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News on all the latest Mobile devices
74 iPhone apps
Oct 14th
Amazon UK
Free
The Amazon app can be very dangerous. Search for an item, and just like the site you can have ordered it and have it winging its way to you, wherever you are. It’s also got a barcode scanner, which will look up the item on Amazon, and tell you the Amazon price. The app still manages to cram in lots of data, with ratings, descriptions and other prices and items still displayed. Essential for bargain hunters.
Free
Auntie’s app needs no introduction. For keeping up with breaking news, and sports results there’s little that does a better job of bringing it all together. Don’t forget that you can customise the BBC app, so that you only get news you’re interested in, and there’s email, Facebook and Twitter integration to share what you’re reading.
Free
Never be out-bid on an item again, with the power of eBay’s iPhone app in your pocket you can keep track of auctions, bid while you’re away from your computer and be alerted if a cheeky competitor pips you to the final blow of eBay’s digital gavel.
Facebook
Free
A must-install for anyone with an iPhone and an account on the world’s largest social network, the Facebook iPhone app is a dream to use, letting you do pretty much anything you can in front of a web-connected PC. It’ll even dish up chat on the go, so you can tap out messages to mates while they’re sat at work, and you’re… on the train in to work.
Free
Weather: in detail. This tells you what to pack for your holidays, and whether you’ll need a scarf when you leave the house. Get an hour by hour breakdown, complete with sunsets and sunrises and meteorological maps.
Free
Putting the Paypal iPhone app in your pocket means you’ll never have to nip to the cashpoint again. You’ll simply be able to borrow tenners from your mates, and put the money in their bank account from the comfort of your iPhone! Either that, or it’ll let you keep track of payments for items bought on eBay.
Free
Skype’s been floating around on the iPhone for ages, but its power to make free calls over VOIP has been ramped up recently by the ability to run in the background in iOS 4 (So you can, you know, receive Skype calls). If you’ve got an iPhone 4 or iPod touch 4G meanwhile, you can make video calls with Skypers too, which is one in the eye for Apple-only FaceTime.
Free
Tesco Groceries, like the Amazon UK app, has a barcode scanner, but this isn’t for price checking, it’s to add things to your shopping basket, whether it’s some particularly nice vino your mate has rolled out for dinner, or the posh chocolate you just finished on a Friday night on the sofa. The idea is to let you manage your shopping list and shopping cart for online groceries from your iPhone.
Free
A must have for anyone wanting to buy train tickets on the go, get them cheaper with The Trainline. With the app you can plan a journey, buy tickets, check up on your account details, and set your home station. Allow the app to use your location, and it will instantly find your next train home.
Free
The official Twitter app is the best Twitter app for iPhone, and needs no introduction. The official Twitter app can handle more than one twitter account. It deals with all the things the online site can do, including lists, follows, unfollows, and profile edits.
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£3.99
Analytics Pro gives a super detailed view of your site analytics, and you can pretty much do anything you can on the full site, from setting date range, to drilling down into any area of content, visitor, goals and traffic analysis. Export to text or a PDF and shoot it over the air to a printer using AirPrint.
Free
If you’re shopping for a new set of wheels, the AutoTrader app should be your go to place – none of that print mag nonsense. The AutoTrader app has a search function to find a car near you, plus phone numbers and a “Garage” function that means you can save the listing to chase it up later.
Free/59p
Smartphone batteries are notorious for not lasting more than a day, and conking out before you get home if you’ve had a heavy day on the mobile. Battery Doctor does what the percentage display on your iPhone can’t: it shows you how much life you’ve got on your iPhone in hours and minutes.
Free
If you’ve got a HTPC with Boxee on board, or the dedicated Boxee Box from D-Link, you need this in your life. This smart remote connects over Wi-Fi, giving you two ways to control all your media from your sofa. You can use traditional on screen buttons, or clever gestures, so you needn’t even take your eyes away from the screen.
Free
Printers are boring, and generally never seem to work. This cuts out the middle man and sends and receives from your printer direct to your iPhone. All you need is a compatible Brother printer and you’re good to go.
Free
Bump is some super nifty new app tech that means that simply by knocking your smartphone together with another, you can swap details in a smartphone data smooch. It works between operating systems too, so you can have an unlikely romance between an Android and an iPhone, iPad, or even an iPod touch.
Free
Those with transatlantic accents will find this app more responsive than those of us with strong regional twangs, but if you’ve got screen fatigue, or RSI from too much typing, this free app will give you a well earned rest. Speak into the phone, and this app will convert it in to speech. Perfect for penning your New York Times best seller on. It’s easy to skip through and correct the bits it gets wrong, and replace words, then just send it via email.
Free
The ultimate file sync service, Dropbox lets you sync files across devices, meaning you can edit and save a document that’s in your Dropbox folder, and those changes will be made across anything with Dropbox, your PC, Mac or iPhone. It’s also a quick way to send and receive files, and to export files to other iPhone apps.
Free
If you’re looking to document your life digitally, Evernote should be your best friend. This is the don of mobile note taking, which lets you make text notes, audio notes, take quick snapshots, pin files together, and pack it away neatly into a digital filing cabinet. Hit save, and that note will sync across all the devices you use Evernote with, be that your Mac, PC, iPad, iPod touch or even your Android phone.
£2.99
Instapaper lets you mark links for reading later, which sync to all your other devices hooked up to your Instapaper account. What makes this invaluable though is the Twitter integration: link your iPhone Twitter app with Instapaper and you can save URLs in tweets for reading later, with one click. Essential.
Free
Managing e-mail lists on the move has never been so fun, or easy. Mailchimp lets you send tons of e-mails without hassle, and if you’re out and about with your iPhone you can even add friends to your list there and then! Get reports on the progress of your mailouts, and see how many willing recipients you’ve racked up!
Free
Mappiness is part of an enormous research effort from LSE, which is collecting reams of data about what makes people happy. This isn’t just one way contribution either, this nifty UI asks you to rate how relaxed, awake and happy you are, where you are, with who, and what you’re doing. It’ll then feed you back analysis of your results, show you a graph of your happiness over time, and tell you what, statistically, you’re happiest doing, where and with who.
£1.79
Twitter’s official iPhone app (based on Tweetie) continues to get better and better, but if you’re not down with it, this is one of the best paid for iOS alternatives. It caches tweets for offline reading, lets you edit your profile from within the app, and best of all, has a superbly convenient homescreen with all the most used actions a tap away.
59p
Hands up who isn’t a bit rusty on basic GCSE maths? Nobody? Then you’ll be wanting to get percentages pronto. This app does the simple task of working out percentages when your brain doesn’t want to. Work out the percentage of a number, the percentage conversion of a fraction, or the percentage difference between two numbers.
Free
Remote is essential for anyone with an Apple TV, or in fact, with iTunes. Remote links across your Wi-fi network, so you can control what’s playing from anywhere in the house, and use the QWERTY keyboard to type out titles on Apple TV instead of inputting the text through the supplied remote.
