Stuff UKの November 2016 の目次

The two most important thin s I’ve learned this month? One: Team Stuff’s thirst for profanity knows no bounds. Two: ‘Jack off’ is not and never will be an acceptable ma azine cover line. But hey, you’ve ot to lau h at Apple’s decision to ditch the headphone port. Dumpin a near-on 150-year-old connection with the same ruthlessness you mi ht show for a month-lon Tidal trial takes some umption. That aside, it turns out the two new iPhones aren’t too shabby. We’ve reviewed both the 7 and 7 Plus in our six-pa e Apple reviews special, and even squeezed in our verdict on the Watch Series 2 and AirPods. Read it all from p45 ­ you’ll doubtless be shocked to learn Apple is still pretty ood at this tech…

THE PRO’S LITTLE BRO What’s going on outside? It’s slimmer. Lying flat on a desk it’s just 3.9cm, down from the original’s 5.3cm, and the Pro’s 5.5cm. It’s also 1.2kg lighter, which is a big deal if you plan to cart it over to a mate’s house for shouting-distance multiplayer action. The touch-sensitive power and eject buttons of the old console are now proper buttons. Other notable physical changes are the deletion of the optical audio output ­ which might be an issue ­ and a new window on the controller’s touchpad so you can see the lightbar’s colour. What’s going on inside? Not much. If you want added graphical grunt you want the Pro. The year’s buzzy acronym HDR, for High Dynamic Range, is present on the Slim... but…

Talented trouser ti htener WELT “But isn’t that what the holes do? What they’ve always done?” You laugh inwardly at this regressive thinking and attempt to explain the marvel of a belt that measures waist size differences over the course of the day. Look, you say, the app records when you’ve eaten something by showing the extra tension on the buckle. “But I know when I’ve eaten something! It’s recorded by my eyes watching my hands put things in my mouth!" Nope, there’s no convincing this one. You march off, putting an extra wiggle into your hips to try to fool the built-in accelerometer into bumping up your steps score. from US$99 / weltcorp.com Bluetooth kin of keys SMART CUBE “The cat is both alive and dead.” You point out…

ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN... #15 APPLE HOME Tom Parsons, Deputy Editor, Stuff.tv You already know about Apple’s smarter home project, HomeKit, but it never seemed to really get off the ground. Now, with iOS 10, it’s ready to fly. Firstly there’s a proper HomeKit control app, called Home. And it’s good, even at the beta stage where I first tested it. Creating and customising scenes and rooms is super-intuitive, with devices re-organisable via the wibbly icon-drag familiar to anyone who’s ever re-ordered apps on an iPhone or iPad. Secondly, there’s stuff. For me it’s still the Philips Hue lights that lead the HomeKit line-up, but I’m pretty keen to add a set of the awesome motorised Lutron blinds to my setup. Next on my list is the Netatmo thermostat and…

METAL GEAR SURVIVE Xbox One, PS4 Despite Metal Gear’s long history of encouraging you to hide underneath cardboard boxes, Survive isn’t a game where you just have to stay concealed inside one until everyone around you dies of boredom. With the series’ eccentric creator Hideo Kojima no longer on Konami’s payroll, a change of direction is no huge surprise. So, instead of galloping around the Afghan desert coshing people on the head and releasing them into the sky attached to large balloons, Survive sees you playing as a soldier who’s been sucked through a wormhole into another dimension filled with zombie-type baddies. Sounds pretty Call of Duty, right? Well, Konami insists it hasn’t abandoned stealth completely and you’ll still have to use those sneaky techniques to fend off your enemies.…

DAREDEVIL BLU RAY Oh, you might think, not another bouncing boy in leggings with an irrational desire to right wrongs at the expense of his own freedoms? But! Daredevil is smarter than it sounds, and finally off Netflix and onto physical media. LO AND BEHOLD, REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD Don’t be put off by the highfalutin’ title ­ Werner Herzog’s new doc about how the internet has changed the world is both hilarious and horrifying. When the apocalypse comes, will you be one of the people printing out pages of Wikipedia? GEARS OF WAR 4 PS4, XBOX ONE Do: stomp down to your local gameporium to get the latest version of this duck-and-cover smasher with new weapons and groovy weather effects. Don’t: ask for “Gears of Four". Those game…

from £369 / stuff.tv/Watch2 Looks just like the last one, doesn’t it? But the new Apple Watch has had some pretty significant upgrades, the most striking of which is waterproofing. Good news for swimmers, yes, but also for surfers, sauna fans and forgetful showerers. A combo of GPS, heart-rate monitoring, accelerometers and huge amounts of research is claimed to make the Watch 2 the most accurate sports tracker out there. For our money the heart monitoring seems less consistent than one of those horrible chest straps, but the rest is hard to fault. The addition of GPS is a big boon if you like to train unencumbered by a phone. The Series 2 locks onto a GPS signal almost instantly and the screen is twice as bright as before, while…

