You want to know which is the best smartphone this season? Tbh, it's tricky to tell 'em apart I call it the "Phone Season". It's the glut of new smartphones that begins with splashy launches at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and ends in late spring. Phone Season defines what phones look like each year. Apart from Apple (which introduces its new models in September) and Google (in October), and the odd mid-year …
And before that, the introduction of reliable fingerprint sensors made logging in via a PIN or pattern seem slow and tiresome, even without lurkers peering over your shoulder. These two changes were small but welcome.
Once again, repeat after me, biometrics have nothing to do on mobile devices. Remember, the device is full of your fingerprints, anyway ...
"The World Won't Listen" to The Smiths.
The point of having fingerprint verification on is to make it easy to log in but impossible for your friends to post "amusing" comments on your facebook account.
I couldn't give a toss whether the CIA could access my phone from the fingerprints left on the screen. I'm not that interesting.
At least here on this side of the pond the courts have ruled that a merely biometric means of unlocking a device (face recog, fingerprint, etc) can be forced to be provided to law enforcement - they can force you to put your finger on the sensor, look into your screen, etc to unlock it & give them access. But those same courts have said that a password or knock code, anything that requires you to provide a *code you know* absolutely can not be forced to be divulged to the law without a warrant. So a fingerprint may be faster but it's also not going to stop a cop from grabbing your hand, knuckling apart your fingers, & forcing one onto your phone so they can search it for incriminating evidence. They can't do that with a code/password/etc. So you may not have anything to hide from the ThreeLetterAgencies, but that cop whom just decided you are now "a person of interest" & wants to go through your phone to find the terrorist bits will be yanked up short by the need to get a warrant first.
As I said, I'm not interesting enough for that to matter.
If I was to not use a fingerprint in order to avoid that, I'd be going out of my way to pretend that I care - I don't.
If the cost of that laziness is that the police can force me to show them pictures of my dogs, or my inane ramblings on El Reg, then I'm not fussed.
"If the cost of that laziness is that the police can force me to show them"
The more realistic cost is that a thief will get his hands on your phone and use the fingerprint scanner to unlock it and access important data you may have there. Defeating those things isn't that hard. It's well within the means of a moderately competent criminal.
If the cost of that laziness is that the police can force me to show them pictures of my dogs, or my inane ramblings on El Reg, then I'm not fussed.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Attrib Cardinal Richelieu
"At least here on this side of the pond the courts have ruled that a merely biometric means of unlocking a device"
As it happens my Huawei requires the pin every so often regardless of whether it's the correct fingerprint or not. It always requires a pin upon restart, both to unlock the sim and another to unlock the actual phone. I'm one of those strange people that never starts his mobey until he's out of the terminal building.... I'm willing to take my chances with uncle Sam's operatives, they do seem to enjoy searching my luggage But then so do the Kiwi's and the Diggers. Weirdly the only place I've never been searched is Hong Kong
"but impossible for your friends to post "amusing" comments on your facebook account."
You clearly don't know my friends -- one of those stupid fingerprint scanners would certainly not prevent them from doing this.
As far as government bodies are concerned, the CIA (or FBI, or other TLAs) isn't the greatest risk vector. It's the local cops.
"Once again, repeat after me, biometrics have nothing to do on mobile devices. Remember, the device is full of your fingerprints, anyway ..."
Good point. But dumping biometrics is a silly concept. What's required, as we humans get the hang of real device security, is full multifactor authentication. As usual, it's a case of convenience versus security. Seeing as security is losing, especially with Android, less convenience is required:
1) Something you KNOW: A password, PIN...
2) Something you ARE: Your face, fingerprint, retina, voice, signature, DNA...
3) Something you HAVE: Hardware authentication device, temporary key, mag strip, RFID chip...
Reading Assignment:
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs513/2005fa/NNLauthPeople.html
Darn right!
I'd say we need to add 2FA to this biometrics mumbojumbo. Send a SMS to the second phone then enter the ginormous passphrase into the first one.
What could be more fun?
Or we can just dispense with all this bull and get back to using the phone as, you know, a phone?
@ AC, that Kaspersky article you linked to actual explains why Apple's privacy policies are fairly good. It certainly does not equate Apple with Google.
It's largely a How-To article about managing the permissions of 3rd party apps and saving battery life by selective use of GPS.
