From the moment Tetris escaped its original home, an obscure Elektronika 60 in Moscow's Dorodnicyn Computing Centre, it became something of a phenomenon. There can be few games as immediately recognisable, addictive and enduring as the block-stacking classic.

Tetris originated from creator Alexey Pajitnov's childhood fascination with traditional puzzle toys, and the game's similarly elegant simplicity ensured it a place among gaming's greats.

Like other classics, it's easy to understand: pieces you can move and rotate fall into a well; make solid horizontal lines and they vanish; the game's over when the pieces reach the top. But also, Tetris is tough to truly master, allowing you to refine your technique over time.

The basic nature of Tetris also ensured that it found its way to countless platforms. The MS-DOS version spread Tetris to the west, but the true genius moment in Tetris history was in being bundled with the original Game Boy. The little monochrome version captivated the world; from that point on, there was no stopping it.

The Tetris juggernaut arrived on home consoles, handhelds, keychains and even the original click-wheel iPod. Of course, it's also found on iOS. EA's now had two cracks at bringing Tetris to the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and the original effort wasn't convincing. A problem with Tetris from an iOS standpoint is the game's reliance on responsive digital controls as the game speeds up. On-screen swipe equivalents never stood a chance.

For the newer version of Tetris (69p, iPhone; £1.99, iPad), the swipe version remains as Marathon Mode, but we prefer One-Touch. This mode shows locations into which the current piece can fit. A timer counts down (and speeds up as the game progresses) and you tap a location to confirm, or tap elsewhere to get more options. Purists might baulk at such a radical departure from the original controls, but we reckon the iOS revision gives you the strategy of Tetris without the frustration of imprecise touch controls.

There's also the puzzle-oriented Galaxy Mode where you dig down through junk, although it's a touch too reliant on power ups to achieve the best times - and the power-ups are, naturally, bought with In-App Purchases.

With Tetris being so popular, it should come as no surprise the App Store's littered with clones, which are typically brazen in their approach, only occasionally doing something slightly different (for example, adding the odd non-standard shape), presumably in an effort to not be sued.

Therefore, we're only interested in block-stacking games that do something unique, rather like Dream of Pixels (£1.99, Universal). On the face of it, you might question our judgement, since Dream of Pixels looks an awful lot like an upside-down Tetris; in reality, it's Tetris in reverse, with you using the familiar shapes to take chunks out of a menacing cloud, which ends your game if it gets to the bottom of the screen.

However, what appears to be a cunning riff on Tetris in reality plays very differently, and interesting bonuses and game modes ensure Dream of Pixels is a must-have for action-puzzle fans.

Of the remaining titles in our selection, there's Tetris in the DNA, but also crossover with match games. The key differentiator from the likes of gem-swapper Bejeweled is that our choices all take place in an endlessly refilling well.

Some efforts simplify the basic block-stacking premise: Shibuya (69p, iPhone) has only a single column, and you must rapidly create chains of two or more like-coloured blocks.

Meanwhile, Unify (£1.49, iPhone) returns shapes that spin and move, but has them come at you from two directions. Fortunately, Unify's limited to stubby rectangles with two coloured pieces (a system Puyo Puyo fans will immediately recognise), and instead of forming complete lines, you're tasked with grouping four identically coloured squares, which subsequently explode. At first, this is simple, but once the game speeds up and gives you a half-dozen colours to track, it's like combining stripped-down Tetris with juggling.

Mini Meteors (£1.99, iPad) is equally frenetic, albeit in a different way. It's more or less a straight copy of the Nintendo DS title Meteos, with coloured blocks rapidly falling into the well. You arrange three or more in a row or column, at which point they abruptly ignite and take off, carrying the blocks above them. If the make-shift rocket is too heavy, it'll stall and fall, although you can give it extra power by rearranging the blocks in mid-flight.

If you're into more sedate fare, grab Slydris (£1.49, Universal) and Drop7 (£1.99, Universal). The former has you re-arranging lengths of horizontal blocks in a well. With each move, more fall from the top, and so you must think ahead and create chains that give you breathing space.

Drop7 demands maths skills along with spatial awareness and planning. Instead of shapes or blocks, you drop numbered discs into the well, and should the number on any disc match how many are in its row or column, it'll explode. That might not sound that straightforward, but Drop7 has the same pickup- and-play brilliance and tough-to-master sneakiness as Tetris, although it certainly gives a work out to a slightly different part of the brain.

