Moss Eisley.
The annual Push Square Towers tradition is back, as we sit down our scribes and pester them once more for their five favourite PlayStation games of the year. With such a strong assortment of software in 2018, it’s always tough deciding upon the cream of the crop. We told Graham we’d burn his cassette collection if he didn’t send us his list.
Read the full article on pushsquare.com
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We all have busy lives, it comes with the times we live in, and while this does wonders for productivity, it can mean that it is increasingly difficult to find the time or energy to stay in shape. Either we’re neck deep in social obligations or we’re constantly grinding for a paycheck – either way we’re not exactly eager to set aside huge amounts of time to work out every week. However, the best fitness apps will help you stay fit, and they’ll do it without requiring a huge time commitment.
Winter is coming, and the warm summer weather is a distant memory, so everyone is going to want to spend their time indoors. While this is great for your video game backlog or Netflix queue, it’s more important than ever to stay active, especially with all of those delicious – albeit high-calorie, holiday meals. The best fitness apps are ready for this cold weather snap, and will supply you with quick High-Intensity-Interval-Training (HIIT) routines that will fill your exercise quota in no time flat.
There are three golden ideals that all of the best fitness apps will strive to reach: convenience, affordability and sports science. These features combine to make fitness apps that can revolutionize the way you look at fitness and exercise. Plus, with the best running gadgets, you can finally say goodbye to those pricey gym memberships and personal trainers.
There is a catch, though. There are hundreds of fitness apps on iOS and Android – as with any other kind of app – which makes finding the best fitness app for your personal needs and goals a hassle. Don’t worry though, you can save your energy for those intense workouts you’re already planning, because we’ve gone ahead and created a list of the best fitness apps you can install right now.
With this very comprehensive and extremely stylish app, Nike offers 100+ workouts varying from endurance, mobility and strength with a host of both swift, 15-minute workouts and longer endurance sessions, so you can constantly change up your workout.
AirPlay and AppleTV support (along with Chromecast mirroring) will display the instructions on a larger screen or speaker system, and it even features a lot of famous athletes (including Rory McIlroy, Ellie Goulding and Serena Williams) busting a sweat with you as ‘motivation’.
An added bonus exists if you use the Nike+ Run Club app, as all your jogging efforts will be automatically synchronised to your Nike profile too, giving a complete picture of your fitness.
Free (Coaching from £2.28 ($2.69 / around AU$4) per week): iOS, Android
Freeletics offers a host of workouts that are all centered around high intensity interval training, or HIIT. This platform revolves around four free platforms – Gym, Bodyweight Workouts and Training, Nutrition and Running.
Bodyweight was the app that started it all, and really pushes you to your limit through moves (that unsurprisingly use the weight of your body) such as sprawls, jump squats, pull-ups, burpees and sprints that you must finish as quickly as possible.
There are videos for each exercise demonstrating proper form, and there is a great social aspect to the app which motivates you to stick to your plan, and push yourself to beat your personal bests.
If you opt to pay the subscription to access ‘Coach’, you get all the different workouts (satisfyingly named after characters from Greek mythology) and a workout plan tailored to your goals and current fitness levels.
There is a further subscription that you can pay to access Nutrition, which gives you weekly nutrition plans to complement the intense workouts.
Free (£3.98, ($4.99 / around AU$7) per month): iOS, Android
Tell Sworkit the type of workout you’re looking for (strength, cardio, yoga, or stretching) and the amount of time you’ve got to do it (anywhere from five minutes to an hour), and the app delivers moves to follow during your sweat session.
Choose to upgrade and the app will enable you to customise your workouts by setting the number of reps and the areas of the body you want to focus on.
It’s a simple system that offers great workouts for those already armed with knowledge of the areas they want to target.
Free (Premium service is £120 a year (around $150, AU$215): iOS
There are lots of workout apps that you can cast up to your TV, but not many are like Fiit. This fitness app allows you to participate in boutique fitness classes from wherever you are using your phone, or you can connect it up to your TV for a full and far more extensive experience.
