Steve Litchfield

I realise that we're in the twilight of my tech career here, but in addition to writing missives in this blog, I'm continuing to produce videos, albeit in Shorts form, mostly on the subject of smartphone tech.  Worth a watch hopefully, even if limited by YouTube's insane compression and time constraints.  For example, extolling the surprising usefulness of Apple's Dynamic Island: And looking at the new features in Google's latest Feature Drop for the Pixel Fold: And then explaining my love for stereo in phone speakers: Plus a load of review content. Here's my three part Fairphone 5 review: Staying topical, will Apple ever release a folding iPhone? I think not: And finally, for now, how to put a skin on a phone, smoothly and successfully(!): That's just the last few months, there's a full two year set of Shorts videos for you to browse through, all listed here . Enjoy!

I'd been swimming against the tide for well over a decade. Making my name writing about Symbian OS on the Nokia phones, then the Apple iPhone appeared in 2007 in fledgling but notable form and Android phones started appearing a year or two later. Symbian was dominant for a while still and then the American juggernauts took over, with Symbian being relegated to irrelevance by 2013.  Not to worry, I had Nokia's new love, Windows Phone, to play with and write about, eh? This was something of a flash in the pan, disappearing after just a few years thanks to Nokia's lack of investment in the high end and the industry's indifference to the platform in general.  Android seemed the obvious choice for me, because of its tech credentials, and I went through several Samsungs and Pixels, until in 2019 a friend (literally) bought me an iPhone 11 Pro because he'd been so impressed by it and thought I would too - he wanted me to cover iOS more in my videos and podcasts. And he was...

I have to say that I wasn't expecting much from these, the Boiros 4-in-one rechargeable hand warmers , not least because the packaging was Chinese-generic and Boiros name was implemented in a couple of cheap stickers. However, the actual product is well made and works rather splendidly. Not least because of the potential for being tiny emergency power banks as well. Note that in all the photos here, the refresh rate of the LCD displays is too slow for the camera shutter speed, so not all segments are shown in the images. But they're fine to the eye! The units are charged (both at once via a single 'Y' cable, unusually) by USB Type C at 10W and a full charge takes 90 minutes or so from any Type C source you happen to have around. Output, if you want to use them as power banks, is via USB-A and also at 10W. But that's OK for emergency use, I suspect, especially with this lowest common denominator port. The idea with these warmers is to use a couple of meaty power bank...

I just do not understand. Well, I do, but... I've heard family, friends, podcasters, and YouTubers all say how they keep leaving their 2023-sized smartphone behind. On a bus, in a taxi, at home when going out, in the car, and so on.  Back in the day (2004), phones were small enough that they'd comfortably fit in almost any pocket. Which meant that you rarely forgot it. In the last half decade, however, phones are now big enough and heavy enough that you have to choose an appropriate pocket and have a strategy for insertion and extraction in most circumstances. Well, maybe ladies have an edge here, if there's a bag on the go, as it were. But I contend that all of this is a problem. Perhaps a first world one, but something to be thought about, at least. Because there's a solution, and one which I've used since the earliest PDAs in the late 1990s: a belt holster. No, don't laugh (people usually do) - get past the style barrier and you'll admit that carrying a ...

Back in the day - 2007 to 2017, roughly, for a decade, I was one of the most active phone camera comparison writers in the world. Writing mainly on the All About sites (still largely up, though inactive for 18 months now), I pitched the trailblazer camera phones of the day against each other - and had enormous fun doing so. There were leaps forward every year - and these were evident on the screen, with 1:1 crops from phone camera photos showing dramatically better results, especially in low light, as time went on. But there came a point (around 2012) where, in good light, any phone camera can produce good shots. Then there came a point (around 2018) where, in low light, ditto - you'd really have to pixel peep to see differences.  Fast forward to 2023 and the quality of a phone-shot photo depends far less, I contend, on the actual phone being used, and far more on the skill and imagination of the person taking the photo. In other words, the phone camera hardware isn't really t...

