| Buying Guide: 10 best fitness apps for Android Apr 23rd 2013, 11:44 
It used to be easy to tell a couch potato from a gym bunny. But nowadays even the most healthy among us has an HD screen in their pocket, and sofa surfers are as likely to move for a Wii as a wee. Tech and pecs are no longer mutually exclusive, so which bits of fit kit should we all have on our handsets? Despite the Nike FuelBand's well-reported issues with Android, there are plenty of other fitness options on Google's operating system. Read on to witness the fitness according to TechRadar. 1. Adidas miCoach
Like a horribly healthy angel on your shoulder, miCoach offers voice-coaching as it tracks your workouts using GPS. With training plans for various sports and 400 built-in exercises, this Adidas app even tells you when you need to buy new shoes. 2. Office Yoga
Turn your workspace into workout space with nine sets of easy yoga movements to do at your desk. Text, pictures and audio guide you through moves to overcome everyday ailments – all low-key enough not to upset your colleagues' coffees. 3. Fitness Buddy
Offering more than 300 exercises with detailed descriptions and animations, this is one fitness buddy that won't leave you gasping as they go for the burn. A paid version adds another 1,400 exercises, HD videos, body metrics tracking and more. 4. Zombies, Run! 2
Part exercise, part role-play, this app encourages you to stay fit with the threat of imminent zombie attack. Missions involve running or jogging to collect supplies, earn rewards and progress the plot – all to a soundtrack of motivational undead moans! 5. Endomondo Sports Tracker
This feature-packed free version of a paid app will track any distance-based sport, measuring duration, distance, speed and burn, as well as letting you set targets, get audio updates on your progress, and even hear encouraging things said by your friends online! 6. Couch-to-5k
Demanding 30 minutes a day, three days a week, this app aims to have you ready for your first 5km run in just nine weeks. Cartoon coaches ease you in gently, then build you up to increasingly active workouts. 7. Nike Training Club
You really can 'just do it' with these fast, flexible workouts ranging from 15 to 45 minutes. Including audio guidance and video demos from top Nike trainers (wearing sneakers), it also boasts Facebook and Twitter integration and unlockable workout rewards. 8. FatSecret Calorie Counter
Eat yourself fitter with this handy database of calorie, fat and carb figures for supermarket and chain restaurant foods. Type in what you eat (or scan the barcode) and it'll tot up your intake in the blink of a pie. 9. You Are Your Own Gym
As the name suggests, this workout programme dispenses with gym equipment in favour of 200 exercises you can do almost anywhere. Based on a best-selling book, the app is boosted by a free video pack to show you how it's done. 10. Charity Miles
Guilt-trip your gut into submission with this ingenious app that gives to charity whenever you workout. Choose from a range of American good causes, and corporate sponsors will fork out for every mile you walk, bike or run.     |  | HTC One now available in unlocked 32GB version Apr 23rd 2013, 10:23 
For those keen on grabbing a HTC One but not wanting to be locked to a particular network, we have good news - an unlocked 32GB model is officially on its way. The 32GB handset ditches the unlocked bootloader of the 64GB Developer Edition, but we can only see this being a big miss for the major tinkerers out there. The new unlocked model is only available on the US store for now, with a price tag of $575(around £375/AUS$560), but TechRadar understands that it is set to appear elsewhere, including the UK, very soon. Unlocked, unleashedWe've rated the HTC One as the best smartphone in the world right now, so this news means you should be running out of excuses to go out and get one. Especially as the 32GB model comes in a fair bit cheaper than the iPhone 5 with the same storage and unlocked network. HTC previously opened pre-orders for the HTC One Developer Edition, which came with 64GB of storage and an unlocked bootloader allowing for custom ROMs.     | | EE boasts pretty standard 4G take-up, loves its 'high value' customers Apr 23rd 2013, 09:18 
EE's 4G take-up continues to trickle rather than swell, with the network claiming 318,000 people on its super-fast network after five months. That equates to 2.3 per cent of EE's contract customers - EE says that 53 per cent of its customers are on post-pay deals; so 2.3 per cent of 53 per cent of its customers are on 4G. That's a fairly underwhelming 1.2 per cent of its overall customer base shelling out for it's top-end 4G plans - but it is early days for 4G in the UK and EE is as-yet the only player in the super-fast network field. It'll be interesting to see how take-up expands when 3 launches its 4G network later this year. On trackHowever, EE still reckons it's well on track to have signed up over one million 4G customers by the end of the year, by which time it plans for its network to cover 70 per cent of the UK population as well. The press release makes a big deal of its 'high value customers' - those are the ones who can afford to shell out for EE's fairly hefty 4G pricing plans - and crows continually about its holding of 36 per cent of the UK's available mobile spectrum. According to EE's own research, those who have opted for 4G report that they are using less or no public Wi-Fi thanks to the superior cellular connectivity, and 1 in 5 also claim to be using their home broadband less.     | | Everyday devices becoming smarter and more efficient, says ARM Apr 23rd 2013, 09:17 
