An excellent web browser. Chrome has struggled with performance on Android, but hits its stride on the Nexus 7 (2013).

Great, tablet-optimized apps for all of Google’s services, from YouTube to Gmail and Google Maps.
Everything you need for reading, from Amazon’s Kindle app for eBooks, Flipboard and Feedly for new articles from websites, and other services like the popular Pocket read-it-later service.

Apps for most popular media services, from Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube for videos to Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio for music. A few things aren’t available — you won’t find Apple’s iTunes and Amazon still doesn’t offer an Amazon Instant Video app for Android, while they do for iPad and even their own Android-based Kindle Fire devices.

Android has very good app coverage when it comes to consuming content, whether you’re reading websites and ebooks or watching videos and listening to music. You can play almost any Android smartphone game, too.

For content consumption, Android is better than something like Windows 8, which lacks apps for Google services like YouTube and still doesn’t have apps for popular media services like Spotify and Rdio.

How Android Scales Smartphone Apps

Let’s look at how Android scales smartphone apps. Now, bear with us here — we know “scaling” is a dirty word considering how poorly Apple’s iPad scales iPhone apps, but it’s not as bad on Android.

When an iPad runs an iPhone app, it simply doubles the pixels and effectively zooms in. For example, if you had Twitter app with five tweets visible at once on an iPhone and ran the same app on an iPad, the iPad would simply “zoom in” and enlarge the same screen — you’d still see five tweets, but each tweet would appear larger. This is why developers create optimized iPad apps with their own interfaces. It’s especially important on Apple’s iOS.

Android devices come in all shapes and sizes, so Android apps have a smarter, more intelligent way to adapt to different screen sizes. Let’s say you have a Twitter app designed for smartphones and it only shows five tweets at once when run on a phone. If you ran the same app on a tablet, you wouldn’t see the same five tweets — you’d see ten or more tweets. Rather than simply zooming in, the app can show more content at the same time on a tablet, even if it was never optimized for tablet-size screens.

While apps designed for smartphones aren’t generally ideal, they adapt much better on Android than they do on an iPad. This is particularly true when it comes to games. You’re capable of playing almost any Android smartphone game on an Android tablet, and games generally adapt very well to the larger screen. This gives you access to a huge catalog of games. It’s a great option to have, especially when you look at Microsoft’s Window 8 and consider how much better the touch-based app and game selection would be if Microsoft allowed its users to run Windows Phone games on Windows 8.
7-inch vs 10-inch Tablets

The Twitter example above wasn’t just an example. The official Twitter app for Android still doesn’t have a tablet-optimized interface, so this is the sort of situation you’d have to deal with on an Android tablet. On the popular Nexus 7, Twitter is an example of a smartphone app that actually works fairly well — in portrait mode, you can see many more tweets on screen at the same time and none of the space really feels all that wasted.

This is important to consider — smartphone apps like Twitter often scale quite well to 7-inch screens because a 7-inch screen is much closer in form factor to a smartphone than a 10-inch screen is.

When you begin to look at 10-inch Android tablets that are the same size as an iPad, the situation changes. While the Twitter app works well enough on a Nexus 7, it looks horrible on a Nexus 10 or other 10-inch tablet. Running many smartphone-designed apps — possible with the exception of games — on a 10-inch tablet is a frustrating, poor experience. There’s much more white, empty space in the interface. It feels like you’re using a smartphone app on a large screen, and what’s the point of that?

A tablet-optimized Twitter app for Android is finally on its way, but this same situation will repeat with many other types of apps. For example, Facebook doesn’t offer a tablet-optimized interface, but it’s okay on a Nexus 7 anyway. On a 10-inch screen, it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as nice an experience. It goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter both offer iPad apps with interfaces designed for a tablet-size screen.

Here’s another problematic app — the official Yelp app for Android. Even just using it on a 7-inch Nexus 7 will be a poor experience, while it would be much worse on a larger 10-inch tablet app.



Now, it’s true that many — maybe even most — of the popular apps you might want to run today are optimized for Android tablets. But, when you look at the situation when it comes to popular apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp, it’s clear Android is still behind in a meaningful way.
Price

Let’s be honest. The thing that really makes Android tablets compelling — and the only reason Android tablets started seeing real traction after years of almost complete dominance by Apple’s iPads — is that Android tablets are available for so much cheaper than iPads.