It's not a good idea to be an apologist for Android's poor security reputation. Every month, if not every week, a major Android security incident is reported. They often involve millions of devices. By comparison, the security of iOS devices is astronomically superior, entirely be design. Apple is by no means perfect in their attention to security. But compared to Google and Android device makers, Apple is genius. Android continues to suffer from severe OS version fragmentation. Google still barely bothers to adequately vet apps tossed into their Play Store. Apple's 'walled garden' is a beautifully secure place by comparison, albeit imperfect.
Meanwhile, marketing moron monitoring of mankind marches on. Taking deliberate precautions is required for every Internet user, no exceptions. Thankfully, both platforms are providing an increasing number of tools for maintaining our right to privacy. Stuff it, big brother!
"But compared to Google and Android device makers, Apple is genius."
I disagree. Apple and Google have just made different tradeoffs. One is not "more genius" than the other. In deciding between the two, if you aren't comfortable having to be more conscientious about security and don't mind the rather serious restrictions that iOS imposes, then iPhones are the way to go. Otherwise, Android is the way to go.
Or, to put it a different way, they're both crap -- just flavored differently.
I disagree. Android is insecure in all sorts of ways, and google, as well as various others if they can get a chance, will collect a very large amount of your data. Apple doesn't collect as much, has more restrictions on third party collection, and has fewer security problems. Apple therefore makes a more secure product.
However, there are a lot of good reasons to dislike IOS. The fact that it's secure doesn't make the lack of choice, the lock-in to apple, the ridiculous expense of the hardware (although certain droid manufacturers are giving apple a run for your money there), or any other annoying elements better. There are trade-offs, but I see them as security versus all the useful features android has that apple doesn't. Security vs side-loading. Security vs removable storage/battery (some conditions apply). On and on.
Also, just because apple's phone is more secure than most android phones doesn't mean that apple is good. Apple could do more to protect their customers' security, and they could easily collect less. I would like to see both. For security changes, I have a very long list for android to do.
"Android is insecure in all sorts of ways, and google, as well as various others if they can get a chance, will collect a very large amount of your data."
Sure, I never said otherwise. I will add, though, that it is possible to make an Android device reasonably secure, even from Google. It does take effort and vigilance, though.
There are Android phones with smaller than 5" screens, especially in your price range.
For starters:
Samsung S3, 4.7" screen, £180
Nokia 1, 4.5" screen, £80
There's also the option of the compact iPhone SE if you're not bothered about Android, a bit more expensive but refurbished models available.
There are crap and ancient Android phones with smaller than 5" screens
TFTFY.
The S3 came out in 2012, and the Nokia 1 has a whopping 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage - not really that usable, with all of the apps being really hungry (and getting worse). Additionally the Google apps have to stay on the inbuilt storage and grow bigger and bigger every year - meaning all of the internal storage is filled and you can no longer update apps because of that.
@Dave126: thanks, I'll check it out - I do share the same problem as the OP. The current phone (LG... uhm... Leon?) is... woefully inadequate. Even opening the email program takes several minutes. And updates to the apps are impossible now the Google apps have taken over the internal storage. The stupid system cannot download the updates to the external SD card, it seems.
I want my Windows phone back (a small, cheap Lumia 520 - my wife still has hers, still works well). And that's from somebody who doesn't even own a Windows computer...
That's my phone, and it is great, does everything you'd want from a phone. It also takes pretty good snaps. As I'm not a professional photographer, that is all I need. Stick a 128gb microsb in it, it's also your mobile media centre. Great battery life, usually above still 50% at the end of the day.
If I come in to some money, my next phone would be a Sony compact xyz whatever they call their next small shiny thing, or else the Samsung A3 2019. But can't think of a reason to upgrade yet.
There are crap and ancient Android phones with smaller than 5" screens
TFTFY.
The S3 came out in 2012, and the Nokia 1 has a whopping 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage - not really that usable...
S3 from 2012? Meet my Nokia 3310 from 2017!
This Nokia is an improvement from the 2000 version. It has a whopping 2.4" screen and 16 MB of storage - pretty usable if you ask me.
/trollface
Second all the comments on the A3. Its my work phone and there's very little it doesn't do well. For example the finger print sensor is faster than both my iPad Pro and my Moto Z. All for a fraction of the price.
My only niggles are the un-removal Samsung trash apps and the annoying reversal of the standard Android button layout.
Dr Devra Davis: "The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwyDCHf5iCY
Even if you think that you already know what is to know about this "issue", I would like to advise you to watch that little presentation anyhow. I'm quite sure that some new facts will come as a surprise to you as well.