Your mobile devices may well soon be capable of dealing with beautiful games as well as getting your battery to last a full day, with chip giant ARM announcing that companies are racing to license its big.LITTLE technology. Announcing a strong quarter of revenue and 2.6 billion ARM-based chips shipped in the period, British company ARM revealed that take-up of big.LITTLE has grown, with another three companies signing up to use the system. The somewhat awkwardly named big.LITTLE pairs a powerful processor with a much smaller one, allowing your device to do intensive processes like gaming using one, but drop down to using the less-power hungry processor when it's doing simpler tasks. Prevalent That conserves battery without sacrificing performance and ARM's financial results suggest we are going to be seeing a lot more of this kind of technology. Indeed, those lucky enough to be getting their mitts on the octa-core version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be able to get your own glimpse at the big.LITTLE tech; but not in the quad-core version. "Everyday devices are becoming smarter, more connected and more energy efficient, which is increasing the applicability of and demand for ARM's technology," said outgoing CEO Warren East. With revenue and profit up compared to last year, ARM is certainly reaping the benefits of its low-power heritage in this so-called post PC era, and TechRadar will be catching up with East to find out more.   | | Buying Guide: Best Samsung Galaxy S3 apps: top apps for your new S3 Apr 23rd 2013, 09:08 
In the 11 months since the Samsung Galaxy S3 first went on sale we've seen plenty of other large-screened Android phones also launch, but none have come particularly close to beating or even equalling Samsung's third Galaxy S. It's still one of the best phones your battered, ever reducing pile of money can buy. And is now cheaper then ever. But if you're starting to feel a bit of upgrade rage and are jealously eying up 2013's new Android models, perhaps your "old" Galaxy S3 might benefit from a bit of a refresh. After all, the phone's quad-core chipset was cutting edge in 2012, and remains one of the best performers today, so it can still run the very latest games and apps with ease. If you're sensibly sticking with the S3 for another year, get this lot installed and spring clean your Samsung mobile. 1. Facebook Home
If you really want to shake things up, install this. Facebook Home an entirely new replacement launcher for Android, meaning it removes the standard Home screen and app drawer system, replacing with an entirely custom interface built around streaming in news and images from your Facebook universe. It's of no use if you only sign into the social network once a month to stare longingly at people you once knew who have now moved on with their lives, but if you're glued to Facebook 24/7 it's a pretty cool way to make interacting easier. Plus your S3 will look and feel like an entirely new phone. 2. Chrome 
Google's desktop browser is replicated extremely well on Android, with plenty of nice design features making it a joy to use. Most useful is the syncing features with the desktop version that activate should you sign in with the same Google account on mobile, with Chrome then letting you access your desktop bookmarks on your phone, view a list of the pages you've had open recently on PC or Mac (often a lifesaver) and sync your password and web form autofill details. It makes using the web on a phone much less fussy. 3. LastPass
If you're going to be spending more time using your phone as a web browser, LastPass is there to help when Chrome's autofill options fail – or if you'd like an automatic password generator on your mobile to make choosing secure options easier. It handles everything, synchronising data from desktop browsing sessions to add any new passwords to its database automatically and therefore making it easier to use your phone's web browser as a... web browser. 4. 4oD
The Galaxy S3's display is ideal for enjoying media, so it makes sense to load it up with as many ways as possible to hoover telly up for free. The 4OD app, while not quite as slick as the BBC's iPlayer app, offers access to 30 days of archive material along with a broad selection of classics from the Channel 4 vaults, although it does require a Wi-Fi connection to stream programmes. You'll never be more than a few presses away from all the Father Ted episodes. 5. Kindle
Seeing as the S3's about the size of a book, you may as well use it like one. Amazon's fantastic reading app clones many of the features found in the standalone Kindle e-readers, letting you throw books into your reading pile direct from Amazon's web site, keep track of your reading progress, edit the page layout, design and font to suit your reading style and much more. Plus when you inevitably get bored, you can head back to Twitter and Facebook and games. It's loads better than using a boring old Kindle.   | | HTC One mic troubles, Apple over Google: tech fights the legal fight Apr 22nd 2013, 23:58 
