Android 4.4 KitKat tips, tricks and secrets

What's hiding in Android 4.4?

Android 4.4 is the most polished and feature-rich iteration of Google's mobile OS yet, and comes with plenty of new and exciting functions to keep fans happy. However, not all of them are immediately obvious from the start.

Allow us to educate you on some of the most interesting and useful tips, tricks and secrets hiding in the software. Grab yourself a hot beverage, find a comfortable seat and prepare to taste the future of smartphone software.

HTC One (M8) Full Review

I'd hate to be a phone designer these days, trying to achieve unique and exciting features in a jaw dropping package for what is essentially a screen with some extra bits and pieces surrounding it.

So it's all the more impressive that HTC, fresh from making the best-looking phone of 2013, has managed to make the HTC One (M8), a phone crammed full of power and great features while improving the design that won it so many accolades.

Nokia Lumia 1020 Tips and Tricks

Think you know everything your Lumia has to offer? Well, you may be right. But, if not, here’s a collection of features you should be aware of. Like a show-and-tell, these are our favourites.

1. Translate text using the camera

Not only is your Lumia’s camera a powerful photographic weapon, it can also be used in other ways, such as translating text into 39 languages. Press the Search (magnifying glass) button and then click the eye icon. Point your Lumia at your subject and click ‘scan text’. If you’re capturing in your native tongue, you’ll be presented with a list of languages to translate to. If you scan text in another language, it will automatically translate to your native tongue. Neat, huh? Results aren’t 100% accurate, but it will always give you a good idea of what’s being said. Handy for restaurant menus. And helping your kids with their homework…

Get the best Photos with Your Nokia Lumia 1020 - tips and tricks

If you bought a Nokia Lumia 1020, you must be after its superb 41 MP camera. Lumia 1020 does not impress as a phone, but, it has one of the best camera unit among the smartphones as of yet. However, what good is a 41 MP camera unit if you can't take good photos with it?

Here are a few tips and tricks from nokia.com to capture that perfect moment.

The new iPhone 5C is a really bad buy

Imagine. You're buying something exciting and expensive. The sales person makes you an offer. You can have 1/8 off the sticker price if you agree to just one thing: from time to time, the sales person would come round to your house and punch you in the face.

The new iPhones and iPads are a bit like that.

50 best iPad games: the greatest free and paid-for games around

No-one predicted the meteoric rise of gaming on iOS, and we're not sure anyone knew what the iPad was for at all when it first appeared.

However, Apple's tablet has become a very able gaming platform. With more screen space than the iPhone, games have the means to be more immersive; the iPad's therefore a perfect platform for adventure games, strategy titles and puzzlers.

50 best iPhone games: fantastic free and paid games

Gaming on iOS is so big that the platform is becoming so dominant it is threatening the likes of Nintendo and Sony, previous kings of the mobile-gaming hill.

Yet for all iOS's gaming prowess, there's no escaping the fact the App Store has a lot of dross. Apple's relative openness, in enabling anyone to develop for the system, means there's no quality control; the flip-side is previously undiscovered indie talent finding an outlet for frequently innovative fare.

Best SMS text messaging apps for Android

It's all very exciting having the latest version of Android install itself on your mobile, but what happens when it makes changes you don't actually like?

That's the situation owners of phones like the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 found themselves in recently, as Google's exciting new Android 4.4 KitKat release arrived – and forced upgraders to use Google's own Hangouts app as the default SMS app.

LG G2 Tips and Tricks

The LG G2 is one of the best Android smartphones of the year 2013, and why not, it does have a lot of potential against the other smartphones in the current Android smartphone market, but are you making the most out of it, or just using it as any other device? Here is a handful of tips and tricks for LG G2 using which you can enhance the user experience and make it a more personalized device for your usage.

10 best phones of Mobile World Congress 2014

This year's gathering of the phone nerds has just taken place in Barcelona, with Mobile World Congress 2014 seeing stacks of new mobiles revealed by the likes of HTC, Sony, LG and Samsung, all jostling for the prize of securing your 2014 phone contract upgrade.

Key trends this year were the arrival of 4K video capture on several mobiles and a continued emphasis on larger displays that'll push trouser pocket capacity harder than ever in 2014, plus there was the enormous shock of seeing Microsoft-owned Nokia release a whole range of budget smartphones running on rival Google's Android OS.

50 best Android apps 2014

The Google Play app store has exploded in recent years, with a proliferation of apps that can cater to your every need. The problem is: there are just too many of them.

Even with Editor's Picks, Featured and Best Selling, Top Paid and Top Free categories there to help you out with your downloading decision it's still a difficult task finding the best apps around.

Firefox OS: could your next smartphone cost just £15?

Android accounted for 81% of worldwide smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2013 and iOS mopped up most of the rest according to a study by IDC.

With that in mind it could be easy to think that Mozilla's new Firefox OS is doomed to fail; after all, how can it hope to compete with the sales figures of Apple and Google, especially when veterans like BlackBerry and big names like Microsoft's Windows Phone are struggling to make much of a dent in global sales?

50 best Android games 2014

While the 'free-to-play' market has taken a bit of a beating of late due to gamers falling out of love with the use of in-app payments, the world of mobile gaming is still an exciting one.

Whether you want games that will last the length of a commute, or want to be lost in a port of GTA where you spend hours mowing down pedestrians and making money out of murder, there is a game on here for you.

10 tips to make your phone more secure

Your smartphone is more precious than your wallet, your keys and in some cases, your actual computer when it comes to sensitive information - but we all have that nagging guilt that we don't do enough to protect our devices beyond perhaps having a four digit pass code.

Thankfully we are here to help with some top-level tips to help make your phone more secure, protecting those all important messages and images that you don't want falling into the wrong hands.

Blackphone - First Impressions

The Blackphone puts privacy and security ahead of flashy features

The Blackphone is an Android mobile phone whose highest priority is security. And unlike Samsung Knox, it's security designed for the normal person, not just high-flying business types who need to hook into corporate networks. We took a look at the Blackphone at MWC 2014 to see how it works, and find out why it exists.

Quantum Dots Explained: What are quantum dots and why are they so awesome?

Quantum Dots and the iPhone 6 Screen

Quantum dots. Sound cool, don't they? But for once this is a technology that's actually as good as it sounds. Quantum dots, among other things, have the potential to revitalise the LCD screens in our phones, tablets, TVs and laptops.

Apple is widely tipped to use them in the iPhone 6 when it comes out later this year, but it isn't the first and won't be the last. Sony already uses quantum dots in some of its TVs under the Triluminous brand, though it's not believed any of its phones currently use the tech despite the Triluminous brand being applied to some of them. Amazon used quantum dots to good effect in the Kindle Fire HDX 7 and HDX 8.9 tablets as well.