Free
Rightmove is a boring but completely essential app if you’re looking for a new pad to call your own. It uses your GPS location to tell you about properties near you, so you can wander round your locale of choice, checking out the houses, then put a call in to the estate agent to book a viewing on the spot. It’s not just for buying – the Rightmove app lists houses up for rent too.
Free
If you have a Sonos system, you can hundreds of pounds by skipping the pricey remote and using your iPhone instead. We’ve used both the CR200 remote and the free Sonos iPhone app extensively, and the experience is exactly the same: quick search through your library, and an easy way to control multi-room audio.
Free
Gloriously lo-fi app that measures the sound volume of where you are. It’s particularly enjoyable if you’re at a really loud gig/club, and stood next to the speakers. Watch the shape of minimal techno.
Free
Speedtest tests the Wi-Fi connection you’re hooked up to, through download speed, upload speed and pings. It’s essential if you’re a heavy data user, and can help you decide where’s best to settle yourself before you start a data onslaught: the cafe with the 0.2Mbps Wi-Fi or the pub next door that’s pushing 8Mbps.
Free
The Tumblr app lets you update your Tumblr straight from your phone, and gives access to the dashboard too. Be aware, there’s one thing it won’t do: create photo galleries. Aside from this though, it’ll do anything the full Tumblr will in terms of what you can post: audio, video, links, quotes and photos (one at a time).
Free
TV Guide is designed to give you at a glance TV listings, without having to skip through menus and channel listings. You can also book a reminder to alert you when your favourite show is about to start, and it lists shows for Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, Freesat and Tiscali. It’s also cached, so even when you’re not online you can still get to the last bit of info you were looking at.
£0.59
WhatsApp Messenger gives you BlackBerry Messenger style chat with everyone in your phonebook – the twist is it’s cross platform, so you can natter with friends rocking Androids, Symbian and BizzackBerry phones too. Works like a charm.
Free
Voted the UK number one money saving app by The Times, Vouchercloud gives you money off cafes, restaurants, and coffee, and uses GPS to find the deals that are closest to you.
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Travel
AroundMe
Free
AroundMe lists the closest cafes, bars, petrol stations, cashpoints to you, plus hotels, hospitals and other essential locations. It will list or map them all, tell you how far you are away from the closest, and map the route too. A hook up with Wikipedia means you can also have a look at entries for your nearby spots: famous pubs, hospitals, and the cashpoint where some Z-list celeb once threw up in front of a pap.
£19.99
Forget TomTom on your iPhone: it costs too much, and what would happen if you decided to switch to Android on the next upgrade? No: far better to go with the equally impressive and shockingly well priced CoPilot Live for iPhone, which provides voice turn by turn navigation as you drive all over the country – or Europe if you’re so inclined. Excellent.
Free
Layar is the must have augmented reality app. Hold up your screen, and you can download free and paid widgets that will show you anything from the history of the canal you’re stood by to the constellations you’re seeing in the sky.
Free
Find a Boris bike when you’re out and about with this map of London, noting all bike locations and how many bikes are available at each spot too. This is one of about a small clutch of similar apps, which all use the same information. Pick which one has the best UI for you.
Free
Top table works across the UK and Europe. It’ll give you free booking and contact details for the scran joint of your choice, and there are also reams of offers, so you should never have to pay full price again. I’ll get this one darling…
59p
For the efficiency obsessed, Tube Exits is a must. Tell it where you’re going, and it tells you exactly what carriage to get into on the tube so that you’ll be near the exits when you get to your destination, and won’t get caught up in the front line of wheely suitcases, half assembled prams and briefcases on your way out into the light.
Free
TFL still doesn’t have its own iPhone app, or any other app for that matter. In its place, make sure you have TubeMap when you’re traversing this country’s fine capital. TubeMap comes complete with live updates and a journey planner.
Free
With the Zipcar app, you can find and book a Zipcar in a few minutes flat. Search by your favourite location, look up where you’re headed, or just look for the nearest one to you. Sort by vehicle, and even honk the horn of your reserved car remotely so it’s easy to find.
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Books, Music, News and Entertainment
Answer Me This
£1.79
We don’t usually advocate paid for apps of podcast feeds, since you can always just get the podcasts synced straight via iTunes anyway. But frankly, if any podcasters out there deserve your money, it’s Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann, the presenters of this hilarious series. Stream any episode, and even ask your question from within the app.
£2.39
Bloom is an ambient music creation tool created by legendary music producer Brian Eno and software designer Peter Chilvers. Proof that the iPhone isn’t just about handy tools and distracting games, Bloom is utterly entrancing and will have you puzzled for hours.
Free
Every film buff should have Flixster: watch trailers for the latest films, read the reviews and ratings from Rotten Tomatoes. It also uses your location to find where a film is on near you, or to tell you what’s on at your local. Plus, iTunes integration means you can rent movies through the app, and it will also help you find somewhere to eat after you’ve been to the flicks. Brilliant!
Free
While the iPod nano is the only Apple device with an FM radio inside, this handy, free app solves your problems by tuning into radio stations over Wi-Fi and 3G. You can even record shows too, if that’s what floats your boat. Great for those who can’t or won’t get Spotify Premium.
Free/£2.99/£3.99
The second iteration of the Guardian app brings in video, better footie results, live updates, and some practical bits and bobs like better integration of user comments, landscape mode and the ability to search across the full archive. It’s now subscription based, so you can buy in for £2.99 for six months, or £3.99 for 12.
Free
Our favourite bit of iBooks isn’t the enormous digital library of out of copyright reading, and free books, it’s the fact that it opens and saves PDFs onto your iPhone. We can attest to this being, in a number of situations, a complete godsend.
Free
The IMDB app can take full responsibility for solving many a pub argument, and helping to turn the phrase “it’s right on the end of my tongue” into one which is obsolete. IMDB gives access to 1.5m film and TV entries, and 3.5m people from the business. It even includes celebrity birthdays.
Free
The Kindle app uses Whipsersync to sync your reading across devices, including the Kindle. It means you can read on the iPhone, then swap to Kindle when you’re running low on battery, and back again, without losing your page, or any of the highlighting you’re doing.
Free
Bored of the music on your iPhone or iPod touch? Get the Last.fm iPhone app and it’ll dish up tunes through Wi-Fi or the iPhone’s 3G connection. It’ll even learn what you like, so personalised radio stations guarantee there’ll always be a song you like just one click away.
Free
If you haven’t got £400 to shell out for an original copy of Fantastic Four issue one, and equally don’t fancy stumping up for the enormous anthology to cart around on the train/bus/tube, then you can get it for just a couple of quid on the iPhone, along with a recommendations service, and a raft of free comics.
£3.49
McSweeney’s is the American publishing house set up by Dave Eggers. Their app is one of the most simple, user friendly design out there, and if you’re a sucker for short stories and funny literary rambles then McSweeney’s is a must have. Often, the stories are the perfect size for a short train or tube journey. More enriching than Angry Birds.
