup is a $5 additional monthly option. The system can also be expanded with options for indoor and outdoor cameras, and compatible Yale electronic locks. While this system is designed to be used for self-monitoring through the Nest App, there is also an option for professional monitoring via Brinks Home Security for $29 monthly, or $19 monthly with a three-year contract (more about that later). You can sign up for Nest Secure here Image Credit: Abode Abode offers a security solution that is professional-grade, and yet easy to install for the homeowner. Like its competition, the company offers a starter kit that includes the essentials: a gateway, a mini door/window sensor, a remote key fob, a motion sensor, and a security sticker – that package retails for $299. This does not include a keypad which will run you $79 extra, and is designed for self-monitoring via a smartphone app. There are a wide variety of expansion options available, including indoor add-on sirens, a water leak sensor, and a glass break and vibration sensor, to name just a few of the many offerings. Upgrade to the next plan for $329, and this includes the same starter kit, plus a year of cellular backup on the T-Mobile or AT&T network, and 50% off the add-on keypad. The top plan goes for $379, which includes everything from the lower plans, complete with a year of professional monitoring. You can sign up for Abode here Image Credit: SimpliSafe SimpliSafe is a well-known brand in the security space. Unlike some other solutions, the company offers five different options for its starter kit. At the low-end is the aptly named Foundation Kit, which has a base station, keypad, an entry sensor and a motion sensor, all for $229. At the top-end, the Haven Kit, which is priced at $489, includes the same base station and keypad, as well as a key fob, four entry sensors, two motion sensors, a 105dB siren, a panic button, freeze sensor, water sensor, and a smoke detector, which is suitable for a larger home, and obviously protects you from more than just burglary. All kits are backed by a 60-day guarantee – the product can be returned if it does not work out for you – and you have a choice of monitoring plans that include professional monitoring and cellular backup (and neither requires a contract). You can sign up for SimpliSafe here Other home security systems to consider Brinks works with a wider variety of smart home devices than most other companies, plus it offers both DIY and professional installation options as required. You can buy into Brinks Home Complete, or purchase the Nest Security System (see above) at a discount through Brinks. The service is really focused on providing the monitoring for you, which comes in relatively cheap in industry terms at $29 per month, after hardware costs. The one caveat is to expect to sign a three-year contract, with early exit penalties coming into play 30 days after purchase. ADT is an established security company that offers equipment tied to a subscription-based monitoring service, most of which will require professional installation that the company can provide. Like Brinks, ADT pushes for a three-year initial contract, which afterwards is renewed monthly, but unlike all the other firms listed it's not very transparent about pricing. While other companies are happy to offer a single fee per product/package, ADT pushes on custom sales for custom packages, which means it’s difficult to make a direct price comparison. Frontpoint Security sells itself on ease of use, with a DIY home surveillance and security kit based on free-standing sensors that don't require any wall mounting, drilling, wires, etc. However, the equipment is sold as part of a contract-term package, and pricing will depend on the period committed to upfront. Plans cost between $34.99 to $49.99 a month, with the cost of equipment discounted to $99 if you commit to a three-year contract. Like its rivals we’ve just mentioned, Vivint offers a combined equipment and monitoring service package, with everything run through a cellular network with backup batteries. However, Vivint SmartHome is something of a premium option, requiring a five-year term and monthly prices that can stack up. Even so, some argue that you get what you pay for, and Vivint certainly has a strong reputation in the security industry. Link Interactive costs less than most of the other solutions listed here, plus it boasts an admirable range of security options you can customize yourself. Promoting itself as "the best value in home security", the company runs on a cellular network rather than a landline, and puts less reliance on using a phone app for monitoring. By providing a two-way voice panel, if you can't get to your phone, the firm can contact you or the emergency services directly if they suspect there's a need to. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Google launches new AI hardware development tools Posted: 06 Mar 2019 11:03 AM PST Testing and developing AI applications can be a difficult process which is why Google is bolstering its range of AI products and services with three new hardware devices aimed at developers. The devices themselves have not yet been officially announced by the company, though a web page promoting them under a new brand called Coral was discovered by Hackster. The trio of new AI devices includes a development board for $149, a USB accelerator for $75 and a 5-megapixel camera add-on for the development board for $25. Worldwide AI investment to top $200bn by 2025 AI took over the world in 2018 Overcoming the AI talent gap isn’t as hard as you think The dev board and accelerator both utilize Google's Edge TPU chips which are tiny ASIC processors capable of running AI models more efficiently than traditional chips. Coral platform for local AI These new products from Google are not intended to be used to train ML algorithms but rather to help with the inference part of AI where trained models are used in the field. This is why the company has included support for its AI framework for mobile and IoT devices, TensorFlow Lite. The USB accelerator can help boost inference on any machine running Linux while the dev board offers a number of pins and ports to help developers prototype hardware and other experimental applications. Intel launched its own USB accelerator several years ago called the Neural Compute Stick and Google has likely followed suit as it looks to boost adoption of its own AI services. Now that the news is out, we will likely hear more details from the company itself on its intentions with Coral and the future of this new developer-focused hardware brand. Via The Verge This is everything you need to know about AI This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Human error still a major security risk Posted: 06 Mar 2019 10:23 AM PST Despite organizations continued attempts to improve their cybersecurity positioning, new research from BAE Systems has revealed that human error is still a major vulnerability in network security. To compile its latest incident response report, the firm surveyed board level executives, IT decision makers and security professionals to better understand the current state of corporate incident response capabilities and readiness. A major finding from the results of BAE Systems' research showcases how many organizational breaches are caused by human error as cybercriminals prey on human nature and employees that make honest, though costly, mistakes in the workplace. The cybersecurity incident response team: the new vital business team The cybersecurity measures needed to protect flexible workers Human nature as the Uber threat to Cybersecurity Of the breaches caused by human error examined by the firm, 71 percent led to phishing attacks while 65 percent resulted in untargeted viruses or malware. Rise in incidents BAE Systems also discovered that incident response teams are dealing with an increasing number of incidents per month.  Of the organizations surveyed, 66 percent responded to between one and 25 cybersecurity incidents per month, 26 percent responded to between 25 and 99 incidents per month and almost eight percent responded to 100 or more incidents per month. The research also revealed that many organizations are just not prepared to respond to cyber threats with 23 percent of incident response teams not conducting readiness exercises with senior management while 22 percent only have temporary or no incident response resources in place. To help organizations deal with today's growing cyber threats, BAE Systems has published its 22019 incident response report, 'Why Ignoring Incident Response Could Spell Disaster'. We've also highlighted the best antivirus to protect your systems from today's growing cyber threats This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Five Eyes "needs major 5G vendor" Posted: 06 Mar 2019 09:28 AM PST As the global rollout of 5G approaches, Australia's former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has brought attention to the fact that the Five Eyes nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US) do not have any telecoms capable of winning the 5G race. During a recent speech in London to the British foreign policy think tank the Henry Jackson Society, Turnbull shared his views on the matter and expressed his disappointment over how the Five Eyes nations do not have their own champion in 5G, saying: "In many discussions with my western counterparts, I raised the concern that we, and in particular the Five Eyes, had got to the point where there were now essentially four leading vendors of 5G systems -- two Chinese, Huawei and ZTE, and two European, Ericsson and Nokia. With the benefit of hindsight it beggars belief that the countries which pioneered wireless technology -- the United States, the UK, Germany, Japan and with WiFi, Australia -- have got to the point where none of them are able to present one of their own telcos [as] a national, or a Five Eyes, champion in 5G." 5G could solve major 4G congestion Five Eyes nations want access to your encrypted communications data Security flaws in 4G and 5G revealed Turnbull also explained that Australia's decision to ban Huawei and ZTE last summer was carried out to defend the country's sovereignty and as a “hedge against changing times”. Distinction between core and edge networks The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) recommended the ban on Huawei and ZTE due to how the distinction between core and edge networks disappears in 5G. This means that any potential threat on a network will be a threat to the whole network. Director-general of the ASD Mike Burgess explained his reasoning behind the ban, saying: "In consultation with operators and vendors, we worked hard this year to see if there were ways to protect our 5G networks if high-risk vendor equipment was present anywhere in these networks. At the end of this process, my advice was to exclude high-risk vendors from the entirety of evolving 5G networks." Currently the UK is considering following in Australia's footsteps which is why Turnball spoke so passionately on the issue while in London. Via ZDNet This is everything you need to know about 5G This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

March Madness TV deal: the TCL 55-inch 4K Roku TV is $220 off at Amazon Posted: 06 Mar 2019 08:51 AM PST March Madness 2019 is almost here, and that means retailers are slashing the prices on some of their best-selling 4K TVs. A standout deal from Amazon is on a TCL 6- Series TV that has Roku TV built-in. You can get the TCL 55-inch 4K Smart TV on sale for $579.99. That's a $220 price cut and the best price we've seen right now for this top-rated TV. The TCL 55R6174K has Roku TV built-in which allows you to stream thousands of movies and TV shows from the home screen of your TV. You can access Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video and even your gaming console without having to switch inputs on the TV. The Roku TV also features an enhanced remote that allows you to use your voice to find movie titles, change channels, launch streaming services and more.  The UHD TV also features Dolby Vision HDR which delivers bold colors and sharp contrasts for a premium picture experience. This is a fantastic price for a 4K 55-inch TV and only $30 more than the Black Friday price. March Madness is a great time to grab a discounted TV, so you should take advantage of this deal while you can. If you're looking for a larger screen size with a slightly higher price tag, Amazon also has the TCL 65-Inch 4K Roku Smart TV on sale for $929.99. That's an excellent price for the screen size and features. Shop more of best cheap TV deals and sale prices that are currently going on and read our review on the TCL 6-Series Roku TV. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Nintendo tells mobile partners to rein in micro-transactions Posted: 06 Mar 2019 08:35 AM PST Nintendo has issued a word of caution to its partners in the mobile development space: go easy on the micro-transactions. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall unless you have a WSJ subscription), Nintendo has asked its mobile partners to limit possible in-game spending, so that players aren't pressured to spend unreasonable amounts on a single game. How to download and play Super Mario Run What to expect from a new Nintendo Switch model Check out our guide to the best Nintendo Switch games Micro-transactions can be hugely lucrative for free-to-play games, allowing players to buy cosmetic items – as in the battle royale game Fortnite, or Apex Legends – in-game currency for new weapons and items, or just advance more quickly through a game. While a dizzyingly successful business model for some, micro-transactions can also be exploitative, pressuring players to spend more than they can afford to unlock tempting content or overcome intentional roadblocks to their progression. (Just remember the player vitriol over Star Wars Battlefront II's loot boxes.) While limiting overall profit, the thinking goes that Nintendo will retain its positive reputation by not looking to exploit young players, or those with cash to burn. New shores Being a Nintendo fan isn't always cheap either, as shown by the company's reluctance to let older games drop in price. The move towards a paid subscription for the Nintendo Switch Online service, too, seemed like money-grubbing to some – even though both Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus did the same already. But seeing some restraint in a new source of income is, sadly, surprising in today's market.  Nintendo is no doubt mainly interested in stopping any bad press, but it's reassuring for players nonetheless that they won't be asked to shell out more than they're comfortable with – or be refused a basic level of fun if they're not big spenders. Many of us were surprised when Nintendo started paying attention to mobile games, after years of dismissing smartphones as a poor substitute for a dedicated handheld console like the New Nintendo 3DS XL – or the Nintendo Switch, of course. So far we've seen the likes of Super Mario Run, which veered on the side of up-front purchase, and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, which went for a free-to-play model supported by micro-transactions – as did Fire Emblem Heroes and surprise hit Dragalia Lost. Nintendo Switch Online: price, NES games, and online play This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Best stereo speakers: the best bookshelf, floor and Hi-Fi speakers in 2019 Posted: 06 Mar 2019 08:31 AM PST Although technology might be advancing at a breakneck speed, one thing always stay the same: we audiophiles have high standards. We want our sound to be clear, we want it to be full and, perhaps most importantly, we want it to be true to the original source.  Although the principles of stereo sound may be decades old now, and it's single unit speakers that are dominating the audio market, audiophiles far and wide still believe that two speakers really are a whole lot better than one.  But although that may be the case, actually finding a set of speakers that ticks all of our boxes is much easier said than done.  So with that in mind, on our quest for the best stereo speakers on the market, we spoke to some of the best audio companies on Earth to review and test a wide variety of stereo speaker setups, ranging from compact bookshelf speakers to room-dominating towers with built-in subs. We will be reviewing more units in the future and adding them to this list, so keep your eyes (and ears) peeled for that.  How audio is changing in 2019: the biggest trends we've seen so far The testing process In testing these speakers, we compared each stereo set at a comparable power level and tested the same tunes, plucked a variety of music genres.  Our test songs spanned the dynamic range of music and artists, from John Mayer to Tom Petty, and from U.K. prog-metal band TesseracT to the likes of John Williams and Hans Zimmer. Each song was chosen to test the dynamics offered by each set of speakers with some speakers reacting better to certain genre’s than others, depending on their design. Of course, not all speakers are created equal in function. The Definitive Technology BP9080x towers, for example, are obviously made to cover a more broad frequency range than say the Edifier bookshelf speakers with a 4 inch woofer. We used to our best judgement in testing these speakers according to their individual purpose and affordability, and graded them with that in mind.  Since comparing bookshelf speakers to high performance towers is an obvious case of apples and oranges, we’ll at least try to make it clear which speaker is an apple and which is an orange. Sound good? Good. Without further ado, these are the best stereo speakers we have tested so far.  What are the best stereo speakers? Image credit: Definitive Technology In life, money isn’t everything. In sound, however, it’s pretty important. Case in point: the Definitive Technology BP9080x speakers. 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.  If that’s you, then let us tell you just how amazing these speakers are.  From beginning to end of the covered frequency range, the BP9080x speakers are crystal clear, articulate, and genuinely moving. The passive design is aided by an active subwoofer, giving the user independent control of the subwoofer volume on each tower, meaning it can be adjusted to fit any room with any standing waves.  The midrange is as full and clear as any speakers we’ve ever heard, never getting overworked or muddy no matter what songs and sounds we threw at it. The pitch-perfect mid range blends perfectly into the gorgeous treble frequencies that never got harsh, even when the windows were shaking from the volume. The clarity from the top of the frequency range to the bottom can’t be overstated.  On top of it all (literally) there are two “height channel” speakers that make this a perfect centerpiece in your Dolby Atmos or DTS:X home theater.  All of this audio goodness is wrapped in a tall and slender package made from premium materials that is impossibly discreet, especially considering the amount of volume it can pump out. All we can say is that if you’re looking to spend the money (and it is a lot of money), we can’t recommend Definitive Technology’s BP9080x speakers enough.  Image credit: Klipsch Since 1985, the Forte floorstanding speakers from Klipsch have been the gold standard for home entertainment. Now, the Forte III speakers are on the market and hope to build on the success of their forebearers.  Of course, as you might expect, these speakers sound fantastic. Klipsch’s attention to detail on the fine tuning of the speakers is second to none, making way for a clear and intricate mid-high range. They’re also phenomenally designed and built, making a great addition to basically any living room. They are also very heavy, which can be a blessing and a curse. Once you figure out their place in the living room, these speakers aren’t going anywhere. These speakers are built for bass, with a 12 inch subwoofer and a massive 15 inch passive radiator in the back of the speaker to help disperse the low frequencies. To get the most out of the bass speakers on these towers, you need to run two separate amps, or a single amp with multiple outs that is strong enough to get the subwoofer moving. Having separated or bi-amp control allows the user to control the power sent to the high and low channels, allowing them to get the exact balance they want.  The downside to these speakers is that they are even more expensive than the Definitive Technology BP9080x speakers and don’t have the powered subs or high-firing speakers that our number one pick has. Part of that premium is paying for the Klipsch name, but there is quality to back it up - just not enough value or pure sound power to topple the Definitive Technology BP9080x. Image credit: Klipsch If you’re not in the market for full-on entertainment behemoths like the Definitive Technology towers, the Klipsch RP-150M speakers are a surprisingly affordable bookshelf speaker option with a mid-range and high frequency clarity that rivals our top pick.  These light and passive reference speakers are beautifully designed and are a continuation of what Klipsch does best: honest and clear replication without over-coloring the sound. While the 5-inch woofer doesn’t do much in the way of bass, not coming audibly close to the 48 Hz promise on the frequency response, these speakers have a surprising amount of low-mid thump.  The mid range in these Klipsch speakers is completely clear and open, allowing for subtle articulation to come through that would be lost on lesser systems. The upper range never gets shrill and has a natural air under it that seems to be a signature in Klipsch products.  Overall, if you’re looking for a solid pair of stereo speakers for casual listening, studio work, or piecing together an entertainment system, these Klipsch RP-150M speakers are just about as good as they come, especially for the price.  Image credit: KEF If you’re starting to take your music listening experience more seriously, it’s natural to look into getting a speaker setup. That is until you realize that you’ll have to pick a preamp, amp, and DAC to get your dream speaker setup. That’s a lot research and setup, which is quite intimidating to a hi-fi newbie.  But what if there was a speaker system that just worked out of the box? What if all you had to do was plug the speakers into the wall and turn on some music? Thankfully, this dream system is real and it’s made by the folks at KEF.  After spending several months with the KEF LS50 Wireless, we were blown away by the package that the company was able to engineer. The speakers offer mind-blowing sound quality with absolute neutrality, hologram-like imaging, and an expansive soundstage. Plus, it was dead simple to set up and use from any of its sources. While not cheap, the LS50 Wireless is actually quite a bargain when taken as a complete package.  Read the full review: KEF LS50 Wireless Speakers Image credit: Q Acoustics If you’re an audiophile who’s in the market for compact bookshelf speakers but doesn’t want to sacrifice on sound quality, it’s time to look at the Q Acoustics Concept 20 speakers.  These extremely low-profile bookshelf speakers are rich in sound from the low-mids to the crispy highs. Even with the amplifier cranked (to safe power levels) the sound never broke up into distortion and remained clear, not shrill. Of course, with any speakers this size, there wasn’t much bass below the low-mid range to speak of, but what was there was full without being muddy.  What could be seen as a pro for some and a con for others, the Q Acoustics Concept 20 speakers are passive and require an external amplifier.  