RODEO STAMPEDE We at Stuff HQ aren’t privy to how zoos are run, but we’re pretty sure Rodeo Stampede plays fast and loose with reality. Here, you saddle up, leap into the air and lasso a rampaging beast. Ride said critter for long enough and it’ll decide it loves you and wants to be a part of your zoo. Did we mention your zoo is floating in the sky? Rodeo Stampede then finds you switching back and forth between catching new animals (super-fast twitchy ostriches, bulldozer-like elephants...) and micro-managing your menagerie. IAPs / iOS, Android CALLY’S CAVES 3 You’ll probably be a few levels into Cally’s quest to rescue her parents before you wonder what the catch is. But there isn’t one. This really is a charming old-school platformer with smart…

PHOTOSHOP FIX Not many people wake up and face the world completely #nofilter. Yep, even that 8 seconds you spend in front of the mirror sorting your hair out counts. So nobody will judge you if you run your selfies through Photoshop Fix before posting them, using its simple tools to give yourself a little boost. £free / iOS   PIXLR Pixlr puts itself ahead of Android’s myriad other free photo editors simply by being ad-free; but its huge range of tools enables you to do anything from simple cropping, rotating and collaging to subtly adding radial focal blurs or going all out with all kinds of grunge and crazy effects. £free / iOS, Android   GIPHY CAM The gif has become valuable currency on the stock market of social…

ROME2RIO You’re in Rome. You want to get to Rio. This app will tell you all the possible permutations for that trip, from car to train to plane. It’ll do it for other starting points and locations too, with prices, booking links and suggestions for accommodation thrown in for good measure. Spoiler alert: it’s best to fly to Rio. £free / iOS, Android MAPS.ME Google Maps now lets you save areas offline, but it makes you redownload them every 30 days. Store the areas you need and Maps.me works without a web connection, complete with directions and places of interest. It’ll even help you hunt out Wi-Fi if you have snaps you want to upload to Instagram. £free / iOS, Android AIRHELP Mugged off by the pirates of the sky?…

RUNKEEPER For £7.99 a month you can turn Runkeeper into a ‘personal trainer in your pocket’ with personalised workouts, but for £0.00 a month you can log your routes, store your stats and compare your performances with friends. We just hope for your sake you’re not buddies with Mo Farah. IAPs / iOS, Android  STRAVA If you prefer to burn your calories on a bike, opt for Strava over Runkeeper. A superior cycling community means its maps have loads of real-world time trial routes that you can try to beat on your commute. Just try not to get to work too early. Nobody likes a teacher’s pet. IAPs / iOS, Android SAMSUNG GEAR ICONX £169 / samsung.com Exercise is boring without music but the wires can get in the way. Samsung’s…

GLP ­ GREAT LITTLE PLACE Second only to kidnapping a local, Great Little Place helps you to find the bars and restaurants that others don’t know about (well, unless they’ve also got this app). It’s a bit like a dating app for food and drink, although you don’t have to worry whether a restaurant or pub fancies you back. Find something you like the look of and you can add it to your shortlist. Find somewhere you like that’s not on the app and you can add it yourself. Just don’t get annoyed if it suddenly gets harder to find a table. £free / iOS CAMONROAD Going on a road trip? After a decent playlist and plenty of sweets, a satnav should be top of your kit list ­ and…

PHOTOMATH Thought you’d left maths lessons at school? Well, you were rubbish at it then and you’re still rubbish at it now. Write down the sum you need to solve, point your camera at it and Photomath will show you step-by-step instructions on how to solve it. If only you’d had a smartphone back in the day, right? IAPs / iOS, Android XIAOMI YEELIGHT £47 / xiaomi-mi.com This bedside smartlight has modes for any mood, with a free app to change the colour Hue-style. It’ll also help you read before bed without straining your eyes, plus its wake-up function will gently ease you out of your slumber each morning. REACHOUT BREATHE STRESS! ANXIETY! MORE STRESS! If your heart’s thumping now, you could probably use ReachOut Breathe, an app designed to…

