Are you waiting for Android 5 to be rolled out for your Android phone? You could be waiting a long time, perhaps forever because there is no guarantee it will arrive. There is an alternative if you want a brand new look and new features for your phone.

What do you get if you cross a velociraptor with a spider? The answer is a velocispider, which combines the best of both creatures. Plus, it has a huge gun on its head. It is a silly idea of course, but Velocispider is a lot of fun.

Canva is both an iPad app and an online tool for creating impressive designs. With a few taps you can design a wide range of items and it is a very easy app to use. If you lack the design skills or tools to draw something from scratch, Canva will enable you to create what you need.

A fisheye lens is an extremely wide angle one with a short focal length that captures distorted, but interesting photos. A real fisheye lens can only be mounted to a traditional camera, but InstaFisheye is an app for the iPhone that simulates the effect.

I have covered brain training apps twice before and have examined four apps for iOS and Android. I make no excuse for covering two more brain training apps and you simply cannot have too many. In order to have a healthy, active brain you need to spend as much time exercising it as you do the rest of your body at the gym.

Modern life can be hectic and stressful. There may be problems at work, deadlines to meet, awkward people to deal with and so on. Problems can occur in your personal life too and they may be a cause of more worry and stress. Headspace mindfulness meditation can help induce a feeling a quiet, calm, relaxation.

The camera on the iPhone is excellent and it is easy to point, tap and shoot high quality video. Apple has an excellent video editing app and iMovie can do all sorts of wonderful things with videos. However, Replay is a different type of video editor and you can have maximum fun for minimum effort.

One of the nice features of Android is the ease with which it can be customised. Every iPhone looks the same, apart from the wallpaper image, but Android users can add lock screen apps that appear when the phone is woken up. Microsoft has an interesting lock screen app that is simple, but effective. You might think it odd that Microsoft has produced an Android app, but the company actually has quite a lot and some are really good, like Next.

Microsoft recently released a new email app and it is more modern and in some ways has superior features to the old app. You should switch from the old Outlook.com to the new Outlook. It is a bit confusing having two apps with almost the same name that access the same email account, but there is really no need to keep the old app and it can be uninstalled.

I recently tried Startup Manager (Free) for Android and it turned out to be a useful tool. When it is run, it tells you of a better app that supersedes it and which offers more features. It does indeed offer more features, but it is a slightly different type of app and if you don’t already have a tune-up and clean-up app, or need a better one, All-In-One Toolbox offers 26 useful tools for your Android phone or tablet.

There are many farming games and many city building games for iOS and Android. Township takes elements from both types of games and blends them into something familiar, but also slightly different. It is not pure farming or pure city building and you get to do a bit of both. I have been playing Township on the iPad for the past week, although an Android version is available too.

Remember Flappy Bird? It was an infuriatingly simple, yet maddeningly difficult game that was incredibly addictive. It was nothing really and could be knocked up in an afternoon by a reasonably competent programmer. 2 Cars is similarly exasperating and its simplicity, difficulty an addictiveness will appeal to Flappy Bird fans.

There is an old saying, ‘Use it or lose it’. Well, you won’t lose your mind, but unless you exercise it, it will weaken and become slow at thinking, reasoning, logic and mental arithmetic. Brain training games can improve your mind and keep it sharp. The more you use it, the better it will be here are two popular brain training apps that run on both Android and iOS, Elevate and Mind Games.

Transport Empire is a free game that runs on just about anything – iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets and even Facebook. It takes you back to the early days of steam trains, steam boats and airships, and you must build and manage cities and transport systems, and accumulate lots of money. I am playing the iPad version and it is a lot of fun.

The mobile phone is probably the most high tech piece of equipment you own. It can make phone calls, send text messages, play music, use GPS and mapping, measure your speed and altitude and much more. It makes a great gadget to have in your car – just get a phone car mount kit and the iBOLT Dock’n Drive app.

One of the nice features of Android is the way in which it can be customised. Take the lock screen for instance. It can be totally transformed by installing a lock screen widget. It is much more useful than lock screen wallpaper and they often have some useful features.

The iPhone and iPad are just a black box. You switch it on and it just works. You don’t need to know what it is actually doing to make it work, except on those occasions when it doesn’t. Then you are struggling to find out what the problem could be because there is very little information to work with. The solution is Phone Doctor Plus.

Flappy Bird was one of the success stories of the year and as soon as the app for iOS and Android devices it took off, dozens, perhaps even hundreds of clones were made. Even now, a search for Flappy Bird in the iOS App Store or Google Play Store will result in lots of clones.

The platform game dates back to the early 1980s home computers, but it can be just as much fun now as it was way back then. Atom Run is classic gaming with a new twist, it is fast, has great graphics and puzzles to challenge your skills.

The lock screen on Android phones and tablets can be very irritating because it often shows very little that is of interest and at best there is just a clock. It also gets in the way and you have to swipe the lock screen away to get to the phone’s features. Lock screen apps are one way to make it more useful and Chronus can be used to show the weather, calendar events, email, news reports and more.