Save the date: More Nintendo Switch details are coming on January 12

The internet lost its collective mind last week over the reveal of the Nintendo Switch, a console which promises to seamlessly bring together the handheld and console gaming experiences. 

But while the video gave us a good idea of the general look and feel of the console, it was surprisingly light on details. 

That’s all set to change on January 12, when Nintendo is promising that we’ll ‘learn more’ about the new system courtesy of a live-streamed presentation, with the exact time yet to be confirmed.

Questions and answers

At the very least we expect to hear a firm Nintendo Switch release date and price detailed at the event – but it would also be nice to get firm details about what launch titles we can expect from the system, as the games shown in its reveal trailer have failed to be confirmed for release.

We could also do with some full technical specs, so that we can stop worrying about rumors of the Switch’s three-hour battery life. 

Following the event there are set to be Switch sampling events for "invited media, partners and consumers" in the US and Europe, with further public showings to come at a later date.

• Check out everything we know about the Nintendo Switch Price

October 27, 2016 at 04:06PM
Jon Porter

Lenovo is poised to snap up Fujitsu’s PC division

Following strong rumours that Lenovo would acquire Fujitsu’s PC business which we heard earlier this month, it seems that some manner of merger will go ahead – or is at least under serious discussion, with an official announcement being made to that effect.

Fujitsu issued a press statement to say that it’s exploring a “strategic cooperation in the realm of research, development, design and manufacturing of personal computers” with Lenovo, with the precise details still being hammered out.

The PC division, Fujitsu Client Computing Limited (FCCL), was spun off early this year, and Fujitsu echoed what it said at the start of October, namely that it had been considering a number of options when it came to the future of FCCL – although it now appears to have settled on the Lenovo route.

Going for growth 

The statement noted that Lenovo wanted to grow its core PC business – and indeed it has to, in order to stay ahead of rapidly closing rival HP Inc, which is now a very close second place to Lenovo in terms of PC sales. But it also noted that the Fujitsu brand wasn’t going anywhere, and PCs carrying the name would still be sold.

As well as these two PC manufacturers, the Development Bank of Japan is also involved in the discussions, set to provide financial support for the move (obviously enough).

The current state of affairs is that: “Fujitsu and Lenovo will continue their discussion in pursuit of a mutually beneficial collaboration.”

In all likelihood, given this announcement has now been made – and wouldn’t have been made lightly – we’ll probably hear something about the final deal before very long.

• So what are the 10 best PCs of the moment? We’ll tell you right here

October 27, 2016 at 03:13PM
Darren Allan

Here are the free PlayStation Plus games for November 2016

Each month, a new range of free downloadable games becomes available to North American, European and Australian PlayStation Plus subscribers, with titles across PS3, PS4 and PS Vita.

We suggest you grab these games while they're free, as you'll then be able to play them as long as you have an active Plus subscription.

As the free games are refreshed monthly, we've taken the liberty of keeping you updated on the titles that are being offered.

Here are your free PlayStation Plus games for November 2016, which will be available sometime during the first week of the month.

PlayStation 4

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture – a critically-acclaimed game from developer The Chinese Room, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a haunting open-world game that see the player explore the abandoned (but beautiful) village of Yaughton in an effort to find out where everyone is. 

The Deadly Tower of Monsters – modelled on the B-grade science fiction movies of the 1970s, this tongue-in-cheek third-person action game sees you play as Dick Starspeed, a space explorer who has crash landed on an alien planet and must deal with its hostile inhabitants, Thankfully, he has the help of Scarlet Nova, heir to the planet's tyrannical Emperor.

PlayStation 3

Dirt 3 – The third game in Codemasters' Dirt series, Dirt 3 mixes traditional rally action with the extreme sports influence of driver Ken Block to create one of the finest racing games of the last console generation. 

Costume Quest 2 – an adorable role-playing game from the beloved studio Double Fine Productions, Costume Quest 2 sees a pair of twins try to save Halloween night from the evil Dr. Orel White.

PS Vita

Letter Quest Remastered – a cute turn-based role-playing game, Letter Quest Remastered sees a pair of adorable grim reapers take on a legion of monsters. The game is also a cross buy title with PS4.

Pumped BMX+ – what do you get when you cross Trials HD with Dave Mirra BMX? You get one seriously bitchin' extreme sports game! Time to bone up on your bunny hops before the release of Pumped BMX 3 later this year. The game is also a cross buy title with PS3 and PS4.

For a discounted PlayStation Plus subscription, be sure to check out the PlayStation Plus deals at CDKeys.com.

Join us next month as we update you on December's free PlayStation Plus games!

October 27, 2016 at 12:52PM
Stephen Lambrechts

The best free iPad games 2016

UPDATE: Cats and skateboarding, together at last! Ollie Cats has been added to the list of best free iPad games 2016 – read the next slide to find out more!

The Apple iPad is a versatile device. It's perfect for everything from watching your favourite TV show to filling out spreadsheets on the go.

But really, where the iPad shines is as a gaming platform. The big screen, the responsive touch controls... it's no wonder that devices like the Playstation Vita are struggling.

That said, iPads can get expensive, and if you've just spent a huge chunk of change on a 128GB tablet, you might not have a lot left over to pick up the games you want.

Fortunately, there are plenty of fantastic free iPad games available on the App Store. What's more, we've compile our pick of the best free iPad games for your convenience right here.

From the off, it's obvious Ollie Cats isn't taking itself seriously. The aim is to 'ollie' (jump) an endless number of cats heading in your rad skateboarder's direction. You can perform all manner of tricks (including grinding along fences when loads of cats suddenly appear), but the game in miserly fashion only bestows a single point per cat cleared, regardless of your amazing skills.

However, you can also be the cat. That's right - it's possible to play the game as a black moggie on a board, aiming to become the coolest feline around. There are fewer stunts in this mode, but it's so ridiculous that the cat version of the game fast became our favorite.

An excellent example in how iteration can improve a game, The Little Fox was almost impossible upon release. But a reduction in speed and some restart points proved transformative, enabling you to immerse yourself in a sweet-natured, great-looking pathfinding arcade outing.

The titular fox is on a quest that takes the bounding carnivore through 13 varied lands. Pathways comprise hexagons littered with collectables and hazards, and at any moment you can only turn left or right or continue straight on.

At the original breakneck pace (still available as an in-game option), this all feels too much. But when slowed down, The Little Fox reveals itself to be a clever, imaginative, fun title, with surprises to be found on every planet the furry critter visits.

It's not every day you get to become a robot superhero, protecting the public in the retro-futuristic Helsinki. But future Finns should be thrilled Byteman is about, because their capital city appears to be chock full of burning buildings, robbers, and villains escaping in helicopters.

Your task is to fly about, using your radar to swoop in and be all heroic, without slamming into a building while doing so. The controls are straightforward (move with your left thumb and 'speed boost' with your right), and there's a handy radar to figure out which cases to prioritise.

It all comes across a bit like a robot superhero Crazy Taxi, albeit one where the valiant android must occasionally head above the clouds to recharge its solar panels. (We bet Captain Marvel never had that problem.)

The Trials family of games on console were breathtaking in the simplicity and addictiveness. The physics racer requires a subtle mastery of speed and body weight in order to tackle incredible tracks in a range of environments.

Trials Frontier brings the series to mobile platforms, with a Wild West setting and a kind of sort of narrative that sees you exploring the frontier to get better bikes and more tracks. The game does have a pretty intense IAP section, but you can definitely succeed in this game without spending a cent.

At some point, developers will run out of new ways to present endless runners, but that moment hasn't yet arrived. Surfingers tries something a bit different, marrying the genre with a kind of stripped-back breakneck match puzzler. You must line up the blocky wave you're currently on to match whatever's coming next, lest your surfer abruptly wipe-out.

At first, this is leisurely and simple, with you swiping up and down, avoiding maniacs in low-flying hot-air balloons, and collecting stars. But before long, you're two-finger swiping to get past massive rocks and buried spaceships, surfing across snowy mountains and sand dunes, and thinking a dip in the shallows might have been a smarter move. And it turns out even being an ice-cool crocodile riding a rubber duck won't save you if those shapes don't line up.

Touchscreens have opened up many new ways to play games, but scribbling with a finger is perhaps the most natural. And that's essentially all you do in Magic Touch, which sounds pretty reductive - right up until you start playing.

The premise is that you're a wizard, fending off invading nasties who all oddly use balloons to parachute towards their prize. Match the symbol on any balloon and it pops, potentially causing a hapless intruder to meet the ground rather more rapidly than intended. Initially, this is all very simple, but when dozens of balloons fill your field of vision, you'll be scrawling like crazy, desperately fending off the invasion to keep the wizard gainfully employed.

The first thing that strikes you about Into the Dim is that it transforms your iPad into a giant Game Boy - at least from a visual standpoint. Its chunky yellowed graphics hark back to handheld gaming's past; but to some extent, this is also true of Into the Dim's mechanics.

