Friday, March 8, 2019

Apple : Leaked trailer shows off Battlefield V’s explosive battle royale mode

Apple : Leaked trailer shows off Battlefield V’s explosive battle royale mode

Leaked trailer shows off Battlefield V’s explosive battle royale mode

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 09:28 AM PST

Battlefield V is soon to get a battle royale mode called Firestorm, and a leaked trailer has given us a good idea of what it will involve.

Of course, there’s the possibility that the footage spilled on YouTube is somehow faked, but that seems unlikely, given that this is a pretty convincing looking video which lines up with previously leaked info in many respects. Still, it would be foolish to declare the footage genuine at this point, obviously.

At any rate, you can check it out for yourself, and make your own mind up: grab a snack, or your beverage of choice, and hit play on the clip below.

Impressed? We’ve got to say it looks pretty nifty, although a lot of it is your expected battle royale stuff – and we think it’s fair to say that at least some ‘inspiration’ has been taken from EA’s other battle royale project, the recently unleashed Apex Legends.

For example, just like Apex Legends, you have different-sized backpacks and inventory management issues to deal with. And when you’re shot, you get ‘downed’, and can crawl around with a chance to be revived by teammates. The difference with Firestorm is that you can shoot a pistol when floundering about on the floor, and also, once you do die – by getting finished off, or bleeding out – you can’t be respawned by teammates at a nearby beacon.

The biggest difference with this Battlefield royale (as it were) – apart from the setting of course – is that there are no separate character classes and abilities as seen in Apex Legends.

Another thing we noticed is that the encroaching ring of fire – the mechanism that herds players ever-closer together as time ticks on – looks pretty darn deadly; a veritable raging inferno.

Quad squad

As was revealed in previous leakage from data-miners poking around in game files, Firestorm will be playable in solo or duo modes, or in squads of four.

As you’ve probably seen, Apex Legends has got off to a blistering start, so much so that it’s no doubt been weighing on DICE’s mind that some of those who have been patiently waiting for Battlefield V Firestorm might just have forgotten about it, at least to some extent.

Some YouTube comments have even aired suspicions that this has been leaked by the developers themselves to stoke up hype somewhat, but naturally, we wouldn’t make any comment on that possibility.

We’ll find out soon enough if the footage is real, or an extremely clever piece of fakery. Battlefield V’s battle royale mode is expected to arrive sometime this spring.

Via Wccftech

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Cyberattacks costing businesses millions each year

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 08:58 AM PST

Dealing with cyberattacks is becoming increasingly costly for businesses according to new research from Accenture and the Ponemon Institute which have revealed that malware and “malicious insider” related attacks accounted for one-third of all cyberattack costs in 2018.

The firm interviewed over 2,600 security and IT professionals at 355 organizations worldwide to compile its “Cost of Cybercrime Study” that found the cost to businesses due to malware increased by 11 percent to more than $2.6m per company.

At the same time, the cost due to malicious insiders, which Accenture defines as employees, temporary staff, contractors and business partners, jumped by 15 percent to $1.6m per organization.

Together these two attack types accounted for one-third of the total $13m cost to companies from cybercrime in 2018 representing a $1.3m increase in the past year.

Cybercrime costs

Accenture's study calculated cybercrime costs based on what an organization spends to discover, investigate, contain and recover from a cyberattack over a consecutive four week period.

Senior managing director of Accenture Secuirty, Kelly Bissell stressed that cybersecurity needs to be the responsibility of everyone at an organization, saying:

“From people to data to technologies, every aspect of a business invites risk and too often security teams are not closely involved with securing new innovations. This siloed approach is bad for business and can result in poor accountability across the organisation, as well as a sense that security isn’t everyone’s responsibility. Our study makes it clear that it’s time for a more holistic, proactive and preventative approach to cyber risk management involving full business engagement across the entire ecosystem of partners.” 

The study also found that the cost to companies from phishing and social engineering attacks increased to $1.4m per organization.

Companies in the US experienced the greatest increase in costs due to cybercrime in 2018 at 29 percent with an average cost of $27.4m per company. Japan was the second highest at $13.6m followed by Germany at $13.1m and the UK at $11.5m. On the other hand, Brazil and Australia spent the least on cybercrime at $7.2m and $6.8m respectively.

  • Protect your organization from the latest cyber threats with the best antivirus

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There less than one week left to grab the UK's cheapest broadband deal

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 08:24 AM PST

There's no doubt about it, Onestream is the king of cheap broadband deals. Consistently topping the list of internet providers offering affordable prices, it's hard not to consider Onestream as an option if you just want the most affordable broadband possible. 

And in an act of total domination of the cheap broadband market, Onestream dropped a deal so cheap no one comes near to it - and it's exclusive to TechRadar readers! The only problem? There's only a few days left to get it.

Coming in at a stunningly low monthly price of just £11.99, this exclusive offer blows the rest of the market out of the water. You would expect there to be a catch, but there really isn't. It has the same average speeds and contract length as its competition and there are no caps on your data usage - just a great overall deal. 

So if you want to be the proud owner of the UK's cheapest broadband, you can find all of the details below. Or if it doesn't quite fit what you were looking for (faster speeds perhaps?) check out our best broadband deals page for all the other options.


  • Rather go all out on your broadband? Check out our broadband and TV deals page for the biggest packages available.

This exclusively cheap broadband deal

How does this compare to other broadband deals?

When it comes to the absolute cheapest price, nothing compares to this Onestream offer. But what about fibre broadband deals?

If it's cheap fibre you're looking for then your best option is TalkTalk. For just £19.95 and absolutely nothing upfront, you can currently get TalkTalk's Faster Fibre package, an incredible bargain on fast fibre speeds.

Or if you like your broadband packages filled with freebies, how about BT. Currently running a brilliant offer on fibre, BT will give you not only fast fibre speeds but also a £80 Pre-paid Mastercard and your choice of a Samsung Tablet A, Fitbit Charge 3 or an Amazon Echo - all for £29.99 a month.

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New figures show Nvidia leaving AMD in the dust with graphics card sales

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 07:48 AM PST

Nvidia has grabbed a further chunk of market share from AMD in the world of graphics cards, and now dominates the discrete GPU arena by having sold more than four cards for every one of its rival’s sales.

This is according to the latest add-in board (i.e. discrete graphics cards for desktop PCs) report from Jon Peddie Research, which gives us figures for the global shipment of GPUs in the last quarter of 2018.

The analyst firm pegged Nvidia’s Q4 2018 market share as 81.2%, with AMD taking the rest and dropping to 18.8%. That’s a sizeable shift compared to the previous quarter, when Nvidia owned 74.3% of the market.

And it’s an even bigger tilt when you consider the previous year, because in Q4 2017, Nvidia had a 66.3% share of the desktop graphics card market, with AMD on 33.7%.

The total value of shipments for the quarter was over $2.8 billion (around £2.1 billion, AU$4 billion), and the overall picture wasn’t good news for either GPU maker, given that the total volume of shipments dropped by 10.7% compared to Q3, and slumped a colossal 40.2% year-on-year. You can blame this on the collapse in demand for crypto-mining GPUs, Jon Peddie noted.

AMD in trouble?

Seeing Nvidia jump to over an 80% market share might seem surprising to those of you who have been following the GPU world of late, given that we’ve heard a fair bit of negativity concerning the company recently.

That included Nvidia’s revenue dipping to the lowest level since mid-2017, and the admission that “certain high-end GPUs” from its new Turing range of (RTX) graphics cards hadn’t sold as well as anticipated (which was part of the reason for that revenue slump).

But remember that this is indeed reflected in the total shipment volume, which has dropped by over 10% since the previous quarter.

The tilt in market share towards Nvidia just shows that within this overall gloomy picture, AMD still did worse. Which, of course, is worrying news for the Radeon GPU maker.

Perhaps, then, while higher-end Turing models (i.e. RTX 2080 and Ti) haven’t done so well, the RTX 2070 actually managed to do okay in the tail-end of last year? (Remember, the RTX 2060 wasn’t out in the time period this report pertains to, and only emerged at the start of 2019).

And indeed, perhaps folks are getting overly impatient with AMD’s new Navi GPUs not being on the near-horizon (though several rumors have claimed they could be launching in July), and the freshly launched Radeon VII just isn’t enough (given that it’s priced at around $800 or £650 currently, so is a pretty wallet-damaging GPU).

Matters could get worse for AMD, too, in the next quarter, as Nvidia has now unleashed a new much cheaper Turing offering in the form of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (which drops the ray tracing tech the RTX cards offer, in order to achieve a much more affordable price tag). Furthermore, more even cheaper Turing offerings are expected to follow imminently.

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Best Huawei phones: find your perfect Huawei

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 07:28 AM PST

Huawei is the second biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world after Samsung, and it's got there by offering up some excellent devices along the way.

It's grown in strength significantly over the past couple of years, to the point that if you're looking for the best Huawei phones around, there's a wide range to choose from.

At the top of the range are the flagship Huawei P20 Pro and Huawei Mate 20 Pro, but our best Huawei phones list also includes great, affordable handsets such as the Huawei P Smart.

That means when it comes to picking the best Huawei phone for you, it can be tricky. With that in mind we’ve highlighted the best Huawei phones the firm currently has to offer and ranked them. 

However, not everyone’s budget and needs are the same, so just because something is lower in this list it doesn’t mean it will be a worse choice for you than something higher.

Ultimately you shouldn’t go wrong with any of these phones, and our list will show you at a glance their specs, highlights and main weaknesses, so you can make an informed choice as to which is the best Huawei for you.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the best Huawei phone you can buy right now, offering up a heady mix of design, power and performance with a few party pieces thrown in too.

It builds on the excellent P20 and P20 Pro, offering up even more screen, enhanced triple rear cameras and an in-display fingerprint scanner.

The Mate 20 Pro packs a huge 6.39-inch display giving you a huge amount of space for gaming and movies, and its QHD resolution and HDR10 support ensures everything looks great. There is a wide notch at the top of the display though.

It also boasts three cameras on the rear, nabbing the excellent 40MP wide-angle and 8MP telephoto lenses from the P20 Pro - but the third sensor is new. It's an ultra-wide 16MP snapper allowing you to cram even more of your surroundings into each shot.

The Mate 20 Pro is a full-featured phone for a full-featured price - it even has a few tricks you won’t see elsewhere, and more powerful specs than most of its competitors.

Read more: Huawei Mate 20 Pro review

The Huawei P20 Pro may not be Huawei's latest flagship any more, but it still has a lot going for it, with the highlight being its exceedingly impressive and versatile triple-lens rear camera.

That camera allows for 3x optical zoom and proves surprisingly adept at night shots, which is usually a setting that phone cameras really struggle with.

Other highlights of the Huawei P20 Pro include a big, long-lasting battery, and an even bigger AMOLED screen that delivers vivid colors on a large scale.

The Huawei P20 Pro also has a striking design, with a metal frame and a glass back, that optionally comes in a gradient color scheme that sees the colors shift from purple at the top to a turquoise shade at the bottom.

Like any good flagship the Huawei P20 Pro also has facial recognition, a fingerprint scanner and lots of RAM.

There’s no wireless charging and the chipset isn’t quite a match for some flagships, but it’s not far off, and as a complete package the Huawei P20 Pro can compete with any other handset, as its strong ranking in our best smartphones list attests.

Read our in-depth Huawei P20 Pro review


While the Huawei Mate 10 Pro landed back in late 2017 it’s still a very strong handset.

And while there are now larger Huawei handsets, this is still a big phone, with a 6.0-inch 1080 x 2160 AMOLED screen giving you plenty of space to enjoy apps, games and video.

As with the P20 Pro, the Mate 10 Pro also has great battery life, thanks to the big 4,000mAh juice pack inside it. And the design, while lacking the flashy colors of Huawei’s newer flagship, still impresses, thanks to a glass back, a metal frame, minimal bezel around the screen and water resistance.

Elsewhere you get a powerful dual-lens camera, loud stereo speakers and exactly the same chipset as the Huawei P20 Pro, making this a surprisingly powerful phone for its age.

Read our in-depth Huawei Mate 10 Pro review

While no match for the P20 Pro, the standard Huawei P20 is still a very strong phone in its own right, and cheaper too.

It has much in common with its Pro companion, including a stylish metal and glass build, a Kirin 970 octa-core chipset, facial recognition and loads of storage.

Plenty more differs though, as with the Huawei P20 you get a dual rather than triple-lens camera, a 5.8-inch 1080 x 2240 LCD screen and a smaller 3,400mAh battery. Still, taken in isolation those are all still very solid specs.

In fact, while neither the camera nor battery is quite a match for the P20’s larger sibling, both are still strong enough for us to praise them in our review. So if you want something slightly smaller and slightly more affordable than Huawei’s headline handset, the P20 is a good option.

Read our in-depth Huawei P20 review

The standard Huawei Mate 20 may be worse than the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, but it’s still a strong phone in its own right and it’s cheaper too.

Other than the lower – though still high – price, highlights include a 4,000mAh battery which in our tests delivered excellent life, and top-end power, thanks to the use of an octa-core Kirin 980 chipset and up to 6GB of RAM.

The Huawei Mate 20 also has a triple-lens camera on the back. This isn’t the same selection of lenses as its Pro-level sibling, but still makes for a versatile setup.

And in some ways the Mate 20 actually has the Mate 20 Pro beat, as its 6.53-inch screen is larger, and it has a headphone port, which the fancier phone doesn’t.

Read our in-depth Huawei Mate 20 review

Strangely, the Huawei Mate 20 Lite actually arrived before the standard Huawei Mate 20, but it has similar strengths and weaknesses to the Huawei P20 Lite.

The Mate 20 Lite has a big, sharp screen for example, with a 6.3-inch 1080 x 2340 display that comes in at 409 pixels per inch. It also has a fairly high-end build, with a glass back, a metal frame, a notch on the front and a high screen-to-body ratio.

Another high point of the Huawei Mate 20 Lite is its camera, as it has a dual-lens one on both the front and back and uses AI to bring out the most in your snaps.

The Mate 20 Lite also has a big, 3,750mAh battery, though this only translates to average life, and as with the P20 Lite its chipset is a bit of a drawback, but if you want a Huawei phablet on a budget this is a strong option.

Read our in-depth Huawei Mate 20 Lite review

The Huawei P Smart is one of Huawei’s most affordable handsets, so its price is definitely a plus, but it wouldn’t be in this list if it was simply cheap.

For one thing, it has an attractive design, with an aluminum back that looks like something you’d expect to pay more for. It also has a fairly sizeable 5.65-inch screen with a trendy 18:9 aspect ratio and a 1080 x 2160 resolution, making it sharp too.

Plus, the Huawei P Smart has a dual-lens rear camera, and though the selfie camera only has a single lens, it and the rear snapper are both capable of background blur in shots.

Performance isn’t perfect, and you sacrifice some features such as fast charging, but overall the Huawei P Smart is a budget beast.

Read our in-depth Huawei P Smart review

Despite having P20 in its name, the Huawei P20 Lite is no match for the rest of the range and nor is it a flagship. Instead it’s a mid-ranger, but it’s quite a good one.

For one thing, it looks good, with a glass-backed design that’s similar to the Huawei P20, down to the notch on the front.

It also has a similarly good screen to its pricier sibling, as it has a 5.84-inch 1080 x 2280 display with a pixel density of around 432 pixels per inch.

Plus it has face unlock, a dual-lens rear camera, an octa-core chipset and 4GB of RAM. However, this is a mid-range chipset and not as good as the ones some similarly priced alternatives have. But power aside the Huawei P20 Lite doesn’t feel like too much of a step down from the full P20 experience.

Read our in-depth Huawei P20 Lite review

One of Huawei’s 2017 flagships, the P10 Plus is getting on a bit but still compares well to most upper mid-range handsets.

Highlights include a bright, 5.5-inch QHD screen, a dual-lens camera giving you both a 20MP monochrome and 12MP color lens to play with, a big 3,750mAh battery, 6GB of RAM and a solid octa-core chipset that was once high-end and is now mid-range.

It has also got a slim metal frame and if you don’t like notches you’re in luck – the Huawei P10 Plus doesn’t have one.

The design feels slightly dated compared to the latest flagships and it lacks a couple of features, like water resistance and wireless charging, but otherwise this remains a strong handset.

Read our in-depth Huawei P10 Plus review

The Huawei P10 could almost be thought of as a compact phone, thanks to its 5.1-inch screen, but unlike most small handsets this isn’t a budget phone – it’s a 2017 flagship.

It has a 1080 x 1920 resolution, the same dual-lens camera as the larger Huawei P10 Plus and a similar design too, with a metal frame and large bezels above and below the screen, but no notch.

One thing we praised in the review is its fingerprint scanner, which does more than just unlock the phone, as it can also be used to navigate parts of the interface by swiping or double tapping it.

The Huawei P10 doesn’t have the best chipset or battery life, but at this point you might be able to find it for far less than it once cost, so it could be a bit of a bargain.

Read our in-depth Huawei P10 review

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The best iPad apps of 2019

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 07:01 AM PST

Apps set the iPad apart from other tablets, whether you need to work on office tasks, learn something new, make music, watch a movie or become a digital artist.

But which apps are worth your cash and time? We’ve tested thousands to come up with our definitive list of the best apps for iPad right now.

You'll find them split into categories on the following pages, but first see below for our iPad app of the week.

iPad app of the week: Live Home 3D (free + IAP)

Live Home 3D is for people who fancy partaking in some interior design. Whether you want to experiment with your own home, or design an entirely new one, there are plenty of tools here for doing so – in 2D and 3D alike.

Even for free, there’s loads to delve into, from creating bespoke floor plans to projecting your finished masterwork on to real-world surroundings in AR. Thousands of materials and models are available to deck your virtual home out so that it resembles the real thing.

There are two paid tiers: Standard ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99) removes watermarks and is flexible regarding import/export; Pro ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99) gives you more customization in terms of drawing, output quality, and light editing. In all versions, the app is powerful, usable, and entertaining.

The best iPad art and design apps

Our favorite iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, CAD, pixel art, graphic design and animation.

Linea Sketch ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Linea Sketch carefully balances power, ease of use and control to help you capture visual ideas.

Rather than drowning you in features and toolbars, tools sit in slimline strips at the side of the screen.This makes it a cinch to select colors, work across five layers (into which you can import photos), choose backgrounds and grids, and get on with sketching. You can adjust the thickness of pen lines, block in areas with a fill tool, use a blend tool to make your work feel less digital, and convert rough scribbles to adjustable geometric polygons by way of ZipShapes.

This still isn’t a full-fledged artist package – you’d need Procreate for that – but as a base for visual notes, quick design sketches, and drawing without fuss, there’s nothing better on iPad.

Affinity Designer (US$19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Affinity Designer brings desktop-grade vector illustration to iPad. Its huge range of tools are ideally suited to anything from high-end illustrations through to interface design. Every stroke always remains editable, and you can zoom to an absurd degree, and never lose detail.

The app works nicely with Apple Pencil or your own digits, and has a smart gestural system where holding fingers on the screen mirrors desktop keyboard modifiers. Elsewhere, you can pinch layers to group them, or drag one layer on to another to create a mask.

This is an app you can get lost in – but in a good way. The more you use it, the more you realize its sheer scope. And it even shares a file format with Affinity Photo, so you can bounce documents between the two without losing anything.

Pixelmator ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Pixelmator is a full-featured but approachable photo and image editor. Loosely based on its desktop cousin, it provides a raft of creative tools, whether you need to make a few tweaks to a favorite photo, or have a burning desire to craft a multi-layered composition comprising images, drawings, text and shapes.

The app doesn’t try to ape desktop editors in terms of interaction. Brush selection, for example, provides a full-screen view with large tappable previews. And although adjustment controls sit within a sidebar, this still feels friendly rather than complex; the last thing Pixelmator wants to do is pack the screen with palettes.

If nothing else, this app also represents astonishing value for money. Pixelmator is the logical next step when Snapseed doesn’t meet your creative demands, and you desire the freedom to begin photographic artwork from a blank canvas, rather than just tweak the odd snap.

Core Animator ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

Core Animator is an app for creating motion graphics on your iPad. If you’ve ever seen Adobe Animate (formerly Flash), you’ll feel at home. If not, the app might take longer to get to grips with, but you’re helped along by built-in tutorials and Core Animator’s usable, logical interface.

The basics involve adding objects to a canvas and manipulating them at various ‘keyframes’ on the timeline. You can adjust each one’s position, rotation, scale, and opacity, and Core Animator deals with all the frames in between.

It’s worth noting there are no drawing tools, so you must import elements created elsewhere. The app also demands time and patience, but give it both and you can end up with superb results.

Concepts (free + various IAP)

Concepts is an advanced vector-based sketching and design app. Every stroke remains editable, and similar flexibility is evident elsewhere, with varied grids (dot; lined; isometric), definable gestures, and an adjustable interface.

With version 5, Concepts’ design revamp transformed the main toolbar into a space-efficient tool wheel, from which Copic swatches pleasingly explode when you switch colors. As such, the app’s a touch alien at first, and can be fiddly if you don’t have a Pencil.

But Concepts soon becomes natural and fluid in use, and it’s apparent the app’s been designed for touch, rather than a developer hammering desktop concepts into your iPad.

If you’re not a professional architect, illustrator or the like it might be overkill, but if you’re unsure, you can get a feel for the app for free. IAPs subsequently allow you to unlock shape guides, SVG and PDF export, infinite layers, and object packs.

Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga ($8.99/£6.99/AU$11.49 monthly)

Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga brings the popular PC desktop app for digital artists to the iPad. And we mean that almost literally – Clip Studio looks pretty much identical to the desktop release.

In one sense, this isn’t great news – menus, for example, are fiddly to access, but it does mean you get a feature-rich, powerful app. There are loads of brushes and tools, vector capabilities, effect lines and tones for comic art, and onion skinning for animations. It also takes full advantage of Pencil, so pro artists can be freed from the desktop, and work wherever they like.

The app could do with better export and desktop workflow integration, and even some fans might be irked by the subscription model. But Clip Studio’s features and quality mean most will muddle through the former issues and pay for the latter.

Procreate ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Procreate is the kind of digital painting app that could feasibly tear jobbing artists away from the desktop. Feature rich, it also has an immediacy that makes it approachable for relative newcomers looking to paint on a touchscreen.

The interface is unobtrusive; by default, tools are accessed from a strip at the top of the screen, and brush size and opacity sliders sit at the left. Simple gestures can take you full screen, or undo a duff stroke.

This simple interface is augmented with a slew of features: custom, sharable brushes; layers with masking; drawing guides (such as isometric grids); live symmetry effects; Quickline for snapping strokes to straight lines; warp and liquify. As your skills advance, you can export video of you painting your masterpiece – or a 30-second timelapse ready for social media.

Pixaki ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

With visible pixels essentially eradicated from modern mobile device screens, it’s amusing to see retro-style pixel art stubbornly clinging on.

But chunky pixels are a pleasing aesthetic, evoking nostalgia, and you know thought’s gone into the placement of every dot. Pixaki is an iPad pixel art ‘studio’, ideal for illustrators, games designers, and animators.

At its most minimal, the interface shows your canvas and some tool icons: pencil; eraser; fill; shapes; select; color picker. But there are also slide-in panels for layers/palettes, and the frame-based animation system.

Bar a slightly awkward selection/move process, workflow is sleek and efficient (not least with the superb fill tool, which optionally works non-contiguously across multiple layers), and the app has robust, flexible import and export options.

Perhaps most importantly, Pixaki’s just really nice to use – more so than crafting similar art on a PC or Mac, and although pricey it’s worth the money for anyone serious about pixel art.

Stop Motion Studio Pro ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Animation can be painstaking, whether doing it for your career or just for fun. Fortunately, Stop Motion Studio Pro streamlines the process, providing a sleek and efficient app for your next animated masterpiece.

It caters to various kinds of animation: you can use your iPad’s camera to capture a scene, import images or videos (which are broken down into stills), or use a remote app installed on an iPhone. Although most people will export raw footage to the likes of iMovie, Stop Motion Pro shoots for a full animation suite by including audio and title capabilities.

There are some snags. Moving frames requires an awkward copy/paste/delete workaround. Also, drawing tools are clumsy, making the app’s claim of being capable of rotoscoping a tad suspect. But as an affordable and broadly usable app for crafting animation, it fits the bill.

Comic Life 3 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

There are plenty of apps that enable you to add comic-like filters and the odd speech balloon to your photos, but Comic Life 3 goes the whole hog regarding comic creation. You select from pre-defined templates or basic page layouts, and can then begin working on a Marvel-worrying masterpiece.

Importing images is straightforward, and you get plenty of control over sound effects and speech balloons. For people who are perhaps taking things a bit too seriously (or actual comic creators, who can use this app for quick mock-ups), there's a bundled script editor as well.

Oddly, Comic Life 3's filters aren't that impressive, not making your photos look especially hand-drawn. But otherwise the app is an excellent means of crafting stories on an iPad, and you can export your work in a range of formats to share with friends - and Stan Lee.

Graphic ($8.99/£8.99/AU$13.99)

Previously known as iDraw, Graphic is now part of the Autodesk stable. Visually, it looks an awful lot like Adobe Illustrator, and it brings some suitably high-end vector-drawing smarts to Apple's tablet.

All the tools and features you'd expect are present and correct; and while it's admittedly a bit slower and fiddlier to construct complex imagery on an iPad than a PC, Graphic is great to have handy when you're on the move. Smartly, the app boasts plentiful export functions, to continue your work elsewhere, and will sync with its iPhone and Mac cousins across iCloud.

The best education apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for learning something new – from astronomy to human history.

Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 represents a leap forward for iPad education apps and digital textbooks alike. In short, it turns your iPad into an anatomy lab – and augmented reality extends this to nearby flat surfaces.

You can explore your virtual cadaver by region or system. Additionally, you can examine cross-sections, micro-anatomy (eyes; bone layers; touch receptors, and so on), and muscle actions. If you want to learn what makes you tick, it’s fascinating to spin a virtual body beneath your finger, and ‘dissect’ it by removing sections.

But the AR element is a real prize, giving you a captivating, slightly unnerving virtual body to explore. Ideal fodder for medical students, then, but great even for the simply curious. And although it’s pricey for the latter audience, the app’s often on sale, and has dropped as low as $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49. Snap it up if you see it cheap.

LookUp ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

There are quite a few dictionary apps on iPad, and most of them don’t tend to stray much from paper-based tomes, save adding a search function. LookUp has a more colorful way of thinking, primarily with its entry screen. This features rows of illustrated cards, each of which houses an interesting word you can discover more about with a tap.

The app is elsewhere a mite more conventional – you can type in a word to confirm a spelling, and access its meaning, etymology, and Wikipedia entry.

The app’s lack of speed and customization means it likely won’t be a writer’s first port of call when working – but it is an interesting app for anyone fascinated by language, allowing you to explore words and their histories in rather more relaxed circumstances.

Redshift Pro (($17.99/£17.99/AU$27.99)

The ‘pro’ bit in Redshift Pro’s name is rather important, because this astronomy app is very much geared at the enthusiast. It dispenses with the gimmickry seen in some competing apps, and is instead packed with a ton of features, including an explorable planetarium, an observation planner and sky diary, 3D models of the planetary bodies, simulations, and even the means to control a telescope.

Although more workmanlike than pretty, the app does the business when you’re zooming through the heavens, on a 3D journey to a body of choice, or just lazily browsing whatever you’d be staring at in the night sky if your ceiling wasn’t in the way.

And if it all feels a bit rich, the developer has you covered with the slightly cut down – but still impressive – Redshift, for half the outlay.

Sky Guide ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

There are quite a few apps for virtual stargazing, but Sky Guide is the best of them on iPad. Like its rivals, the app allows you to search the heavens in real-time, providing details of constellations and satellites in your field of view (or, if you fancy, on the other side of the world).

Also, when outside during the daytime (at which point stars are inconveniently invisible to the naked eye), you can use augmented reality to map constellations on to a blue sky.

Indoors, it transforms into a kind of reference guide, offering further insight into distant heavenly bodies, and the means to view the sky at different points in history. What sets Sky Guide apart, though, is an effortless elegance. It's simply the nicest app of its kind to use, with a polish and refinement that cements its essential nature.

Earth Primer ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.

Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.

Journeys of Invention ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Touch Press somewhat cornered the market in amazing iOS books with The Elements, but Journeys of Invention takes things a step further. In partnership with the Science Museum, it leads you through many of science's greatest discoveries, weaving them into a compelling mesh of stories.

Many objects can be explored in detail, and some are more fully interactive, such as the Enigma machine, which you can use to share coded messages with friends.

What's especially great is that none of this feels gimmicky. Instead, this app points towards the future of books, strong content being married to useful and engaging interactivity.

The best movie and entertainment apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether reading, watching TV, using Twitter or delving into interactive art.

David Bowie is… ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

David Bowie is… takes 2013’s blockbuster Bowie exhibition and stuffs it inside of your iPad as an AR experience.

Curated by theme rather than chronologically, the exhibition is a set of interactive scenes, ‘projected’ onto your desktop. Optional narration by Gary Oldman adds backstory as you examine lyrics, costumes and videos, exploring the life of a music icon.

On iPad, David Bowie is… works especially well. The screen’s squarer aspect ratio makes examining content less awkward than on iPhone, and the larger display lets everything shine. The only thing that might give you pause is the price, but for far less than a ticket to the original exhibition, you get unlimited access to all the goodies – including dozens of songs and videos – without having to peer over other people’s shoulders.

Bloom: 10 Worlds ($7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99)

Bloom: 10 Worlds is the follow-up to 2008’s Bloom, which never made it to iPad. That app had you tap the screen to simultaneously play notes and create spots of color. The former looped and slowly evolved; the latter disappeared into the background like ripples in a pond.

10 Worlds expands this premise out from a ‘single’ into a full album. There are 10 takes on the format to enjoy, each with its own visuals and audio. The visuals in particular have been significantly improved from the original Bloom, replacing that app’s hard geometric forms with a more painterly approach.

However, it’s the intriguing mix of instrument, album, and art that still shines through. The result is an essential addition to iPad, perfectly complementing existing Eno/Chilvers collaborations Scape and Reflection. 

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged takes a warehouse-sized art exhibit and transforms it into a virtual space. This means instead of getting a digital book, where you swipe between stills, you instead experience the context and atmospherics of the original show, dragging the screen to move, or actually walking around in AR, adjusting your view on the basis of where you hold your iPad.

Fairey – creator of the iconic ‘Hope’ image of Barack Obama – is on fine form here, exploring issues relating to social media, celebrity, and the notion of constructing your own reality. Optionally, his narrative can accompany your journey around his work, adding extra insight. But however you check out Damaged, it proves itself to be the finest example of a virtual gallery on mobile, looking to the future rather than the past.

Tweetbot 5 (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Tweetbot 5 is a premium Twitter client. Unlike Twitter’s own client, which is determined to present tweets as it sees fit, Tweetbot lists tweets in order, omits ads, and doesn’t clutter up your mentions feed with notifications about retweets and likes. There’s a night mode, for tweeting in the dark, iCloud sync across devices for keeping your place, and nice sound effects that make the app feel alive.

On iPad, the app of course supports Split View and Slide Over, but it also has its own built-in column view. This means if you’re the kind of person who lives on Twitter, you can, for example, simultaneously scroll through your feed in the main pane, while chatting with people via direct messages in another. Top stuff for power users – or anyone who wants to avoid social network noise.

Monster Park - AR Dino World ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Monster Park - AR Dino World figures everyone should have their own dinosaur park, and enables you to create one on a table, in a garden, or in a mall when you’re feeling hemmed in by concrete and glass.

Fire things up and a T-rex stomps about and bellows while pteranodons fly overhead. A US$0.99/99p/AU$1.49 IAP adds extra beasts, and the app enables you to augment your prehistoric critters with a virtual jungle.

Alternatively, position the experience at a distance to create a ‘portal’ into an ancient world, with the T-rex terrifyingly poking its head through and threatening you with its massive teeth.

Interaction is limited (tap the ground to make a dinosaur move, tap it repeatedly to unsportingly knock it down, and record any of your escapades), but this is nonetheless an entertaining take on augmented reality for kids of any age.

The Brainstormer ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

The Brainstormer is designed to spark ideas when you’re working on a story. In its default state, it’s something of a visual oddity, with three wheels that you spin for a random set-up of plot/conflict, theme/setting, and subject/location. Individual wheels can be locked, and you can swap the wheels for a ‘slot machine’ interface if you prefer.

Although that might seem a bit gimmicky, The Brainstormer can be genuinely useful if you need a little nudge to get going. Also, the app is extensible, vastly broadening its scope. You can buy additional wheels via IAP, such as creature and world builders.

You can also directly edit existing wheels, or create your own from scratch. When you’re fresh out of ideas, a couple of bucks for endless new ones could be a bargain buy that sends you on your way to a best-seller.

Infuse Pro ($14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99)

Even iPads with the largest amount of storage can’t cope with a great deal of on-board video. Infuse Pro is designed to access your collection, without any of it needing to be on your device.

The app connects to local drives and cloud services, and plays a wide range of file types, including MOV, MKV and VIDEO_TS. If the files are named sensibly, Infuse downloads cover art and can optionally grab soft subtitles. The interface throughout is superb.

On iPad, you also get full support for Split View and picture-in-picture, so you can pretend to work while watching your favorite shows. And if you continue on another device – this universal app is compatible with iPhone and Apple TV – cloud sync lets you pick up where you left off.

Islands: Non-Places ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Carl Burton’s Islands: Non-Places is listed in the App Store as a game, but don’t believe a word of it. Really, this ten-scene artistic endeavor is a surreal, mesmerizing semi-interactive animated film.

Each ‘non-place’ is somewhere you’d usually ignore or stay only on a very temporary basis, but here, the mundane is subverted through unusual and unexpected juxtapositions.

You’ll find yourself staring at a luggage carousel, before the bags begin a lazy Mexican wave. Elsewhere, palm trees ride mall escalators, while a run-of-the-mill seating area is suddenly flooded, a warning siren slicing its way through inane background chatter.

The result is frequently disorientating, but Islands also has the capacity to surprise, and is often oddly beautiful.

Chunky Comic Reader (free or $3.99/£3.99/AU$4.49)

There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.

Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low-res comics look good.

Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.

Scape ($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)

Pop music is about getting what you expect. Ambient music has always felt subtly different, almost like anything could happen. With generative audio, this line of thinking became reality. Scape gives you a combined album/playground in this nascent genre, from the minds of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers.

Each track is formed by way of adding musical elements to a canvas, which then interact in sometimes unforeseen ways. Described as music that "thinks for itself", Scape becomes a pleasing, fresh and infinitely replayable slice of chillout bliss. And if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can sit back and listen to an album composed by the app's creators.

