HTC One might not be the lonliest number with increased production
Though being so popular it's impossible to keep up with the demand would normally be seen as a good problem to have, that's not the case for HTC.
There's so much interest in the company's new flagship phone, the HTC One, the Taiwanese manufacturer can't quite keep the supply chains up and running.
The HTC One had a delayed launch to allow for more of the smartphones to be pushed off the assembly lines, which cost HTC quite a bit of money, and led to a release closer to the rival Samsung Galaxy S4.
Coupled with the bad break HTC caught with its Facebook phone, the HTC First, which is fending off rumors of discontinuation, it's no wonder the company will be doubling down on its efforts to produce as many HTC Ones as possible in the coming months.
One just isn't enough
According to a new report from Focus Taiwan, the month-to-month production of the HTC One is increasing sharply to accommodate the surging demand.
HTC will not only bump up manufacturing in May two-fold from April's numbers, but will also jack up the number of smartphones being created in June as well.
"Our capacity is expected to rise significantly starting from mid-May," Jack Tong, president of HTC North Asia, said in the report.
"We are optimistic about our high-end sales during April and June."
While the initial delay was caused by a shortage in the custom camera components created for the HTC One, it now appears HTC will stop at nothing to make sure enough of the phones are made available to wanting customers.
The stellar device is one of the few to garner a five-star rating from our reviewers, so it's no wonder the 4.7-inch Android beast has been desired by so many consumers.
Still, the wait means more potential buyers could be swayed into purchasing Galaxy S4s, or even the iPhone 5, rather than waiting for more of the device we called "the best phone on the market."
Updated: Our iOS 6 review has been overhauled to include the iOS 6.1 software updates.
On the surface, it might not look like much has changed with iOS 6 and the subsequent minor iOS 6.1 updates. However, Apple has added a number of new features over iOS 5, along with continuing in its mission to eradicate Google from the system by default. Apple's YouTube app has gone (Google has since released its own on to the App Store) and Maps now runs with Apple power rather than Google juice.
Elsewhere, the OS is more social (Facebook now joining Twitter in being baked in), Siri's been improved, and countless tweaks (some fairly major from a usability standpoint) are in evidence in the likes of Mail, Safari, Phone and the iOS stores.
Oh, and Apple finally added a clock app to the iPad, which resulted in a legal spat with the Swiss railway network service. It seems not only Samsung is in the photocopying business.
iOS 6 ditches support entirely for the original iPad, but is nonetheless compatible with a surprisingly wide range of devices; iPhones back to the 3GS are supported, as are both the fourth- and fifth-generation iPod touch.
However, the older the kit, the less of iOS 6 you actually get. Some of the big features - Siri, turn-by-turn navigation, panoramic photos and FaceTime over 3G - aren't available for the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4.
The iPhone 3GS doesn't even get Safari's offline Reading List feature, and Siri's not available for the iPad 2.
So is it worth the upgrade? We've installed iOS 6 (and iOS 6.1) across multiple iOS devices to find out. Our test kit is an iPhone 4, an iPhone 4S, an iPod touch (fourth-generation), an iPhone 5, an iPad 2, and a new iPad (courtesy of Vodafone).
There are more new features than you'd think, even when you don't get all the new features.
The iOS 6 interface
A common criticism of iOS is that Apple never radically updates it. Tech pundits in particular often use words like 'tired' and 'dated' to describe the operating system, suggesting it would be better if you could weld Android-like widgets to it, or if every home screen icon was more akin to a hyperactive child begging for attention, as per Live Tiles on Windows 8.
iOS 6 is typically Apple in being purely iterative. You get the familiar grid of icons on each home screen, and the screens can be swiped between.
Double-clicking the Home button reveals the multitasking tray, which also houses media controls, the rotation lock and an AirPlay button. Swipe left from the first home screen and you access Spotlight, Apple's system-wide search.