It's a turn-based RPG, featuring a boy and his dog exploring dungeons, outwitting enemies, and uncovering a mystery. But whereas most modern mobile fare offers procedurally generated levels, Into the Dim's dungeons have all been carefully individually designed. It rewards planning, strategic thinking, and patience; and although the game's finite nature means it can be beaten, doing so will make you feel like a boss, rather than a player being put through the 'random mill' time and time again.

Taking the most famous video game character of all and shoving him into an endless freemium title could have ended disastrously. Fortunately, Pac-Man 256 is by the people behind Crossy Road - and it's just as compelling.

In Pac-Man 256, our rotund hero finds himself beyond the infamous level 256 glitch, which has become an all-consuming swarm of broken code that must be outrun. Pac-Man must therefore speed through the endless maze, munching dots, avoiding ghosts, and making use of power-ups dotted about the place. And there aren't just power pellets this time round - Pac-Man can fry ghosts with lasers, or implement stealth technology to move through his spectral foes as if they weren't even there.

Routing cabling in the real world is a source of fury, and so it might not be the smartest procedure to make into a game played on a device with a glass screen. But Aux B turns out to be a lot of fun, routing INs and OUTs, striving to make music blare forth. There are 80 levels, although towards the end, you wonder whether someone should have a quiet word with the gig organiser and suggest a set-up that's a wee bit simpler.

Very occasionally, free games appear that are so generous you wonder what the catch is. Cally's Caves 3is rather Metroid, except the hero of the hour is a little girl who has pigtails, stupid parents who keep getting kidnapped, and a surprisingly large arsenal of deadly weapons. She leaps about, blasting enemies, and conquering bosses. Weapons are levelled up simply by shooting things with them, and the eight zones take some serious beating — although not as much as the legions of grunts you're shooting at.

It's always the way — you're looking for work, armed with your useless degree, and all that's available is a job in a sweltering chocolate factory, under the watchful eye of an angry penguin overseer. At least that's the story in Coolson's Artisanal Chocolate Alphabet, which hangs an absurdly addictive word game on this premise. Sort chocolate letters from a conveyor belt into boxes with slots, creating words while doing so; make your boss slightly less angry by spelling out seafood whenever possible; and don't let too much chocolate fall into the trash!

The notion of a freemium on-rails Crazy Taxi must seem like sacrilege to Dreamcast fans, not least when considering the iOS port of the original has vanished. But Crazy Taxi City Rush manages to capture some of the original's spirit and madness. You belt along city streets, picking up fares and dropping them off within tight time limits, all while cheesy rock music is hammered into your ears. There's more than a whiff of freemium, but if you're prepared to grind a bit and spend wisely on upgrades, you won't have to dig into your real-world wallet.

In a world of exploitative freemium gaming, Crossy Road shows an entire industry how things could be done. The basic gameplay is endless Frogger — avoid traffic, navigate rivers by way of floating logs, and try to not get splattered across the front of a speeding train. But the genius is in triggering people's collector mentality. During the game, you pick up coins, which can be pumped into a one-armed bandit that dispenses new characters. These often dramatically change how the game looks and plays. You'll want to collect them all. You can of course buy them outright, but Crossy Road is generous in flinging coins your way. Nice.

Time travel weirdness meets the morning rush hour in Does Not Commute. You get a short story about a character, and guide their car to the right road. Easy! Only the next character's car must be dealt with while avoiding the previous one. And the next. Before long, you're a dozen cars in and weaving about like a lunatic, desperately trying to avoid a pile-up. For free, you get the entire game, but with the snag that you must always start from scratch, rather than being able to use checkpoints that appear after each zone. (You can unlock these for a one-off payment of $4.49.)

For a game that started as a joke, Flappy Golf has a lot going for it. A combination of Flappy Bird and Super Stickman Golf 2, it merges the controls of the former (although you can flap right and left) with the courses of the latter, challenging you to reach the hole using the fewest flaps. It's ridiculous, enjoyable, and a great means of experiencing the courses in a new way. There's also madcap online multiplayer, which has you speed-run to each hole.

With its numbered sliding squares and soaring scores, there's more than a hint of Threes! about Imago. In truth, Threes! remains the better game, on the basis that it's more focussed, but Imago has plenty going for it. The idea is to merge pieces of the same size and colour, which when they get too big explode into smaller pieces that can be reused. With smart thinking, you can amass colossal scores, even if Imago is a touch too reliant on luck.

Pool for massive show-offs, with the table's pockets removed, Magnetic Billiards is all about smacking balls about in a strategic manner. Those that are the same colour stick together; the aim is to connect them all, preferably into a bonus shape, whereupon they vanish. Balls of different colours must not collide, but can 'buzz' each other for bonus points; further points come from cushion bounces. For free, you get the 'classic' level set, with 20 tables. If you want more, a $2.99 'skeleton key' IAP unlocks everything else in the game.

With iPads lacking tactile controls, they should be rubbish for platform games. But savvy developers have stripped back the genre, creating hybrid one-thumb auto-runner/platformers. These are entirely reliant on careful timing, the key element of more traditional fare. Mr. Crab further complicates matters by wrapping its levels around a pole. The titular crustacean ambles back and forth, scooping up baby crabs, and avoiding the many enemies lurking about the place. You get 14 levels for free, and further packs are available via IAP.

When it was first released, Neon Drive had a kind of intoxicating vibe, but a difficulty level that made you want to punch a wall. An infusion of the 1980s into your eyes and ears, the game features a car driving along a neon track, avoiding obstacles, all to a synth-pop soundtrack. Even getting to the end of the first course was murder. Someone must have told the dev, because Neon Drive quietly got checkpoints, along with new tracks to try. It's still not exactly easy, but you now have a fighting chance.

When the Crossy Road devs got their hands on gaming's most famous character, Pac-Man 256 was the result. It's endless Pac-Man, with the glitch from the infamous 256th level on an endless mission to consume. You must keep ahead of its flickering maw, simultaneously eating dots and avoiding ghosts roaming about the place. This is a great reimagining of a classic, and rewards repeat play with collectable power-ups — if the ghosts in Pac-Man 256 get a bit smug, you can take their face off with a laser or tiny tornado.

Having played Planet Quest, we imagine whoever was on naming duties didn't speak to the programmer. If they had, the game would be called Awesome Madcap Beam-Up One-Thumb Rhythm Action Insanity — or possibly something a bit shorter. Anyway, you're in a spaceship, prodding the screen to repeat beats you've just heard. Doing so beams up dancers on the planet's surface; get your timing a bit wrong and you merely beam-up their outfits; miss by a lot and you lose a life. To say this one's offbeat would be a terrible pun, but entirely accurate; it'd also be true to say this is the most fun rhythm action game on iPad — and it doesn't cost a penny.

The poor polar bear in Roller Polar is atop a massive snowball rolling down the mountain, and he can't stop. Actually, that's not entirely true: he can stop when something painfully wallops him off of said snowball. Your aim is to stave off the inevitable for as long as possible, by helping the bear leap into the air to avoid rocks, trees, moose, and anything else the giant ball of snow scoops up along the way.

A blocky take on classic vertically scrolling shoot 'em ups, Shooty Skies has flying-ace animals in biplanes battling endless squadrons of internet memes, flying robots, and deranged bosses. The controls are simple, but infuse the entire game with a sense of risk-versus-reward: drag to shoot, but stay still (and therefore instantly become extremely vulnerable) to charge a mega weapon. Fortunately, you can also grab gift boxes to gain a temporary wingman, which is essential when battling giant bosses like an ink-spewing headphone-wearing octopus, or an American Eagle that spits out nuclear missiles and 'patriotism' like they're going out of fashion.

The sausage dog in Silly Sausage in Meatland appears to have fallen into the same radioactive sludge as a bunch of Marvel superheroes. He can stretch, seemingly forever, and stick to walks. This stands him in good stead for navigating horizontally scrolling landscapes full of spiky doom. Come a cropper and you go back to the start, unless you unlock restart points by using gems collected along the way. The game will also let you watch an ad, if you're running low on bling, which seems fair enough. (We've seen people grumbling you're later 'forced' to watch ads, because there aren't enough gems. That misses the point: Silly Sausage is about risk versus reward — not unlocking every restart point — and occasionally a dog sniffing its own behind.)

We imagine the creators of Smash Hit really hate glass. Look at it, sitting there with its stupid, smug transparency, letting people see what's on the other side of it. Bah! Smash it all! Preferably with ball-bearings while flying along corridors! And that's Smash Hit — fly along, flinging ball-bearings, don't hit any glass face-on, and survive for as long as possible. There are 50 rooms in all, but cheapskates start from scratch each time; pay $2.99 for the premium unlock and you get checkpoints, stats, iCloud sync, and alternative game modes.