Ah, legal troubles. Does any tech firm not have a few? A few tribunal tales have popped up today, but we'll start with the firm that always seems to find itself on either end of a lawsuit. Apple actually got some welcome news as the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) threw out the final "patent-in-suit" remaining from a grievance filed in 2010 by Google-owned Motorola against the Cupertino company, as reported by FOSS Patents. The patent in question dealt with a "sensor controlled user interface for portable communication devices," but the ITC ruled it invalid. Movin' onWhat it means for Apple is that it can continue to import iPhones into the U.S. that have the sensor (which causes the phone to ignore touch gestures when the user is on a phone call, for example). Google can appeal the decision to the same court currently reviewing another ITC ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Judging by its history, this is an option Google will likely take. Mic checkAcross the pond in a little town called Amsterdam, the city's District Court granted a request put in by Nokia to place a preliminary injunction on supplies of microphone parts invented by and made exclusively for the Finnish firm. This is according to a Nokia statement picked up by Engadget today. The loser on the other side is HTC, which reportedly uses the components in its flagship One phone, a device that only recently starting shipping to customers after delays. The mics are said to be found in the Lumia 720. "HTC has no license or authorization from Nokia to use these microphones or the Nokia technologies from which they have been developed," the statement read. "In its marketing materials, HTC claims that its HDR microphone is a key feature for the HTC One, but it is Nokia technology, developed exclusively for use in Nokia products," it continued. Apparently, HTC using Nokia parts without permission is an ongoing issue, and Nokia wants its competitor to "compete using its own innovations and to stop copying from Nokia." HTC said it was disappointed by the decision and is looking at what impact it will have on its business as well as alternative solutions.     | | Samsung Galaxy Note 3 flexible OLED rumours back for one more round Apr 22nd 2013, 23:29 
The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablet will arrive at IFA 2013 in September touting a first-of-its-kind flexible plastic OLED display, reports on Monday claimed once again. The Korean giant plans to ditch the glass OLED displays that have featured on all recent devices to launch its long-awaited "unbreakable" plastic solution, according to research from the OLED Association website. The site said the screen will be at least 5.9-inches in size with the flexible OLED tech "thinner and lighter than the conventional glass substrate type OLED." The change will allow the display portion of the phone to be reduced to an estimated 0.5mm and 50g, compared with the 1.5mm and 100g vital stats within the current tech. Higher mobilityThe report states: "The consumer market will be able to experience the unbreakable plastic based AMOLED display integrated into the Galaxy Note 3. Compared to glass substrate type AMOLEDs, the flexible display features a thinner and lighter form factor, resulting in smaller size and higher mobility." The report adds to recent speculation that Samsung is set to ditch its plastic frame for a premium metal casing when it launches the Galaxy Note 3 later this year. It would be somewhat ironic if Samsung ditched the material from one aspect of the handset only to add it to another element. Of course, this rumour should once again be taken with a pinch of salt, but a flexible display sure would quieten down some of the critics who've slammed Samsung's 'cheap' looking recent designs.     | | Who'd have thought? Samsung developing mind-controlled tablet tech Apr 22nd 2013, 22:01 
If touchscreens are the present, then perhaps touch-free screens are the future. Samsung revealed via the MIT Technology Review over the weekend its ambitions to bring mind-controlled tablets to market, with an eye toward disabled people who may experience difficulties using current technologies. Samsung is reportedly working with researchers at the University of Texas to develop devices that interpret users' brainwaves through EEG caps. The tech is currently in an early but functional state, with accuracy around 80 to 95 percent when selections at intervals of at least five seconds. The rise of mind controlForget invisibility cloaks - mind-controlled devices could be the next big wave of innovation. Mind control is nothing new, but so far it's been used mainly for toys and hyper-niche products like brainwave-reading wheelchairs for disabled consumers. But as TechRadar noted over one year ago, mind control is about to go to the next level - and it looks like Samsung is going to take it there. Samsung and the University's researchers have developed an interface that allows users to launch applications on a Galaxy Note 10.1 by focusing on them while wearing an admittedly clunky EEG cap. Eventually the tech will be able select contacts and songs, turn the devices on and off, and more. "Several years ago, a small keypad was the only input modality to control the phone, but nowadays the user can use voice, touch, gesture, and eye movement to control and interact with mobile devices," Samsung's lead researcher on the project, Insoo Kim, told the MIT Technology Review. "Adding more input modalities will provide us with more convenient and richer ways of interacting with mobile devices." The researchers are working on ways to make the EEG caps easier to set up, more efficient at reading brainwaves, and less conspicuous to wear.     | | Geeksphone might be first out of the foxhole with Firefox OS phones Apr 22nd 2013, 20:57 
Spanish startup Geeksphone unveiled its first Firefox OS smartphones in January, and now rumor has it those phones will be the first to hit the market. According to a report today from The Next Web, the Firefox OS devices "Keon" and "Peak" will go on sale to developers tomorrow, or Wednesday at the latest. The site was informed by unspecified sources that both the Keon and the Peak, Geeksphone's entry level and premium Firefox OS phones, respectively, will become available worldwide this week. Geeksphone can reportedly produce up to 5,000 Firefox OS devices a day, though it's yet to be seen whether there's actually any demand for a new mobile operating system. Firefox OS pricing and specsIf it weren't for this early launch, Geeksphone wouldn't really be considered a big player in the Firefox OS game, with competitors like ZTE, Alcatel, LG, Huawei, and Sony all promising to bring HTML5-powered smartphones to market at some point. But Geeksphone does have a few advantages here: in addition to its healthy lead, the price for the lower-end Keon model will reportedly hover around €91 (US$118, UK£77, AU$115), or €115 (US$150, UK£98, AU$146) with value added tax (VAT) included. The higher-end Peak, on the other hand, could come in at €149 (US$194, UK£127, AU$189) or €180 (US$234, UK£153, AU$229) with VAT. Those prices are far from set in stone, though, the site said. The Geeksphone Keon will reportedly feature a 1GHz snapdragon processor, 4GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, a 3.5-inch screen, and a 3-megapixel camera. And the Peak will trump the Keon with a 1.2GHz Snapdragon, a 4.3-inch IPS display, and 8- and 2-megapixel cameras on the back and front, respectively. Firefox OS worldwideMozilla CEO Gary Kovacs revealed last week that Firefox OS devices will start shipping en masse to Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain starting in June, with Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, and Serbia getting Firefox OS phones throughout the year. Kovacs said that Firefox OS wouldn't hit the U.S. until 2014, as Mozilla wants to focus first on emerging markets. But with Geeksphone expected to ship the Keon and Peak dev units worldwide, there might not be anything stopping early birds in the U.S. and elsewhere from getting their Firefox worm this week. For more on Firefox OS, check out TechRadar's interview with Mozilla Head of Engineering Jonathan Nightingale.     | | I'd like to return these: Apple said to dump millions of iPhones on Foxconn Apr 22nd 2013, 20:24 
Apple must have bought into Foxconn because the company has returned 5 to 8 million iPhones to the Taiwanese manufacturer, according to a report today. With labor costs estimated to be USD $200 (UK£131, AUD$195) for each smartphone, that means Foxconn is taking a loss of up to $1.6 billion, reports China Business through The Register. This is further bad news for Apple's go-to manufacturer. Foxconn recently posted its worst revenue numbers in over a decade. Its 19 percent year-over-year first quarter slump is being blamed on a slowdown of once rock solid iPhone and iPad sales. Which iPhones are to blame? While China Business quotes unnamed Foxconn insiders, it doesn't go as far as to reveal which version or versions of the iPhone are to blame for the defects. Digging through the archives, however, there is one Apple smartphone that faced more botched cases than all of the others: the iPhone 5. In fact, user complaints of scratch-prone iPhone 5 handsets reached such a high that it forced Apple to reportedly recall production of its smartphone to address the aluminum issues. Likewise, the company received complaints that the same device would leak light between the display and the antenna, just underneath of the power button. iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 speculationApple didn't comment to TechRadar about which model it returned to Foxconn or what went wrong with its production. Speculation by The Register that the unusable batch of iPhones could include the forthcoming iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 is a possibility, but an unlikely one.     | | Buying Guide: Best HTC One apps: top apps for your new HTC One Apr 22nd 2013, 16:50 