STUFF PICKS The bikes Coboc ONE Rome New to biking? This light and easy-to-use electric bike will get you up and riding in double time. Canyon Urban 7.0 Ready to upgrade? The Urban proves city bikes can be sexy... and low-maintenance. Kona Honzo CR Trail Want something different? A hooligan hardtail mountain bike is perfect for urban shortcuts. Tern Verge X20 Need to use the train? Folding bikes are allowed on most trains ­ and this one’s a rocket off it.…

£3499 / konaworld.com Fraser Macdonald Consulting Editor Sod Google Maps ­ I’ve managed to plot a route to work that’s only 30% road, the rest being shared between cycle paths, gravel, off-road, a few sets of steps and what may actually be someone’s garden. Very little of it is boring. So I need a bike that can take a bit of rough. This Kona may technically be a mountain bike, but it uses the large 29in wheel diameter normally reserved for fast race bikes. Still, the new-school geometry, the wide handlebars, the toughty Fox 34 suspension fork... they all hark towards something more attuned to rock-drop hooliganism than Lycra-clad pace-chasing. And to confuse bike spotters even further, this is one of the new-for-2017 carbon fibre Honzos, making it not just…

Whole latte love A hardcore machine for hardcore coffee lovers... made even better by optional Bluetooth cleverness £1100 / stuff.tv/JuraE8 Serious about coffee? The Jura E8 is fair old investment but it’ll pay itself back through use after about two years, assuming you’re mainlining at least one filter coffee every day. And if you go for the optional Smart Connect Bluetooth dongle ­ see below right ­ it’ll open up a whole new world of coffee. The styling falls somewhere between Apple-esque ­ all polished metal and friendly screen ­ and steampunk. This thing is packing some hefty double pump action at the front, which makes it perfect for dual-wielding the morning espresso cups. Setup is way easier than the manual would have you believe ­ the pathetic printed booklet…

HOW TO DECIDE QUARTZ VS AUTOMATIC The most accurate watches are the more affordable, battery-driven ‘quartz’ pieces. But accuracy isn’t everything ­ if it’s craft and heritage you want, then go for an automatic calibre. To tell the difference, look at the second hand ­ on a quartz watch, it’ll have a tick-tock motion; the action on a mechanical watch is smooth. CHOOSE THE OCCASION You wouldn’t wear a tux to a house party, and it’s the same when choosing your timepiece. Chronographs and other complications add a bold masculinity to a dial’s design, which makes them good for informal, active environments. For the daily grind, you want a watch that just tells the time and looks sleek. WHAT’S THE STORY? Every good watchmaker has a back story ­ anything…

NEVER BE BORED AGAIN PS4 REMOTE PLAY £free / forum.xda-developers.com If you’re a PS4 owner, then you might already be familiar with Sony’s Remote Play app, which lets you stream and play PS4 games directly to your phone like magic. It even lets you connect the PS4 controller to your phone, for proper on-the-go console gaming. Trouble is, it’s not supported on non-Xperia handsets. Thankfully, though, there’s an easy workaround. There’s a version of the Remote Play app available on the XDA Developer forums which lets you load a version of the Remote Play app on almost any Android phone. Installation is a doddle, and you can even get the PS4 controller working too, with a little bit of tweaking. Once you’re set up, you’ll be able to remotely access…

C 368 £799 This advanced amplifier includes many cutting-edge technological breakthroughs developed by NAD over decades of creating affordable ultra-high performance audio components. FUTURE PROOF MODULAR DESIGN. This NAD exclusive feature allows you to customise your C 368 amplifier with additional capabilities and features, now or in the future. The two available MDC slots can accommodate a variety of upgrade modules including 4K video capable HDMI switching, additional Digital Inputs, additional Analogue and Phono Inputs, and one of the most advanced Hi-Res Audio multi-room wireless systems available, the BluOS music management system developed by Bluesound. BluOS connects to your network and is controlled via smartphone, tablet or desktop to manage your music collection and connect to a growing list of high-quality streaming music services. C 338 £599 The C 338…

T hose appear to be Polaroids. Not quite Harry Potter snaps, are they? Not exactly, though they’re not that far off. These 3D prints don’t quite move around with their own intelligence and sentient will, but they are full colour holograms that have been printed using standard inkjet printers. Which is, you know, a sort of magic in itself. It all works thanks to some clever folks from MIT, who have developed a realistic, glasses-free 3D experience using a combination of algorithms and light-field technology. They’re calling it Lumii. What did the cheese say to it’s reflection? Hey Lumii! Very good. It’s going to take us a while to recover from that. But back to these magical photos, because the way they work is rather clever. Subjects are scanned and…

