TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

Quickoffice Pro (Office & PDF)

| $14.99 | Quickoffice

10 best office apps for Android | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

We all know how versatile and powerful today's smartphones are, with numerous games and apps showing off their fun sides. But what about the boring stuff? What about when you really need to edit potentially libellous statements out of a Word document in a hurry? Android has a wealth of productivity tools at its disposal, ranging from free and simple text editors and "to do" lists up to impressively feature-packed and rather costly suites of document management apps that promise PowerPoint and Excel editing on your mobile. Official options are a little lacking, though. There's no proper version of Open Office on Android, for example, while rival smartphone maker Microsoft is obviously a little reluctant to launch any official MS Office apps on Android as well. Fortunately for business-minded users, Android has many third-party options offering similar collections of fully compatible office apps, optical character readers, scanners and converters, all ready to let you use your phone for something a little more useful than moaning on Twitter all day. So here are our 10 Android office apps so you can make your phone work a bit harder. As well as an excellent mobile web interface accessed through the Android browser, Google has recently released a separate Android Google Docs app. The benefits are integration with your Contacts list for easy file sharing, plus it uses your Android phone's camera as a character reader to scan documents. The Android app also supports Google's collaborative editing system - as long as you're using a mobile data connection of some sort. This is a rather expensive option coming in at whatever the current equivalent of $14.99 is, but you do get a lot in the Quickoffice Pro bundle. It implements proper support for Office apps on Android, letting users read, edit and create docs Read More

HomeWork

| FREE | Klwinkel.com

10 best free Android apps for kids | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

Android Market is packed with apps, hundreds and thousands of them, and finding a good quality app can be a tedious and frustrating process. In the Education segment alone there are 2,988 free educational apps available for you to download. Here we dig deep and uncover ten top free Android apps for kids. 1. AniWorld Lite AniWorld Lite is an excellent app for kids aged one to five. It teaches kids the names of different animals and gives them a chance to feed and pet them. While the app itself is very basic, it's the "Hey, pet me" feature that will have you and your kids rolling on the floor. 2. HomeWork HomeWork is not a fun app, it's a helpful one and aimed at the older kids. Using this free app they can schedule homework and lessons, set reminders, plan for exam revision, and manage their time more effectively. It works well on a tablet, supporting both screen angles, and is extremely intuitive to use. 3. Pineapple Studio Jigsaw Puzzles The Pineapple Studio range of jigsaw puzzles from ages two to teen has had superb reviews and are embarrassingly addictive. If you've ever had a child ask you to help with her Dora the Explorer puzzle and then later ask you to give her a turn, well... Toy Story, Twilight, Cars, Simpsons, plenty of options, all free. 4. iStory Books Free books complete with voice-over, pictures and alternative languages. Fancy teaching your tot Spanish? There's a Cinderella for that... iStory Books is a simple but sweet app that's good for entertaining the kids. Eleven free books are included from the get go with new ones added every two weeks. 5. Ant Smasher Ant Smasher is a free app kids and adults can enjoy with vicarious murderous intent. Smash the ants Read More

Bebbled

| FREE | Nikolay Ananiev

30 best free Android games | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

As Android phones have increased in popularity, the number of apps available for the platform has rocketed. And that means more free Android games. There's a lot of junk out there but, fortunately, there are gems among the junk. We've worked our way through a whole load of Android games to reveal the ones you should download to your phone. If we've missed your favourite free Android game, let us know in the comments. We also have a video run down of the top 10: 1. Angry Birds The amazingly popular iOS game moved to Android recently, earning over two million downloads during its first weekend of availability. The Android version is free, unlike the Apple release, with maker Rovio opting to stick a few adverts on it rather than charge an upfront fee. The result is a massive and very challenging physics puzzler that's incredibly polished and professional. For free. It defies all the laws of modern retail. 2. Bebbled Bebbled is your standard gem-shuffling thing, only presented in a professional style you wouldn't be surprised to see running on something featuring a Nintendo badge with an asking price of £19.99. You only drop gems on other gems to nuke larger groups of the same colour, but with ever-tightening demands for score combos and scenes that require you to rotate your phone to flip the play field on its head, Bebbled soon morphs into an incredibly complex challenge. 3. Red Stone There's an awful lot of square-shuffling games on Android and Red Stone is one of the best. And one of the hardest. You start off with a big fat 'King' square that's four times of the normal 'pawn' squares, then set about shuffling things so the fat King can get through to an exit at the top of the Read More