Fiit is presented by a series of personal trainers from all over the globe, and the aim is to give you a high-end studio fitness routine whenever you want without having to travel miles to your local gym to do it.
There’s a plethora of classes with all expertise levels covered and a variety of activities from yoga to HIIT workouts all covered. At the moment the app is only available on iOS, but Fiit plans to launch on Android in the future.
Something to note is the free app isn’t the most extensive experience. If you like the idea of Fiit, you can subscribe either monthly, quarterly or yearly to get the full experience. That comes with a heart rate tracker to help you improve your performance, and that’s when the Fiit experience comes together and makes the most sense.
It isn’t cheap, but it’s far more affordable when you compare it with what it’d cost you to attend boutique classes like these in real life.
Free (with in app purchases): iOS, Android
Fitness isn’t just about squat-thrusts and burpees, and this app explores alternative ways to stay fit by packing in high definition video as an ideal introduction to the ways of the Yogis.
All the routines are under 30 minutes and there are 50 classes available – the Yoga for Runners is particularly recommended if you’re a jogger and getting worryingly stiff – and each session is categorised according to the body part you want to focus on.
Free (£3.99 ($3.53 / around AU$7) per month for premium): iOS, Android
Treating fitness like a classic (but basic) video game, Seven sets you the challenge of working out for seven minutes a day for seven months using no more than a chair, wall and your own body weight.
You start with three lives but missing one day will lose one of them (shown as a heart, rather menacingly) and missing three in a month will reset your progress to zero.
If you stick to it you’ll see results, but it’s worth paying the extra per month for the premium workouts to avoid the monotony of the free routines.
Free (pro version £5.58, $6.99 (around AU$10)/month): Android, iOS (Apple Watch and Android Wear compatible)
With a dizzying selection of over 1000 intense workouts ranging in length from five to 15 minutes, each with step-by-step audio and video instructions, if there’s nothing in Workout Trainer to tempt you from the sofa you’re in serious trouble.
As well as the standard workouts, you can build your own custom routines and share them online, as well as trying out some of the community-created routines yourself.
A Pro subscription gives a big upgrade in features, such as advert-free HD workout videos and even more routines to torture your screaming muscles with.
Free (pro version costs £3.99 ($5, around AU$7)): iOS, Android
Pilates is all about strengthening the core – specifically the back, abdomen and hips. Ask any fitness pro and no matter what level of fitness you are, they’ll harp on endlessly about the importance of this area for back strength, balance, posture, strength and flexibility.
While not offering everything you could want – few Pilates apps are perfect, we’ve found – Fitivity offers all the instructions you need to start training your core, with simple-to-follow routines.
Do it for the three free weeks and, if you want more, the pro version will give you unfettered access when you pay up.
Tried all the above but still can’t seem to find 15 minutes to work up a tiny sweat? Does money motivate you more than the idea of a healthy heart and a six-pack?
If so, you need Pact, the first app that encourages you to gamble on your ability to get fit.
Wager how many days you reckon you can work out, put some money where your mouth is and get running.
It pairs with your phone’s GPS as well as with RunKeeper, Fitbit, Jawbone Up and MapMyRun and the more you stick to your programme the more cash you can win from competing lazy members.
Free (upgraded versions £1.99 / $1.99 / AU$3.99) : iOS, Android
Runtastic sounds like it’s only good for one thing, but actually it’s brilliant at bodyweight strength training too.
There are loads of apps by Runtastic – confusingly, a lot of them seem to do similar things but look completely different – but we’re really into Sit Ups, Squats, Press Ups and Pull Ups at the moment, as they’re just so friggin’ simple.
Simply start the app, it’ll tell you where to hold your phone, and how many reps to do. You’ll get rest targets (which the more hardcore of you can skip) and the progression every couple of days feels manageable. You can even save your workout progress to the cloud and use other devices when needed.
The free version only gets you to level one, but by the end of that you’ll be fully into how much stronger you’re getting and the upgrade cost to Pro is fully worth it. If you’ve been an Adidas MiCoach user in the past, you’ll get free access to the Pro apps automatically too (thanks to Adidas buying Runtastic fairly recently).
