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...

I do get it in the neck from other geeks occasionally for using an Apple iPhone rather than, as many geeks do, an Android-powered smartphone. Now, in truth, I also own several Android phones too, but they're more playthings these days and keeping up with what Google is doing in the phone world, that being (or used to be, seeing as I'm now semi-retired!) my primary trade.  Now, between 2007 and 2015, I was a bit scornful of Apple's iPhones. They were either too small, too limited, too locked down (in terms of apps and files), had too poor a camera (certainly relative to my Nokia Series smartphones), or all of the above. And I maintain that I was right, compared to the competition, and despite the ambition of iOS in aiming for desktop-class performance.  But 2016 saw the ultra-cheap original iPhone SE and I bought one second hand to play around with and was rather impressed by how fast it was and by how well things just... worked. I set it up with my main accounts and had it...

One of the annoyances of modern life is that adverts have crept into video streaming services - yes, you can pay more to get an 'ad free' tier, but if you do that for everything you watch then life gets quite expensive. Happily, I have found that many video streaming services support picture in picture (don't worry, I'll explain) and therefore, when an advert does hit, either before or in the middle of a programme, you can swipe the video to a screen corner and at least do something else productive during the enforced 30 second or 90 second ad. For example, answering an email or text or browsing your favourite social network. Then, when the advert ends, a single tap restores full screen playback of your programme. To illustrate this, I'll use Disney+, though this also works for BBC iPlayer, Prime Video, YouTube, and, I'm sure, several others - you'll have to experiment! So I'm watching a programme full-screen: And the ad starts, so I swipe up to go home,...

We've been hearing about the phone world 'plateauing' for years. I've been the one proclaiming the concept, since about 2020 - and I'm absolutely right. But 'plateau' is perhaps not what you thought it was. After all, a true plateau is just that - flat, whereas the meaning in the phone world is subtly different. What is DOES mean is that the days of significant year on year advances in phone technology are long gone.  Any phone from 2020 will work just fine today, whether iOS or Android-based. Its performance will be 'fine', its camera putting out photos that are 'fine', its speakers and microphones 'fine', its battery life 'fine'. And so forth. Whereas once (pre-2015, say), there would be compelling reasons to trade your phone in after even less than a year, in order to get the shiny new model that was evidently better at something important, in 2025 there's almost no reason. In fact, we've reached the point where it...

So I've been reviewing the Clicks keyboard for the iPhone for the last year and have done several videos showing its strengths and weaknesses (mainly size!): But then I tried to get too clever. The idea was to 'Enable full keyboard access' and then set custom keyboard shortcuts to trigger iOS Shortcuts. It sounded logical and it did work, as evidenced by the next video: However, there have been some side effects, not least with Apple upgrading iOS 18 and something clearly changing under the hood. What has been happening on simple, regular text input via Clicks, is that the space bar often gets missed and the fields and forms on-screen become highlighted with a neon outline. Clearly there was something screwy going on here, and it looked very much like an Accessibility 'thing'. Then I remembered that the shortcuts system above was part of Accessibility and I have discovered that turning off 'Enable full keyboard access' fixes the bogus text field highlighting...

Unusually, for me, this case wasn't sent in for review - I sought it out and bought it and for good reason. The last few years have mostly seen me with a clear TPU case on my phones, in this case an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and usually a Ringke case with MagSafe built in. I've had about four of these, one for each year because the clear material starts to 'yellow' and look a bit tacky. It's a common issue with clear TPU, it seems - something to do with ultra-violet radiation when outside. So yes, I replace the case each year, and sized for the iPhone I'm currently rocking. Except that this time I wanted to look further 'up market'. Given that I wasn't upgrading to the 16 series (I still prefer stainless steel to titanium and I'm not convinced by the new 'Camera Control'), I had funds to invest in a top notch case. In the end it only cost me about £24, I read up about this TORRAS case and it fit the bill across the board: Being smoked black, it...

The titular question is one we debate often on podcasts and the like. The most obvious answer is 'Yes', of course. Any smartphone made in the last five years will be waterproof, can run anything you care to throw at it, its screen will still be fine, the cameras eminently good enough for what most of us 'snap', and so on. So for uncle Joe and cousin Betty, and probably for you, the reader, tech plateaued some time ago. With the likes of the iPhone X onwards, the Pixel 5 onwards, the Samsung S10 onwards, even if some niche security updates have now stopped, they still run up to date apps and have updated middleware - they'll do the job for everyone. And with the tech from such flagships rippling down to mid-priced phones and even really budget options,  even examples from those worlds in the last few years are now perfectly useable and long-lived. (True, in most case, you'll need a case these days, but that's a given.) Making for a short blog post. But talk t...

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 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...