Pigment (free)

Adult colouring books are all the rage, proponents claiming bringing colour to intricate abstract shapes helps reduce stress - at least until you realise you've got pen on your shirt and ground oil pastels into the sofa.

You'd think the process of colouring would be ideal for iPad, but most relevant apps are awful, some even forcing tap-to-fill. That is to colouring what using a motorbike is to running a marathon - a big cheat. Pigment is an exception, marrying a love for colouring with serious digital smarts.

On selecting an illustration, there's a range of palettes and tools to explore. You can use pencils and markers, adjusting opacity and brush sizes, and work with subtle gradients. Colouring can be 'freestyle', or you can tap to select an area and ensure you don't go over the lines while furiously scribbling. With a finger, Pigment works well, but it's better with a stylus; with an iPad Pro and a Pencil, you'll lob your real books in the bin.

The one niggle: printing and accessing the larger library requires a subscription in-app purchase. It's a pity there's no one-off payment for individual books, but you do get plenty of free illustrations, and so it's hard to grumble.

Reeder 3 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

The fairly large screen of the iPad means you can access desktop-style websites, rather than ones hacked down for iPhone. That sounds great until you realise most of them want to fire adverts into your face until you beg for mercy.

Old people will wisely suggest 'RSS', and then they'll explain that means you can subscribe to sites and get their content piped into an app.

Reeder 3 is a great RSS reader for iPad. It's fast, efficient, caches content for offline use and — importantly — bundles a Readability view. This downloads entire articles for RSS feeds that otherwise would only show synopses.

Like on the iPhone, Reeder's perhaps a bit gesture-happy, but it somehow feels more usable on the iPad's larger display. And we're happy to see the app continue to improve its feature set, including Split View and iPad Pro support, font options for the article viewer, and the means to sync across Instapaper content.

The best health, diet, and exercise apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for cooking, relaxing, de-stressing and keeping fit.

Paprika ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Paprika is ideal for people who live in the kitchen. Whereas other cooking apps are content to serve up some recipes and a shopping list, Paprika is a full-fledged scrapbook and meal planner you can use for every aspect of your culinary world.

Recipes can be added manually or snipped from favorite websites. Anything added to the app can be adjusted, if you decide you’ve figured out a way to improve the dish or preparation methods, or fancy adding some photos. Beyond that, there’s an ingredients tracker, meal planner (with Calendar integration), menu creator, and the means to print recipes.

It’s not as visually flashy as the likes of Kitchen Stories and Tasty, but Paprika feels like the best bet for anyone whose iPad spends almost as much time in the kitchen as they do.

Streaks (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Streaks is habit-forming – in a good way. It’s effectively a to-do manager that focuses on what you want to do in your life – and bad habits you want to eradicate.

To get started, you create tasks, assign icons, and define durations. The app’s flexible regarding how often tasks should be done; and you can create time-based ones (whereupon the app temporarily becomes a timer), those that interact with Apple’s Health app, and ‘negative’ ones you don’t want to ‘complete’. Streaks then tracks your progress in handy graph form.

The app’s iPhone origins are obvious, not least in the main display that’s optimized for six tasks and therefore looks comical on iPad. But it’s nonetheless great to have this superb app in native form on Apple’s tablet, and iCloud sync ensures any changes you make are accessible across all your Apple gear.

CARROT Fit ($3.99/£3.99/AU$4.49)

CARROT Fit is the answer if a more sensible exercise app just isn’t doing it for you. Like CARROT Weather, this fitness tool is helmed by a snarky, sarcastic AI. Here, she comes across like the deranged offspring of HAL 9000 and a personal trainer. To wit, she’ll threaten, ridicule and bribe you, in order to “prevent your body from blimping up.”

The actual exercise bit is, broadly speaking, conventional, in that you partake in recognizable routines. But even there, CARROT Fit has a very distinct character, referring to push-ups as ‘Kowtows to Cthulhu,’ and subtly renaming the seven-minute workout ‘7 Minutes in Hell.’ Still, you’ll likely need some humor when sitting on the floor in a sweaty heap after a few minutes of exercise, and CARROT Fit has that over its straight-laced contemporaries.

White Noise+ (free + US$2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP)

White Noise+ is a sound machine designed to reduce distractions by way of ambient noise. Many apps in this space are a bit new age and flowery, and quite a few are, frankly, rubbish. Fortunately, White Noise+ is none of those things, instead providing a thoroughly modern, tactile take on noise generation.

The app’s based around a grid akin to smart drums in GarageBand. Here, you get 16 slots, into which you drag icons that represent different sounds. Those toward the top play more loudly, and those toward the right have more complex loops. Your mixes can be saved, and sleep timers and alarms are available if you want to use White Noise+ for meditation sessions – or for waking you up should you doze off.

You get a handful of sounds to play with for free, but the full set requires a one-off IAP. Given the quality of the app, it’s well worth the outlay.

Streaks Workout (US$3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Streaks Workout wants you to get fit. Such apps are usually associated with iPhone – hardly surprising, seeing as you’re unlikely to go jogging with an iPad strapped to your arm – but for quick sessions of personal training, it fits the bill.

You select from the exercises you’re happy to perform, and choose a workout length – from six minutes (‘quick’) to 30 (‘pain’). The app then randomly sends exercises your way, which are impossible to miss on the large display.

When you’re done with an exercise, you tap the screen to continue, but if you find that a distraction, you can switch from rep counts to timed exercise periods. You can create bespoke custom workouts, too.

During downtime, you can collapse in a heap and flick through saved statistics, mulling that iCloud support means Streaks Workout can follow you to every device, meaning you’ve no excuse to ever stop exercising.

Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

We're not sure what makes this edition of the famous mockney chef's recipe book 'ultimate', bar that word being very clearly written on the icon.

Still, Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes is certainly a very tasty app. The 600 recipes should satisfy any given mood, whether you're after a sickeningly healthy salad or fancy binging on ALL THE SUGAR until your teeth scream for mercy.

Smartly, every recipe offers step-by-step photos, so you can see how badly you’re going wrong at any point. And when you've nearly burned down the kitchen, given up and ordered a pizza, you can watch the two hours of videos that reportedly tell you how to "become a real kitchen ninja".

Note: this doesn't involve wearing lots of black and hurling sharp objects at walls, sadly.

The best kids apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps, learning tools and games for toddlers and children.

Women Who Changed the World ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Women Who Changed the World is an animated storybook designed to inspire children by telling them the stories of some of history’s bravest and most brilliant women.

Whether you’re finding out about Amelia Earhart’s pioneering aviation exploits or Rosa Parks’ instrumental civil rights battles, the app is a feast for the eyes with colorful illustrations and delightful animation. The stories themselves cover the basics, and provide enough intrigue to urge readers to find out more.

The interactive components are a bit slight, and occasionally obscure what you must do to continue. But otherwise, this ad-free, IAP-free title is the sort of app every child could do with exploring, to more fully understand how incredible women have made the world a better place.

Sizzle & Stew ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Sizzle & Stew shows why young children – along with sloths and llamas – need supervision in the kitchen. Your kid helps the furry duo concoct culinary ‘delights’ that would give a Michelin Star chef chills.

Creating dishes involves partaking in all manner of havoc in the kitchen. Want to microwave a carrot into oblivion? Go for it. Stick broccoli in the oven until it’s unrecognizable? Sure. In the washing machine, too? That’s even tastier. (Just as well, then, that these beasts will eat anything.)

With its absurdist, open-ended, risk-free nature, Sizzle & Stew is bound to appeal to kids. Even better, on iPad a simultaneous two-player split-screen mode has room to breathe, so you can pit your skills against your kid’s – shortly before finding out neither of you’s likely to get a TV chef gig.

Toca Life: Office ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Toca Life: Office gives your kids a chance to play out what they imagine their working parents get up to all day – albeit in exciting environments likely more colorful and interesting than the real thing.

For young children, there’s plenty of fun to be had simply in moving the little figures about, and poking backgrounds to see what happens. For slightly older kids, exploration can prove rewarding in other ways – there’s a secret exit from the jail, a working copy machine in the office, and a cafe where you can merrily experiment with what’s on the menu.

Neatly, there’s even a recording feature, so kids can get creative and act out a scene, which can then be shared with friends. In all, this is another superb Toca Boca creation that ticks all the right boxes.

Bandimal ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Bandimal is a music toy for the rest of us. Actually, its App Store description states it’s a music composer for kids, but ignore that because Bandimal is great fun for everyone.

It offers three slots into which you swipe an animal. A quick tap opens a dotted grid, on to which you assign notes by prodding the dots. These trigger loops when the playhead moves over them, and there are no wrong choices.

There’s a drum track too, along with some basic effects and a speed dial. And as you’re composing, your little menagerie will bop to the beat, with animation that’s so much fun it’s sure to make any cartoonists in the vicinity a touch envious.

You might avoid Bandimal because you’re not a musician. Don’t. This app’s only to be avoided if you hate fun.

Zen Studio (free + IAP)

Zen Studio is a unique, beautifully conceived painting and coloring app. Instead of giving you a blank canvas for free-form scribbling, Zen Studio opts for a triangular grid. Tap spaces and they fill with your selected color as a note plays. This combination of coloring and ad-hoc melody proves very relaxing – for children and adults alike.

In its free version, this is an entertaining app, but it’s worth grabbing the main $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP. This lets you save unlimited drawings (rather than just eight), and unlocks white paint, which acts as an eraser on compositions with white backgrounds.

It also provides access to a slew of tutorials. These have you build up a picture by coloring inside stencils, which even a two-year-old should be able to cope with – and then subsequently scrawl over when the stencils disappear.

Little Digits ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Little Digits is a new spin on finger counting, making use of the iPad’s large screen, and its ability to recognize loads of fingers pressing down at once.

The app’s most basic mode responds to how many fingers are touching the screen. Use a single digit, and the app chirps ONE! while a grinning one-shaped monster jigs about. Add another finger and the one is replaced by a furry two. You get the idea.

Beyond this, the app offers some basic training in number ordering, addition and subtraction, making it a great learning tool for young children.

But the smartest feature may well be multiple language support and recording. This means you can use the app to learn to count in anything from French to Swedish, and record custom prompts if your own language isn’t supported.

Toca Life: Farm ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Toca Life: Farm is an ambitious and rich exploratory title for kids, inviting them to manage a farm and fashion their own stories.

There are four locations: barn, house, field, and store. Each of them is packed full of elements to interact with. For youngsters, there’s plenty of fun to be had just poking around, making noises, and dragging colorful characters about.

Toca Life: Farm encourages older kids to think a little more. They can grow their own ingredients, which can subsequently be made into food. Animals can be fed and cared for, whereupon it’s possible to reap the rewards of eggs from chickens and milk from cows.

There’s no stress - this title is all about moving at your own pace. Importantly, it also eschews advertising and IAP, ensuring your little farmer can’t accidentally spend real-world cash on virtual hay bales.

Thinkrolls Kings & Queens ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Thinkrolls Kings & Queens is a set of logic and physics tests for children disguised as a game.

Like other Thinkrolls titles, it involves rotund protagonists working their way to the bottom of a series of blocky towers. Their way is regularly barred by various elements that must be successfully manipulated to fashion a way onward.

For example, gears and racks might need combining to create a conveyor belt, or a mirror shifted to reflect light and remove a ghost.

It’s all clever stuff, and also broadly stress-free. There are no time limits at all, and multiple profiles can be set up to cater for several kids on a single device.

And although Kings & Queens is intended for kids between five and eight years old, the interface and design is such that younger children should be able to delve into the adventure, too – albeit perhaps with supervision to initially help them understand the trickier challenges.

Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Safari ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)

Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Safari is an entertaining digital take on those children’s games where you create weird and wonderful (and occasionally terrifying) creatures by combining different body parts. Here, you get tops and bottoms to swipe between, in order to construct the likes of a ‘zeboceros’ or ‘crocingo’.

Each animal is nicely illustrated and comes with two verses of text, which the app can optionally read aloud. Also, note you don’t have to create strange new animals – you can instead match halves to make normal ones.

Perfect for when your resident tiny person is getting a bit perplexed at seeing a grinning elephant propped up by a spindly pair of flamingo legs.

Endless Alphabet ($8.99/£8.99/$AU13.99)

Young children love wooden puzzles, where you plug a load of letters into letter-shaped holes (with a little luck, ones that actually fit). The thing is, those puzzles never change, whereas Endless Alphabet has over a hundred words to play with.

On selecting a word, a horde of colorful monsters sprints across the screen, scattering the letters, which must then be dragged back into place. As you do so, the letters entertainingly grumble and animate. Once the entire word’s complete, a short cut-scene plays to explain what it means.

From start to finish, Endless Alphabet is an excellent and joyful production. The interface is intuitive enough for young toddlers to grasp, and the app’s tactile nature works wonderfully on the iPad’s large display.

Toca Band ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

It’s concert time for the motley crew of Toca Band, in this toy designed to help kids explore music creatively. (And, um, adults who might get sucked in a bit.)

It’s all very simple: drag weird cartoon characters (each of which plays their own instrument) to spots on the stage, and they automatically jam along with the only song that Toca Band appears to know. Lob a musician at the star and they start a unique solo improv with a modicum of user control.

Toca Band is a very sweet app, which even toddlers should be able to grasp. A word of warning, though: that Toca Band riff will quickly become an earworm you’ll be hard pressed to remove. 

Metamorphabet ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.

The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.

Toca Nature ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

On opening Toca Nature, you find yourself staring at a slab of land floating in the void. After selecting relevant icons, a drag of a finger is all it takes to raise mountains or dig deep gullies for rivers and lakes.

Finishing touches to your tiny landscape can then be made by tapping to plant trees. Wait for a bit and a little ecosystem takes shape, deers darting about glades, and fish swimming in the water. Using the magnifying glass, you can zoom into and explore this little world and feed its various inhabitants.

Although designed primarily for kids, Toca Nature is a genuinely enjoyable experience whatever your age.

The one big negative is that it starts from scratch every time — some save states would be nice, so each family member could have their own space to tend to and explore. Still, blank canvases keep everything fresh, and building a tiny nature reserve never really gets old.

Foldify Dinosaurs ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.

But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.

The best music and audio apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for sampling, being a DJ, making music and listening to podcasts.

NanoStudio 2 ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

NanoStudio 2 is the successor to NanoStudio, an iPhone app that let musicians bash out songs on iPhones before GarageBand for iOS was a twinkle in Apple’s eye. Now less ‘nano’ (being iPad-only), the follow-up is a remarkably powerful tool for recording, sampling, editing, and mixing.

The app was six years in the making – and it shows. Built-in synth Obsidian is among the best on iOS, and is hugely versatile in the noises it can create. Drum machine Slate adds rhythm, and if that’s not enough, NanoStudio 2 lets you effortlessly incorporate Audio Units like Poison-202 and Minimoog Model D.

There is an electronic bent to NanoStudio 2, so it’s not ideally suited to people into more traditional sounds. Otherwise, this usable, feature-rich music production environment is a must-have for iPad musicians.

djay (free + $4.99/£4.49/AU$7.49 monthly)

djay is a full-featured DJ solution for iOS. You get a two-deck mode with crossfader, looping, and effects for free, but splash out on the pro subscription and you’re instantly equipped with enough DJ power to keep you spinning decks into the small hours.

You get a two-deck view with flanking libraries – and a four-deck view when two isn’t enough. There’s VJ mixing when you fancy adding some video, support for a slew of controllers, and over 1GB of samples you can fire off to stamp your personal style over whatever’s blasting from the local sound system.

Naturally, it’s total overkill (albeit fun total overkill) for the typical home user; but if you’re a pro DJ armed with an external controller, it may well be enough to chuck all that traditional kit on eBay.

SquareSynth 2 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

SquareSynth 2 is an iPad synth that recalls the era of 8-bit computing. Its capabilities and pre-sets blast audio goodness into your ears that might once have emanated from a NES or a Commodore 64. And although such sounds are of their time, they can provide some much-needed punch to any contemporary composition.

For dabblers, the noises alone will be fun enough. But start playing with the editor and you’ll find plenty of scope for working up your own ear-smashing sounds.

Audiobus and AudioUnit support means custom creations aren’t stuck in the app either – you can wire up SquareSynth 2 to all manner of iPad apps, or even squirt the entire thing into GarageBand. Good stuff, then, for twanging your nostalgia gland, or just getting lo-fi electronic sounds into your tracks.

Ferrite Recording Studio (free or US$28.99/£28.99/AU$46.99)

Ferrite Recording Studio at first looks like a souped-up voice memos app, but beneath lies a powerful multi-track editor, so if you’re armed with an iPad, the app and some time, you can create your own podcast.

For free, there are limitations: an hour of recording, ten-minute projects and three tracks. Go Pro and Ferrite gives desktop editors a run for their money: 32 tracks, projects up to a day long, and recording time limited only by the space on your iPad.

The pro version adds further handy tools for improving recordings, such as effects, auto-leveling, MP3 chapters and dead air removal, bt the most impressive thing is how this all comes together. Ferrite might be powerful, but it’s also extremely usable. It therefore comes highly recommended if you’ve any interest in multi-track voice recording projects.

Patterning 2 (US$19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Patterning 2 offers a decidedly different spin on drum machines and rhythm making. Rather than you smacking a set of virtual pads, or tapping out notes on a grid, Patterning 2 gives you a wheel. In fact, it gives you several – one for each of eight selectable drum samples.

The interface might be unique, but it’s also versatile. You drag sliders to set an item’s properties. Depending on the selected layer, you can quickly adjust velocity, panning, and tuning; the last of those opening up many possibilities for melodies.

Patterning 2 also wants you to experiment - automation, per-sample directional playback, and randomization can make for complex, rich rhythms you’d be hard pressed to make in any other music app on your iPad.

Lily ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Lily invites you to make music from geometric, minimal spinning flowers. You select a color and shape – the former dictating the instrument, and the latter the lily’s petals. Open the flower and you then gain access to a pulsating playback head.

At this point, you get to set notes by dragging bars across horizontal regions. Repeat the process with multiple lilies and you’ll soon have an oddly delicate cacophony serenading your ears. This music can be exported, and you can save your current composition when you want to start a new one.

Lily is a very sweet app. It’s rather too abstract to be as immediate is it would like, but if you fancy a decidedly different and exploratory, playful take on music-making, it’s a joy.

Samplebot (US$3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Samplebot on the iPhone is primarily about collecting sounds and using them to make a noise (by way of live playback on a pad grid), or turning them into oddball songs via an easy to use built-in sequencer. This is still possible on iPad of course, but with a less portable device, Samplebot’s other abilities transform it into a subtly different app.

Although you can of course still record you tapping pots, pans, glasses, and your own head, Samplebot can also bring in audio from Music, iCloud Drive, or the iOS clipboard, and sample from other apps if you’ve got Audiobus installed.

The end result is a grid pad and sample editor that’s immense fun to play around with, twinned with a sequencer that’s simple, but still powerful enough to sketch out the basics of your next hit record.

SoundForest (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP)

SoundForest is a creative sound toy that mashes up minimalist animal stickers and song-making.

Across four environments, you drag stickers from a strip at the bottom of the screen onto your canvas. Each one – be it animal, plant, or landmark – makes a sound that rarely recalls reality. A mandrill, for example, blasts forth a raucous slap bass. It’s colorful, entertaining, and encourages discovery and experimentation.

Once you’ve dotted your stickers about, you can fire up your composition. The sun or moon acts as a playback head, and your stickers animate as your oddball musical masterpiece blasts forth.

Pros may be frustrated by the app’s lack of export functionality, but really SoundForest is more for the masses than them – an approachable, fun way to make a noisy music loop, using a vibrant, unique interface.

Audiobus 3 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

There are so many amazing music-making apps on iPad that it’s hard to choose between them. With Audiobus 3, you sort of don’t have to, because it acts as a kind of behind-the-scenes plumbing.

Virtual cabling might not sound sexy, but it hugely boosts creative potential. You can send live audio or MIDI data between apps and through effects, mix the various channels, and then send the entire output to the likes of GarageBand.

Much of these features are new to Audiobus 3, and this latest update also adds Audio Unit support, enabling you to open some synths and effects directly in the app.

With support for over 900 iOS products in all, Audiobus 3 is an essential buy for anyone serious about creating music on an iPad.

KRFT ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Generally speaking, music apps echo real-world instruments, as evidenced by the piano keyboards found in the likes of GarageBand. KRFT is different – along with creating loops and riffs (either by bashing out a tune on a grid of pads, or tapping out notes on a piano roll), you also create the play surface itself.

Designing your instrument in KRFT is all based around shapes and icons – diamonds trigger loops, dials adjust sound properties, and squares can be set to trigger several loops at once.

Admittedly, staring at a blank canvas can intimidate, because you must consider composition and instrument construction as one. But KRFT bundles several inspirational demos to show what it can do – and they’re so much fun they might be worth the entry fee on their own.

djay Pro ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

If you’re the kind of person who likes spinning virtual decks, you’ll tell right away with djay Pro that you have in your hands something special. On the iPad – and especially on an iPad Pro – the app has room to breathe, lining up all kinds of features for being creative when playing other people’s music.

You get four-deck mixing, a sampler, varied waveform layouts, and useful DJ tools like cue points and beat-matching. There are also 70 keyboard shortcuts for quickly getting at important features, such as matching keys and adjusting levels.

For a newcomer, it’s perhaps overkill, and the similarly impressive djay 2 is cheaper. But if you’ve got the cash, djay Pro is a best-in-class app suitable for everyone – right up to jobbing DJs.

Poison-202 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

So, you’ve picked up an iPad synth to compose music, play live, or bound about like a maniac, pretending you're on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, Poison-202 is ideal for all such sets of circumstances.

The moody black and red graphic design is very 1990s, but it's Poison-202's sounds that hurl you back to the halcyon days of electronic music. Aficionados of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Orbital will be overjoyed at the familiar (and brilliant) sounds you can conjure up simply by selecting presets and prodding a few keys.

And if you're not satisfied by the creator's (frankly awesome) sound design smarts (in which case, we glare at you with the menace of a thousand Keith Flints), all manner of sliders and dials enable you to create your own wall-wobbling bass and ear-searing leads.

There are iPad synths that have more ambition, and many are more authentic to classic hardware; but few are more fun.

Model 15 ($29.99/£28.99/AU$46.99)

Your eyes might pop at the price tag of this iPad synth, but the hardware reissue of this amazing Moog was priced at a wallet-smashing $10,000. By contrast, the Model 15 iPad app seems quite the bargain. To our ears, it's also the best standalone iOS synth on mobile, and gives anything on the desktop a run for its money.

For people used to messing around with modular synths and plugging in patch leads, they'll be in heaven. But this isn't retro-central: you can switch the piano keyboard for Animoog's gestural equivalent; newcomers can work through straightforward tutorials about how to build new sounds from scratch; and those who want to dive right in can select from and experiment with loads of diverse, superb-sounding presets.

Fugue Machine ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.

For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning.

(Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)

RealBeat ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

The lofty boast with RealBeat is that you can use the app to make music with everything. The remarkable thing is, you really can. The app has eight slots for samples, waiting for input from your iPad's mic.

You can record snippets of any audio you fancy: your voice; a spoon smacking a saucepan; a pet, confused at you holding your iPad right in front of its face. These samples can then be arranged into loops and songs using a familiar drum-machine-style sequencer and pattern editor.

Completed masterpieces can be exported using Audio Copy and iTunes File Sharing, and the app also integrates with Audiobus.

Korg Gadget ($39.99/£38.99/AU$62.99)

Korg Gadget bills itself as the "ultimate mobile synth collection on your iPad" and it's hard to argue. You get well over a dozen varied synths, ranging from drum machines through to ear-splitting electro monsters, and an intuitive piano roll for laying down notes.

A scene/loop arranger enables you to craft entire compositions in the app, which can then be shared via the Soundcloud-powered GadgetCloud or sent to Dropbox. This is a more expensive app than most, but if you're a keen electronic-music-oriented songwriter with an iPad, it's hard to find a product that's better value.

Overcast (free)

Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.

The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.

The best office and writing apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for writing, email, editing PDFs, spreadsheets, coding and file management.

Drafts 5 (free or US$19.99/£17.49/AU$27.99 per year)

Drafts 5 initially looks like a straightforward text editor, albeit one with a heavily loaded custom keyboard bar. As you type, a word/character count keeps track in the corner, and you can prod the aforementioned bar’s buttons to perform actions, and adjust the cursor’s position.

What sets Drafts apart is its flexibility. For one thing, the keyboard bar can be customized. When a text is completed, it can be tagged for easier subsequent retrieval in the app’s inbox. And actions enable you to process text or send it elsewhere.

That’s all in the free tier, but splash out on Pro and Drafts becomes a seriously powerful tool. You can create and edit automation actions, change the app’s theme, adjust your workspace, and explore pro-oriented widgets. It feels like the spiritual successor to Editorial, and in either incarnation is a must-have for writers.

Scanbot Pro ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

Scanbot Pro is a scanner app that uses your iPad’s camera to snap documents. Assuming there’s sufficient contrast, outlines are automatically cropped, whereupon you can rotate, color-adjust, and save the result.

To some extent, this echoes functionality now built into Apple’s Notes app, but there’s an advantage to having a standalone app for scanning. It’s faster and more efficient, for one. But also, this app does more than just scan.

Your documents remain within the app and can be signed and annotated. OCR technology attempts – with some success – to create searchable text from your images, and to extract important details. These are presented as action triggers, for example to kick off a phone call or visit a website. In all, then, probably more useful than a hardware scanner – and rather more convenient to carry around with you too.

FileBrowser ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

FileBrowser makes it easy to grab documents from just about anywhere, then view and edit them. Think of it like a companion app to Files. Although Apple’s file manager supports iCloud and integrates with the likes of Dropbox, FileBrowser can explore connected Macs and PCs, FTP servers, NAS servers and more.

Setting things up is straightforward, and the app’s tabbed interface makes it a cinch to quickly switch between sources. Unfortunately, tabs aren’t drag-and-drop aware, but sidebar shortcuts are. File viewing works well, and you can annotate PDFs and create/unpack ZIP archives.

It’d be good to see FileBrowser more fully embrace the space available on iPad – an optional two-pane view, for example. The lack of Share sheet support is also a pity. Other than that, it’s a solid option when your file management needs exceed what Files can do.

Zipped ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)

Zipped largely fixes a major shortcoming of the iOS Files app for iPad – its inability to deal with ZIP archives. The default Files app merely lets you peek inside a ZIP and extract items one at a time, but Zipped is far more capable.

If you need to unpack an archive, that can be done with a couple of taps. The files within are then saved to a user-defined location – either as they are, or within a named folder.

Creating archives is simple, too, and works via drag and drop in Split View or – an often better option – Slide Over. The one snag is Zipped only recognizes specific file formats, although the most common are covered.

Still, the low price makes it worth grabbing even if you only use it to quickly get at files within ZIPs, rather than laboriously extracting them one by one.

Chambers Thesaurus ($4.99/£4.99/AU$6.99)

Chambers Thesaurus is a thesaurus for your iPad. You might argue that doesn’t sound like the most exciting app in the world – and you’d be right. But if you do any writing on your iPad, it’s pretty much essential.

On macOS, Apple bundles a thesaurus with its Dictionary app, but this is absent on iOS, which merely attempts to correct spellings. Chambers’ offering therefore fills a void – and it does so in a straightforward, unassuming, highly usable manner.

Entries are clearly laid out, and you get a handy search sidebar in landscape. Pages can be bookmarked, and shared, or sent to equally impressive sister app Chambers Dictionary. If you fancy both, grab the bundle to save a few bucks.

Textastic ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Textastic is a text editor geared towards markup and coding. It’s an app that takes a no-nonsense approach – very evident the second you sit before its tasteful, minimal interface.

But that doesn’t mean the app’s heavily stripped back. As you work with Textastic, you realize it’s been cleverly optimized to speed your work along. The custom keyboard row is superb, providing fast access to a slew of handy characters.

Not keen on the way code is presented? Quickly flip to the settings, and tweak the fonts or choose an entirely new theme.

As ever, there are limitations to an iPad editor of this kind, most notably local previews when coding web pages. On that basis, you’re probably not going to create a site from scratch with Textastic.

But with its smart editor, useful settings, Split View support, and a built-in file-transfer system, it’s ideal for making quick changes or typing up Markdown notes when on the move – or on the sofa.

PDF Expert by Readdle ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

On the Mac, PDF Expert by Readdle is a friendly, efficient, usable PDF editor. If anything, the app’s often even better on iPad.

You can grab PDFs from iCloud or Dropbox. Pages can be rearranged by drag-and-drop, and you can add or extract pages with a few taps. Adding pages from another document sadly remains beyond the app, but you can merge two PDFs in its file manager.

As a reader, PDF Expert fares well, ably dealing with large PDFs, and the text-to-speech mode can read documents at a speed of your choosing. Similarly, the app makes short work of annotations, document signing, and outline editing.

Buy the ‘Edit PDF’ IAP ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 on top of the original price) and you can directly update text, redact passages, and replace images. You’re obviously a little limited by a document’s existing fonts and layout, but this functionality is great if you spot a glaring error while checking a vital PDF on your iPad.

iA Writer ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

iA Writer provides a writing environment suitably focused for iPad, but that also makes nods to the desktop.

The main screen is smartly designed, with a custom keyboard bar offering Markdown and navigation buttons; if you’re using a mechanical keyboard, standard shortcuts are supported.

Further focus comes by way of a typewriter mode (auto-scrolling to the area you’re editing) and graying out lines other than the one you’re working on.

Elsewhere, you get an optional live character count, iCloud sync, and a robust Markdown preview. We’d like to see a split-screen mode for the last of those (as per the Mac version), but otherwise iA Writer’s a solid, effective and affordable minimal writing app for iPad.

Scrivener ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

On the desktop, Scrivener is widely acclaimed as the writer's tool of choice. The feature-rich app provides all kinds of ways to write, even incorporating research documents directly into projects. Everything's always within reach, and your work can constantly be rethought, reorganised, and reworked.

On iPad, Scrivener is, astonishingly, almost identical to its desktop cousin. Bar some simplification regarding view and export options, it's essentially the same app. You get a powerful 'binder' sidebar for organizing notes and documents, while the main view area enables you to write and structure text, or to work with index cards on a cork board.

There's even an internal 'Split View', for simultaneously smashing out a screenplay while peering at research. With Dropbox sync to access existing projects, Scrivener is a no-brainer for existing users; and for newcomers, it's the most capable rich text/scriptwriting app on iPad.

1Password ($2.99 per month)

Although Apple introduced iCloud Keychain way back in iOS 7, to securely store passwords and payment information, 1Password is a more powerful system. Along with integrating with Safari, it can be used to hold identities, secure notes, network information and app license details.

But there are other benefits: the app’s cross-platform nature means it gives you a solution if you also use Windows and Android. And with it being a standalone app, accessing and editing your information is fast and accessible.

The app is free to try for 30 days, after which point you must pay a monthly $2.99 subscription ($4.99 for a family of five). For the peace of mind and usability the app brings, it’s well worth the outlay.

The best iPad photo and video editing apps

Our favorite iPad apps for shooting and editing photos and videos and adding filters.

Glitch Art Studio (free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 IAP)

Glitch Art Studio is an effects app that aims to make even dull photos and videos look interesting. The filters are based around glitches and animated distortion, and can be edited to the point you can barely tell what the subject was.

Depending on whether you’re in it for speed or control, you can delve into presets or a bunch of individual menus respectively. Either way, you’ll end up concocting something resembling the display of a barely working old television, or some kind of deranged hallucinogenic episode.

On iPad, the larger canvas lets you fully appreciate the effects on offer – which are deeply impressive. If you’re fed up with filters that ape old paintings, use Glitch Studio to bring your creative photographic endeavors kicking and screaming into the (relatively) modern era.

Oilist (US$2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Oilist comes across like someone’s trapped over 40 painters inside your iPad. Feed the app an image, and it’s recreated in the style – and level of abstraction – of your choosing. 

You also get to be a back-seat artist, if you so desire. By tapping buttons at the side of the screen, you can fiddle with mood and brush types, or introduce ‘chaos’ and ‘gravity’ in a disruptive manner that probably makes the virtual artist want to stab you in the eye with their brush.

At any point, you can save a snap of the current work, which in 4K resolution is suitable for printing. Superb stuff, then, whether you want to turn treasured holiday snaps into a Van Gogh, or just fancy some mesmerizing living art to stare at. 

VideoGrade (US$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

VideoGrade is a color-grading app for video, giving you a taste of Hollywood on your iPad.

It’s a powerful app, but one that’s nonetheless straightforward to use. On launch, it finds all your videos. Select one and tools are displayed at the right-hand side of the screen. Open a menu, drag a slider, and changes are made instantly. Any tool used gets a handy green dot next to its name, helping you keep track of complex adjustments.

Filters (color changes, levels, pixelation and so on) are applied live, and a single tap fires up a full preview. Combinations of settings can be saved for later reuse. Also, the app’s various presets are available as a Photos extension. That means you needn’t even delve headlong into VideoGrade itself to apply some of its magic to your favorite videos.

Retrospecs (free or US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Retrospecs is a photo filter app that revels in the history of computing and gaming. Rather than turning any photo or image into a tiny Picasso with a tap, it instead reimagines whatever you load as if it was on the screen of a Game Boy, Apple Mac or C64.

In fact, over 40 systems exist once you pay for the IAP (you can test Retrospecs for free with a small selection), and if that’s not enough, you can fashion your own custom emulations. For properly authentic retro output, you can edit dither modes, add glitch animations, tweak CRT effects and more.

Full support for video combined with some bonkers filters (PETSCII! Teletext!) adds scope for YouTube weirdness. But even if you only grab Retrospecs because you’ve always wondered what your face would look like on a NES, it’s worth the outlay.

Typorama (free + IAP)

Typorama is about adding text to your photos – or creating typographic designs from scratch – with a minimum of effort. Select a photo, flat color, or a stock image background, choose an output size, and you’re ready to get started.

Other apps in this space let you select fonts, but Typorama has you select designs. Enter some text, tap a design style, and what you typed is instantly transformed. If you’re not keen on what you see, tap the style again for variations.

You can add multiple type layers, and apply shadows and gradient effects to each one. There’s also a 3D rotation/perspective tool, and a selective eraser. Some features are locked in the free version and you must put up with watermarks, but there are various IAP available, including the ability to unlock everything for $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99.

Affinity Photo ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Affinity Photo extinguishes any lingering doubt regarding the iPad’s suitability for creative professionals. In short, it’s Serif’s impressive Mac/PC Photoshop rival, carefully reimagined for the touchscreen.

