Category: Techradar

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.

• Best fitness tracker: the top 10 activity bands on the planet

1. Nike+ Training Club 

Free: iOS, Android

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.

2. Freeletics

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. 

3. Sworkit

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.

4. Fiit

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.

5. Daily Yoga

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.

6. Seven

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.

7. Workout Trainer

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.

8.  Pilates Training from Fitivity

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.

9. Pact

Free: iOS, Android

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.

10. Runtastic Training series

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.

Does it work?

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.

Enough science! How do I do it?

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.

Timers. You mentioned timers…

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

• Free
• iOS, Android

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 Timer & Intervals

• Free
• iOS, Android

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 Interval Timer

• Free
• Android

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. 

What about the willpower?

That’s up to you. Sorry. 

• If that all sounds a bit intense and you’d rather just start running, check out: The tech you’ll need to start running

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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.

• Read our full Nokia / Withings Sleep review

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).

• Read the full Polar M430 review

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. 

• Will better technology solve our sleep sorrows?

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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.

Cut to the chase

• What is it? The next smartwatch from Samsung
• When is it out? Maybe late 2019
• What will it cost? Probably at least $329 / £279 / AU$499

Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 release date and price

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.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 2 news and rumors

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.

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.

What we want to see

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.

1. More third-party apps

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.

2. Better stress tracking

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.

3. Group challenges

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.

4. Compatibility with more wireless chargers

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.

5. Big improvements to Bixby

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.

6. Better iOS compatibility

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.

7. Wider LTE availability

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.

• Don’t want to wait for the Watch 2? These are the best smartwatches out now

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A content delivery network (CDN) works to accelerate almost any website by caching its files in servers around the world. Whether your visitors come from Europe, North America, Asia or anywhere else, content is automatically served from the nearest location for the fastest possible speeds.

If you’re new to the technology then it might seem intimidating, and there’s no doubt that prices can be high, but don’t let that put you off. A CDN is not just for massive corporations. You can set up the simplest services in less than five minutes, and if you choose your plan wisely, it might not cost you anything at all.

Whatever your website, from a simple blog to a sprawling site for a big business, we’ve picked out some of the best services around to help point you in the right direction. If you find anything that looks interesting, give it a try – you can explore many of these CDNs for free, without handing over payment details or signing up for any contract.

• We’ve also rounded up the best VPN services of 2019

Cloudflare is a hugely popular American content delivery service which combines novice-friendly ease of use with expert-level features and functionality.

Setup is simple, with no need to edit your code. Just update your DNS nameservers to use Cloudflare and the service kicks in automatically, caching content and serving it to visitors from their nearest location.

But there’s much, much more. Web filtering can block bots, limit content spam, keep you safe from hackers or detect and mitigate DDoS attacks. Smart image optimizations can reduce image file sizes by up to 35%, further improving speeds. There’s wide support for standards like IPv6, HTTP/2 and SPDY, clever page rules to help you manipulate traffic, and a REST API allows developers to take full control of what the service is doing.

• Read our review of Cloudflare

Cloudflare’s free plan allows you to see what the service can do, without making any commitments. It’s very usable, with unlimited bandwidth and no annoying restrictions to try and force you to upgrade.

Upgrading to the Pro plan costs a reasonable $20 (£16) a month, and adds the image optimization rules, extra configurability and improved support.

Whatever you choose, Cloudflare delivers great performance. As we write, the benchmarking site CDNPerf ranks Cloudflare at sixth place for worldwide HTTP request response times out of a field of 20 top CDNs.

• You can sign up for Cloudflare here

Fastly provides CDN tricks for some really big organizations, including the likes of Spotify and Reddit, and the firm lives up to its name, delivering impressively fast performance levels. Going by the rough guideline of CDNPerf’s rankings, it’s the second fastest CDN for the UK, and worldwide speeds are mostly good, too.

Perhaps Fastly’s strongest point, however, is just how configurable the service is. For example, there’s diverse support for different types of video caching, and tons of low-level controls for those who want to get stuck into the likes of manipulating HTTP headers to customize how content is served.

• Read our review of Fastly

Of course, some know-how is required to set up everything, and novices to the CDN world will doubtless be confused by all the options on offer. But for those who need this level of flexibility and configurability, it’s priceless to have.

Speaking of the price, Fastly operates a pay-as-you-go model with a minimum charge of $50 (£37) per month.

• You can sign up for Fastly here

KeyCDN is an easy-to-use budget CDN that might be a good pick for first-time users.

Getting started couldn’t be much simpler. Sign up with your email address and you get an immediate 25GB to play with, no payment details required. A well-designed web dashboard enables creating your first zone with the minimum of clicks, and there are guides to help you integrate the service with WordPress and other apps. 

Worth mentioning is that as of late November 2018, KeyCDN fully supports IPv6.

