The cheap, chunky and usually quite cheerful Nokia Lumia 620 is one of the more affordable ways to get into the Windows Phone 8 universe, with Nokia and the networks managing to get it into the hands of buyers for around £150 on PAYG SIMs.

Nokia and Microsoft have already done a pretty decent job of pre-loading the Lumia 620 with loads of awesome apps. Nokia's Maps location tool is useful, its integrated Drive satnav software helpful, plus the excellent Nokia Music and the... interesting City Lens, so new smartphone buyers can find some top drawer stuff on the 620 to amuse them for the first few days of loving exploration.

But that's still not enough. Microsoft's app shop is expanding at a massive rate as Windows Phone adoption increases among users and developers alike, with the listings featuring some great, and usually free, ways to make your MS-powered smartphone smarter still.

These are ten of the best apps that help improve your Lumia 620's existence.

UC Browser

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

No offence to Microsoft or its big dream of world domination, but there's still a little bit of shame attached to using Internet Explorer these days, even when it's the new mobile version that comes as part of its Windows Phone OS.

Plus, due to the Lumia 620's rather limited RAM, using IE on the 620 can be a bit of a clunky experience. UC Browser's a little lighter and quicker and, although not flawless, may work better with some of the mobile sites you frequent.

Plus it's stacked with options to play with, like a screen-altering Night Mode, incognito browsing, offline caching of embedded videos and more.

BBC iPlayer

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

After much waiting and literally millions of angry internet comments demanding to know its whereabouts, the BBC has finally pushed out a version of its mobile iPlayer app for Windows Phone users.

The app's only compatible with phones that run Windows Phone 8, meaning owners of older phones are a little bit stuffed, but at least it means Nokia's cheap WP8 model has one very large selling point.

You get 3G and Wi-Fi streaming here, the full seven day archive of shows and background radio playback, but sadly no option to download stuff to watch when offline.

Lomogram

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

Windows Phone is lacking any form of official support from beloved hipster lunch-sharing photography app Instagram, but that's kind of OK as there are heaps and heaps of alternative photo editing and sharing apps available on WP8.

Lomogram's one of the cutest options, letting users choose from loads of lighting effects, filters and frame borders, then chuck the edited results up to all of today's popular social networks.

BT Wi-Fi

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

Make the most of your Lumia 620's Wi-Fi support by instructing your phone to always connect to an active BT Wi-Fi hotspot with this clever little app. It sits on your phone, waiting for you to walk through or sit down within the range of any BT Wi-Fi (previously known as BT Fon) hotspot, then instantly connects on your behalf.

No logging in, no web sites asking for passwords or £5.99 for an hour, just instant internet without fuss. Life = a bit better for BT internet subscribers.

Viber

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

One of the many data-based voice chat tools out there, Viber's popular thanks to being free to use, cross-platform so you can talk to your smug iPhone and Android using mates.

Plus, like amazingly commonplace rival WhatsApp, it reads through your Lumia's contacts list, finds anyone else who's using the service, and lets you call them direct - cutting your network's calling time limits out of the equation.

KIK Messenger

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

If you'd rather us a more text-based messaging tool, try KIK. It's even closer an experience to text chat darling WhatsApp, letting users share photos, set up group chats and receive visual confirmation that your target has received your message, all presented in a clean and tidy style that's right at home within WP8's slick layout.

And it's free. It's a no-lose situation.

Wikipedia

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

The enormous encyclopaedia doesn't have an official Windows Phone 8 app, but that's not really an issue as this indie option is absolutely superb.

The developer has incorporated live tile support, voice searching, an offline mode, article revision history viewing and much more into this app, making it the best way to scan for possibly true facts via your Lumia. But be careful.

There are a few crappy "Wikipedia" apps on the WP8 app store and some terrible paid search tools, so check the user feedback before installing.

Netflix

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

One of the blowing-up big names of the mobile world has been available on Windows Phone 8 for some time, offering subscribers of the streaming film service a simple way to user their mobiles as a miniature portable TV.

Obviously it's useless without a subscription, mind, although newcomers signing up today qualify for a one-month free trial, along with unlimited access to the site's archives.

Sleep

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

As well as the high-profile, Triple-A monster apps, there are also a fair number of quirky little things to play with on WP8. Sleep describes itself as a "sound mixer" tool, playing "soothing" music to the user under the pretence that it may help him or her get to sleep.

It's more likely to remind you your phone's there on the beside cabinet at 3:45am and encourage you to wake up and check your emails and go on Twitter for a bit, but still: that's also quite useful in itself.