So far, so iOS 5, and that level of familiarity will either be warming or maddening, depending on your persuasion. Regardless, it's definitely very usable, even if configuration options on offer are few in number and rapid-sorting settings are non-existent.
However, there have been some small adjustments. The status bar now changes colour on a per-app basis, in an attempt to blend in. This is more visually appealing but muddies the water when it comes to alerts that were once made in part through a change in colour of said status bar.
Better amendments are the new audio controls on the Lock screen and Spotlight search results now displaying the name of an app's containing folder. Apple's penchant for cropping text labels remains frustrating, though, and is increasingly common throughout the OS.
As Android phones and tablets 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.
So without delay, here is our pick of the best free Android games available.
We also have a video run down of the top 10:
1. Angry Birds
The amazingly popular iOS game moved to Android a while ago, 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.
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 screen.
It's hard to accurately describe a puzzle game in the written word, but seriously, it's a good game.
4. Newton
Released in beta form, Newton is a maths/physics challenge that has you lining up shots at a target - but having to contend with the laws of nature, in the form of pushers, pullers, benders (no laughing), mirrors and traps, all deflecting your shot from its target.
The developer is still adding levels to it at the moment, so one day Newton might be finished and might cost money. But for now it's free and a great indie creation.
5. Angry Birds Star Wars
The Angry physics phenomenon took a turn for the weird late in 2012, with Rovio acquiring the rights to blend Star Wars characters with its popular Angry Birds play mechanics. Angry Birds Star Wars is actually pretty nice, with players using Star Wars weaponry to smash down scenery alongside the usual destructive physics action. Not the car crash IP clash we were expecting.
6. Drop
Some might call Drop a game, others might classify it as a tech demo that illustrates the accuracy of the Android platform's accelerometer, thanks to how playing it simply involves tilting your phone while making a little bouncy ball falls between gaps in the platforms. Either way it'll amuse you for a while and inform you of the accuracy of your accelerometer - a win-win situation.
7. Frozen Bubble
Another key theme of the independent Android gaming scene is (ports of) clones of popular titles. Like Frozen Bubble, which is based around the ancient and many-times-copied concept of firing gems up a screen to make little groups of similarly coloured clusters. That's what you do. You've probably done it a million times before, so if it's your thing get this downloaded.
8. Replica Island
Replica Island is an extremely polished platform game that pulls off the shock result of being very playable on an Android trackball. The heavy momentum of the character means you're only switching direction with the ball or d-pad, letting you whizz about the levels with ease. Then there's jumping, bottom-bouncing, collecting and all the other usual platform formalities.
9. Gem Miner
In Gem Miner you are a sort of mole character that likes to dig things out of the ground. But that's not important. The game itself has you micro-managing the raw materials you find, upgrading your digging powers and buying bigger and better tools and maps. Looks great, plays well on Android's limited button array. Go on, suck the very life out of the planet.
10. ConnecToo
Another coloured-square-based puzzle game, only ConnecToo has you joining them up. Link red to red, then blue to blue - then see if you've left a pathway through to link yellow to yellow. You probably haven't, so delete it all and try again.
A brilliantly simple concept. ConnecToo used to be a paid-for game, but was recently switched to an ad-supported model - meaning it now costs you £0.00.
11. Titres
Once you're successfully rewired your brain's 25 years of playing Tetris in a certain way with certain buttons and got used to tapping the screen to rotate your blocks, it's... Tetris.
It hinges on how much you enjoy placing things with your phone's trackball or pad. If you're good at it, it's a superb Tetris clone. Let's hope it doesn't get sued out of existence.
UPDATE: While Titres seems to have been removed from Google Play, there's now an official Tetris app available to download.
12. Trap!
Not the best-looking game you'll ever play, with its shabby brown backgrounds and rudimentary text making it look like something you'd find running on a PC in the year 1985. But Trap! is good.
