Steve Litchfield

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...

Something of a Frequently Asked Question around these parts! This is mostly explained in the last full length video I did, Phones Show 436 embedded in https://stevelitchfield.com/sshow/index.html - in short, my life, and the world around me, had changed. A lot. But I did want to amplify my reasons from a Creator standpoint. Back in 2006 (pre-YouTube) I was the only person in the world reviewing phones in video form . As YouTube started to take off and as smartphones became sexier, especially in the USA, as the iPhone rose and rose, the number of people attempting to review phones grew almost exponentially.  Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) started as a school kid in 2008 but it was in 2012 that he started to cover phone tech seriously.  Michael Fisher (Mr Mobile) started reviewing phones on YouTube in 2016.  Lewis Hilsenteger (Unbox Therapy) started unboxing phones in 2011.  Dave Lee (Dave2D) started up in 2015. Arun Maini (MrWhosetheboss) started up (again as a kid!) ...