For audiophiles, this is a great excuse to drop even more coin on a high fidelity amplifier to get the best possible sound out these already great speakers. For casual listeners, however, it can be an inconvenience to worry about amplification with what should be small and discreet bookshelf speakers.  After testing songs of every conceivable genre, it’s clear that the Q Acoustics Concept 20 speakers are up to just about any challenge. For those looking to fill out the living room with clear, crisp, hi-fi sound, these bookshelf speakers from Q Acoustics are a no-brainer.  Image credit: Polk Audio The beauty of Polk Audio is in its ability to make quality speakers that compete with the biggest name brands while keeping a lower price tag. Do these beautiful full range Polk Signature S60 towers stand up to the prowess of the Definite Technology BP9060x towers? Well, not exactly, but these are stellar speakers in their own right.  Polk’s passive signature series speakers for home entertainment are designed to provide full and immersive sound, and for the most part, they hit the mark. The mid-range, which is the easiest to muddy up, is crystal clear and articulate no matter what sound is blasting through these almost four-foot tall towers.  The high frequency range is certainly lively, occasionally to the point of shrillness when the volume is really pushed, but never gets too harsh for comfort. As for bass frequencies, the packaging advertises a unique porting system that allows more low frequencies to travel more easily. However, to hear the bass really cutting through, the volume needs to be cranked quite a bit. Still, overall the sound quality is excellent in these Polk Audio speakers, the frequencies might could just use a little tweak with an external equaliser.  If you’re looking for a more affordable alternative to the Definite Technology towers, the Polk Audio Signature S60 speakers are a solid option that will likely outshine just about any other run-of-the-mill home entertainment system you’ll encounter. While they don’t handle the highs or the lows as well as our premium pick, we have no doubts that even the most critical ears will be happy with the signal these bad boys pump out. Image credit: Q Acoustics These stylish and compact Q Acoustic BT3 speakers are the most digitally integrated speakers on our list, featuring Bluetooth capability, a remote control, a 3.5mm input, a digital optical input, and active speakers. But how does the sound quality compare to the rest? The sound that came out of these little speakers was shockingly full.  Q Acoustics designed these speakers primarily as a convenient bookshelf speaker, but also as a stereo alternative to the soundbar, and it was clear why. The BT3 speakers covered virtually the entire frequency range very evenly, with the exception of the sub bass. Still, the bass that was produced was thick and full and didn’t cause the signal to overly distort. The high range was also surprisingly manageable, though a bit more shrill than the pricier Concept 20 speakers or the Klipsch RP-150Ms.  While the BT3 speakers from Q Acoustics won’t replace your favorite reference monitors any time soon, they weren’t really designed to. These speakers have a lot of technological integrations that make them a perfect replacement to a traditional soundbar or a simple solution to bookshelf speakers. With Bluetooth integration and remote control, the BT3 speakers are perfect in the corner of the living room when you want to quickly blast your song through the house, and sound good doing it. Image credit: Edifier The Edifier R1280T speakers are a popular choice on Amazon, and for good reason. These compact desk/bookshelf style speakers back an impressive sonic punch and look good doing it, all while keeping the price tag under $100 for the pair. Ok, it’s $99.99, but that penny really does count! The standout features here include its active design, rich mid-range response, and surprisingly competent bass. Because of the small woofer size, these guys obviously don’t push much low-end, and because of the tweeter design, the highs aren’t as clear as the competition we tested. But other than that, the frequency response and clarity holds its own pretty well. While they don’t compare to the encompassing power of the Definitive Technology BP9080x or even the clarity of the Klipsch RT-150Ms, these compact speakers certainly serve a purpose. If you’re looking for an affordable set of computer speakers, or better yet a warm stereo set up for your turntable, the Edifier R1280T speakers are a fantastic option for the money. Image credit: KEF KEF has long been a major driver in the world of audio innovation since launching in 1961, and with the LSX wireless stereo speaker system, the company has set out to prove that you can achieve audio perfection with even the most compact speaker. Separation among the different frequencies is brilliant, and the overall sound is extremely well balanced, with no one frequency overtly dominating the others. For their size, the speakers perform very well when it comes to sub-bass, although you can connect them to an external subwoofer if you find they don’t quite hit the spot.  Where these speakers shine is in analogue sound; vocals, pianos, and acoustic guitar are given a timbral warmth without taking away any of the clarity provided by the brilliant phase correction and distortion reduction. Read the full KEF LSX review Image credit: Roku The Roku TV Wireless Speakers may be some of the best speakers to use in a bedroom because of the voice clarity and sound leveling features which will enable you to listen with full sound without annoying the neighbors or waking the children ... that is, as long as your bedroom television runs Roku TV. As great as these speakers are, they only only work with Roku TVs from TCL, Insignia, Hisense, Sharp and others. They won't work with Roku streaming devices like the Roku Ultra, which is why these speakers are sold exclusively at Roku.com so that Roku can make sure that you're setup for success. Beyond its limited availability, the Wireless Speaker's only fault is its anemic bass, due in no small part to the lack of a subwoofer. If you're after cinema-quality sound you'd be better off with a soundbar/subwoofer combo - like the ridiculously low-cost Vizio SB3621 - but, if you're looking for a late-night listening solution for your bedroom Roku TV, the Wireless Speakers are the way to go. Read our full Roku TV wireless speakers review Check out our list of the best smart speakers in 2018 These speakers are just one part of a great stereo experience, be sure to check out our list of the best turntables. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

How to make a robot with a real personality Posted: 06 Mar 2019 07:54 AM PST “This sounds kind of romantic, but from a character perspective, the way I think about it is that I’m not inventing the character, says Dei Gaztelumendi, character lead at Anki. “The character is there, and we are discovering it. We are unearthing it.” Dei Gaztelumendi, a former character designer at Paramount Pictures, has spent the last four years discovering personalities for Anki’s friendly companion robots, including Cozmo and Vector. That might seem like a big leap, but Gaztelumendi explains that it was quite a natural progression. He began his career illustrating children’s books before moving into animation, where he later specialized in character design. Anki reached out to him in 2015.  “The first task that they needed help with was trying to figure out Cosmo’s eyes,” he says. “They were struggling to create appealing eyes and expressions, and that was definitely in my area.” For Gaztelumendi, the biggest difference between working at Paramount and Anki was moving from just focusing on the outward appearance of the characters to considering their inner workings – the emotional side, and their personality – which has become the core of his work. Discovering a character When Gaztelumendi is creating a character for Anki, the first step is to find out what the purpose of the robot will be, and who it will be a companion for. “Getting that information from the company executives, from a character perspective, gives us the plot of the movie,” he explains. “And then it’s really about designing that character that we hope will fill that void on an emotional and companionship level. “Suddenly when you think about it that way, there are right and wrong answers about how the character should be, how the personality should be,” he explains. “Something that is made for ages 5-10 for entertainment and fun will bring about very different answers than something like Vector, where it’s a little more adult and sci-fi enthusiast oriented. Those parameters are what begin to inform the early stages of the character.” Even if their starting point is just a bundle of vague objectives, Gaztelumendi and his team can use that to come up with a bundle of traits that will evoke the right kind of feeling. He compares it to the core of a snowball that rolls downhill, growing as it goes. Gaztelumendi and his team share sketches to get an emotional reaction from their colleagues. Image credit: Anki At the same time, the character team can use their backgrounds in animation (and in Gaztelumendi’s case character design) to visualize their ideas. “Just little doodles of the character doing this, doing that, while trying to infuse it with all of the qualities from that checklist,” he says. “It sounds clichéd to say it, but a picture is worth 1,000 words.” They can then show these images to the product team – with interesting results.  “Suddenly you are no longer having a rational conversation about ‘Should it be a rascal, or should it be more like a critter’,” he says. “Suddenly you have people going ‘Aww!’ or people going ‘Ooh!’ – and those actually become even more valuable to our team. “We’re engineers of the emotional kind, I guess. Based on those reactions, we’ll continue to fine-tune the character, the behaviors, the antics, the expressions, and eventually these will inform the product itself with all its facets, industrial design, animation, audio. Those are the initial stages of designing a character robot.” Making it real Creating a character is one thing, but making people grow attached to it is something else. For Gaztelumendi, the most important part of creating a believable character is ensuring its behaviour is consistent and coherent. “Just like a person in your life - whether it’s a relative or a friend – there is a certain built-in coherence. If you go out for coffee with someone that is very close to you and they suddenly do something that is incoherent with how they usually behave, you will notice right away, and you’ll be likely a little freaked out – what’s going on? Is everything OK?” As humans, we’re very sensitive to anything that’s out of character – but if behaviour is consistent, we can become very attached. Gaztelumendi says giving a robot a character elevates it above simply being a device, and opens up new possibilities for human interaction. Image credit: Anki “With a robot, we hope to bring about a sense of familiarity, and ideally ultimately bonding, that we believe can only happen if you have a solid sense that you know this character. That you know this little guy.  Whether it’s with Cozmo or with Vector, I think that comes from continuously getting coherent demonstrations of that character. Whether it’s sad or happy doesn’t matter – it just behaves in a certain way.” Once the pre-production work is done, most of Gaztelumendi’s work as a character director involves maintaining that consistency, working with other teams including animation and audio. “At that point I’m not working on producing that many assets,” he says. “Mostly what I’m watchful for is coherence of character. I would say that’s the key thing to do well.” A sense of presence So why is character so important for Anki’s little bots? “What we have found, and it’s what I believe also, is that character and personality is the thing that elevates us from being a mere device,” Gaztelumendi says. “It brings about this sense of presence – like ‘He’s over there, doing his thing!” Even if reviews of the robots are negative, Gaztelumendi relishes them when they refer to Cozmo or Vector as ‘he’. “From a character perspective, whenever we read someone referring to one of our robots – Cozmo or Vector – as a being, not as an ‘it’, that indicates to us that we’re on that other tier, and then more things are possible, such as companionship and our robot having an emotional effect on the users. Those things, we feel, wouldn’t be possible without any character or personality.” Gaztelumendi's first project at Anki was creating Cozmo's expressive eyes, and it's still the project he remembers most fondly. Image credit: Anki After all his years working with Anki creating characters that users can connect with, Gaztelumendi’s favorite project is still the one he was initially hired for: creating Cozmo’s expressive eyes. “Maybe I’m just biased because it was my first project at Anki when I first became involved, but I do have a special place for that challenge,” he says.  "There’s a character who fills, in a certain way, the goal of this robot and we’re chiselling the marble away to find it. And I feel like designing the eyes was almost that same exercise. The moment I felt I succeeded, I was looking into the eyes of the robot that is now Cozmo. I was there tweaking and tweaking, and eventually I got there and I said ‘This is him’. We were looking at each other.” The best robot toys of 2019 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Denon unveils travel-friendly noise-cancelling headphones Posted: 06 Mar 2019 07:39 AM PST Audio company Denon has just dropped three new pairs of over-ear headphones, including wired, wireless, and noise cancelling models. Part of the company's Global Cruiser range, the new headphones combine stylish design features with Denon's proprietary driver technology, and are designed with commuters and travelers in mind with ergonomic memory foam earcups and long battery lives. Check out our favorite over-ear headphones in 2019 Best noise cancelling headphones 2019 Read our Microsoft Surface headphones review The most expensive of the new headphones, the noise-cancelling AH-GC30s are available to buy in the US now for $399. This works out at around £300 / AU$570, but  Denon hasn't released official pricing and release dates for these territories yet.  These wireless headphones uses Denon's own 40mm Free-Edge drivers, which the company says "block out unwanted resonances to provide detailed, accurate sound." Constructed from soft, flexible materials, these drivers promise to deliver "crisp highs, deep bass and precise imaging without flexing or distorting the music signal", which means these premium cans should be suitable for even the most discerning audiophiles.  The Denon AH-GC25Ws Image credit: Denon Situational noise cancellation If you'd rather stick to a wired connection, you may prefer the noise-cancelling wired over-ears, the AH-GC25NC, which cost $299 (around £230 / AU$420), and will be available to buy in April if you live in the US. Then, in May, Denon is set to release the cheapest of the three new models, the wireless AH-GC25Ws, which are set to cost $249 (around £190 / AU$350). Although this model doesn't offer noise cancellation, it does support aptX Bluetooth playback and can be used with a USB connection if desired.  Both wireless models can handle up to 20 hours playback from a single charge, while the noise cancelling models support different noise cancellation modes depending on your method of travel. Denon hasn't said when the models will be available to buy outside the US, but they are appearing on the UK Denon website, so UK customers may be getting them ahead of their Australian release (if there is one).  How audio is changing in 2019: the biggest trends we've seen so far This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Sensor sizes explained: what you need to know Posted: 06 Mar 2019 07:28 AM PST It used to be the case that if you bought a compact camera you’d have a small sensor, and if you went for an interchangeable-lens camera like a DSLR you got a much larger one. This would also typically be reflected in the quality of the images from those cameras, with larger sensors typically producing higher-quality results than smaller ones. To some extent this is still the case. Sensors are typically the most expensive part of a camera to manufacture, and the larger you go the pricier the camera gets. For this reason you won't find expensive models toting 1/2.3-inch sensors, just as you wouldn't find cheap, basic compact cameras with full-frame ones. Sensors are typically the most expensive part of a camera to manufacture, and the larger you go the pricier the camera gets. However, as manufacturers started offering compact cameras with relatively large sensors, and interchangeable-lens cameras with smaller ones, the situation become more complex. Today, we find some small sensors work very well in a range of conditions, while some larger ones may present a handful of benefits over smaller ones in one way, but fall down in another.  Sensor technology has advanced rapidly over the past few years, and the breadth of options across all kinds of cameras is likely to confuse many users, particularly first-time buyers who may not be sure what to expect from different kinds of sensors. Furthermore, as the size of sensor has a bearing on the effective focal length of your lens, this becomes yet another thing to consider when choosing a new camera.  Here, we list the different types of sensor sizes used in cameras today, in ascending order of size, and how each affects image quality. But before we do that, we need to briefly talk about the relationship between sensor size and focal length. Sensor size and focal length The size of the sensor inside a camera has a direct effect on what kind of lenses can be used with that camera.  If you buy a compact camera the lens is built into the body, so there's less to think about here from a buying perspective. But with interchangeable-lens cameras like DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, any lens used needs to be able to have an image circle – the diameter of the light that exits the lens – that can sufficiently cover the dimensions of the sensor.  Whether they're built into the body of a camera or supplied separately, lenses are marked with their actual focal length, rather than the effective focal length when used on a particular camera. The problem here is that different lenses marked with two completely different focal lengths may provide the same effective focal range to work with when used on the bodies for which they are designed. To make things easier to understand, manufacturers often provide an ‘equivalent’ focal length, which uses the full-frame sensor as its reference point.  A 18-55mm lens used on a camera with an APS-C sensor has an effective focal range of 27-82mm, although the exact length depends on the camera used. Image Credit: Nikon/TechRadar. Here’s an example. A camera with a sensor that’s smaller than full-frame may be used with a lens that has a focal length of 18-55mm, but in reality the effective focal range you’ll end up with is closer to 27-82mm. This is because the sensor is not large enough to take advantage of the lens to the same extent as a full-frame sensor can. By discarding some of the peripheral areas of the lens, it ends up appearing as though you’re using a longer focal length. Similarly, a compact camera may have a 19mm lens built into it, but if the size of sensor is smaller than full-frame, it will only ever be able to offer a longer effective focal length on that body, perhaps 28mm or so. This figure is determined by the ‘crop factor’ – that is, the number by which you need to multiply the focal length to work out the effective focal length of the combination. This will be examined in greater detail for some of the sensor sizes below. Sensor sizes Here, we take a closer look at the main sizes of sensor used in today’s cameras.  Note: not all sensors within the same category have exactly the same dimensions. The measurements provided are an example of one such sensor within that format. 1/2.3-inch Canon PowerShot SX70 HS. Image Credit: Canon/TechRadar.  Dimensions: approx. 6.3 x 4.7mm This is the smallest sensor that's commonly used in cameras today, and is typically found in budget compacts. They usually offer between 16-24MP.  These used to be common across these types of cameras, but the gradual shift in focus by manufacturers towards enthusiast cameras with larger sensors means they aren't as common in new cameras.  Their size allows manufacturers to make very compact cameras with long lenses, such as superzoom compacts like the Panasonic ZS70 / TZ90 and Canon PowerShot SX730 HS. They're also found inside DSLR-style superzoom compacts such as the Canon PowerShot SX70 HS. Using a larger sensor in such cameras would necessitate a larger, heavier and more expensive lens.  For general snapshots taken in good lighting conditions, cameras using these sensors may deliver perfectly acceptable results, but otherwise they can struggle to hold on to highlight detail and may produce images with a grainy, noisy texture. 1/1.7-inch Pentax QS1. Image Credit: Ricoh/TechRadar. Dimensions: approx. 7.6 x 5.7mm Slightly larger than the 1/2.3-inch types above, these sensors make it a little easier to separate a subject from its background, and typically offer better performance with regards to holding onto detail in shadow and highlights. As they can capture more light than smaller sensor, they're also likely to perform better in low light. These were once the default choice for enthusiast compact cameras, but their popularity has waned in the face of larger and more advanced 1-inch sensors (discussed below). Some of the most recent cameras to use these include the Pentax QS1, which was announced five years ago. 1-inch Sony RX100. Image Credit: Sony/TechRadar. Dimensions: approx. 13.2mm x 8.8mm This type of sensor is currently a popular choice across a range of compact cameras, with its size making it a versatile but high-performing option. It’s most commonly used in pocket-friendly enthusiast compact cameras. Lenses on these cameras will typically be limited to around 24-70mm or 24-100mm (in 35mm equivalent terms), such as on the Panasonic LX15, Canon PowerShot G9 X Mark II and Sony RX100 VI. It has, however, also now featured in a handful of superzoom cameras from both companies too, like the Panasonic FZ1000 II and TZ200, as well as the Sony RX10 IV.  Cameras that use these sensors can typically provide very good quality images, particularly as many of the compact cameras that use them have wide maximum apertures that let in plenty of light. This enhanced image quality is partly the result of their size, but also on the technology on which they're based. Recent versions may be built with an unconventional construction, for example, which enables them to capture light more effectively than standard sensors. Photography basics: angle of view Four Thirds Panasonic GH5S. Image Credit: Panasonic/TechRadar.  Dimensions: approx. 17.3 x 13mm This is the format used by Olympus and Panasonic for its Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras, such as the Olympus OM-D E-M1X and the Panasonic GH5S. These are a fair bit larger than the 1-inch sensors described on the previous page, but still smaller than APS-C types described below. As this type of sensor has a surface area that’s around a quarter of the size of full-frame sensors, calculating the effective focal length of compatible lenses is easy: you simply double it. So, a 17mm lens used on such a camera will provide an effective focal length similar to a 34mm lens on a full-frame body. Similarly, a 12-35mm lens provides a focal range equivalent to 24-70mm lens on the same camera. A 17MP version of this sensor was also used by Panasonic in its recent Lumix LX100 II compact camera. Here this was paired with a lens that gave a focal length equivalent to 24-75mm on a full-frame camera. APS-C Canon EOS M50. Image Credit: Canon/TechRadar.  