Apple : AMD Next Horizon Gaming E3 2019 livestream: How to watch the GPU keynote |
- AMD Next Horizon Gaming E3 2019 livestream: How to watch the GPU keynote
- Google boosts analytics capabilities with Looker deal
- Tech Data leaks 246GB of customer data
- These latest iPhone XR deals are pure class - free phone and big data on EE
- 5G in the UK: everything you need to know
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare release date, trailer and news
- AMD hints at ray tracing in the future
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake: what has changed since its reveal
- Best noise-cancelling headphones 2019: the top headphones for travel and commuting
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- The best Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals in June 2019
- Death Stranding: what can the play that inspired it tell us about Kojima's game?
- Best cloud storage of 2019 online: free, paid and business options
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| AMD Next Horizon Gaming E3 2019 livestream: How to watch the GPU keynote Posted: 07 Jun 2019 11:39 AM PDT AMD may have just had a killer Computex 2019, but there's more. Team Red is going to be at E3 2019, with a press conference of its own. At AMD's Next Horizon Gaming E3 event, we're expecting to get a glimpse at what AMD Navi graphics cards can do. We've seen some speculation that up to five AMD Navi graphics cards could be coming, but we're not sure all of them will be present at this livestream event. However, unlike many of AMD's conferences, the Next Horizon Gaming E3 event likely won't be super technical, as it has Geoff Keighley presenting. So, while AMD CEO Lisa Su will be showing off AMD's latest technology, you can expect a user-friendly and easy-to-understand demonstration. We're not sure what else AMD could have in store for this event, but because it's taking the form of an E3 keynote, we might even see some PC games that leverage the technology behind the AMD Radeon 5000 series of graphics cards. We've already heard from AMD that these AMD Radeon 5000 graphics cards will be out in July, but we're expecting a precise release date at the AMD Next Horizon Gaming event. Either way, we'll be reporting live from the AMD Next Horizon Gaming event, but if you want to catch all the graphics card news alongside us, then check out the options below. How to watch the AMD Next Horizon Gaming livestream on YouTubeImage Credit: YouTube YouTube is probably going to be the best place to watch the AMD Next Horizon Gaming livestream. If you want to watch the event on YouTube, just go over to AMD's YouTube channel on whichever device you want to watch on, whether it's your smartphone, desktop browser or gaming console. How to watch the AMD Next Horizon Gaming livestream on FacebookImage Credit: Facebook If you want to watch the AMD Next Horizon Gaming livestream elsewhere, you'll be happy to know that you can watch it on Facebook as well. Just head on over to the AMD Gaming official Facebook page on your Facebook app on your console or smartphone, or just on your desktop browser.
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| Google boosts analytics capabilities with Looker deal Posted: 07 Jun 2019 10:56 AM PDT Google has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the data analytics platform Looker in $2.6bn all-cash transaction. The deal is expected to closer later this year after receiving the necessary regulatory approvals at which time the company will become part of Google Cloud where it will provide its customers with a more comprehensive analytics solution. The acquisition is in line with Google's recent multi-cloud plans which included the launch a rebranded google Cloud Services platform that works with AWS and Azure called Anthos.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, who joined the company last November, explained how the acquisition would help boost Google Cloud's analytics capabilities, saying: “Google Cloud is being used by many of the leading organizations in the world for analytics and decision-making. The combination of Google Cloud and Looker will enable customers to harness data in new ways to drive their digital transformation. We remain committed to our multi-cloud strategy and will retain and expand Looker’s capabilities to analyze data across Clouds.” Big data analyticsLooker was founded back in 2011 and the company's platform helps organizations visualize and make sense of their data by tapping into a number of sources including AWS Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake and MySQL. The business intelligence and big data analytics company has raised almost $300 million since its creation and Alphabet's investment unit Capital G even led its series D funding back in 2017. Google and Looker's shared customers, investment connections and existing cloud partnership all help to make the deal a natural fit for both companies. The deal is also Kurian's first cloud acquisition since he replaced Diane Green as CEO back in November. However, the Looker acquisition is just the latest in a recent series of cloud announcements from Google aimed at helping the company try to catch up with AWS in the cloud space. The acquisition will give Google an advantage in the growing cloud analytics market while Looker will have the resources needed to help it scale. Looker CEO Frank Bien confirmed this, saying: “Now, we’ll have greater reach, more resources, and the brightest minds in both analytics and cloud infrastructure working together to build an exciting path forward for our customers and partners.”
Via VentureBeat This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Tech Data leaks 246GB of customer data Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:39 AM PDT IT giant Tech Data has plugged a data leak which exposed 264GB of customer data to the public after being informed of the leak by security researchers. Security researchers Noam Rotem and Ran Locar of vpnMentor first discovered that a log management server was leaking system-wide information while working on their own web mapping project. They then took a sample of the leaked information and determined that the leak was serious. vpnMentor provided further details on their discovery in a blog post, saying:
“With a simple search of the exposed database, our researchers were able to find the payment information, PII, and full company and account details for end-users and managed service providers (MSPs) – including for a criminal defense attorney, a utilities service provider, and more. There were enough details in this leak wherein a nefarious party could easily access users’ accounts – and possibly gain access to the associated permissions for said accounts.” Leaked dataDue to the large size of the database, the researchers only took a small sample but they were still able to discover that private API keys, bank and payment information, usernames and unencrypted passwords as well as process information relating to Tech Data clients' internal systems and SAP builds were exposed. Additionally, information on the company's employees was also available including their full names, job titles, email addresses, physical addresses and telephone numbers. Reseller contact and invoice data, payment and credit card information and internal security logs were also exposed on the database. vpnMentor discovered the exposed database at the beginning of June and the company informed Tech Data on the same day. TechData responded to the researchers' requests a few days later at which time the leak was plugged. Fortunately for its customers, TechData has reported that there has been no evidence yet that the data stored in the affected server has been misused by cybercriminals.
Via ZDNet This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| These latest iPhone XR deals are pure class - free phone and big data on EE Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:35 AM PDT For a select group of people it's an EE phone deal or nothing when it comes to switching devices. Considering EE's position as the UK's fastest 4G network, this is an idea we completely understand. But the one downside of this loyalty is that EE can often be one of the pricier networks for mobile phone deals. Luckily we've tracked down two iPhone XR deals that change that - you can see them in all their glory below. There are three reasons to love these two offers - they're free upfront, they have tonnes of data and most importantly, they're packed with the benefits of being on EE. Much like contracts on EE, iPhone deals tend to fall on the more costly end of the mobile phone deals spectrum, making these two affordable offers especially tempting.
These EE iPhone XR deals in fullEE mobile deals - why get one?Beyond those speedy 4G connections, there are a lot of benefits that make EE the network to go for. EE offers a data gifting scheme, that means you can send any leftover data you have to someone else that needs it. A feature that will make you very popular with friends and family. You also get access to Wi-Fi calling. That means if you're in a bit of a signal dead-zone but you've got Wi-Fi, you're all good to send as many texts and calls as you want. Another major benefit of EE is its entertainment scheme. With this you can take out six month subscriptions with Amazon Prime Video, MTV Stars and Apple Music. On top of that you can get free access to BT Sport for three months - that's a total of 21 free months of subscriptions with EE. Compare these tariffs to other iPhone XR deals:This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 5G in the UK: everything you need to know Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:27 AM PDT 5G in the UK is here! Almost. Yes. Sort of. Depending on your network, location and choice of device. You won't see all 5G networks launch at the same time, and the fifth generation of network won't be available nationwide from day one, plus you'll need a smartphone which supports 5G to take advantage of the new, super-speedy connectivity. Update: EE now has four 5G phones for you to choose from, while Vodafone has two 5G phones on sale - although its 5G network isn't live yet. Thankfully we've got all the information you need to ensure a smooth transition onto the 5G superhighway. So grab your phone, buckle up and prepare to merge into the fast lane. I want 5G right nowIf you're not interested in the nitty gritty and already have your heart set on a 5G phone and plan, we've collected the best 5G deals in the UK for you. EE is the first network to launch 5G in the UK, and it's currently your only option, with Vodafone next in line with a July 3 launch slated. We're still waiting for Three and O2 to confirm their 5G launch dates, but both will have their networks live before the end of the year. You will need a new 5G phone and 5G contract to take advantage of it, and live in one of the six cities that have the connection to make use of the fifth generation of network. 5G on EEImage Credit: EE
EE 5G launch date EE was the first to launch its 5G network, with it landing in the UK on May 30, 2019 - beating the rest of the pack to the punch, as it did with 4G. EE 5G locations Initially you can get EE 5G in six cities in the UK, with London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester the lucky recipients, but the network has committed to rolling out 5G to 10 more cities before the end of the year. EE customers can expect 5G to hit the following areas in 2019: Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. However, at launch EE's 5G coverage does not reach all areas of every city. We've tested it out in London, and found that it's not consistent. In areas where 5G is available though, we're consistently getting speeds of around 200Mbps (versus around 15-20Mbps on 4G devices). EE 5G devices EE has four 5G smartphones for you to choose. The cheapest is the Oppo Reno 5G, the priciest are the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G and LG V50 ThinQ 5G, while the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G sits in the middle of the group. Previously, EE had confirmed that it would also stock the Huawei Mate 20 X 5G, however it has since been temporarily pulled from the line-up due to the recent Huawei ban. EE 5G speeds We got our hands on the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G on launch day and have been testing out the speed of EE's shiny new network. While top speeds of way over 1Gbps are quoted, in reality we've seen speeds more consistently around the 200-400Mbps threshold - still comfortably faster than average 4G speeds. The fastest 5G speed we've managed to achieve in London is 550Mbps, and in that location we downloaded an hour long, 1GB, high quality video from Amazon Prime in 43 seconds. EE 5G cost So how much is EE asking for the first taste of 5G in the UK? 5G on VodafoneImage Credit: Vodafone
Vodafone 5G launch date Vodafone will launch its 5G network in the UK on July 3, 2019. Vodafone 5G locations Vodafone 5G will go live in seven locations on launch day, with London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff and Bristol getting the next generation of mobile network. It's not done there though, as Vodafone has also promised to bring 5G to a further 12 locations before the year is out. The lucky locations are: Birkenhead, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Guildford, Newbury, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Reading, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington and Wolverhampton. Vodafone 5G devices So far, Vodafone has confirmed it will range two 5G smartphones, with the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G and Samsung Galaxy S10 5G both available to buy now - but you'll have to wait until July 3 to take advantage of its 5G network. Until then, the phones will still happily operate on 3G and 4G. Vodafone 5G cost So how much is Vodafone asking for its 5G services? 5G on O2Image Credit: O2
O2 5G launch date All O2 has confirmed so far is that it will launch its 5G network in 2019. O2 5G locations While we wait for an O2 5G release date, we do know where the carrier's 5G network will land first, with four cities lined up. Those places are the four capitals of the UK; London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. O2 5G devices We know O2 will offer the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, but it's not clear whether it'll be on offer when its new network go lives. We'll update this page as soon as we know more. Previously, O2 also confirmed that it would stock the Huawei Mate 20 X 5G, however with the recent Huawei ban this may change. O2 5G cost With no firm 5G launch date or device confirmation, we'll have to wait and see what prices the network will set. We'll update this page as soon as we know more. 5G on Three UKImage Credit: Three UK
Three UK 5G launch date All Three has confirmed so far is that it will launch its 5G network in 2019. Three UK 5G locations Just one city has been confirmed for Three's 5G rollout in 2019 so far, London. Three UK 5G devices Three is another network who has said previously it will sell the Huawei Mate 20 X 5G, but with the recent Huawei ban this may change. A Three spokesperson told TechRadar: "We are currently considering what all the implications are. We will evaluate what impact this has on the customer, both short and long term, and act accordingly." We'll update this page as soon as we know more. Three UK 5G cost With no firm 5G launch date or device confirmation, we'll have to wait and see what prices Three will set. We'll update this page as soon as we know more. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare release date, trailer and news Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:19 AM PDT Forget the zombies. Forget the WWII battles. Forget the future weaponry – Call of Duty is going back to one of the most beloved series within the franchise with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a reboot of the highly-lauded 2007 first person shooter. It’s all about the gritty realities of war this time out, with the ‘modern’ of the ‘Modern Warfare’ title referring to the high-tech gear of today, the cutting edge killing machines employed in combat right now, rather than the far-flung fantasies of science fiction. With the battle royale genre taking up many shooter fans’ spare gaming time, Call of Duty’s crown as the king of competitive shooters has slipped in the past few years. Can a return to its most-popular roots bring it back to glory? Read on for what we know so far. Cut to the chase
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare release dateAnnounced right before E3 2019, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare leaked ahead of the event but a trailer gave us our first glimpse and a variety of details for the game. It included the release date, which is set for October 25, 2019. You're already able to pre-order the game on the official site too. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trailersThe first trailer for the game was released on May 30. You can watch it below: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare newsIs this a reboot of the classic Modern Warfare? Instead, Infinity Ward is using the Modern Warfare name here to evoke a similar feeling, and some of the same characters will return but this is an entirely new storyline set in a different timeline. It's totally separate to what we've seen in the previous games as here those events haven't occurred. We'll still follow Captain Price in this different timeline, and it may mean we see over returning characters throughout too. Price features heavily in the trailer above, and he ends it by saying there's a team of his "old comrades" so it may well be that we see the return of other fan favorite characters such as Soap or Gaz. Image Credit: Infinity War This new timeline is also why the game isn't called Modern Warfare 4. It should mean it's a good place for new entrants to the series to pick up the game, but there's sure to be a few nods to the original series for die-hard fans. Narrative director at Infinity War, Taylor Kurosaki, also noted that the game's storyline is still being tweaked but it's anywhere between five and nine hours long. That means it's not set to be very long, but at least this time there is a storyline. Call of Duty: Blacks Ops 4 opted to drop the storyline in favor of focusing on online play, which is something we've heard very little about so far for this game. A whole new engineThis title will be the first to use a whole new engine for the series, and that should allow for some drastic graphical improvements over previous titles including Black Ops 4. It's the first time the games will use a new engine in 14 years. We've yet to learn the name of the engine, but we know that the franchise has been working on it for five years. We expect to learn more about it in the coming days with the game's official launch at E3, but we can expect some more detailed environments, improved volumetric lighting and ray tracing technology too. Expect controversyAccording to ComicBook.com, the game be "heavy on troubling, realistic emotions, very much inspired by the controversial 'No Russian level" That mission is in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. It was highly controversial at the time for depicting an undercover CIA agent who takes part in a mass shooting of civilians. The trailer suggests other terrorist attacks may feature in the story, and children also feature so it may be these elements are used to stir up controversy. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| AMD hints at ray tracing in the future Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:14 AM PDT AMD has hinted that it's going to start working on ray tracing in the future, during the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2019 Global Technology Conference. But, of course, these discussions will happen after AMD Navi hits the streets. Senior VP of Marketing, HR and Investor Relations Ruth Cotter spoke during the conference, saying that she's "not going to steal Lisa's thunder on the live cast on Monday", referring to the E3 2019 keynote where more Navi information will be shared by AMD CEO Lisa Su.
At E3, AMD is going to go into more detail about AMD Navi, and the RDNA architecture powering it, rather than diving into ray tracing as Nvidia has with its Turing architecture. This all but confirms that ray tracing won't be an active feature of AMD Navi, but we've heard speculation that it will be included in the Navi 20 GPUs rumored for 2020. So what?At the time of writing, despite all of the hype around Nvidia's RTX technology, only three titles actually use it: Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Battlefield V, with Quake II RTX serving as sort of a tech demo. Nvidia clearly has the upper hand when it comes to ray tracing tech, but is it really necessary for AMD to jump on the train right now? Well, RTX adoption is slowing down, with Nvidia's non-RTX GTX 1660 Ti making the fastest gains in its Turing portfolio. With Navi, it looks like AMD is trying to compete with the likes of the RTX 2070 when it comes to compute power, but without the ray tracing. And, now that we've seen rumors that AMD is getting ready to introduce five AMD Navi graphics cards, we could see AMD put out an entire lineup of graphics cards, appealing to folks that see ray tracing as a gimmick. We don't know exactly what AMD Navi is going to be capable of, or what it will cost. But, if AMD is able to offer better or equivalent performance in games at a lower cost, we could start seeing Team Red take the GPU market by storm like it did with desktop CPUs earlier this year. Then again, Nvidia has teased something "Super" for its GeForce graphics cards, rumored for an E3 2019 reveal, so we'll just have to wait until the giant gaming event next week to see what will happen in the graphics card scene.