Google’s latest Nexus 7 (2013) is available for only $230. Apple’s non-retina iPad Mini is available at $300, which is already $70 more. In spite of that, the iPad Mini has much older, slower internals and a much lower resolution screen. It’s not as nice to look at when it comes to reading or watching movies, and the iPad Mini reportedly struggles to run Apple’s latest iOS 7. In contrast, the new Nexus 7 has a very high resolution screen, speedy internals, and runs Android very well with little-to-no lag in real use. We haven’t had any problems with it, unlike all the problems we unfortunately encountered with the first Nexus 7.

For a really comparable experience to the current Nexus 7, you’d want to get one of Apple’s new retina iPad Minis. That would cost you $400, another $170 over the Nexus 7. In fact, it’s possible to regularly find sales on the Nexus 7, so if you waited you could get it for just $200 — half the price of the iPad mini with a comparable screen and internals. (In fairness, the iPad certainly has better hardware — but you won’t feel if it you’re just using your tablet to browse the web, watch videos, and do other typical tablet things.)

This makes a tablet like the popular Nexus 7 a very good option for budget-conscious users who just want a high-quality device they can use to browse the web, watch videos, play games, and generally do light computing.

There’s a reason we’re focusing on the Nexus 7 here. The combination of price and size brings it to a very good place. It’s awfully cheap for the high-quality experience you get, and the 7-inch screen means that even the non-tablet-optimized apps you may stumble across will often work fairly well.

On the other hand, more expensive 10-inch Android tablets are still a tougher sell. For $400-$500, you’re getting awfully close to Apple’s full-size iPad price range and Android tablets don’t have as good an app ecosystem as an iPad. It’s hard to recommend an expensive, 10-inch Android tablet over a full-size iPad to average users.



In summary, the Android app tablet app situation is nowhere near as bad as it was a few years ago. The success of the Nexus 7 proves that Android tablets can be compelling experiences, and there are a wide variety of strong apps.

That said, more expensive 10-inch Android tablets that compete directly with the full-size iPad on price still don’t make much sense for most people. Unless you have a specific reason for preferring an Android tablet, it’s tough not to recommend an iPad if you’re looking at spending $400+ on a 10-inch tablet.

Despite how much people claim to like change, at the core we are creatures of habit. Just as we saw when Facebook introduced Timeline and as we will see when Twitter makes its next significant change, people are going to get up in arms about it. Apple’s iOS 7 was no different.

Described as the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone, iOS 7 has been available to the general public for roughly two weeks at this point. That’s given everyone plenty of time to get accustomed to all of the changes and vent about them, but for us, it’s served as an evaluation period.

Looking beyond the flat UI and the animated background, has that much really changed in Apple’s mobile OS? What did Cupertino get right with the update and what areas or features are still missing? To help answer these questions, I’ve put together a list of the top six things that are still missing in iOS 7 as well as the six things that Apple nailed with the update.

Apple's shiny new iOS 7 mobile operating system was released September 18 to mostly positive reviews, but it has five issues, nevertheless. And in this article we will show you how to address them.

It was the biggest change to iOS since it was introduced in 2007, overhauled to add a slate of new features and a more streamlined, abstract look.

But to be fair to Apple, it's not totally unusual for new operating systems to have some glitches here and there in their earliest days.

Nobody's talking about anything cataclysmic this time, like the Apple Maps fiasco on iOS 6 that led CEO Tim Cook to issue a rare apology -- and which some say led to the ouster of Apple senior vice president Scott Forstall.

But just a couple of weeks into its existence, iOS 7 has prompted a handful of complaints from some users. Here are five of the most frequently heard, along with tips for how to fix, or at least bypass them.

Apple says it's aware of an issue that's causing texts sent through its iMessage app not to go through for some users. On various Apple-oriented message boards, iOS 7 users were complaining that they'd send a message which appeared to work fine, only to later see a red exclamation point that means it wasn't actually sent.

"We are aware of a problem that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update," Apple said in a statement e-mailed to media outlets. "In the meantime, we encourage any users having issues to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users."

Until the update rolls out, some users say they've been able to get rid of the issue by turning their phone off and back on.

Some folks say they're already sick of iOS 7. Phone and iPad users, or at least a few of them, say they're getting symptoms similar to motion sickness while looking at iOS 7 animations. On the new system, images zoom in and out when users switch between apps. As TIME explains, the brain gets unsettled when the eyes try to focus on images that don't match up -- for example, when you're on a rocking ship or moving car and trying to read a stationary item, like a book.

To clear that issue, iOS 7 users can go to "Settings," then "General" and then "Accessibility." Click on "Reduce Motion" to make the zooming go away.