Free
SoundCloud is for listening on the go, but also recording. Use it to capture sounds when you’re out and about, or browse through your stack of things to listen to. Hook up with other people via Facebook and Twitter; share your recordings via email or publicly, plus scroll and comment in the waveform of the track. SoundCloud is promising more features will be added to the app as time goes by, so stay tuned.
Free
The Spotify app is a must, but with one caveat: you need to have a premium account, otherwise it’s useless. With a premium account though, you can stream straight through your phone, just like you would do at home.
Free
Choice headline from The Onion at time of writing: “Terrified FDA warns something makes bananas black after several days.” This is America’s best spoof newspaper, always tongue in cheek, and always giving a moonie to the zeitgeist.
Free/59p
Make like Little Boots with this fake Tenori-On synthesiser. You play via touch sensitive lights, which play in a beat. The best part: it’s impossible to make this sound bad, because it plays to a rhythm, and you can add and remove elements as you go.
59p
TuneIn Radio is an internet radio app that lets you tune into the world of global web radio broadcasts. You’ve got thousands upon thousands of stations to pipe into, with every genre catered for somewhere around the world.
£2.99
Loopy is a musical notepad, where you can thumb out a beat track, hum over the top of it, beatbox into your iPhone and input whatever sounds you can think of making. Loopy takes your input and creates perfectly synced loops to build a track in just a few minutes.
Free
America’s best loved, most travelled free-form radio has an iPhone app. Forget about that being a little out of character, and plunder the archives: dig up Murial’s Treasure, the now defunct calypso show, or tune into some oddball poetry. Whatever it is, you’ve probably never heard of it, but it’s likely you’ll love it.
Health and fitness
iMapMy Run
Free
iMapMyRun syncs with your online account, so that you can track distance, time, pace, route your run, and tweet your run in realtime. Your history is saved too, so you can see yourself improving at every step.
£2.99
Pzizz claims to help you sleep when insomnia has got you by the throat, and we can say that Electricpig writers have used its soothing sounds to get over late lonely nights. It has a binaural beat, soothing sounds and hypnotic words that aim to help you drift into a soothing dreamless sleep, and the time is adjustable, so you can set it to play you anything from 10-60 minutes of sleepy sounds.
59p
The Sleep Cycle alarm clock analyses your sleep patterns and wakes you up when you’re in the lightest sleep phase. In theory, this means you always wake up feeling refreshed, because you’ll never be dragged from the deepest depths of the land of nod by your alarm. It also tells you how well you’ve been sleeping, the average hours you get per night, and can be set to a 30 minute time frame to wake up on time.
£1.19
Weightbot will track your weight loss (on the condition you tell it the truth) and should spur you on to hit your targets. Set your goal, record your weight, calculate your BMI and watch your progress (or not) on a graph, which should give you the incentive to do better, whichever direction the graph is headed.
£1.19
If you have an inability to go to sleep without background noise, you’re not alone. And no, it’s not just you and Wayne Rooney. White Noise has managed to sell an app for precisely this reason. White Noise is packed full of soundscapes and background noises to help you drift off to sleep, from oceans crashing to the sound of an air con unit humming. Whatever gets you off to sleep, this should be your one stop shop.
Free
Working in conjunction with Withings’ Wi-Fi scales, this neat app grabs your daily weight (synced to the cloud by the high tech weighing scales) and lets you track your weight loss (or gain, if that’s your bag) without remembering to diligently jot down your progress each day. It’ll recognise multiple people too, and track your fat and lean mass automatically.
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Photo and video tools
Air Video
£1.79
Got a hoard of downloaded video on your computer? Chances are, most of it won’t play natively on an iPhone due to its limited format support. Air Video removes this problem entirely. The free server software for Mac and PC converts almost any format and container (MKV, AVI etc) in realtime, so after the shortest of pauses, videos play instantly, over the air and on your iPhone. Phenomenal.
£1.19
Everyone’s favourite/least favourite camera iPhone app is the Marmite of camera apps. This is mostly down to the terrible title, which is accurate, but has doomed it to the hipster sinbin. Choose vintage camera effects and make your holiday look like it was spent in 1977.
£2.99
You’ll need to have an iPhone 4 or new iPod touch for iMovie to work to its full potential, but imovie gives you the tools to edit your HD movie on the go, and publish it to YouTube or email it to absent friends, without having to go near your computer.
Free
Instagram has become wildly popular, and with good reason: the copious quantity of filters let you spruce up your camera shots, vintage style, and then bung them online to your social networks of choice at incredible speed. There really is no reason not to try this out: this is one of the very best iPhone apps for social meejah types.
£1.19
Sketches is like notepad, bastardised for drawing. Sketch out pictures, jot down text notes with scrawled diagrams, input shapes from Sketches’ stock set, and zoom in to take a closer look at the Picasso you’ve digitally recreated, then file it under “masterpieces” on your Sketches corkboard.
Free
This nifty app from Royal Mail lets you design and create your own set of stamps using your iPhone camera or photo reel. Stamps are a bit more than standard first class. For the pleasure of putting your image in the place of HRH, Royal Mail Smilers cost £7.80 for a sheet of 10 first class stamps and £13.95 for a sheet of 20.
Free/59p
A tilt shift lens blurs the top and bottom of your photo, making everything look like you’re shooting miniatures. It works best when you’re shooting from a height, down onto a scene, especially if there’s people in the shot too. This iPhone app does a fake version of what a £200 lens does on a DSLR.
Free
VideoJug is the ultimate How To app, with reams and reams of videos on how to learn to do such important life skills as moonwalking, and caring for lizards. Videos also come complete with text and instructions, so you won’t have to concentrate too hard on that plate-spinning video.
£2.99
Apple doesn’t want you to open any video files which aren’t H.264 encoded MP4 files. It’s just not down with it. Luckily VLC for iPhone totally is, happily playing through all your DivX AVI clips with ease. It’ll even open MKV files, though don’t expect them to be playable on anything less than an iPhone 4. Absolutely essential for long train and plane journeys.
71 Android Apps
Oct 13th
Free
Adobe Photoshop Expressmeans you can give much needed touch ups to those washed out smartphone snaps. Add soft focus, colour correct, crop, change to sepia or black and white and add one touch effects like vignettes. The photo browser also lets you organise your snaps, and upload them to the usual raft of social networking sites.
Free
Have you ever accidentally tried to View a PDF in Gmail, and witnessed Google Docs butcher it in front of your eyes? Yeah, Google doesn’t do PDFs very well. Luckily, Adobe does: this comfortably opens PDFs you’re sent, wrapping and rezizing text and letting you get your pinch to zoom on too. Grab it now, and be grateful when the times comes and you need to use it in a jam – like you’ve forgotten to print off an e-ticket, for instance.
Free
ADW.Launcher is another homescreen rejigger that really makes you wonder what the big phone makers were doing when they crafted their Android software skins. It’s fast, clean and completely customisable, letting you put what you see fit in your own dock. If you don’t like LauncherPro try this, but for Heaven’s sake, don’t put up with Motoblur on your Motorola Milestone or Defy.
