The Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor has thoroughly impressed with its selection of smartphones this year – with the Honor Magic8 Pro taking the fight to Samsung and the Honor 600 presenting a brilliant proposition as a mid-range device.

Rather awkwardly sitting somewhere in between these two handsets is the Honor 600 Pro. It's a more affordable alternative to the flagship-class Magic8 Pro (with some admittedly hefty compromises) but still retains plenty of "pro" features to keep businesses interested.

With an £899 price tag, however, many will question whether it offers value for money when you may choose to either go all-out for the most expensive Honor device or save on a few hundred pounds and settle for something a little lighter in nature.

Honor 600 Pro: Design

Parallels in the design of the Honor 600 Series with the iPhone 17 Pro are unavoidable. You can immediately notice the same protruding translucent rear panelling (housing the camera lenses and sensors) as well as the brushed metallic sides with etched grooves.

They even share the same shouty orange primary finish, but we picked up an Honor 600 Pro draped in a sophisticated Golden White coating, which looks clean and sophisticated in its own right. You can also pick up the device in a more generic but safer Black look. The composite fiber material on the phone's rear adds to its premium quality with some much-needed friction while you're holding it, and it's incredibly well constructed overall.

This phone is slightly smaller than the Honor 400 Pro (its predecessor) with a 6.57-inch display versus a 6.7-inch panel; in fact, it uses almost the same shell as the Honor 600 (except a third lens here). With a weight of 195g, it's also one of the lightest devices in this category – and one of the most compact too, thanks to its 7.8mm thickness.

Like the Honor 600, the left-hand side panel features several physical function keys, including volume controls, a power/Gemini button, and the Honor AI button. As with both devices, the display also features rounded corners that taper off far too aggressively, somewhat undermining the large real estate you'd otherwise enjoy.

Like the Honor Magic8 Pro, the device also boasts IP68/IP69/IP69K for dust and water resistance, with the latter certification a new category that means total dust-tightness with protection against pressure and high-temperature water jets. This comes in addition to an SGS 5-Star drop resistance. Hard to think, but this slender device is perhaps one of the most robust you can find right now.

Honor 600 Pro: Display

There's plenty of strength in the Honor 600 Pro's 6.57in AMOLED display – but it's the exact same panel as that used in the Honor 600. Thankfully, it's a good one, with a 2,728 x 1,264-pixel resolution equating to a solid 458 pixels-per-inch (slightly better than the Magic8 Pro) and a super smooth 120Hz refresh rate. There's also basic HDR support, although you're missing advanced standards like HDR10+ or Dolby Vision.

Honor lets you pick from three distinct color profiles that include normal (true-to-life), vivid (enhanced for higher saturation), and professional (suitable for tuning for color-accurate displays). But you can also fine-tune the RGB values – as well as other settings like brightness, contrast, and tint (cool, warm, or a color) – to give you maximum control. The default Vivid setting is best for day-to-day usage, and the colors are fairly balanced to begin with – so very little, if any, tinkering is required. Other settings that you can activate are an eBook mode for a grayscale rendering that's easier on the eyes, as well as AI-powered Super Dynamic Display and Vivid Display, which collectively boost brightness and contrast while helping colors pop a little more.

The screen is dazzling, by the way, with a brilliant maximum brightness of 808nits – although Honor suggests the device can reach a maximum of 8,000nits under certain conditions. There's also Sunlight Mode that can stretch brightness levels – as well as automatic controls that let the phone configure brightness depending on the room you're in. Despite recording fantastic brightness levels with our colorimeter, it was a tad dimmer than the Honor 600's 855nits, although it did outshine the Magic8 Pro's 790 nits (with a peak of 6,000nits).

We must also point out the outstanding color accuracy scores, with 99.9% coverage of the sRGB spectrum (beating the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra), alongside 79.8% coverage of the Adobe RGB spectrum and 92.9% coverage of the DCI P3 spectrum. These are clear of the 70% and 80% required for professional use and slightly higher than the results we registered with the Magic8 Pro.

Honor 600 Pro: Specs and performance

The Honor 600 Pro is fitted with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite. This differs from the 8 Elite Gen 5 fitted into the very newest flagship phones, and is actually the chip that featured in many of 2025's flagships including the S25 Ultra. Honor has paired this with an Adreno 830 GPU (again, slightly weaker versus this year's 840), and you also get a flagship-grade 12GB RAM with 512GB storage.

This is a compelling package that offers almost double the power of the standard Honor 600. We registered 2,933 in single-core testing with Geekbench 6 and 8,738 in multi-core benchmarking, versus the Honor 600's 1,316 and 4,075.

The likes of the S26 Ultra and Magic8 Pro are 50% faster than this yet (we scored 3,671 and 10,722 in the latter, for example), but it suggests you should be comparing its performance with last year's flagships more than this year's mid-budget devices. Interestingly, the iPhone 17 Pro scored 3,778 and 9,816 – so the Honor 600 Pro isn't far away on multi-threaded performance. It's also around the score you'd expect from a mid-range laptop.

The battery life was a little disappointing, by contrast. While 27hrs and 3mins is nothing to be scoffed at, the 6,400mAh battery doesn't last as long as the 7,000mAh battery in the standard 600 – with a stonking lifespan of 36hrs and 12mins. Sitting between these devices is the 31hrs and 42mins the Magic8 Pro lasted. You do, however, get 80W wired and 50W wireless charging – much better than the S26 Ultra's 60W and 25W, but not as good as the Magic8 Pro's 100W and 80W.

Honor 600 Pro: Cameras

The cameras include a front-facing 50MP lens alongside a rear-facing trio of a 50MP periscope telephoto lens, 12MP 112° ultra-wide lens, and 200MP ultra-clear AI main camera lens. This is one more than in the standard 600, and a set of lenses that come close to competing with the Honor Magic8 Pro's incredible setup.

This overall configuration gives you a little more oomph than the standard Honor 600, which excels at point-and-click shooting, with up to 3.5x optical zoom and staggering 120x digital zoom. As with its flagship cousin, you also enjoy CIPA 6.5-stop image stabilization, which is excellent when shooting images or film. The AI-powered Magic Color mode also gives you AI-generated filters if you want to get creative with your photography.

Shooting with video is also excellent, and you can capture 4K footage at up to 60fps and 3.5x zoom, and up to 30fps with 1x zoom using the front camera. There's also a handy Night Video X, which lets you capture footage at 1080p up to 24fps and 2x zoom. Other useful features are an AI button that doubles as a way to zoom if you slide your finger up and down (or click to capture).

Honor 600 Pro: Features and software

With MagicOS 10, powered by Android 16, you ironically get a very iOS-like experience, considering how closely this device resembles Apple's flagship 'pro' smartphone. Unlike this operating system, however, there's so much room to customize it to suit your tastes and preferences, with most of these options overwhelming at first.

On the downside, there are a handful of AI-ready features that feel forced rather than genuinely useful. This is no sin that Honor alone is guilty of, but technology companies the world over are contending with stuffing every new device with as much AI as possible to prove its utility. That said, some are pretty handy.

Downloading a large language model (LLM) allows you to run AI Deepfake & Voice Cloning Detection. This scans video feeds in apps like Google Meet to detect whether you've head-to-head with a deepfake. AI Space also might be useful for those coordinating devices in a smart office. Also, a great tool is the automated transcription feature in the Recorder app.

Less useful is the AI folder on the home screen – which is populated with random apps depending on what you're most likely to use – and Honor AI, which deploys so-called "agents" onto your device to optimize it. We didn't find this feature particularly helpful, with the AI Memories agent, in particular, promising the most and failing to deliver (it's simply another way to manage your screenshots). Although it does come with a handy three-finger-swipe gesture if you can't gel with the conventional physical button combination.

Magic Portal, finally, is another somewhat useful feature that lets you tap into "AI memories" (read: screenshots) to search Google for elements of what's on screen. All you need to do is circle a portion of the screen, and the AI will do its magic. If you're also struggling with drafting documents, AI Writing can help you improve your phrasing and writing style.

The device itself only has room for one physical SIM card and an eSIM. It also ships with a 24-month warranty, including six months of coverage for the charger and removable battery and three months for accessories. This comes alongside seven years of Android maintenance, but there are no specific security-centric plans as you may get with Samsung's Knox Suite Enterprise Plan.

Honor 600 Pro: Is it worth it?

The more time we spent with the Honor 600 Pro, the more value we saw in what it could offer against the broader competition. If you're in the mood for a premium device, but aren't willing to shell out the asking price, a common practice is to look at last year's flagships. Unlike many mid-range or flagship smartphones, the Honor 600 Pro is something in a league of its own – unless you compare it with last year's flagship market.

This smartphone is a device that performs just as well as 2025's best options while also benefiting from a brilliant and color-accurate display, a fantastic iPhone-esque design (with more robust protections), as well as a set of camera lenses on par with the S26 Ultra. For £899, it's also much cheaper than last year's flagship smartphones (somehow) and feels just as fresh as the latest high-end devices launched today.

Sure, there are some bugbears. For instance, its aggressively rounded displays often feel like content is cut off. The battery life is weaker than its counterparts, too. Finally, you don't get some of the most up-to-date display standards (like HDR10+), but there's still plenty here to justify the price tag and a host of new-era AI features that may occasionally offer some use. Overall, for a device that aims to please everyone, it succeeds in many ways.

Honor Magic8 Pro specifications

Anyone waiting for September's annual iPhone launch will be unhappy with this news: Apple CEO Tim Cook has said rising memory costs mean handset prices will be going up too.

That comes via an interview with Apple's CEO in the Wall Street Journal, in which Cook said memory chip prices had become "unsustainable."

RAM prices have skyrocketed because of a drive for data centre demand sparked by AI, with prices of some models more than tripling by the end of last year. IDC said at the time that it was "the end of an era of cheap, abundant memory and storage". The data centre demand has led manufacturers to shift to equipment to meet those needs, away from components for consumer-grade hardware, further exacerbating the problem, while constricted supply has meant prices of remaining parts have continued to rise – not helped by a rise in scalper bots targeting what remains.

Amid these challenges, it's perhaps no surprise hardware prices are set to rise – and no surprise that Cook is concerned, as Gartner said earlier this year that PC shipments were at their lowest level in a decade.

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," Cook said, according to the WSJ. "We're doing our best ⁠to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying ​to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

How much will prices rise?

Cook didn't get into details, however, so it's unclear when those price rises will kick in, or which products they will impact.

But he did pin the blame on AI, saying the drive for higher-spec memory was impacting consumers. "There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases," he said. "We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for ​consumer products. That's the ​bottom line."

Chiew Le Xuan, an analyst at Omdia, told the BBC that the average price of smartphones will increase by 20% this year, predicting that iPhones will cost $150 more this year – though that will also come with upgrade specifications. He added: "This is the new pricing reality, not a temporary spike."

What can be done?

Asked if the US should ease controls around sourcing such parts from China, Cook said: "Everything needs to be on the table."