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) has been gaining in popularity recently, and for good reason – a workout that promises big results from short workouts is going to sound pretty appealing to people who are short on time. HIIT even came to the Apple Watch in watchOS 4.
Here we will explain a little bit about what HIIT is, and a few apps that you can use to for this new workout method, which is exhausting but has the potential to super-charge your results.
There are three different energy systems used by your body during exercise, one aerobic system that uses oxygen as fuel, and two that are anaerobic, using lactic acid and phosphates as their fuel. Long-duration cardio training (running, swimming, cycling) is dependent on the first of these energy systems, as it’s the only energy system that can continue to feed muscles for long periods of time.
The problem with this is that low-intensity training burns a relatively small amount of calories, so in order to achieve a caloric deficit for weight loss, a large amount of this exercise needs to be done.
High-intensity exercise, on the other hand, burns a large amount of calories, but you’re unable to sustain it for long enough that it makes a significant difference to overall fitness.
HIIT bridges the gap between the two training disciplines by interspersing short periods of high-intensity exercise with periods of low-intensity, to help you recover while still burning calories.
One of the most popular forms of HIIT is something called Tabata training, which is eight rounds of 20 seconds maximum intensity and 10 seconds low intensity. If you’re doing the math and thinking that only works out at four minutes of exercise, you’d be right – but done right it will be one of the worst four minutes of your life.
Tabata training was developed as a method of training by Japanese scientist Dr Izumi Tabata, as a method for improving the sprint times of Olympic ice skaters.
He discovered that by doing these short bursts of maximal effort interspersed with periods of low effort, not only did the athletes get similar aerobic gains to a group doing a much longer more traditional workout, but they exhibited anaerobic gains that the control group didn’t show.
To oversimplify this, it basically means that if you work smarter, you can get the same – or even better – results as from slogging away for ages on the treadmill. Plus, as a little bonus, you get the benefits of an effect called EPOC, which stands for excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption, which basically means that as your body works to address the oxygen deficit in your system you keep burning calories long after you’ve finished exercising.
As this is a very intense form of exercise, it puts strain (good strain, but strain none the less) on your heart, lungs and muscles. You should consult a doctor before starting any exercise regime, especially one as intense as HIIT.
You basically need three things for HIIT: an exercise of your choice, will power, and a timer.
The exercise needs to be something you can do for extended periods of time. Static bike is perfect, because it’s easy to shift quickly between low and high intensity. Running machines can work, but they need to be set up to alternate between the intensities, and, depending on your level of intensity, it can get risky having sudden changes of speed that are happening out of your control.
Rowing machines and elliptical machines both work well too. The elliptical machine is actually one of the best in terms of getting a full-body workout, but for some reason has a stigma attached to it.
A lot of people do burpees as a HIIT exercise, which seems to make sense because it’s a full-body exercise, but the fundamental problem with these is that you’re likely to reach muscular fatigue, which will inhibit your ability to push yourself to your desired level of cardiovascularly.
If you don’t have access to a gym, or would just prefer to do your exercise using body weight, then skipping, star jumps, and even jogging on the spot can all be employed.
This is where the tech comes in. Obviously you could use a stopwatch to set your periods, but frankly who has time for that? Luckily there are a number of apps on the market specifically designed to help you plan and carry out your HIIT session.
There are so many to choose from that the selection process can be pretty daunting. To help you out, we’ve chosen our favourites…
Seconds is an app for creating your own exercise timers. It has templates for circuit training, Tabata, HIIT, and custom timers. You can adjust the length of the high- and low-intensity periods, you can adjust the number of sets you’re going to be doing, and you can name the exercises – so if you’re doing a circuit it’ll tell you you’re on the kettlebells next.
During your workout it gives clear audio signals for starting and stopping, and the screen has a massive countdown on it, so even when sweat is streaming into your eyes you should still be able to see how long you have to go before you can rest.
Seconds is free to download and use, but gives you the option to upgrade to Seconds Pro, which allows you to save timers; very useful if you’re going to be doing the same workout four times a week.
