Steve Litchfield

The Surface Go, launched in 2018, is now seven years old. Never high end at the time (though do make sure you seek out the 8GB RAM version with the proper SSD), it is, nonetheless, a fabulous form factor.  A laptop which is also a tablet and, in form, passing for an iPad easily. Many is the time the family has headed off on a holiday and I've been 'banned from bringing a work laptop', yet I got away with it because I brought the Surface Go - everyone assumed it was an iPad that I'd brought along for a few games and some Netflix. Add in decent stereo speakers, microSD expansion, hot swappable Alcantara keyboards, Surface Pen compatibility, two better-than-expected cameras, and super build quality, and you can see the attraction. See also my original coverage of Surface Go over at (ye olde) AAWP ... (NB: There was a Surface Go 2, 3, and 4, though I've only ever played with the original, picking up two of them second hand at super-cheap bundle prices over the years. St...

There's something of a myth in the world of losing weight and getting fit - it all comes down, for many advisors, to simply 'doing more steps'. So targets of 10,000 steps a day etc. Now take this with a pinch of salt, since I'm not a doctor, but plodding along at (say) 2mph for 10,000 steps will burn off less calories (and thus weight) than you might think. Meanwhile, the most cardinal body functions, heart and lungs, won't see much extra action and you won't get significantly fitter. Apple (and other smartwatch makers) know this, of course. Which is why, looking at the fitness rings that their gadgets and software put out, the 'exercise' ring hardly triggers when you walk for a solid 90 minutes and put on those 10,000 steps.  A real world data point here: I've been out walking the dog with friends for an hour, and between wrestling with leads and dogs who want to chase squirrels(!), I feel significantly whacked by the end. Worn out, in fact. And yes...

It's an old, old story, of course. Boy meets girl, no wait... the OTHER old, old story. Android device manufacturer has a vision produces a genuinely different, stunning piece of hardware, then  gets swayed by misguided user complaints that "it's not close enough to all the boring stuff that's available elsewhere" and so compromises its vision in a redesigned version 2 that's nowhere near as 'pure' as the original. And, as a result, often gets abandoned or forgotten. I have some examples. I'll go chronologically. You may not have heard of the Planet Computers Gemini - an Android-powered landscape-first QWERTY clamshell phone that was simply stunning - I reviewed it here in Phone Show 340, so do go watch: Yes this was a full smartphone, despite not having an outside display - a system of LEDs told you who was calling. If ever that happened - 99% of my device use these days doesn't involve phone calls! The Gemini was opened for almost everything...

I'm surrounded, in the UK, by people trying to commit suicide. They don't actually know that's what they're doing, probably, but in effects that's what happening. Because these (usually) young people are cycling around my town at night: dressed in dark clothing with no helmet with no lights on their bike often cycling without hands on the handlebars often cycling while holding a phone in one hand And one young man went for the bonus level by doing all of these!  When I was growing up, in the 1970s, it was drummed into us by parents and teachers that it was illegal to cycle at night without working lights. And over the last half century, I've watched as this rule has become less and less enforced or cared about. To the extent that young people on cycles clearly give no thought at all as to their own safety. ("I'm 17 and I feel immortal", etc.) So far, I've managed to avoid them all but surely we're close to some serious accidents, as yet ano...

A bit of a rant, but... it's all so meaningless. I open up Google Maps to look something up and am told that I'm a 'Level 6' 'Local Guide' and I'm 'only 2743 points away from Level 7'! Moreover, I'm being prompted to 'Earn my Novice Director badge'. As I drive around or walk around in my town, do you think it matters one jot how many points I have, or what my Level is, or what my virtual title is? Of course not! To detox from this nonsense, I head into Booking.com's app to plan an away day. Ahem. Front and centre, I'm told that I need to 'Complete 10 bookings before 20 November 2024 to unlock Genius Level 3'! Eh? What? Why? What happens when I hit Genius Level 3? Did anything happen when I reached Level 2? Nope.  Time to relax and chill. I start up Audible. Apparently I've collected the High Noon, Marathoner, Night Owl and 'Done & Dusted' badges. What do I do with them? Print them and sew them on a jacket??...

Guest writer (and friend) Mike Warner chips in with clarification on things that I (and almost everyone else) gets wrong about Android security... In Android there are three levels of security and updates to functionality. From the highest to lowest levels we have: Google Play Services Google Play System Update … and the (often monthly) Android Security Update Google Play Services implements all the Google developed services, such as App Notifications, Location, Advertising, Google Pay and Mapping and is updated by the Google Play Store automatically to fix any security issues or add new functionality. Google Play Services is distributed only to Google Certified Android devices, so some Chinese phones like Huawei and devices running forks of Android, like Amazon Fire tablets, do not contain this module. Without Google Play Services, the OEM has to provide their own App Store and replace the Google defined services with their own set of services to ensure that Android apps expecting th...

