This guy says he's played with the Microsoft Surface mini

The Microsoft Surface mini has been kicking around as an unsubstantiated tech rumour for quite some time now. And a new report has surfaced (sorry) alleging Microsoft has indeed made one. It just isn't sure about selling it yet.

The report in question comes from Brad Sams over at neowin who says, perhaps unsurprisngly, that the Microsoft Surface mini looks like a Surface Pro 3 but smaller.

Unfortunately, Sams says he wasn't allowed to take any pictures of the device. But it's the detail he goes into that gives his report a whiff of authenticity.

Windows shopping

He says the Surface mini packed a Qualcomm processor, 1GB of RAM, Windows RT 8.1 and a microSD card slot and used a pen, the same as the Surface Pro 3. It also featured OneNote integration.

Additionally, Sams says that Microsoft developed Type Cover-like cases for the device with a built-in kickstand and loop for holding the pen. Although lack of space mean there was no QWERTY keyboard.

"The bezel size is large enough to have a full size Windows button, exactly like the Pro 3 at the bottom; at the top, there is a front facing camera with roughly the same size bezel," says Sams.

"It does make the device look a bit odd since the bezel is so large but it does make sense if you are holding the device so your thumbs don't cover the screen."

Sounds good to us, especially given how fond we are of Apple's Retine iPad mini. It's just a shame that Microsoft decided to kill its announcement of the device at its Surface Pro 3 event earlier this year.

That's not to say the Microsoft Surface mini will never see the light of day, but at least for the moment, it's laying dormant.

• Want to save size on your tablet? Check out our iPad Mini with Retina Display review

Updated: We played with the worst apps in the world, so you don't have to

There are now over 1,300,000 apps on the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store is home to around the same number of Android apps right now. What we're trying to say is - there are a lot of apps out there, and unsurprisingly, a lot of them are crap.

We're sure you've stumbled on some stinkers yourself, but we hope you've not come across any as bad of these. You see, at TechRadar we're making it our mission to scour the underbelly of both app stores to find the truly terrible, the truly disgusting, and the truly WTF, all in the name of technology.

Each week we'll be nominating an app that deserves the crown of "worst of the worst", with an aim to complete a list of the ten truly most terrible apps we've ever seen.

So let us begin our dangerous journey through the bowels of humanity's ideas. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

1. 99 Bottles!

iOS
Price: Free

Let us set the scene: You're having '99 Bottles of Beer' sung to you by Stephen Hawking. We just described the entirety of the 99 Bottles app.

No, that's not fair, you can also pause the song or choose to start it over. There are also some crap bottle animations that twitch along with the "music". Ok, now we've described it.

It's just counting. Annoying counting.

Yes, it's the slow, awkward rendition of 99 Bottles you never asked for but you're sure as hell going to get anyway. And what happens if, God forbid, you last the whole 19 minutes and 48 seconds? No spoilers here, but we can confirm that time is accurate because we sat through the whole damn thing ourselves.

Actually, we got a text message at just over 50 bottles down the first time and accidentally hit 'start again', so we basically sat through it twice for this column. You're welcome.

You'll hear all the greats: 87, 64, 50, 42… And if your phone goes to sleep just as bottle 93 has been taken from the wall, does it start exactly where it left off? Course not, it starts number 93 ALL OVER AGAIN.

We really can't think of any useful applications for this other than torture, and Amnesty would be all over this in a heartbeat.

To its creator's credit he at least acknowledges how ridiculous the app is. We just don't know why anyone would use it, let alone make it. Then again we did play it for the whole 20 minutes so we're hardly in a position to judge. No wait, make that 29 minutes and 42 seconds. Again, you're welcome.