Interface

We've finally got our hands on the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus, so we've taken an in-depth look at Google's latest OS: Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich to its friends.

Google has told us that this is one of the biggest overhauls of the operating systems since it unleashed the Android project three years ago - and there's certainly a lot to plough through.

From enhanced contact menus to improved keyboards and NFC capabilities, even the most ardent Android users will have to spend some time getting used to the new OS - so let's dive in.

Interface

The most noticeable change with Ice Cream Sandwich is the interface - it might follow the same principles as the Android of old, but the way it's used is radically different in a number of ways.

Firstly, Android 4.0 is designed to work without buttons. That's not to say your Galaxy S2's keys won't work when the update happens, but going forward, it's going to be pristine bezels all the way.

Now to navigate around, you're offered three softkeys: Back, Home and Multi-tasking (or Recent Apps). The latter is particularly new for phones, and comes from the Honeycomb UI - basically a set of thumbnails that show recently opened apps.

Here's the new part: swipe sideways to shut down an application, which will greatly help reduce the battery consumption of your phone if there's something silently updating in the background.

The Home and Back buttons are the same as they've always been, but no longer have a 'long press' function attached... so you can't automatically call up the keyboard, for instance.

If you move into something media-ish, such as watching a movie or browsing the web like a pro, these three buttons shrink down to tiny dots, so you've got more of the screen to look at. However, remember what each dot does, as pressing it will take you home/open the recent apps etc and you might not want to.

For Android fans, this presents something of an issue: with the menu button gone, you'll have to hunt around the screen for three vertical dots which have taken its place. However, these can be anywhere, so sometimes you'll get distracted trying to work out how on earth to alter settings.

The multi-tasking pane also seems an odd choice for one of three buttons - it used to be you could access this functionality by long-pressing the home key, and it makes more sense to keep this and then have the multi-tasking slot taken up by a menu key.

However, despite the odd placement, the multi-tasking pane is cool - simply swipe horizontally on any open app to shut it down, in a similar way to the Cards system on webOS - it certainly helps keep open applications under control.

The home screens are once again limited to five, but this time there's no option to get rid of those you don't want. It's not a huge issue to some people, but with the expandable widgets and loads of apps you'll be looking to download, we'd have expected more.

However, we wouldn't worry too much about that - the Nexus S only had a limited number of homescreens, but as soon as the rest of the industry got its hands on the OS there were millions of the things flying around.

There's a plethora of tiny tweaks and changes to the Android OS that we were impressed with, ranging from the Tron-like blue theme that pervades throughout the OS to the ability to unlock the phone simply by using your face.

The latter security option is more novelty than anything else, with Google outlining at the start that it's not meant to be 100% secure.

We also found a few issues with getting it to recognise our face in varying light levels, or even working out which bit of the picture was a face - not the most effective for unlocking your handset, but when it works it's a great party trick.

The notifications bar has been given a functionality overhaul to now include larger information slots - if it's a contact that's sending you a message or a missed call, their contact photo will now appear too, which is a nice touch.

And sometimes you want to get rid of some notifications, but not others - this has been taken care of by allowing you to swipe away the updates about apps and messages you don't care about, making it easy to maintain your info bar.

Settings has also been given a spot in the notifications pane, meaning no matter where you are in the OS you can always duck out and tinker with the phone - this is excellent news for some applications that need GPS or Wi-Fi enabled swiftly.

However, we would have though Google would have copied the likes of Samsung or HTC here and offered one-tap switching to these elements - it works really well on most phones, so we're surprised by its omission.

The other new addition is the dock at the bottom of the screen - this stays on every home screen, and like iOS can be altered to contain the applications you like to tap away at the most.

Folders are more iOS-like too, with users given the ability to drag and drop icons on top of one another from the home screen to create bundles of apps which you can simply rename. Given Apple's ire about Google 'stealing' certain elements of its UI, we can't help but think this will create a little more angst down on Infinite Loop.

Google is clearly also thinking about giving users more ability to enjoy apps than ever before by putting a link to the Market in the top right hand corner of the menu screen, which we really liked as it meant we always knew we could quickly update our app catalogue when needed.

The other big change is widgets have been brought to the fore: you can now look at each one on the menu screen without having to actually select it - this really helps when a new application you've downloaded has an associated widget and you're wondering whether to waste time popping it on the home screen.

Overall, we love what Google has done with the Ice Cream Sandwich UI. It's nothing mind-blowing, but the little touches here and there will add to user delight, and that's what's needed to chip away at those that are dyed-in-the-wool iPhone users.

People

The contacts system has been much improved with Ice Cream Sandwich, with a completely different font (called Roboto, and used throughout Android 4.0) and pleasantly clean blue and white interface to roll through.

The contacts list is the same as it's ever been - insofar as it's a list of people with contact pictures next to their name. But the differences are quite large: for instance, social networking updates from the likes of Google+ and Twitter are available by tapping to open a contact profile then swiping to the left.

There's no Facebook integration as yet, but that's likely to be on the way soon as the social network updates its API. We've reached out to both parties to find out, so we'll let you know when we do.

The layout is lovely though, especially on the larger screen of the Galaxy Nexus making it easy to scroll through all your buddies in one go. The large tab to let you jump the correct letter of your contact's name has gone, but now just sliding your finger along the right hand side of the screen is enough.

The downside to the OS, and one that the likes of HTC will leap upon to improve, is the linking of the contacts together. You have to open the person's profile, tap the menu to edit, then tap the menu again to Join contacts together from other social networks.

It's a really long-winded way of doing things, and one that should be almost automatic - even the suggested contacts once we'd asked to join them together weren't very accurate.

We do like the Google+ integration, as while it's not the most widespread social network around there are some nice tweaks.

For instance, the Groups tab now has automatic links to your Google+ Circles making it easier to connect with the people you care with. However, you've also got a favourites tab to play with, and as there's no way to mass communicate with a Circle from the Contacts tab, it's a little redundant.

Messaging

Google promised to keep updating the keyboard on its new versions of Android, and once again it's come up with a new version of the software - and it's pretty good.

There's not a whole heap of visual changes, bar the predictive suggestions: these have been dropped to just three per word, making it easier to select the word you're after.

Smaller, more subtle vibrations have also been added to each keypress to make it easier to register inputs... we tested this out and it doesn't seem that different to normal haptic feedback, to be honest - but a lot of users are loving it, so we'll give it a crowd-sourced thumbs up.

The accuracy is excellent too on the new keyboard, with even fudge-fingered attempts at writing yielding almost perfect texting. Speech to text is also enhanced, with real time feedback - no longer do you have to wait until you've finished speaking to see what the phone thinks you said, with the cloud-based prediction delivering results as you speak.

It worked well over Wi-Fi, but we'll be interested to note how well it works when it comes to 3G network speeds, as Google hinted it had integrated this functionality thanks to the proliferation of 4G signal in the US.

If, like many, you're looking to compare Google's voice recognition to Siri, we'd say that the former is definitely inferior to Apple's effort - but not by a huge amount.

It seems to struggle more with English accents over US, as our buddy Hank (NB - not his real name but included to make it more authentically YooEssAy) was much more accurate with his voicing than we were.

There's no Universal Inbox to speak of here, but we do love the updated Gmail app - sure, HTML emails still don't render as well as they could, but the overall look and feel is improved substantially. The options are all well laid out at the bottom, and the ease of swiping left and right is highly impressive.

Messaging has always been a decent option on Android, and with Ice Cream Sandwich it's a real step forward.

Internet browser

As with most inbuilt features on Ice Cream Sandwich, there's a change to the internet browser too.

One of the big differences is the change to the tabbed browsing - now you get to see your entire set of open internet pages simply by scrolling vertically through live thumbnails. It's a nice touch - while it doesn't add much when it comes to functionality, it's much easier to jump between windows than before.

Another great notion is the ability to 'Request desktop sites'. This means that while the Android browser might default to the mobile version of some internet websites, some users will need the full content.

