This month’s mobile must-downloads

1 A Park and Pigeons

£1.99 / Android, iOS

In this score-chaser, you too can be a pigeon, desperate for whatever scraps the humans have dropped… including, for some reason, entire bagels. Get munching, chase your foes away and watch feathers fly.

2 Mario Kart Tour

£free (IAPs) / Android, iOS

Remember all your fun times with Mario Kart? Well, forget them here, because this stripped-down slice of loot boxes and IAP even has a subscription that costs as much as Apple Arcade.

3 Dear Esther

£4.99 / iOS

Florence created a market for narrative sort-of-games, and this one sees you explore a gloomy island, piecing together a story from letter fragments read by an anonymous man.

4 Mindkeeper: The Lurking Fear

£1.99 / watchOS

Doom on Apple Watch? Not quite, but you do get tidy 3D visuals on your wrist in this auto-runner where you stomp along, turning whenever you twiddle the crown.

5 Apollo: Immersive Illumination

£2.99 / iOS

Apple gives you all kinds of new portrait photo trickery in iOS 13. But Apollo lets you map on lighting effects that weren’t originally there – you massive cheat, you.

6 Pixelmator Photo

£4.99 / iPad

Most famous for letting you enhance any snap with a single tap (powered by machine learning), Pixelmator Photo now ramps up productivity with batch edits and full Files/Photos integration.

7 Flick Launcher

£free or £3.29 / Android

Another launcher! This one has a dock search bar, custom gestures, and the means to get at Google Now with a swipe. But also, its AI wants to give you the app you want before you realised you wanted it.

8 Pocket Casts

£free / Android, iOS

This one’s not new, but it has a new business model: Pocket Casts is now free, which is a big deal for such a well-regarded podcast player. Check it out with some of our faves – you’ll find them on Stuff.tv.

9 Codea

£14.99 / iOS

Want to get own work in the App Store? Codea is a sharp way to craft apps and games that utilise your device’s abilities. And yes, people have released apps made in this app. It’s like appception.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

SNEAKY

SASQUATCH

Apple Arcade People were never against mobile games, just exploitative freemium awfulness. So while Nintendo blazes the latter trail, the new Apple Arcade subscription service goes fully premium, meaning things like Sneaky Sasquatch can exist. Like Yogi Bear meets Metal Gear, it has you play as the titular hairy chap, who steals grub, hides from rangers and acquires kit from a kleptomaniac raccoon. You might narrow your eyes at ‘Apple does games’, but you have to love a title where a cartoon beast steals a golf cart, drives into a tree and is the next day chastised by the raccoon, who had to hire a wheelbarrow to get him home safely.

Eggstravagance

LINN SERIES 3

Ever been told your taste in music stinks? Maybe you should invest in a Linn Series 3 speaker – which looks as if it could double as an air-freshener. Unfortunately, especially considering the astronomical price, it doesn’t do that at all (and if it did, it’d surely smell of hard-boiled eggs); but it does stream from all your usual services, including Spotify and Tidal, plus there’s Bluetooth and AirPlay if you want to connect your phone. Control is via the Linn app, a connected Alexa device or the touch-sensitive buttons on the cut-glass top, and there’s even an HDMI ARC socket for hooking it up to your TV. Just remember you’re shelling out nearly three grand. No wonder it’s only available in Harrods.

£2950 / harrods.com

Quite the chimer

ARLO VIDEO DOORBELL

Arlo says its first video doorbell allows users to get a bigger, more precise picture of their front porch. Fairly useless in itself, unless you’ve been at the pub too long and can’t remember what the hell your house looks like, but excellent if there’s someone dodgy standing on it and you want to catch them in the act of looking shifty. With high-resolution live video, two-way audio (including direct-to-mobile video calls) and what Arlo claims is an industry-leading vertical field of view with an optimised 1:1 aspect ratio, you can capture people from head to toe – even if your would-be burglar is a basketball player in 6in heels. Out now in the US priced $149, it arrives in Europe early next year.

£tbc / arlo.com

NEWS FEED

THE PLAYSTATION 5 IS OFFICIALLY INBOUND

Sony has finally confirmed the PS5 will launch in 2020. The next-gen console will support ray-tracing for lighting effects, and swaps the hard drive for an SSD. A new controller replaces rumble with more realistic haptic feedback, while adaptive L2/R2 triggers allow for customised resistance.

OCULUS QUEST BECOMES THE HANDIEST HEADSET

The rather brilliant Oculus Quest has already freed us from wires and external sensors, and soon you’ll be able to use it without controllers. From early 2020, the Quest will support hand-tracking, using a new method of deep learning that can understand the positions of your fingers.

REALME STAKES CLAIM AS CHEAP PHONE CHAMPION

China’s Realme has launched the X2 Pro, a flagship impersonator at a fraction of the cost. On the spec sheet is a top-end Snapdragon 855+, a 64MP quad-camera, a 6.5in Super AMOLED screen and a 4000mAh fast-charging battery. Enough to leave the iPhone 11 a bit embarrassed?

STAR WARS SEASON STARTS IN THE KITCHEN

Star Wars is full of cinematic icons, from brave heroes like Han Solo to timeless villains like Darth Vader Round Dutch Oven. Nope, we’re not making that one up: thanks to a collaboration between Star Wars and pot dealer Le Creuset, a bunch of classic characters have been turned into kitchenware.