Cook also suggested Apple was willing to help fund solutions from its own massive cash pile – which currently sits above $68bn, with total liquid reserves above $162bn – though it has no plans to build its own memory manufacturing. "We're willing to use our balance sheet ⁠to ​help be a part of the solution," he said. "Obviously, ​more capacity is needed. "

The BBC reported that Trump claimed on his social media site that Apple would be working with Intel to produce chips in the US, but any such deal has yet to be confirmed by either company. Last year, the US government bought 10% of struggling Intel as part of a bid to bring chip manufacturing to the US.

Cook is set to step down as CEO in September, handing the reins to John Ternus.

The Taliban has had enough of smartphones in the workplace so much so that it is smashing up devices belonging to its own members.

And this isn't just about the typical concerns that the internet is immoral. It's well known that Taliban leadership has repeatedly tried to restrict access to the World Wide Web. But the focus here is specifically on the smartphones themselves.

An unnamed government employee is quoted in The Guardian as saying, "About two months ago, they said not to bring your mobile phones to the office. Me and a few colleagues didn't take it seriously. They confiscated them, and after we made a fuss about it, they smashed our phones".

Why? Well, according to the report, written by Zahra Nader, the editor-in-chief of the Zan Times, the Taliban is worried that its people are online too much, consumed by their phones, and, as a result, not working. Allegedly, the Taliban believes that smartphones don't belong at work. And they are not the only government that is coming to this conclusion.

The reputation of the smartphone has taken a bit of a hammering of late. There's been a large focus on social media, infinite scrolling, and protecting children. But there is a growing community of adults online (ironically) looking at ways to reduce the use of smartphones, either to protect their mental health or, like the Taliban, to be more productive.

Now, many of us have simply deleted apps that cause distractions. I myself have written about the dangers of using Slack at night. And there are also lots of people going for somewhat retro options – dumb phones, actual cameras, iPods – in a bid to claim back their attention spans.

There are also more modern methods on the rise, including Brick, a tiny box that you can tap your phone on to lock you out of those troublesome apps. There are also smartphones with limits, such as the Balance Phone (review coming soon), which is simply a phone with the bare essentials (camera, banking, email). The company has drawn a line on what apps help and which ones don't, using the infinite scroll as the deciding factor (although, technically, business email is an infinite scroll).

How did it get so bad? Do we need to rethink BYOD initiatives for the sake of business productivity? Should we have distraction-free smartphones or Bricks around the office? Or is that asking too much of our already busy IT teams and their stretched budgets? My hand twitches thinking about these – it wants to pull up Google and ask.

The situation is so bad that the mere presence of your phone is distracting. Comedian Josh Widdicombe joked that once he used Brick to block social media, he still used his phone absentmindedly, scrolling through Uber to find out what cities it operated in.

Back in 2017, a consumer research study called Brain Drain: The mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity suggested that cognitive function was impaired by the phone being in reach. It conducted two experiments that showed even when users avoided the temptation to check their phones, the mere presence of the device negatively affected cognitive performance, specifically available working memory capacity.

What can be done about this? Unfortunately, very little. The phone is a tool for business, and apps keep us connected to colleagues, tasks, clients, and so on. It's also an important part of the verification process – I can't get into my laptop without it. But there is a growing movement, both anti-social media and anti-phone. And it might not be long before we see IT departments and businesses taking a different approach to the phones employees use.

Honor is taking the fight to Samsung and Apple with its latest flagship smartphone, hoping to attract consumers and enterprises alike. Rather than being a transformative upgrade on last year's excellent Honor Magic7 Pro, the Magic8 Pro offers some much-needed refinements.

For instance, the device is marginally trimmer and lighter, with a slightly smaller screen, while its camera lenses see minor improvements. There's also a larger battery capacity and a slightly improved chipset. On the flipside, there's a lot of on-device AI to wade through as we try to determine how useful these applications actually are, and whether the incremental upgrades are worthy of the premium price tag.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Design

The biggest change you'll see between the Magic8 Pro and its predecessor is one you'll barely notice, a slight reduction in the display size – and consequently an ever-so-slightly smaller frame. The thickness, for example, has reduced from 8.8mm to 8.4mm – but you'd otherwise be forgiven for believing they were the same device.

The Magic8 Pro features the same rounded glass display as in the Magic7 Pro, placed atop a smoothened brushed metal chassis with squared sides and rounded edges, and a silky frosted metallic rear. On the left-hand side, lined up are the volume, power/Gemini, and Honor AI button (more on that later). One thing we were a little disappointed with was just how rounded the corners were; it feels like the content you view is ever-so-slightly cut off.

It's a beautiful construction otherwise, with just the right amount of grip to feel sturdy when held. The device is also available in the same Black finish as its predecessor, as well as two new colors; a more muted Cyan replaces Breeze Blue, and Sunrise Gold subs in for the jazzy Lunar Shadow Grey.

An Apple-style floating island hosts two front-facing cameras on the top of the display, while a robust glass wheel houses the three rear lenses on its rear. This is slightly larger than in the Magic7 Pro, and you won't find much joy standing the device vertically due to the weight. On that subject, it's ever-so-slightly lighter at 219g (versus 223g) – but the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is lighter still at 214g. This device is also slimmer, with a depth of 7.9mm. But the Honor Magic8 Pro is a little more compact in terms of its width and height.

As with last year's device, the NanoCrystal Shield glass on the front and rear boasts SGS 5-StarDrop Resistance. The dust and water resistance is also excellent, with ratings of IP68/IP69/IP69K, with the latter a new tier of protection that even the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra lacks (only limited to IP68). IP69K is completely dust-tight and offers protection against high-pressure and high-temperature water jets. If you find yourself using the device in harsh terrains, it's as rugged as you can get for something so slender.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Display

You should expect the absolute best from the display in a flagship smartphone, and Honor delivers with its 6.71in LTPO OLED display (a reduction from the 6.8in display in its predecessor) with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HDR Vivid support. Its 2,808 x 1,256 resolution is sharp but offers a slightly weaker pixels-per-inch ratio than the 6.9in S26 Ultra (456 versus 498), but falls in line with the iPhone 17 Pro (460).

You can pick from three distinct color profiles: normal (true-to-life), vivid (enhanced for higher saturation), and professional (suitable for tuning for color-accurate displays). Beyond that, however, you may tweak the red, green, and blue settings, alongside factors like hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, and sharpness. There's also the option to set a default, cool, or warm color tint – or pick from a color wheel. It's an incredible array of customization. We found Vivid (default) is your best bet for day-to-day usage, given the way that colors pop, but Normal might be best if you want a more organic representation of the world when shooting video or taking photos.

Honor claims that the smartphone can hit 1,800cd/m2 under High Brightness Mode (HBM) – with a peak luminosity of 6,000cd/m2. That's considerably higher than the S26 Ultra's 2,600cd/m2 and the iPhone 17 Pro's 3,000cd/m2 maximum. These levels are normally temporary and require exceptional conditions, like direct sunlight, with Automatic Brightness turned on. When we measured the device under manual settings and all automatic settings turned off, we measured a peak luminosity of 790cd/m2 – which is a fantastic base level, and a little higher than the S26 Ultra.

Color accuracy was also outstanding, with 99.9% coverage of the sRGB color spectrum – a notch higher than the S26 Ultra's 96%. This is outstanding, and was complemented with 79% coverage of the Adobe RGB spectrum and 92.3% coverage of the DCI P3 spectrum (where above 70% and 80% is viable for professional use).

Beyond standard settings like Light and Dark mode toggles and refresh rate adjustments are options to adjust the screen resolution (including a power-saving Smart Resolution mode that does so automatically when battery life is under strain), as well as eBook mode, which renders the display in black and white to aid with reading. The phone also lets you toggle two AI-powered enhancement options, including Super Dynamic Display (which adjusts brightness and contrast) and Vivid Display (which adjusts video clarity and colors). Admittedly, it does make a small difference, helping video footage pop from the screen. However, depending on your circumstances, the original image quality is already strong, and it may be worth turning off to preserve battery life.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Specs and performance

You'll find the outstanding Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform in the Honor Magic8 Pro, alongside an Adreno 840 GPU, 12GB RAM, and 512GB storage. The differences between this chipset in the Magic8 Pro and the S26 Ultra are minimal, but performance in the latter just about edges it.

The Magic8 Pro hit 3,671 for single-core workloads and 10,772 for multi-core workloads, which is a tad lower than 3,671 and 11,307 in the S26 Ultra. While not quite eclipsing the power of its direct rival, it packs more of a punch overall than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which scored 3,790 and 9,844 via public testing information, respectively. Still, a score like this outpaces many premium laptops, meaning the Honor Magic8 Pro can certainly make a strong case for a device that can allow high-powered mobile working.

With its huge 6270mAh battery, Honor's flagship phone can certainly last well into two days. In our looped video playback test, the Honor Magic8 Pro lasted 31hrs 42mins – it's a staggering result and certainly more than enough. This is a lifespan that's four hours less than the S26 Ultra, despite its larger capacity and silicon carbon technology (as opposed to Samsung's persistence with Lithium-ion). The Honor Magic8 Pro also supports 100W wired charging and up to 80W wireless charging, as opposed to the S26 Ultra's 60W and 25W.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Cameras

The selection of cameras in the Honor Magic8 Pro is outstanding, both front and back. The front-facing camera comprises two lenses, including a 50MP lens and a 3D depth-sensing lens. On the rear is a 50MP Ultra Night Main Camera, 50MP Ultra Wide Camera and a stonking 200MP Ultra Night Telephoto Camera.

This collection of lenses is as good as you may find in a flagship device – and features a host of software-powered enhancements that add to the sense that you're working with professional-lite hardware. One of the Magic8 Pro's main selling points is its ability to shoot at night, and it really does excel in this department -- flooding your frame with light thanks to the combination of the 200MP lens as well as some AI support courtesy of AiMAGE.

This layer also adds a Stabilization Engine – which Honor suggests is an industry-first CIPA 6.5-stop image stabilizer – and a Portrait Engine that helps you focus on individual subjects and make them stand out. The Magic Color mode is also a fun photo-level feature that lets you add AI-generated filters and color palettes to whatever you're shooting. You can even upload one of your previous photos and use it to generate an original filter.

The Honor Magic8 Pro allows up to 3.7x manual zoom and up to 100x digital zoom – and you can cycle between lenses depending on how you'd like to frame your subject. Shooting while zoomed into something at extreme levels works surprisingly well, with little to no shake, and AI augmentations like colorization and sharpness enhancing the finished product.

Shooting with video is also stellar. While you'll sadly lack the 8K offered by the S26 Ultra and OnePlus 15, you can shoot 4K footage at up to 120fps/3.7x zoom with the rear camera and 60fps/2x zoom with the front-facing lenses. The frame rate is limited to 60fps if you're shooting in HDR and 24fps if you're activating Super Night Mode. There's also fantastic image stabilization, as we've covered. Handily, you can run your finger along the AI button while you're aiming to zoom in and out, and tap it to take your photo or start shooting.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Features and software

The inclusion of a true 3D facial recognition system in the front-facing lenses is fantastic – making authentication a little easier – while a fingerprint scanner fits neatly beneath the surface to cater to those who'd rather avoid scanning their face. Another curious addition is the Infrared Remote Control that lets you activate a range of devices, including displays and air conditioners. You can also benefit from PC Data Sync if you install HonorSuite on your smartphone, although Windows 11 now includes excellent smartphone syncing features.