"Even if you think that you already know what is to know about this "issue", I would like to advise you to watch that little presentation anyhow. I'm quite sure that some new facts will come as a surprise to you as well."
I've been messing around with RF since my early teens, and using mobile phones since 1990, and from reading studies and personal observation I am convinced that the main danger from mobiles phones is actually collision with people using them without looking around them.
They have quite a few cases where the cancer is not only found at the location of the smart-phone, but has even taken the shape of the antenna. Noteworthy are those, where the smart-phone kept re-logging in to the bases at full power repeatedly.
Among the first things they ask male patients in fertility clinics today is the use of smart-phones.
Your "argumentation" is going down the well known path of:
"Woman aged 112 says her secret to long life is smoking 30 cigarettes a day"
<sarcasm>But you seem to have captured the gist, without even knowing the content. Congratulations.</sarcasm>
"They have quite a few cases where the cancer is not only found at the location of the smart-phone, but has even taken the shape of the antenna"
Oooh, citation needed. Very much needed.
For one small thing, the intensity of radiation around an antenna is not the same shape as the antenna.
But I will come here and post that I am wrong if you provide some accessible, peer reviewed citations. English, French, German, Italian, Russian all accepted.
The video does not come with citations, it only comes with a hagiography.
A citation would look something like this:
Has the incidence of brain cancer risen in Australia since the introduction of mobile phones 29 years ago? Chapman S, Azizi L, Luo Q, Sitas F. Cancer Epidemiol. 2016. pii: S1877 - 7821(16)30050 - 9.
That particular paper looks at 30 years of data on cancer rates in Australia and finds that the only uptick comes from better detection of cancer, by the way. In fact, no large scale studies have found any increase in disease or illness that can be linked to the rise in mobile phone use.
"The video comes with citations. It is in English. Dr Devra Davis has been working for the US government before."
So that's a no, then, with added helping of insult. Figures.
Davis's publications are marked by alarmist titles unusual in scientific publishing. Meanwhile, here's a quote from Simon Chapman's intro to the Australian study* cited by someone above. It's to the point and telling.
"Davis’ concerns were the focus of an ABC Catalyst program that attracted widespread criticism, including from me and Media Watch. The Catalyst presenter Maryanne Demasi was nominated for the Australian Skeptics bent spoon award.....
We examined the association between age and gender-specific incidence rates of 19,858 men and 14,222 women diagnosed with brain cancer in Australia between 1982-2012, and national mobile phone usage data from 1987-2012.
In summary, with extremely high proportions of the population having used mobile phones across some 20-plus years (from about 9% in 1993 to about 90% today), we found that age-adjusted brain cancer incidence rates (in those aged 20-84 years, per 100,000 people) had risen only slightly in males but were stable over 30 years in females.
There were significant increases in brain cancer incidence only in those aged 70 years or more. But the increase in incidence in this age group began from 1982, before the introduction of mobile phones in 1987 and so could not be explained by it. Here, the most likely explanation of the rise in this older age group was improved diagnosis."
*Chapman S, Azizi L, Luo Q, Sitas F. Cancer Epidemiol. 2016. pii: S1877 - 7821(16)30050 - 9.
"The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation"
They're radios, of course they emit wireless radiation. They wouldn't work if they didn't. It's non-ionizing and has no proven harmful effects at the power levels emitted by phones. Those levels are always managed to be as low as possible to save battery life.
There are different cells and different tissues. Some cells regenerate (renew themselves) faster than others. This is why cancer is very rare in some regions, while it is more common in others. For that reason, the breast region, the abdomen and the head, for example, are extremely problematic. Our hands are rather robust. For instance, our hands can tolerate considerably more heat than other regions.
I'll wish for:
* Survive a fall from head height to concrete without screen shattering.
* Good vsiibility of display in direct sunglight.
* Decent signal in fringe coverage areas.
I already have the 2 day battery life. Headphones are BT. DIY battery changes are easy even on so called non replaceable ones.
>* Survive a fall from head height to concrete without screen shattering.
>* Good vsiibility of display in direct sunglight.
Okay, the laws of physics and materials are against you, I'm afraid. The more deformation of the case, the less the force. Theres no getting around the bulkier the case the greater potential reduction in force on the phone. There's a wide range to choose from.