£1.99
You may be surprised to find while plonking your iTunes collection on yoru Android phone’s SD card for the first time that album art doesn’t come with it. Apple doesn’t actually use the standard way to tag tracks with their respective graphics, but this one click solution fills the gap for you, and stashes images on the SD card too – plus if you object to a naked baby on your homescreen while listening to Nirvana, you can change the artwork to any other picture you have too.
Free
The Kindle Android app is great if you use Amazon’s ereader platform on other devices too, but we like a bit of competition, and Aldiko certainly gives, with its own book store. Plus, you can open your own eBook files you already own, as it’s down with most formats.
Free
The Amazon Kindle app for Android gives you access to over 500,000 ebooks through the Amazon ebook portal. If you’ve got a Kindle, you can also use WhisperSync to link up your accounts and devices so that you’ll never lose your page. Anything you buy can be read across devices, and reading is flexible, with customiseable text size, bookmarks and annotations.
Free
Buy music on your Android phone from Amazon’s massive music library. Think of this as the Android alternative to the iPhone’s iTunes music store. OK, so there aren’t any music videos, podcasts, audiobooks or any other frippery that Apple likes to chuck in amongst the digital tunes. On the other hand, Amazon MP3 is incredibly easy to use, densely packed with musical choice, and often cheaper than Apple’s music store too!
Free
It’s ChromeToPhone, but right back at ya. android2cloud simply lets you shove what you were reading on your phone straight to your desktop browser for when you get back in the door and want to carry on reading at a respectable font size.
Free
Ever wondered what you’d look like if you were magically morphed into the same size, shape and appearance as Google’s robotic mascot Andy? Well wonder no more, because Google has given you the tool with which to fulfil this rather worrying fantasy. Androidify is an impressively slick avatar creation program which allows you modify aspects such as skin tone, size, clothing and accessories to create an Android-style likeness of your good self. You can then share this via all the usual channels.
Free
So here’s the deal: an Android 2.2 and up phone allows you to install alot of apps to your SD card, rather than your phone’s limited internal storage – something even a high end phone like the Google Nexus Onehas very little of indeed. But if you’ve filled up your internal storage or are running a phone with Android 2.1 or lower, App 2 SD acts as a band aid. It won’t let you run apps from your SD card, but it will let you move them to it for when you don’t need them, and reinstall quickly when the time comes.
Free
AppAware Market mixes things up a bit when it comes to Android Market recommendation by crowdsourcing ratings. Not only can you see the top installed Android apps from AppAware users, you can see which ones have been uninstalled the most, see the top apps of those nearby you, and even those of your friends who’ve opted in too. Give it a go: it’s free and you never know what you might find.
Free
Google’s recent update to the Android Market still leaves it woefully behind the iPhone App Store – not least because after two and a half years there is still no desktop version to browse. Thanks guys. In the meantime, AppBrain App Market does a fantastic job of recommending good apps to you absed on previous downloads, and shows you hot picks and apps which have had a price drop too. One of the best Android apps to get started finding all the others, no matter what phone you own.
Free
A handy, simple way to get access to the file structure on your Android phone – you’ll want to do this from time to time when you can’t find the video you want to send, or a certain ROM for your emulators. it can even zip up files to send – this really makes your Android phone a portable PC.
Free
This really is an elegant solution for something Google really ought to get off its bum and fix itself. Install it, and now when you plug your Android phone in to your computer (PC or Mac), it automatically mounts as external USB storage, negating the need for the laborious process of unlocking your phone and confirming this every time you want to grab some pics or sideload something.
Free
Ever tried to use your own photo as a background for your Android phone? Bet it went horribly wrong, and got all stretched, didn’t it? That’s because Android uses an unusual resolution, to give that effect of the background moving ever so slightly when you swipe through homescreens. Backgrounds is a free app that lets you pick out plenty, and they all look just great. If you’re using an Android phone with an AMOLED screen (rather than LCD), try an all black image, and see if it gives you a battery life boost. That one’s on us.
Free
We could complain about the Android Market until Google releases the next big OS update and then some, but we must admit, we like the ability to pull up a link from a QR code (Those blotch black and white squares) since it saves the hassle of hammering out a URL. Grab Barcode Scanner, point your Android phone’s camera at one and watch as it pulls up the link. As the name suggests, it’s also rather good at checking out regular barcodes for price comparison too, which is nice.
Free
We imagine there’s a cynical reason most smartphones don’t show remaining battery on the homescreen as a percentage rather than a vague symbol, but the benevolent folks behind Battery Indicator are here to help. Install, and it’ll give you a precise percentage of juice left in the notification bar, in an icon no bigger than the default icon. If you have an Android phone with a pathetic battery, like the HTC Desire HD, you need to try this out, pronto.
£1.28
We stick with the more utilitarian Widgetsoid on our own Google Nexus S, but if you’re the sort of person who lusts after HTC’s suite of Android widgets but have a different brand of phone, this is the best Android app for you. It’s stuffed full of hundreds of lavish looking homescreen applets, with lots of animations to choose from, and customisable power control bars too.
Free
If you use the PayPal Android app, you might have used Bump’s tech before. Bump is super nifty tech that means you can share stuff with other people just by bumping your phones together, in a sort of smartphone data smooch. It works between operating systems too, so you can have an unlikely romance between an Android and an iPhone, iPad, or even an iPod touch.
Free
A scanner! In your phone! We’re big advocates of paperless offices but for the times you do need to scan a document in, the CamScanner Android app works eerily well, even with the awful sensors Motorola still sticks on most of its phones these days. Simply take a shot, select the corners of the page in the image, and watch as it twiddles with the contrast and whatnot to give you a smooth, flat, white sheet of paper with your text on.
£22.98
Google Maps Navigation is truly one of the most groundbreaking developments in software of the last decade – it’s now built in on Android, which is why we haven’t included it here. But even it has its flaws: it only caches some mapping, so you need a 3G connection, which is a no go in parts of the countryside, and abroad if you don’t want a huge bill. CoPilot Live however is full PND software for your phone at a knockdown price, with locallystored maps. Ace.
Free
Dolphin Browser HD is superior to the stock (and already recent) Android browser app in every way. It’s faster, still supports Flash 10.1 on Android 2.2 and up, and offers gestures, letting you jump straight back up to the top of a page in an instant for instance – an obvious UI feature Google has failed to figure out as of yet. Google devs, this is one of the best Android apps you could learn from.
£3.13
We love the free desktop version of doubleTwist as a simple way to sync music and media to any phone that isn’t an iPhone, with an eerily similar iTunes-interface and absolutely none of the Ping. This complementary Android app adds the awesome extra feature of wireless sync. While it’s a pricier solution than WinAmp, we really like the sparse, get-the-job-done approach of the desktop software it works with.