The MagicOS 10, powered by Android 16, is largely clean and straightforward to navigate – very much resembling Apple's iOS environment – but allows for a massive degree of customization. You'll spend most of your time at first, however, wading through a half-dozen AI-enabled apps and features that you may or may not find useful.

To begin with, there's an AI Suggestions folder on the home screen that offers a collection of four apps that rotate in and out depending on what the device expects you'll need. We found this unhelpful, as long as you've organized your folders and apps to suit your own muscle memory navigation. You can expand this folder to six apps – or remove it.

AI Space can, in theory, be useful for coordinating all the devices in a smart home office, with the IR blaster and Bluetooth letting you add devices to your Space that you can then control with your phone.

Then there's Gemini, which is fairly self-explanatory. Honor AI is another one that offers three "agents" – one for settings, one for photos, and one for memories. The first two seem fairly straightforward, where a certain degree of automation will take over how you control settings and edit photos, but the third is more intriguing.

By swiping three fingers down on your screen, your device will capture the content on your screen, perform some kind of "analysis", then store it for later reference in a dedicated app that appears on your home screen. Frankly, this feature appears indistinguishable from just taking screenshots.

Some more useful features include the AI-powered real-time transcription and translation through the Recorder app. The Magic Portal also threatens to be useful; by holding the AI button, you can tap into AI Memories or Circle to Search, which lets you capture portions of text or images by circling it with your finger before you Google it. If you want to work on your phrasing and writing, you can activate the AI Writing feature, too, to

For the security-conscious among you, AI Deepfake & Voice Cloning Detection can help you perform scans while using compatible apps, including Google Meet and Phone, to detect whether you've come up against a deepfake. Those who need to swap between SIM cards can also load one physical SIM and an eSIM. Finally, the device comes with a one-year replacement service (including a one-time screen replacement service), a two-year warranty, and up to seven years of Android maintenance. There are no device-specific packages, however, like Samsung's Knox Suite Enterprise Plan, available.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Is it worth it?

This Honor Magic8 Pro is a simply outstanding flagship smartphone that offers plenty of value in its price category. Its main competitor is undoubtedly the S26 Ultra – and it goes head-to-head in several key areas – not quite eclipsing it in a few key quarters like performance and battery life, but eclipsing the South Korean manufacturer's own flagship device when it comes to screen brightness and the camera array.

For businesses keen on offering employees high-end on-device AI functionality, alongside plenty of photo and video shooting power, the Honor Magic8 Pro is an excellent proposition. That's even more the case when you consider its up-to £1,090 price tag versus the S26 Ultra's £1,279.99 valuation. You do, however, miss out on the use of a stylus, and you may well prefer the S26 Ultra's design and build, especially given the Honor's comically protruding camera array. Put simply, however, it's a potential S26 Ultra killer that packs plenty of high-end features at a reasonable price.

Honor Magic8 Pro specifications

The launch of the Honor 600 series rounds off a stellar year, so far, for the Chinese company. From capturing mass attention with its RoboPhone at MWC, to a slate of critically acclaimed devices, the company has yet to miss in 2026.

Its new mid-range devices, the Honor 600 and 600 Pro, are both signs of a smartphone manufacturer that has hit a groove. I have been using the standard 600 for a couple of weeks, and it has impressed me in so many ways.

Honor 600: Design and display

Honor has largely done a splendid job with the designs of its most recent handset. It can occasionally go too far towards the ostentatious – like the Magic V6 – but the 600 series is both neat and distinctive without being too flashy. The handset has smooth, rounded edges, a matte metal chassis, and a composite fiber back cover, with a sort of translucent camera bump that houses two lenses. It does resemble the iPhone 17 Pro in the Orange, but we have it in a cool white finish.

The screen is 6.75in, and has a small circle at the top for the selfie cam, and very little in the way of bezels. Overall, the device is just 7.8 mm thick and weighs just 185g (190g for the EU edition). It's comfortable in the hand, but more importantly, it feels like a premium device.

The 600 series has a 6.75in AMOLED display, with 120Hz refresh rate, vivid HDR capabilities, and can hit 8000 nits in brightness, according to Honor. With a colormeiter, I recorded 855.75cd/m2, which is crazy bright. You also get a 'Sunlight mode' which allows for extended high brightness; like all modern smartphone displays, the 600 has an automatic control that adapts brightness, so I am puzzled why the Sunlight mode is even needed.

Other modes include normal, vivid, and professional colors. Normal and vivid are, but now, self-explanatory, whereas 'Professional' seems somewhat confusing. It takes the blue out of the screen when you initially turn it on, and doesn't seem to make anything improve. Overall, the display is crisp, and colors are largely true to life, particularly in photos and streaming.

Honor 600: Specs and performance

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, which is developed with a 4nm process, also gives the illusion of a premium device as it powers a wealth of top-tier features for AI and camera enhancements – not to mention long battery life (more on that below).

With Geekbench 6, the 600 notched 1,316 for single-core and 4,075 for multithreaded workloads. These are just benchmarks, and they don't come near any iPhone or the top Samsung scores. But what these scores don't really tell the whole story; the phone is zippy, goes through an awful lot of web searches, intensive usage (mainly social media), and lasts and lasts.

As is slowly becoming the norm, we needed to play our looped video test to deplete the Honor 600's 640mAh battery. In total, it lasted 36hrs and 12mins, putting it on par with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the iPhone.

Honor 600: Cameras

The standard model of Honor 600 comes with a 200MP, f/1.9, wide lens (with the night vision technology), and a 12MP, f/2.2 ultrawide lens. The front camera is a 50 MP, f/2.0 wide one. If you opt for the Pro model, you get an extra 50MP rear lens, but from my experience, the standard model is a superb system for point-and-shoot needs, video capture, and low-light shots.

It begs belief that this is a mid-range device when it comes with such high-quality camera technology. The 200MP sensor, in particular, is as premium as they come – the night images I captured are stunning (and I recently reviewed the S26 Ultra). What's more, it captures images more quickly than you would expect, and not too much holding still while it creates the image.

Video is also good; you can shoot 4K up to 30 fps or up to 60fps with a lower resolution (720p). I used this for recent ITPro YouTube content and found it to be crystal clear and steady, even without my gimbal.

Honor 600: Is it worth it?

The Honor 600 is a £549 smartphone. Having used it for two weeks, I feel that the price should be higher; its camera system is as good as most premium models. Its screen is nice and bright. And the battery goes on and on. All powered by a decent Snapdragon processor. It is, arguably, the best budget phone around.

Honor 600 specifications

Honor is having quite the moment. From dominating MWC as the most talked-about brand, thanks largely to the RoboPhone, but underneath that, launching a succession of high-quality tablets, laptops, phones, and more, the company has been both commercially and critically successful.

And that even includes foldable phones. And, following on from its V5, the Honor Magic V6 is further indication that the company that once operated under the banner of Huawei is a smartphone giant in its own right.

Although I have the Honor Magic V6 in hand, at home, and have been using it for a week, Honor has requested that we save our full benchmarks for when it becomes available in the UK. So this is a hands-on review that we will update when the device is fully available.

Honor Magic V6: Design

As with the MagicBook 14 Pro we tested earlier in the year, the design of the Honor Magic V6 is ostentatious. Our review unit has a very flashy gold chassis and back cover. Foldable devices already have a somewhat expensive look (they are also expensive), so the addition of gold makes the V6 look even more like a luxury. You can also get it in white, red, and black, though none of those options seems to make it look any more professional.

This is not to bemoan the quality of the V6, which is a superbly designed foldable. It's just 4.1mm thick when unfolded and only 9mm when folded up – that doesn't include the large octagonal camera bump, though. The back has a shimmery Honor logo, two volume buttons on the side, and a power button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor.

You will still notice an indent in the display where the two screens meet. However, this is only apparent when it catches the light. There's also only a slight bump when you run a finger over it.

The hinge is sturdy and tough. It doesn't seem to have any set positions, so if you only bend the phone slightly, it will snap back open. You can bend it halfway and have it sit on a surface (like all other foldables), which is great for selfies, timed photos, and videos.

Honor Magic V6: Displays

As with most foldables, you get two displays: a smaller one that you use more traditionally, and then the foldable screen. The smaller, outer screen is 6.52in, which is a slight increase in size from the 6.43in on the V5. It's an LTPO2 OLED display, with a 1080 x 2420 resolution and 406 ppi. It also has an Honor Anti-scratch NanoCrystal Shield.

However, open the Magic V6 up, and it reveals the main screen, a 7.95in LTPO2 AMOLED, with a 120Hz refresh rate. Without being able to test, we can only go by the naked eye, and we are not disappointed. The V6's foldable display is big, bold, and bright. Although the most pleasing aspect is the very skinny bezels, which give you such an immersive screen.

One argument for foldable displays is that you can see more with them, so spreadsheets and so on, but I often find that the best use case for them is news websites, social media, and comics books – you just get more space and screen for panels. On the V6, I can't say it was that handy for editing documents for work, as it is still just a bit too awkward. Though you do get a better view of that type of content.

Honor Magic V6: Specs and Performance

Inside the V6 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which can be paired with up to 16GB of RAM. Without going into any benchmarks, the device is rapid and smooth with its transitions into front and internal screens – though you did get an annoying sound effect for it.

The Elite 8 Gen 5, however, is Snapdragon's latest chipset built on 3nm fabrication process. It promises super clock speeds (4.6Hx) and plenty of processing power for on-device AI (more on that in a moment). We can't benchmark the V6 as yet, but previous benchmarks for the Elite 8 suggest a strong-performing device.

AI enhancements are all over the V6, but what's most interesting is the Gemini co-pilot mode, where you can converse with Google's AI assistant about what's on the opposite screen. You can also take notes with AI Meeting Agent, or identify speakers and pull out bits of information.

All that extra AI is heavy for the processor, but thankfully, you gave a larger pair of batteries in the device; two 3,300mAh ones (6,660mAh in total), which is a big jump on the V5 and somewhat more than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. Honor suggests this will allow the V6 to run for 24 hours, which is bold, as claims go, but not implausible.

On the rear of the Magic V6, inside the octagonal camera bump is a 50 MP wide lens (f/1.6, 23mm), a 64 MP periscope telephoto lens (f/2.5, 70mm) that has a 3x optical zoom, and a 50 MP ultrawide (f/2.2, 13mm) lens. There's also a 20 MP wide selfie lens (f/2.2) and a 20 MP cover camera that's also wide (f/2.2).

You get more versatility with foldable phones when it comes to the camera. Not just in how it can be used to take and record video without you holding it, but also the views you get. I could bend the screen in the camera mode and have the camera view and two of my most recent shoots on display. One shot in the Pro mode and one with the standard camera settings.

Honor Magic V6: Is it worth it?

Honor has found a knack for making high-quality handsets with all the things people really want. Long battery life, super camera systems, easy to use interfaces. And, with the Magic V6, it's done all that in a foldable, without any of the regional issues that have stopped UK and European consumers from getting their hands on the Huawei and Samsung models.

There is still a little wait for the Honor Magic V6. We will update this review with benchmarks and full opinions when it comes out fully. But our first impression is that this will likely be the best foldable device around.