This is pro-level photo/image-editing fare, and you need the hardware to match – at least an iPad Air 2, but preferably an iPad Pro – but with the right kit, you get a huge range of features for image editing, creation and retouching.

The live filters and liquify tools are particularly impressive, responding to edits in real time. Working with a finger or Pencil is pleasingly tactile in a manner desktop equivalents can’t match.

RAW shooting/processing support, the ability to add fonts, layer isolation, and robust Files integration all cement Affinity Photo’s place among the iPad app greats. And if you become an expert, there’s even a ‘Show Touches’ option for making tutorials that other users can follow.

Artomaton - The Motion Painter (free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP)

Artomaton - The Motion Painter is an ‘artificial intelligence artist’ – recreating photos as sketches and paintings. For free, you get a small selection of media, but pay a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP and you unlock the full range, including the arresting ‘Pointil’ (as in ‘lism’), scribbly crayons, and a lovely sketch/watercolor combo.

Unlike most competing apps, this one has many settings for adjusting properties, such as vignettes, stroke width, hatching angle, and color saturation.

It even works with video, and although it takes some time for Artomaton to draw all of the individual frames (just a 20-second clip will need close to 200), output with ‘Sketch&Water’ has a gorgeous scratchy hand-drawn quality.

For free, then, this is a great download; but grab that paid IAP for something really special.

Percolator ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Percolator is a photo filter app for ‘brewing’ circular mosaics using a custom recipe. The coffee theme is fanciful, but it is admittedly lovely to see your photo explode into a bunch of bubbles that disappear and then reform when major changes are made to the ‘grind’ (circle size and effect) settings.

Mostly, though, we were impressed by Percolator because its effects range from the bizarre to the beautiful. Some have a kind of classical feel, a few look like high-end art posters, and with careful tweaking of ‘brew’ (pattern and blend) and ‘serve’ (effect and texture) settings, you can even approximate painterly effects.

It’s a pity you can’t save your own custom presets, although the app does at least offer some examples to get you started. For the most part, though, Percolator’s a tasty treat.

MaxCurve ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

MaxCurve is a professional-quality photo editor, designed for people who want plenty of control over the images they’re working on. Much of the app is based around curves you typically find in high-end editors such as Photoshop.

Adjusting curves is pleasingly tactile, enabling you to make dramatic or subtle adjustments to colors and exposure settings with ease. It makes many of MaxCurve’s iPad contemporaries seem comparatively crude. Smartly, edits are stored as virtual layers, which can be toggled, and there are also tools for cropping and vignettes.

The app feels at home on iPad, which provides enough space to see your photo and tools, without the latter obscuring the former. MaxCurve could probably do with some quick-fix solutions for things like exposure, but then perhaps that’s missing the point of an app more about careful, considered edits rather than speed.

Mextures ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

The iPad may not be an ideal device for shooting photos, but its large screen makes it pretty great for editing them. And Mextures is perhaps the finest app around for anyone wanting to infuse their digital snaps with character by way of textures, grunge, and gradients.

The editing process is entirely non-destructive, with you building up effects by adding layers. In each case, textures, blend modes and rotation of scanned objects can be adjusted to suit, and you can experiment without fear of edits being ‘burned in’.

Particularly interesting combinations can be saved as ‘formulas’ and shared with the Mextures community – or you can speed along your own editing by downloading one of the many formulas that already exist.

LumaFusion ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

If you find iMovie isn’t quite doing it for you from a video editing standpoint, take a look at LumaFusion. This multitrack editor is designed with the more demanding user in mind, and is packed full of features to keep you editing at your iPad rather than nipping to a Mac or PC.

The main timeline provides you with three tracks for photos, videos, titles and graphics, and you get another three audio tracks for complex audio mixes involving narration and sound effects. Should you wish to take things further, LumaFusion includes a slew of effects and clip manipulation tools seemingly brought over from the developer’s own – and similarly impressive – LumaFX.

Occasionally, the app perhaps lacks some of the elegance iMovie enjoys, and LumaFusion is certainly a more involved product than Apple’s. But if you want fully-fledged video editing on your iPad, it’s hard to think of a better option.

Hipstamatic ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

On iPhone, Hipstamatic lets you switch between a virtual retro camera and a sleek modern camera app. On iPad, it all goes a bit weird, with the former option giving you a camera floating in space, and the latter making you wonder why you’d use a tablet for taking snaps.

But Hipstamatic nonetheless gets a recommendation on the basis of other things it does. Load an image from your Camera Roll, and you can delve into Hipstamatic’s editor. If you’re in a hurry, select a predefined style – Vintage; Cinematic; Blogger – and export.

Should you fancy a bit more fine-tuning, you can experiment with lenses, film, and flashes. And plenty of other adjustments are available, too, such as cropping, vignettes, curves, and a really nice depth of field effect.

VideoGrade ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

iPad video editors tend to have a bunch of effects and filters lurking within, but with VideoGrade you can go full-on Hollywood. On launch, the app helpfully rifles through your albums, making it easy to find your videos. Load one and you get access to a whopping 13 colour-grading and repair tools.

Despite the evident power VideoGrade offers, the interface is remarkably straightforward. Select a tool (such as Vibrance, Brightness or Tint), choose a setting, and drag to make a change. Drag up before moving your finger left or right to make subtler adjustments.

Smartly, any tool already used gets a little green dash beneath, and you can go back and change or remove edits at any point.

All filters are applied live to the currently shown frame, and you can also tap a button to view a preview of how your entire exported video will look. Want to compare your edit with the original video? Horizontal and vertical split-views are available at the tap of a button. Usefully, favorite filter combinations can be stored and reused, and videos can be queued rather than laboriously rendered individually.

Snapseed (free)

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image.

You get all the basics - cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app records applied effects as separate layers, and each remains editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else. Combinations of edits can be saved as custom filters you can subsequently apply to more images with a tap.

The best productivity apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for being productive with notes, to-dos, reminders, mind-mapping, calendars and calculators.

Yoink (US$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

Yoink is what’s known as a ‘shelf’ app – a kind of souped-up clipboard that can be used to collate files and content from disparate sources.

On iPad, Yoink proves especially useful, working in Split View and Slide Over, and making it a cinch to gather images, text, URLs and documents. You can import items as well, and even get at things you’ve stashed on other devices by way of iCloud sync.

With extended use, Yoink feels like an app that sweats the details. Copying and removing items depends on the status of a padlock icon. What you’ve saved in Yoink can be browsed in Apple’s Files app. You can edit text documents within Yoink, and interact with it via Siri. In all, it’s indispensable for power users – or anyone wanting a place to quickly store items before subsequently sharing them. 

LiquidText PDF Reader (free + US$29.99/£29.99/AU$46.99)

LiquidText PDF Reader has a misleading name. Although it is for reading and annotating PDFs, thinking it only capable of those things does the app a disservice. Really, you should consider it a hugely powerful product for dynamically gathering your thoughts, and quickly getting at important content within documents.

For free, you can import PDFs (along with Microsoft Office files), make highlights, and drag excerpts to a work area. Go pro and you can gather and link information across multiple files.

The app feels perfectly suited to the touchscreen. You can use Apple Pencil to scribble live ink lines that become dynamic links between documents. Gestures enable you to quickly collapse lengthy documents to read highlights, search results, or non-contiguous pages. For students, researchers, and anyone who wants to go beyond paper, LiquidText is a must-have.

Noted (free + $0.99/79p/AU$1.49)

Noted cleverly combines an audio recorder and notepad. The rich text editor is like a simplified Pages, with predefined styles for headings and lists, image support, and a highlighter for drawing a reader’s attention to important bits.

That’s nothing new on iPad, but the way text and audio integrate is. During recordings, tapping the tag button adds an inline ‘#TimeTag’. Tapping this tag later will jump to the relevant point in the recording. This means you can spend more time in meetings and lectures listening, and later return to flesh out brief notes, adding context based on the audio.

Naturally, Noted’s own format is bespoke, but you can share notes with other users via iCloud. Otherwise, you can export audio to M4A format, and everything else to PDF. In all, then, an ideal productivity aid for a wide range of scenarios.

OmniOutliner 3 (from $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

OmniOutliner 3 is a desktop-quality outlining tool that aims to bring structured writing to the masses.

It’s effectively two apps in one. Essentials is about quickly getting down and organizing ideas hierarchically. It’s quick and easy to add, promote and demote items (including with a physical keyboard, so you don’t have to keep reaching for the screen), and to shift rows around with drag and drop. The built-in search further elevates the app from more basic tools, filtering out non-matching rows so you only see only what’s relevant.

If your needs are greater, you can opt for Pro (US$39.99/£38.99/AU$62.99). This pushes the app towards word processing and spreadsheet territory, adding automation, styling options for document types (lists, book drafts, mathematical and so on) and section navigation from a sidebar. In either incarnation, the app is excellent, and a free two-week trial lets you switch between both versions to see which best suits.

Things 3 ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Things 3 is a powerful task manager based around to-dos. Its ultimate aim is to ensure you get more done, and this is achieved by a smart and sleek workflow model that makes it simple to collect your thoughts, figure out your day, and plan far into the future.

The app can be as expansive or as simple as you need it to be. You can live in the Today and Upcoming views, working from basic to-dos, or add extra context and nested lists for more complex tasks. As of iOS 11, Things 3 added support for Split View and drag-and-drop, so you can drag links or emails right to a to-do.

This is the kind of app where you quickly wonder how you lived without it. And although it’s pricey when you buy it across iPad, iPhone and Mac, the time you’ll gain ensures it’s good value for money.

MindNode 5 (free + $14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99 IAP)

MindNode 5 is a mind-mapping app. That might sound dull, given that such tools are associated with boring business meetings that involve massive whiteboards... and the hope the ground will swallow you up.

But MindNode 5 is different. It’s sleek and fun to use as you smash out ideas. You can start with a Quick Entry list, which the app then turns into a mind map; or you can manually create and position nodes. For more context, it’s possible to add photos, stickers, and notes to your maps. And for when you do have to get properly businesslike, there’s a vertical layout for organizational charts.

Whatever you’re working on, MindNode 5 is far better than paper equivalents – it’s flexible, sharable, and always comprehensible.

Prompts ($3.99/£3.99/AU$6.99)

Prompts is a writing tool designed for anyone having a hard time getting started. Create a new document and the app draws from over 300,000 unique starting lines and prompts. If you’re not keen on what it provides, tap refresh until you get something suitably inspirational.

As you’re typing away, the app then leaves you alone, but you can at any point tap the prompts icon to get a further helping hand. Often, the suggestions are rather obvious, but that doesn’t mean they’re not helpful.

The app also includes a tracking and statistics system, to try and get you writing regularly. On that basis, it’s a useful training aid to keep your writing ‘muscles’ fit and healthy, even if you naturally gravitate towards Scrivener and iA Writer when it’s time to get down to serious writing.

Fantastical 2 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Apple's own Calendar app is fiddly and irritating, and so the existence of Fantastical is very welcome. In a single screen, you get a week view, a month calendar and a scrolling list of events. There's also support for reminders, and all data syncs with iCloud, making Fantastical compatible with Calendar (formerly iCal) for macOS.

The best bit, though, is Fantastical's natural-language input, where you can type an event and watch it build as you add details, such as times and locations. On iPad, we do question the layout a little - a large amount of space is given over to a month calendar view. Still, in portrait or, better, Split View, Fantastical 2 is transformative.

Notability ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

There are loads of note-taking apps for the iPad, but Notability hits that sweet spot of being usable and feature-rich. Using the app's various tools, you can scribble on a virtual canvas, using your finger or a stylus. Should you want precision copy, you can drag out text boxes to type into. It's also possible to import documents.

One of the smartest features, though, is audio recording. This enables you to record a lecture or meeting, and the app will later play back your notes live alongside the audio, helping you see everything in context. Naturally, the app has plenty of back-up and export options, too, so you can send whatever you create to other apps and devices.

Soulver ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Soulver is more or less the love child of a spreadsheet and the kind of calculations you do on the back of an envelope. You write figures in context, and Souvler extracts the maths bits and tots up totals; each line's results can be used as a token in subsequent lines, enabling live updating of complex calculations. Drafts can be saved, exported to HTML, and also synced via Dropbox or iCloud.

Initially, the app feels a bit alien, given that people have been used to digital versions of desktop calculators since the dawn of home computing. But scribbling down sums in Soulver soon becomes second nature.

The best iPad weather and travel apps

Our favorite iPad apps for weather forecasts and planning a journey.

WeatherPro for iPad (US$0.99/79p/AU$0.99)

WeatherPro for iPad is a weather app for people at the geekier end of the spectrum when it comes to meteorology and forecasts. It’s far from the prettiest app in the world, but it does pack a ton of information into your iPad’s display.

Set up several locations and their current conditions sit in a scrolling pane at the side of the screen. For the current selection, you can in the main pane check out a rainfall radar, along with the outlook for the coming week. And that’s way beyond a few symbols and temperature predictions – graphs and wiggly lines outline sun hours, precipitation, wind, and more.

For at-a-glance forecasting, you’re probably better off with Dark Sky. But for digging into the details, Weather Pro’s a good bet, especially considering the small outlay. 

Dark Sky Weather provides weather forecasts with an emphasis on hyperlocal rainfall. The Forecast tab displays current conditions, with a handy map indicating the movements of nearby storms. If rain’s imminent, its severity is shown in graph form.

Below that are outlooks for the next 24 hours and upcoming week. The app also includes notifications, including the means to make custom ones triggered by changes in temperature, rain/snowfall, wind, UV, and humidity.

In the past, Dark Sky never felt optimized for iPad. It’s still a bit wasteful of space (notably in the tricky-to-parse Next 24 Hours view), but the latest redesign feels more considered and less like a blown-up iPhone app.

Also, the Map view is best experienced on a tablet, where you can watch the ebb and flow of temperatures and rainfall across a virtual Earth you spin with a finger.

Dark Sky Weather (US$3.99/£3.99)

Poison Maps ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Poison Maps is an app for finding points of interest – POIs – on maps. Hence: Poison Maps. If you were hoping it’d provide insight into finding toxins, you’re out of luck, but for restaurants, hotels, banks, tourist attractions, parking, shops, hospitals and so on, it does the job – millions of such POIs can be found by way of the efficient search function.

This might strike you as unnecessary, given the existence of the entirely free Google Maps, but Poison Maps has some trump cards. First, it has interesting and useful interface components, such as signs that clearly denote the distance to and direction of off-screen POIs.

Beyond static POIs, cycling and transport routes are built-in. Poison Maps also works offline, so should you find yourself in a new town and without a data connection, you’ll still have a fighting chance of finding the things you need.

Tinyclouds (US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Tinyclouds is an adorable weather app. That’s perhaps a slightly odd description to use for something that’s usually utilitarian, but then Carrot Weather (elsewhere in this list) showcases how weather apps can have a character of their own, and Tinyclouds is certainly unique.

Select a location (you can store several within the app) and it provides a big temperature reading at the top of the sidebar, along with a forecast for the rest of the day and an outlook for the coming week. The rest of the screen is an ever-changing isometric city, with cars zipping about, its weather mirroring that of your chosen location.

The app does, admittedly, feel like a sketch – it could do with more detail, and at least a wider range of views. Still, as a simple, great-looking weather app for a docked and charging iPad, it’s well worth a couple of bucks.

Ventusky (US$2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Ventusky is a weather service that started out online, but feels like it was always destined for iPad.

Select a location and the main view enables you to switch the large map between various weather layers, including temperature, precipitation, snow cover, and air pressure. If you’re a weather nerd (and/or British), drag upward and you get an extended forecast to scroll through, along with a ton of graphs and data to bury yourself in.

The one snag is Ventusky lacks Dark Sky’s animated radar, and so you don’t see storms rolling in – just where they will be during a three-hour window. Even so, the wind streaking across your display as tiny white lines helps you understand why conditions are the way they are.

In short, then, this app looks great, is wonderfully tactile, and is pleasingly different from its contemporaries.

CARROT Weather ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

CARROT Weather is a weather app helmed by a HAL-like artificial intelligence that hates humans. As you check whether it’ll be sunny at the weekend, or if you’ll be caught in a deluge should you venture outside, CARROT will helpfully call you a ‘meatbag’ and pepper its forecasts with snark.

That probably sounds like a throwaway gimmick, but it’s actually a lot of fun – adding color and personality to a kind of app usually devoid of both. Most importantly, though, CARROT Weather is a really good weather app.

The forecasts are clearly displayed, the interface is superb, and the Today view widget is one of the best around. There’s even an amusing mini-game for finding ‘collectable’ hidden locations.

There are some downsides: the rainfall/cloud maps are weak; notifications aren’t globally supported and require premium IAP. But if you’re bored of the straight-laced, dull competition, and fancy a weather app that’s informative and entertaining, CARROT Weather’s well worth the outlay.

Living Earth ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

As a combination clock and weather app, Living Earth works well across all iOS devices, but use it with an iPad in a stand and you've got something that'll make other clocks in the immediate vicinity green with envy.

As you might expect, your first job with the app is to define the cities you'd like to keep track of. At any point, you can then switch between them, updating the main clock and weather forecasts accordingly. Tap the weather and you can access an extended forecast for the week; tap the location and you get the current times and weather for your defined locations.

But it's the Earth that gets pride of place, taking up the bulk of the screen. It shows clouds by default, although weather geeks can instead choose colors denoting temperature, wind speed or humidity values. Then with a little swipe the globe rotates, neatly showing heavily populated locations during night time as lattices of artificial man-made light.

Google Maps (free)

You might argue that Google Maps is far better suited to a smartphone, but we reckon the king of mapping apps deserves a place on your iPad, too. Apple's own Maps app has improved, but Google still outsmarts its rival when it comes to public transport, finding local businesses, saving chunks of maps offline, and virtual tourism by way of Street View.

Google's 'OS within an OS' also affords a certain amount of cross-device sync when it comes to searches. We don't, however, recommend you strap your cellular iPad to your steering wheel and use Google Maps as a sat-nav replacement, unless you want to come across as some kind of nutcase.

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The future of workplace collaboration

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 07:00 AM PST

As new technologies change the way we work, businesses have begun to forego the traditional office in favor of multi-purpose co-working spaces designed to help foster productivity, creativity and collaboration. Rows of desks just won’t cut it anymore as employees have become accustomed to using their own devices, as seen with the BYOD movement, and being able to work from anywhere as a result of faster networks.

TechRadar Pro spoke with Logitech’s Head of Video Collaboration EMEA Anne Marie Ginn to learn more about how organizations are changing their office spaces and what the future holds for workplace collaboration.

Image Credit: Pexels

Image Credit: Pexels

Skype on a laptop

Image Credit: Pexels

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Self-driving tanks, drones and throwable micro-robots: the future of warfare

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 07:00 AM PST

Normally, supplying tech to the military is a lengthy business, with a lot of hoops to jump through. It's understandable – kit needs to be safe, reliable and well developed before it can be taken into the battlefield – but it means technology tends to move quite slowly.

To speed up the development of new tech, the British Army is holding an annual competition in the style of Dragons' Den or Shark Tank, inviting companies to pitch their most innovative ideas and putting them through rigorous examination and testing to find the ones that will be tough and useful enough to invest in.

Exercise Autonomous Warrior

Each year, the Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE) invites companies of all sizes to throw their ideas into the ring, AWE makes the process much more straightforward, and is open to companies of all sizes, with special funding available for the smallest.

Companies of all sizes are invited to pitch ideas, which are sifted through to sort out the suggestions with the most potential. The chosen companies then pitch their products in person to experts from the British Army, who picked the strongest projects based on their usefulness, level of development and safety.

In the third phase, the army’s trials and development units (TDUs) to verify and validate the equipment, making sure it works as expected and would be suitable for use in battle.

The companies behind the successful projects are invited to join army personnel putting them to the test in realistic situations, and finding out how well they’ll work in the hands of real soldiers.

Exercise Autonomous Warrior invited businesses to submit aerial and land-based vehicles. Image credit: Ministry of Defence © UK Crown copyright 2019

The 2018 AWE competition, Exercise Autonomous Warrior, focused on unmanned aerial and ground vehicles, plus supporting software. 

For Autonomous Warrior, the British Army received 121 applications, which a team of experts whittled down to 104. These businesses were invited to a ‘show and tell’, where 79 products from 49 businesses were chosen for the next stage.

For the final tests, 31 products from 21 companies were tested in the wind, rain and mud of Salisbury Plain in southwest England. The successful products included micro-drones, an augmented reality display, drone-disrupting ‘guns’, and throwable robots for reconnaissance.

Manned-unmanned teaming

This year's competition, Army Warfighting Experiment 19, will focus on manned-unmanned teaming. Companies are invited to submit idea for a remote operated or autonomous wingman for a manned air or land vehicle (such as an Apache helicopter or AJAX light armored vehicle).

“Innovation will count for nothing unless we get great ideas off the drawing board, into production and onto the front line,” said Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson in an event at the Science Museum on March 5.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced £66 million new funding for the military's robotics projects. Image credit: Ministry of Defence © UK Crown copyright 2019

Williamson announced that the Army would be investing £66 million (about $86 million, AU$123 million) in new projects: £31 million in unmanned air surveillance systems, £32 million in the new Theseus system, and £12 million on robotic combat vehicles.

"We're not sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike," he added. "We're seizing opportunities. We're stepping up to the challenge."

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Apple AR glasses tipped to launch in 2020 as an iPhone accessory

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 06:25 AM PST

Apple's long-rumored augmented reality glasses could be with us as early as next year, according to reputable industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Kuo says manufacturing on the AR specs will get underway at the end of this year or the start of the next one, according to money.udn.com. He also says that they will be reliant on a connected iPhone to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of processing and connectivity.

That should ensure the glasses themselves stay relatively lightweight and comfortable to wear – more Google Glass than Microsoft HoloLens.

While this isn't official confirmation that the Apple AR glasses are real, Kuo does have one of the best records in the business when it comes to predicting Apple's future moves – and this move is one that's now widely expected.

Apple's next big thing?

We know that Apple boss Tim Cook is a big fan of augmented reality, and it is of course one of the features you can play around with on recent versions of iOS.

Apple has been busy picking up companies with an interest in AR, which suggests it's prepping a product of its own – and recently Cook said that Apple had several new products in the pipeline that could "blow you away".

We've also seen a bunch of Apple patents appear recently, explaining how specially-designed lenses could be used to cast images on a user's eye, and how a touchscreen surface (like an iPhone or an iPad) could be used as a controller.

Add all those clues up and it's a fairly convincing case. If Kuo is right, we'll see the fruits of Apple's labor at some point in 2020.

Via 9to5Mac

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Best Samsung phones 2019: finding the right Galaxy for you

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 05:56 AM PST

There are a lot of good Samsung phones out there from today and yesteryear, but how do they rank against each other? We're here to help you find out.

Samsung is the biggest name in Android phones, and for good reason: the company's flagship Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 9 are among the best handsets you can buy.

But Samsung doesn’t only make headline-grabbing flagships – it has a wide range of smartphones which may be the perfect fit depending on your needs and budget.

With that in mind, here’s our guide to the best Samsung phones available right now. It covers new and old(er) at a range of price points, along with different screen sizes, specs and features.

Image credit: TechRadar

As Samsung’s latest and greatest mainstream flagship, is it any wonder that the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus tops this list?

It’s a big upgrade over the previous year’s model, with a new all-screen design, enabled by Samsung ditching bezels in favor of a punch-hole camera. Speaking of the camera, you get three on the back and two on the front, making this a very versatile camera phone.

The fingerprint scanner is in the screen now, which is far more ideal than it being on the back, and there’s a big 4,100mAh battery, which gives the Galaxy S10 Plus a lot of life. So much so you might even consider using the new Wireless PowerShare feature to juice up other devices with it.

The Galaxy S10 Plus also has a massive 6.4-inch screen and all the power you’d expect from a flagship in 2019. It’s Samsung’s best and at the time of writing also tops our list of the best smartphones from any manufacturer.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus review

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 isn’t just one of the best Samsung phones you can buy today, it’s one of the best phones, period. It’s an expensive device, sure, but with more than double the starting storage of the iPhone X at around the same starting price. It actually comes out to be a better deal over Apple’s comparable offering.

Its key selling point this time around is the unique S-Pen, which no longer requires a charge. Not only will you be able to do normal stylus-like things with the new S-Pen, you’ll also be able to use it to take selfies remotely, giving you shots you otherwise would be incapable of getting. 

The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is also one of the best camera phones in Samsung’s lineup, with a camera that easily outshines most of the competition. 

That’s on top of the improved cooling and battery life, which will see this jumbo device last you through most of the day without burning a hole through your pocket – even if the price does.

Read the full review: Samsung Galaxy Note 9  

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus is big, in fact its 6.2-inch screen would make it very big, were it not for the almost complete absence of bezel and the curved edges, which ensure it’s actually quite manageable in the hand. The screen is one of the best around too – it’s sharp and sports great colors.

The Galaxy S9 Plus also stands out through its dual 12MP cameras, one of which is a dual-aperture one, meaning it can switch between f/1.5 for dark scenes and f/2.4 for everything else.

Other highlights include impressive stereo speakers and a big 3,500mAh battery. There’s flagship power too of course, and all the bells and whistles that tend to go with that, like a stylish metal and glass build, water resistance, wireless charging and various biometric security options, including a fingerprint scanner, an iris scanner and a face scanner.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus review

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy S9 is a smaller, cheaper (but still expensive) alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus. 

The 5.8-inch screen makes it potentially preferable if you have smaller hands or pockets, and as with the S9 Plus it’s more compact than you might expect, thanks to its slim bezels and curvy screen.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 has many of the same high points as the S9 Plus, including a sharp, vibrant display, a high-end build, plenty of power and various biometric security options.

It’s only got a single-lens camera, but it’s still a very good one, and the battery is smaller, so this is definitely the weaker phone overall, but it’s still one of the more impressive handsets you can buy in 2018.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S9 review

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is an older model of Samsung’s other flagship, designed for those who want a truly massive 6.3-inch screen and a stylus (known as the S-Pen) to help make the most of it.

Other than that, it has much in common with the Galaxy S range, with a similar (and similarly stylish) glass back and metal frame, a QHD curved screen and a dual-lens rear camera.

There’s lots of power too, though it’s using a 2017 chipset rather than a 2019 one, so it’s not quite a match for the S9 or S10 range. But then it’s also now a little cheaper than the S10 Plus and still has water resistance, wireless charging and loads of storage.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is a big-screen alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S8, but it’s not just the 6.2-inch display that’s bigger, the 3,500mAh battery is too.

Otherwise this is a very similar phone, with many of the same pros and cons. You get a sharp display with great contrast and colors, a powerful – if now slightly dated – chipset, a 12MP single lens camera that excels in most lighting, and more biometric options than you’ll know what to do with.

It’s also cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus or Galaxy Note 8, making the Galaxy S8 Plus a slightly more affordable big-screen option – though it lacks the dual-lens cameras of those phones.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus review

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy S8 was one of the best phones of 2017 and it still ranks high now. In fact, the Samsung Galaxy S9 is only a fairly minor upgrade - though the S10 range has it well and truly beat.

The S8 has a sharp 1440 x 2960 5.8-inch OLED screen, which of course, is curved. It’s got a great design, with a metal frame, a glass back and minimal bezel, it’s got a 12MP camera that outperforms most phones and even now it’s still very powerful.

It’s also water-resistant, supports wireless charging and has a fingerprint scanner, a face scanner and an iris scanner – though the latter two don’t work as well as on the Galaxy S9 and the former is in a more annoying position. Still, they’re small complaints about what’s otherwise a minor classic in the smartphone world.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S8 review

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy A9's big draw is its four rear cameras: a 24MP main shooter, an 8MP 120-degree wide-angle lens, a 5MP depth-sensing camera and a 10MP telephoto lens supposedly capable of 2x optical magnification. (There's also a 24MP front-facing camera, too.) Not bad for a midrange phone!

Of course, the A9 is perched at the top of the company's midrange offerings and just below its flagship S line, so it's pushing the label "midrange." Its specs, however, aren't entirely cutting edge with its Exynos 7885 chip, though its 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and 3,800mAh battery are respectable.

Whether the rest of the phone lives up to its camera cluster will be a far more serious question to answer when more phones replicate its four-lens trick, but for now, the A9 hold bragging rights – and serious photo clout at the midrange level.

Read our hands-on: Samsung Galaxy A9 review

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy A8 finds the sweet spot between Samsung's flagship S range, and the slightly more basic J and lower-numbered A devices with a mix of high-end features and more affordable compromises.

One feature that is unique to the Galaxy A8 compared to most other Samsung phones in this list is its dual front-facing selfie cameras. 

There's a 16MP primary sensor, which sits alongside an 8MP snapper and allows you to access the Live Focus feature, which blurs the background of portrait shots to create a bokeh effect.

The Galaxy A8 delivers many of the core features offered by the flagships. You can get more for your money elsewhere, but if you're set on Samsung there's little to complain about here.

Read our full review: Samsung Galaxy A8

Best Samsung phones

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy S7 was one of the best phones of 2016, which means it’s still very decent now, especially given that the price has dropped a lot since launch.

But it could appeal not just to those on a budget, but also those who want a fairly compact phone, as its 5.1-inch screen is small by modern standards. It’s as good as you’d expect from Samsung though, thanks to its use of Super AMOLED and its QHD resolution, though unlike most Galaxy S handsets from the last couple of years this one’s screen is flat.

The Galaxy S7 also has a water-resistant build and a highly capable 12MP camera, plus specs that were once top-end and still hold their own in the mid-range.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S7 review

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is a bigger, curvier alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S7. The larger 5.5-inch screen is the same resolution (and therefore slightly less sharp) but still super crisp and vibrant, while the curves ensure the design is more modern.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge also has a big 3,600mAh battery, making it one of the longer lasting Samsung phones you’ll find, and it has the same great camera as the standard Galaxy S7.

Its chipset is getting on a bit, but still stands up to similarly priced phones, and there’s only 32GB of built-in storage, but you do also get a microSD card slot, so even the bad that points aren’t that bad.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review

Image credit: TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) was launched as a mid-range alternative to the Galaxy S range, and it holds up well, thanks largely to its 1080p AMOLED screen capable of punchy colors.

The Galaxy A5 is also packing mid-range power and a quality metal and glass build that’s quite similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Battery life is far better than you might expect too, with the phone comfortably lasting well over a day, but the 16MP camera is a bit of a step down in quality from the S7 range.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) review

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5G and a better-connected world

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 05:00 AM PST

Building out the next generation of wireless networks is no small task and companies such as ARCC Communications help with installing the necessary equipment. The company is a regular contractor for both telecoms such as EE, Vodafone and Telefonica as well as network equipment makers such as Huawei.

TechRadar Pro spoke with ARCC Communications’ Managing Director Robin Conway to learn more about its partnership with Huawei and the upcoming rollout of 5G.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Leaked icon points to a bezel-free 7th-gen iPod Touch

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 04:51 AM PST

Updated: looks like the icon we're seeing here might be fake, according to other trusted iOS developers. That's not to say a full-screen iPod Touch isn't on the way... but this doesn't appear to be evidence of it.

Our original story appears below...

Rumors that Apple could bring out a new iPod Touch for the first time since 2015 have been swirling on and off for a few years now, but in recent months we've seen some serious hints that there is indeed a 7th-generation model on the way.

Now some more digging into the latest iOS code from developer Johnathan Mitchell has added more fuel to the iPod rumor fire: hidden in the code is an icon for an as-yet-unidentified Apple product which might well be the new iPod Touch.

iPod Touch leak

iPod Touch leak (credit: Johnathan Mitchell/@jaymit2090tx13)

Based on the icon, the 7th-gen iPod Touch would ditch the bezels and the Home button for an all-screen design reminiscent of the latest iPad Pros, with Face ID presumably used to unlock the device.

It's not much on its own, but add it to the other bits of code referencing upcoming Apple devices and it seems the iPod Touch could be about to make a comeback.

The when and the where

We may even see the audio player appear at an event later this month: Apple is being tipped to launch the AirPods 2 on March 25, so what better time to also unveil a new model for one of Apple's most iconic product lines?

The original 2001 iPod was Apple's first smash-hit pocket electronic device, years before the iPhone came along. Down the years though, iPod sales have suffered as we've all turned to our smartphones for our portable music jukeboxes.

One reason Apple could be refreshing the iPod Touch line is slowing iPhone sales – a cheaper audio player might appeal to those who can't afford the full iPhone experience. Both the iPhone and the iPod Touch run the same iOS software, after all.

If Apple is indeed planning an event at the end of this month we should hear about it soon – and as always, we'll keep you posted.

Via MacRumors

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Gujarat government bans PUBG Mobile in Rajkot and Surat until April 30

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 04:46 AM PST

PUBG Mobile has been banned in the Indian cities of Rajkot and Surat and any person found playing the game in public places is bound to be penalized. According to a notification released by Rajkot City Police, people are now forbidden to play the popular battle royale title until April 30.

Interestingly though, the circular also states that individuals found playing PUBG Mobile or taking part in the Momo Challenge will be prosecuted under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1973 and Section 37 (3) of the Gujarat Police Act. Both of these acts allow the administration to prevent a public gathering of more than four people in the area it’s imposed.

The Gujarat administration has imposed the ban on PUBG Mobile stating the increasing violent instability in children and youth. Furthermore, there have been cases where kids have been hooked on to the game which has impacted their grades in school. Considering most of the school-going kids have their annual examinations in progress, the administration sees this as the perfect duration to put a ban on the game.

PUBG Mobile is the most popular game in India at the moment and this is the first time that such an action has been taken against a game. The game has been going through this ordeal since quite some time now and now with the actual ban in place, it will be viewed in a bad light altogether.

Earlier, Tencent Games had released a statement saying that they are going to work with parents, educators and the government to increase the experience of playing PUBG Mobile and to provide it responsibly. The company had also revealed that they were working on certain new features that will enable a better environment for players.

PUBG Mobile boasts of over 30 million daily active users and has a 16+ age rating on Google Play Store.

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In the Valley of Gods release date, news, rumors, story

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 04:30 AM PST

What if the best Indiana Jones game ever made turned out not to be an actual Indiana Jones game? Cast Uncharted aside – that’s what we’re hoping to get from In the Valley of Gods, the new game from Campo Santo (now part of the Valve development group), the team behind 2016’s breakthrough indie hit Firewatch.

Set in 1920s Egypt and focussing on the travels of archaeological filmmakers Rashida and Zora, it’s a story-driven adventure that’s already evoking memories of Indy’s best escapades, along with the remote beauty of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia.