You draw lines to box in moving spheres, gaining points for cordoning off chunks of the screen. That sounds rubbish, so please invest two minutes of your time having a go on it so you don't think we're talking nonsense.
13. Jewels
Coloured gems again, and this time your job is to switch pairs to make larger groups which then disappear. That might also sound quite familiar. The good thing about Jewels is its size and presentation, managing to look professional while packing in more levels than should really be given away for free.
14. OpenSudoku
We had to put one Sudoku game in here, so we'll go with OpenSudoku - which lives up to its open tag thanks to letting users install packs of new puzzles generated by Sudoku makers. It's entirely possible you could use this to play new Sudoku puzzles for the rest of your life, if that's not too terrifying a thought.
15. Abduction!
Abduction! is a sweet little platform jumping game, presented in a similarly quirky and hand-drawn style as the super-fashionable Doodle Jump. You can't argue with cute cows and penguins with parachutes, or a game that's easy to play with one hand thanks to its super accessible accelerometer controls.
16. The Great Land Grab
A cross between a map tool and Foursquare, The Great Land Grab sorts your local area into small rectangular packets of land - which you take ownership of by travelling through them in real-time and buying them up.
Then someone else nicks them off you the next day, a bit like real-world Risk. A great idea, as long as you don't mind nuking your battery by leaving your phone sitting there on the train with its GPS radio on.
17. Brain Genius Deluxe
Our basic legal training tells us it's better to use the word "homage" than to label something a "rip-off", so we'll recommend this as a simple "homage" to the famed Nintendo Brain Training franchise.
Clearly Brain Genius Deluxe is not going to be as slick, but there's enough content in here to keep you "brain training" (yes, it even uses that phrase) until your battery dies. The presentation's painfully slow, but then again that might be the game teaching you patience.
18. Coloroid
Coloroid is aery, very simple and has the look of the aftermath of an explosion in a Tetris factory, but it works. All you do is expand coloured areas, trying to fill them in with colours in as few moves as possible - like using Photoshop's fill tool at a competitive level.
19. Cestos
Cestos is sort of a futuristic recreation of curling, where players chuck marbles at each other to try and smash everyone else's balls/gems down the drain and out of the zone. The best part is this all happens online against real humans, so as long as there's a few other bored people out there at the same time you'll have a real, devious, cheating, quitting person to play against. Great.
20. Air Control
One of the other common themes on the Android gaming scene is clones of games based around pretending to be an air traffic controller, where you guide planes to landing strips with a swish of your finger. There are loads of them, all pretty much the same thing - we've chosen Air Control as it's an ad-supported release, so is technically free.
If it's worth playing, it's worth paying. At least, that's the credo of our top 10 premium Android games, each chosen to make sure your hard-earned pennies wouldn't be put to better use in an impromptu game of tiddlywinks.
We reckon you'll get your money's worth with this lot – or at least sufficient distraction to forget you were meant to be saving for that vital operation.
We'll be updating this list as time goes on - feel free to suggest other games you think should be here in the comments below.
1. Jones On Fire
Run! Run like you're in Temple Run, but sideways and blocky and with cats! That pretty much sums up this fun side-scroller that proves a combination of flames and kittens can be fun and not a job for the RSPCA.
While many driving games unleash your inner 007, only this one caters to your inner McFly, with car choices including an Aston Martin and a DeLorean. Real-world race locations include central London – making an ideal foil for commuter rage.
If ripping up streets by car isn't your idea of fun, try laying down train tracks with this engrossing puzzler. Getting the engines to the right stations is harder than it looks, so be careful not to miss your real-world stop!
They Need To Be Fed was a huge hit with its 360-degree gravity-based gameplay, and this sequel only adds to the formula. Simply dodge the dangers, feed the monsters and try not to get dizzy over 50 deceptively easy-looking levels.
A pocket sandbox game sounds like a recipe for severe chafing, but mini Minecraft is no less addictive than the full PC/Xbox version. Use 3D blocks to build freely in Creative mode, or choose Survival mode for more traditional gameplay.