Runtastic, as the name might suggest, is from a running company, but don’t let that put you off. A timer is a timer, and this is a good timer, and the app is easily the most aesthetically pleasing of your options.
It’s very easy to customize, and can either give you beep prompts or voice feedback.
Like Seconds, it’s free to download, but if you want to unlock the full range of timers and get rid of the ads you can pay a small in-app fee.
Tabata Timer has a very simple interface, but it does everything you need of it. When you open up the app it gives you the option to change your prep time, work time, rest time, and number of cycles. Once you’ve put your desired specifications in, you just hit Start and away you go.
Tabata Timer works in the background, so if you want to move over to your music app mid-workout you’re not going to stop the timer, which is surprisingly useful. Also, Tabata Timer works with Google Fit, so if you use that app it’ll transfer over your data from your workout.
Tabata Timer is free to download, with the option to upgrade to the premium version (with a number of different affordable plans) if you want to save more than two workouts.
That’s up to you. Sorry.
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You can eat well, exercise, find a great job and read all the self help books you like, but if you’re not getting enough sleep all the good habits and routines you try to stick to in the day won’t have the same effect.
Over the past few years everyone from health professionals to celebs have been obsessed with the magical superpowers of sleep. And it makes sense. Lack of sleep can impact your mood, your energy levels, your skin and a long-term lack of sleep can have serious mood and health consequences.
But the sad truth is many of us just aren’t getting enough shut eye. Luckily, there are plenty of devices on the market designed to provide us with a better night’s sleep, whether that’s through wake-up lamps, devices that track your sleep and even apps that recommend what you can do to rest more effectively.
Most top fitness trackers monitor movement and heart rate during sleep, while a growing range of non-wearables sit above or below your mattress and even on your bedside table. These help you track your breathing, snoring, temperature and allow you to follow those trends over time.
Leading the way are traditional wearable providers like Polar, Nokia/Withings and Fitbit, who have all added powerful sleep tracking to their devices, while there’s also an abundance of excellent non-contact options from sleep specialists ResMed, Beddit and Emfit.
We’ve collected together eight of our favorite sleep tracking devices designed to keep tabs on how you sleep, provide you with data about how much you toss and turn in the night and hopefully equip you with enough insights to shake up your routine and finally get some rest.
It’s been an interesting time for Withings. Nokia bought the health and wellness firm last year, but has since sold it back to Withings co-founder Éric Carreel. That means that the Withings trackers, which became Nokia trackers, are now Withings trackers again. Confused? Us too. It’s just worth scrubbing up on the basics so you don’t fret if you get yourself a Nokia Steel, it’s the same thing.
Both the Nokia Steel and Nokia Steel HR fitness watches are able to track your sleep, but here we’re going to focus on the less capable but cheaper watch of the two.
This analog watch is perfect for minimalists who want access to reams of insightful data without an additional screen bombarding them with endless smartphone notifications. You get the time, and a 0-100% dial for your daily activity. All other insights, including sleep, are synced back to the Nokia Health Mate app.
The major advantage of this approach is the six month plus battery life (slightly tempered by the need to replace rather than recharge). In our experience of fitness trackers, all it can take is one missed recharge to get you out of the habit of wearing.
There’s automatic sleep tracking with detailed insights into sleep cycles, time awake and sleep duration.
The app tells you when you went to bed and how long it took you to fall asleep. The watch’s silent alarm will also wake you gently at the optimum point of your sleep cycle.
More specialist than the Nokia/Withings Steel above, the Nokia/Withings Sleep is a pad you can slip under your mattress to keep a track of your sleep quality without having to wear anything on your wrist.
It means you can just jump into bed and you don’t have to worry about putting on an extra tracker, and if you do own a fitness tracker or smartwatch you can rest assured that it’ll be possible to charge it while you sleep.
The Nokia Sleep will monitor lots of stats too including your sleep phases, your heart rate, the amount of time you’ve been snoring and the duration of your sleep too.
If you just want to crawl into bed and have all of your sleep quality recorded and ready for you to digest in an easy to use app, the Nokia Sleep is the perfect device for you.