The iPad has plenty of fast, playable racing games, but it took an awfully long time for a decent kart racer to appear on the platform. That was Sega's Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, and follow-up Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is even better. You race across land, sea and air, tracks dynamically shifting after each lap. It looks great, handles almost perfectly, and gives you loads to do. IAP does stink up the place a bit, notably if you want to quickly buy characters or burn through the game, but otherwise this is the best free racer this side of Asphalt 8.

One of the most innovative multiplayer titles we've ever played, Spaceteam has you and a bunch of friends in a room, each staring at a rickety and oddball spaceship control panel on your device's display. Instructions appear, which need a fast response if your ship is to avoid being swallowed up by an exploding star. But what you see might not relate to your screen and controls. Spaceteam therefore rapidly descends into a cacophony of barked demands and frantic searches across control panels (which helpfully start falling to bits), in a last-ditch attempt to 'set the Copernicus Crane to 6' or 'activate the Twinmill' and avoid fiery death.

Another one-thumb high-score chaser, Splish Splash Pong is worth a look because it's more devious than it initially appears. You bounce between two gates, collecting square coins. This would be easy if the water between them wasn't infested with killer whales. All you can do to avoid pointy teeth of doom is prod the screen to change direction. Naturally, the game's pace means you'll just as often instead tap the screen, and emit a yelp as you watch your little duck head in precisely the wrong direction and become a tasty snack — just like dozens before it.

Golf is dull — it's pretty much people hitting a ball with a stick. But imagine if golf was played in massive castles. Or on the moon. Or inside a giant ice palace. And everyone wore strange hats that gave them magical powers. Well, wonder no more, because that's Super Stickman Golf 2 in a nutshell, and it's a blast whether you're playing solo, against a friend in asynchronous two-player battles, or thwacking at breakneck pace in the online race mode.

The best puzzle game on mobile, Threes! has you slide cards about a grid, merging pairs to create ever higher numbers. The catch is all cards slide as one, unless they cannot move; additionally, each turn leads to a new card in a random empty slot on the edge you swiped away from. It's all about careful management of a tiny space.

On launch, Threes! was mercilessly cloned, with dozens of alternatives flooding iTunes, but 2048 and its ilk lack the charm and fine details that made Threes! so great in the first place. And now there's Threes! Free, where you watch ads to top up a 'free goes' bin, there's no excuse for going with inferior pretenders.

"Expect retro graphics and megatons of enemies," says the developer about this twin-stick shooter, adding: "Don't expect a story". With its vector graphics and Robotronish air, PewPew brings to mind Geometry Wars and Infinity Field, but without a price tag. Despite being free, PewPew nonetheless boasts five modes of shooty goodness.

It turns out if you're a sheep that thinks the grass is greener, you should check out the other side of the fence first. In Flockwork, wooly heroes make a break for freedom, but end up immersed in a kind of ruminant hell. Your task: help the sheep escape by way of finger gymnastics and fast reactions.

At some point, a total buffoon decreed that racing games should be dull and grey, on grey tracks, with grey controls. Gameloft's Asphalt series dispenses with such foolish notions, along with quite a bit of reality. Here, in Asphalt 8, you zoom along at ludicrous speeds, drifting for miles through exciting city courses, occasionally being hurled into the air to perform stunts that absolutely aren't acceptable according to the car manufacturer's warrantee.

Air hockey games work much better on the iPad than the iPhone, simply due to the iPad's larger screen.Air Hockey Gold isn't the only free game of this type, but it was the one that felt best during testing, and the two-player mode works nicely.

Endless game Jetpack Joyride is a witty, polished take on the iCopter format, with one-thumb controls dictating the hero's attempts to avoid death that comes increasingly rapidly from the side of the screen. The real gems here are the power-ups, including the amusing Profit Bird (depicted), which isn't at all a swipe at Angry Birds and Tiny Wings.

This is more like Plants vs. Zombies 2 vs. freemium grinding. But if you can look past the forced repetition of stages and irksome IAP, there's a lot to like in EA's horticulture/zombie defence sequel, including loads of new stages, a bunch of new plants, plenty of unique features, and a smattering of time travel.

Myriad physics puzzlers exist for iOS, but most are twitch-oriented games where you fling objects around, and repeat with slight variation until you succeed. TinkerBox is different, because it demands you carefully consider the task at hand and then construct machines and tools using engineering concepts. It's great for educating kids and also perfect for anyone who used to love the likes of Meccano.

QatQi starts off a bit like Scrabble in the dark, until you figure out that you're really immersed in a kind of Roguelike mash-up. So although the aim is to make crosswords from a selection of letters, you're also tasked with exploring dungeons to find score-boosting stars and special tiles.

This game might look like Flight Control in the drink, but the gameplay mechanics are subtly different. As with Firemint's effort, Harbor Master is a line-drawing game, this time with you drawing paths so boats can dock. However, once they've unloaded, they must leave the screen or sometimes visit another dock, ensuring things rapidly become complex and frantic.

Tiny people in a tiny skyscraper need you to feed then tiny sushi and do other tiny tasks. Things can, inevitably, be sped up by not-so-tiny IAP cash infusions, but if you're a patient sort, and keen on micromanagement games, Tiny Tower is a charming, enjoyable title that will eat many tiny moments out of your day.

This turn-based strategy game comes complete with an engaging story and a healthy dollop of yo-ho-ho. You command pirate ships, setting their courses and then watching the action unfold. Crimson: Steam Pirates gives you eight free voyages and further adventures can be bought via IAP.

With almost limitless possibilities in videogames, it's amazing how many are drab grey and brown affairs.Frisbee Forever is therefore a breath of fresh air with its almost eye-searing vibrance. The sense of fun continues through to the gameplay, which is all about steering a frisbee to collect stars strewn along winding paths. Initially, you explore a fairground, but soon you're soaring above the wild west and sandy bays.

Many free iPhone OS MMOs are dreary text-based affairs, so it's nice to see Spacetime Studios creating something a bit more ambitious with Pocket Legends, providing us with an iOS-specific 3D world populated by the usual motley collection of fantasy characters. As always with MMOs, the game demands you invest plenty of time to get anything out of it.

The basic aim of Tilt to Live is simple: avoid the red dots, either by cunning dodging and weaving or by triggering explosive devices in the arena. The game stands apart from similar releases due to its polish and sense of humour. You get the basic mode for free, and others can be unlocked by in-app purchase.

It's a case of timey-wimey-puzzley-wuzzley as Doctor Who: Legacy aims to show you that your iPad is bigger on the inside, able to house intergalactic warfare. The game itself is a gem-swapper not a million miles away from Puzzle Quest, but all the Doctor Who trappings will make it a must for fans of the show - or Daleks fine-tuning their tactics regarding how to finally beat their nemesis, mostly via the use of strategically placed coloured orbs.

We're big fans of 10 Pin Shuffle, a universal app that combines ten-pin bowling and shuffleboard. Of that title's three game modes, the best one is included here in 10 Pin Shuffle Lite, for free. Called 10 Pin Poker, it adds a card game to the mix. Get a spare or strike and you're given one or two cards, respectively. At the end of the tenth frame, whoever has the best hand wins.

Fans of the ancient Pitfall series on the Atari might feel a bit short-changed, given that this comeback in the shape of a Temple Run clone diverges wildly from the platforming action of the originals. However, it's one of the best-looking endless runners on iOS, and if you persevere there are exciting mine-cart and motorbike sections to master.

There's a touch of Angry Birds about To-Fu 2, at least if the birds were covered in something yucky that glued them to any walls they collided with. Said stickiness is the name of the game here, getting the squidgy hero to level's end rather than impaling him on the literally strewn spikes.

It's not the most interesting-looking game in the world, but luckily the magic of Choice of the Dragon is in its witty prose. Playing as a multiple-choice text adventure, akin to an extremely stripped-back RPG, this game is an amusing romp that perhaps lacks replay value, but you'll enjoy it while it lasts.

When we think of extreme sports, jogging isn't the first that comes to mind, although it might be now we've experienced Grim Joggers Freestyle. The game's essentially Canabalt, but instead of one guy leaping across grey rooftops, you get a string of joggers trying desperately to survive in a surreal alien world.

With Tiny Wings having spent a large amount of time troubling the App Store charts, we're surprised it took so long to make it to the iPad. All along, Pilot Winds was the next best thing, and it's free. Instead of a fat bird sliding down hills, you're a daredevil penguin skier, and while the game's inspiration is clear, it has plenty of tricks of its own.

Drop7 is one of the finest puzzle games on iOS. You drop numbered discs into a grid, and if the number matches the number of discs in its column or row, it vanishes. Grey discs are destroyed by twice removing discs next to them. Three modes are on offer, each demanding a different strategy. And now the game's owned by Zynga, it's free, with only the occasional unobtrusive advert.