More experienced users will appreciate options like Origin Shield – this allows you to specify a KeyCDN server to be the source for updates rather than the origin, reducing your server load. You’re able to manipulate headers, cache or strip cookies, or set up a custom robots.txt. Once the service is running, a capable set of reporting tools enable watching CDN performance in near real-time.

• Read our review of KeyCDN

KeyCDN’s standout feature has to be its low prices. Bandwidth charges start at $0.04 (£0.032) per GB, less than half the price you’ll pay with some of the high-end competition. The minimum charge is a tiny $49 (£39) a year. (Yes, really – a year.) The company doesn’t even try to cash in on the extras, for example offering shared SSL and custom Let’s encrypt SSL certificates for free.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these low prices don’t get you leading-edge performance, but there’s still plenty of power here and you do get a lot for your money.

• You can sign up for KeyCDN here

MetaCDN is an Australian company which combines the CDNs of Amazon Cloudfront, Fastly and Verizon’s EdgeCast into a single speedy service.

Why? It’s all about performance. When a visitor accesses your site, MetaCDN has three networks and more than 120 locations to choose from – way more than anyone else. In other words, there’s a much greater chance any visitor will have a server near them.

This matters because every CDN delivers its best performance in different areas. EdgeCast scores highly in North America, for instance, but Fastly is quicker in the UK. MetaCDN automatically chooses the best network for every visitor’s location, giving you the best of all worlds.

• Read our review of MetaCDN

This approach does have a catch. When you sign up with a single CDN, you can get access to all its individual settings and options, but combining three means you only get settings which apply to all of them (for obvious reasons). Which essentially means MetaCDN has barely any configuration options at all. (Check the Support site to get a rough feel for how the system works.)

Still, MetaCDN is nicely user-friendly and it could be a good pick if speed is your top priority. Pricing is complicated (although not bad for access to enterprise-level CDNs) and there are three plans, Basic, Lite and Pro. The most popular one, Lite, is $50 on a monthly basis (you can also choose a yearly rate, for a $39 a month).

• You can sign up for MetaCDN here

This CDN provider focuses mainly on the West, with 13 points of presence (PoPs) in North America, and nine in Europe. There are only five PoPs in Asia, and two in Australia and South America (Brazil).

StackPath is user-friendly, complete with a straightforward web console to manage your settings, and if you do get stuck, there’s extremely efficient technical support available via either live chat or phone.

Performance seems good in the US and UK, and indeed Europe, but further afield you may see things tail off a bit, which is hardly a surprise given StackPath’s aforementioned focus on Western nations.

• Read our review of StackPath

Another strength here comes on the security front, with this CDN giving users free shared SSL (or the option to use your own SSL certificate, if you prefer). There’s also anti-DDoS technology and a capable Web Application Firewall.

All in all, this is a tempting offering with a baseline plan that charges $10 (£7.6) for up to 1TB of bandwidth per month. The first month is also free.

• You can sign up for StackPath here

Update: The service has been now integrated with StackPath – “Everything you love about MaxCDN is being integrated into the new StackPath CDN service.”  

MaxCDN is actually owned by StackPath now (the previously mentioned CDN), but provides a standalone service of its own which is well-suited for novices. You get 24/7 tech support with speedy responses promised (and indeed these claims stood up to our testing), and it’s easy enough to set up, and indeed use going forward.

You don’t get as many settings to play with as some of the more advanced services, but that’s hardly surprising when trying to keep things more user-friendly.

• Read our review of MaxCDN

Another definite benefit is a range of useful reports, and a solid core network. MaxCDN offers eight edge locations in the US, five in Europe – and you can add additional locations in Asia (and Australia), but you have to pay extra for those.

Overall, though, pricing is a strong point, starting from $9 (£6.75) a month for a 100GB account, with a clean pricing structure which isn’t confusing in the slightest (often not the case with CDN offerings). Performance is, generally speaking, solid enough, and this CDN does pretty well for speeds in the UK and US.

• You can sign up for MaxCDN here

Amazon CloudFront is the CDN facet of AWS (Amazon Web Services), so it’s certainly part of a heavyweight operation. And indeed CloudFront offers a raft of advanced features as you might expect, and you can customize all manner of things such as enabling automatic GZip compression for better speeds.

Another strength here is the in-depth analytics on tap, showing you details of your visitors’ device type, OS and so forth. There’s also the handy ability to set up alerts, meaning you can be warned when data transfer usage goes above a certain level.

• Read our review of Amazon CloudFront

The downside to all the options on offer is that relative novices to the CDN world may find CloudFront’s control panel a little intimidating, at least initially.