An easily scratched plastic screen rapidly loses clarity in sunlight, but plastic screens are tougher - more resistant to shattering. Best solution is to use a case that protects the edges of the screen and to use a toughened glass screen protector on top. The glass protector will still crack if dropped from a height onto a but of gravel, but in doing so it absorbs the force and saves your expensive phone screen.
A snap-on physical QWERTY keyboard? The following link is to the Indigogo page for the Moto Mod keyboard. It's being developed by a man who has put his money and time where his mouth is, not Motorola themselves. I recommend reading the project updates. Journalists had 'hands-on' back in January, but mass production has taken a bit longer.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keyboard-mod-a-physical-keyboard-for-the-moto-z#/updates/all
I said best solution, not a perfect solution! That was the whole point of my post - physics imposes limits, so it's hard to make a screen that is both tough and hard. However, that doesn't mean that all phones are built up to those limits. Lamination - a thin hard layer atop a more flexible layer is the technique that is used.
There's screen damage from impacts against hard edges or points like a piece of grit in the pavement, and then there's cracking from the screen being bent from a drop. Screen protectors guard against the former. Cases and rigid phone construction guard against the latter.
And they won't be. So, do you really need a flagship phone, or can you find a way to adopt the workarounds that other people do?
If you need a flagship, then Samsung offer you the SD card slot and 3.5 mm audio jack. Last year's S8 has the true flagship trappings ( ARCore, ability to sideload the Pixel Camera smarts, certified HDR display - all niche, but such compatability is reassuring) if you want to save money over this years model, and you can put the hundreds you save against the £50 Samsung will charge you for battery replacement in a couple of years time if needs be. It has Rapid Charging and Wireless charging to mitigate its finite battery.
Oh, and the 3.5mm earbuds it's bundled with ain't half bad, especially if you use Adapt Sound to tune the audio output to your hearing.
Whilst external battery packs can be cumbersome, rapid charging means they don't have to be attached for very long. It depends how much of your day you are away from your desk, car, or rucksack or power outlet.
It seems that you need to listen to a good part of
Jethro Tull's "Living in the Past".
Things move forward and sometimes things get left behind. I'd love to be able to go out and buy a Steam Powered Car but I can't. :) :) :)
I don't know how you use (or abuse) your phone but I never seem to have a problem getting my decidely ancient secondhand iphone 6 through a day. Sometimes it goes for two days between charges. I see no need to upgrade until this time next year.
Some of the Xperia range had lanyard holes, but people fearful of dropping their phones tend to use cases - many of which have lanyard holes.
If you want a lanyard mount without a case, then I recommend a polyurethane adhesive such as Sikaflex. If it's applied to a metal or glass phone back, you should be able to remove it with a Stanley blade in the future should you want to.
I would like to add one thing to your wishlist: A minimum of 4 years of security updates and enhancements.
I shouldn't have to look into Lineage OS (the successor to Cyanogenmod) to get new security updates after 18 months. I don't like getting a new phone because that means I have to spend a lot of time transferring stuff and getting things the way I like it back. I want to keep using my phone for at least 3 years, probably longer. It is not the money, it is the time involved with a new phone.
It's too early to tell what difference Project Treble mandatory in phones shipped with Oreo) will make to the regularity, alacrity and longevity of Android updates because at the moment updates are still arriving frequently for some non-Treble phones. All things being equal, being able to release updates without input from everyone in the supply chain - the aim of the modular Treble - should make things much faster.
A minimum of 4 years of security updates and enhancements.
Yes, but with better user control. My current phone, a Galaxy S6 I bought used and use over an AT&T-hosted MVNO, gets OTA updates, which is good. But the phone only provides a short grace period after receiving an update before it forcibly installs it and reboots. I'm not sure how long a period; it doesn't tell me, or warn me before it does it.
That hasn't been a problem yet, but there are plenty of plausible situations in which it could be. Just downloading the update automatically is pretty stupid.
My wishlist? I don't give a flying rats ass - what's a "feature" today will soon be a standard and will eventually be abandoned - the average phones life is about 2 years so whatever you like today will be replaced/updated/improved/abandoned soon.
Privacy? That's never an option, anyone who thinks their phone is secure is toast.
Strangely the flagships don't but last year's Moto G5 offered all that and the performance is pretty good.
My Moto Z Play offers it all except the replaceable battery but the battery life is so good that I still get 2 days heavy use now after 18 months.
As we all know, these days battery life if the top of everyone's list as phones now do everything well. The manufacturers continue to ignore this as it's the only good way to force people to update.