I'm a sucker for gadget elegance. And the thought that a lump of tech, with no wires, could be clamped to the back of my smartphone and start recharging it, is elegance personified. As with Apple's (still expensive) original version of the idea and as with Voltme's version , there are caveats, but I think they're minor in the grand scheme of things. Anker is a tried and tested name in tech power, of course, and I've bought various things from them over the years, all of which are still in use. The Anker 521 , also known, somewhat confusingly, as the PowerCore Magnetic 5K, is a small and tough rubberised brick, with an internal 5000mAh Li-Ion battery and a MagSafe (/Qi 2) ring of aligned magnets on one side. Clamp the 521 onto the back of a MagSafe (/Qi 2) compatible phone and press the button to start the charging and you're done. Admittedly, the Qi wireless charging is only at a stately 5W, but then even Apple's official (and much more expensive) version o...

Apple's ProRAW system on the iPhone 12 Pro series (onwards) is rather interesting, in that you get all the Apple 'smarts' but without the populist edge enhancement and sharpening that goes into Camera's default JPG output. But, a lot of the time, you may not see the full benefit. Yes, you can fiddle around with the ProRAW DNG files in Photos or indeed any other compatible photo editor and have a lot of fun, but what happens when you want to share around a full quality JPG with the world? For example, on the phone itself, emailing an image to someone or sharing it via iMessage or via a social media app? Happily, iOS is clever enough to convert the ProRAW DNG file 'on the fly', so you never need to worry about this. But, and here's the (really interesting) rub: what if you want a standard JPG on your MAC? Either for space reasons or because you want the desktop file to be as compatible with other apps as possible.  In my case it has been to directly compare JP...

Phone selection at the top end of the market is a minefield these days, in 2023. Or perhaps you're spoiled for choice. It depends on whether your glass is half empty or half full - or on the depth of your wallet! And I made a curious decision recently that surprised me - I rejected the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Google Pixel Fold in favour of the two year old Microsoft Surface Duo 2 . I should emphasise that this wasn't a specs-based or wallet-based choice - I had the Pixel Fold in hand at the same time, and only recently had a month with the Galaxy Z Fold 4 (the 5 is only a minor update). So I had experience galore with the concept and form factors. Shane Craig is big into these devices too and I recommend you check out his YouTube channel . The device I hadn't played with, perhaps surprising given the sheer number of 'gift' devices showered on other tech YouTubers, was the OnePlus Open , but although this is a super slice of technology, its insistence of tryin...

In my three weeks of Pixel Fold video review Shorts , I'd been slowly coming to the conclusion that, despite being slightly outgunned in the raw specs department (screen brightness, chipset, charging speeds), Google absolutely nailed the form factor. What's needed is a phone that's manageable in the hand and yet which unfolds to a decent tablet size. Samsung's Z Fold series gets all the basics right but is over-tall and over-slim when folded, while OnePlus' new Open foldable is almost as tall and wider, making it a large phone to start off with. Plus the latter omits a 2023 essential - Qi wireless charging and isn't waterproof... See my concluding Short in particular (a blog embed isn't perhaps the perfect container for a portrait video, but hey...), in which I list all the reasons why the Pixel Fold is the foldable right now: The key phrase in my video is perhaps 'compact'. Although heavy, the Pixel Fold sits just right in a pocket and in the ha...

It remains a mystery to me to this day. Why don't other phone manufacturers and their cameras use the tricks that Google pulls off? An issue of patents perhaps? Or just lack of software expertise? Regardless, the two 'tricks' demonstrated here are Sensor Fusion and Super Res Zoom. You'll find them on any Pixel in various combinations. On the Pixel 7 and 8 Pro and on the Pixel Fold (below) you'll find both techniques employed. And yes, I already said that most people don't need to zoom more than 3x in normal life , but hey - this is for when zoom is needed. Perhaps at a sporting event or trying to spot rare wildlife. To demonstrate both tricks, let's take a standard landscape shot - with an interesting central subject: So far so good, and any camera phone could take this shot. Here scaled for the web, but don't worry, I'll show off some crops below too. Now we try zooming at 2x: In the case of my Pixel Fold, the main sensor is 48MP, so a 2x zoom smart...