Steve Litchfield

This post was first written and published by me on AAWP and is both backed up and updated here with extra text and images... When a smartphone falls out of use in your life, there's a temptation to find a good home for it. Often a family member, often a second hand market like eBay, but sometimes - just sometimes - the phone is special enough, is unique enough, in fact is downright collectable enough, that you might like to hang onto it. Not necessarily just for pecuniary reasons, but perhaps sentimental reasons as well. As an example, I've picked out a dozen smartphones from my own collection that fit this bill. Classics one and all... I'm sure you'll agree with some of my picks, but you'll also have your own favourites. That's what the comments are for! I had a quick round-up from the office and found most of the devices listed below, at least. A spring clean does indeed beckon, I think, to find the rest! Note that some phones I've used were game changers...

Long time readers of my scribblings on camera phones will know my passion for photos to be captured as they look in reality, not in some high contrast, over-saturated, edge-enhanced version of reality. Sure, the latter look better on 6" phone screens. That's why these trends have become common. But the photos themselves are terrible in terms of image quality. By which I mean they've been messed around to look great on the phone or embedded in a narrow social web feed but you can't do anything else with them. Say you want to use a section of the photo only, cropping in to a group of people or an object in a scene. Or you want to show the photo on a large desktop display or TV. Good luck with that with a photo grabbed at 12MP on an iPhone or Pixel or Samsung flagship with all default settings. You'll see artefacts, jagged borders where there should be none, and general 'over-processing'. Which is why I applauded Nokia's 'PureView' approach ten yea...

This happens at least once a week to me. I'm with a customer (or friend) and we're talking tech. I whip out my Surface Duo, currently the main Android phone in my pockets that's signed into all my stuff (social, banking), to look something up or demonstrate something in the OS. And their jaw drops. "What is that?!" I then have to explain that it's actually quite an old device, brought out in 2020 by Microsoft and then quietly forgotten. True, there was the Duo 2, which I loved in its own way, despite a compromised form factor - and this was also forgotten about. No real updates to either after Android 12L, with the Duo about to hit end-of-support this year, and the Duo 2 Autumn next year after yet more mandatory Android security updates. Oh, and you can't buy them new anymore. And if anything breaks then they can't be repaired. So almost impossible to recommend, then. I proceed with a quick demo. Two apps at once, something spanned, laptop mode, with Q...

We've all been there. Listening to a well known podcast and the host says 'And now a word from our sponsor', followed by three minutes of waffle about mattresses or pelvic grooming tools or NordVPN or whatever. What do you and I do? Immediately hit the 'skip 30 seconds' button a few times in our podcatcher, until our ears detect that the advert slot is over. So we hear perhaps the first few seconds of the advert and maybe the last few, if we're unlucky. So what's the point? Annoying those listeners who don't have a hand free to reach out and hit the skip button? It beggars belief that there are still companies willing to pay significant money for multi-minute ad spots on podcasts. Isn't it just a big waste of their money? The same applies to video podcasts and embedded sponsor slots in videos too, since the timeline bar has a handle and it's trivial to slide this over a few minutes to miss out anything that's not core content. So what's t...

[Yes, yes, a little self indulgent, but I was musing on such a list recently and thought 'Why not do it properly and do it in a blog post?'] I was chatting to my daughter and talking about the 'old days' when we used to make 'mix tapes' on cassette, painstakingly copying on tracks from other tapes or LPs to create curated compilations. She paused for a brief moment and then said 'you mean like a playlist?'(!) Ah. So yes, turns out the mix tape is redundant in 2023, but the idea of picking 10 (or 15, as has ended up here!) favourite tracks from a band, an artist, an era, or a genre, and then theoretically putting them into a playlist is a good idea still. Not least because it filters out a lot of the rubbish that every artist inserts. Because none are perfect and all are guilty of putting in 'filler' songs, let's face it. The better artists or bands have less filler, but it's still there, and therefore warrants a retrospective curation. In...

Here's something off the wall. And not a little psychedelic. Also, I don't think I've reviewed a podcast before. Shiny gadgets are more my staple. But I wanted to put some thoughts down - and a recommendation - for Hawkbinge, an occasional podcast covering the complete discography of Hawkwind, the space rock band from 1970 through to the current day (with the main man, Dave Brock, now in his 80s(!), though thankfully supported by a revolving cast of younger chaps). Hawkwind as a band were always interesting to me because of their driving sound, sci-fi lyrics, and progressive/experimental leanings. And there have been many books written about their history and output. (I've even done a few mini-sites on tangential personnel and bands . Plus webmastering, in the past, for Huw Lloyd Langton , and playing Hawkwind tunes in support gigs .) But Hawkwind music has never been covered in this much detail . Andy Hood (long time Hawkwind fan) and Matt Longstaff (complete novice ...

