Steve Litchfield

If there’s one search that I hear about once a month from various people, it’s how to get flagship performance and features at a price that’s not extortionate and a size that's not extravagant. In 2024 we now have flagship phones that are £1000, £1200, £1400, and more, for the folding variety and, if I may suggest, it’s all getting a little silly. Not least because after paying all that money, you’re also stuck with a phone that’s over-large and heavy, cumbersome in day to day life. Why can’t we have most of those flagship internals in a phone body that’s a regular size and a price to match? Well… there are options. The 'correct' size for a smartphone, I contend. No monstrosities, please. Oh, and aim for £800 max! Certainly on the iPhone side, you can’t argue with the performance and imaging in the regular ‘base’ iPhone, the 15 at £800 . It’s not cheap, but it’s terrific quality hardware and software and it’s significantly the right side of a grand. But it you're leanin...

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 ...