Although it works on an iPhone, Frotz isn't great on the smaller screen. But on the iPad, with its larger keyboard, the interactive fiction player is a revelation. It uses the Z-Machine format, and you can download a selection of freely available text adventures (including the original Zork) using the app, or upload your own files to the app via FTP.

Trainyard Express is a puzzle game which tasks you with getting trains to stations by laying track. It starts simple, but the logic puzzles soon test you, with colour theory and other complications. In all, you get 60 puzzles, and there's no overlap with the app's commercial sibling Trainyard.

As the saying goes, there are few American sports that can't be improved by the impending threat of a banana, and that's X-Baseball. Hit balls! Hit bananas thrown by fans! Also, hit annoying birds flying overhead! Just don't 'not hit', otherwise your game will soon be over. It's just like the real thing!

The original Paper Toss was pretty dry and throwaway, but in dumping the wastebasket in absurd surroundings (within a volcanic pool, in the desert, by the Taj Mahal), it gets a second wind as Paper Toss: World Tour HD and is a far more satisfying flick-based arcade game.

NinJump is a quickfire one-thumb game which has your ninja rapidly climbing, leaping between two endless towers. As he leaps, he knocks obstacles from the air, dispatching killer squirrels, deadly birds and throwing stars lobbed by enemy ninjas. Simple, addictive fun.

The love-child of Pong and a drug-fuelled hallucination, BIT.TRIP Beat Blitz has you deflecting hundreds of balls, in time to crunchy industrial-style dance beats. This is dazzling and pure but demanding arcade gaming, with long, tough levels. Miss too many beats and you're plunged into Nether, a soulless black-and-white realm where you must chain multiple beats to escape from.

In Triple Town, you have to think many moves ahead to succeed. It's a match game where trios of things combine to make other things, thereby giving you more space on the board to evolve your town. At times surreal, Triple Town is also brain-bending and thoroughly addictive. Free moves slowly replenish, but you can also unlock unlimited moves via IAP.

If you're a fan of spanging a metal ball about, Gameprom's iPad pinball tables are as good as they come.Pinball HD Collection is the freemium incarnation of the company's output, and you get the simple but playable Wild West entirely for free. Yee-haw!

There are many endless running games for the iPad, but in Temple Run you're being chased by deadly evil demon monkeys! It's your own fault really, what with nicking that priceless trinket from a temple. The tilty swipey gameplay's perhaps a tad tiring after a while of holding up an iPad, but Temple Run is great in short bursts on the larger screen.

The clue's in the title — there's a quest, and it involves quite a lot of punching. There's hidden depth, though — the game might look like a screen-masher, but Punch Quest is all about mastering combos, perfecting your timing, and making good use of special abilities. The in-game currency's also very generous, so if you like the game reward the dev by grabbing some IAP.

Bejeweled Blitz is the online incarnation of PopCap's hugely popular gem-swap game, and it looks fab on the iPad's screen. As a freemium title, there's a whiff of IAP (either grind or buy coins to unlock power-ups, or you've no chance of topping the high-score tables), but you'll still be addicted all the same.

"Use the magnet to attract the razor to shave the face!" explains Magnetic Shaving Derby, presumably having first hidden any safety instructions from view. The result is an experience best described as completely bonkers, with a side order of "don't try this at home, kids, unless you enjoy the site of blood".

Fairway Solitaire HD is a perfect example of what happens when you marry simple gameplay with a bit of character. On its own, the basic card system would be fine: unlock face-down cards by selecting those one higher or lower than the current one in the draw pile. But the addition of golf scoring and a crazed gopher out for blood turns this into a surprisingly enjoyable and original title. You get nine courses for free.

X-Motorcycle happily offers two video game cliches for the price of none: the speeding hero (this time on a motorbike), who cannot slow down, and inexplicably giant fruit that appears to be an immensely important currency. The result is a fast, playable game reminiscent of old-school thrills filtered down to their essence and squirted into your iPad.

One thumb per person and one glowing neon ship is the premise behind Orbit1. You grab points, aim to destroy your opponents, and just hope someone doesn't flip out, grab the iPad and fling it out of the window in a huff.

More pinball! This one's a bit less realistic than Gameprom's efforts, but Zen Pinball is very pretty, with a bright and exciting free table, Sorcerer's Lair. Further tables are available via IAP, including some Marvel-themed and surprisingly great Star Wars efforts, but the sole freebie should have pinball addicts happily sated for a while.

With a game called Word Solitaire, you might expect a kind of solitaire game that has you form words rather than use standard cards. And that's exactly what you get here - sorry, anyone waiting for a huge surprise. However, this is not a bad thing, because Word Solitaire HD is a relaxing, entertaining title.

In Royal Revolt the king is dead and his siblings have stolen his kingdom while the prince was at school. Unfortunately for them, he was studying magic and is now out for revenge. The game itself is a real-time-strategy effort with some seriously cute and well-animated graphics.

Who knew you could have such fun with a five-by-five grid of letters? In Letterpress, you play friends via Game Center, making words to colour lettered squares. Surround any and they're out of reach from your friend's tally. Cue: word-tug-o'-war, last-minute reversals of fortune, and arguments about whether 'qat' is a real word or not. (It is.)

This one had a dubious start, initially named Smuggle Truck and featuring immigrants being smuggled across the US border. One swift rejection by Apple later and the game swapped immigrants for cuddly toys, which is significantly funnier anyway. The trials-oriented gameplay isn't bad either.

There's a point in chess where you sometimes wish your knight would just give your opponent's bishop a thoroughly good trampling. Sadly, few chess games do such things (the ancient Battlechess being an exception), but Hero Academy takes the idea and runs with it. On specially designed boards, wizards attack knights, and demons defend their turf against samurais. It's an engaging turn-based effort with plenty of depth.

Another chessish two-player effort, Outwitters has teams of angry sea creatures battling to the death, first helpfully arming them with surprisingly dangerous weapons. (It turns out crabs eschew claws when they've a mortar cannon to hand.) Unlike Hero Academy, Outwitters has a 'fog of war', meaning units cannot see any further than they can move. This makes the game tougher to master but perhaps more rewarding on doing so.

Proving that great ideas never die, Shadow Era brings trading cards to life on the iPad. What you lose in not being able to smell the ink and manually shuffle the deck, you gain in not being able to lose the cards or have them eaten by the dog. It's all very swords-and-fantasy oriented, and just like in real life you can also buy extra cards if you feel the need.

A game about blending colours, which doesn't feature an Old English Sheepdog barely avoiding tipping paint everywhere? Missed opportunity! Still, what you're left with in Blendoku is a beautifully minimal game that tasks you with putting coloured squares in order. It starts off simple, but the level design will soon have you sobbing into your crayons.

You know, if infinite zombies were running towards us, we'd leg it in the opposite direction. Not so in Into the Dead, where you battle on until your inevitable and bloody demise. The game's oddly dream-like (well, nightmare-like), and perseverance rewards you with new weapons, such as a noisy chainsaw. VVRRRMMM! (Splutch!)

Score! takes the basic premise of a million path-drawing games and wraps it around classic footie goals. The combination works really well, with you attempting to recreate the ball's path in the best goals the world's ever seen. Failure results in a baying crowd and, frequently, improbable goalkeeping heroics.

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house." If you're of a certain age, you're already downloading Lost Treasures of Infocom, which gives you classic text adventure Zork entirely for free. IAP enables you to buy further titles by Infocom, the masters of interactive fiction, and they all work wonderfully on the iPad.

The original Monsters Ate My Condo was like Jenga and a match-three game shoved into a blender with a massive dollop of crazy. Super Monsters Ate My Condo is a semi-sequel which takes a time-attack approach, shoe-horning the bizarre tower-building/floor-matching/monster-feeding into a tiny amount of time, breaking your brain in the process.

Tactical war-games tend to work well on a touchscreen device, and RAD Soldiers is no exception. The turn-based action has you take on chums or the single-player mode, and the cartoon styling gives a palatable face to leaving an enemy soldier as a pair of smoking boots. Just watch out for the IAP.

Argh! That's pretty much what you'll be yelling on a regular basis on playing this endless racer. Cubed Rally Redline shouldn't be difficult. You can go left or right on five clearly defined lanes, and there's a 'time brake' for going all slow-motion, Matrix-style, to weave through tricky gaps; but you'll still be smashing into cows, dinosaurs and bridges before you know it.

In the distant past (well, the 1980s), there was an excellent console called the Vectrex, which had a vector-based iPad-sized screen. In the Vectrex app, it's been beautifully recreated on the iPad. The Asteroids-Like Minestorm is entirely free, but further games are available to buy via IAP.

Flow's quite sneaky. It looks simple enough, tasking you with connecting like-coloured blobs via pathways that cannot cross. And indeed it is at first, despite you also having to fill the entire board to proceed. But once you're on larger grids, trying to figure out snaking pathways, your ears will be shooting steam.