Honor Magic V6 specifications

Display 7.95in Foldable LTPO2 AMOLED, 120Hz, 4320Hz

CPU Qualcomm SM8850-AC Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (3 nm)

RAM up to 16GB

Storage up to 1TB

Cameras Rear: 50 MP, f/1.6, 23mm (wide), 64 MP, f/2.5, 70mm (periscope telephoto) with 3x optical zoom, 50 MP, f/2.2, 13mm (ultrawide). Front: 20 MP, f/2.2, (wide). Cover camera: 20 MP, f/2.2, (wide)

Connectivity Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0

Dimensions Unfolded: 156.7 x 145.6 x 4.0 mm. Folded: 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.8 mm

Weight 219g

Operating system Android 16 – MagicOS 10

The Apple iPhone 17e is, in my humble opinion, an example of what the company does best. It takes its premium wears and strips them back into an affordable, yet innovative offering – see the MacBook Neo. This is a tightrope walk of leaving you with just enough of what you need and dialing back, where possible, on flash. For phones, that means fewer camera lenses and perhaps a duller screen.

However, making room for the A19 chip has brought a world of innovative features to a modest budget. Add some clever buttons, MagSafe connection, and an almost nostalgic design, and you have an alarmingly attractive mid-range smartphone.

At $599 (£599), the iPhone 17e is considerably cheaper than the lowest Galaxy S26 device. And, going by the price of the S25 FE, it might endup being cheaper than the S26 FE (should there be one released later in the year).

Apple iPhone 17e: Design

The easiest way to spot that this handset is the 'e' model of iPhone 17 is the single camera lens. I'm now at a point in life where that is an odd sight on a phone, as it's normal for them to have two and three (or more). So the rear of the phone looks a little old-fashioned. The rest of the design is more akin to the iPhone 14; really compact, with flat aluminum edges. It fits nicely in the hand, in the same way that the iPhone 12 Mini did five generations ago.

Another noticeable difference is the notch on the display, which is considerably longer than on the standard 17. However, said display is tougher with the new ceramic compound and the latest Gorilla Glass shielding.

Other physical additions include the Action Button (above the volume ones), which I instantly loved. I like the name and its function(s). You can choose from a collection of different shortcuts, like the camera or the focus app – only one action can be used, however. You can use files and have the action button bring up a maximum of four apps/tools, but that makes it more like the drop-down software menu. Admittedly, the button could be even better with a double or triple-click function for extras. I used it for the camera initially, but I have also switched it to the torch. Why can't I have both?

Apple iPhone 17e: Display

You get a 6.1in Super Retina XDR OLED display on the 17e, with a 2,532 x 1170 resolution. This is both far bigger than the 4.7in iPhone SE, and has a greater screen-to-body ratio than the iPhone 11.

You don't get a 120Hz refresh rate or an always-on display, but that's the only real omission here. You still get True Tone, Wider Color support, and a very bright panel. I recorded peak brightness at 535 cd/m2 with our colormitere.

For almost every use (streaming, photography, web browsing), you get a great show of color. It's punchy when it needs to be, the blacks are deep and inky, and it has strong contrast. In truth, I didn't really notice the low refresh rate as it was still very smooth when scrolling the socials.

We also recorded 97% for sRGB gamut color coverage, which backs our experience of using the 17e. It isn't a groundbreaking device, but for a budget device, the display is great value for money. The larger-than-normal notch was also not that big an issue, despite cutting into the screen space.

Apple iPhone 17e: Specs and Performance

Having the A19 chip in the iPhone 17e is a bit of a cheat code. Although it's a slightly different version from what is found in the iPhone 17, it's still a 3nm chip with a 6-core CPU, 4-core GPU, and a 16-core neural engine. And that gives this budget phone a lot of premium features and operations. You also get double the storage compared to the 16e (128GB to 256GB).

In Geekbench 6, the 17e scored 3,648 for single core and 9,215 for multicore. Both benchmarks are a significant improvement over the Apple iPhone 16e, but also pretty close to the standard iPhone 17, which scored slightly above for multi-core.

The doubled storage also gives you plenty of room for apps, music, film downloads, and photos. Or even videos captured with the 48MP main camera – I was able to shoot and store enough for two videos.

In day-to-day use, I found the 17e to be lightning fast, responsive, and capable of getting me through my work day and beyond. It did seem to get quite warm on the back when downloading lots of apps in a row, during the setup, but that was the only time that issue came up.

In our looped video test, the 17e lasted 19hrs and 13mins, which is exceptional for a phone of this price. Again, having the A19 chip and its AI capabilities helps with optimization. In real terms, the phone lasted through work days, though it did noticeably drain quicker on days I shot video and transferred a high volume of files.

Apple iPhone 17e: Cameras

You get one camera lens on the rear of the iPhone 17e, but with two settings; it's a 48MP 'Fusion' camera, as Apple calls it. The additional capability is a 2x telephoto zoom. It's also capable of 4K video (fps?)

There are a couple of annoyances here; it's a 4x3 aspect ratio by default, but can be switched to 16x9 or 1x1. Images don't quite capture what you see before you hit the shutter button; they come out a little overexposed. And then there is a delayed enhancement that's particularly noticeable when you take selfies, which is a bit hit and miss. You also don't get a 'Pro' mode to tweak shutter speed or ISO. There's just a toggle for 'Exposure' that didn't seem to make much difference to the final shot.

Oddly, the video capabilities are much better. You can record in 4K at 60 fps, and it has a range of automatic features that help you, such as the wind noise reduction feature. You can also film multiple scenes in one, using the pause and record feature. We shot our most recent YouTube shorts on the iPhone 17e, and you can see the quality for yourself.

Apple iPhone 17e: Is it worth it?

The iPhone 17e seems like an internal challenge to Apple; how many of the most converted features can you fit into a budget handset? The answer this year is a lot. So you get an A19 chip and all its computational benefits. MagSafe. A pretty innovative camera system, with great video capabilities, and a rather long-lasting battery.

One could argue that the camera isn't high-quality enough – Honor and Samsung are offering a lot more (lenses and software) for roughly the same price. But the overall experience of the iPhone 17e is superior, in our opinion. It comes down to what you want from your budget phone. If it's a top-of-the-range camera with video capabilities, you would surely look at the premium models anyway.

For those who want a cheaper way into the Apple ecosystem, or businesses that want to find quality handsets that their employees will actually like, the iPhone 17e is undeniably a solid choice.

Apple iPhone 17e specifications

CPU A19 6-core CPU, 4-core GPU, 16-core neural engine

Display 6.1in Super Retina XDR OLED display

RAM 8GB

Storage 256GB or 512GB

Connectivity Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3

Cameras (Rear) 48MP Fusion Camera System (Front) 12MP

Dimensions (DHW) 7.8 x 146.7 x 71.5mm

Weight 170g

Operating system iOS 26

If you could build your own smartphone, what would it include? From a consumer perspective, the answer would most likely center around camera technology, AI features, and fun colors.

But for a business phone, the requirements would focus more on data privacy, security, and cost. This is where the Jolla Phone hopes to find its market. The European smartphone, built in Finland and announced at MWC 2026, has already reached 10,000 pre-orders.

The company CEO and co-founder, Sami Pienimäki is a smartphone veteran who spent ten years with Nokia on the product side of the business. Before spinning off in 2012 to establish Jolla with 25 core engineers.

There was a first initial handset launched in 2013, with some success – around six-figure numbers.

“Back then, nobody cared about data privacy, and GDPR didn’t even exist,” Pienimäki told ITPro. “People were more concerned about megapixels and RAM sizes.”

However, today the needs are a lot more complex, especially in the business world where there is some pushback against the US tech giants and their data practices. A pro-European tech movement is growing, and for Jolla, it is all about tapping into that sentiment.

Back in August after a summer holiday, Pienimäki and his team went to the Jolla forum and asked its community and pitched the idea of a new handset. But they specifically asked the community to tell them what kind of phone they wanted.

What specifications do they want, what size it should be, what about cameras, or RAM size, and, crucially, how much would you be willing to pay?

In ten days, Pienimäki was inundated with replies from 20,000 site visitors keen to help build a European smartphone. So the demand was there and, seemingly, all the motivation Pienimäki and his team needed.

Fast forward to MWC 2026, and Jolla pre-orders closed at 10,000 units for its newest model, which will cost €649 (£566) including VAT.

“For the first pre-order, we announced in our forum, ‘if 2,000 of you in the community commit to it, we will commit to making it,” Pienimäki told ITPro. “And then it hit us like a lightning strike, 47hrs we had sold the first 2,000.”

What to expect with the Jolla Phone

The Jolla Phone (2026) has a square design, with a bright orange back cover and a 6.36in AMOLED display with minimal black bezels and flat edges.

It houses a MediaTek 7100 5G chip, comes with either 8 or 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of microSDXC storage – upgradable to 2TB.

The 5450mAh battery is user-replaceable, and it also has a privacy switch. On the rear, you have a 50MP main camera and a 13MP ultra-wide lens on the front – both of which are developed by Sony.

A key area of differentiation is its software. Jolla uses its own operating system, called Sailfish, which is based on Linux. Pienimäki calls it a ‘respectful’ platform; it’s both open source throughout its software layers, and they also don’t collect end-user data or load it with hidden analytics.

You don’t need a Google account for it, but interestingly, it is still capable of running Android applications.

“We actually care about the end users, because we put you in control of the device,” Pienimäki added.

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ITPro had hands-on time with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra way back in February and was left impressed by its privacy display. But two months on, with an Enterprise Edition review unit in our possession, the most impressive feature is arguably its video capabilities.

From its five high-quality lenses to its innovative stabilization controls, the S26 Ultra is a video powerhouse perfect for today's content creation needs. Sure, it's expensive, but for social, promotional, or even mini film needs, the S26 Ultra is almost an all-in-one solution.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Design and specs

There really isn't much to say about the S26 Ultra's design, other than a few new color options and a slight reduction in thickness (7.9mm). To the naked eye, it looks the same as the S25 and the S24, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It has a great design, with those nice flat edges and a minimalist back cover, both made from 'Armor Aluminum'. It's a very distinctive look, particularly with the camera island and its many lenses.

The many lenses seem to be a big bulk of its weight too; despite the flat edges, it doesn't stand up on its own and tends to fall backwards – I even noted this when I tried to support the device with a stand – the weight of those lenses still pulled it backwards. So if you are filming, you need a case with a stand or a tripod of some kind as it won't stay up on its own.

Most of the changes and improvements are software or internal. It's powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, which brings a range of new capabilities for both on-device artificial intelligence and quite striking improvements to the camera software.

The S26 range has been designed under the banner of 'effortless AI', with more generative capabilities and shortcuts with simpler operations. Each of the models in the range will offer tailored experiences as they learn about the user, and produce impressive-looking capabilities for managing daily life and work – all through a new data engine. Bixby is also still lurking on your Samsung device, though it can now search the web. I didn't find this to be much better or quicker than simply searching the web in the old-fashioned way.