So, what’s In the Valley of Gods about? How does it play? And when is it coming out? Read on for everything we know so far about the highly-anticipated game.

Image Credit: Campo Santo

Cut to the chase

  • What is it? A first-person narrative-led adventure set amidst the sandy dunes and dusty tombs of 1920s Egypt.
  • When can I play it? Developer Campo Santo has yet to reveal a solid release date for In the Valley of Gods, but has pencilled in a 2019 launch for the game.
  • What can I play it on? So far only Windows and Linux releases have been confirmed, but Campo Santo’s previous game, Firewatch, eventually made it to consoles too, so here’s hoping.

In the Valley of Gods trailers

In the Valley of Gods was first revealed back at The Game Awards show in 2017. It was shared with a trailer – the only one we’ve had to glimpse at so far – a beautiful and evocative clip that showcases the game’s exaggerated, caricature-like art style:

In the Valley of Gods story

Being a narrative-driven game, there’s likely many secrets, plot twists and character beats that Camp Santo doesn’t want to reveal yet about In the Valley of Gods. That’d defeat basically the whole point of the game. But it has been generous so far in discussing the main beats of the game.

From the game’s Steam store listing:

“In the Valley of Gods is a sprawling narrative experience in remote, 1920s Egypt. You are Rashida, a disgraced former explorer and filmmaker given one last shot at the adventurous life you desperately miss. Somewhere, beyond the endless miles of dunes, ruins, and tombs lies an incredible archaeological discovery—but it can't be found without the help of Zora, the former partner you vowed never to work with again.”

Image Credit: Campo Santo

Duncan Fyfe, one of the game’s writers, succinctly described it as a melting pot of the following components:

“The creators of Firewatch. Adventure stories featuring adult problems. The art of ancient Egypt. The art of modern Egypt. First-person movement and a family curse. The golden age of Egyptology. The birth of documentary film. An old, analog film camera. Two women. A mystery.”

There’s already a sense of the vision for the game coming into focus then. It’s a time of great discovery, one that’s lucrative for the adventurous, with the likes of Rashida and Zora living in the shadow of Howard Carter’s Tutankhamen discovery.

But what’s pulled the pair’s relationship apart? And what’s now drawing them back together? That may well be the game’s “mystery” that we’ll have to play through to find out.

Image Credit: Campo Santo

In the Valley of Gods gameplay

While we may know a fair bit about In the Valley of Gods storyline, we know considerably less about how it will actually play. 

Seeing as the genre is Campo Santo’s strength, and going by what we’ve seen of the game from its trailer, it appears that In the Valley of Gods will be broadly what’s known as a “walking simulator”, a game genre where the narrative is more important than quick reflexes or action-packed gameplay. 

It’s not so much about beating baddies or jumping chasms Lara Croft style, but instead about being engrossed in a story in which you have a degree of agency.

That’s not to say you won’t have things to do in In the Valley of Gods though. There seems to be some light platforming elements, with Rashida and Zora pulling each other up ledges and wading through watery cave tunnels.

Image Credit: Campo Santo

As two filmmakers, light and darkness will play an important role in the game too. While we’re not yet sure how any filming or photography mechanics play out (they’ll certainly be present, with an “authentic” 35mm camera system with which to “document the world and story around you” listed as a gameplay feature) , you’ll be carrying torches and lighters as you wander the halls of ancient tombs. 

Campo Santo have promised a tale that doesn’t rely on the violent gameplay tropes that dominate so many of the titles we play – but that doesn’t mean they can’t creep you out in the dark…

In the Valley of Gods development updates

Campo Santo is one of the more transparent developers when it comes to how its games are made, and offers an extensive developers blog at blog.camposanto.com, covering everything from how it is making realistic hair for the game’s characters to the way it puts together trailers.

As a result we’ve been given great insight into how the company does everything from creating believable water physics: 

To an intricate look at the challenges of making tight Type 4 coily hair move and be lit in a naturalistic way:

It’s definitely worth following if, like us, you’re sat on tenterhooks for the release of In the Valley of Gods.

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Update your Chrome browser right now – or run the risk of malware infection

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 04:04 AM PST

If you’re using Google’s Chrome browser – and the vast majority of folks are – then you need to make sure it’s on the latest version, otherwise you may be vulnerable to an exploit which is out there in the wild, and can be used to deliver all sorts of nastiness.

This hole in the browser’s security – given one of the usual catchy codenames: CVE-2019-5786 – is a zero-day vulnerability which could be leveraged by a malicious web page and used to install malware directly onto your PC. It affects the browser across all desktop operating systems – Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS – as well as Android.

Justin Schuh, who heads up the Chrome team, tweeted that in no uncertain terms, you should make sure your browser is updated right now.

To clarify, you need to ensure that your Chrome browser is updated to version 72.0.3626.121, which has the relevant security fix.

The Chrome team noted a week ago that the stable channel had been updated to this latest version, on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and that it would be rolling out “over the coming days/weeks”. The team further observed that the fix was important because: “Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2019-5786 exists in the wild.”

In other words, this is being actively exploited, so it’s a definite danger which you could potentially run into now in your daily web browsing activities, or via a malicious link sent to you in an email, for example.

Don’t hang about

Chrome should update itself to the latest version automatically – or you may see a prompt top-right telling you that the browser is ready to be updated, in which case, close down Chrome, and reopen the browser to apply the patch.

You can find out which version of Chrome you’re running by clicking on the three vertical dots icon top-right, selecting Help, and then clicking on About Google Chrome from the resulting fly-out menu. That will also check for updates, and let you know that your browser is officially up-to-date (assuming it is).

As to the nature of the bug, it is apparently a memory management flaw in the FileReader API portion of Chrome. However, no harder details have been released regarding the vulnerability, because at this point, a number of web browsing folks may still be at risk from the security hole.

The other issue is how this problem affects other Chromium-based browsers. It seems that Opera was hit by this bugbear, too, so you need to make sure you’re running the latest version 58.0.3135.90 of that browser. And another Chromium-powered browser, Vivaldi, issued an updated version on March 4 to squash the bug, so evidently was affected as well.

And you can bet Microsoft is watching this with some interest as well, given that Edge is shifting to be based on Chromium (we got a good look at some leaked screenshots of the new version of Microsoft’s browser earlier this week, incidentally).

Via The Register

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The best free Android games 2019

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 03:56 AM PST

What’s better than a free game? Pretty much nothing. Except when it’s terrible and you’ve wasted time on downloading and playing it. Fortunately, there are loads of fantastic free games for Android – and we list the very best here.

Whether you’re into word games, endless runners, platformers or puzzles, there’s something here for you. 

Click through to the next pages to see each category or read on below for our pick of the week. And check back weekly for our latest pick.

Free Android game of the week: Snow Kids

Snow Kids finds a chunky cartoon penguin on a mission to, apparently, immerse himself in an epic snowball fight. Not everyone else shares this dream, mind, and so his path is blocked by angry sheep, and other hazards. Fortunately, when they’re hit by a snowball, they freeze; said chilled critters can then be booted across the screen, potentially taking out their cohorts.

With retro-style pixel art, chiptune music, and some entertaining boss fights, Snow Kids is a love letter to classic scrolling platforming action. It’s certainly not the most innovative game on Android (nor even from its creator, also responsible for Super Cat Tales 2 and Drop Wizard Tower); but if you’re in the market for some cartoonish leapy gem-collecting larks, with a snowball-flinging twist, you’ll have a ball. 

The best free racing games for Android

Our favorite free Android 3D, retro, 2D and on-rails racers.

Disc Drivin’ 2

Disc Drivin’ 2 is the turn-based driving game which was presumably created when someone reimagined shuffleboard as Mario Kart and shoved that strange concoction online for web-based multiplayer contests.

The concept of a turn-based racer is bonkers and it shouldn’t work, but it really does. As you flick your little disc about tracks suspended in space, the tension ramps up as you home in on your opponent. You will learn to master shortcuts, zip past hazards, and also how to make best use of bonus powers afforded to your little disc.

It’s absurd to think that one of the best mobile racers on Android is about flicking a coin around a race track, but there we have it. Miss this one at your peril.

Asphalt 9: Legends

Asphalt 9: Legends, like its predecessors, is a decidedly nitro-happy, larger-than-life take on arcade racing. It has you belt along at insane speeds, regularly soaring into the air, your car spinning and pinwheeling in a manner that’d have your car insurance company angrily tear up your policy documents.

This racer also differentiates itself by streamlining controls to the point you needn’t steer. The car moves on rails, with you swiping between lanes, and timing actions like boosts and drifts. That might sound reductive, but this doesn’t detract from the racing feel, it gives you a keen sense of focus on timing, and there’s a manual option if you really want that.

Being an Asphalt game, there’s some grind, but this is offset by you being immersed in the most outlandish and eye-dazzling arcade racing on Android.

Asphalt Xtreme: Rally Racing

Asphalt Xtreme: Rally Racing takes Asphalt off-road. It ditches its collection of sports cars and larger-than-life city circuits for jeeps and trucks – and an awful lot of mud, dirt, rocks, and grime.

Another thing there’s an awful lot of is freemium mechanics. As is seemingly law for an Asphalt game, exciting racing is sadly gunked up by all manner of timers and IAP gates. But put that aside and you’ll find Xtreme an entertainingly daft addition to the series.

Blasting through deserts, canyons and jungles, with your off-roader soaring into the air in a manner that’s almost certainly not covered by insurance, never really gets old. And although the basics – loads of nitro; floaty physics; crazy tracks – might be familiar, the new environments alone make this one worth a download.

Carmageddon

Carmageddon is a blast from the past of PC gaming. It masquerades as a racer, but often feels like you’re hunting prey – albeit while encased in a suit of speeding metal.

The game’s freeform ‘arenas’ are networks of roads in a dystopian future. People and cows blithely amble about while deranged drivers smash each other to pieces. Victories come by way of completing laps, wrecking all your opponents, or mowing down every living thing in the vicinity.

In the 1990s, this was shocking to the point of Carmageddon being banned in some countries. Today, the lo-fi violence seems quaint. But the game’s tongue-in-cheek humor survives, sitting nicely alongside bouncy physics, madcap sort-of-racing, and deranged cops attempting to crush you into oblivion should you cross their path.

Asphalt 8: Airborne

Asphalt 8: Airborne is a high-octane racer that gave a cursory glance towards realism. It then decided against bothering with such a trifling issue, and decided it’d much prefer you to pelt along at insane speeds under the power of glorious nitro, which frequently sends your car soaring into the air.

Not one for the simulation crowd, then, but this racer is perfect for everyone else. The larger-than-life branched courses – hyper-real takes on real-world locations – are madcap and exciting. Rather than doing laps around a boring circuit surrounded by gravel traps, you blast through rocket launch sites, and blaze through volcanos.

There are downsides – cynical IAPs and timers abound, welding a massive comedy tailfin to this otherwise sleek racer’s stylings. But for dizzying speed, mid-air barrel rolls, and loads of laughs, this racer is tough to beat.

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle reimagines Sonic The Hedgehog as an into-the-screen lane-based auto-runner. Which probably sounds a lot like Sonic Dash – but here, you battle it out against online opposition.

With trap-laden courses and pick-ups you can regularly grab as you belt along, Speed Battle has hints of Mario Kart about it. Races are packed with tense moments as you unleash a fireball, in the hope of taking out a distant leader, or have the checkered flag in sight, but know your opponents are only fractions of a second behind.

There is some grind – chests with timers; multiple currencies; glacially slow leveling up. But Speed Battle puts a colorful, entertaining spin on auto-runners that’s fun even if you keep your wallet firmly closed.

Data Wing

Data Wing has the appearance of a minimal top-down racer, but it’s far, far more than that. That’s not to say the racing bit isn’t great - because it is. You guide your little triangular ship around neon courses, scooting across boost pads, and scraping track edges for a bit of extra speed.

But there’s something else going on here – an underlying narrative where you discover you’re, in fact, ferrying bits of data about, all under the eye of an artificially intelligent Mother. Initially, all seems well, but it soon becomes clear Mother has some electrons loose, not least when you start getting glimpses of a world beyond the silicon.

With perfect touch controls, varied racing levels, a few hours of story, and plenty of replay value, Data Wing would be a bargain for a few dollarpounds. For free, it’s absurdly generous.

One Tap Rally

This game does for racing what auto-runners do for platform games. One Tap Rally is controlled with a single finger, pressing on the screen to accelerate and releasing to brake, while your car steers automatically. The aim is to not hit the sides of the track, because that slows you down.

Win and you move up the rankings, then playing a tougher, faster opponent. In a neat touch, said opponents are recordings of real-world attempts by other players, ranked by time.

In essence, this is a digital take on slot-racing, then, without the slots. But the mix of speed and strategy, along with a decent range of tracks, makes you forget about the simplistic controls. If anything, they become a boon, shifting the focus to learning track layouts and razor-sharp timing. Top stuff.

Splash Cars

In the world of Splash Cars, it appears everyone's a miserable grump apart from you. Their world is dull and grey, but your magical vehicle brings colour to anything it goes near. The police aren't happy about this and aim to bring your hue-based shenanigans to a close, by ramming your car into oblivion. There's also the tiny snag of a petrol tank that runs dry alarmingly quickly.

Splash Cars therefore becomes a fun game of fleeing from the fuzz, zooming past buildings by a hair's breadth, grabbing petrol and coins carelessly left lying about, and trying to hit an amount-painted target before the timer runs out. Succeed and you go on to bigger and better locations, with increasingly powerful cars.

The best free strategy games for Android

Our favorite free Android RTS and turn-based games, board games and card games.

Hearthstone

Hearthstone is a head-to-head card game that immerses you in a world populated by hunters, mages, warriors, and other fantasy types. Players take it in turns to try and batter their opponent’s health down to zero, playing cards that represent minions, spells and other skills.

This genre is often baffling to the newcomer, but Hearthstone is an accessible and balanced game. Although IAPs lurk – cards can be bought with bling won in-game, but also by using actual cash – veterans have proved that you can blaze through the leaderboards without spending a penny.

However you choose to play, this is a game that rewards those in it for the long haul. Have patience and learn its mechanics, and you may eventually become a master of this fantastical world of character and chance.

The Battle of Polytopia

The Battle of Polytopia is a turn-based game akin to a stripped-back Civilization designed specifically for one-thumb mobile play. Each game has you start with a single city, the aim being to dominate a little isometric world. You either race to be the best within 30 turns, or emerge victorious when you’re the only tribe still standing.

Wisely, Polytopia focuses more on approachability than depth. The tech tree is abbreviated, stopping short of guns. The maps are small. Cities can be conquered, but you can’t found new ones with settlers.

Each of these decisions helps the game flow, but despite its compact nature, Polytopia affords plenty of opportunities to strategize. That’s especially true when venturing into online multiplayer with other people – a mode open to anyone who buys one or more extra tribes.

First Strike

First Strike is Risk with nuclear weapons. You command a nuclear power, and set about taking over the world. Mostly, this involves lobbing missiles at neighbors before invading, and researching the technology to stop your enemies turning your country into radioactive rubble.

This is a sobering game. Futuristic graphics are joined by a sombre soundtrack, and clinical casualty readouts appear when a major population center is destroyed. Fittingly, victory doesn’t come with a fanfare, but the game asking: “You win?”

The free version contains ads that somewhat disrupt the experience, but this is an otherwise, thoughtful take on land-grab strategy, with a message that we really don’t want to see a devastating first strike – or even a single nuclear missile launched in anger – in the real world.

South Park: Phone Destroyer

South Park: Phone Destroyer marries real-time strategy with the cartoon mayhem found in the popular TV show. If you’ve played Clash Royale, it’s a bit like that, only with swearing, juvenile jokes, and lots of cartoon cowboys and Native Americans stomping about shooting at each other.

If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll appreciate the entertaining single-player story with the show’s famous faces sending each other messages, and occasionally phoning you. The battles are enjoyable, too – the basics are accessible, but there’s plenty of depth for the long-term.

The usual freemium monetization mars things a touch, as does enforcing online player-versus-player match wins for progression. But for the most part, you’ll be yelling RESPECT MA AUTHORITAH! until everyone in the vicinity demands you stop.

Brave Hand

Brave Hand is a card game that starts off with a basic solitaire at its foundation, welds that to a game of ‘higher or lower’, and dispenses with the ‘lower’ bit.

Your aim is to clear the table of cards, by beating the top card in any given pile. The snag is most cards start off face down. You can use a low card as a ‘scout’ that forces two cards to flip. But beyond that, it’s chance that dictates your fortunes as you dig into successive cards in a pile, hoping one won’t beat you.

Despite being very reliant on luck, Brave Hand is compelling. It perhaps won’t dislodge the likes of Sage Solitaire from your home screen, but it should appeal to card game fiends who fancy something fresh.

Really Bad Chess

This game flips chess on its head in brilliant fashion, by messing around with the pieces rather than the board.

During your first go at Really Bad Chess, you might examine what’s in front of you and quickly come to the conclusion you have a few too many queens. Your opponent, by contrast, will have a suspicious lack of decent pieces.

This is intentional. In Really Bad Chess, the AI’s capabilities never change, but the pieces do. As you improve, the setup shifts.

Get really good and you’ll have to take on the computer with a pile of pawns while it attacks you with as many queens as it can feasibly get away with.

For free, you also get a daily puzzle and two attempts to beat it. A $2.99/£2.89 IAP unlocks local multiplayer and removes the ads.

Train Conductor World

You might moan about trains when you're - again - waiting for a late arrival during your daily commute, but play this game and you'll thank your lucky stars that you're not in Train Conductor World. Here, trains rocket along, and mostly towards head-on collisions.

It's your job to drag out temporary bridges to avoid calamity while simultaneously sending each train to its proper destination - it's exhausting.

From the off, Train Conductor World is demanding, and before long a kind of 'blink and everything will be smashed to bits' mentality pervades. For a path-finding action-puzzler - Flight Control on tracks, if you will - it's an engaging and exciting experience.

Sage Solitaire

Having been mercilessly ripped off by a pretender (who cynically thanked the original's developer for "inspiration"), Sage Solitaire finally made it to Android. It rethinks solitaire for mobile, mostly by smashing it into poker. Cards are removed using poker hands, with the added complication each hand must use cards from at least two different rows.

Clearing the deck and amassing points requires careful strategy and a little luck, not least given how rapidly the lower stacks empty. Win three times and you unlock Vegas mode, where you can try your luck making bets on your skills (and, in all likelihood, lose a boatload of virtual money). Regardless of the mode you favour, Sage Solitaire's one of those seemingly throwaway casual games that manages to take hold to the point of obsession.

Clash Royale

There's always a whiff of unease on recommending a game from a developer nestled deep in the bosom of freemium gaming, but Clash Royale largely manages to be a lot of fun however much money you lob at it. The game is more or less a mash-up of card collecting and real-time strategy. Cards are used to drop units on to a single-screen playfield, and they march about and duff up enemy units, before taking on your opponent's towers.

The battles are short and suited to quick on-the-go play, and although Clash Royale is designed for online scraps, you can also hone your strategies against training units if you're regularly getting pulverised. There are the usual timers and gates for upgrades, but the game largely does a good job of matching you against players of fairly similar skill levels, meaning it's usually a blast and only rarely a drag.

Radiant Defense

Radiant Defense is a fantastic tower defence game, given a dazzling modern look. You do all the usual tower defence stuff like building up your weapon strengths and deciding how best to stop the endless marching enemy, with some "super weapons" to unlock and hundreds upon hundreds of waves to beat. And it all looks astonishingly pretty on a big screened device.

In this age of austerity and scrimping, we've all long since sold our last set of dominoes and melted down our Monopoly counters for scrap.

The best free shooting games for Android

Our favorite free Android FPS titles, twin-stick blasters and vertically-scrolling retro shoot ’em ups.

Piffle

Piffle is a shooting game where you fling strings of balls at blocks, depleting their face numbers until they explode. The backstory is that the nefarious Doc Block is doing something suitably evil with the blocks, hence why you’re trying to eradicate them.

Okay, that’s not the deepest of stories, but it doesn’t matter when the cartoonish action is so inviting and immediate. Flinging balls around the colorful levels is lots of fun, not least because they resemble tiny meowing cats.

There’s some grind here, and you’re going to hit levels that urge you to open your wallet. In the main, though, this is a bright and breezy arcade treat, with nice surprises as you work your way to the ultimate goal of stopping the blocks – and Doc Block – for good.

PewPew

PewPew is a twin-stick blaster in the classic mold. It has no time for storylines. Instead, it dumps you in a ship, hurls countless enemies your way, tasks you with blowing them to pieces, and dresses the entire thing in gorgeous old-school neon vectors.

From the off, this is a tense, exciting game. The arena you’re within is claustrophobic and frequently packed with ships and projectiles. Surviving for any length of time requires mastery of the controls, and learning how different enemies behave.

But there’s depth here, too. Once you’ve suitably honed your shooty skills, you can take on a mode with giant space rocks, and a version of PewPew that removes your weapons entirely, presumably making the ships pilot really wish they’d added ‘bring a really big gun’ to their to-do list.

AZ Rockets

AZ Rockets is the follow-up to 99 Rockets, an insanely hard precision shooter featuring little triangular ships on rails. The aim was to blast objects as the ships moved along a pre-defined path. One miss and your game instantly ended.

AZ Rockets initially seems very similar, but this time the game’s ‘merely’ hard – a timer has replaced ‘one error means game over’. Also, your targets are now letters, which when all shot often spell out a message of encouragement.

You’ll probably need it, but this combination of the whimsical and tough-but-fair gameplay makes for a compelling concoction. And given the clockwork nature of the levels, this is a game you can potentially master – without being the kind of one-thumb gaming genius necessary for success in 99 Rockets.

Shadowgun Legends

Shadowgun Legends is a first-person shooter with tongue firmly in cheek. Set in a world where mercenaries are rock stars, and aliens are so much cannon fodder, this is a bold, brash, noisy slice of wanton arcade violence.

If you’re looking for nuance, head elsewhere. The story and characters here are wafer thin. But if you’re after action, Shadowgun Legends does the business. Missions are linear in nature, challenging you to be fast and accurate. Combat is responsive and fluid, and you soon find yourself amassing a pile of cash, upgrading kit, and adding to your fame.

Get good enough and your adoring fans will build a statue in your honor. It still won’t be enough to convince you this is a console-quality shooter, but this game feels perfect for mobile: streamlined, bite-sized, free-flowing, and fun.

Tower Fortress

Tower Fortress is a semi-randomized, hard-as-nails shoot ’em up. It takes place in a mysterious tower infested with strange creatures. And if you don’t ascend to the top, everyone is doomed, for some reason.

Getting to the top isn’t easy. Your hero dodders about, shoots his gun, and can double-jump in a Sonic-style spin attack. Which sounds fine until you realize even the most innocuous foe can trip you up, such as seemingly-benign frogs.

But then you reach the end of a section, nip into a secret area with a key, grab a power-up, and feel like a boss. Until you meet an actual boss, who’ll kick your face off. One to persevere with, then – and once your arcade thumbs are in tip-top condition, give each of the four zones a thorough blasting.

Drag'n'Boom

Drag'n'Boom shows that you should never encourage a teenage dragon. Here, the rebellious fire-breather zooms about minimal landscapes, belly-sliding down hills, soaring into the air, barbecuing soldiers, and generally being a menace.

Fortunately, you get to be the dragon, rather than the put-upon army rather wishing it had better weapons. The game recalls Angry Birds in how you ping your dragon along, but also borrows from twin-stick shooters, Sonic the Hedgehog (super-fast tunnel bits), and even The Matrix (slo-mo as you aim).

Although there’s admittedly not masses of variation across the game’s 50 levels and endless mode, it’s hard to be too critical. Drag'n'Boom looks great, and has the kind of grin-inducing breezy gameplay that’s perfect for slotting into the odd moment when you feel the need to unleash your inner dragon.

Time Locker

This vertically scrolling shooter plays with convention in a manner that messes with your head. The basics are familiar – you’re dumped within a vertically scrolling environment and must shoot ALL OF THE THINGS.

Occasionally, obliterated foes drop bonus items that boost your weaponry, providing the means to unleash major destruction while yelling YEEE-HAA – if that’s your sort of thing.

However – and this is a big ‘however’ – everything in Time Locker only moves when you do. The temptation is to blaze ahead, due to bonus points being won for covering greater distances, and because you’re being pursued by the sole thing that doesn’t freeze when you do – an all-devouring nothingness.

But careening on isn’t always a good strategy, because blundering into a single foe or projectile ends your game. Risk versus reward, then, in this fresh and great-looking blaster that dares to try something different.

AirAttack 2

Bad news! It turns out the Axis of Evil needs overthrowing immediately, on account of having access to a ridiculous number of planes and tanks, some of which are the size of small villages. Sadly, we've had some cutbacks, which means our air force is now, er, you.

Still, we're sure you're going to love your time in AirAttack 2, cooing at gorgeous scenery shortly before bombing it, surviving bullet-hell, and puffing your chest to a thumping orchestral soundtrack.

Sure, you might have to turn down the graphic effects a bit on older hardware, and it's a bit of a grind to reach later levels, but you're not going to get better freebie shooting action this side of World War III.

The best free puzzle games for Android

Our favorite free Android brain-smashers, logic tests and path-finding games.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle bucks the trend in Android horror games. Instead of traipsing about a rickety building that may as well hang ‘Enter to be horribly murdered!’ above the door and getting the odd jump scare, you instead face a sliding puzzler. Think Sokoban – but with buckets of cartoon gore.

The aim in each level is to slide horror icon Jason Voorhees into unsuspecting campers, who are then summarily dispatched. The required pathways become increasingly convoluted; hazards and move limits also act as barriers to your desire to get all stabby. 

The puzzles are well designed, and the horror neatly straddles the line between icky and ridiculous. After all, it’s hard to take things seriously when your mother’s decapitated head, levitating in the corner, is offering sagely wisdom.

Tiny Bubbles

Tiny Bubbles is a mostly meditative match game set in a world of gloopy bubbles. A premium app in its previous life on iOS, it comes across intact to Android in free form, merely dropping in the odd ‘commercial break’ if you don’t fancy splashing out on IAP.

The game itself is delightful, having you figure out how to match four bubbles of the same color, which then pop, ideally in an explosive chain reaction. Complications come by way of color mixing demands, troublesome bubbles to remove, and the machinations of a bubble-blowing fish.

If that all sounds a bit too sedate, the game ramps things up some in the arcade mode. But however you take on this puzzler, it’s bursting with fun!

Flipflop Solitaire

Flipflop Solitaire is at its core spider solitaire. The aim is to remove every card from the table. Cards can be built on the tableau in rank, and in-suit sequences can be moved between columns – but Flipflop shakes things up by messing with the rules.

First, it’s primarily designed for smartphones, and you get just five columns of cards. This is trickier than the standard spider layout, and so the game allows you to stack cards in both directions – enabling dizzying sequences like 9876787654543. You only have to stop stacking when you run out of space.

These changes might seem paltry, but they have the effect of making almost every hand technically possible to win. Throw in endless undos and this transforms Flipflop from yet another throwaway card game into a deviously clever mobile puzzler. 

A Way to Slay

A Way to Slay turns epic and extremely bloody sword fights into a kind of turn-based puzzle. You start each bout surrounded by angry foes with a penchant for getting all stabby and head-choppy. Double-tap on any enemy and your hero zips his way over, before painting the screen red with their insides.

On making a move, your opponents also get a chance to adjust their positions – and they are vital to keep track of. For if you venture too near to anyone, it’s your innards that end up decorating the sparse landscape.

The key to victory, then, rests in figuring out the combination of moves that will see you tap your way to victory, a lone survivor surrounded by a sea of corpses. Top stuff, assuming you’ve the stomach – and brains – for it.

red

red is a puzzle game that challenges you to make the screen go red– though given the intentionally obtuse nature of many of the 50 challenges, you might be the one turning crimson after a few hours pitting your wits against some of the more devious puzzles.

It starts simply. A big red button sits in the center of the screen, inviting you to press it. Do so and a chunky red line fills part of the background. Keep pressing and soon enough the entire screen is filled. Job done. Next!

Explaining any more of the game would spoil things, so you’ll just have to take our word for it that red is relentlessly inventive, frequently vexing, and something of a minimal masterpiece.

Aquavias

Aquavias is a sedate path-finding puzzle game. The aim is to deliver water to cities, which will otherwise suffer from drought. Unfortunately, a buffoon has decided the means of moving said water is by way of elevated and fragmented aqueducts.

Each section – most being a single line or quarter circle – can be individually rotated, the idea being to gradually fashion a solid path for the water to follow.

Naturally, this is where you come in. Each tap rotates a piece 90 degrees clockwise. Depending on the level, you’ll either have a limited number of moves, or a rapidly draining reservoir.

Over time, the complexity of the required pathways increases – notably when T-junctions enter the fray; but the game never becomes overbearing, and its pleasing visuals and soundtrack further add to the charm.

Calculator: The Game

Calculator: The Game is a puzzler geared towards sums, featuring a sentient, snarky calculator who’s relentlessly eager to show you its buttons.

The aim in each level is simple: use whatever buttons are provided to reach a goal number, within a limited number of steps. So if you need to get to 9 and see +3 and x3 keys, that’s pretty simple.

The thing is, this calculator likes playing you as much as you’re playing it. Before long, it’s gleefully adding buttons that enable you to knock digits off of your total, reverse them, or hurl numbers through portals.

This one’s not your standard desktop calculator, then, but all the better for it. And it’s a surprisingly entertaining game, given that you’re ultimately doing math.

Cubway

One of the more abstract games you’re likely to install on your Android device, Cubway comprises over 50 minimal scenes you traverse as a tiny red square.

The aim is simply to reach a goal, but all kinds of objects block your path and respond to your presence in varying ways. You must figure out how to get past them all, despite being restricted in terms of movement – forward or backward are your only options, although you can (and will often have to) stop, move slowly, or backtrack, depending on the hazard before you.

As you travel, a story of sorts is revealed, although the text reads like a strange self-help guide. Otherwise, Cubway is a success – it’s intuitive, the mechanics are fresh and clever, and the aesthetics are unfalteringly atmospheric.

Outfolded

One of the most sedate, forgiving puzzle games you’ll ever play, Outfolded also manages to do something interesting with minimal blocky environments and trundling shapes.

For each of the game’s scenes, the aim is to reach a goal by ‘unfolding’ one or more shapes. Each move you make, one of the shape’s faces disappears, leaving you with whatever’s left for further turns, and you can only move in a direction if you have an intact face pointing that way.

Early on, you can make all kinds of blunders and still reach the goal. But before long, the shapes become complex many-sided things reminiscent of Tetris blocks, requiring you to think carefully about the order in which their sides are unfolded and the routes you take.

Mess up and you can undo as many moves as you like. Even this isn’t galling, the rewind animation being pleasing even when you’ve already watched it several times on a particularly tough level. 

Does Not Commute

This superb arcade puzzler finds you directing traffic about a small town. A vehicle enters the screen, and you’re told where it needs to leave, steering it by way of directional arrows. Easy.

Only, this town is afflicted with strange temporal oddness that means subsequent journeys overlap previous ones. Before long, you’re making all kinds of detours to avoid collisions with cars you’d a minute ago driven to safety, which would otherwise wipe seconds off the timer as you wait for damaged vehicles to limp towards their exit.

Adding to its smarts, Does Not Commute includes a storyline with multiple characters, playing out across its varied environments. The only snag on mobile: you must complete the entire game in a single sitting. If that sounds like too much, a one-off IAP unlocks checkpoints.

Kerflux

It's rare even in mobile gaming – frequently full of innovation – to find a fresh take on puzzling, but Kerflux surprises with a simple, original concept that's perfectly executed.

A crunchy chip-tune plays and you're presented with three waveforms. The music dulls, as if you're underwater, and that's your signal to start manipulating two of the waveforms so they combine to form the third.

Achieving this goal is straightforward, and you can initially blaze through the game's levels – even if a more leisurely pace is perhaps more rewarding. Before long, though, any complacency about Kerflux's apparent ease evaporates when additional waves appear and you're juggling four of them, trying to find the perfect combination that unlocks the next challenge.

Orbit

Although you play games, few of them are about play itself, in the sense of experimenting with a set-up or situation and seeing what happens. Orbit, though, while presenting itself as a puzzle game, is more a minimalist sandbox where you immerse yourself in the delights of creating tiny solar systems.

The game is played by slingshotting celestial bodies around black holes. They then proceed to leave colored trails in their wake, while gravity does its thing. Soon, you have planets clustering together, wheeling around one or more black holes, creating minimalist modern art while they do so.

It's all rather gorgeous and mesmerizing. The only snag is ads periodically wrecking the mood, although they can be eradicated with a single IAP.

RGB Express

In RGB Express, your aim is to build up a delivery company from scratch, all by dropping off little coloured boxes at buildings of the same colour. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Only this is a puzzler that takes place on tiny islands with streets laid out in a strict grid pattern, and decidedly oddball rules regarding road use.

Presumably to keep down on tarmac wear, roads are blocked the second a vehicle drives over them. Once you're past the early levels, making all your deliveries often requires fashioning convoluted snake-like paths across the entire map, not least when bridge switches come into play. Despite its cute graphics, then, RGB Express is in reality a devious and tricky puzzle game, which will have you swearing later levels simply aren't possible, before cracking one, feeling chuffed and then staring in disbelief at what follows.

The best free arcade games for Android

Our favorite free Android arcade titles, fighting games and retro fare.

Fly THIS!

Fly THIS has hints of mobile classic Flight Control, which some time ago vanished from Google Play. Like the older title, Fly THIS has you draw paths for planes to follow, so they land at airports. But instead of following Flight Control’s endless stylings, ramping up the panic until an inevitable collision, Fly THIS feels more puzzle-oriented in its execution.

You deal with fewer planes, but the maps are smaller and peppered with hazards, such as weather and mountains you probably don’t want to steer your aircraft into. You’re also charged with getting passengers from A to B – and must do so within a strict time limit.

The entire thing becomes a grin-inducing – and sometimes challenging and frustrating – juggling act. It’s different from the game that inspired it, but no less appealing.

Don’t Trip!

Don’t Trip! is an endless runner with a unique vantage point, given that it’s played from above. You plant a massive foot on the ground, aiming to avoid stepping in anything gruesome or deadly, and then twist your phone around to find free space for your other foot.

There’s a great physicality about the game that comes from this oddball control method, which can only really work on a handheld touchscreen device. Also, the distinctly zoomed-in nature of the viewport quickly makes Don’t Trip! surprisingly challenging.