This one has been mostly reported by users of older phones like the iPhone 4S. Simply, they say iOS 7 seems to drain their batteries faster than iOS 6 did. One factor may be that iOS 7 expands the ability to run apps in the background while focusing on another task.

To repair that problem, go to "Settings" and "General," but then choose "Background App Refresh." From there, you can choose which apps you'll allow to run in the background and which you won't.

There are also general battery-saving steps, like dimming your screen and making sure things like GPS and Bluetooth are switched off if you're not using them.

This one might take care of itself over time. When Apple updates its operating system, apps that rely on parts of it (like Camera) must update as well. Until they do, they sometimes kick users out. On Apple message boards, users were mentioning apps like Snapchat and Mailbox as frequent offenders.

Some developers may have already tweaked their products, and other fixes are probably on the way. But if you're still having problems, you can go to "Settings," "General" and "Background App Refresh" again. Turn off any apps you're having problems with.

This one has already been addressed in an iOS 7 update from Apple just days after the new operating system rolled out. For the first few days, iPhones and iPads apparently were vulnerable in one particular instance. If users were running the Camera app and had Control Center activated on their Lock screens, there were a few steps someone could take to unlock their phones.

But the iOS 7.0.2 update, released on September 26, "fixes bugs that could allow someone to bypass the Lock screen passcode," according to Apple.

Are you encountering issues with iOS 7? If so, have you found a way to fix them? Let us know bywriting to us.

T-Mobile's new strategy appears to be getting a little help from sales of Apple devices. According to recent numbers from Kantar Worldpanel, T-Mobile grew to 13.2 percent of smartphone sales in the U.S. market in the 3 month period ending August 2013, marking its highest share of sales over the past year.

The market share represents growth of 1.1 percent, reversing an on-going trend of a year-on-year decline. The iPhone 5 remained the top-selling smartphone at T-Mobile, with 17.1 percent of sales.

Kantar's global strategic insight director, Dominic Sunnebo said that when iOS first debuted on T-Mobile in mid-April, the majority of sales came from consumers upgrading from a featurephone to their first smartphone.

"But, looking at those who purchased an iPhone in the August period, 56 percent of those consumers came from another smartphone, including 38.5 percent from an Android device,” Sunnebo said in a statement.

The Kantar numbers shows Android retaining its lead for the period, with a 55.1 percent share of the market. Apple's iOS follows with a 39.3 percent share, an increase of 5.4 percent versus the same period a year ago.

Overall, little movement is seen among the other operating systems in the market, at least for now anyway. Windows saw about a 2.9 percent increase in sales in the August period, while BlackBerry was down to just 1.7 percent of sales.

And Verizon sold the most smarpthones, with a 37.1 percent market share of all sales, which amounted to growth of 6.9 percent. For its part, AT&T maintained a second position at 21.7 percent, and Sprint took home third with a 14.6 percent share of smartphone sales.

A British police investigation into the massive DDoS attack against internet spam killer Spamhaus has led to the arrest of a 16-year-old London schoolboy who is allegedly part of an international group of cyber criminals and activists.

"The teenager was found with his computer systems open and logged on to various virtual systems and forums," says the police document shown to the London Evening Standard.

"The suspect has a significant amount of money flowing through his bank account. Financial investigators are in the process of recuperating all that cash."

The schoolboy was arrested in April at the same time as a 35 year-old Dutchman, thought to be Sven Kamphuis, the owner of hosting firm Cyberbunker, as part of an investigation into the Spamhaus attack by British police dubbed Operation Rashlike.

The arrest was kept completely secret, and the boy has been released on bail pending a trial date later in the year.

British police documents state that the Spamhaus attack in March was the "largest DDoS attack ever seen," and claims that the performance of the London Internet Exchange was also hard hit.

The DDoS attack caused worldwide disruption of the functionality of the internet, it states. On March 18, Spamhaus and its networking partner CloudFlare started getting attacked at around 90 Gbps.

When that failed to take the site offline, the attackers went upstream to ISPs and internet exchanges in Amsterdam and London, and by March 22nd, over 300 Gbps was hitting the Spamhaus servers.

But despite all the activity, the attack didn't seriously interrupt the flow of internet data. The London Internet Exchange reported "minor amount of collateral congestion in a small portion of our network," and Spamhaus' services weren't seriously disrupted.

"Only the website and our email server were affected," said Steve Linford, chief executive for Spamhaus. "All Spamhaus DNSBL [DNS Block List] services continued to run unaffected throughout the attack. In fact, Spamhaus DNSBLs have never once been down since we started them in 2001."