Dimensions: approx. 23.5mm x 15.6mm Long used in entry-level and mid-range DSLRs, and now in many mirrorless cameras too, this type of sensor provides a good balance between system portability, image quality, and flexibility with regards to lenses. Not all APS-C sensors are equal in size, however. Canon’s APS-C sensors, such as those used inside its EOS Rebel T7i / EOS 800D and EOS M50 models, are a touch smaller than those inside the Nikon D5600 and Sony A6400, and other models from those two manufacturers. Canon's APS-C sensor apply a crop factor of 1.6x rather than the 1.5x seen elsewhere.  In any case, these cameras are still a good all-round, versatile option, and models that use them are often preferred over full-frame models by some nature and sports photographers, as the crop factor enables them to get closer to their subjects with a given lens. APS-C sensors have also been employed in a number of compact cameras, such as the Ricoh GR III and Fujifilm's XF10 and X100F models. Here, in order to keep image quality high and the camera portable, they're paired with fixed focal length lenses.  The Ricoh GR III, for example, has a 19mm lens, while the Fujifilm X100F has a 23mm lens and the XF10 has an 18.5mm lens. These provide focal lengths equivalent to 28mm, 35mm and 28mm respectively. These lenses also have fairly wide maximum apertures, which allows the user to more easily capture a shallow depth of field. APS-H Sigma sd Quattro H. Image Credit: Sigma/TechRadar.  Dimensions: approx. 26.6 x 17.9mm This type of sensor was commonly associated with Canon’s older EOS-1D models, such as the EOS-1D Mark III and EOS 1D Mark IV, although the company appears to have moved away from the format, adopting a full-frame alternative for its current EOS-1D X Mark II. Being smaller than full frame but larger than APS-C sensors, the crop factor of these is accordingly between the two at 1.3x. So, a 24mm lens used with such a sensor would provide an effective focal length closer to 31mm. More recently, a 51MP version of this type of sensor was employed in Sigma’s sd Quattro H model. Canon also announced that it was developing 120MP and 250MP APS-H sensors within the last few years, although it stated that the likely applications for these would be for surveillance, crime prevention tools and industrial equipment among other things, rather than for commercially available DSLRs. Full frame Nikon Z7. Image Credit: Nikon/TechRadar.  Dimensions: approx 36 x 24mm Full-frame sensors are used in many enthusiast and professional cameras, including the flagship DSLR and mirrorless models in many manufacturers’ lines.  Their relatively large surface area allows them to collect plenty of light, which in turn helps to produce high-quality images, while the larger area gives the manufacturer more space to play with when it comes to deciding on the number of pixels. Currently, some have as few as 12MP, while others have 24MP, 36MP and even 51MP. Full-frame sensors are (roughly) the same size as a 35mm film negative, so there's no crop factor to think about here. If you use a lens designed for a 35mm film camera on a digital body with a full-frame sensor, the effective focal length will be the same. Depending on the system and manufacturer, some lenses designed for APS-C cameras can be used on full-frame bodies at a reduced resolution. Here, the camera essentially crops away the edges of the frame so that you don't get any darkening of the corners. You should, however, always check that your camera supports this, as using incompatible lenses can damage the mirror. Popular current models that sport full-frame sensors include the Nikon Z7, Sony A7 III and Canon EOS RP mirrorless cameras. Panasonic has also started to use this format for its first two S series cameras, the S1 and S1R. Many DSLRs also continue to make use of these sensors, such as the Canon EOS 6D Mark II, Nikon D850 and Pentax K-1 II. Medium format Fujifilm GFX 50R. Image Credit: Fujifilm/TechRadar.  Dimensions: approx 44mm x 33mm Medium-format sensors are significantly larger than full-frame types, and the arrival of a number of recent cameras using them has sparked a huge amount of interest in the format. These include the Fujifilm GFX 50R and Hasselblad X1D, and the slightly older Pentax 645Z. Theoretically, medium-format systems allow for a higher standard of image quality than cameras with smaller sensors, mainly because they capture a lot more light that goes on to make up the image. A larger sensor can also make it easier for manufacturers to fit more pixels on the surface; Fujifilm is currently promising a 100MP medium format camera, for example. Their practicalities and cost, however, largely confine them to professional use. DSLRs are typically easier to handle, for example, offer a much wider choice of native lenses, and can also autofocus much faster.  If, however, we’re to base our expectations for the format on recent developments, we’ll no doubt see these sensors appearing in more affordable and compact bodies, along with improvements to performance and greater lens ranges. What camera should I buy? This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Fitbit CEO confirms it'll make an Ionic 2, but it won't be launching soon Posted: 06 Mar 2019 07:24 AM PST Fitbit has just launched its new range of wearables, consisting of the Versa Lite, Inspire, Inspire HR and Ace 2, but we’ve also heard word of a sequel to the company's first smartwatch – the Fitbit Ionic. The Ionic, Fitbit’s first proper smartwatch, launched in 2017 with a mixed reception – we found it a little too bulky to be enjoyable to use, and it had a hefty price tag too. We weren't certain that we'd see the brand name appear again, but Fitbit CEO James Park has confirmed that there will be an Ionic 2 at some point in the future. This is what we thought of the Fitbit Versa Find out the best fitness tracker for you Is the Apple Watch 4 the best smartwatch? Speaking to Wareable, Park said “Ionic will get refreshed at some point”, clarifying that he saw the device’s place “at the high end of our roadmap.” One of the problems with reviving the Ionic right now, Park suggested, was that GPS was an integral part of the Ionic experience. Park said, “GPS isn’t really a mass-market thing yet". For now, Fitbit is concentrating on converting more fans to the wearable game with its latest range of fitness trackers aimed at kids and people who haven’t used the devices before.  The Ionic 2 doesn’t fit in with that aim, as it’s firmly a high-end device for people who are accustomed to something strapped around their wrist. We could see the Fitbit Ionic 2 later in the year. The original Ionic released in October 2017, after all, so Fitbit could be saving it for a late 2019 release, but with Park’s vague language, we’re not holding our breath for it to come out before 2020. Here's what we'd love to see on a Fitbit Ionic 2 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

BT uses LPWAN IoT to connect smart water network Posted: 06 Mar 2019 07:18 AM PST BT’s Internet of Things (IoT) ambitions have been boosted by a new pilot programme with Northumbrian Water. The utility company wants to use the IoT to monitor its water network so it can identify efficiencies and potential issues to better serve customers. The pilot will see 150 sensors deployed in Sunderland, tracking data such as water, flow, pressure and quality. This will help spot leakages and even allow for predictive maintenance – lowering costs and speeding up operations. Vodafone: Partnerships are key to IoT success Everything you need to know about IoT What is 5G? Find out more in our hub BT smart water Data from the sensors will be collected via BT’s Low Power Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), allowing Northumbrian Water to analyse the information and gain insight into its network. “The idea first came out of our Innovation Festival and the innovative technology that BT uses made them a great choice of partner for developing and delivering our Smart Water pilot project,” explained Nigel Watson, Group Information Services Director for Northumbrian Water. “We’re keen to understand whether it can be rolled out across our entire North East network to deliver benefits for all of our customers.” “It represents a real step forwards towards the Smart Water network of the future transforming the level of insight we have into our network’s operations and driving improvements.” Utility networks are seen as an ideal use case for LPWAN networks because they cover long distances and have relatively low data requirements. Crucially, LPWAN networks consume low levels of power, extending the battery life of sensors. This is essential for utilities as it isn’t cost effective to send an engineer out to change a battery and any operational gains would be offset. Mobile IoT network standards such as Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-M will play a crucial role in delivering the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications promised by 5G. The GSMA predicts that by 2025 there will be 3.1 billion cellular IoT connections, including 1.8 billion on LPWAN “It’s a great example of how the Internet of Things can be used to deliver a better experience to customers,” added Chris Sims, Managing Director, Strategy Market and Digital at BT. “And with 5G on the horizon, which will provide benefits such as lower latency, higher speeds and greater reliability, we’re thrilled to work with one of the most innovative water companies in the UK to fully realise the transformational benefits of IoT.” Here are the best BT broadband deals for March 2019 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Barclays combines bPay and Pingit contactless services Posted: 06 Mar 2019 07:08 AM PST Barclays is set to merge its two wearable contactless payment products as it looks to keep pace in the mobile payments space. The company is preparing the move for its bPay wearable products and the Pingit app, which allowed users to send money to contacts both local and internationally. Bloomberg reports that the move comes as Barclays looks to combine the two services into a more competitive product that can take on the likes of Apple Pay. Merger The report claims that bPay, which launched back in 2015 and is available as a wearable wristband as well as a key fob and sticker, only has tens of thousands of users, compared to Pingit, which has more than 3.5 million users. The bank hopes that combining the two will make both bPay and Pingit more appealing to a wider range of users, and will look to launch a new Pingit wearable device in May to support this. Users will still be able to make payments to friends and family in over 40 countries, fee free, with a mobile number; and pay directly from the messaging app. But Pingit will also get a range of new services, including the ability for users to split their account into “jars” to set aside money for specific uses, such as saving for a holiday. Barclays adds that all current bPay users, including those with third-party products featuring an embedded bPay chip, will be contacted and provided instructions for a free upgrade to the new Pingit wearables. Best e-commerce platform of 2019: get an online store now This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

3 barriers to cloud adoption for SMBs and why they shouldn’t matter Posted: 06 Mar 2019 07:02 AM PST It’s no secret that cloud technology has been leading the movement towards digital transformation. In fact, a recent survey found that 83 percent of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020. However, the statistic doesn’t account for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which have traditionally been hesitant to adopt cloud technology – or any technology, for that matter. While some SMBs are recognizing the value of moving their operations to the cloud, many are still faced with hurdles that are preventing their digital transformation. Notably, concerns around security, maintenance and costs are burdening small business owners, particularly those who don’t have a dedicated IT person to manage it all. However, what many of SMBs don’t know is that the cloud can alleviate the daily stresses of monitoring data security, housing expensive hardware and dedicating teams to maintain it all. Here's why SMBs need to stop letting these three barriers hinder their digital transformation.  Best ways to transfer files online in 2019 Best ways to share big files Best ways to share files securely 1.  Security While all businesses are at risk of data breaches and cyberattacks, SMBs are particularly vulnerable. According to Small Business Trends, 43 percent of cyberattacks specifically target small businesses. Unfortunately, the same study found that upwards of 60 percent of small businesses that fall victim to a hack will go out of business within six months of being hit.  With that in mind, it’s not surprising that security is one of the top barriers to cloud adoption for SMBs. When it comes to securing business data, the concept of moving information to a place that does not live within the walls of the business can be unnerving. However, keeping data locked up in a hard drive can actually lead to disastrous consequences. According to the creators of World Backup Day, more than 140,000 hard drive crashes occur each week in the U.S. The estimated cost of this failure and resulting disruption to the average small business would amount to $15,000 per day. The potential risks don’t end there; by relying on hardware, SMBs are also extremely vulnerable to ransomware attacks. In September 2017, Hickory Home and Garden Center, a small retail business in Hickory, NC, fell victim to a vicious ransomware attack. Not only were all the files on the server encrypted, but the attack had also encrypted everything on the external hard drive the company used as a backup. After this incident, the company sat down with their ERP provider to understand how a cloud solution might have prevented this from happening. They learned that their data would have been secured from the start through their provider’s strong firewalls, penetration and vulnerability testing and layered storage capabilities – all of which are key benefits of the cloud in preventing cyberattacks. It is extremely important that small businesses understand the implications of refraining to move their data to the cloud. While business data might not be physically in the owner’s hands everyday like it is with hardware, it is just as accessible and even more secure when stored in the cloud. 2. Maintenance  A survey report from Techaisle LLC found that the fourth biggest challenge that SMBs face, following budget constraints, mobile security and excessive data growth, is finding qualified and trained people to manage their IT applications. To combat this, SMBs should look for a provider with data centers that are managed by professional IT personnel with experience in the cloud environment and who dedicate themselves to maintaining the success of their customer’s software.  Prior to their cloud adoption, Hickory Home and Garden Centers had to back up their servers to an external hard drive every day. Afterwards, they backed the servers up to a flash dive, which ate up too much of the team’s time. They would have to go into the store early and stay late in order to maintain the software updates and tend to other maintenance issues. Instead of searching for in-house resources to maintain IT structure, SMBs should identify cloud providers that offer trusted support for their cloud maintenance needs. 3. Cost Added costs to a small business’s tech stack is always a topic of concern to owners. However, moving to the cloud makes operations significantly more affordable for small businesses.  According to NSK Inc., 82 percent of companies have saved on costs by utilizing cloud technology in their business. Instead of setting up a local system that requires annual investments in maintenance and trained IT staff, cloud providers are pooling their resources to house large-scale data centers for their SMB customers. Although switching to the cloud may come with slight upfront costs such as installation or migration, in the long run, it will save small businesses a lot of money.  Small business owners who let concerns around security, maintenance and cost prevent them from moving their processes to the cloud are at risk of falling behind as their competitors embrace digital transformation. With secure and reliable data protection capabilities, efficient server maintenance personnel and cost-effective subscriptions, identifying a cloud provider is the simple answer for any SMB to alleviate the common stresses of data security, hardware maintenance and overall technology costs.  And, while it is smart to weigh out the options and potential risks of adopting a new technology, it is also important that small businesses consider how their current operations might be hindering them more than they realize. Grant Howe, Chief Technology Officer of ECi Software Solutions, brings more than 21 years of product development and management experience.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

The best Android apps to download in 2019 Posted: 06 Mar 2019 06:54 AM PST There's never been a better time to get into Android apps, as the Google Play store has exploded in recent years, with a proliferation of titles that can cater to your every need. The problem is: there are just too many of them, even with Editors' Choice, Featured and Best Selling, Top Paid and Top Free categories there to help. You can filter, see Google's lists or read the reviews - but the easiest (and best) way to find top quality apps is to have someone else do the searching for you. That's where we come in. Like you, we want the best apps for our Android phones. The apps that are going to revolutionize functionality or, at the very least, offer something so great that it becomes one of the must-have apps that has to be downloaded whenever you get a new handset. The following apps will be constantly updated and are a mixture of paid and free ones that have been chosen by our Android experts. So, even if you do dip into actual cash for one of these apps, you can be safe in the knowledge it's a worthwhile purchase. We’ve also sorted them into categories, so you can find what you’re looking for more easily. Click through to the following pages for those or check out the best Android apps of the week below. Best Android apps of the week These are the two apps that we've chosen to highlight each week. They're usually new apps or apps that have recently received a major update, but occasionally hidden gems and other essentials will also be highlighted. Poweramp Music Player $3.99/£3.39 Poweramp is an old favorite in the world of music player apps, but a massive overhaul has brought it to version three, complete with a new audio engine which supports hi-res output and additional file formats, including opus, tak, mka, dsd, and dsf/dff. The overhaul also added tempo controls and a reverb effect, updated the UI to make it a whole lot more modern (complete with light and dark themes) and made navigation more intuitive. That’s all building on top of an already brilliant app that has a 10-band graphic equalizer, support for most audio file formats, and all sorts of tools and options, such as gapless playback and crossfade. The app can display lyrics and download missing album artwork, and there are widgets, a tag editor, and numerous additional themes available to download. Few apps match Poweramp for features, and as of V3 it’s one of the best-looking music players on Android too. It’s well worth the price tag if you play much local audio, but it comes with a 15-day free trial, so you can try it out before paying. VLC for Android Free You’ve probably come across VLC before, but if not you really, really should, because it’s one of the very best video player apps on Android. Even if you have tried it before, it could be worth revisiting, as it’s received several recent updates. This completely free app has almost everything you might want from a video player, including extensive file support (such as MKV, MP4, AVI, MOV, Ogg, FLAC, TS, M2TS, Wv and AAC), support for DVD ISOs, network streams and network shares, the ability to add and display subtitles, adjust the aspect ratio, and alter the look and sound with an equalizer and filters. And those are just the headline features. There’s plenty more to dig into beyond this. We’re not the biggest fans of VLC’s distinctive orange color scheme, but that’s about the only thing we can find to complain about, and it can be partially hidden if you switch to the black theme. The best Android camera apps and photo editors Our favorite Android apps for shooting, sorting and editing photos and videos. Photo Watermark Free + $0.99/£0.89 monthly subscription Photo Watermark does exactly what the name suggests – it lets you add watermarks to photos – but the types of watermarks you can add are quite varied. Not only can you add custom text as a watermark (including changing the font, size and color), you can also use your signature (or any other hand-written text) as a watermark by writing on the screen. You can also apply stickers, a timestamp, a location, a mosaic effect, or ‘graffiti’ (which basically just lets you go wild on your images with a digital paintbrush). Whether you want to protect your photo or just log when and where it was taken, there should be a tool here to suit. Photo Watermark is free, but it’s quite heavy on adverts. For $0.99/£0.89 per month you can get rid of them, but unless you’re adding watermarks to a ton of images it’s probably not worth it. StoryZ Photo Motion & Cinemagraph Free + $1.99/£1.79 monthly subscription StoryZ Photo Motion & Cinemagraph is a photo editing app in two parts. The first of these is ‘Ripple’, a mode which lets you add motion to a static image by drawing the area and direction that you want the motion to happen. This can be an effective way to make it look like water or smoke is moving for example, or simply to add a slightly trippy effect to things that you might expect to be static. The ‘Motion’ mode, which lets you blend a video with a photo, leaves you with an ‘image’ that’s partially static and partially in motion. In both cases it can be hard to make the effect look convincing, but it’s doable, as evidenced by all the impressive public submissions shared on the app. StoryZ also holds contests with specific themes, such as ‘stairs’ or ‘sand’, which you can enter by submitting a relevant creation. The best ones will be featured on the home page and competition page of the app. You can use StoryZ for free, but if you find that you have more of a talent for it than we do then there’s also StoryZ Premium, which for a monthly subscription removes adverts and watermarks, increases the allowable length of videos in Motion mode, improves the toolset in Ripple mode and lets you save and share in high resolution. KineMaster Free + £2.91 (roughly $3.70) monthly subscription KineMaster is probably one of the most powerful video editors on Android, but it’s also intuitive enough that anyone could enjoy using it. The app lets you add audio and visual filters to footage, add text, stickers and other overlays, alter and trim videos frame-by-frame, adjust the speed, add transition effects and a whole lot more. You can also record videos straight from the KineMaster app. It can feel a little cramped on a phone screen, but