My current Moto G5S+ has all of those, a decent camera and upto 2 or 3 days battery life depending on use.
I got mine for £189 some £70 below retail.
The only reason I bought it a couple of months ago was because my Wileyfox Storm developed a battery bulge and I needed a quick replacement before going on my hols.
I've since repaired the Wilefox Storm at a cost of £13 and given it to my mum to replace her Moto G2.
I've not checked out the new Moto G6S yet, but I hear good things... they make decent phones for people who can't or refuse to waste money on so called flagship shiny trinkets... I'm one who refuses to waste money when I can get what I want for a fraction and save money at the same time.
The only one of those my S9+ doesn't have is a user-replaceable battery. Otherwise it has the 3.5mm jack, the battery lasts two days with average use (phone calls, messaging on a variety of platforms, social media, camera etc) and it has a micro SD card slot which will support cards up to 400Gb.
Don't know about the others...
I detest force installed crap I would not want to use, even worse when force restarted and forced to run when you are trying to use said device. I had to use my phone this morning and it took me 5 minutes to get it usable.
Samsung are really bad at this, enough that if my next work phone is one it will go unopened to CEX.
So what is there with
Decent camera
As little forced installed crap as possible
Facebook not even installed.
Ignore my above comment - I misread you as talking about phone after after an unprompted system update.
You should tell your phone's app store not to install updates automatically. You do it in the Google Play Store, and the Samsung's Galaxy Store / Amazon App Store etc if you have them.
Not restart the phone but software running on it.
Took 5 minutes to stop all the blody pay shite before it was back to annoying.
And I am also unable to delete the icon for it.
None of the children want it either, they have the two previous HTCs.
I'd been happy to have still used the N8 from before the landfill Androids.
So what is there with
Decent camera
As little forced installed crap as possible
Facebook not even installed.
If you are still using your samsung device, you could find root or lineageos on xda developers. Rooting lets you uninstall facebook app and update. Lineageos gives you a clean android experience. Otherwise, you could buy a Google supported devices like pixel or any android one devices like Nokia android device for a google android experience.
... as I've still not been down to Carphone warehouse for a tinker ;)
AFAIK, it's the same hardware[*] and software as per the V30 I currently own, and anecdotally the image quality is measurably better than on the Samsung S7 which it replaced.
Not had a chance to compare it to any of the other current flagships, though.
[*] Give or take the ultra-wideangle lens; they've allegedly reduced the viewing angle somewhat. Be nice if they could restore it back to the same angle as the S6...
Are you sure about this?
I'm sure there are millions of "smartphones" out there where no one has ever tested the theory that they can make or receive calls. I know when I try phoning the kids they never answer so I'm forced to suspect that this is not a feature that their phones support.
For most people they're not going to needing perfect shots as they just immediately upload to facebook etc. for others they can look around for a decent camera (for where they tend to use it) at lower price points. Yes some people insist on the latest shiny shiny and if they've nothing better to with the money fair play to them. I'd rather use the money for more interesting things. Personally I'm running the xiaomi MiA1 which for £150 has all the bells and whistles I need (4GB RAM, 64GB on board plus can add an external card or go double sim). Being on the android one program means it gets updates each month from google rather than wait wait in vain for an update, got tired of samsung et al. doing launch and forget.
Pending that, my next phone will be Sailfish on Fairphone.
But you didn't cover them.
No mention at all.
Come on 'El Reg. Be the rebel and try some of the alternative phones for us please.
Especially as the difference between the big boys has become so utterly and boringly un-newsworthy.
I know this isn't trendy due to the fact most people are on a contract and throw away their phones every two years, but in a sane world (one where people treated a laptop in their pocket exactly the same as a mobile phone) there would be riots if it was supported for less than five years.
As it is the best that's possible with Android at the moment is three years for Android Enterprise phones (of which the latest Blackberry KeyTwo is one).
Start punishing suppliers, and chipset creators. Say a new fancy graphics chipset comes out, and they want to extol its virtues :
'so, how open are the specifications?' 'We supply a binary blob certified to work with Android Oreo'
*sucks teeth, immediately lowers score out of ten by four points*
'How long will you be supporting this chipset for?' 'Well, as we said we'll be supporting Oreo throughout its lifetime and then will make a decision on further releases'
'Sorry, our review policy is a blanket support arrangement of a minimum five years including all Android versions released in that time. Come back when you've tried harder'
Phones are now mostly a stable market with very little differentiation. Service should be the key factor here, and the whole infrastructure (Google, chipset manufacturers, headset manufacturers) being geared to force people to change phone on a regular basis is borderline criminal.