HTC's flagship Android model for 2013 has picked up heaps of praise since its April launch, with many declaring the HTC One the best ever smartphone and one of the tech highlights of the year so far. One of the key features is HTC's own "ultrapixel" camera system, which does an incredible job of capturing images at low light levels, with the phone's latest HTC Sense user interface skin making it a joy to use throughout when you're done taking photos of your dinner, children and the sunset. HTC's packed the phone with its own apps and tools, but with over 700,000 available to install yourself through Google's own Play Store app shop, there's still plenty of room to expand your horizons and extra functionality to the hot new phone. Here are five of our favourites. 1. Poweramp, £2.49
One particularly awesome thing about the HTC One is the volume kicked out from its onboard speakers. It's a very noisy phone that produces some of the best-quality sound out there in the mobile world today. So you might benefit from installing Poweramp, a custom music player that gives you a decent graphic equaliser, gapless playback of your tunes and many more nerdy audio features that'll add extra depth to your musical adventures. 2. Cinemagram, free
Cinemagram is a simple video recording app that captures four-second clips, which are then uploaded and shared via Twitter or Facebook. It has a dead simple user interface where you hold down a button to record, meaning you can stitch together scenes without having to do any actual editing. Results are then looped, plus your short films can be saved as animated GIF files for sticking up anywhere online. It's like HTC's own ZOE format, only made a little more sociable. 3. Flipboard, free
If HTC's own Buzzfeed tool has you gagging for more beautifully presented social feeds and news, give Flipboard a shot. It pulls in news stories from the web, generating your own personal little mini magazine, building stylish pages to endlessly scroll through. It's all about adding a pretty skin to news stories and your social network feeds, ensuring text is easily readable on mobiles and saving you the effort of having to zoom in on pages to read in comfort. 4. Instagram, free
The HTC One's camera is one you'll want to show off, seeing as it manages to capture bright images even on gloomy British days, so get yourself signed up to the celebrity image sharing tool of choice. It's free to use, with photos you take live (or load from your phone's memory) edited into a uniform square shape and enlivened with a selection of frames and filters, before being shared with the world. It's a social network for people who like photographing everything. 5. Photoshop Touch, £2.99
Adobe's popular image editing tool has fully mobilised, with this new phone version of its picture tool now ready for use on phones. The £2.99 asking price is modest compared with the full desktop versions of the software, plus you get access to Adobe's cloud storage servers along with 2GB of storage space -- meaning you can start editing an image on your HTC One, then continue making amendments on the desktop software.     | | Grow your own: Top 10 gardening apps on the Note II Apr 22nd 2013, 15:37 
The birds are singing. The trees have little green flappy things on them again. Children have come out of hibernation. For 'tis springtime, when any right-thinking man's mind ought to turn to one thing - gardening. It's also the time of year when the big money hits the cultivation scene, with both the Harrogate Flower Show and Chelsea Flower Show doing their bit to make having dirty fingernails and aching knees oh-so-fashionable. Obviously with this being the future, you don't want to just blunder out there with your dibber in your hand and no clue as to what should be poked in and where. You need to know the basics. And if you already know the basics thanks to having an enthusiastic dad, you need to know more advanced gardening techniques to ensure you can laugh at those struggling with the basics. You won't be able to produce apples on the sort of industrial scale that Tesco demands, but, with the help of some of the best gardening smartphone apps out there today, you should at least be able to manage to produce something a bit more impressive than cress. 
Sun SeekerFree Before you get down to the tedious act of actually digging, planting, watering and preying to the gods to let your seeds actually germinate and turn into something resembling living things, you might want to check out where to actually put your seeds first. Sun Seeker generates an augmented reality overlay of the sun's position, so you can identify sunny and shady spots of your patch - and allocate plant positions according to their lighting needs. Get this right and your chances of success are higher before the soil's even been broken. 
GardenateFree One of the prettiest apps for gardeners, Gardenate incorporates everything you need to get your carrots pointing the right way up and your beans the fashionable length. Its most critical feature is a gardening calendar, letting you know when most types of common plants like to be planted, as if you plant a summer veg in the cold British spring you're going to be left with an embarrassing withered mess. It also gives you space to record your own notes in its 'My Garden' section, so you can track the progress of your stuff and estimate the date of your bountiful harvest. 