Cutting-edge on its original release in 1991, Another World now mixes retro charm with surprisingly robust aesthetics and gameplay. One of the first games to employ a properly cinematic plot, its sci-fi storyline is bound to inspire the odd flashback.
This mash-up offers hours of fun desecrating a much-loved classic – to say nothing of Star Wars, ha ha etc. Much more than just a Leia of lipstick on a pig, this is a worthy addition to an unstoppable franchise.
Ten years after GTA3 carjacked the world and caused a moral panic among non-gamers, here's hoping that many who were appalled then now have it in their pockets and are happily thieving and killing along with the rest of us.
If Game of Thrones has you hankering for some sword-and-sorcery RPG action, you could do a lot worse than check out this Japanese epic, rich in dwarves, golems and "Evils from the Earth-depths", all waiting to get medieval on yo' app.
Finally, here's another old classic given a new lease of life thanks to Android. Beneath its slick new look, this is still the original, much-loved platformer from the 1990s, but with no need to carry an Amiga 500 with you.
With a cutting-edge camera, a super-slim design and the ability to withstand life's knocks and bumps (and Android Jelly Bean to boot) the Xperia Z is a phone that's got us fired up about Sony Mobile again.
Earlier handsets such as the Sony Xperia S and Sony Xperia T were extremely promising from a brand striking out on its own - but it's with the Xperia Z that Sony is really banking on making a cataclysmic dent in the makeup of the smartphone market.
The Android Jelly Bean-toting (albeit only 4.1) Sony Xperia Z comes with some of the best specs on the market - and it's one of the most eagerly awaited handsets of recent months. Launched before the HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony clearly hoped to steal an early march on its competitors.
And it's got the power to match up: a quad-core 1.5GHz Snaprdragon Krait processor, 13MP camera, 16GB storage (expandable, woohoo!), 2GB RAM, water and dust-resistant, 1080p HD screen with Bravia Engine, LTE, to name a few. You couldn't make this stuff up - this is the company that had a part in the Satio, after all.
As soon as we took our review unit out of the box, we were mesmerised. This feels and looks like a premium, high quality product. Sony is one of the few manufacturers that can take what is, effectively, a plain black square and make it into something beautiful. Manufactured from piano black, high gloss glass both front and black, it could have come from the same stable as the Google Nexus 4.
Though maybe we are overestimating it, viewing the Sony Xperia Z through geek-tinted goggles - because while we were blown away, others came out with the line that Sony will be hoping doesn't cross too many punters' lips: "looks like every other smartphone out there though, doesn't it?"
One thing the Sony Xperia Z certainly does have in common with every other smartphone out there is the fact that it is a pure magnet for fingerprints. You'll struggle to keep it clean all day long without either surgical gloves or a can of Mr Sheen in your bag.
As is fast becoming the norm, you can expect to pick the Sony Xperia Z up in white too. On top of that, O2 in the UK is exclusively offering a purple variant.
If you're coming from something like a Samsung Galaxy S3, it'll feel similar, if a little larger, in terms of size: the Sony Xperia Z rocks in at 139 x 71 x 7.9mm/5.47 x 2.79 x 0.31 inches, so there's little room for anything else in your hands.
Coming from something smaller like, say, an iPhone 5, you'll certainly notice the difference. But it's amazing how quickly you'll adapt.
At 146g/5.15oz, it's by no means the lightest handset out there - but the Sony Xperia Z exudes a heftiness that belies a quality device. It's on a par with Apple's offering when it comes to the thickness.
The ports are spread out with the headphone jack up top, the SIM slot and volume rocker on the right - either side of a silver standby button - while both the microSD and charging ports are on the left, alongside contacts for accessories. A watertight port covers each.