The other slight sticking points are that calculating pricing can be a rather tricky matter, and if you aren’t an experienced user familiar with CDN basics, tech support isn’t free – if you need help, you’ll have to fork out for it. Prices vary depending on region, but the good news is there’s a free tier (which gives you 50GB of data per month for one year).

Performance levels are fairly average, too, but there’s no denying the power and configurability that Amazon offers to the slightly more tech-savvy user.

• You can sign up for Amazon CloudFront here

As you’re doubtless aware, Microsoft Azure is a big old stack of integrated cloud tools for building and managing applications and services, with a wide range of coverage including a CDN offering, which is what we’re focusing on here, naturally. Note that this doesn’t use Microsoft’s own edge servers, but rather three plans that use other CDN networks: Standard Akamai, Standard Verizon, and Premium Verizon.

We fully discuss these various plans in our review of Microsoft’s CDN service, linked below, but suffice it to say that in terms of pricing – which can be somewhat confusing to work out – this isn’t the cheapest offering around. Still, those who want integration with other Microsoft technologies and services may well find the price worth paying.

• Read our review of Microsoft Azure CDN

You get a web dashboard which is absolutely crammed with features, although as ever, this means it’s not particularly easy to use for beginners (and the setup process is pretty involved, too). Performance levels are impressive, and at the time of writing, according to CDNPerf, Azure CDN is the fifth fastest content delivery network worldwide, and fourth in the US.

This has to be a tempting prospect if you’re using other Azure services, or if you’re a developer who will appreciate the likes of .NET or PowerShell management features.

• You can sign up for Microsoft Azure CDN here

CDN77 is a big-name player in the content delivery game, with some heavyweight clients signed up including the European Space Agency. It has an expansive CDN network with 32 data centers across the globe, with many of those in Europe and the US, but there are also locations in South America, Asia and one in Australia.

The web console interface is very streamlined and keeps any jargon to a minimum, making it suitably user-friendly for novices to the CDN world. The flipside of this is that there aren’t a huge amount of options, although you can do some tweaking of various settings.

• Read our review of CDN77

In terms of performance, CDN77 is solid enough, and it ranks as a lower-to-mid pack player that’s unlikely to disappoint, but certainly isn’t the fastest CDN network we found when reviewing these various services.

You get a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, and CDN77 is pretty good value for money overall in terms of its per-GB pricing, although it’s not the cheapest outfit we’ve highlighted here. Pricing starts at $0.049 per GB of data for US and European locations, with Asia and Latin America being more expensive. If you want to test the waters, there’s a 14-day risk-free trial, and you don’t need to supply any payment details for this.

• You can sign up for CDN77 here

If you need a powerful CDN, look no further than Leaseweb, an enterprise-level operation which is still suitable for regular business users – just about, although we should say upfront that it isn’t cheap, as you might imagine.

Pricing starts at $113 (£88, €99) per month for an entry-level plan with a 2TB data allowance, the good news being that even with this ‘basic’ subscription, you get all the same security and CDN features as the heavyweight enterprise plans.

That includes a smartly designed console for overseeing your CDN needs, complete with an extensive raft of potential settings and tweaks, featuring many options you don’t get with your average service (like the ability to set the cache-control header, or determine how long to cache 404 responses).

• Read our review of Leaseweb

There’s also an in-depth statistics section which displays graphs and charts showing many interesting stats, such as visitor and traffic breakdowns, cache performance and the top file types which are seeing action.

The one somewhat bleak spot is Leaseweb’s performance, which seems somewhat off the pace going by CDNPerf’s findings, although it’s difficult to gauge exactly what results you’ll get in practice. Users who want a powerful range of features in their CDN could give the 30-day trial a go to find out.

• You can sign up for Leaseweb here

• Also check out our roundup of the best website hosting services

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The festivities of the Christmas period may have only just come to an end but we’re already launching straight on into the January sales, and Mobiles.co.uk is celebrating with a Samsung Galaxy S9 deal worth getting excited about. 

This offer gets you the Samsung S9 for the low monthly price of £23 a month with 3GB of data. Sounds good? Well, it gets better, if you use our exclusive TechRadar discount code TECH25OFF the upfront cost drops down to £50, making it one of the cheapest S9 deals on the market right now. 

The Samsung Galaxy S9 was a decent phone for 2018, packing a top camera with a smaller form factor over the plus model, and the current price drops are making it a much more attractive proposition – don’t forget, we’re still a few months out from the forthcoming Galaxy S10, so the S9 still represents one of the very best phones we’ve seen around at the moment.

If this sounds like the deal for you then you can find all of the details down below – but you do need to hurry as this deal ends on December 31. 

If this wasn’t quite the deal you were hoping for then don’t worry we have gathered all of the best deals for the flagship device on our Samsung Galaxy S9 deals page. 

This exclusive Galaxy S9 deal in full:

• Discover today’s other best mobile phone deals in the UK

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