How to unlock the secrets of your smartphone, and use some amazing apps
Barcode scanners are just the start. There are apps that turn your phone camera into a tool, as well as help you take amazing quality pictures, apps to track stars, planes and the international space station.
It's always with you, day and night, and you can't imagine life without it, but how well do you know your phone? Just as all couples have secrets, you and your phone probably don't know each other as well as you should.
The magic starts with the camera, the smartphone's eye onto the world, and with an underappreciated iOS and Android app from Google called Translate. Simply point the phone at any printed material and the written words at the centre of the screen will change to whatever other language you've chosen. Even if you've mastered a few simple phrases, you're unlikely to be able to read menus in restaurants, road signs and other public signage, so Translate really helps.
Real-time translation like this is little-used, yet something to behold, and it's easy to see why Google was hoping its Glass "smart" spectacles would catch on among tourists. The downside is that Google Translate only works - so far - with 27 languages, almost all of them European (Indonesian being the exception).
Since mathematics is the language of the universe, the PhotoMath app (on iOS, Android, Windows and Amazon) is arguably even more ambitious. It can solve arithmetic, fractions, decimals, roots and more just by being pointed at a written problem. It then shows you how it arrived at the answer; this is a learning tool, not a quick cheat.