otherwise everything works well. You can use KineMaster for free, but all your videos will have a KineMaster watermark and you can’t use them commercially. To remove the watermarks, allow commercial use and unlock additional assets (such as effects and overlays) you have to pay a subscription, but at £2.91 (roughly $3.70) per month it remains affordable. Moment – Pro Camera $1.99/£1.79 A truly great camera app arguably needs to both avoid clutter and be packed full of manual controls, so you can capture an image exactly as you want it, but that’s a tough balance to strike, and few manage. Moment – Pro Cameraarguably does though. It gives you full manual control, including RAW shooting, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, exposure compensation and focus. There’s also tap to focus, a timer, a grid and several different lenses. It’s an impressive toolkit, with the app focusing more on powerful utilities than gimmicky filters, but it all has a very clean, minimalist look. And it’s designed with ease of use in mind. You can double tap any setting to return it to auto or double tap the viewfinder to turn everything back to auto and all the controls are within easy reach. The main downside of Moment is that it can’t currently shoot videos, but for photos there’s a good chance you’ll want to replace your current camera app with this, and video is apparently in the works. IGTV Free IGTV is a new app from Instagram that’s focused on long-form video content. Rather than the one-minute videos of old, you can now make and watch videos up to an hour in length. Videos are in full-screen portrait format, which is unusual for longer content, but makes it easy to hold your phone while watching. If you already have an Instagram account you can simply sign in to instantly see content from people and brands that you already follow. You can also like and comment on videos, view popular ones and browse and search for content beyond the stuff that the app already highlights to you. Technically, you don’t need the IGTV app to access all this stuff, as it’s also been added to the main Instagram app, but if long-form video content is the main thing you’re interested in rather than photos or shorter videos, then the IGTV app is the best way to get it. PhotoDirector Free + optional subscription Your phone might have a powerful camera, but chances are it doesn’t come with much in the way of photo editing tools. Fortunately, PhotoDirector can fill in the gaps. This app lets you adjust the tone, saturation, white balance and colors of photos you’ve previously taken, as well as adding filters and effects, which you can adjust the strength of and apply to all or just part of an image. You can also add text, stickers, frames, change the perspective, mirror the image, cut sections and a whole lot more. There are lots of tools, but PhotoDirector is easy to navigate and you can always undo your changes, so you’re safe to experiment. And that’s just the editing part of the app. There’s also a built-in camera, which lets you shoot new photos with various effects and see live through the viewfinder how they will affect the image. PhotoDirector is largely free, but if you want to direct to your best there’s a premium version that costs £2.59 (around US$3.70) per month, with discounts if you commit for three months or a year. This unlocks additional tools, boosts the output quality and removes adverts. Lens Distortions Free + $0.99/£0.99 monthly subscription “The best effects are the ones no one knows you added.” So says the intro video to Lens Distortions, and it has a point. Rather than flashy, gimmicky effects and photo filters, Lens Distortions has a selection of natural, true to life ones that look like they could have been captured by the camera itself. These include sunlight, rain, snow and fog effects, so tend to be most suited to outdoor shots, but they look convincing and there’s a selection of different looks in each category. Once you’ve applied a filter you can tweak it by adjusting the brightness, saturation, contrast and more, and add extra layers so you can apply more than one filter at a time. The interface is slick and intuitive, and your edited photos can be saved to your phone or shared with various social media and cloud storage apps. You get 40 filters for free at time of writing, but for a $0.99/£0.99 monthly subscription you can unlock additional filter packs and 215 premium filters. As a one-off purchase it would have been easy to recommend, but as a subscription it’s probably only worth it if you find yourself using Lens Distortions a lot. Either way though the free version is well worth a download. LightX Photo Editor Free + $3.69/£3.49 IAP If you want an all-in-one photo editor for Android then LightX Photo Editor is a good choice, not least because most of the features are free. You can merge photos, add effects and filters, selectively apply colors to regions of an image, adjust the color balance, smooth and sharpen images, crop them, rotate them, draw on them, add frames and stickers, add text, create collages and a whole lot more. That’s all handled through an intuitive interface; bring up the main menu with a tap, select the category of edits you want to make (filters or frames, for example) and you’ll be taken to a menu with all the relevant options. Most of it is fairly self-explanatory, but there are also tutorial videos for if you get stuck, and for a one-off $3.69/£3.49 IAP you can get rid of adverts, unlock additional stickers and frames, and add the ability to save images in PNG format. 8Bit Photo Lab Free + IAP 8Bit Photo Lab is a photo filter app that takes you back to simpler times. Times when games didn’t have near-photo-realistic graphics and Android was just a glint in Andy Rubin’s eye. Simply snap or import a picture and pick a color palette from over 50 options, such as Game Boy or Commodore 64. Your photo will then instantly transform into something you might have seen on a screen from that era. But that’s just the beginning, you can also add effects such as noise and checkerboard patterns, change the resolution and aspect ratio, tweak the contrast, saturation and brightness, and add 8-bit stickers, such as a mouse cursor, or little characters that look like they’ve come straight out of a game from the late 80s. Essentially, 8Bit Photo Lab is like Prisma for anyone who prefers old-school video games to modern art, but it’s a well thought-through app. Once you’ve tweaked an image to perfection you can add exactly the same filter to other photos with a swipe, for example, and while you get plenty for free, you can unlock lots of extra options with an IAP, including the ability to turn your creations into animated wallpapers. TouchRetouch $1.99/£1.99 No matter how good your smartphone camera is your images can still be ruined by unwanted additions, be it people in the background, a trash can in your landscape or blemishes on your own face. TouchRetouch is here to help, by removing anything that you don’t want in your shot. You can get rid of unwanted objects by highlighting or circling them, and simply tap a blemish to remove it. There are additional tools to clone or mirror parts of the image, and video tutorials to help you get more out of the app – though most of the features are fairly self-explanatory. Results aren’t always perfect, with the app trying but not always entirely succeeding to hide the seams when you cut someone out, but you don’t have to save any changes you’re unhappy with and it generally does a surprisingly good job, all with only a few taps from you. SKRWT $1.49/£1.39 There are plenty of photo editing apps, but while most offer filters and effects few allow you to alter the perspective of a photo in the way SKRWT does. There are no stickers here, no makeup modes and no real effects. Instead there are tools to shift the perspective, change the ratio and correct lens distortion. You can also flip, rotate, mirror and crop images, but SKRWT isn't interested so much in modifying photos in unnatural ways, as in making them look exactly as you envisioned when you took them. It's a professional tool, but it's easy to use and you can always undo your changes if you don't like them. Our favorite Android apps for painting, drawing, sketching, design and animation. Houzz Free Houzz is a one-stop app for decorating and furnishing your home. The app has numerous different sections, including a database of over 16 million photos to give you decor ideas, which can be filtered based on style, room and other things. These images can also be sketched on and shared. Houzz lets you buy millions of products (such as furniture) and materials from within the app, and there’s a tool that lets you use augmented reality to see how a product would look in your home. There are articles and videos related to remodelling and improving your home, too. You can find and hire interior decorators, architects and other professionals within the app, and there’s a community where users can ask and answer questions. Houzz isn’t an app that everyone needs on their phone, but it is one that’s definitely worth looking at if you’re considering redecorating or making other home improvements. Over Free + $59.99/£54.99 per year Over is designed primarily for adding text to images, which you might want to do if you’re making a poster or Instagram post, for example. The app lets you select from a wide range of canvas sizes, including some created specifically for different social media purposes, such as Facebook cover photos. Then you can add images, text and graphics. For images you can adjust the exposure, contrast and various other things; for text you can choose from a range of fonts, alignments and colors; and for graphics you can select from a range of pre-made designs, then adjust color, position and the like. Projects can have multiple layers, and when you’re done you can save the result as a JPG or PNG, or share it. It’s a handy app and everything that we’ve described so far is free, but for an admittedly hefty $59.99/£54.99 per year you get access to an ever-growing library of templates, hundreds of extra fonts, far more graphics and the promise of additional features in future. For the average user this probably isn’t necessary, but if you’re using it for work or need to combine images and text regularly then it could be worth the outlay. Draw.ai Free + various IAP Digital devices seem an ideal fit for drawing tutorials, yet few drawing apps seem to take advantage of them. Instead they often assume you already know what you’re doing or will learn outside the app, while many of the ones that do teach you rely on static images and text, but Draw.ai is more interactive. While not a comprehensive guide to drawing, it offers a large assortment of images and guides you towards recreating each one step by step, one line at a time. By which we mean the app will draw a line or two from the image, then make it appear faint so you can draw the same thing over it. This continues until the image is complete, after which you’re free to color it (without a guide). Once you’re finished, Draw.ai will show a short video of the entire process you went through. The actual drawing tools are more limited than some apps, but there is at least a handy undo button that erases the last line you drew or change you made – something beginners will be making use of a lot. Many of the images are free and more are added all the time, but to access everything you’ll have to pay a $5.99/£5.49 weekly subscription (with big discounts available if you pay monthly or yearly instead – you can get a full year for $59.99/£52.99). Sketch - Draw & Paint Free + various IAP Sketch – Draw & Paint is a photo editor, sketching app and art community all in one, and while it’s not the deepest option for any of those things, it’s fun and easy to use. On the sketching side you get a variety of different pen and brush types of different sizes and colors, along with the ability to add text and stickers and some basic tools, such as a ruler and layers. You can either start with a blank canvas or take or import a photo, which brings us to the photo editing aspect of Sketch, an aspect which relies on the same set of tools. As for the community, Sketch lets you upload your creations and share them with other Sketch users, as you can also browse through people’s artworks. There are categories for this, including ‘trending’ and ‘newcomers’, or you can just search for something specific. You can comment on or like any of the shared artworks, and follow their creator so you can more easily keep track of any other work they produce. The actual quality of work in the community is varied, but that means it should be less intimidating to share your own. Sketch – Draw & Paint is mostly free, but you can buy extra sticker packs or for £0.99 (around US$1.30) per month subscribe to Sketch Premium to unlock all the stickers, remove adverts, get a transparent background and be able to use a custom canvas size. SketchBook Free You’ve probably come across SketchBook before – if not on Android then on iOS or desktop. This Autodesk sketching tool has been around for a long time and is one of the bigger names in the space, but it’s worth a second look because it’s now completely free, whereas many of the features were previously behind a paywall. That means you can access loads of preset brushes, import images in any quality, customize the canvas size, and do many other things that previously you’d have had to pay for. And, of course, you can sketch, with all the tools combining to make SketchBook one of the most powerful mobile options around. You’ll need a tablet or at least a large phone to make the most of it, but as it’s now totally free there’s nothing to lose in downloading it and giving it a try, even if you have a smaller device. Desygner Free + $7.49/£5.99 subscription Desygner lets you unleash your inner graphic designer on your phone or tablet, but with an intuitive interface and thousands of templates it’s simple enough for beginners to use. You can combine text, shapes, images, stickers, backgrounds and more to create logos, posters, adverts, PowerPoint-like presentations, postcards or any number of other things where images and typography are important. Each component of your design can be moved, resized, rotated, flipped, duplicated or have its color changed, and you can work with multiple layers. Results can then be saved to your device to be used wherever you want. We suspect it might be a bit limited for professional graphic designers, who may want more freedom to completely create designs from scratch, but for everyone else Desygner is a great way to make something that looks professional. The basic app is free but certain features, as well as the majority of the templates, require a monthly subscription which costs $7.49/£5.99. That’s probably worth it if you’re going to use the app semi-regularly, but if you just want to design something as a one-off you might find the free version good enough. Infinite Painter $7.99/£6.99 There’s no shortage of apps for digital artists, but Infinite Painter is one of the most feature-packed, with dozens of brush presets and the ability to create your own, along with layers, blending, editing tools and more, plus the option to export your images as JPEG, PNG, PSD or ZIP. But as well as being packed full of features, Infinite Painter also takes the time to show you how they all work, with detailed tutorials and guides, although the interface is so simple that you should be able to muddle your way through most things anyway. A lot of the features are hidden behind a paywall, with it costing $7.99/£6.99 to unlock everything, but the app includes a free seven-day trial, letting you try everything out before you decide whether you want to put money down, which if you’re a fan of digital art you probably will, because you get a lot for your money. Our favorite Android apps for learning new things, from history to music to coding and beyond. Shepard Fairey AR – DAMAGED $4.99/£4.59 We’ve not always been entirely convinced by digital versions of real-world exhibits, but Shepard Fairey AR – DAMAGED does it right. The app is a digital version of Shepard Fairey’s DAMAGED exhibit and it’s a great option for anyone who can’t make it to the real show in Los Angeles. The app lets you walk around the exhibit with taps and swipes, or you can set it so that rotating your phone also changes your view in the exhibit. Or go even further and use an augmented reality mode that lets you physically walk around the exhibit, using your phone as a window into it. It’s not just the exhibit, either – you also get over 100 minutes of narration from Fairey explaining the various artworks, which combined show that the world – and especially the US – is in a state of crisis, but that much of the damage can be repaired.  MasterClass From $89.99/£84.99 MasterClass gives you lessons in various skills, from cookery to acting to creative writing and a whole lot more, but how it really stands out is that these lessons are all taught by some of the best in the business. You can learn cookery from Gordon Ramsay for example, filmmaking from Martin Scorsese, tennis from Serena Williams or photography from Annie Leibovitz. Of course, this is an app, not a face to face lesson, so you’re not interacting with these people, but they’ve created video lessons and various other materials – such as workbooks – for MasterClass. This content isn’t free; in fact it’s quite expensive, coming in at $89.99/£84.99 for a single course or $179.99/£169.99 for an ‘all access pass’, letting you access every course for a year. That’s steep, but it could be worth it if you’re serious about learning and want some top-class tuition. You can also explore the app and see video previews of any of the courses before paying. Scripts Free + $10.99/£10.49 per month Learning to speak a language is only half the battle. To become fluent in a new language you also need to be able to read and write in it, and in the case of Japanese, Chinese and Korean that can be a daunting prospect, since they have their own unique alphabets. Scripts can help though, as it gives you various bite-sized exercises designed to teach you their alphabets and get you practice at actually writing out the letters. It starts by having you essentially trace or fill in a letter on the screen, then moves on to having you repeat the shape without a guide. These exercises and variations on them are repeated a number of times to drill the letter into you. And if that sounds tedious, well, it’s not. The app is nicely designed and for free you only get to use it for five minutes each day, which isn’t long enough to get bored but is long enough to make progress. If you want more you can pay $10.99/£10.49 per month to unlock unlimited time, get rid of adverts and even get full access to Drops, which is another language learning app by the same company.  Gweek $6.99/£6.49 monthly subscription Ever wish you could speak more clearly? Or just wonder how clear a communicator you actually are? Gweek can help with the first of those things and answer the second. Simply launch the app and talk into your phone for between one and two minutes about anything you want, then Gweek will analyze your speech, give you a score out of 100, tell you how to improve and show where you rank compared to various famous people. When you’re ready you can try speaking for another one to two minutes, taking the advice on board, and see how your score changes. You can also see things like how many filler words you use and how much you stutter, and there are additional tools to help you improve, such as guides to speech patterns and eye movements, and audio and visual examples. Gweek could genuinely make you a better communicator, which could help in all parts of your life, from your relationships to advancing professionally and even gaining confidence. However, to use it beyond getting your initial score you’ll need to pay a monthly subscription of $6.99/£6.49. That seems steep, but it’s a genuinely useful app and does something we’ve not come across before. Toca Nature $3.99/£3.99 If you have mixed feelings about letting your kid loose on a smartphone then Toca Nature could be a compromise, making them just as interested in the great outdoors as the screen in front of their face. The app gives you a mostly empty expanse of grass that you can build mountains, lakes, rivers and forests on – all by selecting what you want and then swiping your finger across the part of the landscape where you want it to appear. This interaction is wonderfully tactile, with mountains rising as you rub repeatedly across the same area and trees sprouting when you glide your finger. Once you’re done creating your landscape it’s time to explore, with the app letting you zoom in, wander around and even interact with the animals that have made this space their home, feeding them various treats and hunting out more across the landscape. You can take photos of your world and there’s even a day and night cycle. While Toca Nature is designed for young children it’s a testament to how good it is that it could appeal to all ages – though older users will probably tire of the limited toolset quickly. Drops Free + $10/£8.99 monthly subscription Apps have revolutionized language learning, but there’s more than one way to learn from an app, and while some focus on typing and speaking, Drops leans into the strengths of a smartphone by making all interactions swipe- and tap-based. Drops gives you a series of exercises to carry out each time you use it, taking various forms. One asks you to swipe a word to its corresponding picture, another asks you to tap pairs of words and pictures, and one breaks up a word or phrase into several parts and has you tap them in the correct order. There are others too, and Drops has a lot of content covering all sorts of categories from food to plants and even politics in a variety of languages. Impressively, it also feels as slick and polished as Duolingo, without imitating it. Drops gives you five minutes of language learning each day for free, but the app is designed to be bite-sized and the makers claim this is enough to make progress. If you do want more though you can pay for unlimited access at a price of $10/£8.99, with discounts available if you pay for a year upfront. Mimo: Learn to Code Free + $9.99/£8.99 monthly subscription The first step in learning to code is deciding what coding language to learn, and that can be a tough decision, as there are a lot of options. Mimo helps with that, first asking you a series of questions in an attempt to find out why you want to code, then creating a curriculum for you, focusing on the language and skills that are more relevant to your needs. The lessons are bite-sized and fun, so you can easily and enjoyably fit them into your day, and while we doubt you’ll become an expert from the app alone, it’s a great way to get started or to supplement other coding classes. You can get started for free, but to unlock the bulk of the content you need to upgrade to premium, at a cost of $9.99/£8.99 per month. Though currently you can get a big discount if you pay for a year upfront, making it a whole lot cheaper. Blinkist Free + various subscriptions Few of us have time to read all the books we want to, but Blinkist can give you a fighting chance by distilling the key information in books down into something that only takes around 15 minutes to read. Obviously, this only works for nonfiction, and you will be missing a lot, but you can genuinely take away many of the core points and messages, so it’s great for books that you’re only semi-interested in and would never read otherwise. There’s a lot of choice, with over 2,500 books included in the app, though to access most of them you have to pay a monthly subscription (which