Via PCGamesN This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Final Fantasy 7 Remake: what has changed since its reveal Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:01 AM PDT The latest trailer for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake landed in May. What we saw was a veritable feast for the eyes; the result of four years of bite-sized nuggets of information, ominous news of third-party companies being dropped and rumors that production had been halted (or even restarted entirely). All of this not long after the game was first teased at E3 in 2015. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the remake was going to nestle nicely into the ninth circle of development hell and become fast friends with Final Fantasy Versus XIII. In other words, things seemed to be slowly unravelling into another one of Professor Hojo’s experiments gone awry. A collective sigh of relief could be felt following the release of the most recent trailer, during PlayStation’s State of Play. It served as a sweet anodyne to the silence and, with E3 2019 just around the corner, we were ecstatic to finally see some signs of life. Combat redesignCloud is back in black. (Image credit: Square Enix) We knew from the start that Final Fantasy 7’s combat had been changed from turn-based to live action. In December 2015, a second trailer showed us how this live action combat would look. Jutting out from the left of the screen was a typical ‘Attack’, ‘Summon’ and ‘Item’ commands menu befitting such an approach, much like in Kingdom Hearts. We also seen a basic display of character names, the unmistakable Limit Break bars, HP and MP pool numbers and, interestingly, what could’ve been a rough draft for an Active Time Battle gauge (ATB). These early designs have since been overhauled. The stylish new look aside, you’ll notice menu actions are now linked to button inputs. Seemingly moved are the options of ‘Magic’, ‘Summon’ and ‘Defend’. Cloud and Barret fight Shinra troops in a plaza. The original menu design shows basic 'Attack', 'Summon', 'Item' and 'Defend' options. (Image credit: Square Enix) Before the redesign, Square Enix teased an early draft in 2017 of an ATB gauge linked to the PlayStation’s Triangle button, while also having three separate bars for a Limit Break. Not only that, but the minimalist Battle HUD on the left was still in the same format as from 2015, but we have seen a ‘Materia’ option replacing ‘Summon’. The latest system shows names of an entirely overhauled combat system. Brand new abilities are married to a simple button layout. One such ability is ‘Punisher’, activated by pushing Triangle. Square is attack and Circle opens a Command Menu which sports two small bars underneath; perhaps letting you expend the mysterious blue gauges under your HP to use even more abilities. Overall, the combat looks remarkable different to what we were first shown. We’re especially thankful that Square Enix has toned down the exaggerated special effects and heavy blue streaks seen in earlier stages of development, opting instead for a more visually pleasing style; making attack impact animations wonderfully reminiscent of the original game. No holds BarredThe new in-battle menu shows the shortcut function, allowing easy use of items and abilities in combat. On the right we see the limit break bar and other gauges. (Image credit: Square Enix) Earlier depictions of Final Fantasy 7 Remake showed a system which appears to fill up a bar the more hits connect to foes, which now seems to be scrapped; perhaps it was an even earlier ATB idea which was tied to unleashing more powerful attacks. In its place, two blue bars can be seen under each character’s name plate. Whether this is now linked to being able to use party member’s special attacks, like Cloud’s ‘Punisher’ or Barret’s ‘Backblast’ shown in May, is still unknown. What we can see is that the Square button is your basic attack and you must press it repeatedly to combo, unlike the boring action of holding it down from Final Fantasy XV. A further change is the inclusion of a ‘Shortcuts’ menu. Activated by L1, you now have easy access to more commands. It draws heavy influences from the exact same function seen in Kingdom Hearts and they are truly a welcome sight to the overall systems. Shortcuts we see are for ‘Braver’ and potions, so items and abilities alike can be placed there. Also located in the shortcuts is the option to use L2 and R2 to switch between party members. While we don’t see it used, this confirms not only speculation from the 2015 PSX trailer, but also reports from 2017 that the game would allow you to change which character you control. This means you won’t always have to play as Cloud, but whether this is exclusive to battles and not the overworld, remains unknown. Overall designThe first look at the new design of Aeris Gainsborogh as she offers a flower to Cloud, recreating the iconic scene from the start. (Image credit: Square Enix) The E3 2015 reveal didn’t show any actual gameplay, but the cutscene was enough to drive fans into a limit-breaking frenzy with a mere glimpse of Cloud and Midgar. It wasn’t until December that year that we got to see Final Fantasy 7 Remake in all its newly rendered HD majesty. At first blush, Midgar retains its bleak aesthetic from early development. But, it also looks more vibrant than ever before as small environmental details ebulliently litter the already nostalgic areas. Be they machines, like the guard scorpion, or generic Shinra soldiers; there’s a wondrous amount of variation giving the impression of grand faithfulness to the source material. Once again we’re greeted by our beloved eco-terrorists. Biggs looks obscenely cool. Wedge is charmingly rotund, while everyone’s favorite gun-armed badass Barret is sporting some shades. The AVALANCHE squad appear wonderfully re-imagined from their nightmarishly appealing pixel forms of the original game. Barret's chest hair, anyone? Cloud and Barret (Image credit: Square Enix) Dubiously missing from everything we’ve seen so far is Tifa Lockheart. Appearing for the first time (in name only) in the 2019 teaser, she’s expected to be revealed at E3 2019. There have been worries that her original, over exaggerated design will be changed for the remake, but we can only wait with bated breath to see how she’s going to appear. The lack of Tifa doesn’t matter to us. Because in the most recent trailer, released in May, we’re finally graced with the true best girl: Aeris Gainsborough. Not to overstate this, but she looks angelic. Subtle changes to her clothing hearken back to her appearance from the film Advent Children, and her whole design and outfit look absolutely magnificent. We’re certainly ready for Final Fantasy 7 to break our hearts all over again. Looking to E3 2019The brand new battle menu features button-linked abilities, streamlining the interface for a more action-based combat system. (Image credit: Square Enix) Rumors swirl and dance about the Final Fantasy 7 remake like water in a weir. People are convinced the game will be playable at the event and, if that’s the case, we feel there’s a strong case for a release date being around Christmas time this year. The first episode, at the very least. It will be fascinating to see if there have been any changes to the user interface and battle menus just one month since their last reveal, but we are expecting a lot of details to come, especially regarding the episodic release. Alongside this, we can most likely expect to get our first proper look at Sephiroth, who has only been briefly glimpsed from behind as of yet. Nomura-san and Kitase-san, if you’re reading this then please listen to our story; this may be our last chance. We are fully anticipating the combat to be fun but not much else, we even expect some story elements to be changed for any number of reasons. But for the love of the Lifestream, if you make the entire world of Gaia; Midgar and Wutai especially, fully and completely explorable, then that will be a job well done from us. We await your reply at E3... This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Best noise-cancelling headphones 2019: the top headphones for travel and commuting Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:58 AM PDT The best noise-cancelling headphones buying guide: Hello headphones fans, and welcome to TechRadar's round-up of the best noise-cancelling headphones to buy in 2019. It's a universal truth that, on the whole, commutes are terrible. Luckily for us, noise-cancelling headphones exist to bring a little more balance into the world and make your morning and evening journey in and out of work a little more bearable. There's also a lot of choice for your anti-sound arsenal, including high-end options from some of the best audio manufacturers in the business, including Bose, Sony and Sennheiser. (Sorry AirPods fans, those as well as most true wireless earbuds just don't cut it.) Take a look at our list of the best noise-cancelling headphones on the market and pick up a pair to say goodbye to commuting, or traveling more generally, to a soundtrack of crying babies, honking traffic and noisy conversations. That's right, audio nirvana is just one step away.
These true wonders of the modern era totally tune out any unwanted sounds, while simultaneously making your music sound even better than any old pair of in-ear earbuds. We believe that noise-cancelling headphones are just as vital as your laptop, TV or mobile phone when it comes to tech that'll change how you live, work and play. That means that choosing the right pair for you is important. Luckily, to help you pick out a pair of headphones that deliver all of the above in spades, we've put together a list of our favorite noise-cancelling headphones, listed below and ranked by their price-to-performance ratio. Can't decide which headphones to buy? Check out our guide video below: What are the best noise-cancelling headphones?Image credit: Sony The Sony WH-1000XM3 are the best noise-cancelling headphones in the world two years running. Sure, they might be a small refinement of last year's excellent WH-1000XM2, but subtle tweaks like using USB-C instead of microUSB and adding padding along the bridge help make Sony's award-winning cans even better. So why does everyone love these Sony headphones so much? Well, it's exceptionally good at cancelling outside noise. Put a pair on while vacuuming and you'll barely hear the motor running. For music lovers, the Sony WH-1000XM3 features aptX HD and Sony LDAC, two of the best ways to listen to Hi-Res music from your phone without a wire. Finally, all of Sony's flagship headphones offer both Google Assistant and, starting in 2019, Alexa support, making them not only the best noise-cancelling cans on the market but some of the smartest, too. Read the full review: Sony WH-1000XM3 Image credit: Sony If you can find a pair, the Sony WH-1000XM2 are still some of the best noise-cancelling headphones around: They sound great, deftly wield noise cancellation technology and cost just as much as a pair of Bose QC35s. They might have a slightly shorter battery life than Bose’s flagship over-ear headphones, but Sony’s WH-1000XM2 outclass the QC35 in terms of performance and feature-set. You’d want to pick these Sony headphones over the Bose because not only do they provide the same level of awesome noise-cancellation, but they have three neat tricks that Bose just doesn't have on its headphones: One is an ambient noise mode that only lets in mid-to-high frequency tones (announcements over a loudspeaker, for instance) and another being Quick Attention mode that allows you to let in all outside noise without taking off the headphones. (The latter is perfect when giving a drink order on a plane or speaking to a coworker for a brief moment before diving back into your work.) The last trick Sony has up its sleeve is the LDAC codec. Alongside the widely adopted aptX HD standard, LDAC enables Hi-Res Audio playback using the 1000XM2. Great-sounding, feature-packed and just as affordable as the competition? The Sony WH-1000XM2 are a solid all-around pick for noise-cancelling cans. Read the full review: Sony WH-1000XM2
Image credit: TechRadar Coming in at the number two spot is the Bose QuietComfort 35 II - a nearly identical product to the already-excellent Bose QuietComfort 35 but updated for 2018 with Google Assistant. This means you still get the class-leading noise cancellation Bose is known for, good sound quality and incredible comfort, plus a convenient assistant to answer any inquiries you might have while traveling. Taken as a whole, the Bose QC35 II NC is an excellent headphone for travelers and commuters. Bose has found a good balance of features that will satisfy most mainstream listeners. While we don't love them as much as the better-sounding Sony WH-1000XM2, they're still top of the class for noise cancellation. Read the full review: Bose QuietComfort 35 II Image credit: Sennheiser The PXC 550's greatest strength is their sound. Other wireless noise-cancelling headphones might offer a better user interface or better noise-cancellation technology, but ultimately none of the above match up to the sound quality of these Sennheisers. However, that said, there are a couple of irritations that prevent us from being able to fully and unreservedly recommend them, such as unresponsive touch controls. These annoyances aren't quite deal-breakers, but there are definitely other noise-cancelling headphones out there that don't suffer from the same issues. Read the full review: Sennheiser PXC 550 Image credit: TechRadar Philips presents a more elegant noise-cancelling solution with its NC1. These on-ear headphones aren't wireless like our top pick, but that's hardly a reason to knock them. Coming in at $299/£195, the NC1 are a compact set that's high on comfort and battery life. You get a lot for the money here. In the box comes the headphones, a hard case for storage and the headphones rock a rechargeable battery that provides noise cancellation for close to 30 hours. But best of all, the sound performance is extremely well balanced and warm. (A quite note for our Australian readers: Philips sadly no longer sells the NC1's down under, so you'll need to import a pair if you're keen.) Read the full review: Philips Fidelio NC1 Image credit: TechRadar A few years ago, the Bose QuietComfort 25 are the best noise-cancelling headphones we've ever used. The lows, mids and highs came through clear as day, never stepping over each other. Music of all sorts sounded predictably incredible. With the noise-cancellation turned on, we never felt further immersed and concentrated than when we let the QC25 engulf our ears. But that was a few years ago and time has moved on since. Bose has released not just one sequel to these headphones, but two: the QC35 and QC35 II with Google Assistant built in, both of which we'd recommend above the QC25. But, it's not all bad. If you don't mind using the older, wired headphones, the QC25s are a finely-tuned set of cans that provide over 35 hours of very good noise-cancelling performance with one AAA battery. Read the full review: Bose QuietComfort 25 [Update: These headphones also come in a wireless version - check out our review of of the Bose QuietComfort 35. Image credit: TechRadar Bowers and Wilkins are a little late to the noise-cancellation game, but their first foray impresses. The PX Wireless aren't just a great sounding pair of headphones, they've also got a number of other interesting tricks up their sleeve. They'll turn on and off automatically depending on whether you're wearing them or not, and they also feature the future-proof USB-C charging standard. In our opinion their only downside is the sound quality, which we felt lacks the depth of the flagship headphones from Bose and Sony. That said, if you've been a fan of the look of B&W's headphones in the past then the PX Wireless are certainly worth a listen. Read the full review: Bowers and Wilkins PX Wireless Image credit: TechRadar With noise-cancelling tech just as effective as that in headphones from rival Bose, and with a more musical sonic ability, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC are a definite contender for the noise-cancelling crown. More affordable and easy to travel with, these lightweight headphones are a great value all-rounder, whether for flights, commuter trains or busy offices. Design-wise, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNCs seem a more slimmed-down, lighter and more focused effort than the bulky and expensive alternatives from Bose and Sony; and crucially, the HD 4.50 BTNCs are just as good with audio, and almost as good on noise-canceling. Whether you're after noise canceling for long-haul ravel, for the commute, or just to stay more productive in a noisy office, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNCs are worth considering. Read the full review: Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC Image credit: TechRadar For the money, the JBL Live 650BTNC punch above its weight in terms of sound quality, build, and features. They offer your choice of either Google Assistant or Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, and can have their EQ customized by the JBL Headphones app. Battery life is rated at 20 hours with ANC and wireless enabled and if you use the JBL Live 650BTNC with a wire with ANC enabled, you can get upwards 30 hours on a single charge. If you don’t want to splurge on the Bose QC35 II or Sony WH-1000XM3, you’ll be satisfied with the JBL Live 650BTNC knowing that you’re getting 80% of the performance at 50% of the price tag. Read the full review: JBL Live 650BTNC Image credit: Microsoft While they're not quite up to par with the flagship noise-cancelling cans from Sony and Bose, Microsoft’s Surface headphones are surprisingly good, with a stunningly warm sound, and generous bass frequencies. Problematically, the active noise cancelling works pretty well, although it won’t block out all ambient noise in your environment, especially if you're somewhere noisy. That being said, if you have the noise cancelling turned on while listening to music, you can pretty much get lost in the experience without being disturbed by your noisy shared office of the rumbling of the train on your commute. Although we were initially unconvinced by the high price (particularly when you can buy quality cans from heritage audio brands for less), most of the Surface Headphone's features work so seamlessly that it feels justified. Read the full review: Microsoft Surface Headphones Image credit: TechRadar If you haven't found something quite to your liking so far, we have one last option for you to look at – the all-new Nura Nuraphone over-ear/in-ear hybrid. Their form factor means you’ve not only got an earbud sitting at the entrance of your ear canal, but also an over-ear cushion sitting over your entire ear. This effectively means you’ve got two physical barriers meaning that the noise from the outside world can’t get to your ears. While more traditional over-ear headphones do a better job offering useful features at a reasonable price, the Nuraphone will appeal to the more experimental audio crowd looking to be on the bleeding-edge of the next big thing. Read our full review: Nuraphone Headphones
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| Walmart 4K TV deal: save $700 on Samsung's curved 65-inch TV Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:40 AM PDT If you're in the market for a large-screen curved TV, then you've come to the right place. Walmart has the Samsung curved 65-inch 4K smart TV on sale for $699.99. That's a whopping $700 discount and the lowest price we've found for the UHD TV.
If you're not interested in a curved design, we've listed other standout 4K TV deals below in a range of different sizes and prices. Walmart 4K TV deals:Shop more of best cheap TV deals and sale prices that are currently going on. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| France vs South Korea and opening ceremony live stream: watch Women's World Cup 2019 from anywhere Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:27 AM PDT Mark the date - June 6 2019. When the history books recount the rise of Women's soccer, the start of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup may be seen as a sea change moment. First, there's the spectacle of an opening ceremony to enjoy, and then we move on to the tournament's first match - and you're in the right place to discover how to live stream France vs South Korea and the rest of the festivities, no matter where in the world you are. France will be looking to take inspiration from their male counterparts' World Cup victory in Russia last year, and they enter their own tournament with high expectations. They're already ranked number 4 in the world (following a brilliant 3-1 win over the US in January), and that home-crowd advantage can surely only help. They are overwhelming favorites to open their account successfully in Paris, and a lot of eyes will be on exciting midfielder Kadidiatou Diani to turn on the style early doors. While they'll be cheered enthusiastically from faraway supporters back at home, nobody is giving Korea much of a chance of making an impact at the 2019 World Cup. If you follow the Women's Super League in the UK, then you may recognise Chelsea midfielder Ji So-Yun. She'll need to put in an awesome performance to get the best from her teammates in Paris today. Whether you're watching Women's soccer for the first time or you've been a fan for years, you've come to the right place to find out how to live stream France vs South Korea at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup - no matter where on Earth you are. Watch a FIFA Women's World Cup 2019 live stream from outside your countryFor devotees to Women's soccer, you won't want to miss a minute of the 2019 FIFA World Cup. For broadcaster details in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand keep on scrolling down this page. But if you try to access those streams (or any other domestic coverage) from overseas, you'll soon be tackled by a geo-restriction. Meaning you won't be able to watch. At least not without either compromising your security with a dodgy, illegal stream or by installing a VPN and relocating your laptop or mobile IP address back to one in your home country. How to watch France vs South Korea: US live stream
And don't forget that using a VPN is the best way to watch if you want to catch your domestic coverage from abroad. - Discover our pick of all the US's best sports streaming sites How to watch FIFA Women's World Cup: Canada live streamHow to stream France vs South Korea live in the UKHow to watch France vs South Korea: live stream in AustraliaHow to watch France vs South Korea: New Zealand live streamThis posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The best Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals in June 2019 Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:21 AM PDT The Galaxy Note 9 has been out for a while now and Samsung Galaxy S10 deals are readily available, which in theory should make Galaxy Note 8 deals old news. Right? Well that's what you would think. But the 2017 model is so incredible that it still performs just like a new model and not to mention it is so much cheaper than its successor. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals are definitely still well worth a look. And it's still getting cheaper! When the Note 8 first came out EE had deals locked down tight, but now there is a pretty good spread across providers so no matter your preference you don't have to switch, Although EE still does have some of the very best deals on this device. Samsung Note 8 deals are now well under the £900-mark in total over the two-year contract and can go as low as £750. The Note 8 is not by any means a budget device, however. It's a absolutely massive smartphone, not just in size but also in raw power. It's got the screen size and specification smarts to be a competitor to the highly praised iPhone X or iPhone's new massive iPhone XS Max and neither of those come cheap. But there are now some excellent Note 8 deals floating around. Check out our comparison chart and handpicked favourite Note 8 deals below. Now we know some of you may have fiery memories of the Galaxy Note 7 in your head when looking at this device but leave those worries behind. Both the Note 8 and 9 have massively improved their batteries and you won't be facing overheating problems anymore. The Note 8 truly is miles ahead of the 7 in every way.