Other notable updates include the battery, which has been improved, with faster charging; Samsung says this can go from 0-75% in 30 minutes, which is near enough there in our experience. And it also sends the bare minimum power to certain apps – so it gives you enough to WhatsApp, but doesn't waste power.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Display

As always with Samsung, the screen technology is top-notch. On the S26 Ultra, the display is a 6.9in Dynamic LTPO AMOLED, with a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ capabilities.

It has two options for color profiles: vivid and natural. The former is punchier and good for streaming, while the latter is for more authenticity, particularly with camera shots. With our colorimeter, the natural setting showcased sRGB gamut color coverage at 96%, and 98% for color volume, which is about the same as the S25 Ultra and other models in this price range.

For those who feel the prying eyes of the world peeking over their shoulder, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has something special for you: a new pixel-level feature that blocks out the display from the side and above. 'Privacy Display', as it is known, is arguably the most important feature on a phone in some time. This is a type of anti-shoulder surfing technology that obscures your screen. It works automatically on notifications, but needs to be activated for individual apps. Once on, sideways viewers will only see a dark display.

The feature works at 'the pixel level', according to Samsung. And it is the result of five years of software engineering and tests. It's an appealing capability for the Samsung S26, but we expect it won't be long before other vendors have alternatives.

It is quite brilliant. No one can see your phone from the side or above, and all passwords have the feature on automatically. I kept it on for about a week, traveling on trains, buses, and in a car, with complete privacy. The only downside is it limits your view when you're shooting video or taking photos.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Specs and performance

Samsung has opted for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 inside the S26 Ultra, with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and either 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. And, for Android devices, this combination is the most powerful.

In Geekbench 6, the Ultra hit 3702 for single-core workloads and 11307 for multi-core workloads. The only device that pips that is the iPhone 17 Pro Max, according to the Geekbench website. Not that you would be able to notice the difference in real use, but the score is there for those who use their devices to the absolute limit.

Using the 5,000mAh battery to its absolute maximum is also a rarity, as it lasts and lasts. ITPro's standard battery test is a looped video that lasts 20 hrs, but we are starting to see handsets last much longer – and the S26 Ultra was just five hours short of doing two rounds of our in-house test. It lasted a whopping 35hrs and 43mins, which is simply amazing.

What’s more, the Enterprise Edition comes with a range of specific features for security and maintenance. These include the Knox Suite Enterprise Plan, which protects devices and data from malware and other malicious threats via multi-layered government-grade software. Along with a three-year warranty, business customers will also get up to seven years of security and maintenance releases and an extended product lifecycle.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Cameras

The cameras (as always) are where the Ultra really shines. There are four lenses (200MP, 10MP, and two 50MP – one telephoto) with vast improvements to the software that underpins them. Case in point, night shots which use the Snapdragon chip to pull more detail out in low light settings, with a brighter aperture and less noise. I used this feature a lot, capturing stunning images later in the evening and at night. The only issue is that you need steady hands to hold the phone still while it captures enough details to make the shot, though the on-device stabilization does help a lot.

I noticed limits to the stabilization elsewhere, such as the maximum telephoto range, which gives you very melty-looking images. Up to 30 times zoom, and it becomes very shaky, but there are many impressive levels before that. And you also get an AI assist, which is largely how people get such detailed shots of moons and faraway sights.

For video, the Ultra goes even bigger, with an 8K sensor recording at 30fps. It boosts stabilization, allows for auto framing, and automatic corrections for action shots. For professionals and content creators, the Ultra also has Advanced Professional Video (APV) capabilities, which preserve the quality of your shoots from capture through to edits, which is also aided by the improvements to storage.

The auto framing feature is a little jaw-dropping. Essentially, you lock on to a subject, and no matter how much shaking goes on, the footage remains still, stabilized, and aligned with the person or thing you're shooting. You have to believe me, I tried spinning the camera and violently rocking it side to side, and it still came back with perfectly still video. This could well be the death of the gimbal.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Is it worth it?

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra costs $1,999.99 (£1,279.99), and for that you get a giant slab of a smartphone with a privacy display, long battery life, a super processor, AI features, and a brilliant camera system. It's a lot, both in price and quality. So it really is worth weighing up your needs.

If you are a business that creates lots of video, or you're part of the team within a business that needs a smartphone that can be used for quick video production, then the S26 Ultra is almost an all-in-one production kit. It shoots crisp footage, gives you unparalleled stabilization, and allows you to transfer those files with little to no loss of quality. It simply is a (mini) filmmaker's dream.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra specifications

CPU Snapgragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Display 6.9in Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X, 120Hz, HDR10+

RAM up to 16GB

Storage up to 1TB

Cameras 200MP f/1.4 (wide), 10MP, (telephoto), 50MP f/2.8 (periscope telephoto), 50MP f/2.9 (ultrawide). Front: 12 MP f/2.2, (wide)

Connectivity Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4

Dimensions 163.6 x 78.1 x 7.9 mm

Weight 214 g

Operating system Android 16, up to 7 major Android upgrades, One UI 8.5

TCL's Nxtpaper 60 Ultra is a strange product, to say the least. It's a smartphone with a giant circular camera bump, a range of different gray and color modes for its display, and it comes with a little stylus that needs its own special accessory to clip it to the device. It's a tough one to describe.

It is a budget smartphone at just under $500, one that has plenty of features that are useful for work. But it isn't pretty, or all that powerful. And there's not much 'AI-powered' spiel in its marketing, which is frankly refreshing in this day and age.

TCL Nxtpaper 60 Ultra: Design

The Nxtpaper 60 Ultra is bulky to look at, but surprisingly light at 227g. Sure, there are more lightweight phones around, but given the thickness of the chassis and camera module, one expected the Ultra to be a bit of a paperweight.

Overall, the design is OK, somewhat clunky in places, and very different from the more refined models we like from Samsung and Apple. The Ultra measures 81 x 175 x 7.6m,m and there is a fair bit of plastic used in its build. Our review unit is black, though it has a blueish hue in and around the camera bump – which is arguably its most eyecatching feature.

Inside the box, you also get a plastic case and housing compartment for the stylus that clips on the side. These are both useful, but it makes an already bulky device quite a lump. It's tough on pockets and unwieldy in the hand.

TCL Nxtpaper 60 Ultra: Display

The 7.2in IPS LCD display is where things get more interesting, as it features TCL's Nxtpaper technology; one of the great features here is the different color modes, which include e-ink. This is great for reading or black and white doodles with the mini stylus.

In its default color settings, we were able to record a peak brightness of 657cd/m2, which is very impressive. And we also saw a color accuracy of 98%, which is again, a top score – both brightness and color representation match the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, which is more expensive.

For e-ink modes, there are three options, with 'Color Paper Mode' arguably the best of those. It is similar to the Remarkable Paper Pro with its muted colors, the kind one would find in old magazines and comics. Ink Paper and Max Ink Mode are more for books and documents, but there are benefits for distraction-free reading.

What makes the whole thing work, though, is the matte finish (the Nxtpaper coating), which reduces almost all glare. Using the phone in direct sunlight or under harsh indoor lights is fine, as it blocks all. However, there are a few different controls for reducing blue light and helping with eye strain – if there is one part of the device that is near perfect, it is the display.

TCL Nxtpaper 60 Ultra: Specs and performance

Inside the Nextpaper 60 Ultra is a MediaTek Dimensity 7400 chipset and a healthy 12GB of RAM. The 7400 is no slouch, but it isn't in the same league as the S25 FE, and certainly nowhere near any of the last few iPhones.

In Geekbench 6, the 60 Ultra scored 1029 for single-core and 3073 for multithreaded performance. Neither really suggests this to be a powerhouse, particularly at this price range. You can even go back a few years and find more powerful devices, like the Pixel 8 and the iPhone 14.

For our modest use, however, the 60 Ultra is more than capable. Be it doodling, browsing, or reading, it has more than enough to get you through your workday. And it will indeed last long enough; in our looped video test, the Ultra held out for 17hrs and 54mins – more than enough for work purposes.

TCL Nxtpaper 60 Ultra: Cameras

If you have a massive, unsightly camera bump, it's best that those lenses perform well, and the three rear ones on the Nxtpaper 60 Ultra are surprisingly good. Starting with the 50MP main camera, which has a large 1/1.55in sensor. It takes in really fine details, like the thread of a rug, or the strands of hair, for a fuller, richer image. This was even the case in low-light settings, too.

The second 50MP lens, which is the periscope telephoto one, is a bit of a luxury at this price range, offers 3 x optical zoom. These might not be anything like what you find on a Galaxy or Huawei smartphone, but still pulled in incredible details from a great distance. Where it lets you down is the hybrid zoom, where the quality seems to go as it gets blurry – we found it best to stick to under 30 x.

For wide shots, you only have an 8MP lens, though it is fairly decent. Same too for the selfie cam, which shoots video in 4K at 30fps. However, the best element of the whole setup is the half-circle interface for Zoom – it's pretty handy and nothing you'll find on any other smartphone.

TCL Nxtpaper 60 Ultra: Is it worth it?

If you want a smartphone that offers a range of different screen modes, the Nxtpaper 60 Ultra is pretty much unparalleled. The Color Ink mode is as good as you'll find on the Remarkable Paper Pro, and the regular e-ink setting is like a Kindle.

However, aside from that quite niche capability, there isn't anything here, for its price range, that you won't find anywhere else. The cameras are good, but not anything Samsung or Apple should worry about. The battery life is decent, not great, just decent. And the MediaTek processor is middling. All in all, it's an OK effort, but it really needs you to want e-ink capabilities.

TCL Nxtpaper 60 Ultra specifications

Motorola has expanded its smartphone portfolio with new devices at CES that include a premium model with four 50MP camera lenses.

The Motorola Signature is described as the company's most "refined smartphone to date", and will stand out in the crowd with its quad 50MP camera system. To put this in perspective, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra only has two 50MP cameras (it also features a 200MP main lens and a 10MP telephoto one).

However, it isn't just another phone with lots of cameras. For Mauricio Moisés, the senior manager of product for Motorola, the Signature is the result of close collaboration with companies like Qualcomm, Sony, and Instagram. It is a melting pot of technologies designed to make a smartphone tailored to its most popular use case: social media.

"We're trying to deliver an experience that is a no-brainer for everyone to understand," Moisés told ITPro.

"To talk about quality, resolution is just one pillar. We need Qualcomm's support; we need Sony sensors. So resolution is only one of the pillars. But to deliver massive and impressive camera quality, we need to be good in all aspects, so the higher the resolution, the more detail we can preserve in an image."

These same rule applies to sensors. The aim is to try and preserve as much as possible so that you get an image as close to reality. That's why the resolution is super important, according to Moisés.

"When you see the details, it makes the difference," he added.

The main sensor from Sony is the largest Motorola has ever used, and it plays a key role in defining what is good and what needs to be improved. The partnership with Instagram, meanwhile, is about minimizing loss of quality from smartphone to platform.

"We just want people to point and shoot; the heavy lifting is on us," Moisés explained. "And thanks to this partnership with Instagram, the heavy lifting is on both sides. So we just open the camera, and it doesn't matter if you use your camera app or the Instagram camera directly, the results preserve the same image quality."

ITPro had some hands-on time with the Motorola Signature at CES, testing out its camera system. And its point-and-shoot capabilities were very impressive. As were the telephoto and selfie lenses.