Color Zen appears to be noodly central - a game where you match coloured shapes while pleasant sounds massage your ears. But there's a devious puzzler lurking underneath, with later levels being tricky to solve. There's no timer, though, and so it's the kind of game you can put down and return to at any point, rather than wanting to hurl your iPad out of the window in frustration.

Nyeeeeooowww! Daggadaggadaggadagga! It's biplane o' clock in Sid Meier's Ace Patrol - a Civ-like take on World War I dogfighting. You and the bally enemy take it in turns to climb, dive, roll and shoot, as you aim to turn the tide of the war and ensure it'll all be over by Christmas. The game is also one of the few we've seen that understands the concept of micro-transactions, for example enabling you to spring POWs for $1.49 a pop.

You'd think that a falling block game with only a handful of colours and set on a rotating disc wouldn't be that tough, and you'd be right — for about a minute. But Rotational soon ramps up the brain-busting, flinging multiple arcs at your spinnable walls, forcing lightning-quick reactions and thinking or — in our case - a lightning-quick end-of-game.

The Tiny Tower devs take to the air in game form, with Pocket Planes. In this management sim, you take command of a fleet of planes, aiming to not entirely annoy people as you ferry them around the world. Like Tiny Tower, this one's a touch grindy, but it's a similarly amusing time-waster.

At first, Letris 3 looks like yet another bog-standard word game, albeit one that's rather visually swish, but it regularly tries new things. The game's based around creating words from falling tiles, but it keeps things fresh by adding hazards, such as debris, ice and various creatures lurking in the letter pile. If you're feeling particularly brainy, you can even play in two languages at once.

Dots looks and feels like the sort of thing Jony Ive might play on his downtime (well, ignoring the festive theme, which is probably more Scott Forstall's style). A stark regimented set of coloured dots awaits, and like-coloured ones can be joined, whereupon they disappear, enabling more to fall into the square well. The aim: clear as many as possible - with the largest combos you can muster - in 60 seconds.

In Smash Cops, you got to be the good guy, bringing down perps, mostly by ramming them into oblivion. Now in Smash Bandits your chance to be a dangerous crim, hopping between vehicles and leaving a trail of destruction in your wake. The game also amusingly includes the A-Team van and a gadget known only as the Jibba Jabba. We love it when a plan comes together!

If you liked this, then make sure you check out our best free iPad apps roundup!

October 27, 2016 at 10:10AM
Stephen Lambrechts,Nick Broughall

The best free iPhone apps 2016

UPDATE: Give your iPhone a bit of old school flair with the Messages sticker app, Classic Mac – details on the next slide!

The App Store has come a long way since Apple launched the first iPhone nine years ago. There are now hundreds of thousands of apps available for your iPhone.

And the best part is that somewhat surprisingly, a large number of them are free.

• What's the best phone of 2016 so far?

It's not just iPhone users that can get on board though. The following list showcases our pick of the best free iPhone apps, and many of these apps are also compatible with the iPod Touch and the iPhone SE.

If your top free iPhone apps aren't covered, tell us all about them in the comments. 

We’re not in the habit of recommending stickers for the Messages app in this list of best free iPhone apps, but we’ll make an exception for Classic Mac.

An official Apple production, you get a whole host of Susan Kare’s perfect pixel art as taken from the original Mac, and which looks pin-sharp on a modern iPhone.

There’s perhaps not a great deal of utility in some of the stickers (the paint can icon from the original MacPaint, for example), but we’d be much happier to always see the Happy Mac icon (and evil twin Sad Mac) in place of boring emoji smilies when chatting away in Messages.

(And we’re pretty sure we’ll find a use for Clarus the Dogcow any day now.)

In an age of diminishing attention spans, it's perhaps no surprise some video services are available that demand extreme brevity, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take care when fashioning tiny videos.Vue is an app that gives you an amusing amount of control over six-second wannabe Hollywood flicks to help satisfy your need.

You can shoot into up to four slots with the app itself or use videos already on your iPhone. It's then a case of arranging them, adding the odd effect, and fiddling with sliders to get the right look. It's a pity the slots are always the same size and this cannot be adjusted, but otherwise this is a great and intelligent app for creating tiny movies.

Plenty of apps claim they can get you making music in seconds, but Figure really means it. The app's heritage helps, as it comes from Propellerhead Software, creators of the legendary Reason and ReBirth.

In Figure, though, working on loops and beats is stripped right back from what you'd find in those complex PC apps; instead, you tap out drums, and slide your finger around to fashion monster bass and playful leads.

Sounds can be tweaked or swapped out entirely at any point. Once you're done, finished tracks can be uploaded and shared online. For serious musicians, there's even Audiobus support.

WhatsApp is one of the most essential apps you can install on your iOS device, especially if you have friends and family across the world.

Rather than using up your SMS allowance by sending text messages, WhatsApp lets you send messages over any Wi-Fi or mobile data connection instead. You can also send and receive photos with no size restrictions, and if you're using Wi-Fi (or you have unlimited mobile data) they won't cost you any extra to send.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

While users of Android smartphones have always exclaimed the virtues of the platform's many alternate keyboard solutions, there have been few iOS equivalent apps worthy of dragging accustomed Apple fans away from iPhone's stock keyboard.

That could change with Gboard, a new iOS-only keyboard app from Google which brings many of those much vaunted Android features over to the Apple handset.

Features include the ability to search for information, emoji, GIFs and images straight from the keyboard, and the addition of swipe-to-type functionality.

If you're serious about running or cycling then you should be serious about Strava. As smartphone fitness tools go it's one of the best, allowing you to track your performance, set goals and see daily progress updates.

There are leaderboards and challenges to give it a competitive edge and if you're ever not sure where to run or cycle you can find user created routes on the app, or share your own. All of that comes free of charge, while a premium version adds even more tools.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

If you like this then make sure you read 10 best iPhone and iPad apps for keeping fit and 5 sports headphones for iPhone and iPod touch.

Apple surprised everyone when it launched the free Music Memos app for iOS. Almost worth considering as a fully functioned free add-on to Garageband, the app lets musicians record and organise new song ideas in high quality audio for later mixing.

Automatically detecting your tempo, feel and chords, the app can let you hear your idea accompanied by an automated rhythm section, including drums and bass.

Even if you're not a full-fledged muso, it's worth playing around with for a bit of fun.

There 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 iOS but on Android 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.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Snapseed is Google's own photo editor that's been designed from the ground up to make tweaking your snaps as easy and fun as possible on a touchscreen device.

Although the interface is simple enough to use with just your fingers, there's also a lot of depth to this app as well. You use tools to tweak and enhance your photographs to make them look the best they ever have, as well as playing around with fun filters that can transform the photos you've taken on your smartphone or tablet.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Spotify has been pretty quick to establish itself as the top music streaming service, and the Spotify Music app brings some great features to your iOS device, turning it in to a pocket jukebox that delivers your favourite tunes no matter where you are.

Even better you can now listen to Spotify music for free on iOS, although if you want to download songs for offline listening and without any ads, then a Spotify Premium account is worth investing in.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Periscope, Twitter's live video streaming app, is an essential download for anyone who likes the immediacy of Twitter but craves something more visual.

You can easily create your own live streams or watch other people's, send comments and hearts in real time and if you miss the action there's a 24 hour window with which to replay streams. In short it's simple enough to dive straight into but has enough to it that you'll keep coming back, whether you're more creator or viewer.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

It's no secret that Apple Maps doesn't have the best reputation, although it has got better in recent times.

Fortunately, Google Maps is a free download, and a far better solution than the old Google Maps app as well, thanks to the inclusion of turn-by-turn navigation and - in some cities - public transport directions. It's an easy way to supercharge your iPhone's mapping capabilities and one of the first apps you should grab for the iPhone 7 when it launches.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Uber is transforming the way we travel. You can quickly and easily request a taxi using the app and get picked up within minutes and you can compare rates and get quotes, as well as paying with PayPal or by adding your credit card to a secure Uber account.

The Uber service is available in over 50 countries, and it's rapidly growing. Give it a try and you'll never want to hail a taxi the old fashioned way again.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Although Evernote Scannable isn't the most feature-rich iPhone scanner you're ever likely to see, it's a winner when it comes to efficiency. Open it up, plonk a document on a background with enough contrast, and the app scans it in in just a moment.

You can send the resulting JPEG to Evernote, share it to another service, or do further scans that will be compiled to PDF.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Boost your productivity with Pushbullet, which lets you view your iPhone's notifications and messages directly on your computer. It means if you get a text message you can read it there and then without having to take your phone out of your pocket or bag.

You can also quickly send files from your computer to your phone with only a few clicks, and if you regularly find that you email links to yourself just to open them on your smartphone, then you'll never have to do that again thanks to Pushbullet's link sharing features.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

The national broadcaster's iview service has long been the gold standard for catch up television services in Australia.