I PHOTOGRAPHED THE MOON WITH MY SMARTPHONE Alright, so I had a bit of help from a telescope as well ­ specifically the Celestron Inspire 70AZ (US$170), which comes with a nifty smartphone adaptor. It’s ridiculously easy to set up and use, and the phone kit, though low-tech, works surprisingly well. It’s not high-powered enough for galaxies and the like, but for shots of the moon and planets it’ll do a fine job. So tonight I’m going to see if David Bowie was right about Mars. Marc McLaren, Editor, Stuff.tv I SAW A TUBBY PLUMBER LEAP ONTO iPHONE I got tired of Nintendo’s first app, Miitomo, in about the amount of time it takes to complete Mario Kart 8’s Rainbow Road circuit. Having launched at Apple’s iPhone 7 event, Super…

NOT JUST FOR THE PLAYAZ Canon EOS 5D Mark IV £3629 / canon.co.uk You don’t have to be a pro to get the most from this big Canon’s new features Get a grip The 5D sits in a sweet spot where full-frame performance meets reasonable price, making it tasty for ambitious enthusiasts as well as serious snappers. But for the Mark IV, the main new ingredients will be of more benefit to the former. For example, the screen is now touch-enabled, making the 5D’s huge capabilites easier to corral. The grips are grippier, there’s a new configurable shortcut button under your thumb and it now has GPS, Wi-Fi and NFC built in ­ which will at least help to keep your costs down. (A bit.) Free go-arounds The usual specs…

THIS WINDOWS 10 PC LOOKS LIKE A SPEAKER BUT CAN STREAM TO YOUR TV IN 4K Why, it’s surely a B&O speaker. A fair assumption, given the available visual information, but wrong. It’s something far better, with many more talents than a mere speaker. Hold on to your beret... it’s a new Windows 10 PC. But... the size, the shape, the freakin’ B&O logo! What gives? Bang & Olufsen were involved in the design. And so, though it isn’t primarily a speaker, it will speak ­ thanks to an upwards-firing driver that will bounce noise off the underside of the top bit to give you 360° sound. How will you verify the truth of this? By running circles around it like a dog on a string, that’s how. And there’s…

HOT LAVA PC Remember that game you used to play as a kid where you couldn’t touch the floor because it was made of lava? Now you can play it on your PC. And it’s not just beds, sofas and upturned washing baskets you’ll be hopping between; there are schools, offices and underground caverns as well. 100FT ROBOT GOLF PS4 A group of Transformer-style robots pull on their plus-fours and try to sink putts on a course built between skyscrapers. Get stuck behind one? Just smash it to bits with your gigantic nine-iron. It even supports PlayStation VR, which launches on 13 October. TOKYO 42 PS4, Xbox One, PC Like a cross between Fez and Syndicate, Tokyo 42 puts you in the shoes of an assassin, in an isometric open…

£159 / apple.com Rip the wires out of a pair of EarPods, give ’em longer tails, cap the ends with a glint of silver and you’ve got AirPods. It’s not that simple, obviously. They’re packing batteries good for five hours of tunes between charges, live in a teeny charging case that’ll top you up with 24 hours of extra listening time, and pair to your iPhone with a tap. In your ears they look like the kind of early-’00s Bluetooth headsets that were all the rage with Goldman Sachs bankers, but some will love how instantly recognisable they are. Put them in and your music starts playing; pull them out and the track will automatically pause. Handy. Double-tapping a bud will wake up Siri, and you can answer calls with…

£60 / amazon.co.uk If you want to be top dog on the 8:21 to Wage Slave Parkway, the luxuriously expensive Kindle Oasis is the only choice for you; but if you can afford one of those you probably don’t need to put yourself through the misery of commuting by train. Join the rest of the worker drones with a 6in basic Kindle, which has recently had a few millimetres shaved off the edges (it’s 11% thinner) and been spruced up with a nicer chassis (it’s 16% lighter). Unfortunately there’s no built-in light, so you might have trouble reading it when the darkness of another impending Monday morning envelops your soul. REDDIT Getting to work to find out you’ve missed out on a new meme can see you becoming a social…