Robo Defense

| $2.99 | Lupis Labs Software

Top 10 best Android games - paid apps | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

Contrary to popular belief, it's not all free on Android. The paid-for development scene is alive and well and charging people money, with plenty of pro-level game entertainment on hand to help you happily spend all day staring at your mobile telephone. Thankfully, Android's a world of bargains - most of the finest examples of paid-for Android games come in around the psychologically negligible 'micro-transaction' cost level, with the majority of developers selling their works for a couple of dollars, tops. So, now you've been gently acclimatised to the possibility of having to pay for something, pay for these things - the 10 best paid-for games on Android today. 1. Robo Defense, $2.99 What people who like to categorise things would refer to as a 'Tower Defense' game, Robo Defense has you micro-managing the stock inventory during a war. You win points for killing enemies, you spend points on upgrading your weaponry to fend off the next, more aggressive assault. Unlike many Android games, the difficultly level feels perfect - this has obviously been tested and tested and tested. 2. Armored Strike Online, $3.99 A quite superb turn-based strategy shooter thing, based on ancient classics like Death Tank and Worms. Everyone has a go at shooting, everyone waits to see if anyone else died, then the remaining living forces have another go. A superb game really brought to life by touchscreen controls and online play. 3. Radiant, £1.50 A modern take on the age-old Space Invaders theme, only dragging it all into the modern era with flashy, vibrant graphics and numerous ship upgrades to keep the game changing and growing as you progress. Works better on second-gen Android phones with a bit more processing power to keep everything running smooth. 4. Flight Director, $1.99 Our favourite of the many line-based air Read More

EasyTether Lite

| FREE | Mobile Stream

10 best Android apps - paid apps | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

We've already shown you our favourite 30 best free Android apps, but what of the produce from those developers keen to actually make a bit of money from spending all their spare time hunched over a development phone? It is possible to find free alternatives that offer similar features to most of the below apps, but some of the paid-for app crowd are simply so polished and innovative you feel duty-bound to occasionally throw the maker a couple of quid as a thank you. And don't panic because we're mentioning money here - the average cost of this little lot is around two dollars a pop. In return, you're able to tether, customise, share data and more, all in incredible style, thanks to the work of Team Android's finest people. Read on for our pick of the 10 best paid-for Android apps... 1. EasyTether, $9.95 A rather steep asking price on this one, but it's worth paying - that one-off fee lets you use any Android phone as a 3G modem, freeing yourself from the misery of having to use wireless hotspots. The free demo works for causal browsing, but refuses secure (https) connections, rendering half the internet broken. Hence you might want to buy the full app. 2. Beautiful Widgets, €1.49 The maker of this app got into a bit of trouble with HTC for cloning its HTC Sense UI look a little too well, but a few rejigged fonts soon fixed that and got it back on the Android Market. Your micro-transaction gets you a stunning collection of clocks and weather icons, bringing Sense-like style to any boring 'vanilla' Android home screen. 3. Touiteur Premium, €1.99 You may well think there's not much room for a paid-for Twitter app on Android, with the likes of Seesmic and the official Read More