The ABC iview app not only offers instant and unlimited access to ABC shows on demand, it also offers live streaming of ABC News 24, the ability to stream via AirPlay and parental controls for parents.

What's more, it's all ad-free and served in an intuitive app that anyone can master. An essential download for all Australians.

Instagram is the go-to app for quickly taking photos, adding quirky filters to them and sharing them with the world. Over 300 million people use Instagram and thanks to the social aspects and effortless interface it's easy to see why it's such a hit.

You're not limited to sharing your snaps on Instagram either, as you can easily add your photos to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more with just a few taps.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Clients to access the popular Evernote service for storing notes and ideas online are available for so many platforms that we half expect a ZX Spectrum app to be announced tomorrow.

On the iPhone, Evernote is efficient and usable, enabling you to rapidly scan your notes and also create new ones.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

Even in these ultra-modern times there are still instances where we can't get an internet connection, but this doesn't have to mean you can't read websites, thanks to the excellent Pocket app. It allows you to save articles, news stories, blog posts, videos and much more, letting you read and watch them offline.

You can also synchronise your saved articles across every device you've installed Pocket on, allowing you to pick up where you left off and continue reading.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

The nature of social media is it's all about the 'now'. With Timehop, you get the chance to revisit moments from this day, based around your online history.

The service connects to whatever accounts you allow it to, and then shows you what was happening in your world. It's a simple concept that's perfect for iPhone.

Listed for app of the year at the TechRadar Phone Awards.

The world's biggest social network brings a tightly honed experience to the iPhone and iPod touch, but nonetheless still enables you to access your contacts, feeds and other important information. This sense of focus makes it in many ways superior to using Facebook in a desktop browser.

If you pick up an iPhone 6S / iPhone 7 when it launches later this year, Facebook will likely be one of the first apps you'll want to download.

If you're feeling the need to cut down on your food intake, Calorie Counter's a smart download. The app is well designed and, importantly, has a massive food-item database, making it easy to input everything you eat. Web sync, optional social features, reports and goals add to the goodness.

Sometimes with apps, it's the seemingly little things that make a big difference. With Overcast, for example, you get a perfectly decent podcast app that does everything you'd expect: podcast subscriptions; playback via downloads or streaming; a robust search for new shows.

But where Overcast excels is in attempting to save you time and improve your listening experience. Effects (which can be assigned per-podcast) provide the smartest playback speed-up we've heard, voice boost for improving the clarity of talky shows, and smart speed.

The last of those attempts to shorten silences. You won't use that setting for comedy shows, but it's superb for lengthy tech podcasts. As of version 2.0, Overcast is free, and betters all the other iOS podcast apps that also lack a price tag. (Should you wish to support the app, though, there's an entirely optional recurring patronage IAP.)

TodoMovies is a to-do list for movies. You use it to browse what's on (and, if you like, what's been on — including years ago) and build a list of what you want to see.

Cleverly the app also enables you to rate each movie, thereby building up a list of your favourites that you can refer to at any time.

Organizing travel just got automagical. Whether you're a planner or the spontaneous type, TripIt helps transform your travel and booking confirmation emails into a master day-by-day itinerary, with all your plans in one place, via the web or your phone.

Along with creating your itinerary, TripIt also suggests attractions and activities according to your schedule, and even looks up all the information we seem to forget like weather, maps, and directions.

There's more to exercising than just running, and 7 Minute Workout can help introduce you to a whole new set of calisthenics.

The app includes instructions for a whole series of exercises including tricep dips, planks (not to be confused with planking), box squats and much more. It even provides instructional video for each to make sure you have the proper form.

AKA 'Stalk My Contacts', but Find My Friends does have practical uses: if you're meeting a bunch of iPhone-owning friends and want to know where they're at, for example, or for when wanting to check where your spouse is on the road, to see if it's time to put the dinner in the oven/pretend to look busy when they walk through the door.

It's all opt-in, so you won't be able to track your friends / be tracked without explicit consent, so you can rest easy once you start using it.

There are plenty of read-later services out there, but Instapaper was arguably the original, and it remains the best.

The app integrates well with iOS, enabling you to send articles to it from other browsers. Only text and imagery is saved - all web-page clutter is removed - and downloaded articles are cached for offline reading.

Inside the app, there are plenty of formatting options, boasting some great font choices and colour options. If you really get into the system, there's an optional premium subscription ($4.49 per three months), which adds full text search for your archive, unlimited highlighting within articles, and the means to create playlists for the app's text-to-speech feature.

Timers and task managers are usually designed with extreme efficiency, to the point they practically yell NO FUN ALLOWED in your face.

30/30, however, provides a streamlined, tactile interface that happens to look great, is fun to use, and that makes it a breeze to create lists and define timers.

It also enables looping for anyone addicted to the Pomodoro Technique.

Plenty of apps exist for transferring content between your computer and your device, but Dropbox is free and easier to use than most of its contemporaries.

Dump files you want to sync in a folder on your computer and Dropbox for your device will enable you to access them, download them for offline viewing, and, in many cases, view them.

Love Dropbox? Then check out our article Essential tips for every Dropbox user.

FaceTime is a great alternative to standard voice calls, but it's no good if you're trying to contact someone without a Mac or compatible iOS device. Therefore, Skype remains an essential download.

The interface is simple and usable, enabling anyone with a Skype account to make free calls to other Skype users and cheap calls to anywhere in the world. If you're on Pay and Go, this is particularly handy, but the app also enables iPod touch users to utilise their devices for calls.

There are plenty of Wikipedia readers for iPhone, but Wikiwand feels like someone's actually sat down and thought about how to design and present information, rather than more or less flinging a mobile website at your face.

Search is lightning fast and comes with handy thumbnail images, to help you make the best selections. Article pages boast large images and enable you to quickly navigate via an easily accessible sidebar.

Our favourite touch, though, is the preview you get when tapping on a link. It appears at the bottom of the screen, giving you a quick overview of the relevant article.

This means an extra tap's required to subsequently open a linked article, but you get context for what you're currently reading without having to switch back and forth between different entries.

Up might be Jawbone's latest app designed for the Jawbone UP3 fitness tracker, but you can also use it with just an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or iPhone 5S by itself.

Thanks to the new Health app and the step tracking capabilities of Apple's A9 and M9 co-processor you can use the app to track your steps, sleep and food intake.

The official Twitter app might lack some of the features found in the likes of Tweetbot, but it does provide a sleek and simple means of using the service.

It also rapidly rolls in new features from the website, such as the Connect and Discover views, along with expandable tweets that contain photos and videos and the new Moments feature that allows you to keep track of stories in little bubbles.

Apple binned its own YouTube app from the iPhone, presumably because it hates Google far more than it loves online video.

Google's own YouTube app works much as you'd expect, enabling you to search and watch an almost limitless number of cats playing pianos, people moaning about stuff to their web-cams, and more besides.

You know how it goes: hand your iPhone to someone so they can check out an amazing picture you took, and before you know it they're scrolling like a maniac through the entirety of Photos.

Stop such rudeness with ShowStopper, an app that enables you to make locked galleries on the fly. You get up to four images at once, but can go unlimited for $1.49.

With iBooks on the iPhone, you might wonder why you should bother with Amazon's Kindle. After all, the app's not as pretty as iBooks, nor is there an integrated store (you buy in Safari and sync purchases to the app).

However, Kindle offers a massive selection of books compared to Apple's app and the reading experience is great.

Although iOS includes iCloud Keychain, 1Password is a better system. It's fully cross-platform and enables you to store multiple identities (such as a full one for payments and a simplified one for forums), secure notes and software licence details.

As of iOS 8, 1Password integrates with Touch ID, meaning you can use it with Safari, although the app also retains its own built-in browser.

A great many Today view widgets seem quite gimmicky, but Vidgets provides a great mix of monitoring and utility.

The standalone app enables you to add and organise the likes of world clocks, network indicators, and widgets outlining remaining space on your device. These are then immediately available in Notification Center.

On using the eBay app, there's a good chance you won't go near the eBay website again. The app is fast, has great saved searches (which flag new finds), and enables you to create listings.

The last of those things is also improved by the built-in bar-code scanning.

We're always waiting for the other shoe to drop with Duolingo, but it seems this organisation really does want you to learn new languages entirely for free.

And it's a fantastic app — fun, friendly, and packed with bite-sized quizzes that hold your interest and never become onerous. It's perfect for anyone who wants to dabble in a bit of Spanish, French, German, Portugese, Italian, Irish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish or even English!

Shazam is an app that feels like magic when you first use it. It's deceptively simple—hold your iPhone near to a music source, and wait while the app listens and tells you what track is playing.

But the sheer technology behind this simplicity is mind-boggling, and while Shazam doesn't always guess right, it's worth a download.

The revamped iOS 8 keyboard is far better than its predecessor, not least because of the predictive word bar, but SwiftKey takes things a step further.