This is especially true when you suddenly find yourself facing rooms packed full of deranged automated vacuum cleaners armed with massive spikes, knives and swinging axes. So much for robots reducing the hassle of housework…

Super Fowlst

Super Fowlst is the follow-up to claustrophobic high-octane avoid ’em up Fowlst. In this sequel, demons from the first game have overrun the world, and they can only be stopped by a head-butting chicken.

So, yeah, this isn’t your typical arcade game. As you dart left and right, like a refugee from Flappy Bird, you must line up your arc-like paths with fire-spitting enemies, and make use of the local environment to, for example, unsportingly crush foes under massive boulders.

There’s a lot to like here, including the procedurally generated stages, plentiful secrets and unlockable characters. And although we’d say the boss battles are a bit too difficult, Super Fowlst is so good you’ll keep on clucking until those giant demons are toast.

Candies 'n Curses

Candies 'n Curses is a great warning that when all of your friends start properly freaking out about that haunted house down the road, perhaps you should listen. Molli Pop didn’t, and now she’s stuck in tiny rooms packed with spirits, ghosts, and all manner of spooky critters. Fortunately, she can zap them with her torch.

This is a speedy one-thumb affair, with you swiping to make Molli leap between platforms and change direction. Because of the claustrophobic nature of the game, you must constantly have your wits about you, to avoid life-force-depleting collisions – especially with tricky end-of-level bosses.

There are only six rooms to visit, but the game’s challenge is such that it’ll take a while before you see them all. In the meantime, you’ll get plenty of fast-paced ghostbusting fun for free.

Train Party

Train Party is a collaborative or competitive game for between two and 12 players. It features a little train happily chugging along, about to have a rather nasty surprise, given that no-one’s thought to lay some tracks.

You and your friends must therefore avert a derailing disaster, figuring out the best place to drop sections of track, dealing with stubborn local wildlife, and ensuring a rogue track bomber doesn’t scupper your plans with a bang.

When collaborating, the train automatically heads to whoever’s device has a completed section of track; but in competitive mode, it always goes around in order. The last player to not cause an accident wins, and – presumably – is then qualified for a combined job in rail transit, zookeeping, and counter-terrorism.

Bacon

Bacon is an entertaining and lightly satirical arcade game, poking fun at food hacks. They say bacon makes everything better, and so Bacon puts that to the test, by having you flick the tasty foodstuff on to nearby foods – at least at first.

You tap to drop your slice of meaty goodness into a sizzling pan. Another deft tap should be enough to flip it on to a nearby cheeseburger. Next up: pancakes. And then it all goes a bit weird.

The game will ask you to put bacon in a glass of red wine, atop the Chinese character for pleasure, and – brilliantly – on Francis Bacon. The physics and controls are pitch-perfect, and some levels are surprisingly tough – but almost always very silly indeed.

Sneak Ops

Sneak Ops is a retro-infused stealth game where every day brings a new mission. The goal is to get to the chopper by stealthily moving through an enemy compound without being spotted.

The game utilises intuitive top-down gameplay - initially, you can freely scamper about the tiles, but when deeper into your mission, it’s vital to carefully time runs past cameras – and regularly use your ability to smack guards over the head.

Getting to the chopper is tough, but if you don’t fancy starting from scratch on being captured, you can ‘buy’ restart points with floppy disks that litter the compounds – an odd quirk we suspect a real spy would give up their best attaché case for.

Fun gameplay and a fresh daily challenge keep Sneak Ops feeling fresh.

Spaceteam

Spaceteam is a superb multiplayer game that deftly showcases your ability (or lack thereof) to work as part of a (space)team. With between two and eight players connected in local multiplayer, you’re informed that your spaceship is fleeing an exploding star, and you must perform actions to stave off your transport being blown up in a manner that would be a major downer for everyone on board.

The snag is the controls were designed by a lunatic. They’re spread between everyone’s screens, and demands simply show up as text-based prompts, so you’ll be searching for the Dangling Shunter switch and Spectrobolt slider, while pleading with everyone to “please turn on the Eigenthrottle”. Captain Kirk never had it this tough.

HeliHopper

HeliHopper is a helicopter game that involves quite a lot of hopping and an awful lot of crashing. In part, this is probably because helicopters are primarily designed for zooming through the air rather than jumping around like frogs, but there you go.

The aim of HeliHopper is simple: using a basic slingshot mechanism (think Angry Birds), you must direct your helicopter to another landing pad. Depending on the particular level you’re tackling, you might be able to nudge the helicopter mid-flight, collect bling, or complete several painstakingly precise ‘flights’ in a row.

An ideal arcade blast for quick sessions, HeliHopper provides a set of defined missions and nine endless modes. Although if you never want to set foot in a helicopter after smashing hundreds of the things here, don’t blame us.

Jodeo

Jodeo features a cycloptic blob being put through the grinder by a sadist. A claw-like contraption lifts the jelly-like critter above an ‘experiment’ and lets go. Your aim: to move it left and right, squelching over every edge of geometric shapes lazily rotating on the screen – without falling off.

With standard 2D forms, Jodeo might have been entertaining, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting. Here, you’re tackling 3D objects moving in and out of a 2D plane, along with other ‘scientific’ conditions, such as someone unhelpfully hurling meteors your way, or turning off a shape’s lines so you can’t see them.

The experience is short, but it’s hard to gripe about a freebie – not least given the protagonist’s seemingly permanent expression of sheer terror.

Beat Street

Beat Street is a love letter to retro brawlers, echoing the likes of classic arcade title Double Dragon. Yet here you duff up all manner of evil gang members by way of using only a single thumb.

This is quite the achievement. Old-style scrolling beat ’em ups might not have had a modern-day gamepad littered with buttons and triggers, but they still had a joystick and two action buttons. Here, though, you drag to move, tap to punch, and use gestures to fire off special moves.

It works wonderfully. Beat Street gradually reveals new abilities and features – not least weapon pick-ups, one of which rather unsportingly has you smack opponents over the head with what’s described as an ’80s brick.

Stranger Things: The Game

Stranger Things: The Game re-imagines the Netflix TV show, set in 1984, as a 1980s videogame. How meta, you might think… but it works.

You take on the role of gruff Officer Hopper, trying to uncover a mystery at the heart of Hawkins, Indiana. As you work your way deeper into the game, you gradually find new characters, each with individual powers that are vital for further progression.

This pixelated adventure game looks the part (despite not being quite as retro as games of the period), and offers an entertaining mix of straightforward puzzling (find an object; put it somewhere specific), and gleefully punching local security forces when they get in your way.

Well, it is set in the 1980s – you’re not supposed to solve mysteries with brainpower alone.

iHUGU

iHUGU is an arcade game that reckons everyone should get along and hug – just not too often. The bulk of the title is a quick-fire arcade memory test, where you hug each character you come across precisely once. If they’ve been hugged before, flick them by – or your game’s over.

Once you’ve powered up your hug bar, iHUGU provides a brief diversion in the form of a mini-game, which can be anything from darting about and grabbing leaves, to whatever the hug equivalent of a beat ’em up is (a ‘hug fight’, apparently). The entire thing’s endearingly daft.

With eight locations, 100 characters to unlock, and a character editor to create terrifyingly freaky monsters with which to hug, there’s longevity here, too. iHUGU also proves there are still new things to say in single-finger Android gaming. We hug it.

Up The Wall

Up The Wall is suitably named given that it probably will drive you mad. It’s an autorunner with a vicious streak, but also some serious design smarts.

You start out by selecting a character from the claw machine, and that determines which world you’re dropped in. You might be a rubber duck blazing along bathroom tiles, or a skull skidding through a fiery hell.

The aim: get to the end of a hand-crafted level to add the character to your collection.

Even the so-called ‘easy’ levels are tough, and the swipe controls are sometimes a bit iffy. But the trippy visuals, head-bobbing audio, and varied isometric worlds peppered with devious traps will keep drawing you back.

Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert

In Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert, the world’s stretchiest canine finds himself trying to worm his way through a land of cake, chocolate, ice cream, and a worrying number of spikes, saw-blades, and massive bombs.

Rather than walk like a normal pooch, the furry hero of this game stretches as you swipe, until his front paws can cling on to something. His bottom then snaps back into place. It’s quite the trick – but also a hazard if one end of his body ends up in danger when the other end is worryingly distant.

There are 50 scenes in all, along with tricky bonus rooms to try and beat. And although some of the later bits of the game are perhaps a bit too testing, this one as a whole is a very tasty, satisfying arcade treat.

Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever

This one’s far from the worst game ever, but it does feature an amusingly grumpy cat. It’s actually a set of simple mini-games, reminiscent of Nintendo’s WarioWare series, only here, they feature a miffed moggie that’d sooner be somewhere – anywhere – else.

Each miniature challenge in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever can be understood in an instant  – stamping a paw on a laser pointer by tapping the screen; firing the cat upward to secure a cardboard box of dreams; pressing shaped buttons to traverse a path and reach a fish.

The variety of mini-games keeps it fresh and interesting, and the game is often smile inducing thanks to its mix of colorful art, ludicrous concepts and eternally irritated feline.

The longer you survive, the faster and more demanding everything becomes. Fail and the grumpy cat scowls, but you’re also awarded coins to acquire new games by way of stickers won from a prize machine. Naturally, every one of them features the grumpy cat.

Hammer Bomb

Take an early 1990s FPS, smash it into an auto-runner, add a dash of Pac-Man, and you'd end up with Hammer Bomb. You're dumped in dank mazes and dungeons full of hideous beasts and must stomp along, finding keys, loot, weapons and the way out.

Levels are randomised, adding a Roguelike quality to proceedings, and the entire game's underpinned by a levelling up system. This means XP being awarded for killing loads of monsters, rapidly finding the exit, or performing other tasks, such as completing quests (which, in a nod to Ms. Pac-Man, involves hunting down roaming foodstuff).

Every few levels, you face off against a massive screen-high boss, darting towards it with whatever weapon you have to hand, before fleeing like a coward. Survive long enough and you can swap coins for upgrades.

Top tip: as soon as you've 150 coins and level 3 status, grab the radar, because Hammer Bomb is much friendlier when you can spot monsters on the top-down map.

The best free match games for Android

Our favorite free Android games where you swap gems and match tiles, aiming for a high score.

Six Match

Six Match is a new take on match games. Instead of swapping gems, you switch coins by having the suitably named Mr Swap-With-Coins barge past them. The twist: a number on the cuboid hero’s head denotes how many moves he has left before he freezes to the spot – six at most before he must make the next match.

This twist makes for a very different match experience – one that’s far more strategic than swiping at the screen like a maniac. You can’t afford to waste moves – particularly when Six Match introduces new concepts to help and hinder. These include bombs, coin-shifting cages that assist and frustrate in equal measure, deadly skulls, and poker-style card hands that boost your score.

The combination of factors proves clever and engaging, and offers scope for long-term play as you work out strategies to improve your score.

Push & Pop

Push & Pop is a sliding tiles puzzler, with mechanics not a million miles away from Threes! (or low-rent knock-off 2048), but this is no mere clone. Instead, it builds on the basics of shifting tiles or blocks around a limited space by also borrowing ideas from Sokoban and Pac-Man, before stripping everything right back again.

Play occurs on a five-by-five grid, around which you slide a cuboid. On every move, a new block appears somewhere on the grid. Arrange five into a solid line by pushing them and they disappear, freeing up space, and leaving behind gems the blocky hero can collect by eating or shoving blocks through them. Further complications are added when immovable blocks appear. Your game’s over when you become stuck.

With its neon visuals and ethereal soundtrack, Push & Pop takes simple foundations and runs with them, fashioning an intriguing, engaging, and surprisingly novel title.

Laps – Fuse

Laps – Fuse is a match-three game based around numbered discs. If three or more of the same meet, they fuse into a new disc with twice the face value. The tiny snag: you’ve limited slots to hurl discs into. The other tiny snag: the discs you hurl zoom about the edge of a circle. The other other tiny snag: you’ve only 20 laps to secure your high-score – and thereby Laps bragging rights.

This isn’t a thoughtful Threes-style outing, then – more an arcade puzzler on fast-forward. You at every moment you must plan ahead, trying to set up matches and chain reactions that fling your circling disc back a little way, buying you a few seconds of extra time.

It’s a tense, clever take on what’s become a tired genre. And should you master the main mode, you can unlock ‘endless’, ‘furious’ (faster), and ‘extreme’ (fewer slots – presumably for masochists).

Wilful Kitty

Wilful Kitty is a sliding tile puzzle game on a four-by-four grid. But before you yawn and assume it’s another 2048 knock-off (which itself was a Threes! knock-off), guess again. Because this game features cats. And all the things that cats really like.

The twist here is a little kitty moves about the grid as you swipe, and objects that enter the grid are combined into consumables and toys. For example, milk and a bowl becomes a kitty drink, and a plate and some fish makes a hearty lunch.

This shift in mechanics shakes up everything you knew about this kind of game – as does you being able to charge up a ‘satisfaction bar’ that when full unleashes a ‘Hyper Kitty Dash’, clearing a chunk of the playfield in double-quick time.

It’s entertaining serving the tiny cat’s every need – and surprisingly challenging, too. Because it turns out this Wilful Kitty has bite.

Age of 2048

Age of 2048 is effectively a reskin of popular swipe-based tile puzzler 2048. Now, 2048 was really a low-rent knock-off of the far superior Threes! (which has its own free version), but it had the advantage of being open source, therefore opening itself up to all kinds of variations on the basic theme.

In the original 2048, you swipe to slide numbered tiles about a four-by-four grid. Merged pairs then double their face value. But Age of 2048 is all about buildings.

Initially, you swipe bits of rock together, until you’re fashioning tents and stone monuments. Build a ‘wonder’ – the largest building type and the equivalent of the 2048 tile in the original – and you unlock the next stage.

Ultimately, Age of 2048 is still a slightly limited game, lacking the nuance and charm of Threes!. But its concept, design, and the addition of some useful power-ups, ensures it’s worth a download, and that it manages to stand out from the crowd.

Topsoil

With its four-by-four grid and penchant for rapidly restricting the playfield, Topsoil comes across a bit like a horticultural Threes! There’s no sliding cards about, though – instead, you’re presented with a string of things to plant, and prod open spaces to plonk them down.

After three, you get a chance to harvest – and this is where things become more complicated. You get more points for harvesting many plants at once, which requires them to be on adjacent squares. But on harvesting anything, the soil beneath is turned over. Soil cycles between blue, yellow, and green, and groups of plants cannot cross different soil colors.

The net result is a clever game where you must plan ahead, and where you keep digging for strategies to last longer and discover new plants to grow and harvest.

Imago

There are a lot of Android puzzle games that involve you sliding blocks about, but Imago is one of the best, even giving Threes! a run for its money.

You drag numbered tiles around a grid, merging those of the same colour and shape. On doing so, their numbers combine, but when merged groups reach a certain size, they split into smaller tiles, each retaining the score of the larger piece. Successful games require careful forward planning, with only a few moves it can be possible to ramp up scores dramatically, into the millions or even billions!

The game's relative complexity is countered by a smart modes system that gradually introduces you to Imago's intricacies. There's also a Daily Flight mode that provides a regular influx of new challenges, for when the standard modes begin to pall. On Android, we noticed a few minor visual glitches here and there, but otherwise this is a must-download puzzle game that's among the best on the platform.

Threes! Free

In Threes! Free, you slide numbered cards around a tiny grid, merging pairs to increase their values and make room for new cards. Strategy comes from the cards all moving simultaneously, along with you needing to keep space free to make subsequent merges, forcing you to think ahead.

On launch, it was a rare example of a new and furiously compulsive puzzle-game mechanic. Within days, it was mercilessly ripped off, free clones flooding Google Play.

Now, though, you can get authentic Threes! action entirely for free, and discover why it's 2048 times better than every freebie 2048 game (personality; attention to detail; music; small elements of game design that make a big difference).

You get 12 free games to start. Add groups of three more by watching a video ad. And you can always upgrade to the paid version if you get suitably hooked.

Bejeweled

There are loads of freebie Bejeweled knock-offs on Google Play, and so if you fancy a bit of gem-swapping, you may as well download the original. For reasons beyond us, Android owners don't get the multitude of modes available on some other platforms, but there's the original match-three 'classic', the can't-lose 'zen', and the superb 'diamond mine'.

In the last of those, matches smash a hole into the ground. You're playing against the clock, and over time uncover harder rock that needs special moves to obliterate. It's a frenetic, intense experience considering this is a match-three title, although high-score chasers might cast a suspicious eye over the offer to extend the time limit by watching an advert.

The best free platform games for Android

Our favorite free Android platformers, from classic retro 2D fare to full-on console-style adventures.

Turn Undead 2: Monster Hunter

In stills, Turn Undead 2: Monster Hunter looks like an action-packed platform game. Its heavily armed, cloaked hero can be seen performing all manner of monster-killing feats with two massive guns that fire stakes the size of a small tree. Only Turn Undead 2 – as the name hints at – is in fact turn-based.

This means you get all the trappings of a classic platform game, but within the framework of a clockwork turn-based puzzler. You get time to plan every move you make, but with the ongoing realization that you might not make it to the exit if you put a foot wrong.

Arguably, it’s a little too tough at times, which can frustrate. Even so, this game’s well worth hunting down, purely because of how well the mash-up of genres works. 

Super Cat Tales 2

Super Cat Tales 2 follows in the feline footsteps of its superb predecessor. All chunky retro-style visuals and leapy gameplay, this high-octane platformer finds a ragtag gang of moggies trying to save their world from an alien invasion.

Like the original, this sequel cleverly rethinks platform game controls for the touchscreen – tapping or holding the left or right of your device’s display is all that’s required for running, leaping, wall-jumping like a furry ninja, and obliterating robot foes when you chance upon a massive yellow tank.

Smartly, this time round you can switch cats on the fly, making use of each one’s special power to blaze through tricky sections, or unearth sneaky secrets. For a fiver, we’d recommend this one; for free, it’s a total no-brainer.

It’s Full of Sparks

It’s Full of Sparks is a speed-run platformer where sentient firecrackers must find a body of water to hurl themselves into before their fuses make them explode all over the shop. The first level is a sprint to the finish line, but the game immediately makes things more complicated.

You first don some red shades, which give you a button for turning on and off chunks of red landscape. Two more colors soon join the show. As the levels increase in size, you end up with a crazed, tense dash for survival, juggling bits of landscape via delicate finger choreography that’d impress even the finest flautist.

The game can be frustrating, and larger levels need quite a bit of trial and error, but this game’s charm and innovation ensures its spark won’t die for the duration.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Classic

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 arrived on consoles in 1992 and, like its predecessor, is a super-fast side-scrolling platform game. The aim is to zoom through levels, grab gold rings, and avoid the enemies and spikes liberally sprinkled about. This sequel also adds a Super Dash Attack to help Sonic obliterate foes, and 3D special stages, which recall newer Sonic fare on mobile.

The game is rightly regarded as a classic, and the mobile version is a rare example of retro done well. Rather than giving you a bog-standard emulator, Sega has fully ‘remastered’ the game in widescreen, added enhancements and secrets, and provided touchscreen controls that are actually pretty good.

There are obnoxious ads here and there, but they’re a small price to pay to get Sonic 2 on your Android for nothing; and if they bug you, a one-off IAP removes them forever.

Cat Bird

Cat Bird is another in a long line of platform games where a cute protagonist has somehow found themselves in a kind of videogame hell, surrounded by danger and death.

The hero is an oddball combination of cat and bird - although Cat Bird is a bit rubbish at the ‘bird’ bit, only being able to glide rather than fly. Level layouts are largely built around this ability, with the furry affront to evolution often gliding past saw blades by a hair’s breadth, before snagging keys and taunting doddering enemies.

Really, it’s all very familiar territory, but the delicate pixel art is lovely, with subtle animations like Cat Bird’s twitchy ears, and tiny hopping birds in the background. Also, the level design manages to smartly make use of the hero’s flappy nature, meaning success requires the use of your brain alongside twitchy thumbs. Download it meow. (Sorry.)

Flat Pack

Flat Pack rethinks platform games by wrapping levels around 3D shapes. The aim is to dodder or fly about, grab six sides of a golden cube, and make for the exit. But each level has its own twist, forcing you to think on your feet – or rotors if you’re careening through the air, heading for some spikes.

Early on, for example, you contend with ‘flipping gravity’. This requires moving around a cubic section of level in a specific way, so you can enter from another direction. One level is two huge blocks that smash together at regular intervals, squashing slowpoke adventurers who dawdle. And it only gets more disorienting from there.

This could so easily have been a gimmicky offering, but it’s the smart level design that transforms Flat Pack into a must-have freebie.

Hoggy 2

Hoggy 2 is a platform puzzler that feels like it’s escaped from a Nintendo console. The premise involves the evil Moon Men kidnapping the children of the blobby heroes. You must find where the kids have been hidden, somewhere inside a massive maze full of jars.

Each jar houses a bite-sized challenge packed full of platforms, enemies, traps, and fruit. Eat all the fruit and you’re awarded a key. Collect enough keys to unlock new areas of the maze.

The platforming bits are frequently deviously fiendish. Early levels ease you in, but you’re soon facing tests that seem impossible until you spot something crucial – a block you’d previously not noticed, or a different order in which to approach things – whereupon you feel like a genius.

Should you best all 200 hand-crafted levels, you can make your own in a level editor, or take on those the Hoggy community’s created. That this all comes for free is astonishing. Download it now.

Drop Wizard Tower

Drop Wizard Tower is a superbly crafted love letter to classic single-screen arcade platform games like Bubble Bobble. You dart about, knocking out enemies, grabbing gems and fruit, and duffing up bosses, working your way towards a final confrontation.

However, there’s a twist in that Drop Wizard Tower fuses old-school platforming with auto-running. Your little wizard never stops moving, and can only be directed left or right. And he only shoots the instant he lands on a platform.

You’ll likely fight against this at first, cursing Drop Wizard Tower for straying from traditional left/right/jump/fire controls. But the game really works on mobile, and when it clicks you’ll be zooming about, stunning foes with your magic wand, and booting them away to create tumbling ‘avalanches’ of enemies.

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic The Hedgehog hasn’t fared as well as one-time rival Mario. Whereas Nintendo’s mascot still features in first-rate platformers, Sega’s blue hedgehog is more often mired in freemium rubbish. With Sonic The Hedgehog, though, you’re getting the original Genesis/Mega Drive classic.

In fact, you’re getting more. This is no lazy emulator, but a fully remastered game, with improved performance and widescreen 60fps visuals. Although a touch fiddly at times, care’s been taken with customizable on-screen controls, and there’s gamepad controller support, too.

Most importantly, the game itself remains compelling, with Sonic zooming about colorful landscapes filled with platforms, traps, gold rings, patrolling enemies, dizzying loops and tunnels, and the occasional boss. Retro-gaming’s often a disappointment, but Sonic stands the test of time. If only all old games were reworked for mobile with such care.

Circle Affinity

A brutal, brilliant platform game, Circle Affinity finds its protagonist in a literal take on the circles of hell – only here there are considerably more than nine.

He scoots about the edge of each disc, leaps into it, and then must jump to the outer edge of the next circle, which bobs about in the air. All the while, massive teeth-like daggers close in, and demons march back and forth, waiting for you to blunder into them.

Games are initially short, and Circle Affinity almost taunts you on death, as you try to master the inherently-disorienting nature. Over time, you'll begin to survive a little longer, whereupon you'll be rewarded with new eye-searing color schemes and additional play modes.

Leap Day

Touchscreens should be a poor fit for platform games, which typically require the kind of precision that only comes from a physical controller. This is why so many mobile titles opt for auto-running, distilling platform gaming to its core essence of timing jumps.

In Leap Day, your little yellow character is tasked with getting to the top of a tall tower. You can jump, double jump and slide down walls, but that's it. You must therefore carefully leap past cartoon foes and gigantic spikes, grabbing fruit along the way.

At various points on your climb are checkpoints, which can be bought with 20 fruit or by watching an ad. This means you don't have to start from scratch on coming a cropper. And when you do reach the summit, you can come back the next day for an entirely new level to try.

Bean Dreams

Although there are exceptions, traditional platform games rarely work on touchscreens. Fortunately, canny developers have rethought the genre, stripping it back to its very essence. In Bean Dreams, you help a jumping bean traverse all kinds of hazards, by sending the bouncing hatted seed left or right.

Each level is cleverly designed to offer optimum paths, boosting your points tally when hitting the goal having made the fewest bounces. Timing is everything, then, but there are further challenges that reward exploration. To find the pet axolotls spread across the map, or collect all the fruit, you must use different approaches, which adds plenty of replay value.

Cally's Caves 3

Poor Cally. It's like she can't go for five minutes without her parents being kidnapped. It's third time unlucky for her in Cally's Caves 3, but lucky for you, because you get an excellent old-school platformer that costs nothing at all. Cally leaps about, shooting and stabbing enemies in a gleeful manner you might consider unusual for a young girl with pigtails.

The game's brutal, too, with a checkpoint system that will have you gnashing teeth when you die a few steps before a restart point. But the weapon upgrade system is clever (keep shooting things to power up guns!), there are loads of items to discover, and unlike on iOS, the free Android version has several extra unlocked modes.

The best free sports games for Android

Our favorite free Android golf, football, tennis and extreme sports games.

Touchgrind BMX 2

Touchgrind BMX 2 is a BMX trials sports game. In other words, it’s not enough to just be fast – you also have to be a massive show-off, catapulting your bike into the air, before performing all manner of stunts. However, unlike the majority of trials games on mobile, Touchgrind eschews a side-on view for something far more tactile and ambitious.

Your bike is seen from above and behind, and you’re invited to park two of your fingers on it – one on the handlebar and one on the seat. Subtle movement allows you to steer, while flicks let you perform the aforementioned stunts.

Success and high scores rely on mastery of stunt combos and committing courses to memory, and then stringing together bike-based choreography that’d make your hair curl if you were to try it in the real world. Great stuff.

Rowdy Wrestling

Rowdy Wrestling manages what some people might consider impossible: taking a sport that’s already full of spectacle and the ridiculous, and making it even more so in every conceivable way.

Bouts involve absurdly bouncy physics and fighters whose arms whirl about their person. Buttons enable you to move left and right, jump, and attack, but this isn’t a game about precision and nuance. Instead, it’s a madcap free-for-all, where you feel like you’re, in terms of control, clinging on by your fingertips.

Fortunately, it’s a blast. Although it can irk when you lose because your wrestler’s seemingly doing his own thing, it’s hard to stay mad at a fighting game that’s this stupid. And it moves beyond single-bout gimmickry, too, with tag-team and career modes.

Score! Match

Score! Match reimagines the beautiful game (as in, soccer – or football if you’re British and the S-word sends you into apoplectic fury) as a turn-based match of wits where you draw passes and attempts at goal with a finger.

The basic premise will be familiar to anyone who’s played other Score! games,, but in this one you’re not attempting to recreate history’s greatest goals. Instead, you go head-to-head against other players online, in two-minute first-to-two-goal bouts.

There’s a lot of freemium gunk lurking: currencies; timers; loot boxes. Also, the AI’s wonky, and the commentary is laughable. But the underlying mechanics are great to the point none of that really matters – not least when you’re one-nil down and have only seconds to get the equalizer that will secure a penalty shoot-out.

Virtua Tennis Challenge

Virtua Tennis Challenge is based on the classic tennis game that years ago once graced the Dreamcast. Although it politely doffed a sun visor in the direction of realism, the game was very much a frantic, exciting arcade outing – and that’s just as true on mobile, as you scoot about the court, trying to better your opponent with a dizzying array of well-placed lobs and electrifying super shots.

Given its console origins, the game controls as well as can be expected. And that means badly if you opt for the gestural controls, which make your tennis star look like they’ve had a few gins too many before appearing on the court. But go for the on-screen D-pad and buttons, and Sega’s tennis game is a fine example of having your own little Wimbledon nestled on your smartphone.

Mad Skills BMX 2

Mad Skills BMX 2 is a one-on-one racing game. You pit your skills against various opponents, racing them on tracks packed full of ramps and bumpy sections designed to make you giddy as you zoom along.

And this is very much a fast game. When deep into a race, the scenery blazes by in a blur as you battle to beat your opponent and take the checkered flag. It’s a true arcade experience, with two-button/one-thumb controls making racing all about track mastery and careful timing.

Somehow, it often feels like a breakneck upside down Tiny Wings. And although it does eventually spray pay-to-win freemium in your face, for a good few hours this one’s wheelie good.

Battle Golf Online

Battle Golf Online is a major revamp of the original – and hugely entertaining – Battle Golf. Once again, the golf bit is stripped right back to two players whacking balls toward holes that appear from a lake. Some of these are greens with slopes to aid the ball’s progress. Others are rather more esoteric – a lighthouse with smashed-out windows; a submarine; the Loch Ness Monster with a hat.

The controls are straightforward – a tap to stop an aiming arrow and another to choose your shot’s power. And that’s just as well, because this game’s more about speed than precision – and the first to five wins.

Against the computer AI, this results in frenetic, entertaining battles, but the hole-in-one comes from online multiplayer, where you battle it out against real humans. Just watch out for people performing the so-called ‘pro’ shot, hitting and hoping before holes surface from the water.

Touchdowners

Touchdowners is, it’s fair to say, not an entirely accurate recreation of American football. Here, two three-strong teams (usually human, but sometimes skeletons or chickens), face off, their arms spinning wildly as they move. Also, the pitch appears to be a massive trampoline.

If you can wrestle your bounding trio into submission, you might get a touchdown. If the other side gets one: game over. (Unless you’re in Career mode, whereupon it’s first to three – or first to five in the final.)

It’s all totally stupid, but – much like Wrassling and Dunkers, by the same team – loads of raucous, breezy fun. Just expect to be a touch disappointed next time you watch a real match, and the Miami Dolphins aren’t soaring through the air, desperately fending off an attack from a team of actual sharks.

Super Stickman Golf 3

This third entry in the Super Stickman Golf series is perhaps feeling a bit too familiar, but the game remains the best side-on golf to be found on Android.

As ever, your little stickman is charged with smacking balls about courses comprising floating islands, laser-infested bases, and space stations. You set your direction and strength, hit the ball, and hope for the best – although this time you can also add spin.

Power-ups eventually enter the mix, providing opportunities to discover new ways to lower your scores. There are also two multiplayer modes – a deranged real-time race and a more sedate turn-based affair.

The free version of Super Stickman Golf 3 is a little limited regarding simultaneous multiplayer games and access to new courses, but a single IAP unlocks the premium game.

Pokémon GO

Although a far cry from classic Pokémon titles, there's no getting away from the sheer impact of Pokémon GO. It's resulted in swarms of smartphone users roaming the streets and countryside, searching for tiny creatures they can only see through their screens.

In all honesty, the game is simplistic: find a Pokémon, lob balls at it, amble about for a while to hatch eggs, and use your collection of critters to take over and guard virtual gyms.

But despite basic combat and the game's tendency to clobber your Android's battery, it taps into the collector mentality; and it's a rare example of successfully integrating a game into the real world, getting people physically outside and - shock - interacting with each other.

The best free word games for Android

Our favorite free Android games that are all about letters, anagrams and crosswords.

Alphabear 2

Alphabear 2 is the sequel to TechRadar favorite Alphabear – a word game that mixes up anagrams and large furry critters.

Each game takes place on a grid, and you select letters to form words. Used letters vanish and bears then fill the gaps. But if turn-based countdowns on any letters reach zero, the tiles turn to stone, scuppering gigantobear schemes.

The game shakes things up a bit with timed levels, and a fairly baffling meta-game where you collect bears to unlock a bewildering array of bonuses. There’s also a smattering of educational content lurking within, giving you an excuse when someone asks if you’re wasting all your time playing games again. 

Well worth bear-ing in mind, then, if you’ve a hankering for a fab new set of word puzzles.

Bonza Word Puzzle

Bonza Word Puzzle deconstructs the classic crossword. Rather than a clue for each word, you get one for the entire puzzle. Said challenge is essentially a completed crossword that’s been hacked to bits and sprayed across your screen like a cross between a Scrabble set and tetrominoes.

Early levels lead you in gently. When there are only a few pieces to manipulate, it’s not much trouble to complete the puzzle before you. But when you’re staring at a dozen or more tiny clusters of letters, figuring out how they all join up is an invigorating test.

Bonza does have IAP for level packs, but you get a decent selection for free. Even better: every day, you receive a new puzzle, giving the game reason to stick around on your device for the long term.

Dropwords 2

Dropwords 2 brings together Boggle and Bejeweled. You sit before a five-by-five grid of letters while a timer ticks down. When you spot a word that snakes through the board, you tap it out from start to end. Submit your word and its letters vanish; gravity then has its brief moment of glory, bringing in new letters for you to use.

Like in timed Bejeweled modes, fast matches are the key to high scores. However, keeping your timer bar full doesn’t just require rapidly submitting words, but also finding longer ones that’ll give you an extra second or two.

If that all seems a bit stressful, there are more relaxing modes too. And the app rather neatly provides a slew of other customization options, from larger boards to alternate typefaces – just as well, given the default Chalkboard that whiffs of Comic Sans.

Jumbline 2

Jumbline 2 is one for anagram fiends. Its main mode starts life as a row of scrambled letters, and a bunch of empty slots awaiting any words you find. Against the clock (which is surprisingly tense and exciting), or in a more relaxed timer-free mode, you drag to rearrange letters, and then draw a line beneath relevant ones to send a word to its slot. Get them all to try the next level.

There are two additional modes as well. Cloud Pop has you fashion words from letters found within clouds, using them before they vanish from the screen, but Star Tower is better, having you create the floors of a tower as it gradually scrolls downwards. Longer words make for taller floors, gaining you precious extra seconds to get your brain in gear and think of something suitably amazing with your next set of letters.

Letterpress

Letterpress combines the anagrams of Boggle with the territory capturing of Risk. Two players take part in a turn-based battle on a five-by-five grid of letters. Any letters used in your word turn your color – but there’s a twist: those surrounded by your tiles cannot be captured by the other player during their turn.

Strategy within Letterpress is therefore not just about finding the biggest words – and certainly not if its tiles are spread about the board. You must instead cunningly eat into your opponent’s territory while safeguarding your own. Battles become like an intense tug of war, ramping up the excitement and providing the kind of edge not usually found in word games.

Spellspire

Spellspire finds you as a crotchety wizard, trying to climb a tower. The snag is that heavily armed monsters want to stop you. This might not sound like the premise for a typical word game, but Spellspire adds a bit of magic to the anagrams mix.

On each floor, you get 10 letters to juggle and form into words that become fuel for spells. Short words only unleash a smallish magical blast, but longer words give your foes a serious kicking. Perform well on your quests and you’ll over time acquire new bling, with which to take on tougher floors.