Beddit is an unobtrusive sleep monitor that sits on top of your mattress, beneath the sheets. You don’t have to wear anything, you don’t have to meddle with an app; all you need to do is focus on sleeping.
In the morning, the powerful app delivers you a detailed breakdown of the quality and quantity of sleep, heart rate data and breaths per minute. If the well-placed kicks from your partner don’t do it, Beddit tells you if you’ve been snoring, which is a serious contributor to poor sleep.
The Beddit app also offers feedback on the temperature and humidity in bed, helping you to optimize the sleep environment. All of the information is displayed in easy-to-read graphs, making it ideal for analyzing trends over time.
Although it’s designed to track the movements of only one person, we found the data wasn’t skewed by presence of a sleeping partner. Despite the lack of direct contact with the body it also produces surprisingly accurate data in line with the fitness trackers we were wearing during use.
Apple purchased Beddit in 2017. The company often shuts down products from firms it acquires, but it kept Beddit around. That has to be a good sign, right?
However unobtrusive they feel during the day, wearing a fitness band at night is often uncomfortable. Some dig into your skin or get twisted and clammy, which actually ends up impeding sleep.
ResMed takes a different approach with a non-contact sleep monitor. Despite sitting on the bedside table, it claims it can accurately monitor breathing, heart rate, movement and overall sleep quality.
This is all while keeping tabs on noise, light and temperature levels to deliver feedback on how you can improve your environment.
The powerful companion app guides you through breathing exercises to help you nod off and plays sounds that match the cadence of your breathing. The app even encourages you to clear your head by jotting down tomorrow’s to-do list.
The resulting sleep score, which is based upon age and gender, also offers feedback and suggestions on how you can improve.
This is where ResMed’s years in the field really pays off compared to general fitness trackers. For example, it’ll tell you to try sleeping on your left side if stomach problems or heartburn is a factor, which is something you won’t get from other trackers in this list.
One of the best running watches of 2018, the Polar M430 has the sleep smarts to keep it on our wrists around the clock.
The Polar Sleep Plus system uses the watch’s accelerometer to deliver highly insightful feedback, and itt gives you actual sleep time (not just the time spent in bed), tracks your interruptions and delivers data on continuous sleep periods.
You can even rate your sleep and measure it over time against workouts and changes to your training schedule.
All of the insights provided are laid out clearly within the Polar companion app, enabling you to track sleep quality over time, and it fuses well with the rest of your active day, which can become rather addictive (in a good way).
The Emfit QS is so subtle that it hides under your mattress. The no-contact solution is primarily designed for athletes and uses the rapidly emerging metric of heart rate variability (HRV) to determine sleep-based recovery.
HRV is based upon the time between your individual heartbeats while resting. Research suggests the higher the HRV, the better your body has recovered from strain and the more equipped athletes are to perform at a high level the next day without risking injury.
The way Emfit’s approach differs dramatically from all of the other sleep trackers we’ve listed is the ability to see the scale of your body’s recovery throughout the night. You get a score when you get into bed and another in the morning.
If your score is high the next day, your body is ready to attack the day. If it’s low, you probably shouldn’t push yourself too hard.
Beyond HRV, the QS (QS stands for Quantified Sleep) goes seriously deep into sleep stats. It also tracks sleep stages (Light, Deep, REM), movement and breathing rates over the course of 360 days.
If you’ve targeted better sleep as the key to unlocking your performance potential in 2018, this could be the sleep tracker for you.
We previously had the Fitbit Ionic in this list, but we’ve replaced it with the more aesthetically-pleasing (and slightly more comfortable) Fitbit Versa.
The Fitbit Versa is the brand’s latest smartwatch, which has a slightly rounded design, customisable straps, plenty of apps and features, as well as a fantastic battery life that’ll last more than 4 days.
Thanks to its sensors, particularly its gyroscope and optical heart rate sensor, the Versa is a really great option if sleep tracking is just as important to you as fitness tracking or getting notifications sent to your wrist.
After sleep, open up the Fitbit app and you won’t just see the duration of your sleep, but the different sleep stages you went through throughout the night, from light and REM to deep. Fitbit also attempts to make sense of this data and give you personalised insights about your sleep, but sometimes they’re a bit generic.