5 best Galaxy Note 8 deals in the UK today:Should I get the Galaxy Note 8 SIM free?Are you determined to get the very best price? Always looking to see how you can trim a few pounds off your new favourite gadget? As you probably know, you can now pick up cheap SIM only deals for as little as £4 a month, which could make it worth buying a SIM and handset separately. The Galaxy Note 8's RRP has dropped massively recently to £649. That is much cheaper than it used to be but you will still be putting up a big chunk of money upfront. Even if you get the cheapest SIM card (usually around £4 a month for 500MB data), that would still cost near to £800 over the two years. You're probably better cranking up the upfront cost in our price comparison chart above, imposing a low maximum for monthlies and finding a cheaper deal in the long run. To get the best price on your new SIM free Galaxy, you can head to our cheapest unlocked Note 8 deals page. Wondering what all the fuss is about? Well the fervour for the Note 8 is probably doubled due to the fact that the Note 7 was pulled from shelves soon after release. But it doesn't take more than one look at the Note 8 to see that it justifies the hype. The huge 6.3-inch ‘Infinity Display,’ is gorgeous to look at, the 6GB RAM innards go like a train and there are two best-in-class rear cameras. It's expensive, but we think the Note 8 is worth it. Read TechRadar's full Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Death Stranding: what can the play that inspired it tell us about Kojima's game? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:13 AM PDT “In this short story, Abe states that the first tool mankind created is a stick,” Death Stranding creator, Hideo Kojima, told IGN in 2016. The story in question was The Man Who Turned Into A Stick, a one-act play by Kōbō Abe, which Kojima cites as the inspiration for his eagerly anticipated but still mystery-shrouded upcoming game.
When humanity discovered fire using sticks and stones, the world advanced a million aeons. Food could be cooked, caves could be warmed, and the darkness could be illuminated by meticulously-tamed flame. But fire became as much of a weapon as it was a tool. For every blazing hearth, infernos rained on some unfortunate village, doomed to be consumed by the twisting tongues of the sweltering blaze. Sticks and stonesImage credit: Kojima Productions The Man Who Turned Into A Stick pits a couple of agents from Hell against a pair of hippies discussing whether a stick fell on or was thrown at them. Unbeknownst to the hippies, this stick is a man who has transformed into a piece of wood after attempting to commit suicide in front of his son, who proceeds to look down from the roof, hopelessly confused - you probably would be too if your dad turned into a stick. Because Kojima has explicitly stated that Death Stranding has something or other to do with sticks and ropes, and that the game is emphatically based on Abe’s play, it’s important to consider what sticks actually represent in The Man Who Turned Into A Stick. According to Man From Hell, “98.4% of all those who die in a given month are turned into sticks.” These sticks are forced to live out their days hearing everything around them without ever being heard themselves. However, even without words, there are strands that link us to others. Although Stick’s voice is unheard, Hippie Boy drops it, exclaiming, “It twitched, like a dying fish.” Even with the strands of communication severed, the stick is still connected to the world in a mysterious way. Given that Kojima has said that Death Stranding is tied to an entirely new genre, called “action game/strand game”, it’s likely that this is the part of Abe’s play that the game will focus on. Kojima has explained on several occasions that Death Stranding is thematically concerned with the idea of strands connecting people, interwoven and invisible links that allow us to communicate in a wonderfully weird way. Although we can’t explicitly speak with the dead, we can still communicate with them, which we can perhaps attribute to the creaks in the floor you hear at nighttime, the whispers of the wind quietly crashing against the roof tiles, or the bloodcurdling phenomenon in which something is momentarily felt, but not through any traditional kind of sensory perception. Like Hippie Boy’s ability to sense the stick’s twitch in The Man Who Turned Into A Stick, in the Death Stranding trailer, Sam says, “I can’t spot BTs. I can just sense them.” Perhaps this is linked to what Kojima has described as a “social strand system,” which connects us to one another in a mysterious way that seems to have the ability to transcend death itself. The key to a riddle...Image credit: Kojima Productions The key to understanding the links between Abe’s play, strands, and Death Stranding lies in the strange throat babies we've seen in previous trailers, one of which Sam-- the protagonist, played by Norman Reedus - is tasked with escorting across desolate and deserted plains for reasons currently unknown. The denouement of Abe's illustrious play places an emphasis on death - which happens to be its subtitle - but death is what begets new life. In the words of another Japanese author Haruki Murakami, "Death is not the opposite of life, but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death." For example, if a man turns into a stick, but the stick is wielded by his son, he becomes defined by the way he shaped those around him in life. As an extension of these people, he lives on, as a tool, a weapon, or something in between. In Abe’s play, Hippie Boy refuses to sell the stick, telling the man, “Me and this stick, we understand each other.” Later on, he adds to this train of thought, saying that, “Once a human hand grabs something, there's no telling what it can do.” Interestingly, Death Stranding’s most recent trailer shows Sam using ladders and ropes - connective objects, designed to bridge gaps that would otherwise be uncrossable. While sticks are separated from the trees they were once a part of, there are other things in this world designed to reconnect the broken and to rebuild the fractured. And, as Kojima said in his interview about Japanese plays and sticks, “A rope is a tool used to secure things that are important to you.” While other people may have already succumbed to the violent nature of Death Stranding’s dying world, there are still a select few who opt to eschew sticks for ropes - to forego conflict in order to promote connectivity, to promote stranding. A forest of sticksImage credit: Kojima Productions Death Stranding is still incredibly ambiguous, and likely will be until it ships. However, the space between life and death is ambiguous by nature. When Hippie Girl opens up about the death of her late sister, Man From Hell asks what happened, to which Hippie Boy responds, “She became a corpse, naturally.” (Interestingly, it’s more likely in this scenario that she became a stick.) “That's why I don't understand anything anymore,” Hippie Girl tells Hippie Boy. “Everything is wrapped in riddles.” In her book, Fake Fish, Nancy Shields includes a statement made by Abe in relation to the purpose of theatre: “Unless the theater regains the power to realize on stage those more abstract things which are impossible to see in everyday reality, audiences will find theatrical productions more and more boring ... In performance it is essential that the style, rather than the words, be emphasized.” Stories like The Man Who Turned Into A Stick and Death Stranding aren't necessarily supposed to be clear. They’re not even supposed to be realistic. The stage directions for The Man Who Turned Into A Stick literally include the line: “Crowds of people passing back and forth. (It is best not to attempt to represent this realistically.)” By the same logic, Death Stranding is a game in which Kojima has been given the freedom to design whatever weird and wonderful things he wants. He’s unrestrained by budget or prospective player interest, and so he has been allowed to emphasize style over words, and to realize his most abstract ideas in a visual form. The man who sold the worldImage credit: Kojima Productions At the end of The Man Who Turned Into A Stick, Man From Hell comes back to the stage post-exeunt and exclaims that the audience consists of “a whole forest of sticks.” In fact, earlier in the play, after Hippie Boy sells the stick to the Man From Hell for $5, the latter warns him that some day he’ll face the consequences for demanding such a high price. “But I'll tell you one thing, my friend,” Man From Hell says. “You may imagine you've struck a clever bargain, but one of these days you'll find out. It wasn't just a stick you sold, but yourself.”
Hippie Boy, destined to be one of the 98.4% of people who turn into sticks, will one day be picked up by another agent from Hell, and confined to a world in which his voice is forever drowned out. However, it is only at this point that he can truly access the intangible strands that bind us to the world and to each other. As Sam “Porter” Bridges says in Death Stranding: “Covering the world in cable didn't bring an end to war and suffering. Don't act surprised when it all comes apart if you try to do it again.” However, despite his nihilism, it’s important to recognize that Sam is trying to do it again. Even in a world populated by sticks, there will be people left who are trying to bridge the gaps, connect the dots, and reinstate the kind of stranding that unites people as opposed to pitting them against one another. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Best cloud storage of 2019 online: free, paid and business options Posted: 07 Jun 2019 07:55 AM PDT Businesses and consumers are increasingly reliant on cloud based storage solutions instead of in-house, on-premise local storage hardware. Your files are stored in the cloud, which is a simplified view of what is essentially someone else's infrastructure (data center, server, hard drive, connectivity etc). Ever since Amazon popularised storage online with S3 (Simple Storage Service), 13 years ago, Google data shows that interest for "Cloud Storage" alone has increased by 40x over the past decade. So much so that people less frequently refer to it as "online storage". Given the multitude of cloud storage providers out there, one has to wisely choose a provider who will offer the maximum amount of low-cost storage and bandwidth, while still keeping your data safe. This list represents our top picks for cloud storage: most offer a free tier allowing you to see if they're right for you before handing over any hard-earned cash. Business users will need to consider carefully what their needs are as terms and conditions as well as quality of service is likely to differ significantly from their consumer alter ego. Go straight to your desired option through the jump links below: IDrive secures servers, desktop system and mobile devices with equal aplomb (Image credit: IDrive) IDrive offers continuous syncing of your files, even those on network drives. The web interface supports sharing files by email, Facebook and Twitter. Cautious or click-happy users will be pleased to hear that files deleted from your computer are not automatically deleted from the server, so there's less danger of removing something important by accident. Up to 30 previous versions of all files backed to your account are retained. Another thing to note is that IT admins have access to IDrive Thin Client application, which allows them to backup/restore, manage settings, and more for all their connected computers via a centralized dashboard. For photos, you have a neat facial recognition feature that helps you to automatically organize them as well as syncing them across all your lined devices. IDrive also offers IDrive Express which sends you a physical hard disk drive if you lose all your data, allowing for the swift restoration of all your backed up files. That applies to the newly introduced disk image backup feature. A business version exists and offers priority support, single sign-on as well as unlimited users and server backup. pCloud delivers an affordable Cloud storage facility with a selection of apps (Image credit: pCloud) While some bandwidth limits apply, there seems to be no limit to the size of files you can upload, so feel free to sync large media files with pCloud. The service is available for all desktop and mobile platforms – users can also log in via the website. The company itself is registered in Switzerland which has strong privacy laws and you can also pay a premium of $4.99 a month for pCloud Crypto to lock (and unlock) individual files with passwords. Note that it is one of the very few cloud services that offer lifetime subscriptions. The latter come with 30 days trash history and unlimited remote upload traffic (you only need the URL of the file); you are - as expected - limited on the download link traffic: 500GB for the Premium package and 2TB for the Premium Plus package.
Image credit: Zoolz There are lots of things to like about Zoolz Cloud Backup for both personal use and business deployment. It offers an easy to follow interface with excellent web management options, and the ability to combine cloud operations with local external storage. This UK-based company leverages Amazon’s Glacier infrastructure to deliver a compelling price/performance ratio, with prices far cheaper than the competition. With 20PB of data stored for three million users for more than a decade, Zoolz is also not as ephemeral as some of its rivals. Image credit: Degoo Swedish outfit Degoo is not a household name, and therefore it comes as a surprise that it has managed to carve itself a niche inside the ultra-competitive cloud storage market. With only two offerings, this outfit has managed to attract more than 15 million users globally since its inception earlier in 2019 – an estimated 20,000 people join Degoo every day. It is one of the few cloud storage companies worldwide that encrypts stored files and disperses them across four different continents. It also supports two-factor authentication via the Google sign-in. Image credit: Mega With an insanely generous free tier and a simple drag-and-drop interface, New Zealand-based Mega is one of the cloud storage heavyweights. There's a handy mobile app to allow you to upload files and photos, as well as sync clients with desktop machines. The company also has business tailored plans. Mega claims that all data stored in its cloud is encrypted on your device before it reaches the firm’s servers. As the company has released the source code to its sync client, experts can check that there are no vulnerabilities. Price: 50GB free. 200GB for $6 a month (£4.50, €4.99, around AU$7.50). 1TB for $12 a month (£9, €9.99, around AU$16). 4TB for $23 a month (£17, €19.99, around AU$30). 8TB for $35 a month (£26, €29.99, around AU$46). Image credit: Microsoft OneDrive is integrated into Windows 10's File Explorer. You don't have to download an additional app – it's there to use out of the box, which is obviously very convenient for those who have made the jump to Microsoft’s newest operating system. Microsoft's Photos app can also use OneDrive to sync pictures across all your devices. As of late March, Autodesk AutoCAD has been integrated with OneDrive which is good news for anyone using the software's drafting tools. There's an app for Android and iOS devices, and there's even one in the App Store for Mac users (although it has received mixed reviews). Price: 5GB free. 50GB for $3 a month (£1.99, around AU$4). 1TB for $8 a month (£5.99, around AU$11). Unlimited (as part of Onedrive for Business) for $11 a month (£7.99, around AU$14) Image credit: Apple If you want to back up your iPhone to iCloud, you'll need more than the free 5GB allowance Apple gives you, but compared to rivals iCloud prices are very reasonable. The Mac Finder app integrates iCloud Drive, where you can store any files you wish. Documents created in the iWork office suite are also saved to iCloud and can sync across your devices. Windows users can also sync their files with iCloud Drive using the official client, and access the iWork apps on the iCloud website. Price: 5GB free. 50GB for $0.99 a month (£0.79, AU$1.49). 200GB for $2.99 (£2.24, AU$4). 2TB for $9.99 (£8, AU$13) Image credit: Google Google Drive is a natural choice for owners of Android devices as it's already integrated, but users of other platforms may appreciate the generous free storage too. You can also store high definition photos on your mobile phone with companion app Google Photos, and make use of Google's own office suite (now known as G Suite). Also, upgrading to paid Google Drive plans is now called Google One (although it might not yet be available, depending on the region). Downsides include the fact that the web interface isn't very easy-to-use, although Windows and Mac users can download a desktop app to drag-and-drop files easily. Price: 15GB free. 100GB for $1.99 a month (£1.59, around AU$2.50). 200GB for $2.99 a month (£2.35, around AU$4.10). 2TB for $9.99 a month (£8, around AU$13). 10TB for $99.99 a month (£74, around AU$130). 20TB for $199.99 a month (£148, around AU$260). 30TB for $299.99 a month (£236, around AU$426). Image credit: Box Box's website currently seems to be pushing its Business plans as clicking ‘sign up’ takes you to the pricing page where for $15 per user (£11, around AU$19) you can benefit from advanced collaboration options and unlimited storage. But there is a 10GB free option, too. As Box has been around for a while, it is supported by a number of mainstream apps such as Google Docs and Office 365. It's also integrated with G-Suite, which means Docs, Sheets and Slides are automatically saved and managed in Box. Additionally, like OneDrive, it's also been integrated with AutoCAD. The Box Sync client is available from the Downloads page for Mac and Windows, plus there's also an official Android client. Price: 10GB free. 100GB for around $10 a month (£7.50, around AU$13) Image credit: NextCloud NextCloud isn’t an online cloud storage provider itself, but offers free software to download and install a cloud storage service on your own server. Using a server on your home network for cloud storage is much faster. You can also enable encryption and make sure the information never leaves your home network, which is far safer. If you've no server or IT experience, you can even purchase a preconfigured NextCloud Box (if you can find one) which comes with a 1TB hard drive and will work with an inexpensive Raspberry Pi board to keep your data synced. Unfortunately, NextCloud Box is sold out but you can check out the alternatives on their website Price: Free to install and use. Self-hosting so storage costs vary. Image credit: SpiderOak SpiderOak is part of a new trend of zero knowledge cloud storage providers. The website claims that after installing the client your data is encrypted before syncing. Unfortunately since SpiderOak hasn’t made the client source code public, there's no way to confirm this. The SpiderOakOne client is available for Windows, Mac and Linux as well as Android and iOS (although, both Android and iOS are read-only apps, meaning you can only view files, and can't upload or sync anything). You can also log in via the web interface but privacy lovers may prefer not to as it exposes your password to SpiderOak employees. Price: 21-day free trial. 150GB for $6 a month (around £4.5, AU$8.25). 400GB for $11 a month (around £8.4, AU$15). 2TB for $14 a month (around £10.7, AU$19.25). 