£39 / uk.cygnett.com No matter how many charges it gives you, there’s not much point lugging around a ‘portable’ charger if it weighs the same as a petrol-driven electricity generator. Cygnett’s Chargeup Digital 10,000 uses polymer rather than lithium-ion battery tech, which keeps the weight down despite it holding enough juice to charge your phone around five times before needing a re-up. And with a pair of USB ports you can charge two phones simultaneously. You know, for when you’re so deep in a Clash Royale hole you have to play it on two phones at once. LEAP DAY A new challenge beckons daily in this one-thumb platformer. Your little blob pootles about, and you tap to make it jump, threading your way through nasties to reach the top of…

LIVE FOOTBALL ON TV With Sky and BT Sport moving the fixtures around willy nilly to satisfy the astronomical fees they’ve spent on broadcasting rights this season, it can be difficult to keep up with who’s on TV and when. The free version of this app will let you track one team at a time; it’ll tell you when they’re going to grace your TV screen and what channel it’ll be on. IAPs / iOS, Android PREMIER LEAGUE The Premier League used to charge for its fantasy football app, but now it’s put everything in one handy package. That means when you’re in the supermarket on Saturday morning and you suddenly remember you’ve left Sergio Aguero on your bench, you can quickly amend your starting line-up before the deadline. Phew.…

£79 / ultimateears.com A decent Bluetooth speaker should be behind only your passport and clean pants on the essentials list when you’re packing to go away ­ and there aren’t many as travel-friendly as the UE Roll 2. It takes up as much space as a pair of socks, and with similar audio smarts to the much bigger Boom 2 it’s capable of filling anything from a cosy Airbnb lounge to a fancy boutique hotel room. It’s waterproof too, so you can take it to the beach and bolster that ‘Brits abroad’ stereotype by annoying all the locals with your choice of tunes. TRAFI There are places in the world that Citymapper is yet to reach. Far-flung towns such as Kayseri, Kaohsiung and Kettering. OK, Trafi might be no use in…

from £599 / samsung.com Games eat your battery like grime MCs consume Nando’s, but the Edge’s 3600mAh cell will last over a day with normal usage. Some intense sessions on Rodeo Stampede will bring that down, but with a 5.5in Quad HD screen you’ll be too pixel-dazzled to notice. It’s also waterproof to 1.5m, so you don’t even have to stop playing when you get in the bath. SHOOTY SKIES Its roots are in the scrolling shooters of the 1980s, but rather than downing an endless stream of boring jets, Shooty Skies has you attacking joystick-spewing arcade cabinets and laptops running LOLcat loops. Daft, but getting past the colossal bosses requires some seriously deft finger-work. IAPs / iOS, Android PAC-MAN 256 This re-imagining of the iconic dot-muncher’s maze-based adventures dumps…

THE TECH US$30 / thetileapp.com When you’re gallivanting about the place downing Bloody Marys and sampling craft beer, it can be easy to lose track of time/your belongings/your mind. You can’t attach a Bluetooth tracker to two of those things but you definitely can to the other. Tile’s new Slim is bigger than its original tracker but much slimmer, so it’ll slip easily into your wallet, camera bag or Panama hat band and you can use the app to track it down if it goes missing. Get close but can’t quite lay your hands on it? You can trigger an alert noise to sound from the accompanying app. Just try not to swallow it by mistake. FOURSQUARE FourSquare is no longer about checking in to your local chippy in the…

CTRL-F Not an app you’ll use every day, but Ctrl-F can certainly come in handy. The name is the keyboard shortcut to search for something on a document, and that should give you a clue as to what it does. Take a picture of a page of text and the app will digitise it, giving you a fully searchable version that can help you find the bit you’re looking for, plus you can export the doc as a printable PDF. If only you could hold it up to your house and get it to scan for your car keys. £free / Android WUNDERLIST If ‘find a new to-do list app’ is somewhere on your to-do list, Wunderlist deserves an audition. It works on everything from your Apple Watch to your…

£2999 / coboc.co.uk Tom Morgan Reviews Editor A daily commute through central London is probably the 10th level of cycling hell, but even with the ever-present threat of militant cabbies, Coboc’s electrically assisted One Rome should make sure I won’t melt into a puddle of sweat by the time I reach the office. Not that you’d know it was an electric bike; Coboc stealthily stuffs the frame full of batteries, and the motor is built into the rear wheel. The power button and charging port are hidden under the top tube; the blue battery LEDs are the only visible giveaway that you’re not purely running on pedal power. Its assistance is most noticeable on hills, although the minimalist motor only makes 40nM of torque so I have to put some…