Mixtapes

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace

For music fans after something a little off piste, there this. Mixtapes is built around user-generated playlists of tracks pulled from YouTube's enormous directory of tunes, letting players stream endless mixes put together by others.

It's basically a personal radio station you compile then share online, or a great way to root out online rarities and collect them for listening yourself without the hassle of downloading/buying/uploading them individually.

Background playback and live tile support make it feel like a posh new WP8 experience, too.

Source : techradar[dot]com

Office for iPhone has hit the App Store, meaning that Office 365-subscribing iPhone users can now create, read and edit documents on the go.

The mobile version of the Windows document editing suite comes with Powerpoint, Excel and Word on board, and offers an experience that Microsoft describes as "similar" to Office Mobile for Windows Phone.

There's no OneNote or Outlook included in the suite though; OneNote is already available as a standalone iPhone app, while Outlook Mobile is exclusive to Windows Phone. You'll just have to make do with Exchange ActiveSync and the existing Mail app, email fans.

Format

It promises that formatting of documents won't get messed up despite the app optimising everything for the smaller screen, and promises built-in sharing (although this seems to amount to not much more than email and SkyDrive access).

No word on whether or not we should expect an imminent release of Office Mobile for iPad, unfortunately - Microsoft recommends that you use Office Web Apps on your iPad for now, or you can scale up the iPhone app if you really, really want to.

What's more, today's Office for iPhone release is only news for US iPhone-owning Office 365 subscribers, although Microsoft promises that the international roll-out should happen occur over four-to-five days.

Source : techradar[dot]com

The Nokia EOS is expected to bring its 41-megapixel sensor to fingers at its July 11 New York event, but for those of you who just can't wait the extra month, we've seen some more pictures that both entice and confuse in equal measure.

These snaps, courtesy of mysterious Chinese sources, give us a few more angular views on the EOS over the images that dropped recently.

However, even more interestingly suggest that Nokia may be going for an aluminium casing in the style of the Lumia 925.

What we'd seen in leaks so far shows a polycarbonate design, but we can't be certain as to whether Nokia has settled on aluminium or if it's just a prototype.

Nokia gets another powerful alloy

The photo-focused handset is expected to bring a 41MP camera like that found in the 808 Pureview, strongly hinted at in the Nokia invitation which is headlined "Zoom. Reinvented."

It's also expected to land running Windows Phone. While the camera sticks out a little, the rest of the body looks on par with the Lumia 920's slim figure.

Nokia has only just launched the Lumia 925 and Lumia 928, so it's good to see the Finnish company making good on its promise to bring out the big guns this year with a large range of offerings.

TechRadar will be at the July 11 event in New York to bring you the news as soon as it breaks.

Source : techradar[dot]com

The memory-freeing software update for the Samsung Galaxy S4 that allows users to install apps to SD cards is rolling out across the UK.

The update means that all those memory-hungry apps can be safely squirreled away on the external memory rather than taking up valuable bytes of the handset's measly 9GB of available storage.

Technically, the S4 comes in a 16GB size, but as a BBC Watchdog report pointed out, only around 9GB of that is actually available for users to host their stuff on.

Update time

This software update should ease the pain. However, it's worth remembering that not all apps can be installed to SD so you may still need to allow space for some on the phone's internal storage.

The software update also comes with some camera firmware spruce-ups, gives the S4 the ability to record HDR video and a couple of other bits and pieces like a semi-transparent status bar.

We're still waiting patiently for Samsung to confirm that the software is rolling out so we can't tell you exactly when you'll get it - it may well be network dependent too - but here's proof that some users, at least, are getting involved.

Thanks Elliot!

Source : techradar[dot]com

Razer may have taken its first foray into tablets with its Edge, but the gaming hardware giant has no plans to head into the phone world.

Speaking to TechRadar at E3, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan explained that the minimal screen size was a compromise too far.

"One of the common questions I get all the time is are we building a gaming phone," he said

"I really think mobility is important - but to sacrifice quality of gaming, I don't think that's something our customer base is happy with."

Crushed

So what does Tan believe is a good game for a phone? He's a little embarrassed to say...

"I play a lot of mobile games. Embarrassingly enough, I play Candy Crush. I'm going to lose some street cred, but I play some Candy Crush and all that kind of stuff.

"But it's just not as engaging as a World of Warcraft or games like that.

"So I don't think it will ever replace what we're doing, until such a day comes when we're able to have cloud gaming, or stream it across to a smaller device and keep that quality and that level of engagement."

• Read more of our interview with Razer's CEO, and see how threatened he is by Xbox One and PS4.

Source : techradar[dot]com