It’s also worth mentioning that the slimmer (and cheaper) Fitbit Alta HR and the newly-launched Fitbit Charge 3 also have Fitbit’s advanced sleep tech built-in. So if you’re looking for a more fitness-focused, slimmer or cheaper option, we’d recommend you check out Fitbit’s full range to see which is best for you.
If you don’t fancy the idea of putting a gadget in your bed or wearing one on your wrist that might be uncomfortable, it might be time for you to try a smart ring instead.
Smart rings were tipped to be a huge tech trend a few years ago, but loads never made it past the crowdfunding or initial prototype phase. Luckily, the Oura ring did. It’s an activity, wellness and sleep tracking rolled into one tiny, slim package that’s about the size of a standard wedding band.
Although it can track your activity, the Oura is focused on wellness and particularly sleep. It provides you with a simple sleep score each day, but you can delve deeper into your stats to find out all kinds of information about the quality of your rest, from your resting heart rate to how much you moved, all presented on a series of bar charts and graphs. It’s crack for sleep and data nerds.
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Update: A new Samsung smartwatch has been rumored, but we don’t think it’s the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2. Instead it looks to be a Samsung Gear Sport sequel, and you can read all about what we know so far here.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch is notable for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that it’s a highly capable smartwatch that doesn’t run Wear OS or watchOS, relying instead on the Tizen operating system.
With a stylish design, long battery life and loads of tracking skills it does enough to compete with any wearable running those better-known operating systems, but it isn’t perfect by any means, so we’ve come up with a list of improvements that we want to see on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2.
You’ll find them further down this article, but before that you’ll find our predictions for the Watch 2, including the possible release timing, price and features. As news and rumors start emerging we’ll add them to this article too.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch landed on August 9, 2018, alongside the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, so there’s a fair chance that the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 will land in or around August 2019, possibly at the same event as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.
However, there’s no guarantee of that and there are no release date rumors yet. But a launch roughly a year after this model would make sense, especially as the Galaxy Watch is in some ways a successor to the Samsung Gear Sport, which landed in August 2017, and the Samsung Gear S3, which landed in November 2016.
In other words, there has been roughly a year between all these models.
There aren’t any price rumors yet either, but the Samsung Galaxy Watch launched for $329 / £279 / AU$499 for the 42mm version or $349 / £299 / AU$549 for the 46mm model, with prices going up if you want a version with LTE. So we’d expect the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 will cost at least that much and it may cost more.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 is sure to be a fairly expensive wearable
There aren’t yet any whispers about the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2, but it’s very likely that Samsung is working on it, and we can take some educated guesses as to certain features that it may have.
For example, it’s sure to retain most or all of the features found on the Samsung Galaxy Watch. That includes GPS, a heart rate monitor and NFC, along with tracking for various sports, sleep and stress.
It’s also likely to have a circular face and a rotating bezel, especially as the likes of the Gear S3 also have those things.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch can track a lot of activities
What’s less certain but still very likely is that the Galaxy Watch 2 will run Tizen. Samsung has been using Tizen on wearables for a while and although a move to Wear OS was rumored for the Galaxy Watch, no such change happened in the end.
It’s possible that Samsung will switch to Wear OS for the Galaxy Watch 2, especially as Google’s smartwatch operating system has a healthier app ecosystem. But there are plenty of reasons to like Tizen and Samsung hasn’t shown any real sign of giving up on it.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch is a great smartwatch but one with plenty of room for improvement. The following seven features are things we’d really like to see on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch runs Tizen, rather than one of the big-name wearable operating systems, and one downside of that is that there are fewer apps available than you’ll find on Wear OS or watchOS.
So by the time Samsung launches the Galaxy Watch 2 we’d like to have seen it work with developers to get key apps like WhatsApp, Google Maps and Facebook Messenger on the platform.
The Galaxy Watch tracks most things well, but not stress
The Samsung Galaxy Watch tracks a lot of things and mostly does a good job, but stress tracking is definitely a weak link.