£2299 / ternbicycles.com Chee-Chiu Lee Brand Art Editor Given that you’re only paid for being at work, not getting there, it makes sense to shorten your commute as much as possible. In the city, that often means a combination of train and bike... and with rush-hour restrictions, that means a folding bike. The Tern Verge X20 is the Ferrari of folders. The aero 20in wheels, FSA carbon cranks and hydroformed aluminium frame add up to a weight of just 9.9kg. That’s great for when you’re carrying it about, but it gives it a swift ride quality too. It’s surprisingly stiff and quick off the mark, with no movement or creaking from the folding bits. There’s a bit of flex in the tall handlebar stem if you’re sprinting, but you get…

1 / Have to dash... AutoBoy Dash Cam Converting your old smartphone into a dashcam is as simple as downloading an app such as AutoBoy Dash Cam, which lets you record all of your automobile outings ­ useful in case of an accident. £free / Android 2 / Eyes on the road! Car Dashdroid Motor not Android Auto-compatible? Give your old phone a new home in the glovebox. This free app provides fingerfriendly navigation for music, maps and contacts, making for safer use in the car. £free / Android 3 / Phone home Boinc Fire up this app when your unused phone is charging and connected to Wi-Fi, and the Boinc project will put its number-crunching processor to good use ­ like searching for…

IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE? AMAZON ECHO & ECHO DOT Therapists are expensive. But if you ever feel that nobody listens to you, Amazon might have a cheaper alternative. The newly UK-bound Echo may not be able to help with your emotional issues (unless you’re emotionally lacking in pizza) but there’s not a lot else that Alexa, the cylindrical speaker’s onboard helper, can’t do. A new Just Eat takeaway app allows you to order that aforementioned deep-pan pepperoni with your voice, while link-ups with Nest, Hue, Hive and WeMo mean it can make your existing tech smarter too. Want to add Alexa’s talents to a speaker you already own? There’s a dinky Echo Dot for that. As hot as... an XL napalm stuffed crust £149 (Echo), £49 (Echo Dot)…

1 Magic Mansion £free / iOS, Android Charming monochromatic retro gameplay ­ time your taps to jump enemies and collect coins ­ offset by the intrusion of all-too-modern ads. Still, that’s the (lack of) price you pay... 2 Minecraft £4.99 / iOS, Android, Windows Lost your Minecraft mojo? Perhaps it’ll be renewed by knowing you can now point one of the world’s most advanced gaming platforms at its blocky graphics. Oculus Rift joins the Gear VR, mobile and PC versions. 3 Action Launcher £free / Android Still waiting for your network to serve up the Nougat OS update? Get the look with Action Launcher, which has swiftly copied some of the menus and folder actions of leaked Nougat shots. 4 Nightgate £2.99 / iOS An accomplished, pitch-perfect puzzler, a neon-soaked…

PENS You otta fi ht, for your write, to party 1 Parafernalia Revolution Ballpoint Triangles have delivered such joy as Dairylea and Zelda’s Triforce. This Italian pen is tri-mendous enough to join that crew. £37 / heinnie.com 2 Retro 51 Dr Gray If your actual doctor is using this, it means someone in their social group thinks they need an aide-memoire. #justsayin £35 / welovepens.co.uk 3 MecArmy TPX33 Good writing can open a window on the world. This pen can also open a window with its smashing spike end. Win-win. £81 / heinnie.com 4 Power Pen It wasn’t so very long ago that 700mAh could power the world. And now you have that in your pen? Revel in your time! £24 / firebox.com 5 Cleo Messograf And from that day…

PRICED UP oBravo EAMT-1 Here’s a joy that iPhone 7 owners will never get: spending over three grand on an extremely niche set of hi-fi in-ears. The ceramic/wood-bodied EAMTs come with either a 3.5mm jack or, if you have a suitably equipped headphone DAC, two balanced 2.5mm jacks. Sound comes via a 13mm neodymium driver and an 8mm Air Motion Transformer Tweeter ­ our ears are not worthy. £3699 / audiosanctuary.co.uk BUTTONED UP Libratone Q Adapt Not long ago, three-button remotes for headphones were considered mindblowingly complex. “Three buttons?” we wrote in 2009. “What, are we fighter pilots now!?” But what’s this? Libratone’s Lightning-cabled Q Adapt has four. The extra one is CityMix, which controls the amount of noise cancellation. Sounds cool; we’re never going to use it. Four buttons!…