"due to the fact most people are on a contract"
Really? Moat folk I know have moved to pre-pay with carry-over of unused data and minutes. Unless their work is paying. Which is less and less these days: you get an allowance and thus are highly motivated to manage your costs.
✓ PWM-affected super bright AMOLED screen for that eye-popping disco ball experience
✓ Locked bootloader and lots of system bloatware to entertain all those powerful CPU cores
✓ Reliable systems to detect and prevent a phone user from becoming a phone admin
✓ Irregular security updates not lasting for long anyway
✓ Who would ever need external storage anyway
✓ Who would ever need to swap the battery anyway
✓ Who would ever need to disassemble the phone anyway
✓ The most important thing in a phone: the [front-facing] camera of course
Is there a chance that manufacturers see some market opportunities and develop phones for professionals: sturdy, long-lasting, easy to repair, quality hardware, software being LTS and optionally bleeding edge available, no unwanted or locked user space software. Expensive, of course.
I can imagine a manufacturer producing the ' sturdy, long-lasting, easy to repair, quality hardware, software being LTS and optionally bleeding edge available, no unwanted or locked user space software. phone - but I rather think that, when push comes to shove, a sensible purchasing department will look at the price tag and decide that a handheld/lose-able/steal-able/breakable device may as well be a cheap and cheerful device.
Increasingly for the past few years, this has been a market desperately in need of some innovation.
Actually the constant reinvention of the smartphone is getting to be a case of change for its own sake, or rather the sake of maintaining high prices and margins. I suppose the nearest comparison would be the planned obsolescence of cars, not to mention the arms race of strange features (fins, anybody?) before the oil shocks concentrated minds on a different topic. Why make something efficient, practical and durable when you can guarantee it will be traded in within a few years?
Yes, once the technology plateaus the sales droids and marketeers will have to sell differently. The companies will have to content themselves with margins in the low double digits, if that, unless of course there's a quasi-monopoly a la Kodak in film (but that didn't last, haha). And reviewers will have to find other reasons for dishing out superlatives.
It seems every phone can take great shots these days if you don't want to zoom, and have good lighting.
Lighting is being resolved through clever tricks but I still can't take a photo of anything not right in front of me, in most cases. Granted a phone isn't a DLSR but my Lumia 1020 had proper optics.
My question is, can one buy an after-market clip-on optic to get 5X zoom? Don't laugh, but in the past I've stuck my phone up to the eyepiece of my binoculars and been really quite surprised how well it worked, letting me take photos of a bunny across a field or whatever.
There have been camera phones. Naturally, they are thicker and less practical.
Some Motorola phones allow said "clip-ons". For instance, there is the 10x zoom from Hasselbad:
https://www.motorola.com/us/products/moto-mods/hasselblad-true-zoom
Problem: The whole thing becomes as thick as a camera and the clip-on costs just as much as a real camera ($199). Therefore, the advantage over having a separate camera is close to non existent. ;-)
>My question is, can one buy an after-market clip-on optic to get 5X zoom?
Yes. However a few factors will likely impair image quality at the cheaper end. And the widest choice of lenses from different vendors and of varying price and quality might not be available for your particular phone.
Still, you easily make a clip for your phone by modifying a hard shelled plastic case - by doing so you could even attach your phone to your old monocular.
Strangely nothing has been said about the ability to make a reliable phone call here.. because if it did the $1000 iPhone X would be slammed, followed closely by the iPhone 8. Can't tell you how often over the last month (since the last major iOS update) both mine and my wife's iPhone X have resulted in calls where the other person couldn't hear us - as though the front-side microphone just turns itself off, then back on, then off, randomly throughout calls. A quick search reveals the problem has been around since launch and has not been fixed. Oddly, I had no issues for the first couple months then after the last micro update, using the phone to make a call has been awful.
> both mine and my wife's iPhone X have resulted in calls where the other person couldn't hear us
I have noticed this too. And from multiple generations of iPhones. The problem is, they can hear me quite well and cannot understand that I cannot hear them well. In their world this is unpossible.
Yes, known about Chad for years, had to look at the details... and I checked two boxes...
I like my V6 Mustang! (30mpg!) AND my next-gen S10, the GMC Canyon (23 mpg, Mustang beats it in almost every category - even hauling stuff, the 2007 Mustang has a big ass)... shitfire... but I'm good everywhere else.