While it’s available, it required us to manually measure our stress levels rather than tracking them automatically in our tests (despite claiming that it can do it automatically), and its accuracy could be questionable, since the data seems mostly based just on heart rate. So we’d like to see this feature overhauled for the next model.
Competing with friends can be a big motivator to get more active and handily the Samsung Galaxy Watch lets you do this. Your friends don’t even need a Galaxy Watch of their own – a Gear watch or the Samsung Health app will do just fine.
However, you can only challenge friends individually, rather than having a group competition. It seems like this would be an obvious and easy feature to add, so hopefully Samsung will.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch uses a proprietary charger
The Samsung Galaxy Watch charges wirelessly, but not just any wireless charger will do, you need a proprietary one that comes with it. This is inconvenient and if you’re ever without your charger means you’re likely to soon have a dead watch (though the Galaxy Watch at least has good battery life).
So for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 we want it to work with standard, everyday wireless chargers. That way if you’re at the office or a friend’s house without yours there’s at least a chance someone will have one you can borrow.
Another downside of using Tizen rather than Wear OS is that the Samsung Galaxy Watch is reliant on Bixby rather than Google Assistant.
This is a problem, because Bixby is nowhere near as good as Google Assistant (or Siri or Alexa for that matter), with one particularly major issue being that it simply struggles to understand us.
While you don’t have to use Bixby to interact with the Galaxy Watch, it has the potential to be a major feature, but until it gets a lot better it won’t be.
Interaction is limited when using the Galaxy Watch with iOS
The Samsung Galaxy Watch works with both Android and iOS, but it’s definitely better with Android, because while you can read notifications on the watch when paired with an iPhone, you can’t reply to them or initiate communications, making it a lot more limited.
This may not be something Samsung can solve, as it would likely require a change on Apple’s end, but it’s something we’d like to see nonetheless, as it could make the Galaxy Watch 2 a real alternative to the Apple Watch 5, or whatever we’re up to by then.
There are versions of the Samsung Galaxy Watch that support LTE, but only on select networks, which won’t suit everyone. For the Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 we’d like to see an LTE model available on more or less all networks, so it’s an option for everyone.
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The January sales are stepping things up a notch now with many stores kicking off their discounts a few days early. So if you didn’t get time to check out the deals for Boxing Day, don’t worry one bit. We’ve just updated this article and are happy to report most of the best deals are still going strong.
After all, you’ve surely got better things to be doing on the Christmas break queuing to enter and leave a retail park’s car park or trying to work out who is having a decent sale from the huge number of UK retailer websites, sifting through what they’re claiming to be epic deals when you know full well you’ve seen them cheaper elsewhere on the same day. So let us do it for you. We’ve rounded up the finest, genuine ones right here!
So yes sit back, scroll down a little and you’ll see we’ve started to list the best offers so far. We’ll be updating this page throughout the Christmas break right up until the dust has cleared on these January sales too.
We’ve shown you where the best January sales are happening today. But we thought we’d also highlight some of favourite individual offers from the best sales we’ve seen, followed by deals in a range of specific categories. We’ll be updating this page throughout the sales, so feel free to keep coming back to check out the freshest discounts.
All the big stores get stuck in. With so many keen shoppers going online over the Christmas period in recent years, it’s just too good a chance for them to finish 2018 off with some extra money in the bank. Let’s take a look at the big hitters below and what you can nab from each.
Not a silly question at all. As we just said, a lot of stores are starting today and we expect even more will go live on Christmas Day – yes they’re pretty keen. If just before Christmas is the time to scramble for last-minute gifts, anytime from the day itself onwards is the chance to treat yourself or use those gift vouchers to make a great deal a truly spectacular bargain.
Expect an early start here too. Although if we’re going off the last few years, the January sales haven’t been particularly special. It’s been all about the Boxing Day deals really, although we’re pleased to report some of the better ones stayed online a good few days into January. January sales are more of a continuation of the remaining Boxing Day sales so you can probably expect to see many stores simply rebrand the sales to ‘January sales’ the day after Boxing Day on December 27th.