Spamhaus is more targeted than most because of the work it does. The organization compiles lists of ISPs, domains, and email servers that are known spammers so that service providers can block off huge chunks of incoming emails offering fake Viagra tablets, suspicious dating sites, viruses and malware.

In 2011, Spamhaus temporarily blacklisted Dutch hosting firm Cyberbunker, which allows customers to use its services for absolutely anything "except child porn and anything related to terrorism."

For its part, Cyberbunker denied responsibility and claimed that Spamhaus was acting as an internet vigilante, although it appears that Cyberlocker's owner may have taken a more direct approach against the watchdog.

Just how a 16-year-old schoolboy got mixed up in all this still remains to be seen. Shifting large amounts of cash through a teenager's bank account isn't the smartest move in the criminal playbook, but it wouldn't be the first time such basic mistakes have led to arrests.

All roaming rate charges paid by mobile phone users when they're travelling inside Canada and the United States will soon get a lot more scrutiny by the CRTC, which is strongly considering possible stiff regulations as a result of several consumer complaints from Canadians.

About than thirty-six telecom companies and wireless carriers had to submit information on the terms and conditions of their roaming rates to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) by Friday of this week.

The CRTC had set the deadline after hearing consumers' concerns that the cost of roaming on another carrier's network could be "unreasonable."

"A decision on whether there is a need to intervene will be made once the CRTC has reviewed the information it has asked the wireless companies to provide," the CRTC's Chris Seidl said in an emailed statement.

The additional information will also help it determine the options available to consumers and the competitiveness of Canada's wireless industry, said Seidl, executive director of telecommunications at the CRTC.

Telecom analyst Eamon Hoey said he expects the CRTC to regulate roaming rates, adding it's the beginning of more regulation for the wireless industry.

"Canadian consumers are more than just a bit annoyed at the rates that they're paying now, not only for basic cell phone service, but also for roaming charges, for additional charges, for so-called contracts, you name it-- the list goes on and on," said Hoey, of Hoey Associates Management Consultants in Toronto.

Hoey also said that Bell, Telus and Rogers didn't do themselves any favors with consumers or the federal government with their publicity blitz against big U.S. carrier Verizon, which had expressed some interest in Canada's wireless market but decided against coming north earlier this month.

Rates aren't low enough, he said, adding that Canada's wireless carriers "pay in pennies per minute" to foreign carriers such as Verizon, AT&T and U.K.-based Vodafone for their roaming agreements.

The changes to Apple's iOS software became apparent as I drove to the headquarters of the company's rival, Google. As I navigated using Apple's mapping app, I noticed one of my favorite attributes was missing: the directions for each next turn presented in green boxes that resemble highway signs.

iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s launch in pictures

iPhones have always been aspirational, high-end products, for which people have been prepared to pay a hefty price in order to join the (not particularly exclusive) club. With Apple's 2013 handset launches that approach has changed slightly: the flagship iPhone 5s occupies the traditional premium-product slot, while the iPhone 5c, reviewed here, comes in for those with less money to spare.

However, pricing is still high compared to the iPhone 5c's many Android-based rivals, with the entry-level 16GB model costing £469 (inc. VAT; £390.83 ex. VAT) SIM-free, rising to £549 (inc. VAT; £457.50 ex. VAT) for the 32GB model. Two-year contract prices from Vodafone, supplier of our review sample, start at £42 a month for a 3G plan with a free handset, or £47 a month for a '4G-ready' plan.

The flagship iPhone 5s costs £549 (inc. VAT) for the 16GB model, £629 for 32GB and £709 for 64GB, while Google's Nexus 4 — perhaps the best-value Android smartphone of the past 12 months — costs £159 (inc. VAT) for the 8GB model and £199 with 16GB of internal storage.

The iPhone 5c may be a budget buy in Apple's terms, but it isn't really one in the broadest sense.

The most obvious innovation in the iPhone 5c is the chassis build, which uses a seamless plastic shell over a steel-reinforced frame. The general design is immediately recognisable as an iPhone, with the telltale home button beneath the screen, rounded corners and Apple logo on the back.

But Apple has decided, for the first time, to produce a handset with a range of pastel-coloured casings in addition to white: you can opt for green, blue, yellow or pink alternatives. There's no black, though. We were sent the pink version, which is unlikely to find its way into many businesses. It's worth noting that the only other handset maker that dares to be as bold with its handset chassis colours is Nokia.

The plastic that's used for the outer shell has a shiny but grip-friendly finish that's not completely scratch resistant. As with previous iPhones, the battery is sealed in behind a non-removable backplate.

