Steve Litchfield

The Surface Go, launched in 2018, is now seven years old. Never high end at the time (though do make sure you seek out the 8GB RAM version with the proper SSD), it is, nonetheless, a fabulous form factor.  A laptop which is also a tablet and, in form, passing for an iPad easily. Many is the time the family has headed off on a holiday and I've been 'banned from bringing a work laptop', yet I got away with it because I brought the Surface Go - everyone assumed it was an iPad that I'd brought along for a few games and some Netflix. Add in decent stereo speakers, microSD expansion, hot swappable Alcantara keyboards, Surface Pen compatibility, two better-than-expected cameras, and super build quality, and you can see the attraction. See also my original coverage of Surface Go over at (ye olde) AAWP ... (NB: There was a Surface Go 2, 3, and 4, though I've only ever played with the original, picking up two of them second hand at super-cheap bundle prices over the years. St...

Guest writer (and friend) Mike Warner chips in with clarification on things that I (and almost everyone else) gets wrong about Android security... In Android there are three levels of security and updates to functionality. From the highest to lowest levels we have: Google Play Services Google Play System Update … and the (often monthly) Android Security Update Google Play Services implements all the Google developed services, such as App Notifications, Location, Advertising, Google Pay and Mapping and is updated by the Google Play Store automatically to fix any security issues or add new functionality. Google Play Services is distributed only to Google Certified Android devices, so some Chinese phones like Huawei and devices running forks of Android, like Amazon Fire tablets, do not contain this module. Without Google Play Services, the OEM has to provide their own App Store and replace the Google defined services with their own set of services to ensure that Android apps expecting th...

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...

Time after time I hear myself on-air complaining about a late or missing update to a smartphone. In the grand scheme it doesn't matter that much, surely? Why should it matter to a phone user whether their device is on 'March 2023 Android security' or err... 'April'? Or indeed 'February'? Well, it normally doesn't. Certainly most phone users have no awareness of the security status of their devices.  The security-smart answer is that users need protecting from themselves. All operating systems have some bugs, some vulnerabilities, due to their complexity, and exploiting (and fixing) these is a perpetual game of 'whack a mole' played between hackers and software developers.  But if a serious vulnerability is found in Android OS then simply going to a booby-trapped web page or being tricked into downloading and installing something dodgy, let alone knowingly downloading 'cracked' commercial apps and games from the dark web, then the phone ca...