Steve Litchfield

Following my longer-than-expected ' how I came to iPhone in the 2020s story ' last week, I wanted to list the reasons why its human interface, iOS software and applications also play a part in keeping me from looking too hard at the Android competition... I should preface this list by saying that both iOS and Android operating systems have copied the best features from each other - and from other previous OS, including Windows Phone, Meego, Blackberry OS 10, and Web OS. For 90% of practical use, iOS and Android are now interchangeable and you can certainly set up your home screens and applications to mirror a setup that you might have had on the competing OS.  However that does leave the interesting 10%. So, away from mundanities like launching a web browser, running PIM and social media apps, watching YouTube and Netflix (etc), all of which are nigh identical on each OS, here are some of the reasons why, in 2025, I stay on the iPhone and iOS: 1. Face ID It's easy to say t...

When is a phone camera really a DSLR? When it has a SnapGrip on its back? Not quite, but it kind of feels like it. So. I bought and am reviewing the ShiftCam SnapGrip , £70 in the UK. Partly spurred by fond memories of the Lumia 1020 PD-95G Camera Grip , which it strongly resembles, in functionality and ambition: You'll possibly remember the Lumia 1020, from 2013. The camera phone champion of its day, thanks to a 41MP back-illuminated 1/1.5" sensor, OIS, Xenon flash, and computational oversampling. That all sounds rather special today and indeed the 1020 still works well today, see my detailed imaging comparisons over on the archived All About sites: The famed Lumia 1020 takes on the DSLR Next up... the Lumia 1020 trounces the iPhone 12 Pro Max?! A 2021 'PureView' battle: 808/1020/Pixel/iPhone ...among other pieces. Do go and have a read. The upshot? In ProRAW (unsharpened, un-edge-enhanced, but much larger file size) mode, the modern iPhones comfortably defeat the dec...