Given phones have multiple rear-facing cameras there's no reason why one phone couldn't be the best in most photo categories. Also, the things that make a camera good in low light also aid its contrast and portraits (high dynamic range and wide aperture, optical image stabilization. )
Sony make all the sensors used in these other vendors best phones. Where the phone vendors differentiate is in the other camera hardware and the image processing. It's notable that both Apple and Google Pixel make phones with DSPs to accelerate this photo processing.
Then of course the user interaction is an important part of any camera. In the cast of a phone, this means the screen is a factor - hard to frames a shot if the screen is dim in sunlight, easier to verify focus if screen high dpi. Phone system fluidity (lack of lag and stutter etc) is important too.
Well phones have two cameras, that's hardly enough to be a jack of all trades. Maybe it will be like razors and we'll see phones with three, four, five and more cameras someday (I await the SNL parody this fall of a new phone that's covered in so many cameras you have to hold it by the edges to take a picture)
I'm sure Sony would love a future where flagship phones have a half dozen cameras...
"Maybe it will be like razors and we'll see phones with three, four, five and more cameras someday"
Some of the phones in the article have three cameras on the back and one on the front. So that's four. Though you might be able to count the fingerprint sensor as a "camera", so that'll be five cameras. My Moto Z has three light / presence sensors as well, and a bunch of microphones. On the other hand, I've never owned a razor.
What I need to know from a phone review are things like:
What do people sound like when you talk to them?
How does call quality change when in area of poor reception?
How quickly does the battery lose it's charge?
How hot does it have to get befor it stops charging? ( a serious problem when using a phone as a GPS in a hot car)
How well does it cope with changing nets whilst using VOLTE)
How many time do you have to use the fingerprint scanne before it actually works?
How far from the telephone do Bluetooth headphones work?
All this is much more useful than how many shades og coffee it can take a photo of. Although this leads to the last question;
How many weird looks did you get using a whole bunch of phones to take the same picture of your coffee?
1 Darth Vader on helium
2. The call quality improves when in poor reception, but only near ley lines.
3. Very quickly if you accidentally short the battery with a spanner. Less quickly if you just use it to talk Darth Vader in an area of moderate signal.
4. It's okay changing nets, but for optimal experience carry your own net with you everywhere you go, trailing CAT 5 from a reel.
5 It depends what you have on your fingertips. Its probably best to wash *that* off, but at least wipe them on your trousers.
6. Around 5.6 Smoots, though this is dependant upon which side of the tinfoil you wear your headphones. The current trend is for outside the foil. So hot!
7. None, anyone who witnessed the coffee photo shoot may just assumed the same phone was being since they all look like glossy black rectangles.
Somebody send this man a bunch of cameras to review I want to see the results, it would be about as much use as this article. If there really must be a test of the camera, then take pictures of him testing the others. I say ‘man’ of course as he posts as an ‘anonymous coward’. He might be a woman, but somehow I doubt it.
All this is much more useful than how many shades og coffee it can take a photo of.
I'm sure this photo stuff is important to someone (besides Andrew), but frankly I couldn't tell the difference between the comparison photos. I have color-deficient vision (poor green response) and I'm reading the Reg on a laptop which I'm sure is not ideal for the purpose of rendering those images, but still - I too was thoroughly uninterested by that part of the article.
Also, I have to say, I've never, not once, seen a phone photo taken by anyone of my acquaintance where I cared about the contrast, lighting, etc. As long as the subject was visible, that's all that was required. Everyone I know uses their phones to take snapshots, not art photography; they're meant as an aid to memory, not some Benjaminian auratic experience.
(Of course, a digital photograph can't be an auratic experience. But I imagine most Reg readers are well familiar with their Benjamin, so that goes without saying.)
Is still as good, and in many ways better, than this year's offering from everyone else, why bother??
I would be surprised if even the pixel 3 is a huge game changer, the pixel 2 barrier was set very high with a pretty affordable RRP that was £400 cheaper than what apple were asking for a worse spec devicr with stupid notches on the screen.
I wonder if the only people who could really benefit from the features of a $1000 phone are precisely the people who shouldn't have one: teenagers and social media <cough>influencers.