Simply tap the relevant option in the menu and you'll get the full flavour instantly, which is very useful for the kind of sites that won't let you jump to the main page easily (BBC iPlayer springs to mind).

A sad fact of UK life is that we a) either never have any 3G coverage when we need it or b) are on such a restrictive data plan that we hate having to spend our KBs unnecessarily.

Google has thought of this with the option to save pages for offline reading. This basically takes a snapshot of the web page without including the hyperlinks, making it easy to read but not navigate through. But then again, if you're offline you can't link out anyway... so it's not a big deal.

We can't fully comment on the speed, as it's partly dependant on hardware how fast things will load; but in tests with the Galaxy S2, which has roughly comparable specs to the Nexus, we noticed some websites popped up much faster.

But on the Galaxy Nexus we love the internet browser. While other devices might not be as responsive, the browser is quick, slick and responds well to the touch. We're annoyed there's no Flash video on board, but let's face it: the death knell has sounded for that platform, and it will still be coming next month.

Camera

The camera on the Android 4.0 system is much upgraded again, after some real leaps forward from the likes of Éclair and Gingerbread.

The settings are the same as before, with the likes of white balance, exposure and Scenes all inbuilt into the OS. The Scene modes are probably the least important of the lot, as only Night Mode really offers up anything in the way of discernible difference.

However, we liked tinkering about with the exposure settings to capture our shots - this yielded some real differences.

The big talking point of the new camera app on the Galaxy Nexus is the zero shutter lag, which is simply ace. It's up there with the iPhone 4S in terms of speed (and probably just beats it, to be honest) and means you can take some cracking shots in the blink of an eye.

However, you do sacrifice auto focus to achieve this - but if it's a well-lit scene, you shouldn't have any issues.

The other new feature is the panorama mode, which does as you'd imagine: helps you capture widescreen shots. The phone will help you by telling you to go faster and slower to capture the picture, but the results can be erratic.

Android 4.0 now has a built in editing tool as well, meaning you can alter the quality of your shots very easily - it might not be a full editing suite, but does come up with some nifty ways to tweak your snaps to improve them before never showing them to anyone ever again.

It should be noted we're trying all this on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which is a very powerful phone. Should the same options be offered on single-core devices with a lot less RAM, we doubt the same shutter speed could be achieved.

Video recorder

The video recording has also been improved thanks to the Ice Cream Sandwich update, with the ability to record in time lapse mode, set the white balance and also add in silly video effects too.

We're impressed with the way the latter works, with the phone able to track your face and keep things like a big nose on the screen at all times. Is it useful? No - but it's very 'Google' in the frippery it brings to the phone.

It's likely some of these features won't make it to the less powerful phones, as they'll require a little more raw power - but we were impressed with the 1080p footage captured on the Nexus camera.

Media

The media capabilities of Ice Cream Sandwich have been much improved in our eyes, with all aspects of the media experience updated to make it that much easier to manoeuvre through your phone.

While some areas could still do with tweaking, we're a world away from the super-basic music app and complete lack of video player on the first Android release.

Music

The music player on Ice Cream Sandwich has been completely overhauled to make it more in keeping with the super-blue theme that pervades throughout the OS.

Once opened, you're presented with a playlist of recent songs and albums you've listened to, which instantly makes you feel like the music player is more personalised.

Swiping left and right will get you to Albums, Artists and Songs - although we'd prefer the option to choose the order of these, as many people prefer to jump straight to the songs if they're hankering for a spot of Girls Al... erm, Michael Bub.... erm.... oh sod it. We have awful taste in music.

Google has chucked in a little search icon at the bottom of the app too, along with the 'Now Playing' bar. This makes it simple to jump to a song or artist you've got on your mind.

The actual music player itself isn't much to write home about, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We're talking big album art, and play/skip buttons. Press the little up arrow and you can like/dislike the song or shuffle and repeat songs.

We're not sure what liking a song really does, but we hope it improves the Shuffle aspect.

Video

The video portal has taken on a much larger significance from Google since it unveiled its movie download service, and as such your personal collection will be boosted too.

The new red-themed offering sees you taken to a dual-tabbed arena: one the left side, all the videos you've rented from Android Market, and the right all your personal videos.

The big boost here is the clear and easy to use thumbnails with description of each vid; if you've ever used an HTC phone or read our reviews of one, you'll know of our ire at the lack of any kind of signpost as to which video is which.

Whether this system on offer here will continue when manufacturers get all skin-happy on the OS, we don't know - but it at least bodes well.

The video player is still disappointingly basic though, with only a slider bad and pause button to mess around with. We're still gobsmacked Google hasn't bought one of the clever apps already on the market (for instance, MVideoPlayer) and offered that as a free premium app to download.

We get that simplicity is key for a lot of people, but we really would love a bookmarking system, or the ability to change the screen brightness in the app. If Google now does this - you heard it here first, people.

Books

The Books app is pre-installed in the Galaxy Nexus, and is set to be a staple feature of the Android 4.0 OS too.

It's one of the better e-reading experiences on a mobile phone no matter what the size of the screen - the page turning animations lend a very book-esque experience that many will enjoy.

It's a lot like the Kindle app to be honest, although the scroller along the bottom of the application will alert you to the different chapters you're bouncing through, making it easier to find the page you're looking for.

There's also a neat 'view original pages' feature for older books, where the original edition is scanned in to be viewed as the first eyes would have done. It's a cool feature, but one we turned off pretty quickly - we want to be able to read a book properly.

The interesting thing is these books are actually stored in the cloud, so each will load the first time you start reading... although the option to make them available offline makes a lot more sense.

Given books don't take up much space, we're more than happy to make sure everything is cached... we don't want to be left hanging on the Underground.

Verdict

We'll jump right out and say it: Ice Cream Sandwich is the step forward Android has been crying out for. It's slicker, faster and more intuitive than ever before, and Google should be applauded for improving an already decent system.

Google has offered up data management too - you'll be able to set a limit to how much data the phone uses, with warnings and updates on which apps are the most byte-hungry. This is the sort of thinking smartphone users will love.

We liked

The overall look and feel of Android has been streamlined, and that's a real plus in our eyes. Google's OS might be a world-conqueror right now, but that doesn't mean people always know how to use it in the same way they might an iPhone.

Things like contact pictures in the notifications bar, the lack of hardware buttons and moving settings to always be accessible are the sort of things many will love, plopping things where you intuitively expect them to be.

The internet browser's improvements to include desktop sites and offline reading are welcome too - anything that gives the user extra control is a good thing in our opinion.

We disliked

One of our larger gripes with Ice Cream Sandwich is, at times, the over-simplicity. Things like the video player being nothing more than a slider and play button are fine, but we expect to be able to do more with the app as we see fit.

There's also the issue of how the OS will work on less-powerful devices - will the fancy animations and services be as palatable on something that costs less than £100?

The other gripes are truly minor: support for file types, no place for Google Wallet as yet, too few home screens and no way to see them all at once.

These are things that will be fixed with updates or manufacturers simply improving on the OS in the months to come.

Verdict

Google needed to make sure it kept its OS refreshed and current, and Ice Cream Sandwich ticks that box in so many ways.

It's worth remembering that this is the foundation for manufacturers to go and build on - there's a lot more to come in the next 12 months.

However, if this is the platform Google will be using on all Motorola devices when the acquisition is complete then it's a good enough OS in its own right.

In terms of how good you'll think Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich is, it all boils down to personal choice. We're excited to see how manufacturers will customise it and extol the virtues to improve media or the home networking options, but others will simply be huge fans of the simplicity - our score is a mixture of the tools Google has offered up and the base level of performance on show.

But make no mistake - Ice Cream Sandwich is the most accessible and easy-to-learn OS from Google, and that's going to be key in the wars against Apple and Microsoft.

Overview

Update: read our Nokia Lumia 800 review.

With Android's Ice Cream Sandwich and the iPhone 5 on the way, Windows Phone 7 needs an update to fill in the missing pieces. The Windows Phone 7.5 'Mango' refresh brings with it a comprehensive list of fixes and features, but how sweet is it in action?