£2.99 / iOS Along with emitting distinct whiffs of Zelda, what with its top-down viewpoint and wandering protagonist who has a tendency to get a bit stabby, Legend of the Skyfish is a handy warning about the dangers of overfishing. Namely, in this world, the fish got sick of it and fought back, turning the humans into mutant slaves. All except Little Red Hook, the character you guide through this simpler-thanZelda adventure, hooking and thwacking things with your fishing rod. It looks and sounds great, and is easy to get firmly hooked on (hooked, yes? Yes?) for as long as it lasts. An Android version is due this winter.…

from £599 / stuff.tv/iPhone7 So let’s talk about that missing headphone jack for a sec. If you don’t already own a pair of wireless or Lightning buds then it’s going to sting a bit ­ especially when you have to reach for that pug-ugly adaptor. That said, switching to Lightning isn’t all bad. It’s freed up space inside the iPhone 7 for the same taptic engine you get in the Apple Watch, adding force feedback to the new all-digital home button. Games get in on the fun too ­ it’s like slapping a Rumble Pak into an N64 controller all over again. And you might not even need to reach for your headphones, thanks to the new stereo speakers. They can really pump out sound when you crank up the…

MAPMYWALK Want to get fitter but just can’t find the time? Tracking your normal pavement-pounding with MapMyWalk will give you an idea of how much more walking you should be doing, so you can hop off the bus a couple of stops early, or scoot up and down the stairs a few times at lunchtime. IAPs / iOS, Android MICROSOFT OUTLOOK Microsoft killed our favourite calendar app, Sunrise ­ but thankfully it’s been swallowed up by the latest Outlook app. It plugs into your email accounts, Facebook events and Songkick plans, plus there’s OneDrive online storage included too. £free / iOS, Android OVERCAST Podcasts are a commuter’s best friend: funny, educational, time-killing and most of all completely free. So even if you have to spend 40 minutes pressed against a…

from US$19 / pocket-tripod.com Wielding a selfie stick not only marks you out as a narcissistic cretin; it’s also one extra thing to carry around with you. You could shove it where the sun is too embarrassed to shine, or you could use a Pocket Tripod instead. When not on duty it patiently waits in your wallet disguised as a credit card ­ but the second you need to hold your phone steady for a selfie, a long-exposure shot or a timelapse video, it twists and twizzles into a sturdy little tripod. The angle of your phone is even adjustable. Handy if you ever run into Peter Crouch. SNAPSEED This photo editor excels when you’ve got a lot of screen space to play with. Choose an adjustment type (such as…

STATUS BOARD Chances are that your iPad sits around doing nothing much of the time. Status Board gives your tablet purpose during this downtime, displaying all kinds of info. Precisely what info is down to you: the app gives you widgets for a clock, weather, calendar, email subjects/counts, Twitter and RSS. Splurge on the £7.99 IAP and you can add graphs, tables, DIY HTML, countdowns, text and photo albums. HDTV support also makes Status Board a superb means of creating a live status display for an office. IAPs / iPad CAR DASHDROID Got a fancy new phone but drive the automotive equivalent of a Nokia 3310? Use this app to turn your phone into a pseudo Android Auto dashboard. It makes the icons more proddable, plus it’ll read out your…

ASSEMBLY Assembly claims to be ‘graphic design for everyone’. In reality, it’s more like a modern take on playing with felt shapes. At the foot of the screen there’s a shapes drawer, and you drag elements to the artboard, which can then be moved and resized. Get a little more advanced and they can be grouped for mass manipulation, recoloured, and have effects such as drop-shadows applied. You can even import an image as a backdrop. You know, if you fancy having a bash at designing next month’s Stuff cover. IAPs / iOS PAPER Originally an elegant drawing app for iPad, Paper got a radical overhaul with version 3. The sketching stuff remained but was joined by superb tools for quickly creating diagrams, taking notes and making lists. Hip beardists…

CLASH ROYALE Clash Royale might look like one of those horrible freemium games you see advertised on TV (and it sort of is), but this mashup of real-time strategy and card-collecting is so compelling that it’s worth dodging its attempts to mug your wallet. Your bank balance might be safe, but your free time won’t be. IAPs / iOS, Android SUPER DANGEROUS DUNGEONS The name makes it sound like child’s play, but each of these dungeons is peppered with traps intent on impaling or drowning the intrepid Timmy as he aims to grab the keys and reach the exit. Which sounds simple until you’ve died 27 times. IAPs / iOS, Android SUPER STICKMAN GOLF 3 Super Stickman Golf’s catapulting ancestor is the same Apple II artillery game that Angry Birds has at…