There’s a bit of grind – you’ll need to replay levels to get enough clout to duff up even the earliest boss – but Spellspire is always fun, and you’ll smile from ear to ear once you start walloping foes with seven-letter words.

Alphabear

Alphabear has you spell out words by selecting them on a grid, but there’s a twist: use letters that are adjacent to each other and bears fill the space. As you remove letters around them, the bears continue to expand. At the same time, you’ll notice countdowns on each of the letter tiles – when they reach zero, they turn to immovable stone, potentially scuppering any gigantobear schemes you had in mind.

When your game’s done, you’ll be given a score and probably also a bear, which can act as a power-up in subsequent games. Frankly, this bit doesn’t quite click, given the bewildering array of bonuses on offer, and the rather overt nudge towards IAP to wake up tired bears. Otherwise, this one’s a furry good word game that’s well worth bear-ing in mind.

Typeshift

Typeshift rethinks anagrams, word searches and crosswords. Each puzzle comprises columns of letters you can drag up and down, the aim being to make a complete word in the central row. When you do so, the word’s letters change color. To complete the puzzle, you must color all of the letters.

Although completing puzzles at speed rewards you with higher scores on the leaderboard, such aspects to Typeshift are largely hidden. This is mostly a lean-back game to relax with, but should you hanker for an additional layer of brain-smashing, you can try cracking crossword-style puzzles where you match words to set clues.

It’s worth noting that Typeshift’s puzzles are hand-crafted, not algorithmically generated, so they do run out - and only some of them are free. Still, there’s always a daily puzzle to try your hand (or your best swiping finger) at.

Scrabble

Yes, the proper Scrabble, not some copyright-infringing clone that'll be pulled by the time you read these words. EA bought the license, tidied it up and stuck it out on Android, where it's a remarkably advert and in-app purchase free experience.

It's been beefed up with a few new modes, but stuff like the ability to sync with Facebook and play multiple matches is actually exactly what you need. A classic that's not been ruined. Hooray.

The best free endless runners for Android

Our favorite free Android games where you run, hop, drive or pinball towards a high score – or an abrupt end.

Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive

Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive is a fast-paced one-thumb arcade game, which has you direct a lone heroic Autobot to blow up a seemingly endless number of evil Decepticon bases.

True to Transformers lore, your character gets to transform from vehicle to robot and back a fair bit. He starts off as a car, barreling along in gameplay that echoes arcade classic Spy Hunter. On reaching a Decepticon base, he transforms and starts blasting, dodging laser fire and explosions. With enough points, he can take on a big boss.

Given its freemium underpinnings, there’s grind lurking within, but Bumblebee Overdrive is fun from the off, has smart level design, and offers varied boss battles that force you to quickly spot attack patterns – or Bumblebee gets very rapidly transformed into a pile of scrap.

PAKO Forever

PAKO Forever is the third entry in a car chase series gradually leaving behind all semblance of reality. If its predecessors were a bit odd at times, Forever is decidedly nutty. It dumps you in the world’s largest car park, with a seemingly unlimited number of cop cars out for the kill.

If you’re rammed just once, your game is over. Initially, that will take mere seconds. But you soon figure out how to drift and snake around obstacles to eke out some extra seconds. At that point, you can start collecting temporary bonus weapons, or chancing upon bizarre ‘events’ like UFOs and volcanic eruptions.

The game’s a touch crude, and should arguably be more forgiving; but for a quick blast of high-octane racing survival, it hits the spot.

Alto’s Odyssey

Alto’s Odyssey finds the titular board-obsessed protagonist move from the snowy slopes of Alto’s Adventure to sandy dunes. Again, he’s on an endless journey, zooming through eye-dazzling scenery, and regularly flinging himself into the air for the odd bit of show-off and score-chasing stunt work.

The game starts off very similar to its predecessor, to the point it might feel like you’re just getting new visuals. You prod the screen to leap, hold to somersault, and must regularly clear massive ravines. You still get chased, too, albeit by rabid wildlife rather than angry elders.

But soon you discover new places to explore, and novel ideas like the ability to wall ride. And if working your way through the game’s increasingly tough achievements gets too stressful, there’s a chill-out risk-free ‘Zen’ mode that’s just you, an endless desert, and some moody music.

Bendy in Nightmare Run

Bendy in Nightmare Run is an auto-runner set in a world of deranged 1920s black-and-white cartoons, seemingly from a place where such creative endeavors are designed to terrify rather than entertain.

You spend your time running out of the screen, fleeing from some kind of hideous monstrosity with massive and very sharp teeth, and whatever minions it spews your way. You must swipe between lanes to avoid getting clobbered, and occasionally pick up weapons you can lob behind you, giving your pursuer a taste of its own medicine.

This game is no pushover. The battles become increasingly tough, with careful timing and deft swiping required if you’re to have any chance of survival. But the unusual viewpoint and superb aesthetics make Bendy very much worth a download, even if the core gameplay is ultimately rather familiar.

Will Hero

Will Hero is a superb, daft, frenetic one-thumb platform game featuring a bunch of squares. Perhaps it’s easier to animate such creatures, but a lack of torsos and limbs hasn’t made Will and his enemies any less violent. Instead, they’re intent on hacking each other to pieces.

Initially, you largely spend your time prodding the screen to move forward and attempting to jump on bouncing enemy heads, like a simplified geometric Mario. But grab a chest and all bets are off. You might find a massive sword or missiles within.

Will Hero then becomes a blast – a glorious minute or two of gore and destruction, before you lose your concentration for a moment and are sliced in half by an inconveniently placed and surprisingly dangerous windmill. This one’s great – install it immediately.

Power Hover: Cruise

Power Hover: Cruise is a spin-off from futuristic hoverboarding game Power Hover. Whereas that game mostly featured heavily choreographed levels punctuated by the odd boss battle, this one’s all about endless challenges that involve the robot protagonist eventually becoming a pile of scrap metal.

The journey, though, is wonderful. Several of Power Hover: Cruise’s modes could lay claim to being among the best endless runners on Android, and you get over half a dozen here, each with its own distinct feel, hazards and challenges.

As you arc across the screen, learning to master the board’s heavy inertia, you’ll be thrilled when dodging dancing lasers inside a pyramid by a hair’s breadth, whirling around a track snaking through the sky, and avoiding projectiles hurled your way by a psychotic monster living deep in an underground tunnel – and who everyone probably should have left alone.

Glitch Dash

Glitch Dash is a premium auto-runner. It’s also really, really hard. It essentially dumps you in an abstract world of checkerboard corridors peppered with traps. You must swipe to dodge, leap and slide, avoiding walls, laser grids, and massive scythes that some nutcase has left swinging from above.

The high-octane gameplay is augmented by an intense electronic soundtrack that broadly matches the moves you must make in order to survive. And unlike the majority of entries in this genre, Glitch Dash’s levels are hand-crafted.

This means when you fail (and you will – often, and sometimes when tantalizingly close to your goal), it’s down to your lack of mastery and an inability to make your thumbs do what you want them to. But you’ll try again right away. After all, you’re not going to let a game beat you.

Hoppenhelm

Hoppenhelm has an air of the familiar with its chunky pixelated graphics and tap-to-move mechanics, but this mix of twitch gaming, one-thumb action and arcade fare turns out to be surprisingly compelling and a little bit different.

The backstory finds the titular knight lost in dungeons that are filling with lava. With each step he takes, the lava drops back a touch – but you can’t simply hammer the walk button and escape a fiery death because the dungeons are packed full of hazards and monsters.

This is where the other two buttons come in. The sword is used to kill enemies, and the shield can protect from fireballs. Because Hoppenhelm is played at speed, the result is a thrilling combination of fast reactions, timing, prioritization, and swearing at your thumbs when the knight is devoured by a goofy floating head.

Infiniroom

Infiniroom is Canabalt in a box, infused with the sadistic nature of Super Hexagon. You prod the screen to make the auto-running protagonist leap to avoid electrified boxes that appear from every surface of a room you’re trapped in. And like a certain superhero, he happily runs up any wall he reaches, then along the ceiling and back down again.

It’s dizzying and chaotic, but Infiniroom further ramps up the tension by continually chopping and changing the play field. At any moment, you may get a second’s warning before a chunk of space disappears (don’t be there when it does), or a new area opens up. And then the game starts gleefully lobbing saw blades and lasers at you.

Not a relaxing game, then, but one you’ll want to play again and again. And given how short Infiniroom games are, you can pack plenty into the shortest break.

Flipping Legend

Flipping Legend is a demanding endless runner smashed into an RPG-like upgrade system. The protagonist embarks on an orgy of destruction atop a chessboard-like pathway, and can only leap diagonally.

This initially makes your head spin, not least because the path is a wraparound one. This means if you leap off of its left-hand side, you reappear on the right – something you frequently have to make use of, to avoid the many hazards in your way.

To further complicate matters, your health bar drains at an alarming rate, and only refills when you biff enemies. Grab enough bling and you can unlock power-ups for taking out multiple foes.

With an energetic soundtrack, a bunch of alternate characters, and a very smart chunky art style, Flipping Legend shows there’s still life left in endless runners (albeit as the hero is busy killing everything in this one).

Binary Dash

Zero points for innovation in Binary Dash, which is another side-scrolling auto-runner where you tap to jump, and tap somewhere else to flip upside-down.

But many points for the combination of super-fast gameplay, superb level design, and a visual aesthetic that thumbs its nose at the modern-day penchant for mid-80s pixel art, instead hurling you back to the lurid charms of late 1970s gaming.

Yes, Binary Dash more looks like it’s been vomited out of an ancient Atari console, but it nonetheless has a quirky charm. And the game itself is great. It eases you in gently, helping you get to grips with flipping above and below the horizon, thus turning game-ending pillars into pits to leap over when you’re upside-down.

Before long, though, your thumbs will be seriously challenged by the tight choreography required to jump and flip your way to the ends of later levels.

Sky Dancer

Yet another into-the-screen endless runner, channeling Temple Run. Yawn. Only Sky Dancer has a certain something that keeps you playing – and that certain something is leaving your stomach in your throat every time you jump.

Much of this is down to the construction of Sky Dancer’s world, which comprises tiny chunks of land hanging in the air in a manner that rocks usually don’t have. As you hurl yourself off the edge of one, you must quickly maneuver to land on a platform below.

Battling gravity and inertia is exhilarating, especially when the game speeds up and you know the slightest miscalculation will result in you meeting a splattery end on the desert floor.

PinOut

Pinball infused with the DNA of an against-the-clock endless runner sounds like an odd combination – but it works. In PinOut’s neon world – featuring a gorgeous electro soundtrack – a massive table stretches far into the distance. Within: dozens of miniature tables comprising flippers, ramps, and more than a few traps.

The basic aim at every turn is to keep moving forward to the next mini-table – and quickly. Accurate ramp shots are key, and so mastering the game’s physics and the layout of its various stages is essential.

For advocates, this is a fresh take on pinball that works brilliantly in mobile form. And for newcomers, PinOut is freed from the frequently arcane rules of pinball, but loses none of its frenetic excitement.

Polywarp

Coming across like Super Hexagon got infatuated with polygons, Polywarp is a brutally difficult arcade experience that’s also maddeningly compulsive.

The basics are simple: your polygon sits at the center of the screen, and walls close in from the edges. By tapping the left or right-hand side of the screen, respectively, you reduce or increase your polygon’s edge count, to match the next shape that’s aiming to crush you.

Everything moves at speed and whirls about, like you’re playing in a washing machine packed with an endless number of lurid shapes.

Initially, Polywarp feels impossible, but you soon recognize patterns to commit to memory and master. Last 60 seconds and you’ll feel like a champ – until you realize a new, tougher mode’s waiting to humiliate your thumbs.

Cubed Rally World

More or less an auto-runner on a five-lane road, Cubed Rally World is all about belting along, steering left and right to avoid anything in your path. Survive long enough in this isometric landscape and you hit the checkered flag, where cube-oriented fame and fortune awaits.

But things get really interesting when you grab coins en-route and start buying new vehicles on the game’s home screen. Each vehicle shakes up the visuals and the manner in which you race - the dune buggy, for example, can leap majestically over sandy hills where the UFO bothers farmyard cows to add some variety into a older game format.

More importantly, for every vehicle you buy, a new track section is added to the rally, the vehicle you control automatically switching when you reach that point.

Amass a suitably large collection and there’s the potential for colossal scores – but completing the rally becomes significantly harder, which helps prolong longetivity.

Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire

Even now, years after Android proved itself as a major gaming platform, some developers seem to barely remember the touchscreen exists. If you reckon trudging through games with virtual D-pads and buttons can be a chore, Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire will be a little slice of magic.

You’re a wizard, defending a castle from interlopers attached to balloons. Cast spells by scribbling gestures to match symbols on the balloons and said flotation devices explode – much to the surprise of their owners, who then rapidly plummet towards a squishy end. Miss just one of them and your wizarding days are done.

From the off, this is a fresh, frantic survival game, especially when trying your hand at the super-fast extreme mode. Stick around for long enough and you’ll be able to utilize super spells too, turning enemies into frogs, and summoning a dragon. Which we all need to do on the odd Thursday here and there.

Disney Crossy Road

We're big fans of Crossy Road, which is both a lesson in how to update a classic arcade game (Frogger), and create a free-to-play business model that isn't hateful. (In short, throw free coins at players, don't make anything pay to win, and add loads of tempting but entirely optional characters to buy.)

With Disney Crossy Road, anything could have happened, but this is far from a cheap cash-in. Sure, it starts off very much like Crossy Road - just starring Mickey Mouse. But unlock a few characters (you'll have at least three within ten minutes) and you suddenly find yourself immersed in chunky takes on famous movies, such as Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph, and The Lion King.

Even better, these aren't mere skins on the original. Each world has unique features, from tiny graphical details that will thrill fans, through to subtle shifts in how the game is played that force you to dramatically change your approach.

Alto's Adventure

You might think there's little new in Alto's Adventure, which is essentially endless leapy game Canabalt on ice. But refined visuals best even Monument Valley, with an eye-popping day/night cycle and gorgeous weather effects; additionally, there's a delightful soundtrack, and a kind of effortless elegance that permeates throughout, propelling Alto's Adventure beyond its contemporaries.

Ostensibly, Alto's Adventure is a game about collecting escaped llamas, but mostly Alto is keen on mucking about on snowy slopes. You zoom down hills, catapult yourself into the air, and try to somersault before face-planting. Extra challenge arrives in the form of chaining stunts to increase your speed, and outrunning elders, angry you're having fun rather than sitting in a stinky llama pen.

Rust Bucket

In Rust Bucket, a cartoon helmet with a sword dodders about a vibrant dungeon, offing all manner of cute but deadly adversaries — skittering skulls, angry armoured pigs, and spooky ghosts. This is a turn-based affair, echoing classic RPGs, but its endless dungeon and savage nature transform it into a puzzle game perfect for quickfire mobile sessions. You must learn how foes move and react, plan every step and always keep in mind a single error can spell doom.

In its current incarnation, Rust Bucket cleverly balances enough depth to keep you coming back with the brevity that makes it ideal for on-the-go roguelike larks. Future plans include finite puzzle modes and expanded endless content.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Best mobile card payment reader of 2019

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 03:20 AM PST

The ability to process credit and debit cards is a requirement for any modern store, but Point of Sale (POS) terminals are usually tied to an internet connection. What happens if you want to sell at a trade fair, or set up a market stall, or any other kind of pop-up shop?

This is where mobile card readers come into their own, allowing you to process card payments wirelessly and on the go. You don't need a checkout till, you just need a smartphone or tablet that can run apps to connect with a mobile card reader. 

They can even be great for small mom-and-pop shops that are looking to keep their initial costs down, and a tablet running apps on a stand can work in lieu of a till.

Most merchant services providing a mobile card reader offer rates similar to online payment systems. Many charge no monthly fee, just transaction fees in the range of 2.5-3.5%. However, there are options to pay a monthly fee in order to reduce transaction fees down to interchange fees only, ie, the pennies the bank will charge for movement of funds between accounts.

Where mobile readers really come into their own is their sheer flexibility. Using nothing more than your own smartphone, a downloaded app, and a cheap card reader costing around $25-$50, you can be ready to start taking payments anywhere there is a cellular network signal. Even then, some merchants offer an offline option.

Even better, it's not just the ability to take payments from credit/debit cards with an EMV aka chip-and-pin, but contactless payments can now also be taken, including Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay. 

Here we look at some of the merchant service providers who can provide the best in mobile card readers for taking payments on the go.

  • 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: SumUp 

SumUp is mobile card reader that is available in 31 countries, although it is a more recent entry to the US market. Notably, it supports cards with EMV, popularly known as the newer ‘chip cards,’ and is powered via a micro-USB port, and has a lithium ion battery.

This mobile card reader solution is well suited to lower volume users as it offers a fixed 2.65% transaction cost, with no monthly fee, or minimum usage level. The card reader is available for a one time fee of $69, and connects via Bluetooth to your smartphone with a downloadable app.    

There is also support for a wide variety of credit cards, including MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover Card, as well as the newer services Apple Pay and Google Pay. Payouts to your bank account take an efficient one to two days. Unfortunately, the card reader is required for any transaction to occur, as transactions cannot be manually entered. 

Image Credit: Shopify

Shopify offers an entire suite of merchant services. Here we are focusing on its mobile POS system, that targets selling at “fairs, markets, pop-ups, and everywhere in‑between,”  making this an attractive solution for an existing Shopify business on the move with a pocket-sized card reader The chip and swipe reader is also free, sweetening this deal even further.

In addition to the mobile card reader offering, this also integrates into Shopify solutions including the Shopify POS smartphone app. However, do note that the mobile reader comes as an extension to existing Shopify services, and isn't provided as a standalone.

Shopify offers three plans, with the starting tier being the Basic Shopify Plan costing $29 per month – it also has transaction fees of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. Merchants can opt to pay a higher monthly fee to reduce transaction costs.

Image Credit: PayPal

PayPal Here is the mobile card reader offering from the online transaction juggernaut that brings instant name brand recognition to this space. A definite plus is a low cost of entry in terms of acquiring the card reader, and there are accessories on offer such as a bouncepad and charger to complete a professional package.  

 The PayPal Mobile Card Reader that can handle card swipes is available for an affordable $14.99, and connects to the phone via the headphone jack, with interaction facilitated via a smartphone app. However, do note that it's only intended for sales volumes of less than $500 a month, and anything over this will result in funds being subject to a 30-day reserve policy.

A better choice would be to upgrade to one of the other mobile card readers, such as the Paypal Chip and Swipe Reader for $24.99. Alternatively, there is a Paypal Chip and Tap reader available for $59.99 to deal with contactless payments, or a version that comes with a charging stand for $79.99.

Image Credit: Intuit

Intuit, best known for TurboTax, produces the QuickBooks small business accounting offering, and under that umbrella is its mobile card reader effort, which is known as QuickBooks Payments.

The GoPayment smartphone app is notable, and this has a companion card reader, both of which come for no additional charge. Unlike free card readers from competing services, this one from Quickbooks Payments can handle both mag-stripe and chip methods of entry, and connects to the smartphone wirelessly via Bluetooth.

Another benefit of this service is that there is no setup fee, or any minimum usage level, making QuickBooks Payments more attractive for the lower volume user. 

Transaction fees are 2.4% plus $0.25 for each swipe, and for a keyed entry this rises to 3.4% plus $0.25 for each transaction. Overall, if you're already a QuickBooks user, QuickBooks Payments could be your priority choice.

Image Credit: PayAnywhere

PayAnywhere is a mobile card reader solution that integrates into the larger PayAnywhere ecosystem. This reader accepts the full range of payments, including traditional magnetic swipe, newer chip payments, and even the latest contactless payments, including Samsung Pay. 

The entry-level reader is free, connects via Bluetooth, and can do both swipe and chip transactions; an upgraded reader also supports contactless transactions.

The notable feature of the PayAnywhere card reader is that it is part of the larger family of PayAnywhere services. These include being able to send invoices from within their app, accepting card payments on your website, and being able to apply discounts to invoices.

For the Pay-As-You-Go plan, there is no monthly fee and the card reader is provided free. The transaction fee is 2.69% for swiped, dip, or tap, and for keyed in payments the fee rate is 3.49% + $0.19. If processing orders of over $10,000 a month, discounted rates may apply. 

Image Credit: Square

Other mobile card readers to consider

Square is another all-in-one merchant service provider, and comes with sleek POS set-up that allows you to treat your iPad as a sales till, running an app connected to one of Sqaure's card readers. Square already do a good offering for online payments, and everything is integrated and comes with analytics. The reader can even be purchased directly from Amazon or Apple. Yet pricing is a standard 2.75% per swipe, dip, or tap, and 3.5% + $0.15 per keyed-in transaction. 

Fattmerchant provides a mobile card reader that could especially benefit merchants with over a 1,000 transactions per month. Although they charge $99 a month for the service, transaction fees are only $0.15 + interchange fees per transaction. There are also integration options, including with Quickbooks Online, which could be especially helpful in making a purchasing decision.

ROAMpay are also worth mentioning, not least because its mobile card reader offers the widest device support in the industry. ROAMpay is compatible with iOS devices running 4.2 and up, Google Android devices running 2.1 and up, and even BlackBerry devices running OS 5 and up. This could make ROAMpay a useful option for merchants who have older smartphones, which may not be able to support the latest apps offered by other merchant vendors.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Chatting to your Google Assistant smart display is about to get more natural

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 03:16 AM PST

If you've found your chats with your Google Home Hub a little on the stilted side up until now, there's good news: the Continued Conversation feature is now rolling out to smart displays powered by the Google Assistant.

Continued Conversation, if you're unaware, lets you carry on a conversation with Google Assistant without having to keep saying "OK Google" or "Hey Google" in front of every request or instruction.

The feature has been around on Google Home speakers for a while now, but Android Police reports that it's now live on Google Assistant smart displays too, for chats that feel more natural.

For the time being though, you need a device set to US English for the feature to work on smart displays and smart speakers. As yet there's no word on when Continued Conversation might be available for other languages.

Get set up

To enable the feature on a device like the Google Home Hub or the Lenovo Smart Display, head to the Google Home app. Tap the Account tab, then Settings, then open the Assistant tab and choose Continued Conversation.

When the Google Assistant is listening for follow-up commands, you'll see a small Assistant icon peeking out of the corner of the screen (on smart speakers, the top LEDs light up to indicate that the device is still listening).

Ask about the weather for "today", for instance, and once Google Assistant has answered you can say something like "what about tomorrow?" straight away, with Continued Conversation ensuring the Assistant understands the context.

If you've got questions about Continued Conversation, or want to find out more about how it works, check out the official Google support page here.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Best free iPad apps 2019: the top titles we've tried

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 03:12 AM PST

Free apps sometimes have a bad reputation, but many are gems that are so good you won’t believe they’re free. We’ve scoured the App Store to find the very best, and sorted them into handy categories, which you can find on the following pages.

On this page you'll find the app of the week - our top new selection to try out, and check back every seven days where you'll find a new option to test. After that, it's the best entertainment apps (surely the best reason to own an iPad...) and a variety of categories on the following pages to tickle your fancy.

Free app of the week: DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser


DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser wants the internet to leave you alone. Specifically, it doesn’t want you being tracked. 

It comes across like a stripped-back alternative to Safari that’s determined to have you leave no trace. Third-party trackers won’t follow you as you browse, meaning no relentless and suspiciously targeted adverts because you several days back happened to check out a nice new TV online.

Sites are forced to use encrypted connections where available, and your searches are not tracked. The app grades sites you visit, too; and so even if you usually use Safari, DuckDuckGo gives you insight into any site’s underlying privacy measures.

Also, if all of that doesn’t go quite far enough, and you want your DuckDuckGo browsing history to be nuked from orbit, a tap is all that takes!

The best free entertainment apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether shopping, coloring, reading, watching TV or using Twitter.

Feedly

Feedly bills itself as a smart news reader. However, rather than attempting to second-guess what you’d like to read, based on you having tapped a few vague category buttons, Feedly takes a more old-fashioned approach: subscriptions.

In short, using the magic of RSS, you (for free) subscribe to the newsfeeds of your favorite websites – anything from news corporations down to the most niche of blogs. New articles are then sent to Feedly, and can be read in-app.

If you fancy discovering content beyond what you usually read, there’s an Explore tab; but Feedly’s best when you’re curating what you end up checking out, through focusing primarily on sources you trust.

As an added bonus, if you like the idea but not the interface, a Feedly account can be used to power other RSS readers such as TechRadar favorite Reeder. 

Pocket

Pocket is a read-later app. What this means is that rather than ending the day staring at dozens of unread browser tabs, you fling items of interest in Pocket’s direction. It then converts them into a streamlined personalized magazine you can peruse at your leisure.

The default iPad interface is an appealing grid, and individual articles are stripped back to words and images. This can be a major improvement over the original websites, letting you delve into content without distractions.

A night mode flips colors late in the day, to ensure you don’t get eye strain, but Pocket also allows you to ‘read with your ears’. This turns your reading list into an on-the-fly podcast. It’s an odd experience, but it can be nice to work through your reading list while cooking, walking or driving.

Infuse 5

Infuse 5 is a video player that lets you get at video from pretty much anywhere. This means if you have a massive video collection, you needn’t load it all on to your iPad. Instead, you can quickly copy across items as and when you want to play them – or just stream from local network storage.

This app isn’t unique in the field, but it’s friendly and sleek. Set-up is a breeze, and even when streaming from your local network, metadata (cover art; item information) is automatically downloaded. It’s also possible to download subtitles on the fly.

The free version has restrictions that require an annual subscription to unlock: some video/audio formats; AirPlay and Google Cast support; background playback; library sync. But as a freebie for anyone who wants to stream videos to their iPad, Infuse 5 really can’t be beaten.

Fiery Feeds

Fiery Feeds is a full-featured RSS reader. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, it enables you to subscribe to almost any website’s content. You’ll then in Fiery Feeds get a list of headlines whenever you open the app, ensuring you don’t miss articles from sources you trust.

Most free RSS readers are clunky, but Fiery Feeds bucks the trend with a sleek two-pane interface, and a slew of customization options. It feels modern, but gives you very direct control over what you read, unlike the likes of News or Flipboard.

There’s a paid tier, too – US$9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 per year – which unlocks additional features, including a ‘must read’ folder, a text view mode (which loads full articles for sites that otherwise only send you synopses), and custom actions. Whichever flavor you plump for, Fiery Feeds is well worth installing on your iPad.

VLC for Mobile

VLC for Mobile is an iPad take on the popular open source media player.

On iPad, it has two main uses. The first is offline playback. You can load up VLC with videos, and – broadly speaking – be secure in the knowledge it’s actually going to be capable of playing them. During said playback, you can fiddle with the picture and audio, and use gestures to skip through boring sections – or backwards if you missed a bit.

VLC is also good for streaming. You can stream movies from a PC or Mac right to your iPad, rather than having to sit in front of a computer like it’s 2005. The interface throughout is sleek and minimal (irritating zooming to the options sidebar aside), and impressive for a video streaming app that’s entirely free.

JustWatch

JustWatch solves one of the biggest problems with the way we consume television and movies. With streaming services and on-demand increasingly rendering traditional schedules redundant, the key is usually finding out where and how to watch something, not when.

JustWatch asks you to confirm your location and the services that interest you. If you’re still into the big screen, there’s a tab for currently showing movies, which makes it a cinch to access local showtimes.

But this app’s mostly about TV, providing filterable feeds that list popular shows and bargains – and where to find them. Select a show, tap on an icon, and you’re whisked away to the relevant app. Whatever you want to see, JustWatch makes reaching it a whole lot easier.

Letterboxd

Letterboxd is an iPad take on a social network for film lovers. Sign up, and you can do all the usual following friends and bellyaching, only here you’re complaining about whether Blade Runner 2049 is 2049 times worse than the original, and who’s the best James Bond. If that sounds awful but you’re a film lover, Letterboxd has another use: the ability to log everything you’ve ever watched.

You can quickly assign ratings and ‘likes’ to your personal favorites, which are subsequently displayed as a grid of artwork that can be sorted and filtered. Beyond that, you can add tags, a review, and the date when you last watched the film. On the iPad’s large display, the entire app looks great – not least when you start checking out trailers of those films you’re keen to see.

Attenborough Story of life

If you’ve any interest in wildlife films, Attenborough Story of Life is a must-have. It features over a thousand clips picked from Attenborough’s decades-long journey through what he refers to as the “greatest story of all…how animals and plants came to fill our Earth”.

The app is split into three sections. You’re initially urged to delve into some featured collections, but can also explore by habitat or species, unearthing everything from big-toothed sharks to tiny penguins skittering about. Clips can be saved as favorites, or grouped into custom collections to later peruse or share with friends.

Some of the footage is noticeably low-res on an iPad – there’s nothing here to concern your Blu-Rays, and that’s a pity. Still, for instant access to such a wealth of amazing programming, this one’s not to be missed.

Chunky Comic Reader

The majority of comic-book readers on the App Store are tied to online stores, and any emphasis on quality in the actual apps isn't always placed on the reading part.

But with many more publishers embracing DRM-free downloads, having a really great reading app is essential if you're into digital comics. Chunky Comic Reader is the best available on iOS.

The interface is smart, simple and boasts plenty of settings, including the means to eradicate animation entirely when flipping pages.

Rendering is top-notch, even for relatively low-res fare. And you get the option of one- or two-up page views. For free, you can access web storage to upload comics. A single $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99 pro upgrade adds support for shared Mac/PC/NAS drives.

eBay

eBay provides access to a colossal online marketplace. Anyone can sell, and so you’ll find huge brands mingling with individuals attempting to offload the entire contents of their basements and attics.

Something of a design playground, the iPad app is regularly reworked; but whatever eBay’s designers come up with, a large touchscreen device proves to be the best way to search. You can quickly drill down into categories, and explore individual listings, swiping between photos.

If you need to keep track of things, the app offers automated notifications, and can flag searches, making it easy to see whenever new matching listings appear. And if you want to sell yourself, you can do that in-app, with eBay providing shortcuts to get your listing started (through barcode scanning or matching your item to publicly available information about it).

Melodist

Part meditative relaxation tool, part sleep aid, Melodist is all about creating melodies from imagery. All you have to do is load something from your Camera Roll, and the app does the rest.

On analyzing your photo or screen grab for changes in hues, saturation and brightness, a music loop is generated. You can adjust the playback speed, instrument and visual effect (which starts off as a lazily scrolling piano roll), along with setting a timer.

Although occasionally discordant, the app mostly creates very pleasing sounds. And while it’s perhaps missing a trick in not displaying your photo as-is underneath the notes being played (your image is instead heavily blurred as a background), you can export each tune as audio or a video that shows the picture alongside the animation.

These free exports are a pretty generous gesture by the developer; if you want to return the favor, there’s affordable IAP for extra sounds, animation and MIDI export.

Notes on Blindness VR

After years of eyesight deterioration, John Hull became blind in 1983. Notes on Blindness VR has six chapters taken from his journal of the time. Each is set in a specific location, marrying John’s narrative, binaural audio, and real-time 3D animation, to create an immersive experience of a ‘world beyond sight’.

Although designed as a VR experience, this app remains effective when holding an iPad in front of your face, moving the screen about to scan your surroundings. The mood shifts throughout – there’s wonder in a blind John’s discovery of the beauty of rain, disconnection when he finds things ‘disappear’ from the world when sound stops, and a harrowing section on panic.

Towards the end, John mulls he’s “starting to understand what it’s like to be blind,” and you may get a sense of what it’s like, too, from the app, which ably showcases how to craft an engaging screen-based experience beyond the confines of television.

Pigment

Adult colouring books are all the rage, proponents claiming bringing colour to intricate abstract shapes helps reduce stress - at least until you realise you've got pen on your shirt and ground oil pastels into the sofa.

You'd think the process of colouring would be ideal for iPad, but most relevant apps are awful, some even forcing tap-to-fill. That is to colouring what using a motorbike is to running a marathon - a big cheat. Pigment is an exception, marrying a love for colouring with serious digital smarts.

On selecting an illustration, there's a range of palettes and tools to explore. You can use pencils and markers, adjusting opacity and brush sizes, and work with subtle gradients. Colouring can be 'freestyle', or you can tap to select an area and ensure you don't go over the lines while furiously scribbling. With a finger, Pigment works well, but it's better with a stylus; with an iPad Pro and a Pencil, you'll lob your real books in the bin.

The one niggle: printing and accessing the larger library requires a subscription in-app purchase. It's a pity there's no one-off payment for individual books, but you do get plenty of free illustrations, and so it's hard to grumble.

WWF Together

With a noodly soundtrack playing in the background, WWF Together invites you to spin a papercraft world and tap points of interest to learn more about endangered species. 16 creatures get fuller treatment - a navigable presentation of sorts that hangs on a key characteristic, such as a panda's charisma, or an elephant's intelligence.

These sections are arranged as a three-by-three grid, each screen of which gives you something different, be it statistics, gorgeous photography, or a 'facetime' movie that gives you a chance to get up close and personal.

Apps that mix charity and education can often come across as dry and worthy, but WWF Together is neither. It's informative but charming, and emotive but fun.

Rather neatly, stories can be shared by email, and this screen further rewards you with origami instructions to make your own paper animal; once constructed, it can sit on the desk next to all your technology, reminding you of the more fragile things that exist in our world.

YouTube

YouTube is the best way to watch YouTube videos on your iPad. On the dynamic Home tab, you can quickly get at interesting stuff. It includes channels you subscribe to, and videos you didn’t yet finish watching; but also, it makes recommendations based on your viewing habits. The more you watch, the better they get.

On selecting something to watch, the video itself sits at the top-left of the screen, allowing you to scroll through comments other viewers have left, and peruse an up-next feed. There’s also a full-screen view for a more immersive experience.

Fittingly, for a service seemingly attempting to usurp traditional television, the YouTube app also provides access to content you’ve bought on Google Play. And with AirPlay and Chromecast support, getting what you’re watching to an actual telly is a cinch, too.

Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!

  • For a mix of free and paid apps, check out our amazing Best iPad apps chart. If you're more into a smaller form-factor or have your eye on the iPhone X check out our list of the best free iPhone apps.
  • Haven't bought an iPad yet and not sure which is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.
  • Are you a professional? Then our pick of the 10 best business apps should have something for you.
  • Want a free app to keep your iPad safe? Check out the best free VPNs

The best free art and design apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, graphic design and animation.