The big advantage of Windows' mobile operating system is the clean, clear, but far from antiseptic Metro interface, which is so good that Microsoft has taken it to both Windows 8 and Xbox 360. Microsoft hasn't messed with success here – Windows Phone 7.5 Mango has the same signature look as its predecessor, only better.

The live tiles are livelier, and you can pin not just apps but specific features within apps to the Start screen (such as the Wi-Fi control, although developers have to allow this).

You can also pin groups of people, who you can then text or track on Twitter and Facebook all at once; folders from email; artists; albums; or the new SmartDJ playlists. Without changing the way the Start screen works, Microsoft has made it more useful and more pliant for personalisation.

You no longer have to cram all your favourite apps on to it to find them either. Once you have more than 45 apps, letters of the alphabet show up to separate the list. Tap any letter to open an alphabetised grid that makes it fast to find an app without you having to spend time arranging them logically.

It's the same principle as the original interface, just made to work better – and in general that's what you get throughout Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.

Multitasking

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango has multitasking capabilities, but what you get from these depends on the apps you run. Some apps – music players, for instance – get to run in the background, but mostly what you get is the same fast-task switching as before, with the addition of an app picker view so you can choose what you want to go back to.

If an app hasn't been updated to suit multitasking, it resumes from its frozen state just about as quickly as before. But apps that have been rewritten to suit the functionality resume more quickly, and they can also get Windows Phone 7.5 to run background agents for them to perform updates and the like.

It's similar to the way that Live Tiles work and a good compromise between making it easier to work with multiple apps and not undermining battery life. A handful of apps, including Evernote, have already been updated to run in the background, and you can go back to working with them as fast as if you never switched away.

Once you have a lot of apps that can run in the background, the new battery saver option comes in handy. When your battery gets low, this turns off Wi-Fi, push email and background apps. We found we could set it to turn on automatically and squeeze extra life out of the phone without ever really noticing that any service was getting turned off.

Social networking

The Twitter integration that was sorely missing in Windows Phone 7 arrives in 7.5 Mango along with LinkedIn, and the Facebook implementation is far better.

There's still one feature missing, though: there's no built-in way to do direct messages, even though there's an obvious place to put them.

Add a Twitter account and replies and mentions show up in the notification pane for the Me tile, which is also where you post updates to as many of your linked social networks as you want. So you tap on your own photo to say things or see what people are saying to you, which makes sense. Then you go to the People hub to see what your friends are saying and to reply.

This works very well. Updates that are on both Twitter and Facebook only show up once and you can swipe between replies on both services. You can also retrieve a day or so of updates, depending on how chatty your friends are, and quickly filter this to show just one social network or just updates from friends in your address book.

Alternatively, you can switch over to a group you've made to track just your family or specific friends, rather than every school chum you're Facebook friends with.

It's worth taking a few minutes to set up groups, because they turn social networks from a font of random information into an easy way to stay in touch with whatever service your friends use (unless, of course it's Google Plus).

You can also chat with Facebook friends just like you were sending text messages. In fact, you can reply to a text message with a Facebook message and vice versa, and the whole conversation shows up in the same place.

This also applies Facebook, Windows Live Messenger or any of the linked services such as AOL and Yahoo.

This would be the ideal place to put Twitter direct messages and we think Microsoft has missed a trick here.

Other exchanges, such as emails, phone calls and meetings, show up in the history pane for each contact you have, so you can follow conversations as they jump across different services.

And you can still filter out your address book, so that it's not swamped by your Facebook friends.

Snap and share

Tweets aren't the only thing you can share more easily with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Take a snap with the camera and you can share your photos via Facebook, Twitter (by dropping them onto a SkyDrive page), email or certain apps.

You can also share videos on SkyDrive and Facebook, but not YouTube, and if you record a long clip it will get transcoded to upload more quickly.

What's more, the camera now saves its settings instead of throwing them away every time you leave the interface, and it has a nifty on-screen shutter button that you touch to focus and take a shot.

There's also an Autofix option that makes some basic adjustments, which improved about half of our photographs.

From this...

To this...

This isn't the cleverest camera interface we've seen, but it's far more functional than before, and third-party apps can now plug in and make it shine.

Internet Explorer 9 browser and real Office

IE9 on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is a real browser that uses the same code as IE9 on Windows 7, although it still lacks the ability to run plug-ins such as Flash. It does, however, have the same super-fast Chakra JavaScript engine.

This means you can run web apps such as Google Docs, the full TechRadar site, your mobile banking site and almost any other page online.

You can choose whether the browser identifies itself as operating from a mobile to retrieve smaller, phone-optimised pages or a desktop browser for the full version of sites, but you rarely have to worry about a page not working unless it's specifically written for Safari or Chrome.

The browser interface has changed slightly to show you more of the page on screen, which means the tabs are now hidden on the swipe-up menu (oddly, the default is for links from apps to reuse the current tab rather than opening in their own new tab).

However, there's now an address bar in landscape mode, which grants a popular Windows Phone 7 request. These are small improvements, though – the big news here is the full HTML5 browser.

If you buy a Windows Phone 7 device, Bing may well be your browser of choice. If your operator has a deal with Yahoo instead, you can thankfully now change the default browser search back to Bing. Unsurprisingly, you can't opt for Google, though.

Email, calendar and SkyDrive

The email client adds both key business features for document security and a threaded view of email that neatly shows you the whole of a conversation without making the interface cluttered or confusing. The conversation view also includes your replies, even if you've filed some messages away in other folders.

You can also choose whether to have separate inboxes for each email service you use pinned as separate tiles on the Start screen, or have a unified inbox for some or all of your accounts.

You can pin key folders instead of whole accounts too, so you can file comments to your blog away neatly, but still know exactly when you have new messages in that folder.

And although it's not new, the way you can swipe across the screen to see unread or flagged messages is still far more convenient than just about any other smartphone email view.

Calendar

The calendar now shows multiple calendars from Windows Live or Exchange, plus your Facebook calendar, complete with events you've been invited to, but haven't yet accepted.

And if you use a service such as Tripit, which puts travel plans into its own online calendar, or you need to see calendars for the rest of your family, you can also get the appointments on your phone.

There's still no week view, although Agenda works well, but it's become much faster to add an appointment in Windows Phone 7.5, because you can just tap on the right time in Day view and type in the details.

Office and Skydrive

The Office and SkyDrive tools are much easier to use now, and the fantastically handy OneNote notes are the first thing you see in the Office hub, followed by recent documents and templates.

There's a new OneNote checkbox list you can use to make a to-do list that you can tick off as you work through it – assuming you're not using the To Do pane in the calendar to work with tasks and to-do items from Exchange and Windows Live instead.

Word and PowerPoint get a few new features, including templates, and Excel now adds up multiple cells when you select them the way it does on a PC, which is a very handy shortcut.

Office 365 integration is very neat too – just typing in your email address and password sets up email, calendar, contacts and a link to SharePoint in the Office hub. But you can also explore SkyDrive and documents on your phone, all in the same consistent interface. Again, this is tidying up something that was useful in Windows Phone 7, but just wasn't done well enough to be appealing.

Incidentally, although Microsoft suggested the autocorrect you get across Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is only for US phones, it worked just fine in every app that we tried that uses the full keyboard after the UK upgrade.

It doesn't seem to learn your specific corrections as fast as the original version, but if you accidentally hit 'b' or 'n' between two words instead of the space bar, it now corrects that, and it's still fantastic at turning gibberish offset keystrokes into the word you were trying to type. This is the touch keyboard for people who can't use touch keyboards.

Speak, listen, search

Voice search in Windows Phone 7 was restricted to US phones. Now the UK and a couple of other countries also let you search Bing and Bing Maps by talking to your phone.

What's more, you can dictate text and Facebook messages as if they were texts, and have replies read to you.

The readback works very well unless you're somewhere noisy – like walking down the street – but it's great in the car, where it's a quiet environment. That's the case even if you're playing music on the phone, since it gets paused automatically when messages arrive.