Free
Stashing files in the cloud is the smart way to centralise your digital documents, but in practice it can sometimes be quite fiddly. Enter, Dropbox. This neat cloud storage app hooks you up with gigs and gigs of free storage (and you can earn more by referring friends). Pay a bit of money and you can get oodles of space. Dropbox lets you tap into your files anywhere, and even better, plenty of other apps sync with Dropbox to automatically save things like photos and audio
Free
Evernoteis the don of mobile note taking. The Android app lets you type notes and make an audio note at the same time, then attach a file, take a photo, then file it away neatly with some appropriate tags and pinning it into one of your digital notebooks. As soon as you hit save, that note will sync with any other version of Evernote you use, be it on a tablet, PC or Mac.
Free
Facebook needs no introduction. While it’s usually later to get features than the iOS Facebook app, Zuckerberg and pals are pushing to get Android up to speed, with Places and improved Groups added just before Christmas. Like all Facebook apps, it’s free. Fingers crossed it’ll be getting Deals soon too!
Free
Federico Carnales – a talented fellow we know well from his work on the excellent LauncherPro – has been busy with a side project that might interest those of you that like the look of Windows Phone 7′s Metro UI. FedeMusic is basically an Android-based replication of Windows Phone’s Zune music player, right down to the silky-smooth animation and transition effects. You can even search your music using the Zune Player’s cool grid-based tool. At the moment it’s only available in .APK form, so you’ll need to download it from Carnales’ site and side-load it using a file manager like Linda. We’re sure more features will be added in the future, but at the moment it should sate your desire to rush out and replace your Desire HD with a HD7, and it’s actually a lot nippier than the default Android music player to boot.
Free
Use your GPS-enabled Android phone to check-in to places and earn badges and (possibly) discounts at selected stores, bars and restaurants. Special check-in combinations earn special badges. Do a tour of four Apple stores in a day, for instance, and you’ll unlock a special Mac-lover badge. Checking in absurdly often? You’ll get the over-shareing badge. It’s a bit like being a digital cub scout, earning badges for roaming around, rather than tying fiddly knots. Fun, too.
Free
Unless you’re rocking a Motorola Milestone XT720 or Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, the chances are your Android phone’s camera is a bit awful. In which case, we suggest you spruce up your pictures by overlaying them wtih retro templates to mask this fact, while giving them a Polaroid 70s feel in the process. For now, this is the closest you’ll get to Instagram on Android, and it’s well worth a look if you’re disatisfied with the quality of your smartphone’s piccies.
Free
Reading something in your browser at home, then need to head out? If you’re signed into your Google account on Chrome (or Firefox with a plug-in) you can sling them to your Android 2.2 or up phone, and carry on reading on the bus, courtesy of the free Google Chrome To Phone.
Free
Google Earth serves little purpose in everyday use, other than to look absolutely amazing. Which it does. You could spend hours just zooming in and out of the world, marvelling at its beauty, and Google’s phenomenal ability to capture it all. And we have – and we advise you to do the same.
Free
A glimpse into the future, this first party Android app shows where image search is headed. Take a photo and Google Goggles will do its darndest to work out what exactly is in the shot, and bring you details about it. Snap a painting in a gallery for instance, and you can find out who it’s by and more – the same goes for landmarks. It’ll also translate some languages for you on the fly, though if you’re using it on your jollies, watch out for pesky roaming charges.
Free
Google’s own podcast trapper-keeper Google Listen is still in beta, but works a treat for sucking down the latest episodes of your favourite audio shows, and cleverly uses Google Reader for managing on the desktop. It’s one for casual podcast listeners rather than audiobook obsessives, but it gets the job done with litle fuss for free.
Free
Google took a strangely long time to come out with a native Android app for its popular RSS reader, but now that it’s here we don’t know how we coped without it. The Google Reader Android app is just like the web version optimized for a small screen, with handy options to view video embeds and even navigate through posts up and down with the volume keys. It’s text heavy, sure, but that’s quite alright with us when it works flawlessly.
Free
One of the best educashional Android apps: this chin stroking official Google app shows you the night sky, and all the constellations and clusters that supposedly look like an animal but clearly don’t. Or at least it shows you what you would see where it not for urban smog getting in the way. Anyway, the Google Sky Map Android app lets you look like Patrick Moore, and that’s good enough for us.
Free
Google Translate‘s handy on a desktop, but inifnitely more so on your phone, when you’re likely to be out and about asking people Polly voo English? It translates on the fly, offering up voice input and even a scary new mode where you can chat over IM in English and Spanish, while the Google Translate iPhone app does all the translation.
Free
Handcent SMS replaces the stock messaging Android app on your phone with a new look program bursting with added features. You can completely customise layout and notifications for different friends, group text people easily and change the layout as you see fit. There’s a ton of themes to download, and plenty of plug-ins on the Android Market too which give you new fonts, emoticons and more.
Free
We really hate voicemail – not so much because the messages people leave us are never good ones, but just because ringing up the network, then pressing all the buttons to listen to it, then having to hear them all again if you missed a bit of it, then trying to delete it, is. A. Nightmare. HulloMail is a simple Visual Voicemail Android app that’s a cinch to set up, and simply gives you voicemails like they were MP3 audio files you can stop and scrub as you like.
Free
Google’s always coming up with new ways to save power but there’s no denying that Android can slurp through your battery’s juice all too quickly. JuiceDefender is a nice solution, turning off various settings at thresholds you specify to make sure you don’t run out for an emergency, and is much more comprehensive on rooted phones, which can toggle many more. We’re recommending this over any task killers (Note their absence from our Best Android apps 100 list) as a power saving solution, as particularly on Android 2.2 and up, task killers are just a placebo, and if anything, can waste power.
Free
Android 2.3 comes with an amazing new touchscreen keyboard, which is almost as responsive as the iPhone’s legendary QWERTY – and adds some killer UI features on top too. For those lumbered with a Google Nexus One or older Android phone with a bobbins custom manufacturer keyboard (LG and Acer, we’re looking at you), this open source interpretation of it is free and works like a charm.
Free
We’re big fans of WhatsApp for smartphone instant messaging, but the other program gaining traction is Kik Messenger, which works like a charm, using a more SMS style layout for your chats with friends. Really, it’s just a question of trying both out to see which more of your friends use – don’t expect any BlackBerry mates on this one though, as the developer is in the midst of a legal brawl with RIM.
Free
The Last.fm Android app has been around for years now, and while it’s been eclipsed by the likes of Spotify’s mobile offerings, it still offers a lot of choice for very little. It’s also still a great way to discover new music, letting you create your own personal radio station, where music discovery is one of Spotify’s few failings.
Free
Unless you own a HTC Sense Android phone, use a custom ROM or a Nexus handset, please don’t take offense when we say your Android launcher is awful – with special laginess prizes going out to Sony Ericsson and Motorola. Luckily, you can speed things up and customise your homescreen to your heart’s content by installing LauncherPro instead, which gives you a nice plain dock to tool with, and no laggy social feeds hubs cemented on. Seriously, give it a go and see how much more enjoyable it makes Android.