Given many workplaces are off until around January 2nd, retailers are keen to show you the best deals as soon as possible while you’ve got time off at home rather than try to push deals on you while you’re heading back to work or nursing that New Year’s Eve hangover.
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Every year Valve, the company behind the popular games store Steam, releases its list of the biggest selling games on the platform, and it has just unveiled its list of the best selling Steam games of 2018.
Due to Steam’s huge popularity with PC gamers, these lists give us an excellent idea of what games are currently popular. Of course, it doesn’t include games on other services, such as Origin, GOG (Good Old Games) or the recently-created Epic Games Store, nor does it include games that aren’t available on Steam, but it still gives us a valuable overview of the big PC gaming hits.
Valve doesn’t give away exact sales numbers, but it does break them down into groups based on gross revenue for the year: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze.
The very best sellers feature in the Platinum group, and include well known games such as GTA V, which continues to make huge amounts of money many years after it was first released.
There’s also a number of new games for 2018 as well, which shows that recent releases are capable of making a lot of money.
The following games are the ones that have made the most money on Steam in 2018:
Games that made enough money in 2018 to make it into the Gold category include established games such as The Witcher III, Assassin’s Creed Origins and Cities Skylines.
Jurassic World Evolution is a notable new entry for 2018 in this category.
Valve also breaks down the biggest virtual reality games of 2018 as well. In the Platinum category Beat Saber, Job Simulator, Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR are some of the biggest sellers.
In the Gold category, Doom VFR, Zero Caliber and Space Pirate Trainer are some of the biggest sellers.
It’s well worth looking at the full list, and while it only shows the biggest sellers on the Steam Store, it shows that PC gaming is in a great shape for 2019, with an eclectic mix of genres and styles selling bucket loads in 2018.
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Actor, comedian and musician Jack Black is now on YouTube.
The star of School of Rock and voice of Kung Fu Panda will be looking to further the entertainment of the masses with his new YouTube channel, ‘Jablinski Games’, covering topics as far-ranging as “games, food, and life”.
Currently the only video on the channel is the announcement clip below, where Black voices the ambition to be “bigger than Ninja… bigger than PewDiePie”, citing two of the video platform’s biggest names. There are a few inside jokes that might be confusing for some – the adjustable chair is a callback to an old PewDiePie video – but take a look for yourself.
Despite the very low-key introductory video, Jablinski Games currently has over 1m subscribers at the time of writing, with that number rising steadily every day.
The channel will reportedly be releasing a new video ‘every Friday’, so there could well be one online over the next few hours.
While YouTube is often looked to as a place for rising stars and content creators starting out in the entertainment business, it’s also become a place where high-profile A-listers can connect to their fans and audience in a different way.
The videos on Jablinski Games will be edited and produced by Jack Black’s twelve-year-old son, rather than any official production team, according to the description on the video posted above.
Are we looking at a short-lived family project, an intriguing intergenerational look at gaming and wider culture, or one big in-joke? We may find out very shortly.
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Big trouble.
Digital storefronts are certified platforms allowing users to buy safe and legitimate content. Due to sheer amount of programs, apps and games approved for these platforms on a daily basis, sometimes there can be oversights.
According to a tweet on the Chinese Nintendo Twitter account, there’s been a big one in China. The local Microsoft Store front, where developers can share paid and free programs digitally, has allowed a third-party Chinese developer to sell a Super Mario Bros. ROM for ¥13 (roughly $1.85 / £1.46).
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
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Luma also unlockable.
Mario Tennis Aces is one of the many Switch games that keeps on giving. In the same tournament where you’ll be able to unlock Luma – the star-like creature originally from Super Mario Galaxy, the Nintendo UK VS Twitter account has revealed there’ll also be a chance to obtain the classic overall outfits for Mario and Luigi.
It’s all dependant on your performance in the January tournament. Below is the official tweet:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
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Iconoclasts physical release also on the way.
Earlier this month during the ”Kinda Funny Video Game Showcase‘ on Twitch, Limited Run announced a physical edition for Celeste would be available to pre-order from 1st January onward.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
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