Bing search and maps

Voice search isn't the only new option in Bing. The rather pointless News results have been replaced by Images.

You can use the Local Scout to look for places nearby to shop and eat.

As usual, the database is a little better in the US, but it does find local venues in London. Annoyingly, the UK doesn't get the best new feature in Bing Maps, though: reading directions aloud as you walk or drive.

We're not so keen on the way the view is permanently split between the map and directions instead of being able to zoom in on one or the other either.

There's an intriguing new option called Bing Vision, which is similar to Google Goggles. With it, you can photograph text, have it OCRed in the cloud word by word, pick the words you want by tapping on screen and either search on the text or translate it into another language.

This works well on clearly printed text or even text on screen, but not so well on a blurry printed receipt. It also recognises QR codes and Microsoft Tags, plus bar codes for US books, DVDs and CDs.

There's also a Shazam-style search for recognising music that's playing and buying it from Zune Marketplace.

The Marketplace is finally easier to search, with results divided between music, games and apps, so that you can actually find what you're looking for.

You can find apps on the new Web Marketplace and send them directly to your phone as well.

On our test handset, what we got was a Hotmail message with a link that downloaded and installed apps (very like BlackBerry AppWorld). On some other phones we've seen, hidden text messages trigger the install directly. Either way, it's convenient.

Installing apps and games is also much clearer too. Click Install and you see a list of your existing apps with the icon for the app you're downloading and a progress bar, so you're not left wondering where the app will end up.

Music with Zune HD

Windows Phone 7 missed out on some of the best features of the Zune HD. With Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, you can finally make your own playlists.

You can also get a Smart DJ mix of music on your device that should go well together, or even music from the whole of Marketplace if you have a Zune Pass.

Unlike Google Music, this actually provides tracks you want to listen to together rather than strange and jarring transitions, especially if you're streaming tracks from the huge choice on Zune.

The player controls are also a little larger and easier to see (although possibly not as elegant), and they show up on the lock screen as well.

For video, assuming the file is either local or a format that can be cached, you're provided with a progress bar to scrub through the media as well.

The other big missing feature of Windows Phone 7 was custom ringtones. The Mango update means you can now add these through the Zune software, with unprotected tracks of less than 40 seconds that have the ringtone genre assigned to them. It's a clunky mechanism, but we expect plenty of apps to appear making this painless.

Verdict

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is definitely an upgrade for the mobile operating system. The 500 new features don't make the system cluttered or confusing, despite adding improvements, fixes and new features in almost every area. Instead they fit in with the existing user experience and enhance it.

This means the operating system has the same elegant and engaging user interface as ever, with colourful tiles and plenty of white space – but it now also has key features that were previously missing to help it match the current versions of iOS and Android. Some aspects even leapfrog other platforms.

It runs on all existing Windows Phone 7 handsets too. While newer phones have updated Snapdragon 8x55 or 7x30 processors, original handsets such as the HTC HD7 didn't feel slow or sluggish at all under the updated operating system, even with many large web pages loaded.

In fact, older models felt faster and more responsive than when running the original Windows Phone 7, although fast task switching and background apps certainly help with that.

Even newer phones still have single- rather than dual-core processors to keep battery lives reasonable, but we didn't ever feel that the devices were slowed down for lack of an extra core.

In short, just having a better hardware spec doesn't make something a better phone. What Windows Phone 7.5 does is take really good advantage of the hardware you have.

We liked

Full HTML5 browsing with IE9 is an excellent new addition, as is the great Twitter integration, including sharing and groups to organise updates from friends.

Multitasking means you can switch between a few current apps quickly.

Voice recognition and handy new ways to search are finally available for UK users as well as US Windows Phone users.

We disliked

Internet connection sharing is at the whim of the mobile phone operator, and only for new phones.

The otherwise excellent Twitter integration doesn't include direct messages.

Apps need to be written specifically to take full advantage of multitasking.

There's no Flash support (although YouTube videos play without a separate player, they're still full screen).

Some features – text to speech directions, indoor maps, traffic – are still US only. Others – hyperlinked addresses and email – work better for US addresses and numbers than for UK ones.

Final verdict

Windows Phone 7.5 is supremely usable, surprisingly powerful and delivers the experience Microsoft has been promising, with only a few rough edges left.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Introduction

This eighth release of OS X brings us around 250 new features, many of which are inspired by Apple's mobile-device operating system, iOS.

Unlike previous versions of Mac OS, it isn't delivered on a disc (though Lion flash drives are due in August, for £55).

Instead, it's purchased, downloaded and installed from the Mac App Store. The App Store was introduced with OS X 10.6.6, so if you're running Leopard or earlier on a Mac that's capable of running Lion, you must install Snow Leopard before upgrading to the latest version of the operating system.

But as Snow Leopard only cost £25 and Lion is a penny shy of £21, their combined price is less than half the usual going rate for a Mac OS.

NEW LOOK: Mission Control and Launchpad are two of Lion's key features

To run Lion, you must have an Intel Mac with a Core 2 Duo, Core-i series or Xeon processor. The new operating system won't run on PowerPC Macs, or very early Intel models with Core Duo chips. You also need 2GB of RAM, where its predecessor only demanded 1GB.

Thankfully, upgrading your computer's memory is a fairly painless task, and as long as you buy from a third-party vendor instead of Apple, it's relatively inexpensive too.

Lion drops support for Rosetta, the dynamic translator used to run applications written for PowerPC processors on Intel machines. This means a Mac running Lion can't run PowerPC applications, so before you install, check whether any of your must-have apps are PPC.

INTEL ONLY: Lion is the eighth release of OS X, and the second that only runs on Intel Macs

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Installation

Installing Lion is incredibly easy. You just open the Mac App Store, buy the software and download it. The installer is downloaded to your Applications folder and added to the Dock. It runs automatically, but the installer disappears after it has run, so if you want to keep hold of it to upgrade other Macs or create a boot disc, quit the installer and copy it to an external drive before running.

The downloaded installer is around 3.76GB, which is about the same as a hi-def movie from iTunes. After buying it once, you can install it on all your Macs, so the £21 you paid for the operating system is an even bigger bargain.

INSTALL: After downloading the Lion installer appears in your Applications folder

Installing Lion usually takes between ten minutes to half an hour, depending on your Mac. The first thing it does after restarting using the new operating system is to index your Mac for Spotlight, which usually takes longer than the install.

This is done in the background and is hardly a problem. Some applications take longer to open the first time you run them in Lion too, most notably Mail, which has to reindex your emails to take advantage of the app's new features. Again, this is hardly problematic, but it's best not to switch to Lion if you've something urgent to do straight afterwards.

Overall, installing Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is a speedy and straightforward task requiring very little user intervention. There's very little that can go wrong here, but make sure you clone your hard drive beforehand just in case.

EASY PEASY: Installing OS X 10.7 Lion is a relatively painless task

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: The Finder

Like all new versions of OS X, Lion brings a host of minor cosmetic tweaks, some of which are proving more popular than others. The gumdrop buttons in the top-left corner of a window are now smaller and less intense.

The Finder window's side bar icons have lost their colour, and the font used to name them is larger. Your boot drive doesn't appear in the Devices section, but you can change this in the Finder preferences, under the Side Bar tab.

By default, new Finder windows open in a new Side Bar option, All My Files. This arranges your personal files in Cover Flow-like rows that can be scrolled and viewed, and ordered according to criteria such as date, kind, size and name.

Unfortunately, it only shows files you keep inside your Home folder. If the majority of your data is stored outside your boot drive, this feature is likely to be of limited use. We hope Apple makes it more comprehensive in time, especially considering how many Mac users have an SSD for a boot drive and an HDD for data.

The Sidebar search folders based on kind and when a document was last opened are gone, but you can recreate them if you wish.

COULD DO BETTER: The All My Files feature isn't as useful as it could be

You can now expand and contract windows from any side or corner, not just the bottom-right. Constraining with the Alt key also resizes from the opposite edge, and Shift-Alt preserves the aspect ratio as it resizes from all four sides. Less welcome is the removal of the pill-shaped button in the top-right corner, which previously minimised the window.