YouTube has popped up several hands-on videos with Huawei’s latest (and rather mis-labelled, if you examine the form factor) 'tri-fold' Mate XT, officially only available in China so far, but several people have paid stupid money, up to $5000, to get a sample.  The Mate XT has two hinges, one inward and one outward, meaning that one 'edge' of the phone has a fragile plastic display crease exposed to the world permanently. I know, I know, the geek dream of a phone which magically expands into a tablet is oh so cool. But physics is heavily against it. At least in the real world, away from cosy first week YouTube reviews. Heck, physics itself is against existing folding screen phones. I’ve just about accepted that the Flip idea (as here) now works because the crease is small, because the device is always closed when not in use to protect the fragile interior, and because the purchase price is now sub-£1000 (though that's still a lot).  But the folding screen failure ra...

Unusually, for me, this case wasn't sent in for review - I sought it out and bought it and for good reason. The last few years have mostly seen me with a clear TPU case on my phones, in this case an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and usually a Ringke case with MagSafe built in. I've had about four of these, one for each year because the clear material starts to 'yellow' and look a bit tacky. It's a common issue with clear TPU, it seems - something to do with ultra-violet radiation when outside. So yes, I replace the case each year, and sized for the iPhone I'm currently rocking. Except that this time I wanted to look further 'up market'. Given that I wasn't upgrading to the 16 series (I still prefer stainless steel to titanium and I'm not convinced by the new 'Camera Control'), I had funds to invest in a top notch case. In the end it only cost me about £24, I read up about this TORRAS case and it fit the bill across the board: Being smoked black, it...

Clicks is a fascinating story, from start to, well... it hasn't finished yet and even as I write this, (what is effectively) a version 2 with notable improvements is being made for the new iPhone 16 series. The whole 'you don't need keyboards' motif came in with the Apple iPhone in 2007, so 17 years ago, but while that's true on the whole, there are a number of use cases where a keyboard is surprisingly handy: When writing anything more than a couple of sentences, in a social or messaging or business app, it's really handy to have the full display of content and the keyboard separate. In particular, when working with numbers, perhaps a spreadsheet, having 40% of the screen full of number or QWERTY input makes things very tricky. Clicks solves that elegantly. Using hot-keys that you've learned on, for example, a Mac. So Command-F to find something in a web page in Safari, or Command-N for a new message or email, or space bar to play/pause in YouTube or any o...

(I answered this in video form, but I thought an article would help people find it too!) As part of my research into buying an EV or hybrid, one complaint I heard was that, perhaps especially on the Toyota Yaris models, the 12V battery tended to die if the car wasn’t used for a few weeks, then requiring a jump start from a battery pack or another car. And there’s a lot in this. Not least because the problem is endemic to all cars, though more so with more recent models, as there’s more going on - literally - under the hood. Let’s start with the 12V battery itself, a lot smaller in hybrids and EVs than in traditional pure petrol cars because it doesn’t need to be beefy enough to crank a starter motor. Which is mainly why you don’t hear of 12V depletion in those cars - the larger batteries can withstand much longer periods of inactivity. A 12V battery is used to run the car’s lights, computers, air conditioning (usually), cabin fan, engine pumps and fans and power steering, that sort o...

Everywhere you look online, companies are trying to sell you a VPN (Virtual Private Network), it's the in-thing these days. Getting online using a VPN will 'keep you safe' they say. And they're absolutely right. Except that you're absolutely safe without a VPN too - don't believe the scare stories. You see, every Internet-facing application, including web browsers, in 2024, accesses data over an already-secure  connection. The layers of encryption already in place as you access, for example, your iMessages or Gmail, mean that there's nothing bad guys could do even if they were to somehow intercept random batches of your over-the-air 1s and 0s. But why not pay a subscription and use a VPN anyway, I hear you say - isn't that just even more security? Well... it's over the top security. And the main effect of paying out for a VPN for regular online activity is that it will make that activity significantly slower, because of all the extra encryption being...

I’ve been covering aspects of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 in video form, I’ll leave the media embedded here (7 different videos, each less than a minute long!) - if it works. If not, then see my YouTube Shorts output at https://www.youtube.com/@stevelitchfield/shorts   But I wanted to go into more detail on its hardware and software proposition for the man or woman in the street. There’s only so much you can say in 58 seconds in a Short! For a self-confessed geek like me, phones, smartphones, PDAs, pocket computers, I expect them to be sizeable - else they won’t be useful. So I can put up with a flagship like the S24 Ultra. Or Pixel 9 Pro XL. Or even a fold of some kind. Or even my precious iPhone 14 Pro Max in the Clicks case.  But the average phone user, while liking a large display area, also secretly wants their phone to be smaller in the pocket or bag. Which is where the Flip series come in. Simply fold your large screened phone in half and tuck it into any pocket. ...