HTC 10

You get what you pay for

It’s a cunning plan to call your smartphone ‘10’. Hmm, I wonder how many marks out of 10 we should give this? Well, sorry HTC, we only go up to five.

If only getting a positive review was as simple as sticking a number after the product’s name. In reality, the product has to impress us. That’s not something HTC proved very good at with last year’s M9, which was basically their previous phone with a different rubbish camera and the battery life of a turnip.

LG Stylus 2

A phone with a pen

Does anyone else remember PDAs, or did we dream them? Before there were smartphones, there were pocket computers from companies like Psion and Palm. And their black-and-white screens came with that essential accessory: the stylus.

It seems odd to feel nostalgic for something we were only too happy to give up. Glorified cocktail sticks are frustratingly easy to mislay, after all, but we can generally find our fingers.

Never download junk again

Downloading free software can be a minefield. If you don’t know which boxes to untick, your PC could end up riddled with junk. Here, Jane Hoskyn reveals how to install the best programs safely

You’ll already know your pups from your PUPs (one is a cute young canine, the other is a troublemaking program that sneaks into your PC along with reputable software, and can be a right old dog to remove). PUP stands for ‘potentially unwanted program’, a laughably polite term for unwanted junk that can cause great harm to your PC.

But you know how to avoid them, right? You choose safe, big-name software from trusted companies like VLC, Adobe and AVG, instead of junk-riddled nonsense like Free YouTube Downloader and “too good to be true” freebies like CamStudio, which claims to be a realistic alternative to the superb £250 screen-recording program Camtasia Studio. You probably also know that certain download mirror sites, such as Cnet’s Download.com pack their installers with dodgy extras that are easy to miss if you’re in a hurry or unfamiliar with the process.

Download everything in higher quality

Don’t put up with substandard quality in videos, music and photos. Robert Irvine reveals how and where to download the optimum versions of digital files

Stop Hackers Locking Your PC & Phone

The criminals behind ransomware are finding ever more devious ways to lock your files. Wayne Williams explains how to protect your devices from the latest threats, and recover from an attack

Ransomware first hit the headlines a few years ago as one of the nastiest types of malware yet, taking control of a victim’s computer, encrypting their files and extorting money to remove it. Sadly, in recent months, the threat of ransomware has grown worse – much worse, in fact. Not only has it spread from PCs to phones, tablets and Macs, but there has been a massive increase in the number of instances of ransomware detected. Moreover, the methods that hackers use have become more devious and more difficult to deal with.