Rather than laboriously tapping out individual keys, you just glide your finger across them. This can make for some comical typos initially, but SwiftKey soon speeds up iPhone text entry.

For the most part, Yousician Guitar feels quite a lot like Guitar Hero, only you use a real guitar and the app is cunningly teaching you how to play it.

Things start with the absolute basics, but before you know it, you're strumming and picking with the best of them. The app's free, although with limited daily play time. Subscriptions enable you to learn more rapidly.

For the paranoid souls out there (or the unlucky ones who've had their devices pilfered), Find My iPhone is a must-have download.

Assuming you've a 2010 or later iOS device, you can set up a free account and locate your devices within seconds. (Note that older devices can also be added to Find My iPhone - you just need a recent one to get things going.)

Google Translate is a bit like an insanely portable and entirely free gaggle of translation staff. When online, you can translate written or photographed text between dozens of languages, or speak into your device and listen to translations.

And for English to French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish (and back), the app will attempt to live-translate (even when offline) any text in front of the camera.

The idea behind TunnelBear is to keep browsing private and to get around censored and geo-locked websites. The interface is insanely simple — you just tap the country you want to browse from and wait a bit.

Connections are generally robust but easy to restart if they drop. For free, you get 500 MB per month. Spam your Twitter feed and you'll get an extra GB.

There are a wealth of running apps available, but RockMyRun is a good'un. This free app monitors your pace - or if you have a wrist or chest based heart rate monitor, your beats per minute - and offers up its specially curated playlists to give you the perfect music for your speed.

This means the music tempo will respond to your pace or heart rate, thus making every run tailored to your awesomeness.

From serene sounds during your warm up, to high intensity bangers when at full speed, it adds another dimension to your run. The best bit is when you explode into a sprint and the music pounds in your ears.

Skyscanner's a great website, which enables you to punch in airports and find out the cheapest way of getting from A to B.

The Skyscanner app is the same, but it's on your device and with a spiffy AI. Well worth a download, even if only to check flights for an upcoming holiday.

Time trackers tend to fall into disuse when they're not simple to get working, and not immediately available. Fortunately, Hours Time Tracking has an interface that makes setting and starting timers simple. You can use the app itself, a Today view widget, or even your Apple Watch to get a timer going.

Adjustments, edits and exports can later be made from within the app itself. (Also, when sync service Hours Cloud appears, existing users will be grandfathered into a better ongoing deal for free usage than new users, do grab this one as soon as possible, then!)

Some might rightly grumble that the Netflix selection leaves a little to be desired, but it's still a very affordable way to get a ton of TV in front of your eyes.

The app works much like you'd expect: browse, watch, realise it's three in the morning - again.

It would be a hard ask to expect the Flipboard experience on the iPhone and iPod touch to match that of the iPad version, but it nonetheless has a good go, transforming your favourite feeds and news sources into a tiny, beautiful digital magazine.

It's interesting to watch the evolution of an app. Starting out on iPad, Paper was something of a design industry darling, offering a beautiful and stylish, if ultimately slightly limited, digital notebook of sorts.

Then it went free, the developer positioning Paper as the perfect app to use with its Pencil stylus.

But the latest update not only brings the app to iPhone it also radically reimagines and expands it. Alongside existing sketch tools, you now get notes and the means to add photos, transforming Paper from nice-to-have to essential.

These days, the bigger problem isn't deciding what you want to watch on the telly, but where you want to watch it. And where has a couple of meanings: the device you're going to peer at and the service you use. With telly becoming so decentralised, JustWatch aims to bring coherence to browsing content offered by a range of providers.

Search for a show or movie and the app tells you where you can buy, rent or stream it; click New, Popular or Price Drops and you can, respectively, find newly added content, see what everyone else is watching, and discover bargains that might only stick around for a day or two.

The thinking behind Slack is to free teams from the drudgery of email. It's essentially a real-time messaging system, where people have group conversations based around user-defined hashtags, or send private messages to one-another.

Support for inline images, videos and Twitter-like summaries boost pasted content, and the app integrates with cloud storage from the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive.

It's worth noting that while Slack is clearly aimed at businesses, it works perfectly well as a means of communication for groups of friends who aren't thrilled about storing their personal insights and details on Facebook.

Back in 2009, Jorge Colombo did some deft iPhone finger painting using Brushes, and the result became a New Yorker cover.

It was a turning point for iOS and suitably handy ammunition for tech bores who'd been drearily banging on about the fact an iPhone could never be used for proper work. The app sadly stagnated, but was made open source and returned as Brushes Redux.

Now free, it's still a first-rate art app, with a simple layers system, straightforward controls, and a magnificent brush editor that starts you off with a random creation and enables you to mess about with all manner of properties, from density to jitter.

Making decisions is hard. With Flotsm, absolve yourself from all the pesky responsibility by unleashing questions online (anonymously) and having people vote for their favourite options.

Should you not be thrilled with a particular response, you can cunningly nudge it in a different direction, filtering votes by gender, age and location. Alternatively, if you're more a bossy than indecisive type, trawl lists and spend your time voting.

Should you get a bit too much into Flotsom, you can follow search terms, although be advised the Apple keyword will return everything from queries about what iPhone someone should buy to concerns about the proper ingredients for a fruity pie.

This Star Wars app is clearly a cunning slice of digital marketing injected into your iPhone, but we don't care, because it's fun. The main interface has three skins - droid, light side, and dark side - and provides you with access to all kinds of Star Wars goodies.

There's a sound-board, selfie generator, and augmented reality Force Trainer where you waggle your iPhone about like a lightsaber, attempting to deflect bolts from a floating training remote.

There are practical bits, too, such as ticket-booking (obviously) and checking out the local weather - the app helpfully noting which Star Wars location it most closely maps to.

The prospect of Nike+ but better and for free might sound unlikely, but that's what RunKeeper provides. Previously split into 'pro' and 'free' versions, the developer now generously includes all the features in one free app.

That means you can spend no money, yet use your iPhone's GPS capabilities to track your jogging and cycling routes, and examine mapping and details of your pace and calories burned.

Activities can be shared online, and treadmill runs and other exercise details can be entered manually.

Around Me figures out where you are and lists local stuff - banks, bars, petrol stations and, er, Apple Retail Stores.

The app's reliance on Google Maps info means there are gaps, but it's nonetheless handy to have installed when in unfamiliar surroundings, and the 'augmented reality' landscape mode is amusing, if flaky.

Over two million definitions, synonyms and antonyms are available in the palm of your hand with this free, offline dictionary and thesaurus.

The app is fast and efficient, includes phonetic and audio pronunciation of words, and its interface seems perfectly suited to the iPhone.

"Hold the world in the palm of your hand," says Google about Google Earth, which enables you to fly across the planet by swiping your finger.

More integration with content and features from Maps would be good, but Google Earth's Wikipedia articles and a Panoramio layer at least ensure it's a great app for seeing the world from your living room.

XE Currency is a fine example of an app that does what it needs to, without fuss. You configure a list of currencies, and it shows current conversion rates.

Double-tap a currency to set its base rate or to define values for custom conversions.

Don't bother buying a DAB radio - just install TuneIn Radio instead and plug your device into a set of speakers.

TuneIn Radio has a great interface for accessing over 100,000 digital stations; it also has AirPlay support, and you can use it as an alarm clock.

We say a big PFFT! at CGI. Real animators use stop-motion, until they inevitably go crazy at only being able to craft about three seconds of footage per week. iMotion enables you to create such painstaking animations with your device.

The sting in the tail: an IAP for export, but if you don't care about that, you can play your creations on your device to your heart's content. There's also the free iMotion Remote to use as a remote controller over Wi-Fi for iMotion, to avoid you accidentally moving your 'camera'.

TED is brain food. The app provides access to talks by insanely clever people, opening your mind to new and radical ideas.

You can also save your favourite talks locally, for even easier access, or ask the app to inspire you, based on your mood and available time.

Whatever bank you're with PayPal has you covered for mobile banking and it's a pretty solid performer.

You can manage your account on the go, send and receive money and find local businesses using PayPal Here, so you can pay for stuff without cash. Nifty.

The App Store has so many to-do apps that it's in severe danger of tipping over, due to the sheer weight of digital checkboxes, but Wunderlist is one of the very few that really stands out.

The interface is very usable, and the app's ability to seamlessly sync across devices and platforms makes it a great download.

This one falls under 'essential' rather than 'amazing'. If you've turned on two-step verification on your Google account, chances are it'll regularly ask for a code. You can get this sent to you via SMS, but it's much less hassle to have Google Authenticator instead provide the numbers to type in.

Safari's a perfectly decent web browser on the iPhone, but Chrome has a couple of particular advantages.

First, the card-like tabbing system (technically unlimited, but Chrome does tend to get a bit crashy if you open too many) is really very nice indeed; secondly, you can send tabs to your iPhone from the desktop version of Chrome.