One of Lion's most controversial changes is its scrolling behaviour. Previously, scrolling controlled the window's scroll bar pellet, so scrolling up moved the pellet upwards, and the window's contents downwards. This has been reversed in Lion; scrolling directly interacts with the window's contents, so scrolling up moves the page up, like in iOS.

While it's difficult to get used to at first (and can be changed using the Mouse or Trackpad system preferences), it's actually more logical. Find a friend or relative who's never used a Mac before and get them to scroll a window; chances are they'll instinctively go for the Lion method.

The first time you open a Java application, you find Lion doesn't provide a Java runtime by default. Go to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421 to download and install it.

UP OR DOWN: Vertical scrolling behaviour is reversed in Lion, but you can change it back if you wish

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Gestures and full-screen

With Lion, Gestures are a much more integral part of the operating system. So much so that desktop users should consider buying a Magic Trackpad to get the most out of the new OS.

Activating new features like Mission Control and Launchpad using Gestures is much quicker and easier than clicking on their Dock icons, and new Taps, Pinches and Swipes give you a much greater degree of control over your working environment. What was previously a useful asset for notebook users is now such a fundamental part of the Mac experience that people who don't use a trackpad are missing out.

That's not to say you can't use Lion with a Magic Mouse, or even an ordinary, third-party mouse. But after a few weeks with a Magic Trackpad, going back to a mouse feels like stepping out of a sports car and into a family saloon.

Like the new scrolling behaviour, Gestures can take a little getting used to. You might trigger multi-fingered gestures accidentally through resting your fingers on the trackpad while trying to move the pointer, for example, or move through your Safari browsing history when you were trying to scroll. But they soon become instinctive, and a real asset to the way you interact with your Mac.

CHANGE TOUCH: You can configure your gestures in the Trackpad system preferences, and watch short animations showing them in action

While applications with full-screen modes have been around for years, Lion brings the feature natively to OS X, standardising their behaviour. Apps written to take advantage of Lion's Full Screen feature have an icon in the top-right corner of the window.

With a single click they fill the entire screen, cutting out borders and distractions. This is especially useful when using small-screen notebooks. Even the menu bar at the top of the screen (which offers a button to exit full-screen mode) only appears when you drag your pointer to it.

You can have more than one application open in this way, using a three-fingered swipe to navigate between full-screen apps, your desktop and the Dashboard.

Naturally, Apple's native OS X apps are already full-screen compatible, and the API has been made available to developers, so third-party software should soon make use of this excellent feature.

Unfortunately, Lion's Full Screen feature is currently single-display only. If you have a two-monitor set-up and go full-screen on your main display, the second screen is covered with the grey linen wallpaper used in several places in Lion OS (for example, for the background in Mission Control).

You could argue this is all part of the no-distractions philosophy that underpins the Full Screen feature, but surely it should be optional? We hope it becomes so with the first Lion update.

COMPLETE VIEW: Full Screen does away with distractions, but is incompatible with multiple monitors

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Mission Control

Mission Control unifies Snow Leopard's Exposé, Spaces and Dashboard functions into a single feature. And it's magnificent. Accessed through a function key, a Dock icon or (best of all) a simple three-fingered gesture, Mission Control gives a birds-eye view of everything that's running on your Mac.

Open windows are grouped according to application, so you can quickly and easily navigate to the one you're looking for. Across the top of the screen, your Dashboard, Full Screen applications and Spaces desktops are shown. In effect, the top section of the screen replicates Snow Leopard's Spaces function and the lower half becomes Exposé.

And integrating them on a single screen enhances both. If your desktop is getting cluttered, it's really easy to open Mission Control, add a second desktop and drag windows from your main work area to the secondary one.

Individual Exposé functions such as Application Windows and Show Desktop are still available, and can be accessed through the function keys as before, or through Gestures. You can configure the keys through the Mission Control preference pane, and the Gestures through the Trackpad pane, but the default settings are more than comfortable.

BRINGING IT TOGETHER: Mission Control is a useful and comprehensive fusion of Spaces and Exposé

Our only criticism of Mission Control is its aesthetics. It's far from attractive, and definitely not up to Apple's usual design standards. Perhaps the means for adding a second desktop could be clearer too; you hover over the right-hand side of the Spaces row until a plus sign appears. If you didn't know, you would never guess. Even so, Mission Control is an exciting addition to OS X, and significantly simplifies the way you interact with your Mac.

The Mac App Store was introduced with OS X 10.6.6, but is now built into Lion, and brings a handful of new features. In-app purchases are now catered for, as are delta updates, whereby when updating an application bought from the Mac App Store, only the sections that have changed are downloaded.

Push notifications allow developers to bring you important information about their app, even when it's not currently open on your machine. For security, Lion also greatly enhances OS X's sandboxing function, something Mac App Store downloads will soon be required to use.

APP IT UP: Lion's Mac App Store offers new features

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Launchpad and resume

A feature that's clearly made its way to OS X from iOS is Launchpad. A convenient and versatile application launcher, Launchpad is activated from the Dock or with a gesture and behaves very similar to iOS's home screen. Applications bought from the App Store or kept in your Applications folder are present automatically, and programs kept elsewhere can be added by dragging them onto the Launchpad Dock icon.

Launchpad can display 40 app icons per page, and like iOS's home screen, you can swipe between pages. Applications can be reordered and moved from page to page, and also grouped into folders by dragging one icon onto another. A folder can contain up to 32 applications, and is automatically named according to their type, though you can change the suggested title if you wish.

IOSESQUE: Lion's Launchpad feature is instantly familiar to anyone who has used iOS

Of all the major features in Lion, Launchpad seems to have generated the least enthusiasm among long-time Mac users.

Yet while it's clearly designed to make life easier for those who bought their first Mac because they liked iOS, it could prove more useful than you expect over time. After you've used it for a while, and the apps you need most often but not quite often enough to keep in the Dock are easily accessible on the front page, it might become a useful alternative to typing the name of the app in the Spotlight field for quick access.

Some users have found a bug where applications can display incorrect icons in Launchpad. We hope this is fixed soon.

Resume (as in 'pick up where you left off', not 'résumé', the American term for a CV) is arguably the most useful addition to Lion. If you quit a Resume-compatible application, when you reopen, it launches in exactly the same state as it was in when you closed it. Windows are reopened, palettes and panes restored and even highlighted text and cursor positions are kept just as they were before. Safari tabs and web pages are also restored, as long as you weren't using its Private Browsing feature.

The feature also works when you shut down or restart your Mac. A new option in the confirmation pop-up asks if you want to reopen windows when you log back in. If you leave this checked (as it is by default), Lion takes a snapshot of your system as it shuts down, restarting in exactly the same state it was in when you closed it.

Applications are relaunched, windows reopened and documents arranged exactly as they were when you shut down. This is especially useful if you want to install an application or upgrade the system software while you're working on something else; there's no longer any need to put off restarting until you've finished what you're doing.

It's important to note that not every Mac application currently takes advantage of Resume. If you use Google Chrome as your main browser, for example, don't expect your currently-open web pages to return after a quit and restart. We hope third-party developers aren't slow to take advantage of this extremely useful feature, but until they do, be careful when shutting down or restarting; don't simply assume everything will reappear.

START AGAIN: Leave this box checked to restart using Resume

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Versions and recovery

There's nothing worse than losing work to a crash or application freeze when you haven't saved for a while. You've only got yourself to blame, of course, but that just makes it even more galling. With Auto Save, tapping CMD-S every couple of minutes might become a thing of the past. Applications that have this feature are saved automatically, during pauses in your work or every five minutes if you don't take a break. To cut down on wasted disk space, Auto Save preserves changes rather than creating additional copies of the entire document, and does so wholly in the background, so there's no spinning beach ball or progress bar.