The front of the Sony Xperia Z is minimalist - showing off only a Sony logo and front-facing camera. The rear is a little busier, with various tech info printed on it, plus the Sony Xperia logo, an NFC badge, camera light and the all-important lens. That back is stuck fast - as is becoming the custom, you'll have no luck if you want to remove the battery.
Turn it on, and you're not disappointed. Coming from the blackness, the 5-inch screen springs into life. Whether or not you'll like it is down to personal choice.
Some who've used the Sony Xperia Z describe the screen as a disappointment because Sony has gone for TFT - albeit with 1080 x 1920 pixels, giving a pixel density of 441ppi, which would explain why it looks a bit washed out. If you've come from a Super AMOLED screen you'll definitely feel the difference.
We're still fans - this is a razor sharp display from one of the world's premier screen manufacturers, although it doesn't have the wow factor of the HTC One's Super LCD 3 screen.
The only thing that lets it down is viewing angles - if you look at the Sony Xperia Z's screen, dead on, it's sharp enough. If you look at it from the side, it has a strange ability to look incredibly washed out. It's no huge problem - but it does mean the impressiveness of the screen is diminished compared to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4 or the HTC One.
One of the selling points of the Sony Xperia Z is that it is also water resistant. There's something slightly unnerving about taking a £529 phone and dropping it in the sink - but that's exactly what we did. And it worked absolutely fine.
Clearly, you'll need to make sure the ports are covered using those watertight protectors, that much goes without saying.
And here's some more good news: the price of the Sony Xperia Z is dropping quite quickly, already making it cheaper than the likes of the HTC One and in some worlds available for under the £30 contract mark for a half-decent whack of minutes.
While it's actually the same price as the comparable SIM-free 16GB iPhone 5, the cost is now closing in on the iPhone 4S on PAYG, so we can't help but feel the Xperia Z is finding its natural pricing level.
Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 is literally heaving with apps from the off, thanks to Samsung loading it up with its TouchWiz user interface, a whole separate collection of tools to make use of its S Pen stylus, and plenty of other third-party apps to help you hit the ground running and more than a little bewildered by the choice.
Then, once you've worked out what everything does, there's the small matter of around 700,000 other apps available on Google's Play Store, all designed to add further functionality to a phone that's already more functional than a Swiss Army Knife taped to the top of a universal remote control.
To help you sort your way through the amazing amounts of chaff available on Google's app shop, we've picked out ten of the best apps that compliment Samsung's whopping great telephone, making best use of its unprecedented, size, power, and versatility.
1. AirDroid
One of the most impressive Android apps out there and something of a modern tech miracle, AirDroid lets you remotely access your Note II or almost any Android phone from the comfort of a desktop web browser. There's a small amount of tedium involved in installing the phone app, registering an account and making sure you've applied the relevant permissions to make it all work, but one that's done you have access to a browser control panel of your phone system, from where you can download and upload stuff to your computer, send SMS messages and even control the phone's cameras and take shots from within the browser. It's properly impressive tech in action. And it's free.
Samsung's TouchWiz user interface is very clever, stylish and responsive, and we mean no disrespect in suggesting this, but sometimes you just fancy a change. The beauty of Android means you can simply replace and change the entire Home screen and app management system as easily as you might download an app, with plenty of these replacement launchers available on Google Play to radically reboot your phone's appearance. One of the most popular is the Go Launcher series, which, once installed, lets you add additional plugins to boost its functionality, making is as slim and fast or as rammed with extras and widgets as you like. It's similar to getting a new phone, only without having to sign away the next 24 months of your life. And you can switch back to the original launcher in seconds if you hate the change.
Samsung's not exactly shy when it comes to providing ways to share and distribute photos via the Note II, but we can't help being charmed by newcomer Rando. It's a stylish and simple app, which does one thing -- shares "live" photos with strangers and sends you one back in return. There's no cheating by loading an image from your phone's memory, as the system demands you take a shot there and then, approve it, then upload it. Wait a few seconds or minutes and you get someone else's Rando back at you, giving you a weird glimpse into the life of a bored smartphone user somewhere else in the world. Which is oddly captivating, as you know they've also taken the shot just a few seconds ago.