Another image editor, but Photo Editor is a good 'un. The interface is clear, and it contains all the tools you'd expect: filters, enhancements, cropping, and the ability to fire that picture of your frothy coffee/amusing dog/current skyline to Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook or Twitter.

"But Gmail works in Apple Mail," you might say. And this is true, but it doesn't works really well. For the best of Gmail, Google's own offering is unsurprisingly the app to opt for.

The Gmail app provides a full experience, enabling you to search, thread, star and label items to your heart's content - and is far better when your connection is patchy.

With weather apps, you're frequently forced to choose between lashings of data or something that looks lovely. Yahoo! Weather combines both, offering a stunning interface that also happens to be rich with information. The maps are a touch weak, but other than that, this is an essential weather app.

Such is the nature of social networks and online media that Vine's 15 minutes might have passed by the time you read this. Still, the app is a great way to rifle through the many thousands of six-second videos people have uploaded to the service.

Long-time internet users frequently dwell on what might have been regarding Flickr. It should have the ubiquity of Facebook, but seemingly missed the mobile boat. Still, Yahoo! now has new leadership and if apps like Flickr are any indication of what's to come, the service might get a second wind.

We keep hearing about how important coding will be to the future of everything. That's all very well, unless code makes about as much sense to you as the most exotic of foreign languages.

The idea behind Lrn is to gently ease you in. Through friendly copy and simple quizzes, you gradually gain confidence across a range of languages.

For free, you get courses on HTML and CSS, along with introductions to JavaScript, Ruby and Python. You can complete any course for $4.49; but even if you don't pay anything at all, you'll get a lot out of this app if you've an interest in coding but don't know where to start.

There are plenty of GPS running apps for iPhone, but Runtastic is an excellent freebie. Although you naturally get more features on stumping up for the 'pro' version, the free release gets you GPS tracking, measurements and charts, a nicely designed map view, your training history, social sharing, the means to manually add activities, integrated music, and cheering.

Yes, you read the last of those right - you can have friends cheer you on as you huff and puff during a run. The app's human side comes across in its IAP, too, some of which are motivational tales you can listen to while you run. Or jog. Or hobble a bit. (We're not judging.)

The rules have changed when it comes to modern media. Pretty much anyone can do it, but there's much more out there. Also, unless you've loads of spare time and a hobbyist mentality, chances are what you love isn't what you're being paid for. That's where Patreon can help.

People who make stuff get direct access to the fans who fund them; and everyone else gets access to loads of really interesting projects.

The app's a typically mobile 'discovery and interaction' tool, for the most part, enabling you to search Patreon, find new things, and post comments and notifications.

The science of sleep is something few people delve into. But you know some days that you wake up and feel awful, even if you think you've had a decent night's sleep. Sleep Cycle might be able to tell you why. It analyses you while you sleep, using sound or motion, and provides detailed statistics when you wake.

Additionally, it'll constantly figure out what phase of sleep you're in, attempting to wake you at the best possible time, in a gentle, pleasing manner.

That probably all sounds a bit woo-woo, but here's the thing: this app actually works, from the graphing bits through to helping you feel refreshed and relaxed on waking up.

We're told the 'S' in Vert S stands for 'speed'. This is down to the app being an efficient incarnation of the well-regarded Vert unit converter.

The older app had you browse huge category lists to pick what you need, but Vert S is keener on immediacy. There's a search, but the app's core is a Favorites page, where commonly used conversions are stored.

Tap one and you enter a basic calculator, enabling you to convert between your two chosen units, which can be quickly switched by tapping the Vert button. (Note that currencies are behind an IAP paywall — $2.99 for 'Vert Pro' — but conversions for other units are free.)

A great many iPhone cookery apps make the mistake of aping cookbooks a little too closely. You tap a recipe, only to get a set of steps, rendered in tiny, barely readable text.

Kitchen Stories is different. From the off, the app dazzles your eyes (and tempts your tastebuds) with stunning photography. Better: open a recipe and you'll find handy step-by-step photo instructions and typography that you don't have to squint at.

Not sure about some of the basics of cooking? The app's got you covered there, too, with a selection of HD video guides.

Developer Pixite is best known for its eye-popping filter apps, and so Assembly was quite the surprise. The app is all about building vector art from shapes.

Individual components are dropped on to the canvas, and can then be grouped or have styles applied. It feels a bit like the iPhone equivalent of playing with felt shapes, but you soon realise that surprisingly complex compositions are possible, not least when you view the 'inspirations' tab or start messing about with the 'remix' projects.

For free, you get loads of stuff to play with, but inexpensive IAP unlocks all kinds of bundles with new themed shape sets to explore.

It's interesting to see how far the App Store has come. Time was, Apple banned apps that gave you the chance to build prototypes. Now, Marvel is welcomed by Apple, and is entirely free.

Using the app, you can build on photographed sketches, Photoshop documents, or on-screen scribbles. Buttons can be added, and screens can be stitched together.

Once you're done, your prototype can be shared. If you're not sure where to start, check out existing prototypes made by the Marvel community.

Apple's Music Memos is all about getting music ideas down — fast. You launch the app, hit record, play your guitar or piano, and your riff is safely recorded, rather than vanishing from your head the moment you see something vaguely interesting outside.

Smartly, the app provides additional toys to experiment with. There's a tuner, and during playback, you can add automated electronic bass and drumming. The virtual instruments attempt to match tempo and energy with whatever you recorded (and with some success, although more complex inputs can confuse this feature to an amusing degree).

Music Memos also tries to transcribe the chords being played; its accuracy is questionable beyond the basics, but not bad as a trigger when you later want to learn how to play your own spark of inspiration.

Usefully, you can fling recordings at GarageBand and Logic (bass and drums going along for the ride as separate tracks).

Less usefully, you can sing into the app, and still add bass, drums and chord transcription, for some kind of madcap tech-based cacophony of awfulness that we felt entirely compelled to try in the name of a thorough review. Expect our effort to (not) trouble the charts shortly.

The Weather Underground app (or 'Wunderground' to your iPhone, which sounds like an oddly dark Disney film) is one of those products that flings in everything but the kitchen sink yet somehow remains usable.

Whatever your particular interest in the weather, you're covered, through a slew of 'tiles' (which can be moved or disabled to suit) on a huge scrolling page.

At the top, you get a nicely designed tile detailing current conditions and showing a local map. Tick and cross buttons lurk, asking for input regarding the app's accuracy. During testing, we almost always tapped the tick — reassuring.

Scroll, though, and you find yourself immersed in the kind of weather geekery that will send meteorological nuts into rapture. There are rainfall and temperature graphs for the next day and hour, along with simpler forecasts for the week.

You get details on humidity, pressure and dew point. Sunrise, sunset and moon timings are presented as stylish animations. You can investigate local and global webcams and photos, and then head to the web if not satisfied with that deluge of data.

Weather Underground is funded by non-intrusive ads (which you can disable annually for $2.99 if you feel the need), and is easily our favourite free iPhone weather app; in fact, it even rivals the best paid fare on the platform.

You've got to hand it to NASA: in naming its app 'NASA App', you're well prepared for a product bereft of elegance, and so it proves to be. This is a clunky app, with ugly graphic design, and that's heavily reliant on you being online to download its content.

Oh, but what content! It's the wealth of eye-popping imagery and exhaustive commentary that will keep anyone with an interest in space glued to their iPhone, devouring items by the dozen. The 'Images' section is particularly lovely, with a huge range of photos.

There are pictures of star clusters that look unreal, moody shots of planets and moons, and snaps of engineers doing clever things. These can all be rated, run as a slideshow, shared, or saved locally.

Elsewhere, you get a ton of informative and educational videos, guides to missions, news, and, slightly weirdly, access to NASA's Twitter feed. And if you fancy turning your brain off for a bit, there's a live feed from the ISS, the blue marble that is Earth slowly rolling underneath.

On the iPad, Novation Launchpad is one of the best music apps suitable for absolutely anyone. You get a bunch of pads, and tap them to trigger audio loops, which always sound great regardless of the combinations used. This isn't making music per se, but you can get up a good head of steam while imagining yourself as a futuristic combination of electronic musician, DJ and mix genius.

On iPhone, it shouldn't really work, the smaller screen not being as suited to tapping away at dozens of pads. But smart design from Novation proves otherwise. 48 trigger pads are placed front and centre, and are just big enough to accurately hit unless you've the most sausagey of sausage thumbs.

Effects lurk at the foot of the screen — tap one and a performance space slides in, covering half the screen, ready for you to stutter and filter your masterpiece.

As on the iPad, you can also record a live mix, which can be played back, shared and exported. This is a really great feature, adding optional permanence to your tapping exploits.

October 27, 2016 at 09:55AM
Stephen Lambrechts,Nick Broughall