Once the flagships crossed the $500 mark, the spell was broken for me. Would I would really get $500 worth of value from a device? Turns out that I wouldn't, and I suspect I'm not alone. At around the $200-$300 mark there are a lot of really good phones out there. My current fave is the Nokia 6.1, which is dual-SIM (or one-SIM + micro-SD), stock Android, two years of Android updates, very respectable camera and all for $250 on Amazon.
I may be an edge case: I use my camera for holiday snaps (where an 8/10 photo is good enough, doesn't need to be 10/10, after all I know what my spouse and kids look like) and taking photos of meeting room whiteboards and blinky lights in server rooms. I make a few dozen calls a week and send a few hundred text messages. I use a small number of grown-up apps heavily, but it's no big deal if they take 0.7seconds to load instead of 0.3.
The recent interim report prepared by a Select Committee of the Digital, Media, Culture and Sport had a number of important pieces of information in it but none more the statistics that Facebook has about the same number of users as Christianity adherents, Twitter is trailing a bit with only the same number as Islam and that users check their phones about once every six and a half minutes on average. (Which, given the number of people that don't......heavy stuff....).
There's such a thing as an 'adequate' phone; I bought one recently via Amazon that cost $130 or so that had a decent amount of memory and processing speed plus a usable screen (...and it works quite well as a phone). Its cheap enough to be not a great loss if it gets broken or stolen so its not worth paying insurance and it doesn't need finance.....
Obsessions with phones and social media are killing us (or at least turning us into sheep). (Again, read the report....its important.....). And, as anyone who's lived with an Echo or the Google equivalent will tell you, its also a pretty naff way to interact with a portable interface. (I'm also getting increasingly fed up with younger women who still think they can interact with their phones and drive --- had another one this morning, can't imagine what's so important on their feed that they just have to read their feed *right now*.)
I do not care much for mobile phones, but I am holding out for a handset with improved GPS performance.
Broadcom made a splash in the headlines about a year ago (e.g. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/design/superaccurate-gps-chips-coming-to-smartphones-in-2018) and since then... total silence.
It was mentioned at the time that Broadcom isn't very popular among the handset makers, but I assumed other chip makers would add support for L5. Or maybe they already did. These specs aren't terribly easy to come by on shopper's websites that compare very short spec sheets.
Enabling GPS on my current handset results in me having battery angst. So I frequently do a little GPS dance number every time I find myself lost in a new place (as recentlly today when trying to figure out if there was a pharmacy in the shopping mall I was currently trapped in. Turns out there was... about 5 meters behind my back. D'oh!)
I drive and rely a lot on Google Maps in a city where GPS multipath interference is supposed to hurt but yet I never had navigational errors from GPS inaccuracies in current gen phones. It's always things like unreported road closures and non-updated landmark changes.
Then again common sense works a whole lot better when near a destination than blindly relying on GPS.
Is ~30cm accuracy a good thing? Of course. But will I pay more for it, not really...It's the good enough adage all over again.
There's no exciting, real and meaningful differentiation of old versus new, or new low-end versus new high-end in consumer electronics for most people anymore, and the only left to compete is price.
-3 year old phones are entirely usable as long as you replace the battery
-5+ year old PCs are still more than fast enough
-Nobody cares about overpriced OLED, HDR, 4K, Quantum whatever backlight except for niche videophiles
Here's my review: The best phone of this season is last year's, now available at a significant discount. For buyers on a budget, the best choice is a gently-used phone, available without contract at an 85% discount from the original selling price.
Surprisingly, these are the same winners as in last year's review.
It hardly amounts to a "ritual"; a word that falsely implies an elaborate ceremony. Plugging in a phone is actual the basic quanta of infinitesimal chore; it's the smallest imaginable action. This assumes that your phone has an ambidextrous connector that'll plug in either way; if it's USB Micro then yes it's a major ritual.
Those that claim that charging their phone overnight is a huge bother are either homeless, lying about the state of their lifestyle, or slightly insane. Typically it's the middle option.
Year after year people throw away £600+ of their salary on a flimsy device that they use to argue with everyone on social media, look at web pages and play simple games like candy crush.
On top of that they then also need to buy a case to protect the flimsy phone because it is so thin.
And a battery charger because the battery doesn't even last a day if you actually us ethe device.
And a screen protector because the screens are so easy to scratch,
All of this can be done on a phone that costs under £200, I have purchased several Chinese phones that do everything and cost less than £100.
I would much rather have a chunky, rugged phone that I cana ctually hold properly, is shock proof, won't break in my pocket, a screen protector as standard, a battery that lasts several days.
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