5TB for $29 a month (around £22.1, AU$39.9) Best free cloud storageImage credit: Google Free storage allowance: 15GB (expandable) If you're a Google user, you already benefit from Google Drive integration, such as the ability to save email attachments from Gmail. However, anyone can sign up for the free cloud storage, even if they don't have a Gmail address, by creating a new Google account. Google is also in a process of releasing Google One as a sort of substitution for Google Drive, although depending on your region it might not be available yet. With 15GB of space for new users, Google Drive is one of the more generous cloud offerings, and there are occasional ways to boost this capacity free of charge. The catch is that this Google storage space is also shared with a user’s other Google services including Gmail and Google Photos. Mobile apps are available to allow easy access for iOS and Android users, and Google’s Backup and Sync desktop app lets you synchronize files from your PC to the cloud. Google Drive also includes online office tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations which can makes sharing files with others effortless. Image credit: pCloud Free storage allowance: 10GB (expandable) You might not recognize the name, but if you're looking for a decent chunk of cloud storage free of charge, pCloud could be just the ticket. To kick things off, you're given a fairly generous 10GB to play with, and there's a bandwidth allowance of 50GB of downlink traffic per month. While we're primarily interested in the free version of pCloud, note that you can upgrade to 500GB of space for a monthly plan of $4.99 (£3.70), or 2TB for $9.99 (£7.50) a month – both of which are great deals for storage. You also have annual and lifetime plans, which are a cheaper option in the long run. The initial 10GB free offering can also be expanded up to 20GB via an additional 4GB for completion of offers, as well as referrals that add 1GB each. It’s also worth noting that pCloud offers well-designed desktop and mobile apps that supplement the website for seamless integration into a user’s workflow. With no limit on file sizes, and simple sharing options, pCloud is a great way to send large files to friends and colleagues – it's even possible to share with people who aren't using the service themselves. Add in decent streaming options and a neat online interface, and pCloud is well worth a look. Image credit: Microsoft Free storage allowance: 5GB Coming from Microsoft – a company with plenty of money to throw at the cloud – it's a little disappointing to find that OneDrive doesn’t include more space free of charge. Free users get a mere 5GB of storage, although it's relatively inexpensive to increase this to 50GB. If you have Office 365, you'll automatically get boosted to 1TB of space, but not everyone wants an Office subscription. Like Google Drive's appeal to Google users, OneDrive will be a good fit for anyone who is committed to using Microsoft's services. There's neat integration with Outlook.com, for instance. It's also integrated with non-Microsoft services like AutoCAD. OneDrive also ties in nicely with Windows 10, and there is a selection of reasonable mobile apps to facilitate access on the move. It's possible to share files with other people even if they aren't OneDrive users (complete with customizable permissions), and the ability to edit files online without downloading them is a welcome touch. Image credit: Dropbox Free storage allowance: 2GB (expandable) Dropbox is a stalwart of the free cloud storage world, with a web interface that remains streamlined and easy-to-use. Despite its popularity, Dropbox actually has one of the least generous free packages for new users (just 2GB), but there are various ways to boost this space without paying, including inviting friends to join (you get 500MB per referral up to 16GB), completing the Getting Started guide (250MB) and contributing to the Dropbox forum (which elicits 1GB per 'Mighty Answer' provided). DropBox really comes into its own when you start delving into the service’s extra features. There's a great collaborative working tool called Dropbox Paper that acts as a group workspace, and – if you install the desktop app – you can back up photos automatically. The File Requests feature also allows you to request another user to upload a file to your Dropbox account. There are desktop apps for Windows, Mac and Linux, and mobile apps including Android, iOS and even Kindle. This gives Dropbox broad appeal, as does the support for third-party apps and services. The web version of Dropbox lets you edit files without needing to download them, and really the only thing that counts against the cloud storage service is that most alternatives offer more space to free users. Image credit: MediaFire Free storage allowance: 10GB (expandable) MediaFire has been around for over a decade, and those years of experience really show. You're given 10GB of free space initially, but you can boost this by an extra 40GB through activities like referring friends and following MediaFire's social media accounts. Few people would disagree that 50GB of free cloud storage is impressive. Free accounts carry ads, but this is a small sacrifice to make. There's support for large files up to 20GB, and the sharing options are very impressive, even allowing sharing with non-users. The web-based interface is excellent too, and MediaFire offers mobile apps for convenient uploading and downloading on iOS and Android. These make it easy to access files you're storing in the cloud, and include convenient features such as automatic photo syncing. Best business cloud storageImage credit: SpiderOak SpiderOak is a collaboration tool, online backup and file hosting service founded in 2007. The platform allows users to access, synchronize and share data using a cloud-based server. The company places a strong emphasis on data security and privacy. They offer a cloud storage, online backup and sharing service which they claim uses a ‘zero knowledge’ privacy environment. This means the client is the only one who can view all stored data. Not even SpiderOak themselves have access to your data. SpiderOak’s main focus is on privacy and security. As a result, the tool itself has a very basic design. This makes the admin console and all central device management very straightforward to use. They also include a handy drag and drop feature for organising files. From the centralized device management dashboard, users can access settings for all applications such as backup selection and sharing. The dashboard also allows users to manage their accounts, set group permissions and gain insight into usage. Prospective business clients will need to contact SpiderOak’s Sales Team directly to obtain a quote. 500 users minimum is required. Online commentators have observed that SpiderOak lacks many of the collaboration tools available from other cloud storage providers. Image credit: Tresorit Tresorit is a cloud storage provider based in Hungary and Switzerland. It was founded in 2011. The provider emphasizes enhanced security and data encryption for businesses and personal users alike. If you are concerned with ensuring that your stored data is kept safe online then Tresorit is the service for you. This provider allows you to keep control of your files through ‘zero-knowledge encryption’ meaning that only you and the chosen few you decide to share with can ever see your data. Your Tresorit account can also be secured by two-factor authentication login. Furthermore, you also have features like Document Scanner which securely scans and uploads documents directly to Tresorit. Tresorit’s ‘Small Business’ Packages starts at $25 (£19.60) per month (or $20 monthly for the annual plan) for teams with 2-9 users. This includes 1000GB encrypted storage, secure access on up to 10 devices and synching of existing folder structure. Tresorit’s ‘Business’ plan begins at $30 (£23.30) per month (or $24 monthly for the annual plan) for businesses with over 10 users. This comes with extras such as digital rights management, remote wipe and phone support. At the time of writing there is a 50% discount on "Business plan", so you can pay as low as $12 (£9.4) per month The ‘Enterprise’ tier weighs in at $34 (£26.65) per month (or $27 monthly for the annual plan) for businesses with more than 100 users. Extras included in this are personalized staff training, admin API and on-premises deployment. In order to sign up for this plan, users need to contact Tresorit directly. All tiers come with a 14-day free trial. The extra security offered by Tresorit makes it relatively expensive compared to other cloud backup solutions. However most users will probably appreciate the greater piece of mind and extra features offered by Tresorit. Image credit: Egnyte Egnyte was founded in 2007. The company provides software for enterprise file synchronization and sharing. Egnyte allows businesses to store their data locally and online. All types of data can be stored in the cloud, whilst data of a more sensitive nature can be stored on servers on-premise. This makes for better security. Business teams can work how and where they want with an easy to use collaboration system through Egnyte’s content services platform. Egnyte integrates with popular industry applications such as Office 365 or Gmail. This allows both remote and internal employees to access all files with ease. Egnyte’s ‘Office’ plan starts at $8 (£6.21) per employee per month. This covers 5-25 employees, 5TB of storage and 10GB max file size. The ‘Business’ packages starts at $20 (£15.7) per employee per month. This includes 25-100 employees, 10TB online storage and 10GB max file size. In order to take advantage of their ‘Enterprise tier’, which includes over 100 employees, 25GB max file size and unlimited storage, you will need to contact Egnyte directly. Egnyte offer a 15-day free trial for all packages. Users have observed that some files, such as photos, can take a long time to load. Image credit: Dropbox Dropbox is one of the oldest cloud storage providers. It was founded in 2007. To date it is one of the simplest storage providers to use. Dropbox can be installed on most computers or devices and syncs easily between apps. The app can store almost any kind of file while never having any issues with compatibility. You can drag and drop files into the desktop app with ease. You can also share files with other users easily through links. These can be shared with users who don’t have a Dropbox account. As Dropbox has been around for a long time it integrates with most other apps such as MS Office and Slack. All files and folders can be shared with other users even if they are not part of your account. These users will be limited to their own plan's storage limits. Dropbox Business can be connected to your personal account so you can access all your files in once place. Personal account feature "automatic camera upload" is now also available to Business accounts, as of November 2018. The dashboard is simple and easy to use. From here, admins can see how many team members they have as well as any pending invites. You can restrict sharing, and allow/block commenting as you see fit. The dashboard allows you to access settings and to monitor usage. Dropbox offers a 30-day free trial which asks for your payment details. Your plan will automatically upgrade after the trial at which point your card is charged. The ‘Standard’ plan starts at $12.50 (£9.71) per user per month starting at 3 users and includes 3TB storage. The ‘Advanced’ package begins at $20 (£15.70) per user per month with unlimited storage. In order to subscribe to the ‘Enterprise’ tier, users will need to contact Dropbox directly. Some users have commented on the lack of online editing tools. Image credit: Box Box is a cloud content management and file sharing service for businesses. It was founded in 2005. Box offers strong management capabilities and security features. The interface is made for ease of use and is simple to navigate. The dashboard allows access to settings, files and folders. Admins can manage all users, monitors activity and control sharing. As Box has been around for a while, it is supported by a number of mainstream apps such as Google Docs and Office 365. The Box Sync client is available from the Downloads page for Mac and Windows. There's also an official Android client. Box offers a 14-day free trial for all packages. Their ‘Starter’ plan is priced at $5 (£3.88) per user per month. This includes 100GB secure storage, 2GB file upload with a maximum of 10 users. The ‘Business’ plan starts at $15 (£11.80) per user per month which includes unlimited storage, 5GB file upload and no maximum number of users. The ‘Business Plus’ package is $25 (£19.60) per user per month and comes with unlimited storage, 5GB file upload and unlimited external collaborators. In order to subscribe to Box’s ‘Enterprise’ plan, users will have to contact them directly for a quote. If you choose to share files external users are limited to read-only access.
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| Would you swap your car for an electric scooter? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 07:43 AM PDT If you live in a city, you’ve probably noticed ranks of pay-to-ride scooters springing up like motorized weeds along the sidewalks, but are they truly practical – and could they even replace your car? The e-scooter boom was particularly visible at GreenTech Festival in Berlin – a new event dedicated to sustainable technology, and hosted by Formula One world champion Niko Rosberg (a man who, during his career, must have amassed a yeti-sized carbon footprint). The show floor was populated by electric cars from Tesla and Byton, flying taxis from Ehang and Volocopter, sustainable fashion companies and a business that specializes in tasty snacks made from insect flour. However, the sector with the most booths was last-mile mobility – chiefly e-scooters. Companies including Tier, Flash (now rebranded as Circ), eFloater and Ono all presented their own vision of clean, two-wheeled transport. Tier was one of half a dozen micro-mobility startups showing their wares at GreenTech Conference (Image credit: Tier) “The way people move through cities is changing,” Boris Mittermüller, chief operating officer of Circ told us. “They’re still using cars, but the car is not the best vehicle any more. 70% of cars are single-use – it doesn’t make sense. Car ownership is going down.” According to Boston Consulting Group, about 35% of all personal trips cover distances of under 3km – a distance that could be walked, but is much faster made by e-scooter. Unlike a bike, a an electric scooter won’t leave you sweaty when you reach your destination, and it’s much cheaper than hailing a ride-sharing service. They’re also easy to ride, and don’t require training or a license. Speed of changeThe appeal is clear, and startups are popping up seemingly overnight to meet demand. Speed is the name of the game: the fastest E-scooters can hit speeds up to 35mph, and the startups supplying them move just as fast. In 2018, Circ was only a glimmer in its founders’ eyes, and at the time we spoke to Mittermüller, its scooters had just clocked up a million rides. While Lime, Lyft, Uber and Bird battle for top spot in the US market, there isn’t yet a clear market leader in Europe. Circ is making big inroads, though, and hit the million-ride milestone much faster than its competitors on the continent – and it has no intention of hitting the brakes. "There are a couple of big markets about to open up: Germany and Italy, and hopefully the UK at a certain point this year or early next year," said Mittermüller. "Like most other escooter companies, we’ve seen tremendous growth – but much faster. If you look at growth rates, they are exponential in terms of existing customers and new customers." Hit the brakesE-scooters certainly aren’t for everyone, though – they depend on riders being a certain height, weight, and level of mobility. They’re also not great if you’re carrying anything more than a backpack. Nor can we see them taking off in historic cities with equally historic cobbled streets, and they don’t perform well in rain, ice or extreme heat. The rules of the road can be problematic too, and vary hugely between countries. Are they suitable for riding on the pavement, or are they restricted to roads? If the latter, do they need to be taxed and insured? Who’s liable in an accident? Should riders wear a helmet, and do they need to provide these themselves? Then there’s maintenance and waste. Scooter batteries are often non-replacable, which means that when the battery dies, the entire scooter is destined for scrap. That’s before you consider those thrown into rivers, hurled into trees and otherwise trashed. eFloater's sturdy scooters boast Segway-style self-balancing technology (Image credit: eFloater) Not all scooters are created equal though, as the huge range of designs on show at GreenTech Festival showed, and some are more robust than others. The offering from Hamburg-based eFloater was particularly striking – a chunky, three-wheeled design that uses similar self-balancing technology to a Segway. Circ’s custom-made scooters are also a little different – a fact that Mittermüller says is key to their success. “We firmly believe that a superior scooter will be a huge differentiator, and this is why we build our own vehicles,” he said. “We took the time to build a scooter that is much better than what our rivals have. Those are electrified consumer toys – they’re not comfortable or safe. Our scooter has wider handlebars, a lower center of gravity, is more robust, and has more safety features.” Mittermüller says the feedback from riders bears this out. Passengers in Paris, for example, have a huge variety of scooters to choose from, but consistently report that Circ’s feel safer and more comfortable. Beyond two wheelsE-scooters are clearly a winner with riders, but why are there so many startups dropping them onto city streets? It’s partly due to convenience for the founders: starting an e-scooter service has relatively low costs compared to a more ambitious car-sharing service. “From a tech standpoint, you have technology that is ready for e-mobility,” says Mittermüller. “Strong batteries are available at a reasonable price, and you have IT that is at a stage where you can use it in a robust and reliable way to communicate with the vehicle – to lock and unlock it, and also during the journey. This made us very confident.” Circ is also looking beyond the scooter to other forms of ‘micro-mobility’, including vehicles capable of carrying cargo and others with a seat. E-scooters are just a convenient entry point. Travelers in LA are spoilt for choice when it comes to e-scooters (Image credit: Rachid Jalayanadeja/Shutterstock) So could a shared e-scooter replace your car? Potentially, if you live in a city (as two thirds of us are predicted to do by 2050) in an area with reliable public transport for longer journeys, you’re physically capable of riding, and you don’t mind getting damp occasionally. They’re never going to replace a car if you live further than a couple of miles from a docking point either. Electric car owners might suffer range anxiety if they stray too far from a charger, but e-scooters are on a different level (though at least they can be carried if they run out of juice). E-scooters aren’t the only option, though: if you’re looking for a zero-emissions option and feeling brave, a French startup is offering pay-as-you-hop pogo sticks to let you bounce around the streets of Paris. Suddenly scooting to work doesn't sound like such a bad idea. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| You can get 10% off selected retailers at eBay for Father's Day Posted: 07 Jun 2019 07:35 AM PDT Father's Day is coming up fast – Sunday, June 16 to be exact – and if you're still looking for the perfect gift, it might be worth looking to eBay for inspiration. In the spirit of celebrating dads everywhere, eBay is giving UK customers 10% off purchases from a number of sellers with a special coupon code.
To get your discount, enter coupon code PAPA10 at the checkout when prompted – you'll need to spend £20 or more, and the code can only be redeemed when buying from selected sellers. The deal lasts until midnight on June 10, so you'll need to be quick – presumably, this is to give the retailers the chance to ship their products in time for Father's Day. Which retailers are included?If the dad in your life is a tech nut, there are a number of retailers included in the promotion that are bound to have the perfect gift, including Cheapest Electrical, which sells everything from televisions to laptops, Envirofone, which sells contract-free smartphones, and Tesco Outlet, which has games console bundles, home cinema gadgets, and more on offer. You can check out the full list of retailers on eBay's Terms & Conditions page. With over 50 sellers taking part in the Father's Day promotion, you'll pretty much guaranteed to find the perfect gift. However, if nothing takes your fancy, check out our guide to the best Father's Day gifts, where we've rounded up the best presents, whether your dad is into music, gaming, photography, running, computing, or something else entirely.
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| The best free Android apps of 2019 Posted: 07 Jun 2019 07:31 AM PDT It has been over ten years since Android was first outed by Google, and back then it was hard to imagine the sheer number of apps we'd have today. There are apps for everything, and many of them are completely free, meaning you're just a few downloads away from supercharging your smartphone at no extra cost. Admittedly, the huge quantity of apps doesn't mean they're all quality - far from it in fact, and finding the good ones can be tough.