Garden Manager: Plant AlarmFree This one's a clever little interactive calendar, which lets you automate the tiresome process of having to remember to do things. It lets you set custom alarms to remind you when to water thirsty pot plants, also providing a growth chart if you're bored enough that you want to measure your seedlings and generate a graph illustrating just how quickly they've been shooting up. There's also a bizarre photo diary feature, should you want a permanent memory of a carrot you grew particularly fond of. 
 Free
This one mirrors the sort of basic advice you get printed on seed packets, telling you when's the right time of year to literally sow your wild oats, complete with approximate harvest time and rough maintenance advice. It also comes with an editable notes field, so you can add your own little observations, tweaks and tips, gradually building up your experiences of what does and doesn't work for you. 
 Free
You know those flower things and those lettuces? They are made mostly from water, just like us humans. And, just like us, they also need watering, else they go all floppy and eventually wither away and die, giving nutrition only to worms and maggots. Which is where Remember To Water comes in. It does one thing -- bugs you endlessly with alarms and reminders about filling up the watering can and giving the gift of liquid to your suffering little plants. Guilt-free gardening awaits those who set up its daily watering schedules. 
 Free
If you're all out of inspiration, try this. The National Trust app features a searchable database of all its properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, where you'll be able to see just how neat and alive things can look when planted and maintained by professionals. It fully embraces Android's excellent Navigation GPS system, so once you've found a place you like the look of, one press instructs Google's robots to generate a route and feed it into the GALAXY Note II's satnav for instant guidance right to the hopefully free car parking facilities. 
 Free
Those of you after something a bit more advanced are best holing up in the shed with a download of Gardeners Calendar. This goes into more complex tips regarding soil PH levels, germination temperatures and what kind of sunny or shady aspect plants prefer, for those of you eager to take their DIY planting to the next level of super-size home produce. This one's a paid app costing £1 to buy, buy you could recoup that investment back from one monster, two-kilo carrot alone. 
 Free
Plants have lots of enemies. Slugs eat them. People stand on them. Dogs lie on them. And Mother Nature sometimes even turns on its own creations, with sub-zero temperatures killing delicate plants before they've had a chance to bloom. ColdSnap! helps you avoid frosty plant death by monitoring future weather conditions and letting you know if there's cold weather on the way. So you can move pot plants indoors, get some fleece on your seedlings and sit out there all night with a hot water bottle on your most precious crops. 
 Free
This app, from the University of Bristol, is there for you as a last resort. It lets users track rogue, invasive plants that are tearing their way unchecked through the countryside. If you have grown something deadly, something that cannot be killed and is in fact multiplying and spreading, use this. It lets the makers notify the authorities about dangerous plant life, so a man in a plastic suit can be sent round to spray it out of existence and burn the remnants. 
 Free
Or why not read about other people doing it properly? Google recently launched its fully featured digital magazine service in the UK, letting users of modern Android-powered phones buy stacks of magazines straight through their phones. The GALAXY Note II's large display is ideally suited for reading mags, with its high-res output making text easy to read while on the go. Ideal for when it's raining or you've give up in a sulk because the snails launched an unstoppable offensive on your cabbages. ---------- Also check out on Your Mobile Life: Working on the go made easy VIDEO: A Beginner's Guide to the Samsung GALAXY Note II Living with the Samsung Galaxy Note II Writers, designers and gamers: how the Note II brings innovation to the smartphone space Streamline your office with S Note and S Planner     | | In Depth: Designers explain the S Pen's appeal Apr 22nd 2013, 14:37 
Web designers, graphic designers, fashion designers or anyone with even an iota of creativity will fall in love with the Samsung GALAXY Note II, if they haven't already. Not only has the phone got a handsome HD Super AMOLED display measuring in at a generous 5.5-inches, it also comes loaded with Samsung's S Pen. The S Pen is anything but a stylus. It offers an incredible 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity when combined with the Note II, the same sensitivity as professional graphics tablets such as the Wacom Intuos range. Speaking of Wacom, the GALAXY Note II's S Pen tech is powered by a Wacom digitizer, so anyone used to using a graphics tablet will feel right at home sketching, snipping and ultimately, creating on their Samsung GALAXY Note II. Samsung GALAXY Note II - Native design features Inspiration Before we even start designing anything, we mood board. This is a brain dump of inspiration ranging from images, textures, colours and even typefaces that resonate with what we're trying to achieve. Of course, any Android phone has apps like Pinterest and the stunning Pic Collage, but the Samsung GALAXY Note II is packed with interactive, rich mood board functionality out of the box. 