Apps designed to take advantage of Lion's Auto Save feature include Preview, TextEdit and Apple's iWork suite. Documents created using one of these apps have a pull-down menu for a title, giving you the chance to lock it against further automatic saves, duplicate it and keep the original as a template, revert to the last saved version to undo changes, or browse the document's states saved in another of Lion's key feature, Versions.

SAVE IT: In apps that take advantage of Auto Save, the title bar becomes a menu

Lion's new Versions feature creates a history of your document as you work on it. A new version is recorded every hour, whenever you make a significant change and when you email, duplicate, lock or revert it using the Auto Save pull-down menu. You can also create a new Version manually using CMD-S; it seems this trusty old keyboard command still has its uses.

Selecting Browse All Versions from the title menu sets the current document against its previous versions in a Time Machine-like interface. You can revert to an older version if you wish to abandon changes made since, or copy and paste pictures and text; just the thing if you've accidentally cut something you wish you'd retained.

Auto Save and Versions won't reach their full potential until third-party developers include these new features in their own applications, but given their huge potential for making life easier and more productive, they should be quick to do so.

Previously, if your Mac suffers a crash from which it can't recover, you had to boot from your operating system disc and restart. Obviously, this is impossible in Lion – as the new OS is downloaded from the Mac App Store, there is no operating system disc.

Thankfully, Apple has thought of that. Lion reserves a small portion (about the size of a CD) of your boot drive as a recovery partition. If you can't start your Mac using your usual account, power up holding CMD-R to boot straight into it, or hold ALT and select it from the list of bootable drives. Booting in the recovery partition lets you reinstall Lion, fix a damaged drive using Disk Utility, check email or Apple's support site in Safari or restore from a Time Machine backup.

While the lack of a boot disc makes many users nervous, restarting from a recovery partition is certainly simpler than using an OS disc.

LOOK BACK: Versions uses a Time Machine-like interface

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: AirDrop and Mail

Another new feature appearing in Lion's Finder window Side Bar is AirDrop, a handy but limited means of sharing files between Wi-Fi-enabled Macs. Click on AirDrop and your Finder window turns into a radar-like image, with your own Mac at the foot of the window.

Any Macs within a ten-metre range that also have an AirDrop window open are also shown. To transfer a file to another Mac, you just drag and drop it onto its image in your AirDrop window. There's no setting up or configuring to be done, and as transfer is peer-to-peer, you don't even need to be on the same Wi-Fi network. It really is that simple.

Sharing with AirDrop is secure. After dragging a file onto another Mac's icon, you're asked to confirm you want to send it. The receiver can accept or decline – you can't drop files onto another person's Mac without permission. Transfer is encrypted, and neither party ever sees the files on the other's hard drive.

But although secure and convenient, AirDrop is also very limited. It can only transfer files between Macs running Lion; it's not available for earlier versions of Mac OS, and there's no Windows or Linux version for PCs. It's a useful feature if you regularly transfer small files between up-to-date Macs, but if you're in a mixed Mac and PC environment, or not every nearby Mac has been upgraded to Lion, you'd better not throw away that USB stick just yet.

TRANSFERS: AirDrop is a secure and convenient means of transferring files between Macs, but only if they're both running Lion

OS X's bundled email client has undergone some radical changes. A new widescreen view gives you a full-height window to view your mail, with received messages listed and previewed in a column on the left. Mailboxes and other folders aren't shown by default, but can be opened in another column at the push of a button. A favourites bar gives access to commonly-used folders, and you can customise it by adding new ones.

Messages can be flagged in seven different colours now, not just red, and the new Conversation feature threads on-going exchanges in chronological order, making them easier to follow. The search engine has had a radical rebuild, making it much easier to find what you're looking for. Mail is now compatible with Microsoft Exchange 2010 too.

Like Finder and iTunes, the button icons in Mail have gone stylishly monochrome, sometimes to the detriment of clarity. How, for example, are you supposed to know that a thumbs-down image means junk mail, or a square icon that looks like a washboard gives you a new note? When you first start using the revamped app, you might have to hover your mouse pointer over the buttons just to see what they do.

Perhaps it's strange that as the rest of Mac OS X becomes more tailored to the novice user, Mail gets more complicated and less instinctive. But Lion's email client is undoubtedly more capable than its predecessor, even if it isn't always as intuitive.

NEW MAIL: The new release of Apple Mail is more powerful, but less intuitive

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Teething troubles

The switch-over to Lion has been relatively free of problems, but a few minor maladies are worth mentioning.

Fans of Apple's elegant but limited Front Row application will be disappointed to find it's been removed in Lion. We can't understand why. It's quite capable of running under the new operating system. So much so, in fact, that a Mac user has taken Front Row and its associated components from Snow Leopard and bundled it into an installer. Entitled Front Row Enabler, you can download it if you wish. It worked for us, but install it at your own risk.

Something that won't be returning to Lion is Rosetta, Apple's dynamic translator used to run applications written for the older PowerPC architecture on Macs with Intel processors.

To see if you're still running PowerPC apps, open the System Profiler found in Applications > Utilities, click on Applications and sort them according to Kind. If you're planning to upgrade to Lion, PowerPC applications must be upgraded or abandoned.

Some people who use a NAS drive for Time Machine backups find it no longer works after moving to Lion. This is apparently because Apple used a new version of Netatalk that's incompatible with the protocols used by most third-party network-attached storage devices. If you're in this position, all you can do is check the support site for your NAS drive and wait for an update.

Finally, the new-look iCal and Address Book applications have not been well received. In yet another nod to iOS, they've been made to look like their real-world counterparts, with iCal sporting a stitched leather finish and a tear where the previous month's calendar was ripped away, and Address Book looking like a physical volume, with a bookmark ribbon used to switch from viewing groups on the left page and contacts on the right, to contacts on the left and individual contact cards on the right. It's totally unnecessary.

NASTY: Do digital productivity applications really need a real-world metaphor in 2011?

In 2011, people are used to using digital calendars and address books – we no longer need a real-world metaphor to remind us what we're doing. And in Address Book's case, the aesthetics actually detract from its usability, with Snow Leopard's handy three-column view abandoned to make way for two facing pages. We hope Apple addresses this very soon.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Verdict

The eighth release of OS X takes features developed for iOS and brings them to the Mac, and adds some excellent enhancements of its own. Scrolling now follows iOS protocols, with the user interacting directly with the window's contents instead of moving the window itself, and compatible applications can be viewed in Full Screen, with no distractions in your peripheral vision.

A trio of related features make saving and restarting a simple task. Auto Save means you should never lose work to a crash again, Versions lets you switch back to or take material from an earlier version of a document and Resume means you can close an application or even your whole system and have it reopen in the same state it was in before it closed. Again, these features require compatible applications.

We liked

£21 for a new operating system is an incredible bargain, especially considering you can install it on all your Macs; no family licences here. The Recovery Partition is an excellent idea, and is certainly handier than having to find your install disc, restarting with the mouse button down to eject the optical disc drive and then again to boot from the DVD instead of your hard drive.

OS X's new Gestures are extremely useful. They take a while to learn, but after a few days with Lion, they transform the way you interact with your Mac. You might well want to switch to a Magic Trackpad to make sure you get the most out of them. Finally, fusing Spaces, Dashboard and ExposÈ into Mission Control is a masterstroke, which again makes it much easier to interact with your Mac.

We disliked

Switching back to a real-world metaphor for iCal and Address Book seems a really odd decision. It might make sense on an iOS device, where you hold it in your hand like a paper calendar or address book, but there's no need for it on a Mac. Address Book is actually less usable now, with a useful three-column interface giving way to a two-page view.

We're not convinced that dropping the colour from in-app icons was a good idea either. There were many complaints when iTunes did it a few months ago, and now Finder's monochrome sidebars are equally poorly received. In Mail especially, the colourless icons are unclear. A button showing a yellow page, for example, was clearly there to produce a new note, but robbed of its colour, we had to hover over it with our mouse pointer until a pop-up told us what it did.

