Steve Litchfield

I realise that this might be a controversial opinion in the current climate, with Apple and others moving phones away from 'ye olde' 3.5mm headphone jacks and towards increasing use of wireless solutions (e.g. AirPods, Pixel Buds), but I'm still not convinced about Bluetooth audio when on the move. In my tests, I've tried several different makes of Bluetooth headphone (most recently these and  these ) with a variety of phones running Android and Windows 10 Mobile. And have been left unimpressed. And, contrary to what you might expect, the issue isn't audio quality - though, by definition, there's usually some loss in the recompression of just-decompressed music just to traverse the few feet to your ears. No, my problem are the occasional tiny cut outs. Now, this might just be me being hyper-sensitive, but every few minutes (at random) there's a tiny cut out in the audio stream - you wouldn't notice it for speech, but for music it's very distr...

This was slightly out of the blue and out of my normal review fare, but the idea of being able to choose any colour at all to illuminate my bedroom rather appealed to me. There are times, you know, when subtle mood lighting is appropriate [cough]... And this light is terrific, with only one big caveat - that happily has a workaround, though not an elegant one. Plug in and a bright blue status LED lights up (I'll come back to this below). Touch anywhere on the metal body of the lamp and it glow gentle white, tap again to go to medium and maximum brightness. Then it gets interesting - long touch (for three seconds) on the metal and the lamp starts cycling through myriads of colours, just tap once to select the one you want. It's intuitive and flexible and there are no buttons to wear out. To turn the lamp off again, just long touch again for three seconds. Not as fast as pressing a button, but not a problem. The light cast by the lamp is even, despite the vagar...

A new phone, new cases, and so it goes. With the iPhone X in for review, it gave me the chance to review a handful of cases from Olixar, thanks to Mobile Fun. See the links below, all taken from their line of iPhone X cases . The 'X' (pronounced "ex, err.. I mean ten"!) is an all glass design, effectively, and incredibly expensive. In addition to considering Apple Care on your new phone, you'll also want to make sure that the phone is cased when you're out and about. Which is where these cases come in... Olixar X-Duo - Carbon Fibre Silver, £20 A slightly fiddly neoprene inner-shiny plastic outer combination, this is much more solid when mounted on the iPhone X, though you're not going to want to take it on and off again too often, as the parts separate and then it's fiddle time all over again. The button detailing is immaculate and the carbon fibre pattern on the neoprene's back is mesmerising. A perfect case for a perfect iPh...