Meridian Media Player Autonomy
Free
Not everyone likes to keep enormous, lossless FLAC versions of their songs on their Android phone’s SD cards, but audio purists will appreciate the extra format support this smart music player offers over the bult in Android sound slinger. Meridian also lets you edit the ID3 tags of all your songs on the fly, which is handy if your CD ripping software of choice hasn’t done it already. Or you’re, er, sourcing music from, how shall we say, “elsewhere”.
Free
What did we do before PayPal? With the Paypal Android app you can check payments, transfers, balance, and even go Dutch. Every payment is confirmed with a pin or password too, so it’s secure. The best bit of the PayPal app though is the Bump tech that’s inside – knock two Android phones together and exchange details for quick and easy payments.
PdaNet
Free
If you’ve got a phone running Android 2.2 or up, the chances are you have a mobile WiFi hotspot app built right in. For everyone else who wishes to apply their Android phone’s 3G connection to their laptop, there’s PDAnet. It’s free, it works with PC and Macs, and the only catch is it’s through USB tethering or Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi. Go get
Free
Android doesn’t have too many visual, magazine style RSS reader apps at the moment, in the same way iOS boasts – though that may change with the advent of Android 3.0 Honeycombfor tablets. In the meantime, Pulse News Reader is the best of the bunch, presenting news feeds and blogs in a gorgeous layout – plus there’s offline caching for when you’re on the train with poor or no signal, and Facebook news feed integration. If you’ve never used RSS before and have an Android phone, we urge you to try this one out.
62p
Ever found yourself reading a particularly interesting website and then realising you’re late for work, and have no option but to make a mad dash for the door, leaving the aforementioned article unfinished? Or perhaps you’ve been stuck at work and spotted something that you’d love to read at a later date, but have no way of reminding yourself? Sounds like you need Read It Later, the Android edition of the web bookmarking tool that has already proven to be a massive success on the iPhone. The premise is simple – once you’ve established a Read It Later account, you can tag pages on both your phone and your web browser. Unread pages appear on both devices, so you can finish reading either on the way to work or when you return home. The best thing is that Read It Later even remembers how far you’ve gotten in a particular page, and allows you to pick up from exactly where you left off. Genius.
Free
While mobile VNC is easy on modern smartphones, this flips things on its head by giving you access to your Android phone from your computer instead: check out the contents of its storage, get notifications on your computer screen and even send SMS messages with your keyboard. Great for office workers.
Free
Android isn’t known for its video format support, and if this is a dealbreaker for you, we suggest you go with a Samsung Galaxy S phone – Samsung’s gone above and beyond to offer native support for usually unplayable AVI and MKV files. For the rest of us, RockPlayer does a great job of opening any clip in any format in a pinch – perfect for watching TV shows on the go.
Free
Skype for Android gives you access to a full contacts list (and syncs with your Google contacts on your phone), lets you make in-app calls on the cheap (or for free if you call another Skyper) and has instant message support that can work one to one or with a group. Hook up to Wi-Fi if you’re going to Skype from abroad to avoid pesky roaming charges though!
Free
Like LauncherPro, this gets rids of the random garbage launcher your Android phone manufacturer has likely enforced upon you. Instead of paring it down however, this Android app transforms your homescreen into a beautiful, visual guide to all your notifications, with the latest from calls, text messages, email, Twitter and even RSS. Take that in your static homescreen face, iPhone.
Free
Google’s calendar widget will take a huge chunk of screen real estate, without ever showing more than one day’s events ahead. Smooth Calendar on the other hand, is a nice thin bar with a clean visual indication of the day, and detailed descriptions of your next three upcoming events. This has pride of place on our Google Nexus S‘ homescreen.
Free
Historians are going to look back at this time and curse us: SMS messages really are the most transient form of communciation humans have ever invented. Other than speech. Anyway, the point is, SMS Backup + lets you preserve your 153 character gems for posterity by backing them up to a label on your Gmail account. It keeps them as conversations, just as your Android phone does, which is handy too.
Free
There’s a surfeit of fitness-related applications available on the Android Market right now but the recently-released Sports Tracker is by far the most polished. It does everything you could possibly want from this kind of application – you can track your runs and cycle routes, analyse your performance and share your activities with other like-minded fitness freaks. It’s backed up by a robust social networking framework that allows you to share your regimen with friends, and that encourages a spot of good-natured rivalry that can push your exercise aspirations to new levels.
Free
As many tunes as you can stuff into your ears, with offline caching that’ll stop you blitzing that 3G data allowance too. Spotify‘s music streaming app is very nearly perfect, and a must-own for music-loving Android owners. The only downside is you’ll need to fork out cash for a monthly Spotify subscription – £9.99 in the UK. It’s worth every penny though. Note that the link above will take you through to Spotify’s mobile site for download, as AppBrain doesn’t currently list the European only app.
£1.25
SwiftKey is another keyboard Android app that gets better as you use it. It tries to predict the next word you’ll use based on sentence structure, rather than just the current word you’re typing, and it learns your lingo over time, making it eerily efficient. If you’re on an Android 2.1 or lower phone, we strongly advise you to check this out – and it looks a lot like HTC’s Android keyboard, which is a tres good thing.
Free
Swype is one of a new wave of unconventional touchscreen keyboards available on Android. Instead of poking one key at a time, you swipe (Get it?) across the screen for the word you want – it’s eerily accurate and if you give it time to learn your new words, get’s very fast. It’s worth trying on any Android phone, but if you’ve got one with an unresponsive resistive touchscreen it’s absolutely essential. You can download it simply by clicking through to the company’s site and registering.
Free
You probably won’t need this if you’re sporting a HTC Sense or Sony Ericsson Android phone, but for the rest of us, Google’s attempts at linking Facebook profiles to those in your phonebook often falls short, with no way to manually join them. SyncMyPix makes a much more intelligent attempt at populating your contacts with Facebook profile pics, so you can see who’s calling you at a glance.
£3.99
Tasker lets you create incredible, complex profiles based on everything from your location to whether the Wi-Fi is on, or your headphones are plugged in. Then they lie dormant in the background, triggering actions at your convenience: we’ve got our Google Nexus set to turn off the PIN lock when we get home and give us a list of media playing apps to launch when we plug in our cans. It’s utterly brilliant, and well worth the time to customise. In fact, it’s so good, we named it in our Best Android apps of 2010.
Free
Instant access to the world of internet radio. Listen to rumba stations from Cuba, or country from the deep south. Over 40,000 channels, with browsing by type and genre, plus presets to save your favourites. This version is free, with banner ads, but if you fancy an ad-free version get your hands on RadioTime.
Free
TV Show Favs is for the sort of person who follows American TV schedules rather than waiting months for the BBC to pick up a hot new show: You just enter the shows you watch, and then it’ll remind you when the next new show airs, as well as let you keep tab of the episodes you’ve already seen. Perfect for boxset addicts.