The silent-mode switch and volume buttons are on the left edge, while the power switch is on the top. The headset jack is on the bottom edge, alongside the microphone, Lightning connector and speaker. There's a caddy for a nano-SIM on the right edge of the chassis.

The 132g iPhone 5c feels solid and substantial in the hand, yet is quite comfortable to hold — even for people with small hands. It's quite thin at 8.97mm and has a moderate-sized footprint at 59.2mm by 124.4mm.

The Retina display measures just 4 inches across the diagonal, but its 1,136-by-640-pixel resolution makes for a sharp and clear 326-pixel-per-inch (ppi) image. The backlit IPS LCD screen is vibrant and content seems to jump out at you. The iOS 7 feature that sees application icons jiggle about slightly as the phone moves in your hand is a little disconcerting, but it lends a faux 3D appearance to things.

There's nothing new about the screen specification — it's the same as both the iPhone 5s and the now-discontinued iPhone 5. That sets the tone for much of what's on offer here, for the iPhone 5c is essentially a rebadged iPhone 5 in terms of its core specifications.

The iPhone 5c uses the same A6 processor as the iPhone 5. It also sports the same 8-megapixel iSight camera at the back, the same 4-inch Retina screen and the same local- and personal-area wireless connectivity (dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4 respectively).

There are some differences between the iPhone 5 and 5c though. The sensor on the front-facing 1.2-megapixel FaceTime camera has bigger pixels for better low-light performance, for example. The 5c also supports a full set of LTE frequency bands, while the iPhone 5 has limited LTE support. Battery life is better, too, the 5c offering a claimed 10 hours of 3G talk and LTE internet use compared to the 8 hours of each on the iPhone 5. As ever, one person's average usage is another's light use, so it's difficult to be definitive about battery life. Still, if you're a current iPhone 5 user, you should go longer between battery charges with the 5c. During testing, we certainly didn't need to rush off and find mains power during a typical day's use.

The 5c may not be Apple's flagship handset, but its price sets it apart from mid-range offerings from other vendors — and for the money, its feature set is a little bland. Apple has saved its iTouch fingerprint scanner for the top-end iPhone 5s, for example, and we're surprised there's no place for Near Field Communications (NFC) here (or on the 5s for that matter). And while some people dislike the huge array of extras with which Samsung peppers its handsets, we'd have appreciated a little more innovation from Apple on the iPhone 5c.

The main innovation work with this refresh cycle has gone into building iOS 7, of course — but that's not exclusive to the new iPhones. Apple's new mobile OS is downloadable to the iPhone 4 and later, iPad 2 and later, and the 5th-generation iPod Touch — although not all devices get the full gamut of features. This is not the place for a full review of iOS 7, but it's worth noting some key points.

iOS 7 has had a complete visual makeover. Apple follows the chassis colour through to the iOS 7 theme, and the overall design is flatter, cleaner and leaner. Third-party apps are already starting to follow suit. There are plenty of new features, including a swipe-up settings area that you can set to be accessible from the lock screen and which, among its features, lets you use the camera's LED flash as a torch.

A new app switcher appears when you double-tap the home key, letting you see everything that's running and sweep anything upwards off the screen to close it. There are many other changes under the surface that add new features and enhance older ones.

LTE ('4G') support is likely to be a key draw for some users, and if that's the case then it's worth checking your chosen operator's coverage. Our iPhone 5c review sample came from Vodafone, where it's available with Spotify or Sky Sports Mobile TV preinstalled. If you sign up for the handset before the end of October, you get 4GB of 4G data added to your contract for its duration. Vodafone's UK 4G rollout currently only covers London. At the end of September Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield will be added. By the end of the year 4G coverage will also include Bradford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

The iPhone 5c's colourful appearance puts it firmly in the consumer camp, although the relatively sober white version is certainly an option for business users. If you're an existing iPhone user and weren't tempted by the iPhone 5, then the 5c is worth considering as an upgrade. However, iPhone 5 owners should think carefully: there's very little difference between the core specifications of the two handsets, and iOS 7 is just a download away.

In a recent Support Note, Apple said that update addresses a recently-identified vulnerability with the Java web plug-in. For those systems with OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, Apple suggests that customers make sure that they are running the latest version of Java 7, and then update Java through the Java Control Panel app.

According to Intego's Mac Security Blog, the update modifies the XProtect component of OS X, aka File Quarantine, to block outdated versions of the Java browser plug-in — in other words, those vulnerable to the vulnerability.

Apple's best practice continues to suggest that customers enable Java when necessary.