starts at $6.67/£5 per month if you pay for a year upfront but is $12.99/£13.49 if you pay monthly). This also lets you listen to the distilled versions, so you can consume them even when you can’t or don’t want to read. If you stick with the free version of Blinkist you get one book per day and the app chooses which one. It’s still well worth having on your phone, but if you get into it then the subscription is probably worthwhile. DailyArt Free + $4.99/£4.69 IAP DailyArt shows you a new artwork every day – mostly paintings, but sometimes other forms of art such as sculpture too. It includes classic, modern and contemporary artworks, accompanied by information on the work and artist, so you can see and learn something new every day. You can also favorite, share and download artworks, get notifications when a new daily one appears, and get information on where you can see each of the works in the flesh. The core DailyArt app is free, but for a one-time IAP you can unlock access to the entire database, which currently includes around 4,000 artworks from 1,000 artists, so if you want to go beyond one artwork each day you’ll have a whole trove of them to dive into. Rosetta Stone Free + various IAP Rosetta Stone has been teaching people languages since before smartphones were a thing, and its Android app is one of the best ways to learn. You can select from 24 different languages, then go through a variety of lessons that combine words and images so you can learn visually. All the phrases are spoken, so you also get to hear the pronunciation. There are a variety of different lesson types. Some show you several pictures and ask you to tap the one that matches a word or phrase, while some ask you to repeat the word or phrase, then use Rosetta Stone’s speech recognition technology to tell you how close you got. There are stories that you can read or have read to you in the language you’re learning, and you can download lessons, so you can learn even when there’s no internet connection. If you’ve ever used something like Duolingo then this app will feel somewhat familiar, but Rosetta Stone seems to put more of a focus on having you speak words aloud. Unlike Duolingo, most of Rosetta Stone isn’t free, but you can get some basic lessons without paying to begin learning the foundations of a language. Then, if you want to take it further, you can subscribe for anywhere from three months to a year, or buy lifetime access to a language course. Prices vary depending on what you choose, but this isn’t cheap, costing for example $79/£42.99 for three months of access. Still, it’s potentially more affordable than a real-world course. Guitar Lessons by Fender Play $9.99/£8.99 monthly subscription While taking guitar lessons is probably advisable if you want to learn, it’s perfectly possible to teach yourself, and Guitar Lessons by Fender Play is probably one of the strongest tools for that. Starting with the absolute basics, the app lets you choose the style of music you want to focus on and whether you’re playing electric or acoustic guitar, then it takes you through a series of video lessons, teaching you chords, riffs and songs. Many of the videos are short, so you can learn in bite-sized chunks, and information is often also written out for you below the video. You can also jump ahead to later lessons if you’re more advanced or just not interested in certain tutorials, and there are hundreds of different songs and lessons in total, so there’s plenty to sink your teeth into. Guitar Lessons by Fender Play costs US$9.99/£8.99 every month, but that’s still a lot less than you’d spend on a weekly lesson, and you get the first month free. Our favorite Android apps for having fun on your phone or tablet, through watching videos, reading, socializing and more. Soon Free Soon is an app for keeping track of all the movies and shows you want to watch, the music you want to listen to, the bars and restaurants you want to visit, the books you want to read, and various other things. Simply tap on the relevant category (‘books’ for example) then type the name of the thing you want to remember. Soon will populate the entry with relevant details if it can find any. These might include the address if it’s a place, or the cast and crew if it’s a film, for example. In this way you can build up lists and have them all in one place, so you’ll never lose track of them. If you’re planning a trip you can also create a list of the things you want to do on it, and even collaborate on the list with other people. Each of the list categories also has a second screen where anything that you’ve marked as ‘done’ appears, so it doesn’t clutter up the main list, but so you can still easily check if you have watched, read or visited the thing, in case you can’t remember for sure. You also get a chance to rate the thing when you mark it as done, so you’ll have a record of what you thought of everything too. RAM and Game Booster $0.99/£0.59 Some smartphone makers have put a big focus on gaming modes, such as Huawei with its GPU Turbo feature, but if you don’t have a handset with these sorts of features there are still things that can help, such as RAM and Game Booster. It helps by freeing up RAM, which it can do on-demand or when specific games are launched. You can also set RAM and Game Booster to free up RAM when RAM usage reaches a set percentage, after a set period, or when the app judges that the device requires it. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an app aimed at freeing up RAM, but the various settings for when it happens are more comprehensive here than on most rival apps. This still won’t turn a low-end phone into a gaming powerhouse, but it could make a small difference to performance. Pocket Free + $4.99/£4.49 monthly subscription Pocket isn’t a new app, but it does have some new features and a new look. For those who don’t already know, Pocket is an app that lets you save articles so that you can read them later. That both means you can read them offline and allows you to keep a list of content you plan to read so you won’t forget about it. And as Pocket works on a variety of devices, including Android and iOS phones and tablets as well as PCs, you can read what you’ve saved anywhere. Thanks to a recent update you can also now listen to saved articles, with Pocket reading them out to you, so you can devour them even when you’re busy doing something else. The company is also planning to add Alexa integration, meaning you’ll be able to listen to articles through any device that has Alexa built in. And the interface now has multiple themes, as well as a general overhaul designed to make reading for long periods more comfortable. It’s good stuff, and it’s mostly free, but subscribing to Pocket Premium for $4.99/£4.49 per month gets rid of adverts, unlocks a powerful search tool, and ensures your saved articles won’t be lost even if they’re taken off the web. Google Home Free One of the problems with smart homes today is that your devices are typically made by a variety of different companies and, as such, they’re all managed by different apps. It’s a messy and not particularly smart situation, but an update to Google Home aims to address that. The app now lets you manage most smart devices from within it, whether they’re made by Google or not. Thousands of devices from hundreds of brands are supported; it’s just a case of finding yours and logging into them from the Google Home app, thereby giving it permission to manage them. You can then create groups of smart devices based on what room they’re in and manage everything from lights to thermostats to coffee makers all in one place. Some devices still aren’t supported, and you don’t always have full control – for example, we can turn our LIFX lights on and off and adjust the brightness from Google Home, but can’t change the colors. Still, for basic interactions with most of your smart devices, Google Home is a slick, streamlined option. MTV Play UK £3.99 per month If you’re in the US you could have been enjoying MTV content on your Android phone or tablet for years, but the app has only just come to the UK. For £3.99 per month (following a free seven-day trial) you get access to box sets of a variety of MTV shows, such as Geordie Shore and Ex on the Beach, plus the ability to catch up on the latest episodes, and new content added all the time. There are also extras, such as behind the scenes footage, and there’s a daily MTV news bulletin providing news focused on the entertainment industry. As streaming apps go MTV Play UK is pretty basic – there’s no Chromecast support currently for example, or the option to download content, but if you like MTV and don’t like being a slave to TV schedules then it’s still a near essential app.  Mubi Go £7.99 per month You might have come across Mubi before – it’s a streaming film service that gives subscribers access to a new film every day, with a focus on independent and world films. Mubi Go is essentially that for the cinema. The service selects one new cinema release each week and gives you a free ticket to it. Or rather, it gives you a QR code that can be scanned at select cinemas in exchange for a ticket. There seems anecdotally to be quite a good range of cinemas, including big chains like Vue, though Mubi Go tends to select quite niche films which don’t have a wide release, so if you’re not in a big city your mileage may vary. The service is included with a standard Mubi subscription, so if you’re already subscribed to that you can download the Mubi Go app and have instant access. However, while Mubi itself is available in both the US and UK, Mubi Go is currently only a UK service. We wouldn’t be surprised if that changes one day, but in the meantime US users always have the superficially similar MoviePass.  Compass News Free + $0.99/£0.99 monthly subscription Compass News is a slick, speedy way to get to the heart of the day’s most important news stories. The main screen contains a list of the biggest headlines of the day and tapping on them provides a brief summary of the story, no more than a few paragraphs long. For free, that’s all you really get, but take out a subscription and you can access another feed that has more stories – though still only reports judged to be the biggest and most important. Here, each contains an even shorter 30-second summary, along with a separate tab providing background and context, which again is done in a few short paragraphs. If you want the full story you can tap on it to be taken to its host site and read it in full - these sites are major sources such as The Guardian and The New York Times. There are over 25 different publishers in total, all of which are judged to be among the best and most trusted, so there’s no risk of fake news. The sources also encompass both the left and right of the political spectrum, to provide a more rounded look at the news. You can favorite stories in order to access them offline, and browse topics if you’re only interested in certain news sections, but that’s all the app offers. It’s light on options by design, keeping things simple so catching up with the news doesn’t become a chore. Curio Free + $7.99/£5.99 monthly subscription There are so many interesting articles around, with new ones being published every day, and while many can be found for free online the big problem can be finding the time to read them all, which is where Curio comes in. Rather than reading the articles yourself, with Curio you can have them read to you. That means you can absorb them while doing other things, like walking, driving or exercising, and we’re not talking about some robotic synthesized voice here. All the articles are read by real people (professional voice actors at that), so they’re actually enjoyable to listen to. There are over 2,000 articles available across a range of subjects and from a variety of sources, including The Guardian, The Financial Times, Salon, Aeon and many more. You can filter articles based on publication, their length, or their ‘vibe’, and there are various playlists too, grouping similar articles together, so there are lots of ways to find new things to listen to. There are also handy tools like the ability to download articles, so you can listen to them offline, or load the article in text form so you can read along to it. All of this doesn’t come free though. You can listen to two articles (chosen by the Curio team) each day without being charged, but for unlimited listening you need to subscribe at a cost of $7.99/£5.99 per month (with discounts available if you commit to a year). It’s not cheap, but we’d say it’s well worth it if you ever find yourself wishing you had more time to read articles, or just prefer having them read out to you. Shudder $4.99/£4.99 per month If you’re a big horror fan there’s a better place for you than Netflix, and it’s called Shudder. It’s a similar service, offering a range of streaming movies and shows for a monthly subscription, but all of them broadly fit into the horror genre. As such the selection is both smaller and less diverse than most streaming services, but its horror catalog is hard to top and new content is added regularly, including recent releases and exclusives which you can’t stream anywhere else. Shudder supports Chromecast, so you can view things on a bigger screen than your phone or tablet, and it also works with iOS devices and computers so you can get your horror fix on almost any device. You can also create a watchlist, so you’ll never lose track of what you want to see, and review and rate things you’ve already watched – as well as reading other user reviews. The only major missing feature is the ability to download content to view offline, but as long as you have an internet connection Shudder is hard to beat for horror. Letterboxd Free Letterboxd bills itself as a social network for film lovers and that’s about right, but its focus is primarily on tracking what you’ve seen, planning what you want to see, and discovering films you didn’t even know about. That discovery part comes mostly through themed lists created by other users, with titles such as 'Japanese films that will blow your mind' and 'When you’re feeling a little lost'. You can read reviews of films from other users and follow people to receive updates on their activity in Letterboxd. The app also invites you to write your own reviews and create your own collections, as well as building up a list of films you’ve watched, ones you like and ones you want to watch. Each movie has its own page, complete with user reviews and ratings, a description, often a trailer, and list of a cast and crew that you can tap through to find out more about people and what they’ve done. All of this is very nicely laid out, with lots of images, and Letterboxd is accessible from the web and iOS devices as well as Android. Readly $9.99/£7.99 per month In the age of the web, magazines can feel like a dated concept, but Readly does a decent job of bringing them up to date by offering a Netflix-like subscription service. We say Netflix-like, but while most of the content on there is far from brand new, you have access to the latest issues of thousands of magazines on Readly, all in digital form and with unlimited access for $9.99/£7.99 per month. You can read content from not just your own country but various others too and the selection is strong, with plenty of big names on offer, along with more niche magazines. Readly is accessible on phone, tablet and computer, so you can access your magazines almost anywhere with a screen, and even download them for offline reading. You also have access to back issues, and navigation is a breeze, handled by intuitive swipes and taps. Readly even supports crosswords and other puzzle content, so you can do just about everything you could with a paper version. Our favorite Android apps for working out, reducing stress and crafting meals. Shine – Self-Care & Meditation Free or $9.99/£9.49 per month / $53.99/£50.99 per year Shine is a self-care app that combines a number of things other apps specialize in. You can start by ‘checking in’ every day, saying something that you’re grateful for and something that you’re doing to make yourself happy. This is a small thing, but by thinking about what’s good in our lives we really can feel better about them. Shine will also send you a motivational text every week day, but the bulk of the app is a selection of articles and audio tracks covering a variety of topics. Some of these are meditations, but there’s also content on everything from improving sleep to avoiding burn out. As with many self-help apps, much of this is hidden behind a paywall, with Shine costing $9.99/£9.49 per month or $53.99/£50.99 per year to unlock everything. That’s not cheap, but there’s quite a lot of content, including seven-day audio challenges that provide a deep dive on a specific topic. QuitNow! Free + $3.95/£3.95 Quitting smoking is always going to be hard, but there are tools to help, including QuitNow!. The app first asks you how many cigarettes you smoke a day, how long ago you had your last one, how long you’ve been smoking, and a few other things. It then shows you a dashboard, complete with the amount of time since your last cigarette, which constantly counts up in seconds. You can also see how many cigarettes you’ve avoided and how much money you’ve saved based on that. A second screen shows how close you are to achieving certain health milestones, such as a lowered risk of sudden death and improved physical condition (all of which is based on World Health Organization data). There are also achievements to unlock, such as one for going without a cigarette for two days, and a community page, where you can post your progress and encourage others. That’s all free, but for a one-off fee of $3.95/£3.95 you can access 55 more achievements, a better community chat screen, custom achievements and more, as well as getting rid of adverts. If you’re serious about quitting and the app is helping, then that’s probably a price worth paying. Cocktail Flow Free + $5/£4.49 per month Most drinks you simply pour, but cocktails you craft, and if you want a little aid and inspiration then Cocktail Flow is a good place to start. The app has a large library of cocktails, complete with ingredient lists, equipment lists and instructions, plus the ability to choose what measurement units you want to use and how many servings you want to make. You can browse cocktails based on the type, base spirit or country of origin and you can favorite the ones you like so they’re easy to return to later. There’s also a small library of tips to help you get better at making them. These include things like how to layer drinks and how to dry shake. Much of the content is free, but for $5/£4.49 per month you can upgrade to premium, which unlocks hundreds of additional recipes with new ones added each week. It also lets you add your own cocktail recipes to the app and save notes, detailing tweaks that you like to make to cocktails. These are genuinely useful features, but we’d be much happier with a one-off payment than a subscription to access them. Still, if you’re a mixologist in the making it should be worthwhile. Paprika Recipe Manager Free or $4.99/£4.69 Paprika Recipe Manager isn’t a typical recipe app. In fact, it doesn’t house any recipes at all - at least, not when you first download it. Rather, Paprika includes a web browser that you can use to search for recipes and import them into the app. Paprika will attempt to save all the details, including ingredients, instructions and anything else included in the recipe, and generally it does a good job, but if it misses anything or if you want to tweak the recipe you can make manual edits. In this way you can build up a recipe book of all your favorite recipes from the web, rather than being limited to a single database as you are with most recipe apps. You can also add ingredients to an in-app shopping list, use a calendar in the app for meal planning and – if you upgrade to the full version for $4.99/£4.69 – sync your recipes to the cloud and save an unlimited number (up from 50 recipes in the free version of the app). Our only issue with Paprika is that the look of the app is functional rather than stylish, but overall this is well worth having whether you stick with the free version or shell out for the full app. Endomondo Free + £9.99 (roughly $13) monthly subscription If you run, cycle or even like to track your walks then there’s a good chance you’ve come across Endomondo before. As one of the oldest, biggest and best apps in the business - it stays that way thanks to regular updates; at the time of writing the app was updated less than two weeks ago. Even if you don’t run or cycle you might still want to check out Endomondo, as - despite its GPS-tracking specialities - it can also track more than 60 other sports, such as golf, climbing and ice skating. Alongside route and distance tracking, Endomondo can also track your speed, pace, calories and more. Ff you’re doing a sport that can’t be tracked with GPS then you can manually enter your workout, so you’ve still got a log of your achievements. Additionally, you can link Endomondo to heart rate monitors and cadence sensors to incorporate their data into your records. The app can also be connected to auxiliary fitness accounts such as Google Fit, Garmin Connect and Polar Flow, so all your health and fitness data will be in sync. Endomondo also lets you create goals for individual workouts or for your week, so you have targets to hit - the app will even alert you when you achieve a personal best. Plus, you can create and participate in challenges against friends and other users of the app. And if all that isn’t enough then you can also subscribe to Endomondo Premium, which adds heart rate zone analysis, interval training, personal training plans, access to advanced statistics (such as how far you’ve run in total each month), and more. SnoreLab Free + $6.99/£5.99 IAP Ever wondered how much you really snore or want to get your snoring under control? SnoreLab can help. Simply set the app to run while you sleep and it will record snippets of your snoring throughout the night, telling you how loud you snore and giving you a ‘snore score’. You can also play back the recordings, compare your snoring over multiple nights and log any factors that might be making it worse (such as alcohol) or any remedies you’re trying (such as nasal spray) to see how much difference they really make. Doing this you can both see first hand how bad your snoring really is and more effectively work out what makes it better or worse. The core app is free, but there’s a one-off IAP to access your full history and additional features, such as soothing sounds to help you get to sleep. Bring! Grocery Shopping List Free Bring! is a grocery shopping app, and while you could just use any old list app to make your shopping list, Bring! has a number of features that help it stand out. For one thing, it’s communal, in that you can share your lists with other people. In most cases that would mean sharing them with other members of your household so they can all add to the shopping list, see what needs buying, and tick things off as they’re bought. It’s quite an attractive app, with little sketches accompanying each entry for many common items. You can also add your own images, which is ideal if you want a specific brand of something, so anyone else accessing the list can see exactly what you want. Bring! has a recipe section too, giving you ideas of things you might want to make and making it easy to add all the relevant ingredients to your shopping list. You can have multiple lists at once, each with a different name, and Bring! is easy to navigate, so it doesn’t make shopping any more of a chore than it has to be. Seven – 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge Free + $9.99/£9.99 monthly subscription Seven – 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge is an exercise app for busy people who only have a few minutes to work out, or those who just don’t fancy spending longer than that building up a sweat. There are a lot of apps with a similar focus, but Seven stands out in a number of ways, from its polished interface to its various achievements, which reward you for sticking with it. There’s even a ‘7 Month Challenge’, which tasks you with working out every day for seven months and causes you to lose one of your three ‘hearts’ for every day that you skip. The core app has a range of exercises, none of which require any equipment, and there are specific training plans that give you different workouts depending on your goal, be it losing weight, building strength, or a number of other things. You can also create and save your own workouts. Much of the content is free, but for US$9.99/£9.99 per month you can get additional workouts and exercises (with over 200 available in total), and get personal workout plans that are adapted to your fitness level. The price might sound steep, but it’s still a lot cheaper than most gym memberships. Shleep Free + $11.99/£10.49 monthly subscription There are all sorts of apps and gadgets for monitoring your sleep, but few of them give much feedback on how to actually sleep better. That’s what Shleep is for. When you first start the app, it asks a short series of questions to gauge the general quality and quantity of sleep you’re getting. It will then coach you towards better sleep through short daily videos (or just audio if you prefer), which highlight things that can help and then give you specific things you can try doing – or not doing as the case may be. These include removing associations with anything other than sleep from your bedroom, only going to bed when you’re actually tired, staying away from screens late at night, and finding effective ways to unwind before you doze off. Some of these suggestions are obvious and others are less so, but putting them into practice can make a real difference. Shleep will ask how you slept each night, so you can build up a picture of your sleep quality and whether it’s improving. There are also handy tools like a sleep debt calculator and the option to have daily tips and exercises emailed to you to refer back to later. You don’t get access to every sleep video for free, but there’s plenty to make a start. If you feel it’s making a difference, there are subscriptions available per month (£10.49/$11.99) or per year (£74.99, roughly $105). You can also unlock everything permanently for a steep one-off fee of £299.99/$389.99. Not cheap, but can you really put a price on not being constantly tired? Fitbit Coach Free + $7.99/£6.30 monthly subscription Fitbit Coach is the new name for Fitstar, so it’s not a new app as such but it is worth highlighting. Packed full of workouts and exercise plans, Fitbit Coach has a wide range of content with things suited for most abilities, most of which doesn’t require a gym membership. There are dozens of bodyweight workouts, plus guided walks and runs and at the time of writing 24 different treadmill workouts, each of which has a duration and an estimated calorie burn that you can see before you start. There are also various ‘programs’ which have you work through a selection of workouts each week. Most workouts are videos, which you can cast to your TV if you prefer, but there are also audio ones for runs and walks. The app aims to keep the workout variety up, which - along with built-in soundtracks from Fitbit Radio - should help keep you motivated, and despite the Fitbit branding there’s no requirement to have a Fitbit in order to use it. The only problem is that most of this stuff is hidden behind a monthly subscription, but you can access a handful of workouts for free to get a taste of the app before putting any money down. Box Breathing $4.99/£4.49 Box breathing is a breathing technique used by the Navy Seals, sports professionals and others, which involves taking long deep breaths and holding them. It has a number of supposed benefits, from reducing stress and anxiety, to improving blood flow, awareness, focus and attention. While we’re not sure how sound the science is for all of that, it can certainly serve as a calming influence, and the Box Breathing app helps you get started. It contains an instructional video to help you get the technique down, and then can guide you through the required breaths, with words or sound effects and visual indicators to tell you when to breathe in and out. You can work through a number of levels, which adjust how deep a breath to take and how long to hold it, or just stick with the basics, and Box Breathing also keeps a log of your breathing practice and can be set to remind you to do it daily. There are even gamification features, with new ranks handed out for practicing a number of consecutive days. And all in all, the app is about as comprehensive as possible for such a simple technique, and justifies its price tag. Simple Habit Free + $9.99/£9.99 monthly subscription  Meditation apps are meant, among other things, to relax and de-stress us, but if you’re anything like us they run the risk of doing the opposite, becoming chores that we feel guilty for neglecting. Simple Habit doesn’t completely solve that problem, but it gets some way there, by offering short 5-minute meditations, that you can easily fit in at any point during your day. Other meditation apps have short sessions too, but there are usually only a few of them, mixed in with longer meditations, while they’re all short in Simple Habit (though we do have to point out some stretch beyond 5 minutes to cater for those that do want a bit more relaxation). Simple Habit also has a variety of different teachers to guide you, so if you don’t get on with one (or just get bored of their voice) there are plenty of others to choose from. The rest of the app is as you’d expect, with meditations designed around specific life circumstances, goals or moods, and a simple interface that doesn’t get in the way. Like Headspace, most of the meditations are locked behind a subscription, but you can listen to a handful for free to see if Simple Habit is for you. Our favorite Android apps for making music, listening to music, finding podcasts and everything else to do with audio. Stellio Player Free + $2.99/£2.69 IAP Stellio Player is a ridiculously full-featured music player which has everything you’d expect and more, such as widgets, support for multiple audio formats (including lossless ones such as FLAC), lock screen music controls, and the ability to sort by album, artist, genre or folder. Additionally, Stellio Player lets you control music through your notification shade, has a sleep timer, and gives rich control over the sound, with a 12-band equalizer with complementary effect controls such as echo and reverb. Further features include gapless playback, crossfade, and the ability to change track with a long press of a volume button. The player is stylish and can change color to match the album art of the track you’re listening to, or you can select from a number of other themes to further customize it. Android Wear users will appreciate Stellio’s Wear OS support, so you can control your music from your wrist too. All of this is free, but for a one-off payment of $2.99/£2.69 you can remove adverts (which are unobtrusive anyway) and access a new theme. YouTube Music Free + optional $9.99/£9.99 monthly subscription YouTube Music is a YouTube app that puts the shows and shorts to one side and is all about the music. It’s all here, presented with personalized recommendations and a constantly updated ‘hotlist’ of trending tracks. There are also numerous playlists, and you can create your own. That’s all free, but to get the most out of YouTube Music you need to pay for YouTube Music Premium, which costs US$9.99/£9.99 per month and lets you listen offline, with your screen off, or while using other apps. It also gets rid of the adverts. However, if that sounds appealing you’re probably best off paying for YouTube Premium. This subscription costs slightly more at US$11.99/£11.99 per month, but also gives you access to the main YouTube site and apps ad-free, lets you watch YouTube originals, enables you to play videos in the background, and more besides. Loffee Free Loffee is a gorgeous app that provides a curated collection of lo-fi music ideal for putting on in the background. Current playlists include ‘morning coffee’, ‘late night vibe’ and ‘rainy days’ among others. Each one is designed around a certain mood or time of day, and contains a selection of fitting tracks. Unless you’re seriously into lo-fi sounds you probably won’t have heard much if any of it, but that’s all the better because there’s some great stuff here waiting to be discovered. It’s all served up alongside nicely done artworks, making the app itself pleasant to navigate. Loffee is limited in a lot of ways – the selection of music is fairly small for example and you can’t cast it to speakers, but just about everything that is here – from the music to the app design – is great. TaoMix 2 Free + various IAP TaoMix 2 is an ambient noise app designed to drown out the outside world and help you relax, sleep or focus. There are lots of sounds to choose from, such as birds chirping, rain, waves, wind, a fireplace, a thunderstorm and many more. But you’re not limited to one sound – you can build a soundscape by selecting several at once. Each of these sounds appears as a circle on your screen and there’s another circle which can be made to move around the screen, and which makes each sound more prominent when it overlaps with them, so the soundscapes vary over time based on the movements of this circle. You can save any soundscape you make to easily return to it later and you can set a timer, so the soundscape will automatically turn off after a set period of time. You can even record your own sounds. The core app is free, but to get the most out of TaoMix 2 you’ll want to invest in some of the sound packs to bulk up the available selection. These start at £0.69/US$0.99. Ringtone Maker Pro $3.99/£3.29 Got a song that you want to use as a ringtone but want to cut it down first? Ringtone Maker Pro will get the job done. It supports MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, AAC, M4A, MP4 and 3GPP/AMR files, and should be able to find any audio file on your device when you hit the scan button. Select the one you want to edit, then choose a start and end point for the ringtone right down to the millisecond. There’s scope for more complex editing too; you can cut parts of the song, copy and paste sections, or paste together parts of multiple audio files. You’re not limited to the music that’s already on your phone either – you can also record your own ringtone using your voice or any other noise you can create. The app is fairly straightforward to use and in this form it comes free of adverts, but if you’d rather have the adverts and not have to pay there’s also a free version available. Bandcamp Free The Bandcamp app is brilliant whether you’ve bought music from the site before, or you’re just interested in discovering new songs. It houses loads of music from loads of artists – mostly but not exclusively independents, so they’re ones you’re less likely to have heard on the radio. You can browse music by genre or search for specific artists, but Bandcamp will also highlight music in its featured feed, and if you favorite any artists you’ll see releases from them in your music feed. You can listen to much of the music for free, and access streams and downloads of any music you’ve bought from Bandcamp. There’s even a weekly podcast highlighting interesting music you might not have heard. Shuttle+ Music Player $2.49/£2.69 Shuttle+ Music Player has been around for ages, and it’s long been one of the best players for anyone who prefers owning music to streaming it from the likes of Spotify or Google Play Music. Shuttle+ is now better than ever thanks to a recent update bringing it to version 2.0. The app’s interface has undergone a major overhaul, making it more intuitive than ever. The update has also added new features, including the ability to shuffle albums as well as songs, and dynamic themes, which change to match the album artwork of what you’re listening to. Beyond the new additions and refreshed interface this is the same impressive app it’s always been, packed full of features including a six-band equalizer, gapless playback, a sleep timer, widgets, Chromecast support, automatic album artwork downloads and a whole lot more. There’s also a free version, but it lacks certain features such as Chromecast support, and the paid version is more than worth the money if you listen to a lot of locally stored music. Nebula Alarm Clock Free + $2.49/£2.09 IAP If you have trouble getting up in the morning, or just want some extra incentive to do so, then Nebula Alarm Clock could be the answer. Every night the app will grow a star, which you can collect in the morning and eventually use to build constellations. The catch is that you only have a few minutes to claim your star, and to do so you have to turn the alarm off, which means no snoozing. It can optionally involve having to solve a challenge too, such as scanning a barcode or completing a brain teaser. If you fail to collect the star, not only do you lose it, but the supernova will break any constellation you’ve been working on, so you could lose several nights’ work if you don’t get up in time. There are other features too, such as having soothing sound effects play for a set amount of time when you go to bed, choosing between various alarm sounds, deciding how much time you have to claim your star in the morning, and setting the alarm to gradually get louder. There are rewards for completing constellations too, such as unlocking new sound effects to send you off to sleep. The core app is free, but for additional alarms and sounds and to remove adverts you can pay for a $2.49/£2.09 one-off IAP. Pocket Casts $3.99/£3.99 There are any number of podcast apps for Android but Pocket Casts is easily one of the best. Its slick, colourful interface helps it stand out from the drab designs of many competitors and it's feature packed, with Chromecast support, auto downloads, sleep timers and more. There are even tools to improve the listening experience of podcasts, such as the ability to remove silent sections to speed them up or toggle video podcasts to audio only. There are cheaper and even free alternatives to Pocket Casts, but you more than get your money's worth with it. Our favorite Android apps for taking notes, writing and editing documents and generally working on the move. JotterPad Free + various IAP If you have an Android tablet with a keyboard you might be considering doing some serious writing, and if you’re considering that then you should definitely consider using JotterPad. This isn’t a new app; rather, it’s an old favorite of many that’s regularly updated, ensuring it remains one of the best options for writing on Android. The core of the app is a distraction-free text editor, but dig into the menus and there are all sorts of tools and options. There’s Markdown support for example, a word count, cloud storage, a phrase search, a built-in dictionary, a dark theme, a rhyming dictionary, numerous fonts, and more. Some of this stuff is hidden behind IAP, the main one being ‘Pro’, which costs $14.99/£12.99. That might seem steep, but it’s a one-off payment and if you’re writing an essay or novel on JotterPad then you should easily get your money’s worth. Writer Tools Free + $4.99/£4.99 monthly subscription Writer Tools is a set of tools for anyone who’s setting out to write a novel. The app makes this daunting task a bit more manageable by letting you create characters and locations. These sections store these details so they’re always readily available, and help you flesh them out. For example, the character creator lets you fill out all sorts of optional details such as their greatest fear and best memory. Writer Tools also has a built-in thesaurus, lets you jot down ideas and notes, create timelines, set quarterly writing goals, and more. You can also back-up your work to the cloud, so you’ll never lose it. This is all free, but for a monthly subscription you can get rid of adverts, access all your historic backups, add images to your characters and locations, switch to a night mode, and more. There’s a lot there, which goes some way to justifying the price, but many users will be fine with the free version. OfficeSuite Free + £8.49 (around $11.10) IAP If you’re looking for office software on Android there are really only a handful of options, and OfficeSuite is one of the best, thanks largely to how feature-packed it is. You can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations or PDFs, and you can start from scratch or use one of numerous templates as a jumping off point. You can share documents and message contributors, save work to the cloud, open two documents and work on them both at once in split-screen, cast presentations across multiple devices, and a whole lot more. Most of the features in OfficeSuite are totally free, but if you’re using it a lot it’s probably worth upgrading to OfficeSuite Premium, which, among other things, lets you save files in more formats and unlocks more PDF tools, such as the ability to convert PDFs to Word or Excel format, and create and use digital signatures. Microsoft Word Free + $6.99/£5.99 monthly subscription Microsoft Word probably needs no introduction, but if you do much word processing on your tablet (or even your phone) and haven’t tried the Android app then you really should. You essentially get the full version, allowing you to view, create and edit documents of various styles, including newsletters, brochures and more. You can change the font, text color, margins, add bullet points and most other things possible from the desktop version of Word, via a slick, polished interface that’s pleasingly minimal most of the time. You can also save your documents to OneDrive, so they’re accessible from other devices. Many of the features are free, but you’ll need an Office 365 subscription (which starts at US$6.99/£5.99 per month) to unlock the likes of page and section breaks, columns, different page orientations, and the ability to track and review changes. Otter Voice Notes Free + optional subscription Sometimes you don’t have time to take notes. Recording audio can come in handy, but often means spending time transcribing it later. Not so with Otter Voice Notes. The app will automatically transcribe what’s spoken using AI, and you can teach it to recognize your voice so it can differentiate between speakers. Once the audio is transcribed you can read it and correct any mistakes manually. The audio is also recorded, so you can listen back to the recording as well. The really clever bit though is that Otter will detect keywords automatically, so you can search for a word and the app will find where it appears in any of your recordings. It’s a great feature that makes it easy to find specific information, even if you’ve recorded hours of audio. You can also create groups, allowing you to share recordings with others, and all of your recordings are stored in the cloud so you can access them on any device and they won’t take up space on your phone. The only two problems we’ve found so far is that longer recordings can take a while to be transcribed, and the transcription isn’t always perfect. It’s usually good enough that you can tell what it means though, and you can correct any errors so it’s not a big deal. Grammarly Keyboard Free Grammarly Keyboard goes far beyond just auto-correcting typos; it will also check your grammar and punctuation, explain any mistakes and correct them. Start typing and Grammarly will check the text automatically, flagging any issues. You can tap on a correction to apply it, or on an icon to the left for an explanation of why what you’ve written is wrong, which can help you avoid making the same mistake again. That aside, Grammarly is a fairly standard touchscreen keyboard, with a handful of settings, such as whether or not you want the keys to vibrate when pressed, and whether you want the first letter of a sentence to be capitalized automatically. It works well and feels as accurate as most other Android keyboards – just with the addition of extra grammar checks. It isn’t perfect – it missed when we wrote the same word twice in a row and didn’t seem too picky about where commas were placed – but it flags more than most keyboards will, so if you care about the accuracy of what you type it’s well worth checking out. Chambers Thesaurus $4.99/£2.99 There are a number of thesaurus apps on Google Play and some are free, but if you’re regularly writing – or looking words up – on your Android device, then Chambers Thesaurus is one of the best options, and worth the outlay. It has entries for almost 40,000 words, along with around 400,000 synonyms and antonyms, and they’re browsable alphabetically so you can read through the thesaurus if you want, rather than simply searching for a word. When you do search, you’ll get results as soon as you start typing, and not just for words that fit the spelling, but also similarly spelt words, those that sound similar, and those that are often confused for one another. You can also bookmark entries and cross reference with the Chambers Dictionary or WordWeb apps (if you have them), or look the words up on Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Google, all with a tap from Chambers Thesaurus. Data is stored locally, so you don’t need an internet connection to use the Chambers Thesaurus app itself, and there are all sorts of customization options, letting you change the color scheme, font size and more. Our favorite Android apps for improving productivity, whether through to-do lists, focus timers or other tools. ActionDash Free + $6.99/£4.49 IAP ActionDash is a way of visualizing which apps you use and how often. It’s not alone in doing this – Android itself even now has a similar feature baked in, but it’s not available on all phones and in any case, ActionDash does a very good job of it. The app shows you a daily and weekly pie chart, highlighting which apps you’ve used the most, as well as telling you how many times you unlocked your device and how many notifications you received that day or week. You can also see graphs for daily and hourly screen time, along with a list of apps and how much screen time they each individually got. There are similar charts and lists for app launches, notifications and device unlocks. That’s all free and attractively presented, but if you upgrade to ActionDash Plus for a one-time IAP you’ll also be able access your full usage history (whereas it’s limited to seven days in the free version). This IAP also unlocks a dark mode, deeper usage insights and more, as well as removing adverts and adding the ability to back up and restore your data. If the information in ActionDash interests you then it’s a price that’s probably worth paying, but even the free version is well worth a download. Cube Call Recorder ACR Free + $1.99/£1.79 for three months of premium Cube Call Recorder ACR is – as you probably guessed – an app for recording calls. But not just phone calls; it also allows for the recording of calls on Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook and many other apps, assuming you have a phone that supports VoIP call recording. There are a lot of features here. You can set Cube Call Recorder ACR to automatically record all calls, to automatically record calls from certain numbers, or to not record calls from certain numbers. You can record part or all of a conversation