Free
TweetDeck for Android might just be a better option than the official Twitter app for Android, depending on what you want to do. TweetDeck lets you pull in more than one account, plus Foursquare, Facebook and Google Buzz feeds, as well as the usual replies, mentions and retweet functions, and it looks a whole lot nicer than the desktop client.
Free
We know what you’re thinking – do I really need another accursed Twitter client when I already have the excellent official app and the mighty TweetDeck? The answer to that question ultimately depends on how much control you want over your Twitterverse. Twicca – which has been in beta for what seems like years and has recently been updated for Gingerbread – is without a shadow of a doubt the most comprehensive Twitter app on Android, offering near-limitless customisation. However, for all its depth and complexity, our favourite feature is the ability to colour-code tweets, so you can group people into various categories.
Free
The Twitter Android app does everything you need to keep up to date with all your tweeps on the go. Tweet, reply, retweet, share and favourite tweets, and will also let you keep on top of your lists, alter your profile. Be aware though, to use the Twitter for Android app, you’ll need to be running Android 2.1 or higher. An older version than this means you’re stuck with the mobile app.
Free
Increasingly, Android phone peddlers are including some form of media streaming app built in – Samsung, Motorola, HTC and Acer all offer this feature on their new Google phones. Have something different and want to join in the fun and stream music and video from your phone to DLNA friendly devices in your house? Grab Twonky Mobile, which is currently free. It’ll let you create your own DLNA or UPnP server, so you can stream TV shows from your phone to your PS3 plugged into your telly, for instance.
Free
You know how all your friends still lugging BlackBerrys around love their BlackBerry Messenger? Get them to install this cross platform alternative instead: you can holler at friends on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Symbian phones, using micro amounts of data instead of wasting valuable texts for long conversations. It’s instant messaging, but tied to your mobile number so as soon as you install it you’ll see which of your friends use it and are available to pester.
Free
Widgetsoid lets you conjure up widgets of just about any shape for your homescreen, then stuff them full of toggles for all sorts of power controls, settings and media toggles. Want a bar that lets you toggle 2G and 3G, remove the PIN lock and toggle screen brightness? Want it vertical? Whatever, you choose.
Free
WinAmp for Android is a great music player made even better by the addition of wireless desktop syncing and iTunes library importing. Just leave your phone lying around in the radius of your home network, and presto, all the latest songs you ripped on your computer will be there. Magic.
Free
Ever find yourself wishing you could connect to your PC or Mac and peruse all its contents (and see its desktop) on your Android phone? Wyse Pocketcloud is your go to Android app then. This RDP/VNC freebie works like a charm, and for all your Android 2.2 and up folks, can be installed on your Android phone’s SD card to save space. The free version is only limited to one computer and without 128-bit crazy encryption – but that might be enough for most!
Apple orders production of 15 million iPhone 5s
Aug 4th
Still coming September
Taiwanese production plant Pegatron Technology has reportedly received a manufacturing order from Apple for 15 million iPhone 5s. The plant, which is best known for building notebooks, was a major supplier of iPhone 4s, and if sources are to be believed, production is on schedule for a September launch.
The same sources also re-affirm rumours that the forthcoming iPhone 5 with be more like an iPhone 4S – it will be a fractional update on the iPhone 4, possibly with a new case design (and, obviously, sporting iOS 5), but with few other surprises in its bowels.
Pegatron Technology formerly supplied four million CDMA iPhone 4s, so it has been working with Apple for a while, but if this new report is true, this is the largest volume of handsets it has ever been commissioned to build.
The company itself declined to comment about its partnership with Apple, or its involvement with the iPhone 5.
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Apple iPhone 5 Phones iPhone
Apple orders production of 15 million iPhone 5s originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:51:58 +0100
Nokia X7 now in Three stores
Aug 4th
No not three stores, Three stores
With Nokia’s WP7 adventure imminent the new Nokia X7 could be seen as a tough sell as it’s armed, solely, with a Symbian update – Symbian Anna.
However, mobile phone OSes aside this hasn’t put off Three from stocking the handset on its shelves; the new smartphone being available right now.
The Nokia X7 does have a strong design – whether you like it or not is a different matter – and packs in a 4-inch Clear Black Display AMOLED screen and an 8-megapixel camera around back. You’ll also be able to capture 720p HD video footage and then share this instantly via the usual channels.
Buying through Three will mean you get a 16GB memory card instead of the standard 8GB as well as having the phone in a Light Steel colour for 3 months.
The Nokia X7 is available from ?30 a month or ?35 a month on The One Plan with All-You-Can-Eat Data, 5,000 Three-to-Three minutes and 5000 texts.
If you want to go PAYG the Nokia X7 will set you back ?379.99. All in One 15 costs ?15 and gives 30-days access to all-you-can-eat data along with 300 any-network minutes and 3,000 texts. Or All in One 25 costs ?25 and offers 500 minutes, 3,000 texts and all-you-can-eat data for a 30-day period.
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Mobile phones Phones Nokia Nokia X7 three
Nokia X7 now in Three stores originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:54:04 +0100
iRoll smartphone concept swaps practicality for looks
Aug 4th
Indian designer conceives funky phone
OLED, the screen technology that can offer up super-thin displays, will eventually lead to some madcap gadgets, gizmos and entertainment doo-hickeys that we haven’t even thought up yet. And it’s certainly exciting young tech designers around the globe.
No more so than Indian designer?Sudhanwa Chavan who has used an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) touchscreen as part of his rolled-up smartphone concept – focusing on its potential to be paper thin and flexible.
iRoll, as he calls it, is his conceptual smartphone that comes in scroll form. It simply rolls up into a tube not much bigger than a pen when not in use. It takes up less room in a pocket or handbag than a conventional handset, and its exterior features an “intellectual surface” that can change colour to indicate things such as battery life.
All good so far.
However, as he’s made a giant leap of faith as to the availability of future tech such as the never-degrading, bendable OLED screen and a 360-degree rotating camera working on a ratchet mechanism, it’s possibly shortsighted that he also mentions that it will work on a 3G network and act as a USB flash drive. We don’t need a crystal ball to know that 4G is around the corner (in the UK) and very very real, and that USB is merely a stop gap for digitised memory air – flash memory that exists in the collation of minute, charged air particles.
Er… Maybe we’d be best to leave it to Chavan after all.
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Phones iRoll Concepts Smartphones
iRoll smartphone concept swaps practicality for looks originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:53:00 +0100
Orange Euro road-trip: Barcelona, Stockholm and Monte Carlo
Aug 4th
Budget handsets announced
Orange has detailed the release plans for its three new budget smartphones – the Orange Barcelona, the Orange Stockholm and the Orange Monte Carlo.
Starting with the the Orange Stockholm (which is a re-branded version of the Huawei U8160), this is an Android 2.2 device with a 2.8-inch QVGA TFT capacitive touch screen and a 3.2-megapixel camera.