There are tools and techniques to help, with various lists in the Play Store providing you with Editor's Picks across a range of categories, new releases and even apps that are specifically recommended for you based on your previous installs. You can also hunt out apps that are similar to your favorites by searching for an app you have and seeing what else comes up. And checking out user reviews and ratings can save you from downloading a dud of an app. But even with all that, the sheer number of apps on Google Play means many of the best can often get lost, while weaker ones sometimes rise to the top. So to make sure you never install a duff app here's our selection of the best you should install right now - each one carefully chosen to ensure you'll have a whole suite of fun, engaging and, dammit, useful apps on your phone or tablet. We've sorted them into categories so you can more easily find what you're looking for. But make sure to check back weekly for our free Android apps of the week, which you'll find below. Best free Android apps of the weekEach week we add two apps to this list and you'll find these two latest additions below. AP NewsAP News is an official app from the Associated Press, serving up a constant stream of news stories from around the world. If you trust the AP for your news – and as news sources go, it’s arguably one of the most reliable – then the app is well worth having. Beyond giving you a slick way to access its stories on your phone or tablet, the app doesn’t do much that’s overly exciting, but you can see a feed of the top stories or filter by category, and also choose which categories you do and don’t want to see, for a more customized experience. You can also watch news videos and access AP Radio through the app, in case you prefer watching or listening to your news to reading it. DisqusThere’s no official Disqus app on Android, but this option from Try&Catch does pretty much everything you might expect an official app for the comment hosting service to do. You get notifications when people reply to you, and can view your comments and their replies in the app. You can also post replies from the app, and follow channels and people. And there are several themes, so you can customize the appearance. Some things can’t be done in-app – changing your profile for example – but there are links from the app to the Disqus website to do this. Aside from a few limitations like that, our only issue with this Disqus app is that it seemed slightly unstable in our experience, and crashed while we were using it. It seems to be regularly updated though, so we’d expect it will get more stable over time. Our favorite free Android apps for painting, drawing, sketching, design and animation. TattoodoIf you’re looking for tattoo inspiration then Tattoodo is a great place to start. The app has an enormous number of tattoo images, which you can browse, or you can follow tattooists to see their designs, or search for a specific style or image. Tattoos that you like can be saved so you can easily find the image again, and Tattoodo also lets you find nearby tattoo shops, upload images of your own tattoos, book appointments and request consultations. That’s just half the app though – albeit the half that most people will probably be interested in. But Tattoodo also lets you set up an artist account, which allows tattooists to add their tattoo studio and portfolio to the app and makes them visible to numerous potential customers. Google Arts & CultureWe’ve written about Google Arts & Culture before, but it’s worth highlighting again, as the app has been steadily updated with new content and features. In fact, there’s an almost overwhelming amount of content tucked away inside this free app. You can, for example, view high-quality versions of famous artworks and zoom in close for a better look at them. You can also see 360-degree videos and – with the help of a VR headset – virtual reality tours of museums and other attractions. You can also tour many of these sites using Street View, with both exteriors and interiors covered. There are also articles, information on local events and exhibits, the ability to save favorite artworks to easily return to later, and lots more. And if you make it to an exhibit in the real world, you can also use Google Arts & Culture to learn more about artworks, simply by pointing your phone’s camera at them. If you have even a passing interest in art or culture, this is an essential download. OverOver could be the app to take your social media game to the next level, as it has all the tools you need to create stylish designs full of photos, images and text, fit for Instagram, Facebook and most other social sites or even for use on posters and flyers. The app lets you select from a range of canvas sizes, many of which exactly line up with the sizes used by popular social sites, then lets you add images and text to them, with various options available, including a range of fonts, the ability to adjust colors and positioning, and more. Over also includes plenty of pre-made graphics to spice up your projects, and when you’re done creating you can easily share your design to other apps or save it as a JPG or PNG. The basic tools are mostly free, but power users might want to pay for the Pro subscription, as this gives you access to more of everything: more fonts, more graphics, plus a database of templates, so you don’t have to build up your designs from scratch. HouzzRedecorating or improving your home can be a daunting prospect, but Houzz could make it a little bit more manageable. It could do that by inspiring you through its library of millions of photos, showing exteriors and interiors of various styles. It could also do that by giving you a single storefront to find and buy all the furniture and other items you need, even going so far as to let you see products in your home, using augmented reality. And it can do that by helping you find experts – such as architects and builders – to do the hard work for you. If you’re planning to take on the task yourself then there are also plenty of articles on hand to help, as well as the ability to ask the Houzz community for advice. Sticker MakerIf you use WhatsApp, you’re probably aware that the service has finally added support for stickers, so as well as emojis and GIFs you can now send larger emoji-like images. But while there are plenty of sticker packs to choose from there’s also – thanks to Sticker Maker – the option to make your own. The app first has you create a new ‘sticker pack’ which you can name, then simply load up an image on your phone and cut out the part of the image that you want to use as a sticker. You can do this freehand or use tools in the app to cut a perfect square or circle. You can also rotate the image if you want and then save it to your pack when you’re happy. Packs can contain up to 30 stickers, but need at least three. Once you’ve made at least three you’ll be able to send the pack to WhatsApp, where you can use your custom stickers just like any others. If you later want to add or remove stickers from the pack, you can do that. You can also make additional packs if you have more than 30 sticker ideas or just want to keep the packs themed. Sticker Maker is a slick app, and a useful one for anyone who likes WhatsApp stickers but just wishes they were more personalized. PexelsPexels is a database of photos that you can use for free for any purpose, including commercial uses, with no attribution needed (though it notes that attributions are still appreciated). You can search using keywords or browse trending images, while tapping the photographer behind a photo will show you their other work on Pexels and let you follow them, so you never miss anything new that they upload. You can also ‘like’ and collect photos within Pexels and if you want to take them outside the app you can easily share them with Instagram or other apps, save them as your wallpaper, or simply download them. But Pexels also lets you become one of the photographers, as you can upload any of your own photos to the app for other people to use. However you choose to use Pexels though, it’s a slick, beautiful app. SketchBookSketchBook isn’t a new app, but while many of the features used to cost money, it’s now completely free, making it worth revisiting. The features that are now free include more than 130 brush presets, customizable canvas sizes, various rulers, high quality image imports and more. And that’s on top of all the basic tools that were already free, such as a layer editor and pen mode, all of which combine to make this one of the most generous free sketching apps available on Android. Coming from Autodesk, the power of SketchBook should come as no surprise, but it’s an app that seemed worth the money previously and is now utterly essential if you’ve even toyed with the idea of digital sketching. BitmojiEver wanted your own custom emoji and stickers that star you, rather than a generic face? Then you should definitely download Bitmoji. This lets you recreate your likeness in cartoon form, with loads of tools available to make the look as perfect as possible. Then you can choose an outfit and get access to dozens if not hundreds of stickers, each of which feature you. These can be shared to various chat and social apps, but Bitmoji has deeper integration with Gboard, letting you share its stickers direct from the keyboard. It can also be linked to your Snapchat account, making your Bitmoji your Snapchat avatar. You can alter the look of your Bitmoji at any time, so if you change your own hairstyle you can change theirs to match, or just give them a new outfit, and new stickers and customization options are being added over time, so you shouldn’t get bored. CanvaCanva was a hit on iOS and now it’s arrived on Android, giving you a simple yet powerful way to create posters, collages, flyers, cards, Instagram posts, banners and headers for blogs or other social media, and more. It’s a graphic design app, and one that’s intuitive from the moment you launch it. Start by choosing the type of content you want to design, then take your pick from a wide selection of ready-made templates (or search for something specific). Once that’s done, you’re ready to get editing. You can tap on any part of a template to change it with context-sensitive tools. Tap on text, for example, and you can write something new, or change the font, size, color and spacing. Select an image to change the color, add a filter, adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, or switch it for a different picture altogether – either one of the many in Canva or one from your gallery. You can also drag and rotate things, and there’s unlimited undo, so you can go back as many steps as you want if you make a mess of the whole thing. When you’re done, you can save your creation to your phone or share it online. It’s also saved in the ‘Your designs’ section of the app, which you can access from the web and other devices, so you’ll never lose a design you’ve made. Our favorite free Android apps for shooting, sorting and editing photos and videos. CuratorCurator claims to be the first gallery app that organizes your photos using AI entirely offline, giving you the search power of something like Google Photos, without compromising on your privacy. It works well too. The first time you launch the app it will analyze and assign tags to all of your photos (which can take a long time), then if you search using a keyword, such as ‘beach’ or ‘cat’, it will show you every image containing that. Curator has a nice interface too, with two themes and the ability to view albums, all images, or all of the tags that have been assigned. Albums can be renamed and favorited, photos can be moved between albums and there are gesture controls, to help you navigate the interface faster. There are also new features on the way, such as private folders and shared albums. If you don’t care about the added privacy offered by Curator, then Google Photos is still the better app. Not least because it backs up your images and gives you access to them from other devices, but Curator is a strong alternative for those who prefer to keep their online presence to a minimum. Photo MapPhoto Map is simply a world map that displays your photos over the parts of the world that you took them in. Zoom out and you’ll likely just see a single thumbnail of one of your images over each country that you’ve snapped shots in, but zoom further in and you will see photos grouped into much smaller areas too. The thumbnails also have a number on them, telling you how many photos are in that gallery. You can easily see them all and enlarge them with a tap. There are a few options, such as the ability to change the look of the map or add terrain or satellite imagery to it, but mostly it’s just a great and simple idea – a visual way of separating your photos based on where they were taken. This is definitely one for those who like to travel! Photo Map is free to use, but a one-off $1.49/£1.29 IAP will get rid of adverts. PicaiIf you love slathering filters all over your photos then there’s a good chance you’ll love Picai, as it makes the process a lot smarter than most apps. But this isn’t just a tool for sticking filters on photos you’ve already taken (though you can do that too). Rather, it’s a camera app. Simply point it at something you want to photograph and it will use AI to detect what you’re looking at, even going so far as to provide a text pop-up telling you what it sees. From there it will automatically choose filters that it thinks would be a good fit and overlay two of them on the viewfinder – one on the left half, the other on the right. That means you can see what a filter will look like before you even take a photo. If you’re happy with one, you can swipe horizontally across it to select it, or you can swipe up or down to cycle through filters. It’s a clever idea, well implemented and completely free. Google LensYour phone might already have Google Lens built in, but if not you can now download it from the Play Store, and that’s worth doing. Once you’ve launched the app you can point your camera at almost anything and get information on it. Point it at a book and it will give you links to reviews of the book and places to buy it. Other products also produce store links, or if Google Lens can’t definitively identify something it will suggest similar products. You can also point it at a landmark to get information on it, at foreign text to translate it or at an event to add it to your calendar. You can even point it at plants or animals to identify them. The results aren’t perfect. In our experience Google Lens will regularly incorrectly identify something or fail to come up with any suggestions for what something might be, especially with more unusual items, but it works often enough to be genuinely useful, especially once you get used to the kinds of things it’s likely to work with – so you know whether to even bother booting it up. PhotoDirectorPhotoDirector is one of the more powerful and polished photo editing apps available on Android. It’s got you covered for fun filters, frames and effects, but it gives you more control than some of its peers. For example, you can adjust the strength of effects and choose to apply them globally or selectively. You get a lot of control over the core image too, as you can adjust the white balance, saturation, hue, sharpness, tone and more. You can also rotate, crop or mirror the image, cut out sections, adjust the perspective, and if you’ve taken a portrait remove red-eye. There’s more here, too much to list, but suffice it to say, PhotoDirector is a comprehensive app. You’re not limited to just editing photos you’ve already taken either; there’s also a camera component, allowing you to take new shots and see how effects and filters will look before you’ve even taken a picture. PhotoDirector is free to download and use. There’s an optional subscription for £2.59 (around US$3.70) per month if you want to unlock additional tools, remove adverts and improve the output quality, but the core app is already far more generous than most free offerings. Just a LineJust a Line is a simple example of the creative potential offered by AR (augmented reality). It lets you view the world through your phone camera and draw on scenes by touching the screen. You can see your drawings from multiple angles as you move the phone around, and you can film your creations to save them or share them with others. There’s not a whole lot more to it than that, and Google (which built the app) describes Just a Line as an experiment, so you should go in expecting a curiosity rather than a full-featured app, but it’s a fun introduction to AR that can be enjoyed by all ages. LightX Photo EditorThere are loads of filter apps and photo fixers on Android, but LightX Photo Editor is one of a much smaller number of comprehensive editing apps. It has plenty of filters, as well as tools for sharpening images and removing blemishes, and much more besides. You can tweak the hue, saturation and tone, adjust the focus, add a frame, sticker or text, merge images, create collages, flip, crop and rotate, draw on pictures and change the perspective. All of that is free, though there’s an optional IAP to remove adverts and add a few extra features. Whether you opt for the free or paid version, LightX is a powerful, feature-packed app that should suit most mobile photo-editing needs. Motion StillsIt’s not often that Google’s apps come to iOS before Android, but Motion Stills did, as it was designed to stabilize Live Photos, so they’d come out smoother. Now though it’s out on Android too, letting you shoot a short video clip which the app stabilizes. Clips that you shoot can be saved as a video or a looping GIF and then shared on social media, and Motion Stills also lets you use a ‘Fast Forward’ mode, which will condense up to a minute of footage into a shorter clip. This too is stabilized, to keep it smooth, and you can pick the playback speed. Motion Stills only works for new footage – so you can’t import and stabilize anything you’ve already shot (though if you just want to turn old footage into a GIF there are plenty of other apps that will do that). But for anything new you shoot Motion Stills is a great way to make a GIF or short video and ensure footage remains smooth. It’s fast too, as footage is stabilized in real time, so you don’t need to wait for it to process your clip, and it’s completely free. Google PhotosThere are probably hundreds of photo apps around, but Google Photos stands out as it gives you unlimited storage for photos and videos, all for free. That's reason enough to jump on board, especially as it works not just on Android but on iOS and computers too. But with basic editing tools and the ability to make collages and albums this is more than just photo and video storage, it aims to be your first and last stop after taking a picture. To achieve that it will need a few more features, but it's well on its way. Our favorite free Android apps for learning new things, from history to music to coding and beyond. SmartPlantSmartPlant is a database of plants, including care information for most of them, such as how much and often to water them and where to place them. You can search for a plant by name, browse by category, or scan a barcode or snap a picture for the app to identify, then you’re presented with images and details. You can save plants to a wish list or tell the app that you have the plant already, and if you do the latter then it will add entries to an in-app calendar, telling you the optimal times of the year to do specific things with it, such as when to move it into direct sunlight. With an optional $3.99/£3.99 monthly subscription you can also message experts to get more specific advice and answers to any plant-related questions you might have, but even the free version of the app is worth having to build up a database of your plants and get basic care instructions. Big Bang ARYou might have read about the birth of the universe, but with Big Bang AR, you can see it. The app takes you on a journey starting 13.8 billion years ago, covering the Big Bang through to the development of Earth. It does this with the help of augmented reality, letting you view the universe through your phone and look around by moving your handset. At points you can even do things like hold out your hand and see the Big Bang happen in your palm. There will also be points where you can tap on things for additional information, and the journey is narrated by Tilda Swinton, so it’s engagingly delivered and it’s well worth experiencing at least once. St John Ambulance First AidThe St John Ambulance First Aid app isn’t new, but it is worth highlighting as it could save a life. It includes a selection of situations that you can choose from, such as ‘chest pain’ and ‘choking’, then talks you step by step through what you should do to help a person with these issues. There are also guides to useful techniques that you might need, such as CPR, and the app – while functional rather than stylish – is easy to navigate. Whether you ultimately choose St John Ambulance First Aid or not, we’d strongly recommend having at least one first aid app on your device - and this is one of the best. StudySmarterStudySmarter aims to help you do just that. When you first launch the app, you can pick your area of study from numerous categories, such as law and mathematics, then you get access to various flashcards aimed at teaching you the subject. But better yet, you can create your own flashcards and optionally share them with the rest of the StudySmarter community. Speaking of the community, there’s also an area where they can ask and answer questions related to subjects. StudySmarter users can also upload documents related to a subject, ensuring they have access to all their study materials within the app and also giving access to other users, and users can even add their own subjects to the app. The result is an app with a whole lot of potential, because as the user base grows, so will the number of study aids. Right now, the content is somewhat limited, meaning it’s most useful just as a way to create and use flashcards, but as a free download that’s enough to recommend it and if enough people take to it then StudySmarter could one day be a very smart way to study. StorySignStorySign is designed to help deaf children learn to read, by translating children’s books into sign language. To do this you need not just the app but supported books too, which at the time of writing in the UK is limited to just Where’s Spot?, but more are expected to be added. With book in hand, just point your phone’s camera at the page and an animated character in StorySign will read the page in sign language. And children will know which words are being signed as the word will be highlighted. As such they’ll both be able to enjoy the books unsupervised and learn to read in the process. While the content of StorySign is somewhat limited so far, there’s a lot of talent involved, with Aardman Animations (the company behind Wallace and Gromit) designing it and Huawei AI powering it, while Penguin Random House has partnered with it to supply classic children’s books to the app. Even in its limited form, StorySign is well worth trying if you have a deaf child young enough to appreciate it, but we expect that this is one app that will just keep getting better as its library grows. ScriptsScripts is a language-learning app focused specifically on learning to write and read in Chinese, Japanese or Korean. These languages are among the trickiest to learn as each one has a unique alphabet, but Scripts gives you a fighting chance. It does this by showing you letters from the language you choose to learn, and then taking you through short exercises which see you swipe across your screen to draw the letter yourself. Initially you’ll be swiping across an outline of the letter, but it quickly moves on to just showing the letter at the top of the screen or not showing it at all, so you really have to learn to progress. You’ll repeat the same letter a lot, but the exercises are all bite-sized, and so is your study, as you can only practice for five minutes each day unless you pay. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as everyone should be able to fit in five minutes of learning, but if you do want more you can pay $10.99/£10.49 per month, with discounts if you commit to a year. That gives you unlimited time, removes adverts, lets you access Scripts offline and gives you full access to Drops. We’ve covered Drops previously but it too is a language learning app, but it’s broader, rather than just being focused on the alphabet. Khan Academy KidsKhan Academy Kids is packed full of games and activities designed to entertain and educate young children. From sorting objects based on their color, to selecting the right letter to complete a word, to drawing and a whole lot more, there are apparently thousands of activities in here, and while we haven’t tested that many, the ones we have tested are varied and well put together, with colorful drawings, songs and sound effects. Most of the interactions use simple tap and swipe gestures, so most children should be able to navigate the app comfortably. A colorful character sits in the corner, and can be tapped whenever help is needed. There’s a lot here, and Khan Academy Kids should be suitable whether you want something your kid can do on their own, or something they can play through together with you. LingoDeerThere are a lot of language learning apps on Android, but when it comes to languages such as Japanese, Mandarin and Korean, which have different alphabet systems, most apps fall a bit flat in teaching you to read and write in the language. But that’s where LingoDeer excels, with various exercises designed to teach you the alphabet and grammar, as well as more conventional lessons focused on speaking and hearing the language. LingoDeer can feel a bit intimidating at times, especially if you’re a complete beginner, as these alphabets can look completely alien, but we’re not sure there’s any way around that. Learning one of these Asian languages is going to be hard, and LingoDeer is a good way to get started. OrphicThere are so many words in the English language, including all sorts of weird and wonderful ones that you might never have come across. But how do you come across them? Browsing a dictionary is inefficient, so instead you could try Orphic, an app dedicated to the more unusual and interesting parts of English. The app contains hundreds of words and will highlight a new one for you every day, even sending you a push notification for it if you want, so you can constantly learn new words. You can also head into the app and explore its library of language at your own pace. For every word you can see definitions, example sentences and even hear an audio clip, so you can be sure you’re saying it right. You can also add words to a list of favorites, so you can easily return to them later, and Orphic promises to add new words regularly, so the app should get better over time. Space Nation NavigatorSpace Nation Navigator is an oddity. Part game, part learning tool, part fitness app – the only thing uniting it all is a focus on space. There are various ‘missions’ including mini games, such as memorizing codes to repair a spacecraft, quizzes, and even physical exercises designed get you ready for an outer space adventure. There are also videos and articles that teach you more about space and the people exploring it, while leaderboards give you extra incentive to carry out the various activities. There’s the slightly annoying need to buy ‘coins’ or watch adverts if you want to replay missions, but otherwise Space Nation Navigator is an interesting app for anyone with even a passing interest in space. A bit more focus might help, but there’s a lot of content here. Today in HistoryToday in History is exactly what it says on the tin, telling you what happened today in history, and as it turns out there’s usually a lot that happened. The Today in History app will tell you about events, births, deaths, holidays and just about everything else significant that ever happened on the current day, and it includes pictures, text and links to Wikipedia articles (which is where it pulls its data from). It’s an attractive app and even better if you use the widget, which shows you events from this day in history on your home screen. Today in History also lets you download content for offline use, get notifications and – for anyone who’s not a native English speaker – switch to one of 50 different languages, a switch which cleverly will also affect the events you see, with those relevant to the culture associated with that language being prioritized. Duolingo: Learn Languages FreeIf you fancy learning a foreign language then make sure you download Duolingo: Learn Languages Free, as it's one of those rare apps that manages to be both educational and fun, ensuring that you'll keep coming back for more to brush up on your language skills, with bite-sized, genuinely useful lessons and tests. Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Esperanto, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Welsh, English, Swahili and Romanian can all be learned, it's mostly free and it's one of the best ways you can learn a new language with your Android device. Our favorite free Android apps for having fun on your phone or tablet, through watching videos, reading, socializing and more. Novel Effect: Read Aloud BooksNovel Effect brings books to life by adding music and sound effects. The app – which is aimed at young children – listens to you reading the book aloud, so that the right sounds are played at the right time. There’s a small selection of free ebooks included in Novel Effect, including some classics such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but to get the most out of the app you’ll need to buy or supply other books. Over 200 books and poems are supported with more regularly added, and there are links to buy many of the supported books from Google Play Books. But if you’ve got a physical copy or an ebook in a different format that works too, you just have to tell the app what book you’re going to read and then start reading. CuratedCurated lets you curate a list of the movies, songs, articles, podcasts, books and other content that you come into contact with. Simply search for the content on the app or add a link, then add a short review and any relevant tags, and other users of the app will be able to read what you think. In turn, you can also see the content other people post and follow people with similar tastes to you, so it’s a way to share and find interesting new content of all kinds. You can comment on other people’s posts, browse specific tags to find related content, and ‘save’ content that you want to remember to check out another time. For most things in Curated’s database there will also be relevant information. For example, for a podcasts there will be links to listen to it, and for a film there will be a trailer, cast list and synopsis, so you’re not reliant purely on the comments posted by other users. It’s a good app, and with more people using it Curated could be great. VLC for AndroidVLC isn’t new; in fact, in both Android and PC form, it’s been around a long, long time. It’s also been included on this list before, but continual updates mean it’s worth highlighting again. The app, in short, is one of the best and most powerful video players for Android. It supports just about every audio and video file format, as well as network streams, DVD ISOs and pretty much anything else you might reasonably want to play. Subtitles and closed captions are supported, and there are various tools when playing content, including an equalizer, Google Cast support, and numerous aspect ratios. There are also gesture controls for things like volume and brightness, making them easy to adjust without digging into menus. It’s also completely free, so while VLC isn’t the only video player app for Android, it’s probably the only one you’ll ever need. Telegram XTelegram is a popular, powerful messaging app, and Telegram X is that but faster, with better animations and experimental features. That last point is both a pro and a con, since some of those features won’t be as polished or useful as you might want, but most of them are minor (such as a night mode and some customization options) and can be ignored if you want. For the most part, Telegram X is just like Telegram, which itself is a lot like WhatsApp, but with some features that help it stand out. You can, for example, create group chats with up to 100,000 participants, and share files with no limits on the size or type. Telegram claims to be the fastest chat app on the market (other than Telegram X). That’s a tough claim to test, but it certainly seems slick. It also uses encryption, so your chats are secure, and it works on tablets and PCs as well as phones. The real issue with both Telegram and Telegram X is that they’re only useful if you know other people who use them. If you do, or can get people to start, then they’re well worth exploring, but that could be a tough ask. SoonSoon describes itself as a social bucket list app. What that means in this case is an app that lets you create lists of books you want to read, movies you want to watch, restaurants you want to try and more. You can select from a number of categories, including games, shops, bars, museums and TV shows, then make a list of the ones that interest you. To make a list, just type the name of the thing or place and Soon will usually be able to find it in its database, complete with information like the address if it’s a place or the cast if it’s a movie. Once you’ve read, watched, visited or otherwise interacted with a thing on a list you can tap ‘Done’, then rate and share your experience. Soon also has a trip planner, where you can select a destination and make a list of all the things you want to see and do. You can also share this list with anyone else you’re traveling with, so you can collaborate on it. All in all, Soon is a great app for anyone who struggles to remember the things they want to watch, visit, read, play and listen to, or just for anyone who likes making lists. LIKEtoKNOW.itEver seen a picture of someone in an outfit and wondered what they were wearing or where to buy it? With LIKEtoKNOW.it you won’t have to wonder any more. The app lets you take screenshots of photographs and can then tell you what’s being worn, as well as providing links to buy the clothes online. Or at least, it can sometimes. For any guarantee that it’s going to work, you should look out for captions containing ‘#liketkit’, the LiketoKNOW.it website link, or the LIKEtoKNOW.it logo in the bottom right-hand corner. Those things won’t exist on most images, but a growing number of fashion influencers will make posts compatible with the service. And that’s just one part of the app. LIKEtoKNOW.it also lets you browse images and follow influencers from within the app, and all the images of course also have links to buy the products contained within them. By following people, you can create a feed full of content that you like, but you can also browse other feeds for specific categories, such as ‘fitness’ or ‘weddings’. Most of the content is aimed at women, but there is a men’s category too. There’s also some kids clothes and some décor – it’s not all just outfits. If you’re female and into fashion, it’s definitely worth a look. Amazon AlexaThe Amazon Alexa app is essential if you have an Echo device, but previously it was an app you probably wouldn’t spend much time in. That’s all changed now though, thanks to an update that aims to make it the only app you need to control your smart home. It’s a similar overhaul to the one Google Home got, allowing you to turn lights on and off, control your thermostat and more. You can also control and set up aspects of Alexa from the app, of course, such as adding skills to it, managing timers and alarms and setting up Routines. The last of those is perhaps the most interesting, as these allow you to set a custom command that will cause Alexa to carry out a custom set of actions. For example, you could set the command “Alexa, time for bed” to turn off all your lights and turn down the thermostat. Blizzard EsportsEsports still have a long way to go before they’re as popular as conventional sports, and part of what’s holding them back is accessibility, but that’s something the Blizzard Esports app could help with. The app makes it easy to keep up to date with activity in Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, StarCraft, StarCraft II and World of Warcraft, offering schedules, scores, news and the option to set alerts reminding you to tune in when an event kicks off. When it’s time to tune in, you can do so via the Blizzard Esports app, so it’s a great companion for anyone into esports for the games above, or anyone who thinks they might want to get into them. Blizzard Esports is a little limited in that it only covers esports under the Blizzard banner. It won’t do much to help you understand the games being played if you’re completely new to them either, but for anyone with a bit of understanding and interest it’s a great addition to your app arsenal. For years Pocket has been helping people find the time to read all the articles they find online that would otherwise go ignored. You know the situation: you’re idly browsing but don’t have much time or should be doing something else, when you happen across an article that looks interesting. Maybe you plan to read it later and then forget, maybe you just resign yourself to the knowledge that it will go unread. But with Pocket, you can save it to a reading list so it won’t be forgotten, and make it available both offline and on just about any device with an internet connection, so you can read it wherever and whenever. It’s a great app, but as of recently Pocket has got even better, as now you can also listen to articles you’ve saved, so you don’t even need to read them. Pocket’s look has also been updated in an attempt to make it more pleasant to read from for long periods. So if you’re not already using it there has never been a better time to start. Google HomeGoogle Home isn’t a new app, but it has recently been overhauled, making it now perhaps the best solution for managing your smart home, particularly if you have smart home devices from a number of different brands. That’s because Google Home now lets you control them all from within the app. Or, at least, it does with most things. Inevitably some devices probably won’t be supported, but thousands are from hundreds of brands. You simply link them up to the Google Home app, then you can assign them to a room in your house, so that for example every smart device in your living room is grouped together. You can see all your devices from the main screen though, divided into these groups, and you can interact with some of them in a limited way from there (for example turning lights on or off) or tap on the device to do more with it (such as adjusting the brightness). You can also invite other members of your household to the app, so they can also manage smart devices from it, and the only real limitation is that some functionality isn’t supported. For example, with LIFX lights you can’t currently adjust the colors from Google Home, and with our Honeywell thermostat we can’t adjust schedules. But for the basics it’s a lot easier – and smarter - than jumping between multiple apps for all your smart devices. LetterboxdIf you’re a movie lover then you might already know about Letterboxd, and if you don’t you should. It lets you keep track of movies you’ve watched, add them to your list with a single tap, review them, give them a star rating, and say when you watched them. It also lets you keep track of what you want to watch, thanks to a comprehensive film database and the ability to add films to a watch list – again with a single tap. Letterboxd helps you discover films by highlighting what’s currently popular, and offering thousands of lists created by users of the app. These lists all have a theme, and while that’s sometimes as simple as someone’s favorite movies, usually it’s a lot more interesting than that, for example one list is titled “They aren’t films, they’re experiences”. Of course, you can also make lists of your own, and Letterboxd is a bit of a social network too, letting you follow other users and comment on their lists. Our favorite free Android apps for working out, reducing stress and crafting meals. My Possible SelfMy Possible Self aims to improve your mental health and reduce the symptoms of stress, anxiety and low moods in as little as eight weeks. We haven’t yet used it for that long, but based on around a week of use it seems like it could make a real difference. It includes 10 modules dedicated to improving different aspects of mental health. Each module has a number of fairly substantial ‘sessions’, made up of tips, examples and exercises to help you, say, manage stress or build happiness and wellbeing. On top of that, My Possible Self also includes a mood tracker, letting you fill in how you feel every day and see a graph of your moods over time. Plus you can add ‘moments’, which are a snapshot of how you feel at any given moment, made up of text and optionally a photo. There are other apps like My Possible Self, but this seems richer in resources than most. Having said that, it’s only currently available in the UK, and many of the modules are hidden behind a paywall of £5.99 (about $8) per month or £59.99 (about $80) per year. It’s not cheap, then, but also no more expensive than many meditation apps that are similarly focused on your wellbeing. myCrewmyCrew is a social running app designed to help you find new runs and people to run with. Once you’ve selected your city (with options currently limited to a handful of major locations across the world, but more set to be added over time), you can browse runs that are happening in the area. These are a mix of big, professionally organized runs and smaller scale ones organized by users of the app. Each run has a description, a distance, a map and more, and you can select to join it with a tap. Then you just need to show up and get running. You can also host your own runs, which could be anything from a short regular route where you’d like some company, to something long and challenging. There’s a tab highlighting other people on the app too, so you can chat to people before you go running with them. Ultimately, myCrew is a social network and event calendar for runners, and its social approach makes it a bit different to most running apps. The only real issue at the moment is the lack of cities available, but a number of big ones such as London and New York are covered. Workout AlertsIf you work in an office, then chances are you’re not moving around enough during the day. There are tools to help with that, such as the movement reminders that are built into some fitness trackers, but Workout Alerts goes a step further. Rather than just reminding you to move regularly, it sets you a random exercise to complete. These exercises aren’t too taxing or time-consuming, usually just consisting of around 10-20 reps of something and taking no more than a couple of minutes, but they’re a lot better than just walking around for a minute or two, and far, far better than staying sat. The exercises don’t require any equipment, so you can do them almost anywhere, and there are both animations and descriptions explaining how to do them. There’s even an optional modified version of each exercise which you can tackle if you’d prefer. You can also set the days, time range and frequency that you get the Workout Alerts and for the most part it’s totally free. The only time fees appear is if you want to swap an exercise for another one or clear ‘Missed’ or ‘Skipped’ exercise stamps. None of that is likely to be very necessary, and if you do want it you can buy credits or just pay $4.99/£4.69 to be able to do those things an unlimited amount. Easy PedometerEasy Pedometer joins the many existing pedometer apps on Android, but this new option stands out in a couple of ways. For one thing, it’s packed full of achievements you can unlock for both daily goals and more long-term objectives, such as walking the same distance as it would take to circle the Earth. That should help keep you motivated, as should leaderboards comparing you to friends and strangers, the ability to level up when you take a certain number of steps, and a custom daily step goal. Easy Pedometer also tells you the distance you’ve walked, your active time and takes a guess at the calories you’ve burnt from walking each day, and keeps a log of this for a year, so you can see a lasting record. There’s a lot here and it’s all wrapped up in an attractive package. It’s an app that seems to have arrived fully-formed, with the type of feature-set and level of polish on day one that many apps take years to reach. The only real issue we have with Easy Pedometer is that sometimes it makes you view an advert for a few seconds when moving between screens. We’d love an option to get rid of adverts with a one-off IAP, but at the moment that’s just not possible. WoebotWoebot was selected by Google as one of the best apps of 2018 and with good reason, as it could make a real difference to your life, especially if you’re struggling with mental health issues. The app is basically a chatbot, but one which checks in with you daily to assess your mood and helps you work through any problems you might have, using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy principles. It tells stories with a message behind them, and provides tools and exercises to help you change your thinking, so you’ll hopefully end up feeling more positive in yourself, even if you can’t change what’s going on around you. As well as daily check ins you can also message Woebot any time you want to chat or feel down, and while it won’t replace actual therapy it’s a handy, always available tool that you’ll likely be thankful for when you need it. EndomondoEndomondo is one of the oldest Android fitness apps and it’s still one of the best, thanks in part to regular updates. It’s packed full of features, letting you track not just running, cycling and walking but also more than 60 other activities -, so if there’s a sport you do, chances are Endomondo has some tools to help you monitor it. GPS monitoring lets you track statistics such as distance and pace, but you can also manually log indoor workouts or anything else where GPS won’t be much use. Additionally, Endomondo can be paired with other accounts and wearables, such as the Fitbit app and heart rate monitors, allowing it to sync data with them. With custom goals, challenges (that in some cases even have prizes) and the ability to compete with friends, there’s a lot to keep you motivated and the app itself is slick and easy to use. All of these features are free, but you can unlock various extra tools such as personal training plans and advanced statistics if you subscribe to Endomondo Premium, which costs £9.99 (around $13) per month, though it’s only around a third of that price if you commit to a year. Google FitGoogle’s official health and fitness app, Google Fit has been around for a while, but it’s now been overhauled and is better than ever as a result. At the heart of the overhaul there’s ‘Move Minutes’ and ‘Heart Points’. The former records your general movement throughout the day and aims to encourage you to make small changes, such as walking up stairs rather than taking the elevator. Heart Points reward you not just for the amount of time you’re active but for how much you raise your heart rate - a feature which really helps the app stand out. In line with most fitness apps, the core features are still available; you can track various workouts, monitor and adjust your goals, and even get some basic customized tips and coaching, based on the activity that you do. Seven – 7 Minute Workout Training ChallengeSeven – 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge promises to get you fit in just seven minutes a day, and while a longer workout might do you more good, we can’t deny that this got our hearts racing. There’s a wide variety of exercises and workouts, with an animated man or woman showing you how to do each one, along with an optional text explanation. So far, so standard, but Seven also doles out achievements, lets you add friends for some friendly competition and has specific training plans for different goals. For example, if you tell the app you want to lose weight, it will give you different workouts to if you want to increase your mobility. The exercises in Seven don’t require any equipment, so you can do them from home or even your office if you have a bit of space, and you can create your own workouts too if there are specific exercises that you like. Seven is partially free, but there’s an optional US$9.99/£9.99 monthly subscription which unlocks additional workouts, exercises and personalized workout plans. If you like the free version, it could be worth considering. Our favorite free Android apps for making music, listening to music, finding podcasts and everything else to do with audio. SwootSwoot aims to make podcasts social, by sharing what you’re listening to with any friends who also use the app. This is primarily useful to help you find new podcasts to listen to, especially as there’s also a recommendation feature, which lets you actively recommend a podcast to friends in the app (optionally adding text to explain why you recommend it). Swoot also has a ‘Trending’ tab, so you can see what’s popular with people who aren’t on your friends list, and beyond all that it’s a basic but competent podcast player, letting you subscribe to podcasts, download episodes so you can listen offline, and change the playback speed. The interface could use some work – it’s fine but a bit bland in appearance, but otherwise this is a great app if you have friends who are as into podcasts as you. EndelEndel creates soundscapes to help you relax, help you focus, help you sleep or for when you’re on the go. Unlike some apps such as TaoMix 2 you can’t customize the sounds, but what Endel can do is access time, location and weather data, and even your heart rate if you have a monitor and give it access to your health data, and it uses this information to tailor the soundscapes to your current situation. Beyond picking a mode you can also set a timer if you want it to shut off after a certain amount of time, but that’s about all. This is a simple, stripped back app on the surface, that’s doing lots behind the scenes to ensure it’s properly personalized. It’s also an attractive, easy to navigate app, so whether you want something to drown out the background noise, bring on sleep or motivate you to keep moving, Endel could be a good choice. Louder.meLouder.me aims to both help listeners discover new independent music, and musicians get their music out there – and maybe even win cash prizes in the process. As a listener, you can hear samples of independent songs in the arcade section of the app. If you like what you hear you can heart it and there’s also the option to listen to the full track or add it to a playlist. But the tournament section is perhaps the most interesting part of Louder.me. This pits the 64 songs with the highest rating in arcade mode against each other. It pairs them up – so there are 32 pairs of songs - and lets you