by tapping a button that pops up whenever you make or receive a call, and you can choose to add a geotag to calls (saying where you were when you made or received them) and star important recordings so they’re easy to find in future. That’s all free, but for $1.99/£1.79 every three months you can also unlock a whole bunch of premium features, such as the ability to back up recordings in the cloud, save recordings in different formats, add a PIN code to the app, save recordings to a microSD card, automatically delete old recordings, exclude short calls from being recorded and more. We wish this was a one-off purchase rather than a subscription, as these features are genuinely useful but maybe not enough to justify the subscription price unless you plan to record a lot of calls. Be aware that laws around call recording vary from country to country, so make sure you know what is and isn’t legal before you start. App Usage Tracker $0.99/£0.99 Google’s Digital Wellbeing app does a good job of helping you monitor your smartphone usage, but it’s not currently available for a lot of phones, so App Usage Tracker makes for a handy alternative. It will tell you how long you’ve spent in total using apps each day, which apps you’ve used and how long you’ve used each of them for. As well as numbers, there are also pie charts and graphs showing your most used apps, as well as a ‘pattern’ chart, which shows the times at which you most use your phone. There are also tools allowing you to hide certain apps from usage tracking and it’s overall just a great way to get a clear overview of how much you use your phone, when, and what for. Our only real issue with App Usage Tracker is that in our tests the app seemed surprisingly sluggish, but that could be an issue with our device or a quirk that will be fixed in an update. InboxIt Free + $0.99/£0.99 IAP InboxIt is a simple but potentially very useful app, especially if you ever email things to yourself, as rather than having to manually attach content to an email and enter the address to send it to, you can just share the content with InboxIt. Once shared, the content will automatically be sent to your Gmail inbox, and the app supports lots of different content types, including images, website links, text and just about anything else that works with the Android ‘Share’ function. You can also send yourself reminders from within the InboxIt app. For example, perhaps you want to access an image or file that’s stored on your phone from another device. There are other ways to do that and depending on what other apps and services you use they might in some cases be even more seamless. Google Photos, for example, gives you constant access to all your images on all your internet-connected devices, but we certainly still find occasion to email ourselves, and if you do too then InboxIt is essential. Everything we’ve detailed so far is completely free, but you can also upgrade to Premium with a one-off $0.99/£0.99 IAP, which lets you set a custom recipient (the free version only supports Gmail), set a custom email subject prefix (the default being ‘Inboxed’), and use Gmail labels. Three.do Free + $10/£6.99 yearly subscription Three.do is an app that aims to make setting reminders as speedy and simple as possible. It does this by condensing any reminder to three taps. First, you select the ‘who’, which is the person to whom the reminder relates - for example you, a family member or a friend. Simply tap a box containing the most relevant one and you’ll get to the ‘what’. Here you get a series of verbs like ‘call’, ‘write’ or ‘meet’. Tap on one of those and finally you get the ‘when’, with boxes for a range of times from five minutes to tomorrow. Alternatively, you can tap the ‘on’ box to bring up a calendar. Once all three boxes have been filled, the reminder is set and the app automatically closes itself, saving you a fourth tap. Of course, as you’ve probably realized, this is only good for setting very vague reminders, but Three.do’s developer acknowledges that. It also argues that we don’t usually forget the specifics, but rather need reminding do something at all. So if you need to buy pet food, for example, then a reminder to ‘buy something’ may well be all you need. That said, it is possible to enter more details, as rather than tapping a box you can enter text, though at this point the app won’t be much faster than a standard calendar or reminder app. Three.do is mostly free, but you can subscribe to the pro version for $10/£6.99 per year, which will let you do things like save reminders to Google Calendar, set up repeating reminders and create your own ‘who’/’what’ options. Quick Reminders $0.99/£0.59 Quick Reminders is a simple but potentially very useful app that lets you pin reminders to your notification shade, so they’re always visible. You can create a title for the reminder, and if it needs more information you can also add extra text that’s collapsible, so it’s only visible with an extra tap. You can set a date and time for the reminder (or just have it instantly appear), customize the color it’s shown in, and you can have multiple reminders shown at once. It’s also possible to edit or delete a reminder or create a new one just by tapping the relevant option in the notification shade. Quick Reminders is fast and simple to use, living up to its name, and if you use reminders a lot it’s a handy alternative to standard calendar reminders. FX File Explorer Free + $2.99/£2.79 IAP FX File Explorer isn’t new – in fact, at the time of writing it’s recently been updated to version 7 – but that just shows you how well-supported it is, and it’s worth being aware of if you’re not already, especially as the version 7 update improves it significantly. It’s a powerful file explorer and manager, with all the tools you’d expect, such as the ability to browse your files and folders, move or copy them, rename them, create new ones, sort them by their name or date and see which things are taking up the most space on your phone. It goes beyond many rivals, offering things like a split-screen mode, which lets you view multiple folders at once. There are also gesture controls, customizable themes and more. Most of the features in FX File Explorer are free too, but for US$2.99/£2.79 you can connect your cloud storage accounts and networked computers, create and explore encrypted ZIP files, and manage playlists for audio files. Our favorite Android apps for customizing your device and improving its security. Resplash Free Resplash is a wallpaper app that uses content from Unsplash – a site full of stock photography that you can use for free, for anything. As it’s using content from such a well-established site, Resplash has a massive library, with over 100,000 images, but it’s still easy to find specific styles of photo by searching or browsing by category. As well as downloading images or setting them straight to your wallpaper, you can also favorite them, so you’ll always be able to find them again, even from a different device. Resplash offers a surprising amount of personalization too, letting you change the theme and the way images are displayed (as a list or a grid, for example). You can also choose the quality of images when you download them or set them as a wallpaper, with options ranging from ‘thumb’ to ‘raw’. Best of all, it’s completely free, though if you do feel like supporting the makers of the app there is an option to donate. SAFE Free SAFE is an app that’s designed to, well, help you ensure your phone is safe. It guards against intrusion - whether it’s from hackers, viruses or nosy eyes. It does this by giving your device four scores. One for its configuration, one for connectivity, one for apps and one for the operating system. Each of these scores is out of five, with higher being better and suggesting a greater level of security. But you get more than just a number. You also get a breakdown of everything that affected the score, with positives in green and negatives in red. If you tap on any of these you can get additional information, complete with help in solving the problem if it’s a red thing. Bear in mind that you might disagree with SAFE as to what is and isn’t a problem. For example, it will flag having Bluetooth or NFC on as security issues, which technically they are, but they’re also useful (and essential in some circumstances). You probably won’t want to fix everything, but SAFE could end up highlighting some issues you didn’t know about and making your device safer in the process. Widget Drawer $0.99/£0.89 Widgets are a potentially great feature of Android phones, but they can take up a lot of space and leave your home screens feeling cluttered. So, what if you could hide them, but in a place where they’re never more than a swipe away? That’s the concept of Widget Drawer. The app places a ‘handle’ on your screen, which is basically just a narrow colored line running part way down one edge, and if you swipe it you can see a screen full of widgets. You can choose which widgets to put on that screen, resize them and move them around. The handle itself is accessible just about everywhere other than your lock screen, so you can even access your widgets when inside other apps. You can customize the size and color of the handle, and when in the Widget Drawer you can return to the screen underneath either by hitting the cross at the bottom or just tapping any empty space. It’s the sort of useful app that you might end up wondering how you ever lived without. Or at least it will be with a bit more polish. At the moment resizing widgets feels a bit more clunky than it needs to be and we can’t find a way to remove widgets from the drawer without reinstalling the app. There might be one, but it’s either not obvious or not working for us. However, that’s not such a surprise, as Widget Drawer is still in early access, so we’d expect it will improve over time. Blur Free + $39.99 (around £24) per year Blur is essentially a one stop app for privacy and security online. As you might expect then, it has a number of different features, but the most interesting is perhaps Masked Cards, which lets you shop online without ever entering or exposing your real credit card information. This works through the creation of disposable virtual credit cards through Blur, so essentially you give retailers a temporary card number that will only work for that one transaction. You can mask your phone number and email in similar ways. Blur also includes a password manager, so you can create and store passwords in the app and have them auto-filled when you go to a login page for other apps or sites. Masked emails are free, but most of the other features require a subscription, costing $39.99 (around £24) per year, with discounts available if you commit for two or three years. Note also that the card masking element only works in the US, but Blur is working on making it more widely available. Google Family Link Free Google Family Link is an app aimed at helping you keep an eye on your child’s smartphone or tablet use. The service, which actually requires two apps – one (Google Family Link for Parents) installed on your device, and the other (Google Family Link for Children and Teenagers) installed on your child’s – gives you all sorts of tools. For one thing, you can choose which apps your child can access and install, either blocking specific ones or just preventing them from installing anything that you haven’t authorized. You can also see what apps they’re using at any given time, set screen time limits and lock the device when you don’t want them using it. There’s also a feature that’s more about safety than monitoring, as you can also use Family Link to locate your child’s device at any time, so as long as they’re with it you’ll also have located them. There are other apps and services with a similar set of tools but few if any that are free while also being as feature-packed and polished as this. Bouncer – Temporary App Permissions $0.99/£0.79 Some Android apps ask for a worrying number of permissions, and while you generally have to grant them in order to get full functionality, you might not want them to retain those permissions once you’re done using them. Usually removing the permissions again would mean digging into your settings screen, but with Bouncer, any time an app requests a permission – say for your location, or microphone access – Bouncer will ask whether you want it to be able to keep the permission, have it removed as soon as you exit the app or have it removed after a certain amount of time. It makes revoking permissions a lot less hassle, and next time you use the app you’ll get asked for the relevant permissions again and Bouncer will again ask what you want to do, meaning you can make full use of any app while adding and removing permissions almost seamless. Ava Lockscreen Free + $2.99/£2.19 IAP Considering how customizable Android is in general, we’re constantly surprised by how few lock screen replacement apps there are, but Ava Lockscreen is a new and fairly accomplished option. It lets you add widgets and custom shortcuts to your lock screen, reply to notifications from the lock screen, and customize various elements of it, such as the clock and notification style. Much of the content is free, but for a one-off IAP you can unlock additional features, such as the ability to set more than two custom shortcuts and use more advanced widgets. Ava also supports Android security, so you don’t have to disable your fingerprint scanner, PIN or whatever else to use it. Malwarebytes Security Free + $1.49/£1.19 monthly subscription While there are various security features already built into Android, you can’t be too careful, so it’s well worth considering adding Malwarebytes Security to your app arsenal. Malwarebytes can scan your device for viruses, adware and malware, but it also offers proactive protection, with real-time ransomware shields, protection from phishing URLs when using Chrome, alerts when there’s a malicious link in a text message, and the ability to block unwanted calls. Malwarebytes can also conduct a privacy audit on your phone, showing you at a glance what privileges your apps have. Most of these features are only available in the premium version, which costs $1.49/£1.19 per month or $11.99/£10.99 for a year, but you get a 30-day free trial and if you don’t want to pay you can still scan and clean your phone with the free version. OnePlus Gestures – Gesture Control $1.49/£1.39 Some phones have gesture controls, but if yours doesn’t you can add them with OnePlus Gestures. This app (which is inspired by the gestures on OnePlus phones, but not made by OnePlus) lets you toggle up to eight different gestures, each of which involves swiping up, left or right in a certain area of the screen to act as a shortcut to an app or function of your choice. You could, for example, launch the camera by swiping from the bottom of the screen halfway up and holding, or switch to your recent apps screen by swiping up from the center. In our tests the gestures were easy to trigger, but if you’re having issues with them you can tweak the swiping distance and hold time, the size of the activation area (where you need to start the swipe from), and even make the activation area visible. We’d like to see an even wider assortments of possible gestures, but what’s here works well, and can genuinely save you time when navigating your phone. RememBear Free or $35.99/£32.49 per year There are plenty of password managers, but most of them don’t have bears. RememBear (by the makers of TunnelBear) puts a friendlier, less dry spin on password management, but it’s good where it counts too, offering end-to-end encryption and autofill, so you can securely store all your passwords in the app and never have to remember or type them. The app itself is secured with a master password, with the option to add a fingerprint. It’s not just for logins either - you can also store credit card details. Struggling to think up a secure password for a new login? RememBear can do that for you. It’s also got a web browser for an extra layer of security when you’re browsing the net. RememBear is also available on PC, Mac and iOS, and the core app is free, but to sync your data across devices you'll need to subscribe to RememBear Premium for $35.99/£32.49 per year. Handily it comes with a 30-day free trial. Cerberus Personal Safety €5 (around $6.20/£4.50) per year Cerberus Personal Safety (also known as Persona) is a simple but potentially very useful app. It allows you to share your real-time location with friends or family, letting them see where you are and optionally also your destination for as long as you want. Send your contacts a link via email, text, Twitter or Facebook and they’ll be able to see where you are on a map. The map opens in a web browser, so they don’t need the app installed to use it. You can share links with individual contacts or with groups, and set up home screen widgets to share your location with a single tap – which could be ideal if you get in an accident and need to quickly tell people where you are. You can also share your location via Android Wear, and anyone viewing your location can message you from the map screen. When you don’t want to share your location any more, you can disable it, though it also stops automatically after a duration set by you. Cerberus Personal Security comes with a one week free trial, after which it costs €5 (around $6.20/£4.50) per year, but that includes access to the powerful Cerberus Anti Theft app, which we’ve written about before, so Cerberus Personal Safety is essentially free if you already have a subscription to that. ProtonVPN Free + various subscriptions There are loads of VPN services available for Android, but ProtonVPN stands out in a few key ways, starting with the fact that you can use it for free, with no bandwidth limits. It also puts more focus on security and privacy than some – it doesn’t track or record your activity, it offers hundreds of servers all over the world, and its ‘Secure Core’ maintains your privacy is even if a VPN endpoint server is compromised. It’s also easy to use, letting you connect to a server with just a few taps. It might sound too good to be true, but as far as we can tell it’s not. There are also paid plans that offer even more. For $4/€4 (around £3.50) per month, a basic subscription increases the speed, unlocks servers in all countries and lets you use the app with two devices, while for $8/€8 (roughly £7) you can use ProtonVPN with up to five devices at maximum speeds. NavBar Animations Free + $1.49/£1.29 IAP Want to add a little life to your Android phone? Then you might want to check out NavBar Animations. Assuming your phone has a navbar (the bar at the bottom of the screen housing software buttons) this app will add an animation to it, which plays whenever you hit a button. The fact that it doesn’t play constantly is a good move, as that would be a bit over the top. As it is, NavBar Animations just adds a bit of flair to your phone, and there are loads of animations to choose from, though many of them are hidden behind a $1.49/£1.29 IAP. As well as picking an animation you can also pick its speed, whether it plays when hitting the home button, the recent apps button, or both, its colors and its alignment. Then it’s just a case of set it and forget it – at least until the next time you hit one of those buttons. Our favorite Android apps for planning a holiday, checking the weather and getting around without getting lost. Fog of World $4.99/£4.49 Fog of World is a new, fun take on mapping apps, as it’s inspired by the ‘fog of war’ that you get in some video games (that being fog that obscures areas of a map that you’ve not been to yet) but applies it to the real world. The app gives you a detailed world map, but applies fog to it. Unlike most games the fog doesn’t actually hide the map, it just dulls it a bit. When you’ve been somewhere the fog is removed, so over time you can see all the places you’ve been on a single world map, based on which bits don’t have fog. To make it more interesting you can level up as you make progress and unlock various achievements, such as for visiting a certain number of countries or crossing the equator. You can also sync your data so it’s available on other devices. Fog of World isn’t going to replace Google Maps for your navigation needs, but it’s a fun, visual way to see where you’ve been, covering everything from a trip to the local store to your various holidays. CARROT Weather Free + optional $3.99/£3.39 yearly subscription After a long stint on iOS, CARROT Weather has finally come to Android, and if you like a dose of snark with your forecast it’s worth getting excited about. Because as well as providing accurate forecasts powered by Dark Sky, CARROT Weather is home to an ‘AI’ that insults you and revels in your weather-related misery. This takes the form of more than 6,000 lines of dialogue, each of which can optionally be spoken aloud by its synthetic voice. With cute illustrations as well and even a game that sees you following clues to hunt down secret locations, CARROT Weather has more personality than any rival app. It’s also good for the important matter of telling you the forecast, as you can see hourly and daily forecasts, complete with humidity, UV Index, wind speed and more. The core app is free, but for US$3.99/£3.39 per year (or US$0.99/£0.89 per month) you can unlock a customizable widget, animated satellite maps, and get rid of adverts. Moovit Free Moovit isn’t new, but if you ever use public transport it’s well worth knowing about. Simply type a destination and Moovit will give you a selection of ways to get there, using all the public transport routes available. Tap on a route to get full directions or even a map with live navigation (complete with alerts telling you when to get off the transport you’re on), or further filter your results to minimize walking, use the least number of transfers or cut out certain transport types entirely. There are also handy features like the ability to save regular destinations and favorite the bus and train lines you use a lot, so you can quickly see their timetables. Transport timings are real-time where available, so you’ll know if the train or bus is running late, and you can download various maps for offline use. You can also use Moovit all over the world, with transport details for new cities regularly added. All in all, it’s one of the slickest, most feature-packed public transport navigation apps you can get. Zomato Free Ever need some inspiration for where to eat? If so, Zomato has you covered. The app can show you nearby restaurants in a list or on a map, and you can filter results in numerous ways. Only want to see Chinese restaurants? No problem. Need somewhere that accepts bookings? You can do that. After outdoor seating? That’s fine too. And those are just a few examples of the many filters on offer. There are also ‘collections’, which highlight restaurants that fit a specific theme, such as ‘great breakfasts’ or ‘celebrity chefs’, and when you’ve found somewhere of interest you can get loads more information by tapping on it. You can see the opening times, pictures, reviews and ratings from other users of Zomato, menus, average costs, recommended dishes, contact details and a list of pros and cons. From here you can also add your own review, rating or photos, call the restaurant or bookmark it so you don’t forget about it. There’s also a social side to Zomato; you can follow other users, allowing you to see when they review a restaurant or say that they’ve visited it. Zomato has a lot to offer, and it could help you get out of your culinary comfort zone. Day One Journal Free + $24.99/£22.49 yearly subscription Digital journaling is clearly popular considering the number of apps that let you do just