Readers may well be aware that I'm partial to some 1970s Hawkwind. But there's one period of time, around two years from 77-79, where the usual people in, people out the door got a little silly, complete with multiple tours, multiple line-ups, three studio albums arranged in the 'wrong' order, and even a complete change of band name! So, in an effort to get my mind round all of this, I'm drawing on personal knowledge and remembrances of the time (I was in my late teens), press clippings, album sleeve notes, extended CD editions, plus most importantly  Joe Banks' excellent Hawkwind 70s history , to put everything into a strictly chronological list. Here's what happened and (as best as I can tell) in what order! Early January 1977 : Recording sessions for an album at Rockfield Studios, with Adrian Shaw in the band for the first time on bass. The rest of the band is Dave Brock, Robert Calvert, Simon House, and Simon King, of course. 28 January 1977 : Recorded i...

It's a fair cop. I was wrong about Apple's AirPods. But also right, at least up until the last year or so. Bear with me... I'd always hated the circular plastic outer-ear Apple headphones - they came with every iPod and early iPhone and they sounded tinny and awful, plus they weren't comfortable in my ears for extended periods. So I always refused them and went to third party headphones. Apple then redesigned them to be more 'sculpted' - which mostly helped the comfort issue. But not the audio. Then they went wireless with AirPods, which looked a little stupid (and still does, to some extent, even years later), plus the audio issues remained, at least compared to the competition. But... we come to the third generation of AirPods  (roughly £170 as I write this). They're sculpted, so adequately comfortable now. The long stalk is now shorter so they look marginally less stupid (plus so many people wear them that they don't stand out so much in 2023). And, b...

I recently declared that a phone needs to be lifeproof to be... well, Steve-proof, and that this partly means a decent degree off waterproofing, for use when it's raining (this is the UK!) and for surviving the occasional dunk in washing up water or similar. Which largely precludes the use of 'folding' phones, as in devices which unfold along their length to reveal a mini-tablet. However, there are some subtleties here, if we look at specifications and review materials. So I thought a brief table might be helpful. Device Official IP rating Notes Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 IPX8 No official dust rating, though brushed hinges seem to keep most dirt out in JerryRigEverything tests. Oppo Find N2 none Advertised as 'dust and water resistant'. So OK for use in the rain, for example, but it won't survive a dunking. Vivo X Fold 2 none Teardowns have shown water gaskets and various protections, so again probably fine in the rain, even down the be...

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...

Yes, yes, manufacturers usually quote durability specs (materials, IP rating, etc.) when advertising their phones, but for me it comes down to a certain minimum - if a device is man enough (or, I guess, woman enough!) to survive real world daily use. So, for example, I have my iPhone 14 Pro Max. It: has a stainless steel chassis has 'Ceramic Shield' glass is IP68-rated for dust and water, so is essentially waterproof to the nth degree, you can wash it under the tap or in the bath if it gets dirty is encased in tough clear TPU (and belt-holstered ) Then, to one side, the other smartphone I'm captivated by, the Microsoft Surface Duo, two displays, 360 degree hinge, and so forth. Amazing potential for productivity, a folding tablet in the pocket, effectively. It: has two Gorilla Glass Victus displays, with Gorilla Glass backs has no IP rating, thanks mainly to the 360 degree hinge mechanism and likely ingress of dust and water can't be cased due to the need to fold closed ...

I did want to plug my friend Juan Carlos Bagnell's YouTube video here, as I'm essentially repurposing his bullet points, but in written prose rather than on camera! You see, the move to larger camera sensors in smartphones has been something I've been tracking for one and a half decades . And in each case, sensors getting larger has been a very.good.thing . Except that good 'ol physics, the same physics I've been touting as a benefit as sensors have gotten larger and more and more light is being gathered, and photos have thus got better even in dim lighting conditions - that same physics has meant that the trend has passed a tipping point and we're now starting to see real world issues in real world phones. Too shallow depth of field Starting off with something that's perhaps subjective, since it depends on exactly what you want your phone to photograph. But a larger (1") sensor means a larger aperture feeding it light, and the larger the aperture, the...

The story so far... I can't live without a belt case for my PDA/smartphone/whatever. Really. I've tried, and I kept leaving it behind. And don't talk to me about pockets - these are fine when I have a jacket or coat, but I find today's giant phones uncomfortable in a trouser front pocket. I'm clearly in a worldwide minority here - maybe I'm just too slender!  So belt case it is. And my go to for the last decade has been PDAir - I won't link to their web site because it's effectively dead now. Either coronavirus or just market forces or mis-management caused their demise. Which was a great shame, since their slender vertical belt pouches were/are perfect for me. Here's an early sample, from 2013 for the Lumia 1020: Since then I've managed to get half a dozen (gradually larger) PDAir belt pouches and these have done my various Android and then iPhones right up to date. In each case, I like to have the phone in a slimline TPU case (for grip) and the...