Facebook for Android

| FREE | Facebook

40 best free Android apps | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

OK, so the Android Market is more akin to Lidl or Asda than the iPhone's enormous, indulgent Selfridges-at-Christmas time approach, but the open source nature of Google's OS means there are plenty of apps for Android to be found. And best of all, most of the good stuff on Android is free, thanks to the work of developers who do it for love alone. So here's our pick of the top free Android apps you should install. You can also check out our video of the top 10 free Android games 1. Seesmic There are many Twitter apps on Android - and Twitter itself shook up the scene with the launch of its own-brand app recently - but we're sticking with Seesmic. Offering support for multiple accounts, a home page widget showing latest tweets and an incredibly slick and professional design, it's one of the finest examples of app development out there today. 2. Facebook for Android Facebook for Android is lacking in features compared to Facebook itself, but a recent update added Inbox support to the Android app, finally allowing its users to communicate in almost real time. The app's fast and stable, with a simplicity that reminds you of the old days when using Facebook used to be bearable. 3. ASTRO File Manager ASTRO is nothing more than a Windows-style file explorer, but if you're into tinkering and directly installing Android APK files yourself, it's essential to stick something like this on your phone. It makes your phone feel like a computer, and makes you feel like you're in charge of it. UPDATE: ASTRO still exists as a free ad-supported app, but you'll have to pay for the full version without ads. Our new favourite file explorer app is listed below. 4. Job Centre Plus Hey, times are hard Read More

K-9 Mail

| FREE | K-9 Dog Walkers

10 best alternative Android apps | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

As great as Android is, the default experience and app selection can be a little bit... dull. A little bit... Windows 95. The standard Android email client is basically just a list of text, as is the SMS client. And while the WebKit browser is fast and free, it doesn't exactly lead the curve when it comes to offering interesting things to fiddle with or a genre-defining feature set. Even if you're using a phone layered down with a custom user interface like Sense, TouchWiz or that blue thing Sony Ericsson puts on its Android phones, there are many alternatives to your pre-installed tools and settings. And don't worry about experimenting - if you don't like the look of your new email client or browser, simply delete it - your old one will still be there. So, if you're after a bit of an OS refresh, these are our 10 favourite alternate Android apps. Add a few more options and some different colours to your phone. It's almost as good as blagging an upgrade. 1. Best keyboard for Android: SwiftKey Beta Just launched in beta a few weeks ago, SwiftKey is a larger, more useable alternate keyboard for Android, which introduces more text prediction options. It doesn't just predict the word you're typing, it also tries to guess the next word - letting users auto-type entire sentences. As long as you don't use too much flowery language. 2. Best Android email app: K-9 Mail The incredibly simplistic official Android email app is very bland - you get your emails, nothing more. K-9 Mail lets you edit fonts and colours, combine email inboxes, use gestures to page through your emails, also giving users the power to customise separate individual display options for each folder. It's a tinkerer's dream that's miles ahead of Read More

Angry Birds Lite Beta

| FREE | Rovio Mobile Ltd.

Angry Birds arrives on the Android platform | News | TechRadar UK - TechRadar UK | Technology News And Reviews

One of the iPhone's biggest gaming hits has finally arrived on the Android platform, with Rovio Mobile's phenomenally addictive Angry Birds making the jump to a new platform in beta. Angry Birds has been a massive seller on Apple's App Store, and the calls for it to arrive on Android have been many and volumous. And that dream is now a reality, with the company announcing on Twitter that the app is now on the Google platform. Beta version "And Angry Birds have landed on Android:-)" the company said, adding "If you have any problems with the Android beta, let us know. It's a beta, so we know it's not perfect. Help us make it better." Rovio Mobile has impressed many with its after support – the original Angry Birds has been continually updated with more levels and different birds for free. The game has been so successful that there is even talk of a film in the offing. We're not sure if the plot will stretch that far, but it may still be more complex than Transformers. Nearly closed "This week, we were planning to run a closed beta test of Angry Birds Lite for Android," explained Rovio on its blog. "Due to the massive response and demand from the Android community, we have decided to make Angry Birds Lite Beta available for everybody through the Android Market this Friday. "Angry Birds Lite Beta will run on second generation Android devices and upwards. "We want to ensure that we will publish the best game ever released on Android, and we hope that this beta version will prove to our Android fans that Angry Birds has been worth the wait!" Read More