listen to samples (or the whole song if you’d prefer) and then say which of each pair you preferred. Over a number of rounds and eliminations a winner is ultimately declared, winning $1,000. Of course, even the losers get extra exposure this way. As a musician you have to use the website to upload your tracks to Louder.me – that functionality isn’t offered in the app, but as a listener the app somewhat gamifies the listening experience, making for a fun twist on music discovery. Aroundsound Audio RecorderAroundsound Audio Recorder is a seemingly simple audio recording app with a surprising amount to it. It’s designed to allow you to quickly and easily record any sound with a single tap - be it a conversation, the wind in the trees, or anything else. Recordings are saved automatically, named based on the time of day, and given a location tag. Tapping on a recording then plays it back. Simple. You can also adjust the recording quality, pause a recording and continue the same recording later, trim a recording or edit out unimportant parts, and share recordings with people or apps as a web link, so there’s no need for others to have the Aroundsound app or to download a file in order to listen to your recordings. You can also change the names of your recordings and add bookmarks to important points in them, so you can easily find the key parts later. These bookmarks can even have a note attached. Plus, you can back up your recordings to the cloud, so they’ll never get lost. There’s a lot here, but most of its stays out of the way, so if you want to stick to the basics you won’t find endless buttons and toggles intruding on the experience. Sound AmplifierSound Amplifier is an app from Google designed to enhance audio when using headphones. Well, we say an app, but it won’t appear in your app drawer and you can’t launch it as such. Instead, you’ll find it in the Accessibility section of your phone’s main settings screen, and only when wired headphones are connected. Once there, you can reduce unwanted sounds, adjust the mic volume and boost or fine tune the audio from one or both sides of your headphones. The primary purposes of the app are to make sound clearer by increasing quiet sounds without over-boosting loud sounds, and to reduce background noise so you can better focus on the audio. It did a fairly good job in our tests, but there’s one major issue, namely the need for wired headphones. This of course is a problem for anyone who prefers to go wireless, and even more of a problem on the ever-growing number of phones that lack a 3.5mm headphone port. The app also seems as though it could really benefit those with hearing issues, yet many such people use wireless hearing aids, which won’t be compatible with it. Hopefully Google will drop the need for wires before too long. Radio by DeezerRadio by Deezer is a slick if slightly basic radio player app, and although it comes from Deezer (a company known primarily for its Spotify-like subscription service) it’s free to use. The app has around 30,000 FM and online radio stations sorted into various categories, such as ‘pop’ and ‘rock’. So you can browse them that way, or search for a specific station. Stations that you recently played or play the most often will be added to lists on the ‘My Stations’ tab, though in a weird omission there’s no way to manually add stations to your favorites. You can however favorite songs that are being played, but unless you have a Deezer subscription this will just show you a list of them, rather than actually letting you listen to them again. It’s an app that needs work, but it looks good, is easy to navigate and makes for a great companion to the main Deezer service. BBC SoundsBBC Sounds brings all of the BBC’s live radio content and podcasts to one app, so you can listen live on your phone, and subscribe to and stream podcasts. BBC Sounds also lets you pick up where you left off on another device, so if you get halfway through a podcast on your phone, you’ll be able to start from that point on your tablet automatically. It can also recommend content based on what you’ve been listening to, so it’s a good way to discover new things. It’s basically iPlayer for radio (in fact the plan is for it to ultimately replace BBC iPlayer Radio) and if you listen to a lot of BBC content it’s arguably a smarter, better choice than listening on a radio or using another podcast app. At the moment the BBC Sounds app is UK-only, but given that the iPlayer Radio app is available globally we wouldn’t be surprised if BBC Sounds is one day too. SW True-Fi BetaSW True-Fi Beta aims to maximize the potential of your headphones by tuning sound settings specific to the headphones you have plugged in. You do this by selecting yours from a long list of supported headphones, then True-Fi does the rest. But you can also adjust the sound according your age and make manual tweaks to aspects of it, such as the bass. The adjustments only work when playing music through the SW True-Fi Beta app, but that needn’t be a problem, as not only can it play local music files, it can also connect to Spotify and play music from there. Not all headphones are currently supported, which is the main limitation of the app, but if yours aren’t then you can contact the company to ask them to be added. 1lyrics1lyrics is designed to show the lyrics to songs as you listen to them, but handily you don’t need to play the songs in 1lyrics itself, instead it supports numerous music players, including ones that use locally stored songs, and streaming players, such as Spotify. Just start listening to a track on your player of choice then open 1lyrics and it should show the lyrics to the current song. In some but not all cases it will even scroll them in time with the music. Lyrics that you’ve viewed in the past are saved, so you can access them at any time, even if you’re not currently listening to the song in question, and it’s quite an attractive app, pulling in artwork for the songs it provides the lyrics to. There are some caveats here. For one thing, it doesn’t currently work with all music players, though more are set to be supported over time. It also doesn’t have lyrics for every song, though we tried some semi-obscure stuff and it found lyrics without any issue, so you should be able to get lyrics for most things. AnchorAnchor is both an app for both listening to podcasts, and creating and sharing your own. It’s that second part that’s the most interesting. You can record audio straight from the Anchor app, or import recordings. You can also add friends to a recording, even if they’re elsewhere in the world, allowing you to have a recorded conversation that you can use as a podcast. You can add various sound effects, and rearrange and edit parts of the podcast, so you’re not limited to a single audio file. Once you’re done you can share your podcast, not just on Anchor itself, but also on the likes of Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts. When it’s out in the world, you can use Anchor to track how many listeners it has, and which parts of the podcast are most played. If all you want to do is listen to podcasts then there are other apps that do the job just as well or better (Pocket Casts is always a favorite), but Anchor is a slick, simple way to get into podcasting yourself. Drum Pads – Beat Maker GoDrum Pads – Beat Maker Go is a drum machine which lets you easily make beats on the go. There are numerous sound packs split across various genres, such as dubstep, EDM and hip-hop, and once you select one you can get tapping on the drum pad. There are various effects that you can apply to your track, such as distortion and delay, you can create loops and save your finished pieces, then share them with friends. Drum Pads is accessible enough that beginners should be able to have fun with it (though some trial and error will be required), but there’s enough here to appeal to more advanced users too. Phonograph Music PlayerWhile many of us have moved to streaming music, there is still a place for locally stored music on Android, and Phonograph is one of the better players. Phonograph puts aesthetics and ease of use first, so it’s always pleasant to operate. The app has a Material Design look that fits with Google’s vision of Android, but it’s also packed full of album art and color, so there’s never a dull screen. You can also customize the colors and overall theme and look of the app, while the color of the main ‘now playing’ screen will change based on the album artwork of the current track. The layout is simple too, with your music library sorted by song, album, artist or playlist, and you can switch between views with a swipe, while most other options are no more than a tap away. Although not as feature-packed as some players, Phonograph has a number of handy extras and toggles, like gapless playback, information and images pulled automatically from Last.fm, a sleep timer, widgets and lock screen controls. TimbreTimbre’s full name is ‘Timbre: Cut, Join, Convert mp3’, and that tells you almost everything you need to know about it: this is an app for cutting, joining and converting files. But the MP3 bit in the name rather undersells it, because Timbre can also work its magic on WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC, PCM, AIFF, Ogg, WMA, ALAC, MP4, AVI, FLV, MOV, WebM, MKV and MPEG files. You can convert from one file type to another, which is handy if, for example, your music or video player doesn’t like a specific file type. You can also trim down audio and video files, or combine several files into one, which you might want to do if you’re editing together a video with multiple scenes, or making a mixtape. Those are the headline features of Timbre, but there are also tools to remove audio from a video file, split a single audio file into two parts, and change the bitrate of an audio file. All of these things are simple to do, with Timbre sporting a clear interface, and it’s completely free as well. Our favorite free Android apps for taking notes, writing and editing documents and generally working on the move. Email - mail with TypeAppIn the wake of Google killing Inbox there will probably be lots of people looking for a new home for their email. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of options. We’ve recently highlighted Spark as one strong alternative and Email - mail with TypeApp is another. This has been around for a long time, has strong user reviews and is regularly updated, which is reassuring. Features include quiet hours, read receipts, support for multiple email accounts, a unified inbox, Android Wear support, multiple themes, widgets, an integrated calendar, configurable menus and more. Email - mail with TypeApp also has a ‘People Switch’ which puts emails from actual people at the top of your inbox, ahead of marketing emails and the like. We’re not the biggest fans of some parts of the design – while your inboxes look good the settings screens don’t – but for features, this one’s hard to beat. SparkGoogle might have discontinued Inbox, but Spark has arrived to fill the gap. Already a hit on iOS, Spark aims to stand out from the email app crowd with handy features like a smart inbox, which puts important emails at the top. There are lots of features aimed at helping you reach Inbox Zero too, with tools like snooze, send later, quick replies, a smart search, collaboration tools and more. Despite offering lots of features, Spark is also easy to navigate, with a clean, simple interface that makes interacting with your email as pain-free as possible. Oh, and it’s totally free. HiHello Contact ExchangeBusiness cards are a somewhat dated concept but they still serve a purpose, so in an attempt to bring them into the 21st century, HiHello Contact Exchange makes them digital and even easier to share than the physical kind. The app lets you create multiple different cards containing different information. You might for example have a work card that contains your work email and job title, while a personal card could have your personal email and Facebook link. Lots of different things can be added to each card though, including your phone number, website, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. To share a card you just launch the HiHello app, tap on the card you want to share, tap the share button to display a QR code and then the person receiving it simply points their phone camera at the QR code to get it. Alternatively you can email or text the card to someone, so unlike a conventional business card they don’t need to be physically present to receive it. And the card can be saved to their phone’s address book, meaning they don’t need the HiHello app themselves. Notes by FirefoxNotes by Firefox is a very simple note-taking app, ideal if you just want to jot down basic notes without wrestling overbearing interfaces and unwanted options. The look is minimalist, with a mostly white screen housing all your current notes. You can tap on one to open and edit it, tap the plus button to make a new note, or tap the minus next to a note to delete it. There are a few formatting options – you can create bullet points or numbered lists, add headings and use bold and italics, but that’s about it. However, Notes by Firefox does have a few tricks up its sleeve, as it syncs between your Android device and the Firefox browser on your desktop, so you can access your notes from multiple devices, and they’re secured with end-to-end encryption. Other than that, this is a basic app, but if you’re not a power user it should be all you need, and it’s completely free. QuipQuip is an office suite built for teams, as not only can you create documents and spreadsheets, you can also share them with others and work on them collaboratively. It supports real-time messaging too and while this app will mostly be of use for teams of people who work together it could also be used for other things, such as shared grocery lists and to-do lists. You can access it all from your phone, tablet or computer, so you’ll never be far from the work and information you need, and Quip is quite full-featured when it comes to actually creating documents and spreadsheets, as for example it supports over 400 spreadsheet functions. You probably won’t want to make much use of them from a phone, but if you’re on a tablet then Quip is a great way to work on the move, and even on a phone it can be good for reading, editing and commenting on work. Otter Voice NotesOtter Voice Notes is a voice recorder, but that’s just the beginning. It also uses AI to automatically turn the recordings into written text so you can read them back rather than having to listen to them. The app also lets you search for keywords, so you can find exactly the piece of information you’re looking for in seconds, even in long recordings. This all makes it a great tool for recording meetings, lectures and the like, especially since Otter can be trained to recognize voices and you can tag who’s talking, so that even in text form you can see the true flow of a conversation. You can also create groups with other Otter users if you want to share recordings, and all of your recordings are saved in the cloud so you can access them anywhere and don’t have to store them on your Android device. The text transcription isn’t perfect (though Otter claims it will get better over time if it’s you talking, as it gets to know your voice better), but it’s reasonably accurate in our experience and you can always go in and make changes to the text manually. Files by GoogleChances are you already have some kind of file manager on your phone, but Files by Google is still worthy of attention, as it’s made by Google and has many rivals beat. There’s two parts to it. First, the ‘Storage’ section which highlights all the ways you might be able to clear space on your device, such as by deleting duplicate or large files, moving files to your SD card and deleting rarely used apps. Then there’s the ‘Files’ section, which is a file explorer, letting you dive into the folders on your phone so you can find, open, rename, delete or share specific files. The whole app is colorful and easy to navigate as well, with an interface seemingly inspired by Google Now’s cards. Our favorite free Android apps for improving productivity, whether through to-do lists, focus timers or other tools. Firefox SendFirefox Send is a simple but potentially very useful app for sharing files. You can upload files of up to 2.5GB in size and get a link to share them with others. The link opens a webpage that you can download the file from, so the people you’re sharing it with don’t need the Firefox Send app. So far, so basic, but where Firefox Send goes a bit further than some file sharing apps is in the ability to set how long a file is available for – you can choose to keep the link active for 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day or 7 days. You can also choose how many times it can be downloaded before expiring, with a range of options between 1 and 100 downloads. And if you want you can also set a password, so no one can download it if they happen to stumble across the link. All of which makes Firefox Send a great option for security and privacy while file sharing, especially as it also uses end-to-end encryption. If there’s a downside it’s that there’s no option to have a file stay up indefinitely, but then we can’t think of many situations where we’d want it to anyway. AnyListAnyList wants to replace Wunderlist and the like as your list-making app of choice and it puts forward a good argument for why it should. It doesn’t look like much, with a bland, functional rather than stylish design, but what it lacks in looks it more than makes up for in features. These include categories that your list entries can be filed under automatically (with ‘apples’ appearing in the ‘produce’ section of a grocery list, for example). You can also make your own categories and move entries to different ones, or not bother with categories at all. You can save regularly recurring items to your favorites, so they’re easy to find and add back on to a list whenever you want, hide or display crossed off items, sort items alphabetically or manually, share lists with other people and plenty more besides. The bulk of the app is free, but for a $9.99/£8.99 yearly subscription you can unlock all sorts of extras, such as passcode protection, cloud backups, the ability to add photos and prices, and a whole lot more. It’s good value for money but even if you stick with the free version of AnyList you’ll find that it’s more feature-packed than most rival apps. Calendar NotifyCalendar Notify is designed to make your upcoming calendar entries more visible, so that rather than having to open your calendar you can see them on your status bar, as well as optionally on the lock screen and as a widget on your home screen. You can customize the look and size of these calendar displays and the app works with your existing Android calendar, so you don’t have to start using something else. The core Calendar Notify app is free, but for a one-off purchase of £3.39 (around $4.50) you can unlock the Premium Edition, which is packed full of extra features, most notably a range of advanced customization options, giving you near total control over the design and layout. WishlistIf you ever have trouble remembering people’s birthdays then Wishlist is for you, as it lets you create a list of important dates for the people you care about. Other apps do this too, but with Wishlist you can set a notification to go off in advance of the date, so you have warning that it’s coming up. That too can be handled by some other apps, but Wishlist does it automatically. Just set how many days before a date you want a notification and that setting will be applied to all dates in the app. Ideally, we’d like to be able to set multiple notifications – one in advance and one on the date, for example, but this is a good start. Wishlist isn’t just for dates, either. As the name suggests, it can also be used to build up lists - in this case of present ideas for people - so each contact saved to Wishlist can have their own list of potential presents. That means if you ever see something that you think someone might like, you won’t have to buy it months in advance of their birthday or hope you remember it, you can just add it to a list. There are fields for not just the name of a gift idea, but also website links, the price, any notes, an image, and a priority rating out of 10. Beyond all that you can also add a phone number to any contact you add to Wishlist and can then message or call them from the app. The idea is presumably for Wishlist to become your main dialer app, though we’re not convinced you’ll want to make that change right now as the interface is quite bare bones. But for its date and list features it could make a good companion to your existing apps. InboxItInboxIt doesn’t try to do everything. Rather, the app does one thing, but does it very well. That one thing is emailing things to yourself, be it photos, videos, URLs or text. You might not think that you need a separate app to send yourself an email, but InboxIt speeds up the process. Once you’ve set the app up you simply tap the ‘Share’ icon on the content you want to send, then select InboxIt and the content will automatically be emailed to you. No need to select an email address, type out a subject or anything else. And if you’re in the habit of emailing yourself reminders, you can do that from InboxIt too. Just launch the app, select ‘New reminder’, type one out and hit ‘Save’. You can set the free version of InboxIt to send things to a Gmail address, which will probably suit most people just fine. But if you want to use a different email you can pay $0.99/£0.99 to unlock premium features, which also include the ability to use Gmail labels and a custom email subject prefix. HoldIf you’re anything like us then you probably open Facebook or Twitter about 600 times a day on your phone, even when you know nothing has changed and that you should be doing something far more important. But if you’re anything like us then you’re also motivated by rewards, and Hold gives you them for not using your phone. Simply activate it and put your phone down, and you’ll receive 10 points for every 20 minutes that you resist the lure of your apps and messages. These points can then be exchanged for rewards. These change over time and depend on what country you’re in, but examples include free popcorn at the cinema and free contact lenses. You don’t have to bank very many points for some of the rewards either, with many being available for as little as 20 points. And if free and discounted stuff isn’t enough incentive to stay off your phone, how about a little friendly competition? You can link up with your pals in the app and compete to get the most points. Your Phone CompanionYour Phone Companion is a companion app for a PC app called – you guessed it – Your Phone. The companion app itself doesn’t do much, other than allowing the main desktop app to do its job of showing your phone’s photos and SMS messages on your Windows 10 PC. Both can be browsed, photos can be downloaded, and messages can even be sent and received on your desktop, so you don’t have to keep turning back to your phone. While that’s ‘all’ the app does, those two features could be very useful for anyone who spends a lot of time at their computer, or who tends to email themselves photos to get them onto their PC. It’s worth noting that Google Photos does the photo part too, and is better at it, since it’s a full-featured gallery app, but this is a good alternative for anyone not already using that. OnedoxOnedox describes itself as a digital P.A. for your household bills, and that’s fairly accurate. The app lets you link accounts for your household bills, such as gas, electricity, internet, Netflix, Spotify and more, then shows you details of each billing, all on one screen. The app also shows you renewal dates – so you’ll know when prices might be changing and when you can shop around for a new deal. Tapping on any account will show additional details, such as previous bills, price changes, and any notes you’ve added to the account. It makes staying on top of your bills a lot easier and ensures you can always have a clear idea of exactly how much you’re spending. The only downside – other than the fact that this is UK-only right now – is that not all accounts are supported. For example, some gas companies can’t currently be added. However, Onedox is adding new companies and categories of bill all the time, so one day you really will be able to manage all your bills from one screen. Right now you’ll have to make do with managing most of them, which is still pretty handy. DatallyDatally is probably not one of Google’s best-known apps, but it deserves to be, especially if you have any interest in monitoring or conserving your data. The app lets you see how much data you’ve used in the last day, week or month, as well as telling you which apps are using the most data. It also has some clever extra features, two of which were added recently – so even if you’ve used Datally before it could be worth revisiting. There’s ‘Bedtime mode’, which disables data on your phone between two times that you set, which means that apps won’t be using data in the background while you sleep. Futhermore, ‘Emergency bank’ lets you set aside a portion of your monthly data allowance for emergencies. You decide how much and Datally will make sure you don’t use it accidentally. These join existing features such as the data saver mode, which blocks apps of your choice from using data when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi, plus you can view a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks, including information on whether you need a password for them. If