that, and Day One Journal is one of the best. It’s a recent Android arrival, but benefits from a long stint on iOS, where it’s had time to develop a high level of polish. Its developers have recognized that there should be as few obstacles to journaling as possible. With a paper journal you just open it and start writing, and with Day One Journal you simply tap the big plus symbol on the main screen and start typing – or if you want to start with an image you can tap the camera instead. All your entries are automatically tagged with the time, date, location and current weather, and you can later find them either on a calendar view, letting you search by date, or on a world map, with pins in locations where you’ve previously written an entry. There’s also a gallery view, so you can browse the images in your journals, and you can star your favorites or add keywords for easy filtering. Struggling to remember to write in your journal? Daily reminders can prod you. Want to look back on past entries but not sure where to start? Day One Journal can highlight entries you’ve made in nearby locations or on this day in previous years. You can also keep your journals secure with a fingerprint or passcode, and if you pay the subscription for the premium version they’ll also be uploaded to the cloud so they’ll never be lost and are accessible from any device. That optional $24.99/£22.49 yearly subscription also gets you the ability to keep multiple journals and store an unlimited number of photos. Worth it if you’re a daily journaler. Hitlist Free Hitlist is another flight comparison tool, but it’s not just another flight comparison tool. It will search through millions of flight prices to find the best deals, as you’d expect, but it’s also focused on helping inspire you. Because as well as being able to pick a specific date and destination there are also loads of categories shown off by the app, such as ‘weekend getaways’ and ‘unbelievable islands’, as well as events, such as ‘Alba Truffle Festival’. The app also highlights low prices on last minute getaways in case you want to take a trip at short notice, and you can save locations if you want to be notified when prices drop. All of which makes Hitlist decent if you just want to find low prices, and great if you also want some help deciding where to go. Flowx Free + various IAPs Flowx isn’t actually a new app, rather a rebranding of WeatherBomb, but it’s worth your attention if you don’t know about it. Yes, it’s a forecast app, but it’s more interested in showing you how weather systems move than simply telling you whether it’s going to rain. The app gives you a map and then you can choose whether to track precipitation, cloud, wind speed, temperature, pressure or wave height. Then zoom in or out with a pinch and swipe slowly to see how these conditions are predicted to change over a period of hours or days, by watching for example clouds or storms move across the map. You can add arrows to give you a clearer picture of the direction weather systems are moving in, key details such as the temperature are shown at all times, and you can customize the units of measurement. Flowx probably won’t replace your normal forecast app, in fact the app description even suggests you use Flowx alongside a more conventional weather app, but if you want deeper insight into weather patterns it’s a fascinating addition to your app arsenal. And if you get really into it there are various IAPs that will remove adverts, give you more days of data, additional features and ensure you get future features. UVLens Free Avoiding sunburn can seem like a dark art at times. It doesn’t always need to be that warm or sunny to get burned, and everyone’s different in terms of how much UV they can take. It’s also not always clear how often you should reapply sunscreen, but with UVLens you need never get burned again. The app tells you the UV index now and throughout the day, so you can plan the best time to be outside. And based on the current index, combined with what you tell it about your skin (the tone, whether you have many freckles etc), it will estimate how quickly you’ll burn and what if anything you should wear to prevent damage – be it sunscreen, sunglasses or a hat. You can also tell the app the type of sunscreen you’ve applied and what activity you’re doing, and then it will tell you how soon you should re-apply, and can even alert you when it’s time to. UVLens is a simple, easy to use app that makes the effects of UV - and how to combat them – far clearer. Climendo $3.99/£3.49  The problem with weather apps is that, for the most part, they only use one source for their data, but Climendo uses lots, and then works out what the most likely weather at any given time is. The complete selection of weather providers that it uses includes AccuWeather, Weather Underground, NOAA, Met Office, Foreca, Dark Sky, SMHI, YR and World Weather Online – though only the most accurate ones for your location will be used. You can see hourly or ten day forecasts, complete with the likelihood of each being accurate, or you can dig down to the individual forecasts from each weather provider, to see how they vary. Climendo lacks some of the more detailed information found in other apps – such as humidity and UV index -  but if you just want accurate information on whether or not you need an umbrella then this app is up there with the best. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

OLED vs LCD vs LED: which TV technology should earn a place in your living room? Posted: 06 Mar 2019 06:47 AM PST Bamboozled by TV tech terms OLED, LCD and LED? Wondering why OLED is so expensive? Or unsure of the benefits of LCD and LED TVs? Where do QLED TVs come into it? If you're buying a TV and have questions like these buzzing around in your head, we're here to help. Let's face it, the most important part of any television is the picture quality. Nowadays most smart TV platforms meet the same general requirements, and TVs in general don't vary too much in shape or the kinds of sizes available – but the sorts of panels and picture processors you'll find in your TV can vary hugely between manufacturers. Here we'll be running through the differences between OLED, QLED, and LCD-LED: competing technologies that each offer a trade-off between price and picture quality, with their own strengths and weaknesses in the picture department. All of these screen technologies support the increasingly essential 4K resolution, as well as accompanying 4K color-boosting tech like HDR, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. There are hosts of other terms that can distinguish between sets – like 4K HDR Processor X1, Dynamic Range PRO and Triluminos Display (Sony), NanoCell and IPS 4K Quantum Display (LG) and 4K SUHD and Ultra HD Premium HDR 1500/2000 (Samsung). These technologies certainly make a difference, but they're hardly the be all and end all.  When buying a TV, we'd recommend keeping your mind less on all that marketing bluster and more on the important picture quality differences between OLED, QLED, and LCD-LED. We'll explain everything you need to know here. OLED is a self-emissive display technology (Image Credit: Sony) What is OLED? Watching an OLED TV for the first time is genuinely a pure ‘whoah!’ moment. So smooth, fluid, colourful and contrasty are the images that it's really hard to go back to your old LCD or plasma TV. Does that mean OLED the flat TV tech we’ve been waiting for?  Almost as flat as wallpaper, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is a breakthrough moment for TVs. Critically, it emits its own light, so the huge backlight used by most TVs isn’t there. As well as being slim, in an OLED display each pixel self-illuminates, so you can control images at an individual pixel level.  In an OLED panel, organic films are placed between semiconductors, then supplied with an electrical current, which effectively means that each and every pixel can be switched on and off individually. This process simultaneously uses less power to create more brightness, and makes total black possible.  So video that features both darkness and extreme brightness, such as a star-filled night sky, looks realistic. With unlimited contrast, it means the whitest whites and the darkest blacks – and everything in between. Expect eye-popping color, and, crucially, lightning-fast response times. There are downsides to OLED too though: it’s very expensive, and no one is quite sure how long panels will last. OLED panel manufacturing is also more environmentally friendly than traditional panels. While LCD panels require the greenhouse gas Nitrogen Trifluoride in their production, OLEDs don’t. So, if you want to save the planet and have a better picture quality, you may want an OLED set. Basic LCD TV tech is quickly fading from the market (Image Credit: Samsung) What is LCD & LED? If you can’t justify spending big on an OLED or QLED TV, the good news is that all major TV brands are still selling plenty of LCD-LED TVs. LCD (liquid crystal display) and LED (light-emitting diode) TVs are often thought of as competing concepts, but they actually refer to identical display technology. In an LCD TV, liquid crystals rotate polarized light, effectively acting as a light valve that illuminates all pixels simultaneously. Instead of the pixel-by-pixel lighting of OLED TVs, in a standard LCD TV all light comes from a big energy-guzzling backlight. The result is a uniform brightness, and relatively low contrast images. LCD is an outmoded technology, so much so that you can’t easily buy basic LCD TVs of any size anymore, at least not in the original configuration. That's where LED-backlighting comes in – instead of having a one-piece backlight that limits contrast, LED TVs are illuminated by (you guessed it) LEDs. They’re ranged in either clusters behind the panel (so-called full-array local dimming) or on the sides (called ‘edge’ or ‘edge-lit’ LED TVs). The latter is more common, largely because the resulting TV is flatter. There are a few drawbacks, namely that both techniques still get their light from an external source that increases the components and size of the finished TV. If you watch in a completely black environment, you’ll notice blotches and uneven brightness on the panel too, and a lack of shadow detail in dark areas of the screen. That said, images are usually very bright, and very colorful, and you can buy an LED TV in virtually any size you want. They're great value. Brands are always trying to shout about new innovations (such as LG’s recent chatter about Nano Cell technology), but they're often just tweaking old technology. LED-backlit LCD TVs provide the current sweet-spot for TV technology, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Best LED TVs: Our pick of the best LCD LED televisions you can buy today QLED is Samsung's name for its latest LCD tech (Image Credit: Samsung) What is QLED? Another premium TV technology that’s only recently gone on sale, QLED (quantum-dot light emitting diode) is very different to OLED. QLED panels are not self-emissive, instead lit by LEDs along the edge (just like an Edge LED-backlit LCD). The advantages of QLED TVs are that they use a quantum dot color filter and are capable of significantly higher brightness than OLED TVs. Cue eye-popping color, but slower response times than an OLED TV. However, the contrast and blacks aren’t as good as OLED TVs. So far, QLED has had only modest success, but that could change. At CES 2018, Samsung announced that its QLED TVs for 2018 would use direct, local-dimming backlighting, and boast even higher brightness. If the black level performance and motion blur issues can be improved, Samsung could be on to something. But only if they’re cheaper than OLED, which for now remains the benchmark. Read our full guide to Samsung QLED TV Philips' 6 Series of OLED TVs come with Ambilight (Image Credit: Philips) Should I buy an OLED, QLED, LCD or LED TV? Most TV brands sell whatever TV technology is popular. However, there is a schism in the market; as noone really sells both OLED and QLED (excluding Hisense, who are flirting with both quantum dot LED displays and their first OLED set).  OLED panels are manufactured only by LG, and QLED panels only by Samsung. Other brands use them on license and try and add their own secret sauce to give their particular models the edge.  What you decide to buy largely comes down to price. Future innovations could turn that advice on its head, but for now, if you have money to burn and want the best, go for an OLED – no question. Want a brighter panel? Go for a QLED. If price is more of a concern and you don't need the blackest blacks around, then an LED-backlit LCD TV could well be the one you want – they might not have quite the same level of contrast, but depending on the manufacturer's technology they could come very close. It may all seem confusing at first, but when armed with a little knowledge about the differences between OLED, QLED, LED and LCD, buying a TV isn't quite as tricky as you might think. For a deeper look at the two rivals of the moment, check out our QLED vs OLED explainer This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Best Fitbit 2019: which is right for you? Posted: 06 Mar 2019 06:35 AM PST Update: Fitbit just announced four new products you'll probably want to know about. There's new fitness trackers called the Fitbit Inspire and Fitbit Inspire HR, as well as a new tracker for kids called the Fitbit Ace 2. Alongside that, the company has unveiled its cheapest smartwatch ever called the Fitbit Versa Lite. It's a reworking on last year's Fitbit Versa, which you'll find in the list below. Fitbit was one of the very first wearable tech companies to bring us step counts, badges and calorie burn information to our phones with its early devices, like the Ultra, the Fitbit One and then the Fitbit Flex.  Fast-forward a decade and the company is still going from strength to strength. That's because the brand has stayed on top of what customers want and the latest health tech trends, but it's also stayed true to its simple, easy-to-use and accurate roots.  These days Fitbit has a wide range of products that are bound to suit most lifestyles and most budgets. From those who love running outdoors to those who love the gym to those who just want to count steps each day or even buy a tracker for their kids. Late in 2018 we saw the introduction of the Fitbit Charge 3, and earlier in the year we heard all about the Fitbit Versa. Before that we saw the Fitbit Alta HR and Fitbit Ionic smartwatch following on from the Fitbit Charge 2 and Fitbit Flex 2 that came out the year before. Now we've seen the introduction of the new Fitbit Inspire trackers alongside the Fitbit Versa Lite. We may also see products like the Ionic 2 or Charge 4 launch later in 2019. Products such as the Fitbit Blaze and Fitbit Surge aren't available directly from the company any longer, but you can quite often find them on sale at third-party retailers so they're still included in the list below.  It's also worth noting the company now has its own tracker for kids called the Fitbit Ace, but you won't find that below in our ranking as it's not designed for adult users.  Looking for something different? Check out our best fitness trackers Need to save money? Check out our best cheap fitness trackers Or maybe try one of the best Wear OS smartwatches? If you've bought a Fitbit, check out our selection of the best Fitbit bands Get the most our of your band with our fitness tracker tips and tricks guide Below you'll find our full ranking of the best Fitbit activity trackers that you can buy right now. We've taken design, features, fitness prowess, price and many other elements into account when making this list. The best Fitbit for fitness tracking is the Charge 3, which has a much larger screen compared to the last few versions of the Charge series. It's one of the best fitness trackers you can use right now and comes with fitness features such as a heart rate tracker, guided breathing, swim tracking and improved notifications. If you opt for the Fitbit Charge 3 Special Edition, you'll get Fitbit Pay compatibility as well. It connects with the GPS on your phone to keep track of your runs as well, but unfortunately can't keep tabs on your location without your phone. With that in mind, it might not be the best option for serious runners.   Everything is just a bit better on the Charge 3, and considering it's the same price at launch as the Charge 2 it'll likely be a suitable tracker for anyone looking for a Fitbit in 2019. Read the full Fitbit Charge 3 review What's next? Could we hear about the Fitbit Charge 4 soon? It's unlikely, so you're safe buying the Fitbit Charge 3 without worrying about it becoming obsolete. Image Credit: Fitbit Do you want a fitness tracker that is easy to use and uncomplicated? The Fitbit Flex 2 may be the best device for you. You'll be able to use this while swimming as it's waterproof and it'll also keep an eye on how well your dips in the pool are going. On top of that it comes with all the other basic tracking features you'd expect plus a slim and light design too. It's a touch cheaper than the Fitbit Charge 2 as well, so it may be the perfect Fitbit tracker for you. If you're considering buying a Flex 2 for yourself, it has great fitness tracking on board and a super subtle design that's bound to appeal to almost everyone. The only thing it's seriously lacking is a screen, so for an upgrade consider a Versa instead.  Read the full Fitbit Flex 2 review What's next? Despite the Flex 2 being one of Fitbit's most popular trackers, we've yet to hear any leaks or rumors of the Fitbit Flex 3. Image Credit: Fitbit Packing a lot of the features we saw debut on the Ionic, the Fitbit Versa has condensed them down to a smaller package with a lower price tag and if you want a slimmer watch on your wrist this may be better for you than the company's first watch. The price is already lower than the now cheaper Ionic, and while it doesn't feel as premium we enjoy the smaller design that sits closely to your wrist. It comes with Fitbit Pay, all of the apps on the Ionic, storage for music and much more. If you're looking to use it for running the Versa is sorely missing GPS features so you'll have to take your phone with you to track where you're jogging, but it's still a great smartwatch from Fitbit. Read the full Fitbit Versa review If you're after a smartwatch from Fitbit, there's also this. The Fitbit Ionic isn't the fantastic smartwatch some hoped it would be but it succeeds if you're looking for a fitness focused device that can tackle running, weight lifting, swimming and much, much more. Dedicated workout programs and Fitbit Pay are among the other highlights of the Ionic, but it doesn't perform as well as say the Apple Watch 3 or LG Watch Sport if you're looking for a full blown smartwatch experience.  It's not cheap either and the Fitbit Ionic is also low in our list of the best Fitbit products because it's just very expensive for what it can offer you. However, if you're an outdoor runner the Ionic is your best bet. Not only is it durable, but it has built-in GPS, meaning you can leave your phone at home.  Read the full Fitbit Ionic review What's next? We've put together a list of things we'd like to see if the company decides to announce a Fitbit Ionic 2. Image Credit: Fitbit The Fitbit Alta HR takes the slim, stylish Fitbit Alta and jams a heart rate monitor into its slender frame, without bulking it up. Where the original Fitbit Alta feels a bit light on features, and puts form over function, the Alta HR is an admirable tracker which goes beyond basic step tracking, but still looks good. It's still not the most feature-packed - there's no GPS for a start - but it strikes a good balance and is the sort of thing you'll be happy to wear 24/7 (other than when swimming - this isn't waterproof), which is handy, because it can also track your sleep, and the heart rate monitor helps there too. With basic message / notification alerts pulled from your smartphone and an almost week long battery life too, it's well worth considering if you don't need the features - or don't want the bulk - of something like the Fitbit Ionic. Read the full Fitbit Alta HR review Until earlier this year, the Charge 2 was our favorite Fitbit. It has a much larger screen compared to the original Fitbit Charge and the Charge HR, and it's packed with extra fitness features. There's Multi-Sport tracking that allows you to keep a track of outdoor runs, walking, weight training and many more exercises. It also connects with the GPS on your phone to keep track of your runs as well. You won't be able to use this in a pool though, if you want to go swimming with your tracker we'd recommend looking at the Fitbit Flex 2 above or the Fitbit Charge 3. Read the full Fitbit Charge 2 review The Fitbit Blaze is the dark horse of the Fitbit family. This is one of the stranger devices on the roster as it was (sort of) meant to be the first smartwatch from Fitbit, but it's not. Despite the design, the Fitbit Blaze is just a fitness tracker at heart. The design is a little quirky, but that may be something you want to go for in a fitness tracker that you want to use more as a watch. The display also offers up notifications for your text messages, but not for any other apps you may want to see.  The Blaze does offer up a variety of fitness features - such as SmartTrack, which will track your exercise even if you haven't told the wearable what you're going to be doing - allowing you to burn through those calories quickly and easily. Read the full Fitbit Blaze review What's next? Don't expect to see a Fitbit Blaze 2. Instead the company replaced the Fitbit Blaze range with its newest smartwatch called the Fitbit Versa, which sits above in this list. Image Credit: Fitbit The Surge is no longer the most expensive wearable in Fitbit's stable thanks to the Ionic which replaced it, and that means it's now a lot harder to find a Surge on sale. The Fitbit Surge comes with GPS technology built-in, which means you can take it out without having to keep your phone in your pocket while you're jogging. It comes with a heart rate monitor and a classic watch-like design that some of the other Fitbit products don't offer. There's a slightly weaker battery life on this Fitbit and the design isn't to everyone's taste, but if you like to run this is one of the best choices of Fitbit for you. Be warned though, it may not be on sale for much longer. Fitbit has replaced the Surge on its official website with the Ionic, so it looks like the company has stopped selling it and you may now only be able to find it at third-party retailers, where stock will one day run out. Read the full Fitbit Surge review Image Credit: Fitbit The Fitbit Alta has a big focus on the design rather than its fitness features. The style is customizable with various straps so you can switch them out for whatever you feel like that day - you aren't limited to just one choice as you are on some Fitbit devices. In our review, we found it also had a week-long battery life, which is even more than the five days Fitbit claims for the Alta. It's not all great though as the Alta's screen isn't very sensitive and it's not waterproof either. But if you're looking for an all-round fitness tracker, the Alta may be a good option for you.  All of that said, the Alta's position in this list largely comes down to the fact there's now the Fitbit Alta HR, which is a far superior option and should be your first choice. Often we see the price for the HR version is lower too. Read the full Fitbit Alta review See our selection of the best Fitbit Ionic and Fitbit Versa apps Photo illustration: TechRadar; Fitbit This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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