Atlas Wallpaper

Atlas Wallpaper does pretty much what you’d expect: turns maps into background wallpapers for your iPad. That might sound like an odd idea, but abstract imagery based on road systems and waterways can work really well on your Lock or Home screen.

The app includes a modicum of customization. You can select a location, zoom in, and choose a color scheme from a range of options. The resulting image can then be exported to Photos, ready for applying as a background.

For a one-off $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99, you can unlock the app’s premium features, including custom styles (useful if you want some really subtle grey-on-black), and desktop/Apple Watch export sizes. But even for free, this is a great option for having something a bit different behind all your app icons.

Adobe Spark Post

Adobe Spark Post finds Photoshop creator Adobe asking how quickly it’d be possible for someone to fashion gorgeous layouts on an iPad. The answer, as it turns out, is: very.

Adobe describes its app as ‘frictionless graphic design,’ and it’s easy to see why. You can start with a selection of your own images that are then arranged into a grid, or work from a predefined template. At any point, a few taps can drastically update what’s in front of you, with new (and tasteful) arrangements and typography.

It’s quite a lot of fun to keep tapping away, to see what Spark Post will come up with, but at some point you’ll want to actually use what you make. Even then, this app’s really smart, automatically shuffling components around to optimize your layout for social network profile shots or embedded imagery.

Unsplash

Unsplash is an app that gives you fast access to many thousands of images generously gifted to the Unsplash website by the photographic community. These photographs can be used entirely for free, for any purposes you wish, and can be modified as you see fit.

The app and available photographs are both rather good. You can search for something specific, browse new photos, or explore by themes. The large iPad display is the perfect lean-back way to look through dozens of images, flicking between them in full-screen mode.

It’s a pity there’s no download option, nor a means to follow specific photographers. But then this one’s all about effortlessness and immediacy, and knowing that whenever you do find something that inspires you, it can be downloaded to your iPad’s Photos app with a single tap.

Artomaton - The Motion Painter

Artomaton - The Motion Painter is a little like Prisma, in that it uses AI to transform photos into something that looks like it was painted or sketched. However, this isn’t a single-tap filter app; Artomaton wants to afford you at least some control over your creations.

To start with, you paint in the natural media effects to the degree you’re happy with. Do so lightly and you get the subtlest of sketches; cover every inch of the canvas and you end up with a more complete piece of art. Beyond that, there are plenty of settings to fiddle with.

The resulting images aren’t always entirely convincing in terms of realism, but they always look good. And although many materials are locked behind IAP, you get plenty for free.

Adobe Illustrator Draw

On the desktop, Adobe Illustrator is more about enabling creative types to work up pin-sharp illustrative fare than freehand drawing. But on iPad, Adobe Illustrator Draw concentrates on doodling. You can experiment with five highly configurable brush tips, which feel great whether drawing with a stylus or a finger.

But dig deeper into the options and the professional sheen of this app becomes apparent. There are perspective grids, a layers system for mixing and matching artwork and imagery for tracing over, and stencils you temporarily overlay when extra precision is needed.

Completed images can be exported to Camera Roll or the clipboard, and Adobe Creative Cloud users can also send art to Photoshop or Illustrator with layers preserved.

A straightforward vector export option would be nice, although that’s perhaps too big an ask for a free app designed to suck you into a larger ecosystem.

Autodesk SketchBook

We tend to quickly shift children from finger-painting to using much finer tools, but the iPad shows there's plenty of power in your digits — if you're using the right app.

Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll.

The core app is free, but it will cost you $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 to unlock the pro features.

Brushes Redux

The original Brushes app was one of the most important in the iPhone's early days. With Jorge Colombo using it to paint a New Yorker cover, it showcased the potential of the technology, and that an iPhone could be used for production, rather than merely consumption.

Brushes eventually stopped being updated, but fortunately went open source beforehand. Brushes Redux is the result.

On the iPad, you can take advantage of the much larger screen. But the main benefit of the app is its approachable nature. It's extremely easy to use, but also has plenty of power for those who need it, not least in the layering system and the superb brush designer.

Canva

The idea behind Canva is to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating great-looking layouts based on your photos. Select a layout type (presentation, blog graphic, invitation, and so on) and the app serves up templates to work with.

These are mostly very smart indeed, but the smartest thing about Canva is that these starting points can all be edited: swap out images for your own photos, adjust text boxes, and add new elements or even entire pages.

Because of its scope, Canva isn't as immediate as one-click automated apps in this space, but the interface is intuitive enough to quickly grasp. Our only niggle is the lack of multi-item selection, but with Canva being an online service, you can always fine-tune your iPad creations in a browser on the desktop.

Pixel art editor - Dottable

Despite being lumbered with an awkward name, Pixel art editor - Dottable is a usable and nicely-conceived app. Choose a canvas size and then the interface is split between your drawing area, layers, and tools.

The basics are all there for creating old-school pixel art, but beyond brushes and fills, Dottable adds some fairly sophisticated shapes and transform tools.

If you want to trace an image, it can be imported, and optionally converted to pixel art form. Exports are also dealt with nicely, either exporting your image as a PNG, or converting each layer into a single frame of an animated GIF.

None of this is enough to trouble the pro-oriented Pixaki, but as a freebie for pixel artists, Dottable is mightily impressive.

Folioscope

One of the great things about the app revolution is how these bits of software can help you experience creative fare that would have previously been inaccessible, unless you were armed with tons of cash and loads of time. Folioscope is a case in point, providing the basics for crafting your own animations.

We should note you’re not going to be the next Disney with Folioscope – the tools are fairly basic, and the output veers towards ‘wobbling stickmen’.

But you do get a range of brushes (of differing size and texture), several drawing tools (pen, eraser, flood fill, and marquee), and onion-skinning, which enables you to see faint impressions of adjacent frames, in order to line everything up.

The friendly nature of the app makes it accessible to anyone, and there’s no limit on export – projects can be shared as GIFs or movies, or uploaded to the Folioscope community, should you create an account.

MediBang Paint

MediBang Paint feels like one of those apps where you’re always waiting for the catch to arrive. Create a new canvas and you end up staring at what can only be described as a simplified Photoshop on your iPad. There are loads of drawing tools, a layers system (including photo import), and configurable brushes.

Opening up menus reveals yet more features – rotation; shapes; grids – but palettes can also be hidden, so you can get on with just drawing. Judging by the in-app gallery of uploaded art, MediBang is popular with manga artists, but its tools are capable enough to support a much wider range of digital painting and drawing styles – all without costing you a penny.

PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator

You won’t trouble Hollywood with PicsArt (or PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator to use its unwieldy full name). However, it is a great introduction to animation and also a handy sketchpad for those already immersed in the field.

A beginner can start with a blank slate, paper texture, or photo background, on to which an animation frame is drawn. Add further frames and previous ones faintly show through, to aid you in making smooth transitions.

Delve further into the app to discover more advanced fare, including brush options and a hugely useful layers system. When done, export to GIF or video – or save projects to refine later. That this all comes for free (and free from ads) is astonishing.

Quark DesignPad

Quark DesignPad scratches an itch if you need to get started on some layouts while on the go with your iPad – or just fancy doing the same away from the glowing screen of your Mac or PC.

This isn’t a full-fledged desktop publishing app, note. Instead, it’s about creating frameworks for page designs – wireframes that show the placement of headings, images, columns, and boxes. You can work pages up from scratch, or use one of the pre-defined layouts. With its grids, pop-up menus, and a little nudge ‘joystick’, the interface proves to be flexible and efficient.

Output options, however, are initially limited. You can save flat images to Photos, but if you want PDFs or to print via AirPrint, you’ll need to go pro ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99).

Seedling Comic Studio

Although it's apparently designed for kids aged 9-11, Seedling Comic Studio comes across a lot like a free (if somewhat stripped back) take on iPad classic Comic Life. You load images from your Camera Roll (or take new ones with the camera), arrange them into comic-book frames, and can then add all manner of speech balloons, filters and stickers.

Decided that your heroic Miniature Schnauzer should have to save the world from a giant comic-book sandwich? This is your app! Naturally, there are limitations lurking. The filter system is a bit rubbish, requiring you to cycle through the dozen or so on offer, rather than pick favourites more directly, and a few of the sticker packs require IAP.

But for no outlay at all, there's plenty of scope here for comic-book creation, from multi-page documents you can output to PDF, to amusing poster-like pages you can share on social networks. And that's true whether you're 9 or 49.

Tayasui Sketches 

Tayasui Sketches is a drawing tool, designed to be realistic, versatile, and usable. And although various IAPs lurk for the full toolset (which includes a ruler, extra layers, and pressure sensitivity), you get an awful lot for free.

You start by selecting a paper type, or use an imported photo as the basis for your masterpiece. Then it’s time to get cracking with the pens and brushes. Although it’s perhaps a stretch to call them totally realistic, they all offer pleasing results. The watercolor brush in particular is lovely, bleeding into the paper and leaving splats on the canvas when you tap the screen.

In fact, the app as a whole is very pleasant to use, offering the right balance between trying to help and getting out of your way when you’re busy painting. And as a final neat touch, if you’re stuck for inspiration there are some coloring book pages thrown in for free.

The best free education apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for learning new things – from coding to astronomy.

Night Sky

Night Sky puts the planets and stars inside your iPad. More importantly, it goes above and beyond in the ways you can explore them.

Like many other astronomy apps, you can drag to adjust the view or explore the heavens by holding your iPad in front of your face and physically moving around. Chill-out music burbles away in the background, and there’s visual bling in the form of illustrated constellation overlays.

But here, constellations and celestial bodies can be pulled from the main view. They can then be moved with a finger or walked around in AR. With constellations in particular, this provides a great understanding of depths and distances.

Beyond that, you get Siri support, a moon map, advice on local planetariums, and many more features – and that’s before there’s even a hint of monthly IAP to access the Grand Orrery and live sky tours.

Civilisations AR 

Civilisations AR is an augmented reality app that puts over 30 historical artifacts in front of your face, ranging from an ancient Egyptian mummy to iconic modern art. It feels like a thoroughly modern way of exploring the past, enabling you to check out every nook and cranny of these famous objects.

Spin a globe to see where the items are from, then tap to select one and it will appear before you, ready to be resized and spun around. Discoverable hot-spots offer up more information by way of voiceovers.

Surprisingly, even paintings work really nicely in this app, enabling you to put your nose right up to the virtual canvas and inspect individual paint marks. An iPad display is big enough for you to truly appreciate these works of wonder.

JigSpace

JigSpace uses augmented reality (AR) to educate, by way of 3D models you can fiddle about with before your very eyes. Although the range isn’t exactly in Wikipedia territory, you get quite the variety of ‘jigs’ for free. There’s the anatomy of a trebuchet, a floating eye to fiddle around with, a manual car’s transmission, and many more.

JigSpace rapidly finds a flat surface onto which your object is projected. You can then pinch to resize it, or spin it with a swipe. Objects aren’t static either – many animate, and are gradually disassembled across a series of slides. For example, an alarm clock opens to show its gears and mechanisms – and because this is AR, you can check everything out from any angle.

Khan Academy

Maybe it's just our tech-addled brains, but often we find it a lot easier to focus on an app than a book, which can make learning things the old fashioned way tricky. That's where Khan Academy comes in. This free app contains lessons and guidance on dozens of subjects, from algebra, to cosmology, to computer science and beyond.

As it's an app rather than a book it benefits from videos and even a few interactive elements, alongside words and pictures and it contains over 10,000 videos and explanations in all.

Everything is broken in to bite-sized chunks, so whether you've got a few minutes to spare or a whole afternoon there's always time to learn something new and if you make an account it will keep track of your progress and award achievements.

Py

Py wants to teach you to communicate with computers. You provide some information about the kind of coding you fancy doing, and it recommends a course – anything from basic HTML through to delving into Python.

Lessons are very reminiscent of those in language-learning freebie Duolingo. A colorful, cartoonish interface provides questions, and you type out your answer or select from multiple choice options.

Py could be more helpful when you get something wrong, but its breezy, pacy nature gives it a real energy and game-like feel that boosts focus and longevity.

Unlike Duolingo, Py doesn’t have any interest in being free forever. A premium tier locks a chunk of content behind a monthly fee (along with access to mentors, who can help you through tough spots via an integrated chat). But for no outlay, there’s still plenty here for budding website - and app - creators to get stuck into.

SkyView Free

SkyView Free is a stargazing app that very much wants you to get off your behind and outside, or at least hold your iPad aloft to explore the heavens.

Unlike TechRadar favourite Sky Guide, there's no means to drag a finger to manually move the sky around - you must always point your iPad's display where you want to look - but there's no price-tag either. And for free, this app does the business.

There are minimal ads, a noodly atmospheric soundtrack, an optional augmented reality view (to overlay app graphics on to the actual sky), and a handy search that'll point you in the direction of Mars, Ursa Major, or the International Space Station.

Swift Playgrounds

Swift Playgrounds is an app about coding, although you’d initially be forgiven for thinking it a weird game. Early lessons involve guiding oddball cartoon cyclops Byte about an isometric landscape by way of typed commands, having him trigger switches and grab gems along the way.

This is, of course, sneakily teaching you the fundamentals of logic and programming, and the lessons do then gradually become more involved. However, at no point does Swift Playgrounds become overwhelming. And the split-screen set-up – instructions and code on the left; interactive world based on your work on the right – feels friendly and intuitive.

It’s not Xcode for iPad, then, but perhaps a first step in that direction. More importantly, Swift Playgrounds can act as a first step for people who want to start coding their own apps, but for whom the very idea has, to date, simply been too daunting.

Wikipedia

Often, third-party apps improve on bare-bones equivalents provided as the ‘official’ take on a product, but Wikipedia is an exception. This freebie app for browsing the online encyclopedia is excellent on iPad – and probably the best option on the platform.

The Explore page lists a bunch of nearby and topical articles; after a few uses, it’ll also recommend things it reckons you’d like to read. Tap an article and the screen splits in two – (collapsible) table of contents to the left and your chosen article to the right. Articles can be searched and saved, the latter option storing them for offline perusal.

It’s a pity Wikipedia doesn’t rework the Peek/Pop previews from the iPhone version (by way of a long-tap), but otherwise this is an excellent, usable encyclopedia for the modern age.

Yousician

Learning a musical instrument isn't easy, which is probably why a bunch of people don't bother, instead pretending to be rock stars by way of tiny plastic instruments and their parent videogames.

Yousician bridges the divide, flipping a kind of Guitar Hero interface 90 degrees and using its visual and timing devices to get you playing chords and notes.

This proves remarkably effective, and your iPad merrily keeps track of your skills (or lack thereof) through its internal mic. The difficulty curve is slight, but the app enables you to skip ahead if you're bored, through periodic 'test' rounds. Most surprisingly, for free you get access to everything, only your daily lesson time is limited.

TED

TED is a video app designed to feed your curiosity, by watching smart people talk about all kinds of subjects.

Although the organization’s name stands for ‘Technology, Entertainment, Design’, it’s fundamentally interested in ideas. Example talks we watched during testing included a piece about screen time for kids (and why related fears are not true), not suffering in silence from depression, and mind-blowing magnified portraits of insects. What we’re saying is: this app has range.

It also has smarts. Along with a standard search, you can have the app ‘surprise you’ with something courageous, beautiful, or fascinating, and revisit favorites by delving into your watch history and liked talks, which sync across devices.

TED’s perhaps not an app you’ll open daily, but it’s a breath of fresh air when you desire brain food rather than typical telly.

The best free health, food and exercise apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for cooking, relaxing and keeping fit.

Oak - Meditation & Breathing

Oak - Meditation & Breathing is an app that wants you to relax. It’s split into sections for meditation, breathing, and sleeping. A stats area provides the means to track progress, with you gaining streaks and winning badges through regular use.

Meditations can be guided or unguided, catering for all skill levels, and although you don’t get the wealth of options available in some apps, you can adjust instructor gender, session duration, and background noise. The three breathing exercises cover relaxation, focus, and invigoration. And the Sleep section offers guided breath exercises designed to help you unwind.

On iPad, the interface betrays the app’s iPhone origins and could do with optimization for the larger display. Other than that, Oak’s pleasing and effective – and won’t surprise you a few weeks in with a stressful demand for IAP.

Tasty

Tasty is a cookery app that wisely reasons modern-day cookbooks need to move beyond being digital equivalents of paper-based tomes. It achieves this by way of fast, filterable searches, and judicious use of video.

Rather than opening with a photo, your selected recipe instead initially shows the dish being made by way of a tightly edited video. Below that, you get an ingredients list (which can be exported), tips and step-by-step instructions.

Tap a button below the last of those and each step’s text and video loop is isolated – a great way, when cooking, to sanity-check you’re doing the right thing, and aren’t on the road to a culinary disaster.

Breathe+

Many of us are caught in high-stress environments for much of our lives, and electronic gadgets often do little to help. Apple has recognized this on Apple Watch, which offers a breathing visualization tool. But Breathe+ brings similar functionality to your iPad.

You define how long breaths in and out should take, and whether you want to hold your breath at any point during the cycle. You then let Breathe+ guide your breathing for a user-defined session length.

The visualization is reminiscent of a minimalist illustrator's take on a wave rising and falling on the screen, but you can also close your eyes and have the iPad vibrate for cues. For free, there are some ads, which aren't pretty, but don't distract too much. For $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99, you can be rid of them, along with adding themes and usage history stats.

Kitchen Stories

As you launch Kitchen Stories, you catch a glimpse of the app's mantra: "Anyone can cook". The problem is, most cooking apps (and indeed, traditional cookery books) make assumptions regarding people's abilities.

Faced with a list of steps on a stark white page, it's easy to get halfway through a recipe, look at the stodge in front of you, reason something must have gone terribly wrong, and order a takeaway.

Kitchen Stories offers firmer footing. You're first met with a wall of gorgeous photography. More importantly, the photographs don't stop.

Every step in a recipe is accompanied by a picture that shows how things should be at that point. Additionally, some recipes provide tutorial videos for potentially tricky skills and techniques. Fancy some Vietnamese pho, but not sure how to peel ginger, prepare a chilli or thinly slice meat? Kitchen Stories has you covered.

Beyond this, there's a shopping list, handy essentials guide, and some magazine-style articles to peruse. And while you don't get the sheer range of recipes found in some rival apps, the presentation more than makes up for that — especially on the iPad, which will likely find a new home in your own kitchen soon after Kitchen Stories is installed.

TaoMix 2

There's a tendency for relaxation aids to be noodly and dull, but TaoMix 2 bucks the trend. You get the usual sounds to aid relaxation (wind, rain, birds, water), but also an interface that nudges the app towards being a tool for creating a kind of ambient personal soundtrack.

The basics are dead simple: tap the + button, select a sound pack, and drag a sound to the canvas. You then manually position the circular cursor within the soundscape, or slowly flick so it lazily bounces around the screen, your various sounds then ebbing and flowing into the mix.

This makes TaoMix 2 more fun to play with than its many rivals. Of course, if you just want to shut the world out, that option exists too: load a soundscape you've previously created, set a timer, and use TaoMix 2 to help you nod off.

Should you want something other than what's found within the generous selection of built-in noises, packs are available for purchase (including whale sounds, 'Japanese garden' and orchestral strings); and if you fancy something entirely more custom, you can even import sounds of your own.

White Noise+

There are quite a few apps for creating ambient background noise, helping you to focus, relax, and even sleep. White Noise+ is perhaps the best we’ve seen – a really smartly designed mix of sound and interface design that is extremely intuitive yet thoroughly modern.

It works through you adding sounds to an on-screen grid. Those placed towards the right become more complex, and those towards the top are louder. Personalized mixes can be saved, or you can play several that are pre-loaded.

For free, you do get an ad across the bottom of the screen, only five sounds, and no access to timers and alarms. But even with such restrictions, White Noise+ is pretty great. Throw $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 at it for the extra features and noises, and it borders on exceptional.

7 Minute Workout

7 Minute Workout is designed to give you a complete fitness workout in just seven minutes. It’s far from alone on the App Store, but we like this take because it’s straightforward – and also properly free (rather than being riddled with IAP).

The exercise screens are basic, but bold. It’s always obvious where you are in a routine, and if you’re unsure about the next step, you can tap a video playback button to view a demonstration.

Beyond the exercises, the app enables you to track your weight and set the gap between exercises, which are regularly switched during the routine. The only downside is not being able to block specific exercises if, for example, you don’t have access to a chair, or cannot perform them due to accessibility reasons.

Epicurious

Epicurious is a massive recipe book for iPad. It provides access to over 35,000 recipes, and offers a magazine-like presentation. The entry screen is awash with new recipes with vibrant photography; you can quickly flick between that and dedicated pages for themed recipes and new videos.

The app’s search is excellent. You can select by meal type, and filter available recipes by selecting specific ingredients, cuisine types, and dietary issues (such as low-fat and wheat-free). Flicking back and forth between filters and results can irk, but the app at least does so quickly and efficiently.

The actual recipe pages are a touch basic – there’s no hand-holding like the step-by-step photos you get in Kitchen Stories. Still, if confident in your abilities, it’s a great app to broaden your culinary horizons.

The best free kids apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps, learning tools, and games for toddlers and children.

Tankee

Tankee lets kids watch other people playing and talking about video games. If you’re of a certain age, that might seem baffling, but it’s something kids really like to do.

Where Tankee differentiates itself is in curation: every video on the system has been watched by an actual human.This avoids issues found in certain other online video networks, where kids may suddenly find themselves viewing unsuitable fare.

Tankee also deals with another big concern: comments. It achieves this by omitting such functionality entirely, although some barebones ‘networking’ remains. Create an account and your kid can stash favorite videos for later and follow specific creators. If they particularly enjoy a show, they can madly hammer smiley stickers in real time to let everyone know.

Wonderbly Story Time Books

Wonderbly Story Time Books is an iPad take on personalized illustrated story books for children. The premise is the protagonist has forgotten their name, and must go on an adventure to collect it, one letter at a time.

The story is nicely presented, and the app deftly deals with multiple instances of the same letter by providing variations for each one. (In fact, this works to an entertaining degree – we tried using the name ‘Aaaaa’ and were presented with five non-repeating vignettes!)

Part of the point of the app is you’ll get to the end, and then buy a real copy of the actual book. But even if you resist those papery, spendy charms, the app’s a blast – and it even lets you store previous adventures, so none are ever lost.

Lego Creator Islands

Lego Creator Islands is for fans of the popular construction toy when there are no plastic bricks close at hand. It starts you off with a little island, on which you build a house. Construction is simple: tap piles of bricks and they magically combine into pieces of a finished Lego set, which you drag into place.

Rinse and repeat a few times and your kid will beam as they watch their island increasingly come alive, populated with Lego minifigs and bounding Lego animals, and dotted with buildings, trees and vehicles.

The experience is, admittedly, not that deep, and you can see most of what it has to offer in an hour or so. But it’s always fun to return to, and certainly beats treading on a Lego brick while barefoot.

Sago Mini Friends

Sago Mini Friends is a sweet-natured collection of adorable mini-games, ideal for young children. After selecting a character to play, you visit a neighborhood of colorful houses. Knock on a door and you’ll be invited inside for a playdate.

The activities are varied and smartly designed. There’s a birthday party, where gifts are gleefully unwrapped, and a birdhouse to fix by hammering in nails. Our favorite, though, is a cleverly conceived snack time that finds two friends sitting side-by-side. Feed one and the other looks a bit glum, which encourages the young player to learn to share.

Entirely lacking IAP and advertising, Sago Mini Friends is a no-brainer for any parent who wants a safe, free, fun, educational app for their youngster to spend a bit of quality time with.

LEGO AR-Studio

LEGO AR-Studio is the app we first thought of when Apple started banging on about augmented reality. After all, who wouldn’t want a bunch of virtual Lego bricks to play with, which could magically integrate with the real world?

Well, it turns out Lego wouldn’t, because that’s not what this app offers. Instead, you get a small selection of AR Lego kits, which you can mess about with, take videos of, and thereby try to trick your friends into wondering why their own Lego doesn’t zoom about the place on remote control.

It’s admittedly a bit shallow, and feels a touch proof-of-concept. But here’s hoping this is just the app equivalent of a Lego baseplate on which to build, rather than a completed set.

Zen Studio

According to the developer's blurb, Zen Studio is all about helping children to relax and focus, by providing a kind of finger-painting that can only exist in the digital realm. Frankly, we take issue with the 'children' bit, because Zen Studio has a welcoming and pleasing nature that should ensure it's a hit with every iPad user.

You start off with a grid of triangles and a column of colored paints. Tap a paint to choose your color and then tap individual triangles or drag across the grid to start drawing. Every gesture you make is accompanied by musical notes that play over an ambient background soundtrack.

Bar the atmosphere being knocked a touch by a loud squelch noise whenever a new paint tube is selected, the mix of drawing tool and musical instrument is intoxicating. When you're done, your picture can be squirted to the Photos app, ready for sharing with the world.

This is, however, a limited freebie in some ways. You get eight canvases, which can be blank or based on templates. If you want more, you can buy an IAP to unlock the premium version of the app. Still, for no outlay at all, you get a good few hours of chill-out noodly fun — more, if you're happy drawing over the same canvases again and again.

Doctor Who: Comic Creator

Doctor Who: Comic Creator does what you’d expect from its name. When you’re between seasons of the hit sci-fi show, you can satisfy yourself by fashioning custom adventures about everyone’s favorite regenerating time traveler, who goes everywhere and everywhen in a beaten-up old time machine.

Creating comics is akin to slapping down stickers – only you can move things around later. And you get a pleasingly diverse range of page layouts, along with a monster maker, so you can combine parts of the Doctor’s enemies into something suitably horrific.

The main downside is most foes lurk behind various IAPs – would it have killed the BBC to throw in a Cyberman for free? Sadly, there’s no way to use the app to get all timey-wimey and change people’s minds when the app was being made.

Lego Life

Lego Life is a social network for kids whose lives revolve around plastic bricks. Once you’re signed up, you explore feeds and follow themes, to become a better builder, or just see what’s current in the world of Lego.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a nod towards advertising of a kind, in new product videos being liberally sprinkled about. But mostly, this is an app about inspiration. You’re regularly offered building challenges and knowledge tests; during lazy days, you can slap stickers all over a virtual Lego kit, or build a mini-figure for your profile.

Given that it’ll mostly be kids using the app, it’s worth noting usernames are anonymized. You can’t type your own, and instead select from semi-random word lists. EmpressSensibleMotorbike, meet ElderSupersonicJelly!

Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby

Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby is a two-part game designed for children as young as six months old.

In Level 1, your youngling – now armed with a worryingly expensive piece of technology – can tilt and tap the screen to make shapes appear and bounce around. But Level 2 ramps things up considerably.

“Let’s put on a show,” chirps the app as the five shapes wiggle and jig about on the screen, lurking above a colorful keyboard. And you know what’s next: maddeningly jaunty earworms, augmented by a deliriously happy baby smacking the huge piano keys.

Your slow descent into madness will be worth it for the smile on their little face.

Toca Tailor Fairy Tales

Toca Tailor Fairy Tales is a dressing up app. You choose from a male or female customer, and then set about giving them a new and exciting outfit.

As with other Toca Boca fare, this is a tactile, immediate app. Tap a garment to adjust its type; drag and you’ll change its length. Accessories can be added from an expanding box, if you decide your appreciative on-screen ‘manakin’ needs a trendy hat.

The best bit, though, is the materials section. For each part of the garment, you can drag and drop materials onto it. This isn’t a question of merely recoloring either – you can pinch/rotate to make all kinds of crazy patterns, and even import photos or snap a texture using the iPad’s camera. Great stuff for tiny wannabe fashion designers.

The best free music and audio apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for listening to podcasts, making music or being a virtual DJ.

djay

djay once existed in various forms on iOS, but is now a free, universal app that invites budding DJs to pay for the level of features that they want.

If you’re not willing to splash out, there’s still plenty to enjoy. You get the full two-deck classic mode, featuring a pair of virtual record decks to spin, a crossfade mixer, scrolling audio waveforms, and a bunch of effects. The interface is intuitive and tactile, although you can delve into AI-driven auto-mixing when manual control seems like too much effort.

Paying subscription IAP unlocks a slew of extra features, including a four-deck pro view, video, MIDI, and high-end mixing. For jobbing DJs, that’s perhaps the only option; for bedroom deck-spinners, the free app’s more than enough – and rather generous, given its high quality. 

Beatwave

Beatwave makes it easy to create music. You select a voice and tap out notes on a grid. The grid can be set to various scales, ensuring the notes you use always sound good. Go deeper into the app and you can layer/arrange multiple loops, each of which can have a unique sound assigned.

The app looks great, with an explosion of color bursting from each note as the playhead hits it. This is a welcome hangover from the app’s previous incarnation as a simplified digital take on the Yamaha Tenori-on.

The more conventional redesign elsewhere robs Beatwave of some immediacy and playfulness regarding the play surface, although accessing all of its features is now a lot more coherent. Overall, it’s a good bet for beginners but also musicians looking for a fun sketchpad.

AudioKit Synth One Synthesizer

AudioKit Synth One Synthesizer is an iPad synth bursting at the seams with dials to twiddle, buttons to push, and all kinds of exciting noises that blast forth from your speakers.

Even if you’re not overly musically inclined, there’s fun to be had here by selecting presets - many of which use a built-in user-friendly sequencer, so you can fire off a melody by holding down a single key. There’s loads for musicians to delve into, including Audiobus and IAA support, customizable filters, and touchpad play surfaces.

It’s hugely impressive and the sort of thing you’d usually expect to set you back north of 30 bucks, so it’s all the more surprising that Synth One is entirely free from ads and IAP - and that will always be the case, given that it’s also an open-source project.

Novation Launchpad

Novation Launchpad is about remixing electronic music using a grid of loops. For the beginner, it’s a friendly, intuitive introduction to music-making. You load a genre and just tap away, safe in the knowledge everything will always sound great. You can even record live mixes and share them with friends.

There’s depth to Novation Launchpad as well – effects to apply, filters to experiment with, and the option to mix and match pad sounds. If you’re prepared to dip into your wallet, you can take things much further, importing your own audio files and working with a larger range of effects.

On iPad, you can buy all of these things – and a MIDI sync feature – for a one-off $14.99/£14.99/$AU22.99 IAP. But even if you stick to the free version, Novation Launchpad proves to be suitably noisy fun.

Auxy Music Studio

The thinking behind Auxy Music Studio is that music-making - both in the real world and software - has become too complicated. This app therefore strives to combine the immediacy of something like Novation Launchpad's loop triggers with a basic piano roll editor.

For each instrument, you choose between drums and decidedly electronic synths. You then compose loops of between one and four bars, tapping out notes on the piano roll's grid. Subsequent playback occurs on the overview screen by tapping loops to cue them up.

For those who want to go a bit further, the app includes arrangement functionality (for composing entire songs), along with Ableton Link and MIDI export support. Auxy's therefore worth a look for relative newcomers to making music and also pros after a no-nonsense scratchpad.

Figure

The iPad is the perfect mobile device for composing music, with its fairly large display and powerful innards. This has resulted in a range of involved and impressive music-creation tools, such as Korg Gadget. Sometimes, though, you yearn for something simpler for making some noise.

This is where Figure comes in. Within seconds, you can craft thumping dance loops, comprising drum, bass and lead parts. The sounds are great, being based on developer Propellerhead Software's much-loved Reason. They can be manipulated, too, so your exported loops sound truly unique.

Garageband

On an iPhone, music-making app GarageBand is mightily impressive, but on iPad, the extra space proves transformative. In being able to see more at any given time, your experience is more efficient and enjoyable, whether you’re a beginner tapping the grid view to trigger loops, a live musician tweaking a synth on stage, or a recording artist delving into audio waveforms and MIDI data.

Apple’s app also cleverly appeals to all. Newcomers can work with loops, automated drummers, and piano strips for always staying in key. Pros get seriously impressive track controls with configurable effects, multi-take recording, and Audio Unit support for bringing favorite synths directly into GarageBand.

If you don’t feel terribly creative sitting in front of a PC, GarageBand’s the perfect way to unleash your Grammy-winning songwriter in waiting.

Groovebox

Groovebox is a really clever app for anyone interested in making electronic music. The smartest bit is in the app being approachable for newcomers, yet offering power and features for seasoned noise makers.

The basics involve selecting a track type (drums, bass, or synth), and then a sound, whereupon Groovebox starts playing a loop. If you’re not happy with what you hear, tap the dice and Groovebox will spit out a different pattern.

Most apps of this ilk are samples-based, and so grind to a juddering halt at this point. But Groovebox goes further, offering a keyboard for live play, and a piano roll grid for tweaking a loop’s notes – or removing them all to add your own. You can also build up entire tracks using a ‘song sections’ feature.

The only major limitation of the free version is many advanced instrument controls sit behind IAP. Still, for no outlay, Groovebox offers plenty of head-nodding entertainment.

Music Memos

It’s fair to say that Music Memos is primarily designed for the iPhone, enabling musicians to quickly capture a song idea, which can later be expanded on. But if you’re in a studio – home or otherwise – strumming away on a guitar, and with an iPad nearby, the app can help you compose your next chart-troubler on a much more user-friendly screen size.

You kick things off by tapping a circle in the middle of the screen, whereupon Music Memos starts recording. Tap again to stop. The app then attempts – with some degree of success – to transcribe the chords played, and enables you to overlay automated bass and drums.

It’s when tapping the audio waveform in the recordings list that the iPad’s value becomes clear – you get the whole screen to see your in-progress song, which is great for playing along with or when considering further tweaks. And with iCloud sync, you can always record on iPhone and peruse later on iPad.

Overcast

Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.

The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.

Pacemaker

There are quite a few DJ apps for iPad, but they mostly tend to make the assumption you’re a master of the decks already. With its bright colors, straightforward nature, and lack of a price tag, Pacemaker feels rather more approachable to the typical wannabe deck spinner.

You can mess about with demo tracks or load tunes from your iPhone and Spotify. Then it’s a case of messing around with virtual decks, sliders and buttons to crossfade, beat-match, and add effects. If you hit on something especially great, record your live performance and share it with your friends.

It’s worth noting the app does have IAP lurking, but that’s really only for people properly bitten by the bug. Splash out and you can grab new effects or a premium subscription for precision mixing. For free, though, there’s plenty to enjoy.

Seaquence

There are two ways to approach Seaquence, where the first is as a really bizarre interactive album. Select a track and a bunch of little creatures swim about on the screen, which results in spatialized sound mixes. (Stick some headphones on to hear how their movements affect the placement of sounds being played.) You can manually fling the creatures about, or tap-hold to remove them.

But Seaquence also enables you to edit. Add a new creature and it’ll instantly change the track. Tap a creature and you can delve into a scale editor, sound designer, and a sequencer for adjusting the notes of the current loop.