For video, we found it to be slightly jumpy, particularly if there is light in the frame, although that can be fixed with the Pro mode.

Alongside the Signature, Motorola has also unveiled a new Razr Fold with an expansive 8.1in display, the same quad camera system as the Signature, and a Motorola Qira – a new AI assistant that works across both Lenovo and Motorola devices.

Samsung's 'Fan Edition' of its Galaxy S25 range is more premium than you would expect. One of its four camera lenses is 50MP, the display is big and beautiful, and it has the kind of long battery life my old Nokia 3210 would be proud of.

However, there are some specifications that you will only find on a budget handset; you only have 8GB of RAM, and the storage options only go up to 512GB. This is also the Enterprise Edition, which means it comes with some business-only perks. And its $650 (£450) price is very reasonable.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: design

The Fan Edition of the S25 looks exactly the same as the other S25 models, with a flat back cover encased in a cold metal chassis. It has a smart and polished look, with power buttons and a volume rocker down the right-hand side, and a SIM tray to the left of its single USB-C port at the very bottom.

With its 6.7in display, the S25 FE feels big in the hand. The whole handset is a whopping 161.3mm in height and 7.4 mm in thickness, which makes it slightly awkward to swipe or open apps in one hand. But this long screen is absolutely great for watching content – it was even good on a few Zoom calls.

Around the back, the three camera lenses are the main point of focus; they protrude to the point that the handset doesn't lie flush on a desk. Arguably, most people will fix that with a case, but if you don't, it rocks like a seesaw when you use the touchscreen. I didn't purchase a case (didn't have it for long), and it became an issue using it in tandem with my laptop. You don't get this on the Google Pixel as it has a wide camera bar that stretches across the device.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Display

Samsung is arguably the king of screens, and what you have here on the S25 FE is the same size display you find on the S25 Plus – it's just more affordable. The 6.7in Dynamic LTPO AMOLED display is ridiculously stunning. It comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, and a 1080 x 2340 resolution with 385 ppi density – all very premium specifications.

Now it isn't exactly as good as the S25 Plus; you have a lower peak brightness (1,900 nits), but it doesn't struggle in bright conditions. I found it more than capable of handling direct sunlight and harsh indoor lights. What's more, the refresh rate is buttery smooth, with scrolling on social media fluid.

You can choose between vivid and natural settings for the display, although both are excellent. Colors pop off the screen no matter what content you view, and everything looks warm and vibrant. Video calls are high quality with the selfie camera, and all your favourite shows look at their best – again, I have to point out, Samsung is the king of displays. And the S25 FE is a testament to that.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Specs and performance

Unlike the standard S25, the Fan Edition has a 4nm Exynos 2400 processor, which scores lower in benchmarks. In Geekbench 6, the FE hit 2190 for single and 7098 for multi-threaded workloads. That is quite a drop, on paper, from the standard S25, which came in at around 9,800 for multi-threaded.

This, however, isn't something I can say I noticed while using the S25 FE. I found it to be super fast and fluid regardless of the apps I used. And there is a lot going on inside the S25 FE, with multiple systems and programs running in the background for image enhancement or prompts for what app you're going to use next.

It's all very subtle and largely helpful, until you get to typing, as there is something very aggressive and wholly wrong with the default setting of predictive text. I found the number of typos and whole words it puts in place frustrating. You can clearly see when and for how long I was using the S25 FE across Slack, Gmail, and WhatsApp, where my corporate messaging was riddled with errors – frankly, it's a feature that can duck off.

On a more positive note, the battery is brilliant. In our looped video test, the S25 FE lasted 29hrs and 27mins. That's comfortably a day's worth, though I did find it drains quicker after a heavy session on the socials. Workwise – Slack messaging, emails, proofreading docs – it has all the hours of juice you'll need.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Cameras

There are so many camera lenses on the S25 FE that you will wonder if this is actually a mid-level device. You get three on the back: a 50 MP, f/1.8, 24mm wide lens, an 8 MP telephoto one, and a 12 MP one for ultrawide shots. And, within the screen, is a 12 MP, f/2.2, 26mm lens that also shoots wide. It's a 'fan edition' but also heavily stocked.

You can shoot both images and video in their respective Pro modes, which is similar to what Sony Xperia used to offer. For video, it doesn't work as well as just using the default settings. This is arguably where the BlackMagic app has found success, which is a strange consequence of this age of influencers. It seems perplexing that Samsung and its rivals haven't simply added those types of LUTs and controls to their own camera apps.

The controls are slightly better for photos, though you'll be hard-pressed to make them any better than the S25's point-and-shoot capabilities. In our tests, we were able to match the point-and-shoot capabilities. The only time we were able to do better was in misty conditions, or where there was a nice beam of sunlight – the standard camera settings seem to remove these from view in their attempts to improve image clarity, which nearly all smartphone camera systems do.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Is it worth it?

My only real issue with the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE is its default settings for certain systems. Predictive text, for example. Which, of course, can be changed. Beyond that, what you have is an affordable smartphone with some quite brilliant premium features.

I love the big, bright display, all four of its camera lenses, and the fact that its battery lasts over a day. This is a device I would recommend for any office worker – or anyone in general. There are also plenty of Enterprise perks to be had with this device, such as next-day replacements and the Knox Suite Enterprise security plan. All of which makes this as good a business phone as there ever has been.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE specification

Identity and access management specialist Okta has unveiled its new Elevate partner programme, which aims to create more opportunities and accelerate growth for partners.

Launching on 3 April, the Okta Elevate programme introduces simplified deal registration, a broader range of specialisations, a flexible tier structure, as well as a new partner badging model.

The initiative has been designed to better tackle the digital identity market which Okta estimates to be worth around $80 billion. With its changes, the company is repositioning itself to cater to a broader range of partner types, including systems integrators, MSPs, technology partnerships, and cloud service providers.

“Partners want to work with Okta, but every partner is different,” said Warwick Lawson-Syer, director of regional alliances at Okta. “Okta Elevate celebrates this individuality, the potential of identity, and re-establishes the foundation of how we work with our partner community in the UK and across Europe.

“From specialisation to recognition, Okta Elevate allows each and every partner to showcase their expertise and deliver the Okta experience to customers.”

Elevate’s new structure introduces four tiers for partners to move up through, with the entry-level Elevate providing a gateway to the programme's Amplify, Ascend, and Apex tiers.

This framework allows partners to move up when meeting revenue and specialisation requirements, opening up access to various benefits – including new training and tools, market development funds, as well as partner advisory councils.

A new partner badging model also introduces digital badges as a primary way for customers to identify the capabilities that partners provide on behalf of Okta. For example, partners can display their expertise as Tech Champions, Public Sector Experts, or Managed Service Providers.

Okta partners will also now have specialisations to showcase their product capabilities, while simplified deal registration aims to provide improved rewards for finding new customers.

Bill Hustad, Okta’s SVP of global partners and alliances, said the company reached a stage in its growth that required a rethink of its partner strategy.

“We need to recognise and reward partners for the full spectrum of value they can deliver to our customers and Okta – from finding, developing, and influencing to delivering, managing, and transacting,” he explained. “The more of these motions a partner offers, the more value they provide to Okta and our mutual customers.”

He added: “Our partner strategy will revolve around recognising and rewarding our partners for embracing the motions that matter. The good news is that our partner ecosystem is already evolving, with many actively developing a breadth of capabilities.”

Samsung is back with its latest line of foldable devices including the Galaxy Z Fold4. This plays on the functionality of long-gone flip phones but manages to infuse them with modern screens and touch technology to produce a fairly unique device.

Nearly 10 million foldable were shipped last year and the Galaxy Z Fold3 was one of the most in-demand handsets within that category. However, it's a premium handset, with a price tag to match, but does it meet its mark?

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review: Design

The Galaxy Z Fold4 is essentially made up of two smaller smartphone-esque devices which are linked together through a folding screen. One device holds the cover screen and inner left screen, while the other holds the inner right screen and back panel with a camera.

In its "normal" state, you can use the cover screen as you normally would, with the camera on the rear of the device. However, you're also able to fold open the smartphone, almost like opening a small book, to unveil two beautiful inner screens. The cover screen now makes up one part of the back of the device, with the camera on the other side making up the other half. This unveils the main screen, which is a sight to behold.

In its folded state, the device is a little chunky although it is fairly narrow, measuring 14.2 mm and 155 x 67. For example, it's smaller in height and width than a Google Pixel 7 Pro. This might make transporting it a little easier since it fits better into your pocket, whereas other smartphones, like the iPhone 14 Pro, are attempting to outgrow these storage spaces. It also fits comfortably in your hand and there's easy access to the button on the side.

When it is unfolded, the device is completely different. It almost transforms into a mini tablet, measuring a depth of 6.3mm and 155x130. Thankfully, it's fairly light, weighing just 263g, and fits well into your grasp. Do note, however, that the fold in the device, that separates the screen so it can fold it, is fairly notable when it's not on. The good news is that when you're using it, you don't tend to notice the fold.

Also, when you use the device when it's unfolded, your fingers will grasp its back. This is where your camera and cover screen are located. Although the material which makes up the "back" where the camera is sitting on, doesn't tend to become imbued with fingerprints, your front screen will. It might be worth getting a screen protector because of this, especially since you might have to clean it regularly.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review: Display

You'll be pleased to know that the main, unfolded, display is absolutely stunning. It's a 2176 x 1812 AMOLED display which runs QXGA+ at up to 120Hz. The colour is beautiful and vivid, looking extremely rich across the screen. The fold isn't usually noticeable either. Bear in mind, that in order to fit the dimensions of the screen, sometimes videos can be slightly zoomed in. However, this doesn't detract from the overall experience, the screen is mesmerising.

As for the front screen, it's a 2316 x 904 AMOLED display, running in HD. It's a great screen but you won't be using it most of the time if you're watching videos or working, but does a good job if you decide to answer messages or use the camera function.

Bear in mind, that after extended use both screens become full of fingerprints. Every time you open or close the device you have to put in a fair bit of effort, with your fingers wiping against the screen each time.

In our display benchmarking, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 confirmed our high expectations. It had a sRGB gamut coverage of 100% with a 100% DCI P3. These scores put it in the top of the class. The iPhone 14 Pro, for example, scored 97% sRGB and 72.2% DCI, while the Google Pixel 7 Pro scored 96.4% sRGB. Ultimately the display goes beyond these two devices, which is why it is so rich and vivid.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review: Specs and performance

Humming silently under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 runs an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor. It comes with 12GB of RAM as well as 216GB of available memory. It also comes in a 512GB or 1TB version if you're looking for more space on your handset. The device itself runs smoothly, coping easily with the apps we put it through and seamlessly changing from one to another.

In our Geekbench test, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 scored 1,321 (single-core) and 3,960 (multi-core). Compared to the iPhone 14 Pro (1,874 and 5,497) or the Google Pixel 7 Pro (1,030 and 3,166), it's definitely an impressive result. However, it is an Android device, without Apple's beefy chips, and managed to beat the Samsung S22 Ultra's score of 1,166 and 3,475. Despite this, it maybe could have done a bit better considering the device's price tag.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review: Battery life

Having more than one screen, and quite a big screen as well, you might be worried about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4's battery life. Our video playback battery tests produced a good time of 17 hours 36 minutes, just shy of the 20 hours Samsung claims the video playback time lasts for.