you ever find yourself running low on data, then Datally is the app for you. InwareInware does one thing and does it well: it tells you about the device you’re running the app on. More specifically, it tells you just about every hardware detail, from the screen size and resolution, chipset, RAM amount and battery size, to far more in depth information, like the current speed each core is running at and the serial number. Inware can also tell you how much RAM is currently in use, how healthy the battery is, how hot the battery is, how much storage there is in total and in use, the build number, what security patch your device has, what GPU it has, the aspect ratio of the screen and plenty more besides. It goes way more in depth than your phone’s settings screen likely will, so if you’re ever curious about an aspect of your handset’s hardware or software, this is the app for you. Envision AIVisual impairments are one of many things that technology has made slightly easier to live with, and Envision AI is a prime example of how tech can help. Point your phone’s camera at whatever’s in front of you, press a button, and the AI will examine it and say out loud what it thinks it’s seeing. Descriptions can be moderately detailed, taking in multiple objects in a scene (for example a computer monitor and the desk it’s sat on). With common objects it all seems quite accurate, though testing it on more unusual things, such as a wooden sculpture of an elephant, led to more mixed results. As well as scenes, Envision AI can also read out text, even if it’s handwritten (though unclear handwriting will again lead to mixed results). So it’s not perfect, but Envision AI could make a big difference to anyone who struggles to see or read on their own. EmmaEmma helps you keep a close eye on your money. Link all your bank accounts (including credit cards) and you’ll be able to see all their balances in one place. But that’s just the beginning. Emma also tells you how much money you have in total across all your accounts, as well as how much debt you have, and how much money you gain or lose in total each month. It also lists all transactions and has a good stab at putting them into categories, such as shopping, transport or bills. This also means you can see at a glance how much you’re spending in each category, which is a good way to make you more aware of your spending and potentially reduce it. You can change any miscategorized spends, see a list of recurring payments, get a weekly breakdown of spending and income, and more. Of course, Emma is secure too. It uses SSL 256-bit encryption, supports fingerprint locking and doesn’t store your banking credentials. Emma is an essential app if you have accounts with more than one bank, but even if you don’t, chances are that it gives you a lot more insight into your money than your bank does. The only real downside is that it’s UK-only. Starling BankStarling Bank is more than just an app. In fact, it’s a bank account, but it’s a modern one that’s entirely app-based. That means there are no branches and there’s no web access. That could sound daunting, if the prospect of changing bank account isn’t already off-putting enough, but in fact having everything in an app keeps things simple, and there are some powerful tools here not offered by most conventional banks. For example, it has zero ATM withdrawal fees or transaction fees when using your card abroad, it lets you temporarily or permanently lock your card in-app, and you can enable or disable contactless payments, ATM withdrawals and online payments, for extra security. You can also send in-app requests to friends and family who owe you money (and who don’t need Starling themselves to pay you back), receive instant notifications for income and outgoings, and a whole lot more. As for changing your bank to take advantage of all this, well, you don’t necessarily have to. After all, there’s no real downside to having two bank accounts, but if you do decide you want to go all-in with Starling Bank that’s simple too, as there’s an account switching service that does all the hard work for you. This one’s for UK users only, but there are similar app-based banks elsewhere, such as Simple in the US. Pet Care DiaryPet Care Diary is a fairly simple but potentially very useful app for keeping track of when your pet needs feeding, cleaning, walking or whatever else. Essentially, it’s like a calendar or to-do list, where you can set up events and reminders, but they’re all focused on your pet, and if you have more than one pet you can set up individual profiles for each, where you can see every upcoming event and reminder, as well as previous ones. You can also add comments to each reminder, as well as assigning a category, such as ‘food’ or ‘veterinary care’. Pet Care Diary is probably most useful if you have a high-maintenance pet or multiple pets with their own schedules and needs, but if you ever find yourself putting pet-related things in your calendar, or forgetting to do them, then it’s definitely worth having. The core app is free, but for $2.99/£3.99 you can unlock the pro version, which removes adverts and lets you create an unlimited number of pet profiles, among other things. Our favorite free Android apps for customizing and improving the security of your device. LockBoxLockBox is a simple, secure way to store information that you want to keep handy but don’t want to risk anyone unauthorized getting access to. The app has a simple interface letting you type out basic text notes and put them in named folders. But these notes are automatically encrypted (using AES-256 bit encryption with PBKDF2 SHA-256 and salted hashes), so they’re more secure than your average note app, and as LockBox stores data in the cloud you can access it anywhere. The sorts of things the app imagines you storing include passport numbers, social security numbers, credit card information and the like, but you can use it for anything. The app also requires a password or fingerprint to login to of course, so if someone gets access to your device, they won’t get access to your notes. Hide Camera HoleSome phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 now have punch-hole cameras cut into the screen. These eliminate the need for a bezel or notch, but it means there’s a potentially distracting circle in the corner of your phone’s display instead. Hide Camera Hole is one of several apps that tries to address this by supplying a selection of wallpapers designed to, well, hide the camera hole. In many cases that just means a dark area where the camera is, while others will have a similar circle in the image, positioned to line up with the camera. You can adjust colors and positioning, ensuring the wallpaper fits perfectly, and the app has wallpapers that account for both single and dual-lens cameras on either the right or left of the display. Indeed, that’s one of the main advantages to this app over some others, which are focused just on the Galaxy S10 range and don’t work with other handsets. App TilesYour Android device likely has all sorts of shortcuts on its notifications screen and you can probably customize which ones are displayed, but what you probably can’t do is add shortcuts to apps. App Tiles adds that option, letting you create up to six shortcuts to apps of your choice, meaning whatever screen you’re on you’ll always be able to swipe down to display your shortcuts, tap on the relevant app and be taken straight to it. For apps that you use a lot, this could be a real time-saver. App Tiles is easy to set up – it doesn’t require you to change any settings on your phone, just launch it and assign apps. App Tiles does have adverts, but you’ll only have to put up with them when you’re setting it up. Once the shortcuts are in place you never have to launch the App Tiles app itself again. HiyaScam callers and other unwanted calls seem to be getting ever more frequent but fortunately there are ways to tackle them, such as Hiya. This app has a database of numbers, so it’s often able to identify who’s calling, as well as flagging spam calls. There are also tools in the app that let you automatically block ‘scam and fraud calls’, ‘suspected spam calls’ and calls from private numbers. Hiya can also identify the sender of text messages, and there’s a Call Screener tool, which blocks calls from unidentified numbers and sends them a text message asking them to identify themselves and call back. You can also manually block and look up numbers from within the app. It’s a handy, easy to use service, and while it’s not the only option (Truecaller which we’ve recommended before does a similar job), it’s a great choice. RedPapersThere are loads of wallpaper apps, but surprisingly few that will automatically cycle through designs so you can get new wallpapers on your phone without having to lift a finger. And those which do offer that service are often quite limited in terms of content. Not so with RedPapers. This app lets you pull images from any subreddit and have them set as the wallpaper for your home or lock screen. You simply type the subreddit name, pick how often you want the wallpaper to change (with a range of options from every 10 minutes to every 1 week), pick whether to sort the wallpapers by what’s hot or what’s new, and away you go. RedPapers itself is just a single screen where you select those options, so there’s not much to the app, and it’s not much of a looker in itself, but it’s really useful if you get bored of staring at the same wallpaper every day. SAFESAFE (which stands for Security Assessment Framework for Everyone) shows you at a glance how secure your Android device is, giving it several scores out of five – one for its configuration settings, one for connectivity, one for applications and one for the operating system. Higher is better and it factors in all kinds of things, including whether your SIM card is locked, to whether you allow installation from unknown sources, and whether you allow notifications to show their content on your lock screen. As well as the overall score for each category you can see a list of all these factors, with ones in red being ones that aren’t secure (in the app developer’s opinion). You can tap on each of these things for more details as well as a guide to making them secure. You probably won’t be aiming for a perfect score, especially as some things that SAFE puts in red will be intentional things that you want or need. For example, it considers location services and Bluetooth to be insecure. Still, it’s a good way to quickly and easily assess the security of your device and tighten it up if you feel the need. SAFE might even end up highlighting some vulnerabilities that you didn’t know about or hadn’t considered, which should be enough to make it worth a download. 1.1.1.1: Faster & Safer InternetIf you ever use public Wi-Fi networks, then 1.1.1.1: Faster & Safer Internet is for you. That’s because public Wi-Fi is notoriously lacking in privacy and security. There’s a chance the provider will sell your browsing data and it also allows other people – if they have the skills – to snoop on your browsing data. But 1.1.1.1 helps stop either of those things from happening by changing your DNS resolver to one managed by Cloudflare (the company that makes this app). It promises never to sell your data or use it to target adverts, and by browsing through Cloudflare you’re also hiding your data from any other potential snoopers. As an added bonus, you might even get a speed boost, as Cloudflare’s DNS resolver is the fastest public one. The app is also completely free and easy to use – there’s just a single toggle to turn 1.1.1.1 on or off. That’s it. RememBearRememBear is a simple, surprisingly cute password manager full of bears. Simply add all your passwords to it, lock them behind a master password or fingerprint, and RememBear can auto-fill login forms with them so you never have to remember them or type them again. RememBear can also generate new secure passwords, so you won’t have to think them up, and the data is synced across devices, so if you don’t have your phone to hand you can access your logins from a computer or other device. You can also store credit card details, there’s end-to-end encryption and there’s a built-in browser for secure web browsing. RememBear lacks some features offered by rivals like LastPass, such as favorites, but more features are likely to be added over time. It’s also free to use on a single device, though there’s a paid version that you’ll have to upgrade to for $35.99/£32.49 per year if you want to access your account on multiple devices. ProtonVPNTwo of the main reasons for using a free VPN are accessing geo-restricted content and maintaining your privacy and security online. ProtonVPN can help with both of those, and costs a lot less than most rivals. In fact, the core service is totally free, and there are no bandwidth restrictions, so you can use it as much as you want. There are no ads either, because it’s fully funded by optional paid subscriptions (starting at around $5/£3.50 per month). These unlock higher speeds, VPN servers in more countries and the ability to use ProtonVPN on more than one device. But for free you still get access to VPNs in three countries, and a whole lot more security than you’ll have without a VPN, as your activity will be encrypted and protected by Swiss privacy laws, and it won’t be logged. Our favorite free Android apps for planning a holiday, checking the weather and getting around without getting lost. PolarstepsThere are all sorts of apps designed for journaling your travels, but Polarsteps can do much of the work automatically. The app will track where you’ve been and add photos from your travels, giving you a map and gallery of all your trips, simply by having the app running in the background on your phone. You can make trips manually and add any photos it missed, but creating trips automatically means you’ll have at least a partial record of your adventures without doing anything. This might sound like it would hammer your phone’s battery, but in fact Polarsteps is designed to only use around 4% each day and it doesn’t even need to be connected to the internet, which is ideal if you’re traveling somewhere where data costs extra. You can keep your trips private or share them with friends and family, and by following people in the app you can see their journeys as they happen. Polarsteps is also nice to look at, easy to use and completely free, making it near essential for anyone who wants a visual record of their trips. OverdropOverdrop is yet another weather app, but it stands out more for its widgets than its forecasting skills. It has quite a lot of them, and many are beautifully designed, showing some combination of the weather, time, day, date and battery level. We’d be surprised if you can’t find one you like, and while some are reserved for the paid Overdrop Pro app, many are free. Beyond that, Overdrop is a perfectly accomplished weather app, with seven-day forecasts, nice animated illustrations, and information on things like cloud cover and humidity. Ventusky: Weather MapsThere’s a lot more to the weather than you’ll generally see in a typical forecast, and it can be a lot more interesting – and beautiful – than a simple temperature reading. Ventusky knows this, as it makes forecasts more engaging by including an attractive weather map and wind animation, complete with the current temperature shown on the map, so you can see exactly which areas are what temperature at a glance. Hourly forecasts let you see how the weather will change over the day and tapping on any hour or day will adjust the weather map accordingly. You can also view weekly charts of the temperature, precipitation and wind, so you can see how much it varies over time. Sunrise and sunset times are also available, so there’s a lot to sink your teeth into, but really Ventusky is all about that weather map and wind animation, which shows the motion and direction of the wind in a mesmerizing way. Facebook LocalFacebook Local is all about finding events and attractions nearby. It links to your Facebook account then shows a bunch of events listed on Facebook that are near your current or home location, or another place of your choice. Some of these will be from friends and pages that you follow, but it will also dig up other local public events, so you’re likely to discover things that you wouldn’t have found on your main Facebook feed. You can filter events and attraction by type, date, location or time, view them on a map and add them to your Facebook calendar, so it’s simple to control what you see and keep track of what you’re interested in. You can also add your phone calendar to the app, so you can see and manage everything in one place. More or less all of this stuff can be found on Facebook itself, but Facebook Local is a much more focused way to find out what’s going on around you, without all of Facebook’s many distractions, so it’s worth having on your phone even if you already have the main Facebook app. MoovitMoovit is the only app you need to navigate public transport wherever you might be in the world. Simply enter a destination and it will tell you how to get there from your current location (or you can set a different start point). Moovit will give you various route options using different forms of transport by default, but you can tell it to only include certain kinds of public transport, or to minimize walking or transfers. Select a route to see full step by step instructions or get live navigation. The app will tell you exactly where to go and even alert you when you’re nearing your stop so you don’t need to stare at your phone screen the entire journey. There are also timetables for buses and trains and you can save your favorite destinations or transit lines to quickly get directions and timetables in future. Moovit also has widgets, offline maps, and transport information for thousands of cities in over 80 countries. We weren’t kidding when we said it’s the only public transport app you’ll need. Trips by Lonely PlanetTrips by Lonely Planet is a visually beautiful way to share your travel experiences or view those shared by others. It’s essentially a journaling app designed for globetrotters. Create a new trip in the app, give it a title, subtitle and cover photo, then add your choice of photos, text and maps. Your trips can be kept private or shared publicly, you can edit them after posting, and of course you can view and favorite other people’s. There’s a slight social element in that you can follow other users, so you’ll always see any new trips they post, but mostly this is just about seeing the world from your phone and sharing your own trips with the world. CitymapperArriving in a brand new city is always exciting but it can also be a little daunting, especially if you need to get around using public transport. Citymapper is a brilliant app that brings you real-time information on public transport for cities around the world. You can easily plan your route using all kinds of transport, from buses to ferries, and you can be kept up to date with real-time data, including any disruptions or cancellations. An essential app for any city-bound traveler. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The best video editor for iPhone: produce and upload stunning videos Posted: 07 Jun 2019 07:13 AM PDT With a great video editor for iPhone, you can give ordinary video clips a professional edge that will make them impossible to skip. iPhones are brilliant for shooting video: recent ones can capture 4K video at a speedy 60fps and automatically stabilize the recording to reduce the worst of the shakes. That’s great, but for best results you really need a video editing app too. In most cases that enables you to join multiple clips together, add titles and effects, get rid of unwanted sections and turn your footage into something you’ll want to show off. There are lots of video editors for iPhone in the App Store, ranging from simple apps designed for social media sharing to high-end apps that you could easily make entire movies with and specialist apps for specific tasks. Some are cheap, others cheerful, and some are both. Whether you want to amuse your friends or make a masterpiece, these are the apps we think you should consider. iMovie. Image credit: Apple We think Apple’s iMovie is the best iPhone video editor for casual users. It’s powerful enough to produce very impressive results, simple enough for absolute beginners and doesn’t cost any money. Like all iOS video editors it’s a little fiddly on iPhone, but it’s superb on the iPad’s bigger screen – and you can connect a keyboard to use keyboard shortcuts for even easier editing. As you’d expect it integrates very well with Apple’s other apps and features, such as Photos, iCloud Drive, Mail and Messages, and you can stream via AirPlay to an Apple TV. 4K video is supported on iPhones 6 upwards (and iPad Air 2 onwards). Image credit: Luma Touch LLC If you find that iMovie isn’t quite powerful enough for you, LumaFusion delivers many of the features of higher-end video editors without losing the simplicity you want on iPhone. It’s a multi-track video editor for iPhone with three audio/video tracks and an additional three audio tracks for narration and effects, and in addition to the built-in effects and transitions it also supports chroma keying for green and blue screen effects. In addition to local and cloud storage it also supports WD Wireless Pro drives, and if you want to subscribe to the optional Storyblocks service you also gain access to thousands of royalty-free images, videos and sounds. Image credit: Adobe As a video editor for iPhone, Premiere Rush CC is very good, with four video and three audio tracks and a typically user-friendly interface: if you’ve used Adobe’s iOS image apps you’ll pick it up immediately. The sound tools are particularly good at balancing, reducing sound and ducking audio so narration is always clear, and the app makes it easy to export for the major social media services such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Projects can be opened on desktop in Premiere Pro CC, Adobe’s heavy-duty video app. As with other Adobe iOS apps, the free offering is limited: you can only export three times. To unlock unlimited exporting and sharing you’ll need the $9.99 monthly sub. That gives you a licence for iPhone, iPad and desktop along with 100GB of cloud storage. Image credit: Samer Azzam Filmmaker Pro is a slightly more advanced alternative to iMovie, with particularly good colour options, filters and green screen support. This video editor for iPhone includes video grading, something iMovie doesn’t, and it enables you to choose between nearly 200 different fonts for your text overlays. Filmmaker Pro can shoot video too - but not in the free version: like many such apps the full feature set requires in-app purchases. Unlocking removes the watermarks that the free version puts on video, and you can choose between monthly and annual subscriptions. Like iMovie, it supports 4K video on most iPhones and iPads (iPhone 4K support begins with the iPhone SE). Image credit: Apple You wouldn’t use Clips to make a serious video project on your iPhone unless you were some kind of masochist, but for quick video messaging and social media sharing it’s hard to beat. It’s exceptionally easy to use, comes with stacks of stickers from the likes of Star Wars movies and Pixar movies, and you can easily add a soundtrack from the supplied library or from your own music collection. The voice-controlled titling is a nice feature and the all-important filters are present and correct too. If your device has the TrueDepth camera for FaceID, you can also use the clever Selfie Scenes feature to put your animated avatar in front of an animated background. Image credit: Magisto Ltd Magisto is another video editor designed for social media sharing, and it’s been created for people who have zero video editing experience. It can turn static photos into an animated slideshow, automatically apply features such as video stabilisation and cropping, and easily share the results via the likes of Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. The core features are free; $6.99/£6.99 a month gets you the Premium version with support for longer movies, but if you want to be able to edit and reorder scenes you’ll need the Professional package for a whopping $29.99/£29.99 per month. If you pay yearly that drops to $89.99/£89.99. Image credit: GoPro Quik - GoPro Video Editor isn’t just for GoPro users, although it integrates with GoPro Plus and can recognize faces, smiles and certain actions from GoPro footage. It also works with your photo library and includes support for Live Photos. As the name suggests it’s designed to make video editing quick: all you need to do is select the photos and video clips you want to use and it’ll do the rest. It’s easy to reorder clips, change the formatting and speed up or slow down footage, and you can add the usual stickers and text. It doesn’t do 4K, though: videos are 1080p or 720p. Image credit: Fidel Lainez If you want to turn a bunch of clips into a seamless whole or stick emoji on your snowboarding footage, VideoGrade isn’t the iPhone video editor for you. It’s designed to do one thing and one thing only: color grading. Color grading is the process of changing or enhancing the colour of something, and it’s what makes movies really pop. You can use it on photos and Live Photos as well as on video, and you can make adjustments ranging from incredibly subtle to ridiculously dramatic depending on what you want to achieve. There are over 40 different adjustments, you can save presets for easy recall in future and it renders 4K video quickly and effortlessly.
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