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...

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...

You'll have heard of the Surface Duo? Running Android, it's a dual screened phone with unique form factor that is being abandoned by its maker, Microsoft, in a month or two's time. Begging the question as to what happens for people using it at that time. In fact, the situation isn't unusual, especially in the Android world. People all over the planet are still using 3, 4, 5, even 6 or more years old phones with nothing really bad happening to them. Manufacturer updates typically stop around the three year mark (more if it's a Samsung, less if it's made by Motorola or a lesser Chinese brand), so it's a valid question to wonder just how safe using these older phones with old operating system versions really is. I realise that this is a topic we keep coming back to on the Phones Show Chat podcast , but for everyone else, here's a primer... and my take. There are various aspects to manufacturer updates that get offered to your smartphone: Operating System (O...

Gulp.