This is just under the Google Pixel 7 Pro's score of 18hrs 53mins and a bit further off the iPhone 14 Pro's 19hrs 56mins. Although it will get through a working day confidently, with its 4400 mAh battery cell barely needing us to worry about thinking of charging the device, this could have been a bit longer, especially with the price taken into account.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review: Features

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 runs Android 12 which adapts easily to its folding screen. To navigate when it's open, it uses digital buttons at the bottom of the screen, not physical ones. When you enter an app, a taskbar also appears at the bottom of the screen displaying the apps stuck to the bottom of your home screen to allow you to access them faster. In addition, an icon with nine dots also appears which, when selected, opens your app directory where you can easily access all of your apps, the same action you usually do when swiping up on the home screen.

Android 12 also packs everything you would normally expect, including screen recorder, link to Windows, and eye comfort shield, filling the device with handy tools from day one of use. Samsung also lets you jump into apps you've just opened by hitting a button located on the bottom of the screen.

For security, it also has a fingerprint scanner. However, this is located in the button on the side of the device that you use to wake the phone, different to many smartphones. This makes sense, as otherwise you would have to always enter the phone using the cover screen, when in reality you might find that you immediately unfold the device most times you use it, bypassing the cover screen altogether.

As for the folding screen, you can also fold it 90 degrees so it sits up on your desk. This can make it slightly easier to work from since you don't have to be holding it or directly over the device if it is lying down. Additionally, you can also use Android's split-screen mode to have different apps open at the same time. This makes it easy to search for information, for example, if you're working on a document. However, although you probably won't make this your full-time work device, it can be useful if you're on the move and need to make quick fixes to things.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review: Camera

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 has a number of cameras. On the back of the device, it has three rear cameras. They have 50MP, 12MP and 10MP lenses, as well as 3x optical zoom, and a massive 30x digital zoom. This should give you enough firepower to take good photos as well as zoom in to spy on subjects from far away.

There's also an "under display" camera on the third panel of the device, on the left-hand side of the inner screen. It's a 4MP camera that you will probably use for making video calls, so it doesn't have to be super high in quality. The under-display camera is fairly camouflaged and you won't really notice it during use. When we first spotted it, we thought the screen had some dead pixels but thankfully this wasn't the case. Lastly, there's a cover camera on the front screen with a 10MP lens which you might use for taking selfies or unlocking the device.

Samsung has got creative when it comes to how you can use the Galaxy Z Fold4 to take images. It's introduced a feature called dual preview, where the people you're taking a photo of when the device is unfolded can see the image you take using the front screen, which Samsung says allows them to adjust to look their best.

There's also a 'capture view', where if you have the device folded 90 degrees, you can take photos using the 50MP camera on one side of the screen and immediately see what they look like on the other side. It shows you a preview, allowing you to reshoot if needs be.

Lastly, if you're looking to take a photo of yourself from far away, you can always fold the device and put it on the ground or a surface like a table without needing something to lean on. Simply set the self-timer on the camera, run in front of the lens, and pose.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review: Verdict

With its beautiful screen and extreme portability, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 is almost like a tablet and smartphone combined into one. That might be the reason for its excruciating price tag of £1,374 (exc. VAT) for the 256GB version and £1,474 for the 512GB version (the 1TB version isn't currently for sale).

For the same money, you could get smartphones such as a £916 iPhone 14 Pro, a £849 Google Pixel 7 Pro, or even a £1,149 Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Looking at tablets, you could buy the £1,316 Microsoft Surface Pro 8, the £916 Apple iPad Pro 12.9in (2021), or the £500 Lenovo Tab P11 Pro. Just to highlight Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4's price tag: You could buy a Google Pixel 7 Pro and a Lenovo Tab P11 Pro and have £25 left over.

That being said, the device has great benefits like amazing photo functionality, extreme portability compared to modern smartphones, and a rich, crisp, screen. Though, realistically, you're not going to be able to spend a whole day working off this device either.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 specifications

Every year, Sony takes its flagship Xperia 1 smartphone and squishes it down into a more compact version labelled Xperia 5. They also come with a confusing Roman numeral naming scheme; the latest is the Xperia 5 "IV" but pronounced 'mark 4'.

The other noticeable thing about the Xperia 5 range is that they tend to be quietly brilliant. IT Pro gave 5 stars to the 5 II, even going as far as to say it was the phone of the year (2020). We expect the same with the 5 IV as it packs an excellent camera system, vivid display and snappy processor in a small form factor, though that also now comes at a pretty hefty price (£949 exc VAT).

Sony Xperia 5 IV: Design

There isn't much to say about the Xperia 5 IV aside from it looking exactly the same as the III and II and pretty much every modern handset Sony releases. This was exactly an amazing design, to begin with, and it now looks and feels rather tired, particularly when compared to the likes of the iPhone 14 or the Huawei P50. Simply put, the Xperia 5 IV is the dullest-looking device around.

What works in its favour, however, is the compact form; Sony has managed to get a triple camera system, a 6.1in display and a 5,000mAh battery into a 67mm width and 8.2mm thickness. Specs like these usually come in big phablet phones but the Xperia 5 IV is a subtle little thing that weighs just 72g.

Sony Xperia 5 IV: Display

Despite the compact design, the Xperia 5 IV packs a 6.1in OLED display with a 21:9 aspect ratio. It's very narrow, which is great for your thumb as it can reach right across, and also good for a border-free movie or two, but it does look odd against other handsets in the current market.

Again, Sony has incorporated an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate and the same 2,510 x 1,080 resolution as was in the III. In fact, the only real difference here is that the screen is much brighter. Under our calibrator, the display reached a peak brightness of 610cd/m2 which is nearly double the Xperia 5 III.

Colour-wise, the display produced 99.9% for sRGB gamut colour coverage and a gamut volume of 102%. Both of those figures are excellent with only the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra able to beat it (100% and 148% respectively), which really does underline the quality of the Xperia 5 IV.

Sony Xperia 5 IV: Specs and performance

As with the Xperia 1 IV (and a number of other high-end devices) the 5 runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, which is an upgrade on the 888 version found in the III. Though its benchmark scores are not necessarily an improvement on the previous device.

In Geekbench 5, the 5 IV hit 1,212 for single-core scores and 3,554 for multicore scores - roughly the same as the III. However, these scores are quite impressive when compared to the S22 Ultra which only managed 3,475 for multi-threaded workloads. For power, it really is only the iPhone 14 Pro and its A16 chip that can best the Xperia.

For day-to-day use, the Xperia 5 IV is a solid companion able to handle multiple workloads all at once. We put it through as much as we could, running lots of apps at the same time and found it to be quite the workhorse. Although, due to the narrow screen, you will find limits to what you can actually do, workwise, on this device.

Sony Xperia 5 IV: Battery

Despite the compact design, Sony has managed to install a 5,000mAh battery, which is an increase from the 4,500mAh one in the III. Though this didn't result in a better battery score; the IV lasted 20hrs and 22min in our looped video test, which is just a few minutes less than the III. However, that is a decent score, particularly as the device has a 120Hz refresh rate, which tends to drain battery life. Devices like the Google Pixel 7 Pro and the One Plus 10 Pro couldn't make it beyond 20hrs under the same tests.

In real terms, the device gets through a working day (8 hrs shift) with power to spare – we regularly finished the day with 50%n or more battery life left. This is good because if you need to top it up you'll have to wait for a while. The device is calibrated for a 30W charger and that takes ages; it took over 30 minutes to get more than 50% back.

Sony Xperia 5 IV: Features

Feature-wise, there is very little interest beyond the handset being upgradable to Android 13. There is an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, Bluetooth 5.2 and a USB Type C 3.2 port – all very standard stuff. On the plus side, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top and a MicroSD slot. The latter is great, partly because it is very rare in modern smartphones, but also because it gives you that extra bit of storage for all those professional photos you'll be taking.

Sony Xperia 5 IV review: Cameras

Once again, the Xperia 5 is fitted with a triple-lens camera system with three 12MP lenses (literally the same as the III). Although it is worth noting that the 12MP telephoto lens is slightly different switching down to just a 2.5 x optical zoom.

The Xperia range doesn't really care much for the point-and-shoot experience and its image processing tends to look more natural – or nowhere near as polished as the iPhone 14 Pro or the Pixel 7 Pro. There's no dedicated night mode either, so you really need to work to make images pop.

This is partly due to extensive controls in the 'Pro' setting; Sony wants you to treat your device like a DSLR camera and get hands-on with things like shutter speed and ISO. While most consumers are f/8 and show-up types, there is something impressive about the Xperia 5 IV's pro settings; yes, it can be frustrating and time-consuming to fiddle with the dials, but it is wholly satisfying when you do capture an image in this way.

Sony Xperia 5 IV review: Verdict

Despite its fantastic display, long battery life and genuinely brilliant performance, it is hard to fully recommend the Xperia 5 IV. The design, the narrow size, and the way the camera system is set up give it a more niche appeal. Worse, still, the £949 price is also off-putting.

However, if you do like movies without borders and you're one for tinkering with photography controls, there isn't much better. This is a DSLR in smartphone form and considerably cheaper than an actual camera. So in essence it is potentially an alternative for street photographers that can't afford a proper camera.

Sony Xperia 5 IV Specifications

It is a testament to the ingenuity of Apple that it can take something very unloved like a display notch and turn it into an interesting new feature. Rather than ditching it completely, as various rumours and leaks suggested, it simply found a new purpose for it.

As such, much of the interest in the new iPhone 14 Pro is around people wondering what a 'Dynamic Island' is. But that is just one of a number of new features that makes the iPhone 14 Pro, potentially, one of the most exciting smartphones around.

iPhone 14 Pro review: Design

In our opinion, Apple really nailed the design on the iPhone 12 and that is why we don't mind the fact it hasn't changed much over the last two years. The iPhone 13 was an exact replica and the iPhone 14 Pro is almost indistinguishable. We say almost, because there are, in fact, pretty major tweaks, such as the notch, which is now a pill-shaped cut-out at the top of the screen. This is for the new 'Dynamic Island' feature – more on that, later.

Beyond that, the iPhone 14 Pro is a solid handset, with flattened-off edges and subtly curved corners. There is a set of circular lenses that protrude from a transparent camera bump and a shiny Apple logo in the centre of the back cover. It looks the same as the last two models of iPhone, but still refreshingly different from every other smartphone available today. The device weighs 206gs – 2g more than the iPhone 13 Pro – and comes coated in Apple's ceramic shield. This is a specific compound that makes the phone that little bit more drop resistant. On the iPhone 13, and 12, it proved very durable.

If there is a point of contention on the iPhone 14 Pro it's the size; there are four variations on the latest iPhone, with the standard (6.1in) being the smallest and the Pro Max (6.7in) being the tallest. However, the Pro is not actually Pro-sized, going by other manufacturers' measurements. It's considerably smaller than the Pixel 7 Pro (6.7in) and the 'Plus' model of the S22 (6.6). Really, this is a normal-sized iPhone but the name almost makes you expect it to be bigger.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: Display

There is a sumptuous 6.1in OLED display on the iPhone 14 Pro that is both vivid and exceedingly bright. It has a 120Hz refresh rate, so it's also buttery smooth, and its ProMotion adaptive technology keeps that refresh rate in check for the sake of battery preservation.

