Steve Litchfield

It can't only be me who has scam phone calls come in. The most recent (and most common) is an Indian call centre voice saying that they're from my mobile phone operator, quoting (or guessing correctly) Three, in this case. They open up with 'We can offer you a 45% discount on your current mobile monthly bill'. Which, in itself, should raise alarm bells - what company ever contacts you to get you to pay them less money?? The scam itself is intended to get you to hand over all your details, of course, including payment, for the 'new contract' - and presumably your account then gets debited for a whole lot. But the point of this blog post is to point out that you should always interrupt their spiel and ask them to prove their identity. After all, it was them that called you, so the onus is on them - just as it would be if you called a company and wanted to change something in your own contract with them - they'd run you through security questions before doing ...

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...