It packs HSDPA 3G+ with UMA signal boost (meaning that you’ll be able to connect to friendly Wi-Fi networks and receive your voice calls and messages via Wi-Fi rather than over the 3G network) along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and has all the other ingredients that will keep its tween-based target market happy – such as an FM radio, an MP3 player, and push email.
Next up is the Orange Barcelona, which Pocket-lint got hands-on with last month. The Barcelona is a re-skinned Huawei Boulder with entry level specs.
It packs the Qualcomm MSM7225 processor clocked at 528MHz (not confirmed by Orange, but those are the specs from the Boulder) and a 3.2-megapixel camera around the back.
It has a 2.6-inch touchscreen (supporting multitouch) as well as the full QWERTY keyboard beneath it. It packs Froyo and supports a couple of network features from Orange – the first being HD Voice and the second, like the Stockholm, being UMA.
The Orange Monte Carlo is a Gingerbread device that Pocket-lint first saw back in March.? It’s powered by an 800MHz chip and has a 4.3-inch display and a 5-megapixel camera. There are also HD Voice capabilities and HSDPA, 3G+, DLNA and Wi-Fi connectivity.
The Monte Carlo is, in fact, the ZTE Skate in new clothes and is possibly the most attractive sounding Orange branded budget smartphone yet.
The Orange Stockholm will be priced at ?79.99 on PAYG, the Barcelona is ?20 more (or free on contract). There’s no pricing yet for the Monte Carlo, but Orange says that it’ll be coming this summer.
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Orange Orange Barcelona Orange Monte Carlo Orange Stockholm Phones Mobile phones
Orange Euro road-trip: Barcelona, Stockholm and Monte Carlo originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:35:00 +0100
Nokia 700 Zeta official pics leaked
Aug 4th
Not a blurred shot in sight
If you were excited by the leaked, but extremely blurry, pictures that emerged of the Nokia 700 Zeta last week, then hold on to your socks – because some clear, official pics have now hit the web.
The possible N7 (that’s our guess at least) was originally leaked on a dubious looking spec sheet that was doing the rounds at the end of last month.
It’s said to be packing a 3.2-inch nHD AMOLDED display and running the next-gen version of Symbian Anna – Belle. It also boasts a 5-megapixel with LED flash and there are murmurs of NFC capabilities too.
The early spec sheet labelled the Zeta as “the thinnest smartphone ever” but with measurements of 110 x 51 x 10mm, Sony Ericsson may have something to say about that.
The Nokia 700 Zeta is just one of up to 10 Symbian handsets that could be coming our way before Nokia fully teams up with Microsoft.
We’ve also heard whispers of the N5, the Nokia 701 Helen, the Nokia 600 Cindy, the Nokia 500 Fate, the N6 and the N7 – although it’s not clear if some of these devices are, in fact, the same handsets.
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Nokia 700 Nokia Zeta Nokia Phones Mobile phones
Nokia 700 Zeta official pics leaked originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:05:30 +0100
Motorola Droid 3 / Milestone 3 leaked pics aplenty
Aug 4th
Hitting 7 July?
The Motorola Droid 3 has been caught out from all angles – after a 360-degree view of the forthcoming handset was leaked by Verizon. Dummy models of the handset are also reported to be arriving in Verizon stores.
Back at the start of June, Verizon was guilty of leaking three training videos of the, as-of-yet-not-official, completion to Motorola’s Droid / Milestone trilogy – it’s almost as if the US carrier is doing it on purpose….
The Droid 3 is said to be packing both a HDMI-out and a micro-USB port, as well as an 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash, and Full 1080p HD video shooting.
Other speculated specs include a 4-inch qHD display, a 1GHz OMAP 4430 CPU, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and a front facing camera.
The Droid 3 is apparently on course for an official announcement and release as early as 7 July. Nothing official yet though – as ever, we’ll keep you posted.
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Motorola Droid 3 Motorola Milestone 3 Motorola Phones Mobile phones
Motorola Droid 3 / Milestone 3 leaked pics aplenty originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:53:41 +0100
Motorola Droid 3 finally official
Aug 4th
Dual-core smartphone hits Verizon
The Motorola Droid 3 has had more leaks than a Welsh allotment, but now the high-spec’d handset is finally official – with Verizon (the perpetrator of most of the leaks) putting the phone up for sale on its website.
The Droid 3 (which we hope will come to the UK, possibly as the Milestone 3) is a Gingerbread handset, boasting a five-row QWERTY keyboard and rocking a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP chip.
It packs a 4-inch qHD 960×540 display and has 16GB of onboard storage – which is handy because you’ll be eating up plenty of space by storing the 1080p videos that it is capable of recording. It also has an 8-megapixel camera for stills, with auto-focus and face recognition and a front facing cam for video calling.
Connectivity on the Verizon version is All–Digital, 800/1900, CDMA EVDO rev A and GSM 850/900/1800/1900 UMTS, Wi-Fi, DLNA and Bluetooth 2.1 and it has a 1540mAH Li–Ion battery.
Verizon is selling the Motorola Droid 3 for $459.99 on a rolling monthly deal, $199.99 on a 2-year contract. No word as of yet with regards to a UK release – we’ll keep you updated though.?
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Motorola Droid 3 Motorola Phones Mobile phones
Motorola Droid 3 finally official originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:29:00 +0100
Ravers more likely than rockers to lose iPhones at festivals
Aug 4th
Leave home without it
Gadget insurance provider Protect Your Bubble has released the results of a survey taken from the Wireless Festival, Hyde Park. It showed that 1 in 4 people will lose something at a festival this year, with dance fans apparently most at risk with 1 in 10 (12 per cent) losing their mobile despite nearly half owning an iPhone.
A range of festival goers were polled, with pop fans the least likely to have their gadget stolen, whilst those into hip hop come in a close second behind their dance counterparts with 9 per cent losing their mobiles. Hip hop fans being at high risk could be something to do with 84 per cent of them admitting to drinking over seven pints of lager; the particular drug of choice for the dance crowd was undisclosed.
Rock fans appeared to be the most practical of the bunch with 29 per cent bringing cheap “dumb phones” to a festival with them.
Stephen Ebbett, Director, Protectyourbubble.com, commented: “Our research shows the difference between the type of music people like, and the care they take of their gadgets. Fans of David Ghetta and the Chemical Brothers are the most likely to own an iPhone, but also the most careless at losing the gadget. While fans of Plan B and Tinie Tempah drink the most and have the least insurance protection. Fans of Pulp and Ke$ha clearly take better care of their gadgets with their chances of their mobile getting lost or stolen nearly half that of other fans.”
The rule of thumb appears to be that if you’re going to get off your face at a festival then it’s probably best not to take anything of value, let alone a ?500 piece of tech. And if you do it’s probably not a bad idea getting some insurance – just in case.
Related links:
Feature – Best festival gear
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Phones Mobile phones Apple iPhone Surveys
Ravers more likely than rockers to lose iPhones at festivals originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:53:00 +0100
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