FLICKR If nothing else, Flickr is worth signing up for just to get the 1TB of storage and automatic photo backup to the cloud that it offers for free. But if you also happen to own an Apple TV and have access to some poor unsuspecting victims, it’s also a neat way to subject the family to a slideshow of your snaps from your summer holiday in Alicante (or those from holidays uploaded by people you don’t even know). £free ADOBE LIGHTROOM We’re bending the rules a little with this one because you need a Creative Cloud subscription to use it, but if you’re serious enough to subscribe for Photoshop you should be just as serious about showing off the results ­ and where better than on the biggest screen…

THE TECH £149 / amazon.co.uk Having spent the last couple of years helping out our friends across the pond, Amazon’s Echo is finally making the trip to the UK. This hi-tech tennis ball tube is home to Alexa ­ a Siri-style helper that you can instruct to set timers, make lists and read out your schedule for the day, among a stack other things that Siri can only dream of. Use it as a brainy speaker or internet radio using voice commands to get it to play what you want from Spotify, Audible or TuneIn Radio. Don’t fancy cooking? Get Alexa to look up nearby restaurants for you. It’s just a shame she can’t call them and make you a booking. SUBSCRIPTME That free trial with the mail-order sausage firm…

£1139 / canyon.com Ross Presly Deputy Art Editor Having ridden all of these bikes extensively on rollers (that’s me blue-steelin’ all over the pictures up there), mine is the only opinion you should trust. Electric? Too slow once the motor cuts out. MTB? Good luck nipping through a gap with those wide bars. Folder? Everybody knows you should go Brompton. But the Canyon is a truly versatile urban cycling champ. Equipped with a belt drive and eight-speed hub gear, it’s easy to ride up hills, doesn’t leave your legs spinning on the descents, cruises along the flats comfortably, then as a trouser-flapping bonus the carbon fibre belt drive is super-quiet and filth-free. You’ll probably notice a lot of people trying to get a good look at your “interesting" frame and…

CUSTOM HOMESCREEN Do you have trouble sleeping because your PS4’s default homescreen is so boring? Head to Settings >Themes and choose a brand new look. If you haven’t got any themes loaded, go to ‘Find in PlayStation Store’ and find a design that speaks to you. Boom: a perfect night’s sleep is (gaming marathon aside) yours. PERSONALISED SOUNDTRACK If you’re a Spotify subscriber you can stream music straight to your PS4 ­ a bit of Bacharach’s ideal for making scary games less terrifying. Simply make sure both your phone and console are on the same network, select the PS4 from the devices tab in your Spotify app, and say hello to your personal gaming mixtape. APPY BANTER Sony has a separate PlayStation Messages app, which is a handy tool you…

1 ...MOD YOUR TECH Gadgets have a habit of either breaking or not being perfectly tailor-made for your needs. Sugru and Formcard have some ideas on how to fix that... Boost your storage. Sugru’s mouldable silicone is available in a new Rebel Tech Pack (£10, sugru.com), which is most keen on customising your tech. We like its hook-based ideas for tidying away Apple TVs and hard drives. Tweak your controller. If your PS4 pad’s analogue sticks or shoulder buttons are too stubby for your liking, a couple of moulded balls of Sugru could lift you top of your FIFA league. Get a quick fix. Formcard’s mouldable bio-plastic (from £5, formcard.com) is handily shaped to slip into wallets, but a cup of hot water later it’s ready for all sorts of…

DU MAURIER COMMODORE LIMITED EDITION, £465 This Swiss-made diving watch is limited to just 125 pieces. It’s a classic combination of style and performance: the Commodore is a true dress-diver that looks as good with a suit as it does in the water. www.dumaurierwatches.com SUUNTO SPARTAN SPORT, FROM £399 Suunto Spartan Sport is an advanced multisport GPS watch with trim fit, a color touchscreen, 100m water resistance, a compass and up to 16 hours of battery life in training mode. With 80 preset sport modes and rich sport-specific metrics, Spartan Sport could be your ideal training partner. www.suunto.com CHEAPO BRAND NANDO METAL, £55 Born in Sweden and inspired by skateboarding, music and art, Cheapo Brand believes that good-looking watches and sunglasses shouldn’t cost you a fortune. That’s why they offer…