The first and probably the ultimate mood board feature is the snipping tool. Holding down the button on your S Pen and tracing around an inspiration will cut out your trace, throwing it into your Samsung GALAXY Note II's memory for use later. This feature is incredibly quick and easy, doesn't open a new app or require you to think about opening one yourself, perfect for fleeting inspiration on the go that you'd miss if you didn't have such a great way of capturing it. Mood boarding Collating inspiration is only part of the mood boarding process, it has to end up somewhere, and that is where S Note comes in. Open up the app, tap the 'add image' icon to the top right and you'll see an option 'clipboard'. 
Simply select it and you'll have access to all the snippets you captured before. Once you find the one you want, tap it and it will be dropped onto your page. You can then throw more images on at will, take some from the camera, or get doodling, enriching your moodboard with hand-written notes and hand-drawn sketches. Incredible tools like shape match mean that even hand drawn sketches can have a refined look and feel to them. What's shape match? It's a simple feature that converts your rough shapes into perfect lines, circles, curves and squares. 
Samsung GALAXY Note II - Downloadable design features There's plenty more we could talk about pre-loaded on the Samsung GALAXY Note II, but a quick dip into the Google Play Store gets even more design value out of this creative phone, so here are our highlights: Image editing If like us you work with images on a day-to-day basis, the Samsung GALAXY Note II has a great photo editor accessible through the Samsung Apps world. Any designers out there however may want to take things to the next level though, and the best way to do that is by downloading Adobe Photoshop Touch. 
The app costs £2.99, so isn't cheap, but what you get is an image editor as fully functional as the £50 Adobe Photoshop elements. The versatility of having it with you all the time is also incredible, with the instant access to the Note II's 8-megapixel camera being priceless. 
Any existing Photoshop users who upload their files to the Creative Cloud will have access to all their uploaded files with a simple sign in. With the editing capabilities of the app being virtually limitless, supporting layers and the S Pen's pressure sensitivity, the asking price becomes easy to justify very quickly. Sketching Android's sketching app of choice is generally Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile (£1.32), regardless of what phone you've got, but no phone pulls off Autodesk's app quite like the Samsung GALAXY Note II. Why? It's all about that Wacom digitizer. 
The 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity make sketching on the Note II as lifelike as possible, and Sketchbook Mobile takes full advantage of the fact. You can import pictures to trace or start from scratch. With a range of brushes and tools, you've got a huge amount of freedom to make an illustration look exactly how you want it to look, and what's even more impressive for designers are the export options. Naturally, you can save your results as a JPG, but what you might not have expected was the option to export your Sketches as a multi-layered Photoshop file. This means that once you're done sketching on the fly, you can get right back to your workstation and pick up exactly where you left off. Working with colour Any designer knows how important colour is. More importantly, colour consistency across projects is priceless, and the Samsung GALAXY Note II's HD Super AMOLED screen can be coupled with some great tools to ensure you get just that. The first app worth a mention is incredibly simple, and it's called Magic Color Picker. The app presents you with a colour spectrum wheel, you pick a colour and it gives you the colour code in a number of standard formats such as RGB, HSL and even hexadecimal code for web safe colour work. 
The second colour app worth shouting about is all about your Note II's fantastic 8-megapixel camera and it's called SwatchMatic. 
Just open the app, point your Note II's camera at anything and SwatchMatic will make a colour swatch based on what it sees. Tap your screen to save the swatch and once again, it'll give you all the colours in standard formats. 
The app is free to try ten times, after which it'll cost you £1.93. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't particularly difficult making a case for the S Pen as a designer's best friend – Samsung clearly had creatives in mind from the get go with the Samsung GALAXY Note II. It doesn't stop at the Samsung GALAXY Note II though. The Note range is expanding. The GALAXY Note 10.1 is already available to buy, packing the same core specs and features as the Note II with a 10.1-inch display, and the Samsung GALAXY Note 8.0 is en route, expected to land in the next couple of months, complete with phone call capabilities and a stunning 8-inch HD display. ---------- Also check out on Your Mobile Life: Working on the go made easy VIDEO: A Beginner's Guide to the Samsung GALAXY Note II Living with the Samsung Galaxy Note II Writers, designers and gamers: how the Note II brings innovation to the smartphone space Streamline your office with S Note and S Planner     | |
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