A $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 IAP opens up a bunch of pro features; but for free, Seaquence is entertaining whether you’re just listening and occasionally bothering the digital sea life, or figuring out how to construct your own tunes.

Beatwave

Beatwave is a grid synthesizer/sound toy, loosely based on Yamaha’s Tenori-on. This means you tap notes by turning on the grid’s lights. When the endlessly looping playhead collides with one, you get an explosion of color, and a sound plays.

Notes towards the top of the grid are higher, and those at the bottom are lower. Some instruments use the bottom two rows for drum sounds. Most importantly, though, Beatwave is designed to always make output listenable.

It’s actually quite difficult to create anything horribly discordant, short of filling every square on the grid.

For those who fancy more depth, the app offers plenty of alternate sounds, automated morphing, and the ability to save patterns to the sidebar, which you switch between with a tap. So it’s fun whether writing songs or just playing with sound and color.

The best free office and writing apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for writing, email, spreadsheets, presentations and calculations.

Documents by Readdle

Documents by Readdle has quite a lot of overlap with Apple’s Files, in the sense it’s designed as a place to stash, organize, and preview documents. However, it’s worth grabbing for its wealth of features.

The app can import from a range of cloud services, but also local shared network drives, so if you want to get at documents on a Mac or PC, this is the cheapest way to do so. Imports can be arranged and archived as ZIP files, media can be previewed, and PDFs can be annotated.

Documents also integrates with Files, thereby providing widespread system-level access to whatever you’ve stored. This and the app itself can sit behind Face ID/Touch ID, thereby turning it into an off-limits space for more secure files. In all, for free, it’s a no-brainer install.

Archives

Archives largely deals with one of the major blind spots in iOS – an inability to ably deal with archives. Apple’s Files app can let you peek inside of ZIPs, but the process isn’t optimal; Archives is a lot better.

The app supports a wide range of formats, from the likes of ZIP and RAR through to esoteric examples like DiskDoubler and BIN. Open an archive and you can view what’s inside of it without extracting anything. With text files, audio, images, office documents and the like, previews are available in-app, along with the means to peruse advanced file info.

Individual items can be emailed, saved, or opened in another app. There’s sadly no means to view galleries of thumbnails, or to send a folder of items onward at once; nonetheless, this is a very useful freebie.

LastPass

LastPass in some ways echoes iCloud Keychain, in giving you a central repository for storing passwords and payment details. You might therefore wonder what the point is in using such a system.

First and foremost, LastPass is fully cross-platform, so if you also work with Windows and Android, it means you can take your passwords with you everywhere, securely. But there are other advantages, such as secure notes and form fill options, all of which seamlessly integrate with devices running iOS 12 or later.

There is a premium tier; US$24/£23/AU$38 per year adds sharing options, 1GB of encrypted file storage, and premium multi-factor authentication. For most users, though, the extremely generous free version should be enough.

Drafts 5

Drafts 5 describes itself as the place where text starts. That might be a lofty claim on the iPad, given that Apple’s tablet has plenty of top-notch text editors, but Drafts has some pretty amazing tools to help you capture ideas faster and work on lengthy texts.

The main writing view gives you a live word count, and a custom keyboard row for quickly getting at useful formatting options and actions. Texts can be tagged for grouping and retrieval purposes, and the app includes a large range of actions for processing and exporting missives.

If you want to make your own custom actions you’re into subscription IAP territory, which also gives you custom workspaces, superior share extension options, URL automation, and themes. But even in its free incarnation, Drafts is extremely generous and a first-rate install.

Scanbot

Scanbot is a scanner with a sense of humor. No, you read that right – it starts off urging you to try a tutorial ‘challenge mode’. In AR, you chase documents around the floor, trying to scan them as quickly as possible.

All this has a point: teaching you how to best to position your iPad when scanning, and to showcase how streamlined Scanbot makes the process. Once the scan’s been done, you can adjust crop and contrast levels, append more pages, and upload the end result to a cloud service of your choice.

The app includes page size settings and integrates with iOS’s Shortcuts app. And if you upgrade to the pro version, you gain OCR text recognition, one-tap actions extraction for things like triggering phone calls, and robust document editing. But even if you stick with the free version, Scanbot’s an excellent choice.

Paper by FiftyThree

Paper by FiftyThree originally invited you to sketch in virtual journals, but then dispensed with sketchbooks for a board of cards you could rearrange. This latest take tries to merge the two approaches.

The best bit of Paper – the actual sketching tools – remains intact. You scribble with pens, splash watercolors on the canvas, and draw geometric shapes that neatly retain the character of your stroke.

Beyond that, the app stumbles. Text appears as notes stuck over your work when browsing – an ugly effect – and only one image can be imported to each sketch, which you can either trace over or use as a background.

Still, despite its flaws, this is still an app worth installing, simply because it feels really great to use.

Adobe Acrobat Reader

Adobe Acrobat Reader is a popular app on the desktop for viewing, annotating and signing PDFs. On iPad… well, it’s much the same, albeit with a reliance on cloud storage, and a nicely-designed touchscreen interface.

On importing a PDF from another app, Dropbox, or iCloud Drive, you can rearrange its pages, add a signature, slather the thing in comments, and highlight bits of text. If your document arrived from Adobe Scan, you can search the text, and select/copy some to paste elsewhere. Annoyingly, copying must be done manually – there’s no ‘grab all text’ option.

In the main, though, this is a friendly, usable app, and you get the bulk of its functionality for free, including the means to share edited PDFs with other apps. (IAP is mostly for converting PDFs to other formats for editing in the likes of Microsoft Word.)

Bear

A halfway house between full-fledged writing tool and capable note-taker, Bear provides a beautiful environment for tapping out words on an iPad.

The sidebar links to notes you’ve grouped by hashtag. Next to that, a notes list enables you to scroll through (or search) everything you’ve written, or notes matching a specific tag. The main workspace – which can be made full-screen – marries sleek minimalism with additional smarts: subtle Markdown syntax next to headings; automated to-do checkboxes when using certain characters; image integration.

There’s not enough here for pro writers – they’d need on-screen word counts, customizable note column ordering, and flexibility regarding notes nesting. Also, for iCloud sync, you must buy a $1.49/£1.49/AU$1.99 monthly subscription. But as a free, minimal note-taker for a single device, Bear more than fits the bill.

Dropbox

Dropbox is perhaps the most famous of cloud storage providers. For free, you get 2GB of space for your documents and photos – and more if you pay to upgrade.

In the early days of iPad, Apple wanted to hide the file system away, and Dropbox – which was quickly supported by a great many apps – became a kind of surrogate. And even in these days of iCloud Drive, it’s very much worth installing.

The main Dropbox app is smart and straightforward, with speedy previews, the means to save content offline, passcode lock functionality, and optional automated backup of your iPad photos.

As of iOS 11, Dropbox can integrate directly into the Files app, too. Given Dropbox’s cross-device and cross-platform nature, this makes it worth grabbing even if you only use it rarely. Chances are, though, you’ll use it a whole lot more often.

There are other decent cloud storage apps too, such as Google Drive, but even if you already have that it’s worth grabbing Dropbox for a little extra space.

Gmail

Gmail brings Google’s email service to your iPad. Of course, Apple’s own Mail app does this to some extent – and supports sending and receiving from Gmail addresses. But the Gmail app provides a fuller experience.

One of the most vital is the ability to undo a send. You have to be quick, but it’s hugely useful to stop something being sent if you realize you’ve made an error, or forgotten to add an attachment.

Elsewhere, the app’s also in tune with Google’s way of doing things, and so you get profile pictures of people you’re conversing with, integration with Google Calendar, and excellent search capabilities.

Another possible reason to install: as a means to keep business and leisure fully separate, if you use Apple’s Mail for work, and Gmail for everything else.

LiquidText

There are loads of iPad apps for reading and annotating PDFs, but LiquidText is different. Rather than purely aping paper, the developers have thought about the advantages of working with virtual documents.

So while you still get a typical page view, you can pinch to collapse passages you're not interested in and also compare those that aren't adjacent.

There's a 'focus' view that shows only annotated sections, and you can even select chunks of text and drag them to the sidebar. Tap one of those cut-outs at a later point and its location will instantly be displayed in the main text. Smartly, you can save any document in the app's native format, export it as a PDF with comments, or share just the notes as an RTF.

Numbers

With Numbers, Apple managed to do something with spreadsheets that had eluded Microsoft in decades of Excel development: they became pleasant (even fun) to work with.

Instead of forcing workmanlike grids of data on you, Numbers has you think in a more presentation-oriented fashion. Although you can still create tables for totting up figures, you’re also encouraged to be creative and reader-friendly regarding layout, incorporating graphs, imagery, and text. On iPad, it’s all tap - and finger - friendly, too.

With broad feature-parity with the Mac version, iCloud sync, and export to Excel format, Numbers should also fit neatly into most people’s workflow.

And although updates robbed the app of some friendliness (whoever removed the date picker needs a stern talking to), it still excels in that department, from nicely designed templates through to the handy action menu, ensuring common tasks are only ever a tap away.

PCalc Lite

PCalc Lite's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us. For anyone who wants a traditional calculator, it's pretty much ideal. The big buttons beg to be tapped, and the interface can be tweaked to your liking, by way of bolder and larger key text, alternate display digits, and stilling animation.

Beyond basic sums, PCalc Lite adds some conversions, which are categorised but also searchable. If you're hankering for more, IAP lets you bolt on a number of extras from the paid version of PCalc, such as additional themes, dozens more conversions, alternate calculator layouts, a virtual paper tape, and options for programmers and power users.

The best free photo and video editing apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for editing photos, working with filters, adding text to photos and editing video.

sok-edit

sok-edit is a collage app with a decidedly old-school and scrappy outlook. Whereas the likes of (the admittedly excellent) Pic Collage are all about clean lines and grids, sok-edit invites you to roughly cut out bits of photos and stick them to other photos.

It’s a fun app, with a gleefully tactile interface packed full of chunky buttons. Items can quickly be cut, flipped, and cloned, sound effects playing as you do so. Individual elements can be further reworked, rotated, and resized, and you can then slap text all over everything.

The free version limits you to three images/text layers, although you can view an ad for more. Alternatively, the pro IAP is a mere $0.99/99p/AU$1.49 – ideal if you go a bit collage crazy.

Visionist

Visionist echoes Prisma in having you load a photo that’s then transformed into something resembling a painting. However, you get more control in this app.

There are 10 free styles to choose from (a one-off $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP unlocks 60 more), but Visionist doesn’t stop the second you select one. Along with adjusting the effect’s strength, you can define how abstract it is, adjust the manner in which it interacts with the original image, and mix styles together.

Some labels on the styles would be useful, not least those based on real-world artists; also, the end results do look rather digital in nature, rather than like they’ve appeared from the hands of an actual painter. But the important thing is they’re arresting, adding interest to even the most mundane of snaps.

Infltr

Infltr stands for ‘infinite filters’. The app isn’t quite packed with endless options (there are ‘only’ around seven million), but feels limitless as you drag a finger across a photo and watch it change.

But this is only one tool packed into a versatile, usable editor. You can crop, make adjustments to temperature and hue, fix perspective, mess around with blurs, and more.

Edits are non-destructive, so you can always update or remove a setting. You can save up to three favorites for one-tap application as well.

That limitation goes away if you pay for the subscription IAP - which also gives you HD export and additional tools, including color shift and selective HSL - but as a freebie, Infltr ably does the business. A no-brainer download for iPad users keen on fixing their snaps.

Enlight Pixaloop

Enlight Pixaloop wants photographs to get animated – in a literal sense. Load one up and you can draw paths to denote the direction of your flowing, looping animation, and use anchors and masks to make everything else stay put. The effect is like a cinemagraph, but you only need a single still, rather than a sequence of shots or a video.

On iPad, Pixaloop benefits from the larger screen, and the accuracy an Apple Pencil affords. You can create some seriously intricate and eye-dazzling effects, even from fairly mundane source material.

If you’re short on snaps, the app enables you to grab something from Pixabay. And when you’re done, you can export your work to video (although, alas, not animated GIF). It’s smart, sleek, and even though optional IAPs lurk, offers plenty of functionality for zero outlay.

Pic Collage

Pic Collage is a powerful app for creating photo collages. You can start with a freeform canvas or a card template, but the pre-defined grids are better. Select some photos and a grid, and the app will automatically arrange everything.

Many apps stop there, but Pic Collage goes much further. You can tweak the frames, and perform adjustments on individual images. Movement can be added through importing up to three videos and later exporting your creation as a GIF. And if you’re feeling arty, you can scribble all over your grid-based masterpiece.

Pic Collage hits that sweet spot of unlocking creativity in an immediate, usable manner. You get results fast. The only real negative is exports have a watermark, but if that bugs you, they can be gone forever with a one-off US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP.

Plotaverse

Plotaverse is an image editor and social network very much of the opinion that photographs are a bit rubbish unless they move.

The meat of the app is Plotagraph+, which provides tools for animating your pics. The process is simple: mask parts you want to remain static, and then drag arrows to denote movement. Plotagraph+ then does its thing, resulting in an endlessly looping animation.

Naturally, there are limitations. The system tends to work well with flowing subjects (such as water or clouds) and geometric patterns. Still, you can create amazing videos with a minimum of effort.

The social networking bit is less impressive, as are cheesy effects overlays (free and paid) that are available for download. But in bringing a touch of Harry Potter to even the most mundane of snaps, Plotaverse feels like a little piece of magic on your iPad.

Prisma

Prisma invites you to be an artist – albeit an incredibly lazy artist who’s not against a touch of stylistic plagiarism. There’s no actual drawing or painting here – you instead load a photo (or take one using the app) and tap an effect to apply it. This effect can be strengthened or weakened by swiping across the canvas.

Rather than aping cameras and film types, Prisma is interested in traditional art – everything from classical to manga is fair game. You’ll need an internet connection to download and apply effects, but it doesn’t take long and you can remove any duds if your library starts to become cluttered.

You’re not going to turn that shot of your lunch into a forgotten Kandinsky with Prisma, but the app is capable of gorgeous painterly results. High-res output is locked behind an $1.99/£1.79/AU$2.99 monthly subscription, but SD output is fine for posting online.

Clips

Clips is a video editor designed for people who don’t want to spend a great deal of time editing – or even shooting. Unlike Apple’s iMovie, Clips is intended for impulsive shoots, and super-fast clip arrangement – a video editor for the social media generation.

On iPad, you might question its relevance. After all, you’re not going to whip out an iPad Pro to quickly shoot someone larking about on a skateboard. But the iPad’s larger screen is superb for editing, making it easy to rearrange clips on the timeline and get a proper eye for the many included filters.

There’s more lurking here too, including automatic animated subtitles, posters with customizable text and iCloud sync. Clips won’t make you a Hollywood legend, but it might just propel you towards Instagram stardom.

Photoshop Fix

It's become apparent that Adobe - creators of photography and graphic design powerhouses Photoshop and Illustrator - don't see mobile devices as suitable for full projects. However, the company's been hard at work on a range of satellite apps, of which Photoshop Fix is perhaps the most impressive.

Built on Photoshop technology, this retouching tool boasts a number of high-end features for making considered edits to photographs. The Liquify tool in particular is terrific, enabling you to mangle images like clay, or more subtly adjust facial features using bespoke tools for manipulating mouths and eyes.

Elsewhere, you can smooth, heal, color and defocus a photo to your heart's content, before sending it to Photoshop on the desktop for further work, or flattening it for export to your Camera Roll. It's particularly good when used with the Apple Pencil (still a funny name) and the iPad Pro, such is the power and speed of that device and input method.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Making apps approachable is a good thing on mobile, but sometimes photo editors go a bit far, flinging all kinds of detritus into the mix (stickers; gaudy frames; a million indistinguishable filters).

With Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you instead get a more sedate and distinctly professional offering – although one that nonetheless retains plenty of immediacy.

The basic toolset includes cropping, rotation, a bunch of measured and genuinely useful presets, and an editor for adjusting tones, vignettes, colors and lens issues. Edits aren’t burned in and so you can experiment and revert as you wish. When you’re done, you can send the result to your Camera Roll.

If you’re an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, you also get DNG support, and selective adjustments. But even as a pure freebie, Lightroom’s a must-have for any iPad owner interested in improving their photographs.

Little Moments

There are loads of apps for making basic edits to photos and slapping on some words, but Little Moments stands out primarily through being rather jolly (if a little twee at times) and being extremely easy to use.

Load in a pic (or use the camera to shoot a new one), and you can quickly add a filter, adjust things like saturation and contrast, overlay some text boxes, and get creative with quotes and stickers.

Weirdly, the last two of those things are pixelated when browsing through the app, but look just fine when added (and sadly many of the categories also sit behind in-app purchases).

But everything else about Little Moments is a joy, from the non-destructive adjustments (unless you select a new filter, whereupon everything resets) to the friendly, intuitive interface.

MuseCam

The App Store's awash with alternate cameras with editing smarts, but MuseCam warrants a place on your iPad's home screen nonetheless. As a camera, it's fine, with an on-screen grid and plenty of manual settings. But on Apple's tablet, it's in editing that MuseCam excels.

Load a photo and you can apply a film-inspired filter preset (based on insight from pro photographers), or fiddle around with tone curves, color tools, and other adjustment settings.

The interface is bold, efficient, and usable, making it accessible to relative newcomers; but there's also enough depth here to please those wanting a bit more control, including the option to save tweaks as custom presets.

IAP comes in the form of additional filters, but what you get for free is generous and of a very high quality, making MuseCam a no-brainer download.

Photofy

Although Photofy includes a decent range of tools for performing typical edits on photos - including adjustments, cropping, saturation, and the like - this app is more interested in helping you get properly creative.

Within the photo editing tools are options for adding in-vogue blurs and producing collages; and in 'Text & Overlays', you'll find a wealth of options for slapping all kinds of artwork and text on top of your photographic masterpieces.

The interface works well through bold, tappable buttons and chunky sliders (although it takes a while to realise the pane containing the latter can be scrolled). And although some filters and stickers require IAP to unlock, there's loads available here entirely for free. (Also, Photofy rather pleasingly gives you alternatives for its watermark, if you don't want to pay to remove it, but aren't too keen on the default. Nice.)

Quik

Formerly known as Replay, Quik is a video editor primarily designed for people who can't be bothered doing the editing bit. You select photos and videos, pick a theme, and sit back as Quik pieces together a masterpiece that can subsequently be saved and shared.

For tinkerers, there are styles and settings to tweak. Post-Replay, the app offers its 28 varied styles for free, and you can delve into the edit itself, trimming clips, reordering media, adjusting focal points, and adding titles.

Alternatively, the really lazy can do nothing at all and still get results - every week, Quik will serve up highlights videos, enabling you to relive favorite moments. These videos are quite random in nature, but are nonetheless often a nice surprise. Still, anyone willing to put in the slightest additional effort will find Quik rewards any minutes invested many times over.

Snapseed

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image. You get all the basics — cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.

The best free productivity apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for being more productive with cloud storage, timers, iPad keyboards, automation and more.

Copied

Copied is a ‘shelf’ app – a means of saving snippets so you can use them later. This is advantageous over the iOS clipboard, which only offers a single slot.

Text, images, and web page links can be sent to Copied from the clipboard or Share sheet, and the app is also drag-and-drop aware. In Split View or Slide Over, Copied can be used alongside other apps while researching and writing. Items within Copied can be formatted prior to pasting them elsewhere, too (to extract a web page photo’s source URL rather than the image itself, for example).

Some features sit behind a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP, notably clip organization (lists/rearrangement) and sync, but even in its free  version, Copied is worth a download if you spend time copying words and images between iPad apps.

Speed Test SpeedSmart Internet

Speed Test SpeedSmart Internet might have a name that appears to have sprung forth from an annual meeting of search-engine optimization experts, but the utility itself proves a useful install on your iPad. Prod a button and it checks your internet speed, providing readings on latency (response time), download speed, and upload speed.

These tests don’t necessarily show the full speed your router is getting, but if you’re having connectivity issues over a period of time, SpeedSmart can be a useful way of logging results.

Not only do you get a full history, but also a handy details pane that shows your location, offers extended information about each test, and lets you add notes. All good stuff to send your internet service provider’s way.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts is Apple’s revamp of automation utility Workflow. Its main goal is to save you time by performing complex tasks with simple interactions (such as a button tap), rather than going through a list of steps manually in multiple apps and websites.

There are two ways to approach Shortcuts. The first is to delve into the gallery’s dozens of premade actions. These include everything from calculating tips to saving documents as PDFs. Everything you download can be experimented with, or you can start from scratch and construct your own workflows in the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.

This proves particularly effective on the iPad’s larger display, which gives you plenty of room to work. And this latest revamp makes workflows even easier to access, because you can trigger them using Siri voice commands.

Cheatsheet Widget

Cheatsheet Widget is a notes app for all those little things that you need to remember – but never do. Its items are designed to be quick, glanceable fare (like phone numbers, codes and combinations and a few words) and are made easier to spot by twinning them with icons.

Your list is created in the Cheatsheet Widget app, but the list can also be displayed as a Today view widget. Items within the widget can be deleted, or their content copied to the clipboard – ideal for things like open network passwords.

For free, the widget will display four items from your list, and you can opt to always place new ones at the top. As of iOS 12, there’s a dark mode; and if you splash out on the one-off IAP, you also get iCloud cross-device sync, a Cheatsheet Widget keyboard, and no ads.

Bundler

Bundler is a boon to anyone who regularly finds themselves having to collect a selection of files that then need to be sent elsewhere – a common task in many kinds of workplace.

Documents are added to ‘bundles’ using the Share sheet. In any compatible app, you share selected documents (or the current one) to Bundler and choose which bundle to place them in (or make a new one). On returning to Bundler, these documents can then be previewed and renamed. (In the latter case, ensuring your files have suffixes – JPG, TXT, and so on – is a good bet, or they aren’t always included on export.)

Sharing a bundle sends it to a location or app of your choosing as a ZIP archive. The process is sleek and simple, and the dual-pane view on iPad makes things even easier when you’re juggling a large number of files and bundles.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is a browser designed to make the internet less creepy, preventing websites following you around the web. It blocks every hidden tracker it can find, uses the privacy-oriented DuckDuckGo for search, and rates websites you visit in terms of how much they care about your privacy.

It’s a combination of educational aid and web browser, and the latter bit isn’t half bad. It’’s a bit stripped-back compared to Safari, but you can still bookmark sites, open pages in tabs, and share content with other people. When you’re done, you can nuke your session’s search history with two taps.

Even if it doesn’t become your primary browser, DuckDuckGo is worth installing. It’s ideal for browsing sensitive data such as financial and medical records, safe in the knowledge you’re not being tracked by nefarious scripts.

Evernote

In a sense Evernote is an online back-up for fleeting thoughts and ideas. You use it to save whatever comes to mind — text documents and snippets, notes, images, web clips, and even audio. These can then be accessed from a huge number of devices. (We suspect any day now, Evernote will unveil its ZX Spectrum app.)

The app itself could be friendlier, and there's a tendency towards clutter. But navigation of your stored bits and pieces is simple enough, and the sheer ubiquity and reliability of Evernote makes it worthy of investigation and a place on your Home screen.

Firefox Focus

The web’s pretty great, apart from the bits that aren’t. And those bits are the manner in which your journey online is monitored by countless trackers. They look into what you’re viewing and where you’re going, aiming to serve up targeted ads. Beyond privacy issues, these trackers can slow down web pages and even crash browsers.

Enter: Firefox Focus. The app itself is a brutally stripped-back, privacy-oriented browser. You go online, tracker-free, do whatever you want, and then stab Erase to delete your session. Which probably sounds ideal for nefarious purposes, but this is mostly great for basic efficiency, and also handy if someone wants to quickly get online using your iPad but not leave their accounts live when handing your device back.

Beyond this, Firefox Focus can also integrate with Safari, blocking trackers and web fonts from that browser and, potentially, increasing its performance.

MultiTimer

Given the acres of space you get on an iPad display, it’s a bit odd that Apple’s own clock only provides a single timer. Fortunately, MultiTimer – as its name suggests – goes somewhat further by offering multiple options.

In fact, depending on the layout you choose, you can have twelve timers all ticking away at once. Each one of them can have its own icon, color and default time assigned, for those people who need to simultaneously exercise, boil eggs, and cook a turkey.

Smartly, the app works in portrait or landscape, and if you want a timer you can see clearly across the room, a single button press zooms it to fill almost the entire screen.

Should you want a bit more flexibility by way of multiple or custom workspaces, there’s a single IAP to unlock those features.

Slack

We're not sure whether Slack is an amazing aid to productivity or some kind of time vampire. Probably a bit of both. What we do know is that the real-time messaging system is excellent in a work environment for chatting with colleagues (publicly and privately), sharing and previewing files, and organising discussions by topic.

There's smart integration with online services, and support for both the iPad Pro and the iPad's Split View function.

Note that although Slack is clearly designed with businesses in mind, it also works perfectly well as a means of communicating with friends if you don't fancy lobbing all your worldly wisdom into Facebook's maw.

Thoughts

There are plenty of apps for doodling on your iPad, but Thoughts differentiates itself by going for a kind of razor-sharp minimalism that’s vanishingly rare these days.

On creating a new document, you can draw with a finger, and resize the canvas with a pinch. There’s also an eraser, a small palette to change colors, an interesting night mode (which flips black to white) and that’s pretty much it.

It sounds reductive, but in reality frees you up. You’re not thinking about line thicknesses and the like – you’re just drawing. Export is a little disappointing – it would be good if you could have a vector format rather than a fairly low-res bitmap – but otherwise Thoughts is a nicely simple sketching tool for iPad.

TunnelBear

VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) are becoming very popular, due to issues people increasingly face when browsing the web. A VPN can be used to circumvent region-blocking/censorship and security issues on public Wi-Fi. Such services can baffle people who aren't technically adept, but TunnelBear is all about the friendlier side of VPNs. With bears.

After installing the app and profile, you'll have 500 MB of data per month to play with. That said, TunnelBear’s exclusive TechRadar plan offers a far more generous 5GB, 10 times the amount you get if you sign elsewhere.

Tunnelling to a specific location is simply a case of tapping it on the map and waiting a few seconds for the bear to pop out of the ground.

Tweet about the product and you'll get an extra free GB. Alternatively, monthly and annual paid plans exist for heavier data users.

The best free travel and weather apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for planning a holiday, currency conversion, weather forecasts and mapping.

Today Weather

Today Weather is weather forecasting aimed at iPad owners with an eye for style. Launch the app and it displays a photo to represent the current weather in your location. Below that, you’ll see a brief overview of current conditions. Scroll and you get an extended forecast and further details (including rainfall, air quality and wind speed), all rendered in almost painfully cool neon tones atop a dark background.

If the photo’s a bit much, you can get rid of it. Either way, this is a great weather app for a docked iPad, and even the sole ad can easily enough be scrolled off-screen. Neatly, there’s also something for when forecasts don’t quite gel with your own observations: if you don’t get on with Today Weather’s data source, you can switch it for Dark Sky, Accuweather.com, or YR.no.

Google Earth

Google Earth is about exploring our planet. Search for somewhere specific and the app swoops and dives to its target. Important landmarks are rendered in 3D that’s surprisingly effective – if you don’t zoom in too far.

This is an entertaining, tactile app that encourages investigation. You can drag and spin the screen, and flick through cards that point towards local landmarks. Fancy looking at something new? Hit the random button, or tap on the Voyager icon for stories based around anything from UNESCO World Heritage Sights to trekking about Kennedy Space Center.

The app is effortless to use, and the iPad’s large screen enables you to more fully breathe in the sights; the result is armchair tourism that’s far more effective than what you’d get even on the largest of iPhones.

Google Maps

Google Maps is an app that might seem an odd fit for an iPad, but we’d argue it’s an essential install. First and foremost, it’s much better than Apple’s Maps for figuring out journeys: Google Maps can more easily find points of interest, and ably deals with public transport information.

Local areas can be explored in terms of amenities (food, drink, and sometimes entertainment), and in a more direct sense, with the road-level Street View. The latter is a great way to familiarize yourself with a place before you visit.

If you always have your iPad on you, Google Maps can save maps for offline use as well, so you don’t even need an internet connection to use it. Alternatively, sign up for a Google account, and the searches you make will be synced with the app on your iPhone.

Momondo

There are two things a good flight comparison apps needs to be: easy to use, and useful results. Broadly speaking, Momondo ably does the job in both cases.

Looking for flights is simple; the app allows a pleasing amount of vagueness regarding locations (including regions with multiple airports, such as ‘London’, or even entire countries, such as ‘New Zealand’), and it’ll happily enable you to search for singles, returns, or multi-city jaunts.

As search results gradually load in, the app points you to the cheapest and quickest options, along with what it considers ‘best’ when taking into account price, time and convenience. For some routes, a calendar graph lets you check nearby dates to see if you can snag a bargain.

Additional filters are available to further refine your results, and you can create an account to save favorites and receive fare alerts - plus hotel listing can be added in too, should you want a more comprehensive.

Townske

Townske seems to bill itself as an app akin to Foursquare – a place to find the best local cafes, restaurants, and sights in major cities. But really it’s more of a place where photo-bloggers can publish their unique take on amazing locations, thereby providing you with gorgeous photos and succinct chunks of writing to devour.

You can jump right into the main feed, or focus on a specific city. You then tap on a photo to open an individual story. Every one we tried was rich in superb imagery, with just enough text to add meaningful context without interrupting the flow of the visuals.

Neatly, you can tap a map icon to see where the various photos were all taken; and if you sign up for an account, favorite stories or individual images can be bookmarked for later. But even if you simply treat Townske as a regularly-updated lean-back digital take on a newspaper travel supplement, you can’t really go wrong.

Weather Underground

With a native weather app bafflingly absent from iPad, you need to venture to the App Store to get anything beyond the basic daily overview Notification Center provides. Weather Underground is the best freebie on the platform, offering a customizable view to satisfy even the most ardent weather geeks.

Current conditions are shown at the top, outlining the temperature, precipitation likelihood, and a local map. But scroll and you can delve into detailed forecasts, dew point readings, sunrise and sunset times, videos, webcams, health data and web links. The bulk of the tiles can be disabled if there are some you don't use, and most can be reordered to suit.

Although not making the best use of iPad in landscape, the extra screen space afforded by Apple's tablet makes the Weather Underground experience a little more usable than on iPhone, enabling faster access to tiles. And for free, it's a top-notch app, although you can also fling $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 at it annually if you want rid of the unobtrusive ads.

XE Currency

XE Currency is a currency converter that’s far from the prettiest of its kind – but it is useful and has all the right features.

Initially, it lists a few currencies, with the base one at the top. Tap an item in the list to select it as the new base currency; you can also adjust the base figure – tap on the number, and then enter something new in the calculator. The list of currencies can be changed at any point, and an item’s position adjusted by tap-holding and dragging it.

Beyond that, you can analyze rates, by punching in an alternate exchange rate, view graphs that outline rates for a pair of currencies over the past decade, and sign up to free rate alerts, which notify you when specific points are hit.

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Your printer: it's a vulnerable, connected device

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 03:00 AM PST

The end of 2018 saw a rash of cyberattacks mounted by way of networked printers. In one notable incident, as reported by Kaspersky, a hacker targeted 50,000 printers and caused them to print a message supporting a YouTuber named PewDiePie.

 According to Kaspersky, the hacker had utilized Shodan, a search engine for devices, and found no fewer than 800,000 vulnerable printers from which to choose. 

This story, and many others like it, should alarm anyone tasked with cyber security duties. The ubiquitous printer can be a dangerous, overlooked attack surface.

Why networked printers are vulnerable to hackers

Why do networked printers create risk exposure? Most of us think of printers as peripheral devices that attach to our computers. Even as printers have grown vastly more sophisticated and connected, we tend not to think of them as connected devices, which is what they are. Even the IT department may fall into this complacency, focusing instead on more obvious security work like patching employee PC’s or monitoring BYOD smartphones.

A networked printer is an often underestimated point of vulnerability. Unlike earlier printers, which only connected to computers directly through a USB port, most of today’s printers are network enabled. A printer is simply another connected device. You send documents to print over Ethernet or Wi-Fi.  

Like any other connected device, the printer is accessible to anyone with access to the internal network. Often, it is also acccessible to anyone on the internet. This arrangement is common because people may want to look up and print web pages directly from the printer, scan and email documents from the printer or use the device to send or receive faxes. These kind of use cases require the printer to publish itself on the internet. Even if the printer connection is limited to the internal home or organization network,  it can be accessed externally from the internet if the internal network is not set and secured properly. Thus, a network enabled printer can be accessible to anyone with internet access.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

As the PewDiePie attack shows, many printers are not properly secured. There are many reasons for this, but the most common is that printers are un-patched and running outdated firmware versions. Unlike PC’s or smartphones, where software and firmware updates are executed automatically over the air, most printers still require manual updates, wherein the user manually downloads the latest firmware to an external device and installs it into the printer.  

Moreover, printers users are not aware they should check for their printer firmware updates and rarely receive notifications form the printer manufacturer that a new firmware version is available. Many owners regularly use printers running old firmware with many known vulnerabilities, just waiting to be exploited. Malicious actors can search the internet for printers running old firmware versions that can be accessed remotely, or use Wi-Fi from outside an office building to look for vulnerable printers.    

Hackers can take over a printer by sending malware to it over the web or through a digital fax. Once they’ve taken over the device, attackers can use the printer to access other devices on your network. Since the printer is relatively trusted by your network, it can be used as the hacker’s gateway to your other network connected devices. For an example, it can be used to access your network drive, your PC, or a security camera that share the same home or business network. It’s a point of entry from which hackers can access or attack other devices, disrupt your business, steal data or eavesdrop on communications.

Printers are part of a bigger security problem

Disturbing as the printer hacks may be, they are really just part of a much bigger problem: the risk we face from connected devices and the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re familiar with printers, so we can picture how attackers exploit them. But what about the billions of other devices we don’t think about? They could also be vulnerable. From connected thermostats to connected light bulbs. Who ensures these devices are secure and continue to be secure for the coming years in which they serve us? Who ensures they continue to be patched with updated software?  

Any device’s software or firmware will eventually become outdated and will need to be updated to maintain its security level. With no clear and easy way to update the software of these devices, and with no guarantee from device manufacturers to maintain software updates for years to come, these innocent-looking devices will eventually become vulnerable and will be used by hackers as a gateway to attack other devices on your network and to gain unauthorized access to private information they process and store.  

Asaf Ashkenazi, Chief Strategy Officer at Inside Secure

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