Verdict

Lion is a significant step forward for Mac OS X, but it's not without its problems. Features such as Mission Control, Resume, Auto Save and Versions will prove incredibly useful over time. Launchpad may prove its worth, but even if it remains unused, it's not in the way. Many Mac owners will miss Rosetta, but its demise was inevitable. Not so Front Row, which didn't need to be dropped at all. Maybe Apple will put it in the App Store as a free download.

Despite a few teething troubles (most notably breaking third-party NAS compatibility and a few questionable interface decisions), Lion is definitely worth the upgrade. Like most OS upgrades it will probably really shine after its second or third update, but unless you're running PowerPC applications you can't be without, there's no need to wait.

Unlike Ubuntu, Peppermint or Fedora, openSUSE is a fully-fledged KDE distribution, and offers the most integrated experience of all the distributions we've looked at.

With openSUSE, this approach stretches to non-KDE applications too. For example, despite using GTK+ for its widget toolset, Firefox is skinned to look like a native KDE application. That includes the toolbar icons, framing and file requesters, and even functions like mailing a link will use KDE's mail application rather than the default.

It's a similar story with LibreOffice, the forked version of the OpenOffice.org office suite. Happily, openSUSE is the first major distro to include it on any desktop, and thanks to Novell's many submitted performance and stability patches, it's also the best Linux office platform available.

The KDE desktop isn't particularly attractive. The Novell green and blurred curtain effects of this new release make the default KDE values look good, which is quite an achievement, and very little effort has been made to tame KDE for the average migrant.

Changing the name of the desktop settings tool isn't a good design decision for example, and while you can install MP3 and Flash codecs by playing with the repository tool, it's not an Ubuntu solution.

Stability

Even worse, bundling so much cutting edge software has an adverse effect on quality. The beta version of Firefox 4 is bogged down with bugs, for instance, and there are several show-stoppers that might affect your installation.

Other SUSE installations aren't added to the boot menu, and if you're brave enough to install Gnome Shell, it won't work.

There's also a well reported lack of stability if you use 32-bit proprietary Nvidia drivers, as most of us do.

These problems are unusual for an openSUSE release. Version 11.4 damages a well earned reputation for stability, and early versions are likely to be passed over by all but the most ardent KDE fans.

Fedora is a traditionalist distribution. That means its packages and desktop are as close to the default as you might expect from a distribution that isn't Gentoo.

Its KDE desktop is particularly interesting, because there are none of the niceties like a customised menu or re-themed panel that you'd expect from a more KDE-centric distribution. You get the original KDE experience, which isn't always a great thing.

If you're coming from the world of Windows, KDE isn't all that easy to pick up. It may look familiar, with a launch menu, widgets and virtual desktops, but it takes some serious re-adjustments.

The system control panel, for example, is a mess of OS X backwards/forwards panels, hidden windows and dozens of checkboxes. Fedora makes no attempt to tame this complexity, whereas openSUSE brushes over some of these cracks with its own configuration panels.

The default desktop environment is equally uncompromising. Most users will only persevere with this desktop if they know what to expect.

Default values

On the desktop, Plasma is unadulterated – you get just the basic file widget. This is the virtual representation of what's in your 'Desktop' folder, or any other folder you'd like it to point at.

This is one of the big ideas behind what KDE used to call the Plasma desktop – a brave attempt to tie the internet and the world of social networking to your OS.

Fedora's default gives none of this away. Instead, you'll need to click the Plasma cashew icon, adding widgets to your desktop and panel. Only then does the desktop start to feel more advanced and progressive than a Windows 7 installation.

The addition of Activities is the best example of KDE's innovation, and it would be great if a distro like Fedora was brave enough to realise its full potential.

This is a brave release from the team at Canonical. After several years making small enhancements to the Gnome desktop, like the unified messaging/logout menu and the onscreen notification system, it's going the full distance with Ubuntu 11.04.

It's replacing the desktop with a product of its own creation, Unity, which started life on the back of the netbook Ubuntu version from a few years ago, a version that's now rolled into the main release.

Unity replaces the metaphor of a desktop with a full-screen app launcher, file viewer and task manager.

The unified messaging and system controls stay at the top of the screen, but everything else is new. You can switch between common folders and the entire file system using quick links, but here's the rub.

Unlike other versions of Ubuntu, Unity requires graphical hardware acceleration. It doesn't need to be much, but it needs to be more than the stock VESA driver your system may default to if it can't install a native driver. In such cases, it looks like you'll be dropped to the Qt-based 2D version of Unity, which is functionally identical but lacks the eye candy.

Free politics

A more profound problem is that Unity is very similar in concept to Gnome's shiny new Shell. Like Unity, the Gnome Shell replaces the desktop with a full-screen file and application management interface.

However, thanks to the politics of open source, the projects are fully independent. This means that while all other distributions forge ahead with Gnome Shell, Ubuntu has split itself from mainstream Linux distribution. While that won't affect the uptake of Ubuntu 11.04, it may affect its influence by the time Windows 8 is released.

Add to this the community furore surrounding Canonical's switching of affiliate payments in its new music player, Banshee, and it seems likely that the distribution has a lot of patching-up to do if it's to maintain its momentum.

Peppermint is another Ubuntu derivative distribution, in a similar vein to the likes of early CrunchBang and Mint.

It has two unique selling points. The first is speed without feature compromise, as the entire system has been tuned for lightening-fast operation.

This is mostly due to the use of OpenBox for its desktop environment. Its quick user interface doesn't waste time making things look too pretty.

Unlike KDE, you'll find that menus appear instantly, and applications aren't stalled by desktop activities or wobbly window effects. This means you don't get advanced features like native widgets, embedded search or a vast array of desktop widgets, but nor do you have to wade through icons you're never going to use.

This is a distribution for when you want to get work done with the minimum of fuss. Just click on a launch menu and run the tool you want to use.

Apps in the cloud

The second unique selling point is that the desktop tools have been replaced with cloud-facing portals. These run through the Mozilla Foundation's Prism platform, presenting web applications within their own windows.

Office duties are fulfilled by Google's documents in the cloud, for example, and even GIMP has been replaced by Pixlr.com.

When you see the breadth of applications available through a browser presented in this way, you realise how far we've come and what any future desktop may look like. But the obvious downside is that you'll need an internet connection for all of this to make sense.

And the future's also going to be interesting because Prism is no longer being developed. The latter problem will likely be solved with Chrome, especially because it also needs to be solved for Google's own OS. Initial trials are available in Peppermint Ice.

And the first problem will simply be solved in time, because it's not going to be long until we're all connected.

Pushed to receivers over the air or available from the Humax website (for USB transfer), TV Portal adds a degree of broadband-based functionality to Humax's Freeview HD boxes, starting with the HDR-Fox T2 PVR (at the time of writing, the HD-Fox T2 zapper was set to get TV Portal within weeks).

Using this free upgrade requires getting your receiver online by hooking up its Ethernet port to your broadband connection or attaching a Humax W-LAN stick (£29 from Humax's web shop) via USB, which also allows for wireless media streaming from networked devices.

If you're recording using either box, you can still use TV Portal regardless. The latest software also gives HDR-Fox T2 owners the ability to export recordings to remote storage via FTP (you'll need to transfer them back to directly connected storage to play), background delete and automatic file deletion options, the ability to modify multiple folders, SMS text entry and a power saving in standby option.

Homebrew looks

Accessed by pressing the TV Portal button on the handset or via the main menu, considering how slick the remaining software is (on the HDR-Fox T2 especially) the TV Portal interface looks incongruously 'homebrew'.

There are two display modes. Full Mode has the current channel displayed top left with icons for each service on the right, while simple mode leaves the icons running in a bar along the bottom of the screen.

BBC iPlayer offers both radio and TV streaming. The interface (apparently grabbed from the BBC's 'big screen' online version and tweaked to better suit the receivers) presents a slideshow of highlights and thumbnails allowing you browse TV or radio, shows by channel or day shown, or use an onscreen keyboard to keyword search.

There are normal or high-quality (HD) streams – all up-scaleable to 1080p. You can skip to the start or end using the remote, but not forward or rewind.