You're going to have to take sides in the great Netflix/LoveFilm battle at some point. Netflix currently lets users stream an immense amount of film and TV content to mobile, with the Note II's power and immense display meaning you get to enjoy media on the equivalent of an 80-foot cinema screen if you hold the phone up right in front of your face. There's the £5.99 monthly subscription fee to stomach, but this payment open up access to its entire archive, making it a simpler proposition to understand than Amazon's weird, segmented LoveFilm charges, which always seem to want mo' money for some better content or to remove some arbitrary restriction.
Google arrived a little late to the cloud storage party, but is making up for it by trying very, very hard to ensure Google Drive becomes as ubiquitous and popular as its rival Dropbox. What's unique about Google Drive is the way you're able to integrate Google documents within the app, making it a simple way to fire up a word processor file, edit on your phone, then turn it off, safe in the knowledge Google's data elves will have saved a copy to the cloud that you can continue accessing from desktop at a later date. Plus it supports Google's clever group-editing features, so several people can work on the same file. Only they're at a desk and you're in the garden using your phone and therefore BEST at being a modern person.
The popular desktop media player's been tagged as a work-in-progress on Android for over a year now, with its keen coders gradually piecing together one of the best performing and most feature-packed mobile media players out there. It's ideal for Note II users who are looking for a way to play some of the more exotic movie files they may have downloaded over the years, also supporting network movie streams, separate subtitle files, letting you manually adjust the aspect ratio and much more. It's loads better and more robust than the self-effacing Google Play listing suggests.
If you have a Sky account, you'd be mad not to download the Sky Go app. It lets you access your TV packages on the go, bringing the joys of the Sky One daytime TV schedule to your office Wi-Fi connection. All the movies and sports channels are joined by up to 300 live TV feeds (depending on how many your Sky account lets you access), plus there's a selection of slightly old (but useful to have in an entertainment emergency) films to stream on-demand as well. You have to pay more to access the Sky Go Extra additional feature that lets you download and cache stuff to your phone for offline viewing, though, which sours the experience a little. Still, it's good for using your Note II as a spare TV when there's Big Important Sport on and it clashes with what's being watched elsewhere in the house.
We're not going to go down the road of suggesting Android's a piracy hell that enables clever Chinese hackers to access your phone and steal your bank account login details, as that's not really true in the slightest. However, if you're in the habit of downloading apps from sources other than the official Google Play store, it won't hurt to give apps a cursory scan before install -- as accessing apps from external sites is the weak point in Android's defences that can cause you trouble. Also, Android AVG includes a phone location and remote wiping service, which is genuinely useful for peace of mind, regardless of your thoughts on the much talked about Android malware situation.
A weird one, this. Seemingly aimed at the marital infidelity market, Snapchat lets users send each other messages within its locked-down system, with a time limit attached to each so they expire once the reader's read them. The idea being it's good for messages you don't want passed around the school, office, home, or local police station. As the app's listing suggests, though, it's not impervious to being beaten, as Android lets you take screen captures of what you're looking at, and the Galaxy Note II then lets you augment these and share them in a multitude of ways, so... it's still best to keep the sexy and secret stuff to handwritten letters you can later burn.
EA's "console quality" mobile race game stirred up quite a bit of controversy with its in-app purchases and ludicrous "grinding" approach to earning enough stuff to actually play the game, but... it's free. If you can live with some of the more miserable aspects of how big corporations are trying to monetise mobile games, you can at least see what the fuss is about when it comes to the look of the thing. It's extremely polished, akin to a top drawer PS2 game, great fun to play and looks dazzling on large screens. Just expect the fun to be regularly punctuated by pauses and requests to pay for nonsensical car upgrades.
