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8 articles
We tracked six months of update notes across 25 everyday UK apps and compared the promises with what actually changed on screen. Some updates were genuinely useful. Others moved the buttons, reset the settings and hoped nobody would notice.
We simulated a lost phone in November 2026 and timed how twenty everyday UK apps let us back in. Some took four minutes; others took a call centre, a selfie video and a long wait. Here is the recovery maze, plus a checklist to avoid your own lockout.
Forty UK apps, eleven localisation checks and one question: does this thing actually know where we live? We scored address fields, date formats, currency symbols, clocks and spelling, and found a clear split between apps built for Britain and apps merely tolerating it.
We tried to close accounts in 30 UK apps and timed every tap, call and retention offer. Only nine made it easy. Here is what the good exits look like, where the roach motels hide, and how to leave without losing your data or your patience.
We switched on VoiceOver and TalkBack, turned the screen away, and tried to pay bills, book trains and track parcels. Some apps were quietly excellent. Most were not.
We installed 124 popular UK apps, started a stopwatch and waited to see how long it took before we could actually do something useful. Carousels, sign-up walls and permission prompts ate most of the time. A short list of apps got out of the way in seconds.
We signed up, screenshotted, cancelled and cross-checked 24 UK app subscriptions over six weeks, applying the same five fair-dealing questions to each. Thirteen behaved decently. Eleven did not — and the ways they failed turn out to be remarkably consistent, and remarkably easy to spot once you know what you're looking at.
We started with a spreadsheet of 124 apps across four phones. A year of rail strikes, bin days and sulking smart meters later, most of them are gone. Here is what earned a permanent spot on a UK home screen, what we binned, and what we refused to install at all.