Our final two games also take block-stacking away from the purely abstract, although they rely on letters, not numbers. SpellTower (£1.49, Universal) has rows of letters cleared by making words, Boggle-style. Tower Mode is laid back (a static grid and no pressure), but Puzzle Mode adds a new row for every word you create. By the time you get to Rush Mode and its relentless timer, you'll be yelling at the screen, demanding to know why there are so many unusable letters huddled together.

Still, it's good training for Puzzlejuice (£1.49, Universal), which doesn't stray too far from the truth when it states it will "punch your brain in the face". It merges Tetris and SpellTower with Unify's colour-matching - complete rows of squares and match coloured blocks to transform them into letters, which are removed by dragging out words.

Add power ups and you've got a creation that pays homage to Tetris, match games and word games, while merrily ensuring steam will shoot out of your ears at regular intervals. We're a little bit surprised the developer didn't bung some shooting and sports in there for good measure!

Google has just updated its Search app for iOS, which finally makes Google Now available for both iPhone and iPad.

The app is almost identical across both iOS devices, while following the style seen on Android when it debuted last June.

For those not in the know, Google Now pulls info from all of Google's services to provide you with information before you even ask for it. So it might remind you to take an umbrella with you if the weather forecast is bleak.

The info is displayed on little cards and in notifications which can be easily dismissed once you've been alerted.

We want it now

However, some of the features, including Activity Summary, Boarding Pass, Concerts and Nearby Events aren't available for the iOS version right now, though we expect them to appear in the near future.

All you have to do to get Google Now on your iOS device is download Google Search from the App Store and then get playing.

The trusty old text message has been eclipsed by instant-messaging through chat apps like Whatsapp for the first time.

The statisticians over at Informa say that app-based IM-ing saw over 19 billion messages sent per day in 2012, while we managed only 17.6 billion texts per day between us.

This isn't exactly stellar news for the phone networks who are losing out on all that juicy text messaging revenue - chat apps use up tiny amounts of your data allowance, while SMSes are a proven income stream of yore.

Vibez

Informa's research was a little selective when it came to messaging clients - Whatsapp, BBM, Viber, Nimbuzz, iMessage and KakaoTalk made the cut, but others didn't - so the volume is likely to be higher. Facebook Messenger, for example, seems a glaring omission.

The research house reckons that data-based messaging is set only to grow, predicting that nearly 50 billion messages will be sent daily via app by 2014, while it sees only 21 billion SMSs going out per day in the same year.

So is it the end for the text message? Informa says not - "There is a lot of life still in SMS," Informa's Pamela Clark-Dickson said, citing the fact that billions of people are still on app-less feature phones rather than smartphones, particularly in developing countries.

BT has put its weight behind O2's 4G rollout as the two firms put pen to paper and sign a ten year deal.

O2 came out poorly from the 4G spectrum auction at the beginning of the year, gaining the least amount of the valuable frequencies so its new partnership with BT will come as welcome relief.

The deal will see BT build a new high capacity transmission network to ensure O2 has the capacity it needs to support the increased data demand - thought to be up to 400 per cent - on the 4G network.

'Mind-blowingly aggressive'

We've already heard from O2 that its 4G rollout will be 'mind-blowingly aggressive' in comparison with its 3G rollout, and the additional infrastructure support is now has from BT will help make that claim a reality.

O2 reckons it will be able to offer "unrivalled mobile phone and internet browsing experiences" - something we're pretty sure EE, Vodafone and Three probably won't be in agreement with.

While EE has had a decent head start in the 4G arena take-up hasn't exactly exploded, leaving the door open for the other networks to claim a decent chunk of the LTE market when they come online later this year.

Google may not be prepping Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie for its annual IO conference next month with fresh reports suggesting Android 4.3 may be on the way instead.

The folks over at Android Police have apparently spotted some server logs which point towards Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices running an updated version of Jelly Bean - Android 4.3.

According to the report the IP addresses of the devices have be traced back to Google's offices and two separate employees, although we remain sceptical on that particular fact for the time being.

Delayed?

Last week we heard reports that Key Lime Pie wasn't going to appear at Google IO, as the search giant could be delaying its launch to allow manufacturers time to roll out Jelly Bean to their current crop of handsets.

This latest news jives pretty well with suggestions of a delayed Android 5.0 arrival and Google may be releasing a little Jelly Bean update in May to keep everyone sweet in the meantime.

Additional weight has been added to the Android 4.3 argument after a Reddit user did some snooping of their own, claiming to have found various pieces of evidence relating to the existence of Android 4.3.

These sort of details can be forged and while Android Police claims it's traced some of the information back to Google itself, we still can't be sure what we're going to see at Google IO in May.