The remaining applications aren't as slick. Wiki@TV repurposes Wikipedia pages with pictures in scrollable form with SMS-style searching enabled (useful for solving TV-related family arguments, perhaps).

The Humax-created Flickr photo browser is limited, displaying a scrolling slideshow of newly added images which can be blown up. You can browse friends' libraries and mark favourites but not perform a general search.

Better is the internet radio application, where you can search by category, country or keyword and mark favourites. Sky Player was not available at launch, but a sneak peek at the beta version revealed all the familiar features in place, including the Sky EPG.

Future updates will include YouTube, shopping, and a Humax customer area with software downloads.

iOS 4.3: big changes for iPhone, iPod and iPad

Update: now read our Hands on: iOS 5 review.

The latest revision of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 4.3, sneakily arrived on 9 March - a couple of days before its official release date.

As with other versions of iOS, many of the changes are minor, but there are nonetheless fairly major updates to Home Sharing and AirPlay, along with the introduction of a long-awaited personal hotspot feature.

Naturally, the release also retains revisions included in previous versions of iOS 4.x, such as multitasking, springboard folders, Find My iPhone, Game Center and enhanced Mail.

Home Sharing

Since iOS devices have utterly fixed storage, they are restrictive for anyone who has a large media library.

Even the iPad 2 won't assist on this score, since it tops out (like the current-generation iPod touch) at a mere 64GB of storage (several GB of which is taken up by system software). This forces a pick-and-choose approach to media-syncing, but iOS 4.3's Home Sharing provides a logical and flexible alternative, streaming media from a Mac or PC on the same Wi-Fi network as your device.

HOME SHARING: this new feature enables you to play iTunes content from a Mac or PC on the same network as your device

In use, set-up is simple, as outlined in TechRadar's Home Sharing tutorial, and playback appears efficient and robust. Our test Mac's relatively large media library, with over 90 GB of music, didn't cause crashes or lock-ups, and the library loaded in around ten seconds; subsequent audio playback was instantaneous, and switching between a remote and local library is child's play.

Video is less impressive, since it's slower to begin playback over a network, and Apple's Videos app is bare-bones and buggy; during testing, it regularly forgot to apply thumbnails and titles to videos it found in a remote library.

VIDEOS: The Videos app proved buggy during testing, with both Home Sharing and AirPlay

It's also worth noting that the revamped Home Sharing feature is not in any way a sync solution—presumably, wireless sync is still slated for a future version of iOS.

AirPlay video

The second major plus introduced in iOS 4.3 is AirPlay video support. In iOS 4.2, this feature was hobbled and only worked with a very limited number of built-in apps (iPod, Videos, YouTube); in iOS 4.3, it's open to third-party apps and other Apple software, including Safari and Photos.

This was the feature Apple TV 2 users were most looking forward to, since it promised a means of unlocking the potential of a device starved of media (at least for anyone outside of the USA). In practice, AirPlay is a step forward from the version in iOS 4.2, but it's not without its problems.

SAFARI: You can now play Safari videos on an Apple TV

On test, we found using AirPlay video fell into three camps: 'great', 'problematic' and 'the BBC'.

Videos and slideshows from the Photos app played flawlessly on the Apple TV (once its software had been updated), as did on-device content, videos from YouTube, and videos in Safari that use the standard iOS player.

Bandwidth issues made playing back network video problematic: the Videos app just threw up error messages, while playback using the Air Video app was a lottery—some formats live-converted and played back fine, whereas others (notably MKV files) needed buffering at regular intervals.

iPLAYER: Want to watch BBC content on your Apple TV over AirPlay? Tough

And then there's the BBC: its apps (and even the iPlayer website) don't work at all with AirPlay. This isn't Apple's fault, since the BBC eschews the default player, but it's a pity there's still no way of getting iPlayer and BBC News on to your TV via the Apple TV. Here's hoping the BBC updates its apps soon.

iOS 4.3: Hotspots, Safari and more

Hotspots, Safari and Settings

The third and last of the major updates in iOS 4.3 is personal hotspot, an iPhone 4-only feature that enables the device to act as a Wi-Fi router for other devices (three over Wi-Fi, and up to two more via USB and BlueTooth).

This brings iOS into line with Android's Mobile AP feature, and it appears to 'just work', but note that you need a qualifying data plan or risk being charged unexpectedly.

Best of the rest

Most of the other changes in iOS are relatively minor, but nonetheless welcome.

Safari's JavaScript performance is noticeably faster—handy for a device more reliant than other platforms on JavaScript-heavy interactive web content (as opposed to Flash).

In Settings, a rare Apple about-face enables you to define whether the side-switch on the iPad locks rotation or mutes the device (hurrah!); muting also remains available in the multitasking tray and by holding the volume-down end of the volume switch for a second.

SIDE SWITCH: The rotation lock is back! And all it took was a ton of bitchy emails to Apple!

You can now set the number of times a Messages app repeat alert sounds (once, twice, three, five or ten times), find Location Services at the top level of the Settings app, and use the new Noteworthy font in Notes (but not Chalkboard, which has been taken out back and shot).

Apple's also not entirely forgotten Ping: select it in the iPod app and you'll be asked if you want to be bugged with notifications regarding comments and follow requests.

PING: Now slightly less useless (i.e. still useless)

Apple also claims you can 'like' songs from the iPod app's Now Playing screen, but if this is the case, there must be some kind of ninja-style protection, because we couldn't find the controls on any of our iOS devices. Fundamentally, Ping still seems broadly useless.

Omissions and mothballed kit

Of course, it wouldn't be an iOS review without some gripes about what Apple didn't include.

AirPlay might have received some love, but AirPrint remains half-baked, working with only a very limited range of printers. It's a pity Apple doesn't enable you to print to shared network printers.

Also, the iOS notification system remains intrusive and generally awful, and fancy new multitouch gestures splattered all over the rumour mill during iOS 4.3's beta run remain off-limits unless you're a developer.

While some of these would have caused pain to developers, clashing with existing software controls, a fast means of app-switching would have been useful for power users.

This update also unceremoniously officially mothballs the iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod touch.

Given how rough iOS 4 has been on these devices from the start, this comes as no surprise, but it will disappoint users to learn devices that are under three years old have hit a software brick wall.

For the rest of us, iOS 4.3 is a no-brainer upgrade. We tested the system on an iPhone 3GS, current-generation iPod touch and an iPad and it seemed both solid and stable, and it's clear that Home Sharing and AirPlay will further open up the potential for iOS to become a leading platform for media playback.

Jolicloud is one of the more interesting entrants in the near-future competition for a cloud-based netbook OS.

Like its closest competitor, Google Chrome, it's a shade of Linux that's unrecognisable on the surface, built over an older version of Ubuntu with a browser-based veneer.

Installation and performance are essentially identical to Ubuntu's 9.04 UNR, so you get the same rapid boot up, the same battery life and the same hardware-dependent suspend and resume. It might not reach the stratospheric battery life that Google's gunning for with its no-hard-drive, no-user-install approach, but Jolicloud is far more likely to work with your current hardware.

The main part of the display is a customised version of Google's Chromium browser, which Jolicloud has nicknamed 'nickel'. It's a cleverly themed, full-screen replacement for Ubuntu's launch menu that feels more integrated than the current Chrome in its namesake OS, and offers plenty of native Linux goodness.

Packages, done

This is because its main function is to act as an 'app store', enabling you to install applications from a list of hundreds, presented in a pleasing, icon-centric interface.

Many web-based tools, such as Twitter and Google Docs, lock themselves into the Nickel window and look like part of your desktop, but you can also install many standard Linux applications, which you can't with Chrome OS.

But we did experience a few problems. The manual partitioning options always failed for us, and the migration of key tools to the cloud means you miss such essentials as a touchpad configuration utility.

Most seriously, if there's no internet connection, Jolicloud shuts down. Without Google Gears, a default installation will be crippled by long train tunnels or trips to the Outer Hebrides.

But these problems can be solved and, for a first release, Jolicloud 1.0 succeeds.