With our calibrator, the 14 Pro reproduced 97% of the sRGB colour gamut, with 72.2% DCI P3. These are great scores, matching last year's iPhone 13 (97.7%) and the Google Pixel 7 Pro which showcased 96.4%. The phone is also ridiculously bright; it hit 1,997cd/m2 under an HDR video playback test, though it is worth noting that only a part of the screen can reach that level. If you're on a website or app it will be capped much lower. But still, blindingly good scores.

For the first time, Apple has added an always-on display and it is a stunning addition. This is down to the ProMotion tech which projects images at a rate of 1Hz so as not to overload the battery. So you can have simple time, date and notification graphics but also richer content such as widgets and even background photos. It is a fabulous extra to an already wonderful display.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: Specs and performance

With the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, Apple has introduced its latest silicon chip, the A16 Bionic processor. This is made up of a 6-core CPU, a 5-core GPU and a 16-core neural engine, and has been developed with 4nm technology. Apple is slowly starting to leave the competition behind with its Bionic range and the A16 is another industry-leading processor.

In GeekBench 5 it produced 1,874 for single-core workloads and 5,497 multi-threaded tasks. That is a big improvement on the iPhone 13's A15 Bionic chip (4,668 for multi) and streets ahead of practically everything else – the Exynos 2200 chip in the Samsung S22 Ultra hit 3,475 for multi-threaded, for example.

There is almost too much power in the iPhone 14 Pro, as very few users will ever find its upper limits. It handled everything we could throw at it with barely any sign of effort. However, if there is one gripe – and there is always one with Apple – it is the 6GB RAM limit. You get options of 8GB or 12GB on the S22 Ultra and the Pixel 7 Pro, Apple could clearly do more here.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: Battery

There is a 3,200mAh battery inside the iPhone 14 Pro, which is a tiny bit bigger than the 3,095mAh source found in the iPhone 13 Pro. In our looped video test, the 14 Pro lasted for 19hrs 56mins, almost two hours longer than the iPhone 13 (18hrs 5mins), but actually less than the iPhone 13 Pro which made it over the 20-hour mark.

The always-on display and the higher refresh rate do affect the battery life which really does ebb away if you're constantly scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, and so on. Aside from that, however, the 14 Pro can easily make it through a workday and into the late evening – on a couple of occasions, we even found it to last into a second day, provided we didn't watch anything.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: Features

The big new thing with the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Max Pro is the 'Dynamic Island' notification system. Essentially a reimagining of the notch, partly so Apple can keep it, but also so it can make notifications seem less annoying. It's a feature exclusive to the Pro and Pro Max models – so you won't get it on the standard iPhone 14. It seems quite refreshing, with music presenting the best use case for it as you can skip through your iTunes playlists with real simplicity.

It works by pressing the notch and holding it to open it up into an information window at the top of the display. Apple is making its APIs open to developers so the likelihood is that Dynamic Island will get more functionality with the next couple of iPhone generations. For now, it's just a slightly useful notch.

There is also 'Crash Detection', which alerts emergency services if the phone detects you've been in an accident. It's one of the newer iOS16 features that we thankfully never got to properly test out. Elsewhere you get Wi-Fi 802, Bluetooth 5.3, an IP68 dust and water resistance rating and a Lightning USB 2.0 slot – though if reports are correct, this will be the last iPhone to feature it.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: Cameras

There are some big changes with the 14 Pro's camera setup compared to the iPhone 13 Pro, though there isn't a particularly noticeable improvement in picture quality. The main camera has been bumped from 12MP to 48MP, but with a slightly smaller aperture at f/1.8. There is also a 12MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and a second 12MP ultra-wide lens. There is also a 12MP selfie cam.

There isn't much improvement with images captured in daylight, though there is a big difference when capturing images in the ProRaw format. This needs to be enabled via the settings but it is worth that extra hassle as it captures full-res 48MP images, rather than 12MP ones. This gets you the super fine details, which is also why these images take up more storage space.

Video is perhaps a bigger improvement, year-on-year, with the new Action Mode offering very smooth footage at 2.8K and 60fps. Along with the Dolby Vision HDR, the 14 Pro is a great little action cam and the results look great on most screens.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: Verdict

One could argue that there isn't much change year-on-year, or that what is new isn't quite the finished article. But then again, the iPhone 14 Pro sailed through most of our tests and left a good impression on us after a week of use. And, despite being two years old, the design still looks fresh against the competition.

The price is high (£916 exc VAT) but that gets you an always-on-display, the Dynamic Island, a very good camera system and probably the most powerful mobile processor of all time. We can't say the iPhone 14 Pro is best in class but it is most definitely the best smartphone Apple has produced to date.

Although Oppo only reached Europe around five years ago, its influence on the phone market has been huge. As one of the biggest phone brands in its native China, and sister brand to OnePlus, the company has already impressed with the X2 Pro and X3 Pro – but in the X5 Pro, the brand has matured into a real contender for the high-end European market.

The Oppo Find X5 Pro is a premium handset with a lightweight aluminium frame backed with a choice of ceramic or vegan leather. But what makes this more than just another black rectangle?

Oppo Find X5 Pro review: Design

The Find X5 Pro offers a fairly bog-standard smartphone design, but it does it with a sense of style – it's the sort of device that you can feel very smug about pulling out and putting on the desk. The curved edging makes it easy to hold, but the shimmering reflective back is highly polished, putting it at constant risk of slipping off any unstable surface – a case is a must, therefore. Which is a shame because with its 90% screen ratio and edge lighting – a familiar design choice to Oppo and OnePlus users – it makes for a beautiful, up to the minute look, let down by a larger-than-average camera bulge.

With its 8.8mm thickness, tapered at the edges, it feels remarkably thin and light, but with enough weight to assure a quality build. Along with the slippery back, the screen is protected with the latest generation Gorilla Glass Victus, which we found rugged, but prone to scratching, so a screen protector is recommended.

Oppo Find X5 Pro review: Display

Visually, the X5 Pro is stunning, with a 1440 x 3216 AMOLED display, running in QHD+ at up to 120Hz. Colour reproduction is extremely accurate and movements are smooth and natural. If that all sounds a bit overpowered, you have the option to turn the refresh rate down and drop the screen resolution to a (still beefy) FHD+ resolution to save battery and resources.

During our display benchmarking, we found the X5 Pro to be more than capable of accurately reproducing a full HDR colour gamut and nominally infinite contrast ratio. We had high expectations, given that Hasselblad Colour Calibration is one of Oppo's major marketing points, but with a near-perfect average Delta-E of 0.31 (maxing out at 2.20) and an sRGB colour gamut coverage of 100%, this is a powerhouse of a display. In short, this display is rivalling the likes of the iPhone 13 and Samsung's S22 Ultra in terms of colour fidelity.

Oppo Find X5 Pro review: Specs and performance

Under the hood, the Oppo Find X5 Pro boasts an octa-core Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, with a choice of 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage, with a cheaper 8GB/256GB model available for the budget conscious.

Those specs are enough to handle pretty much anything you can throw at it with ease, and as well as the ability to "borrow" extra RAM from storage, there's a dedicated High-Performance mode which maxes out every core of the processor, albeit at the expense of the battery. Nevertheless, even without these extras, we've thrown almost every app and game we could think of at it, and it's yet to let us down. For our tests, we turned off both of these features, to ensure a level playing field with other devices.

In our Geekbench test, the Oppo X5's CPU scored 959 (single-core) and 3,280 (multi-core). While it's no iPhone 13 (1,735 and 4,668), it's certainly an impressive result. In comparison with other Android devices, which don't benefit from Apple's Bionic chips, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra scored 1,166 and 3,475, making Oppo a clear winner.

Oppo Find X5 Pro review: Battery life

When it comes to specs like those of the X5 Pro, particularly its high-end display, there's always a risk that battery life will suffer. But our battery tests produced one of the longest battery durations we've seen, at 21hrs 37mins of constant video playback. Of course, that's hugely reduced during real-world use, but during our daily activities, we could confidently get through a work day and back home with more than 20% remaining.

With a 5,000mAh cell, we found no issue with all-day battery life, even during heavy usage. It's also worth noting that Oppo is finally embracing wireless (Qi) charging at 50W and reverse charging at 10W, and thanks to Oppo's Supervooc 80W charging, you can refuel it in the time it takes to drink a coffee. Using a non-Oppo charger reverts to USB-PD standards though, which takes a little longer.

Oppo Find X5 Pro review: Features

What makes the X5 really sing is the intelligent approach to Android with Oppo's ColorsOS 12 – offering a near-stock Android 12 experience, augmented and complemented by unique features that make the most of the hardware, without smothering it in an unnecessary skin.

All the usual protocols are included; Bluetooth 5.2, A-GPS, Wi-Fi Direct, Miracast And NFC are all present and correct but most notable is that this is one of the first handsets we've tested to offer the benefit of not just the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard, but the bleeding edge Wi-Fi 6E, which uses the nearly cleared 6GHz band. This offers faster speeds and more concurrent connections. Although, at the time of writing, there are comparatively few routers that support it.

The screen houses an under-display fingerprint scanner. You can augment the fingerprint with an impressively efficient facial recognition feature for maximum security. The bottom edge holds the USB-C 3.1 port and a pair of downward-firing stereo speakers which produce above-average onboard sound. This is also where you'll find the SIM slot, which accommodates dual-SIM as standard, or if you prefer, you can opt for an e-SIM.

One of the most theoretically useful innovations in ColorsOS 12 is Oppo PC Connect which, as the name suggests, is designed to create a seamless experience between your device and computer. With cross-device copy-paste, messaging, file transfer and full control of your phone in a dedicated window, this could be highly useful, but unfortunately, we had trouble getting communication established on two different machines.

There's lots more to like about this phone, though. A slide-out menu on the home screen gives you quick access to answer text messages and jump straight into your favourite apps, utilising another of Colors OS 12's secret weapons – multiple scalable windows. This makes the phone even more efficient at multitasking, and with the addition of an external monitor and keyboard, fairly efficient as a makeshift desktop machine. It's not quite Samsung DeX, but it's not far off.

The X5 is also capable of curating two versions of the same app, connected to different accounts. So, for example, you can stay logged in with two different Twitter accounts through a 'cloned' version of the app. This is an efficient way to keep work and personal life separated on a single device, and we really like it. Sadly, if you're looking for SD card or headphone support, you're out of luck.

Oppo Find X5 Pro review: Camera

The rear cameras require a significant bulge on the back of the phone to accommodate the 50MP Hasselblad camera, flanked with a second 50MP ultra-wide lens and a 13MP 2x optical zoom telephoto lens. The punch-hole 32MP front camera is the only gap in the bezel-less 6.7in screen. The camera array is powered by a MariSilicon X image chip and Hasselblad colour calibration.

The pictures that we took during testing were crisp, bright and focused, thanks to the phone's AI chip. The 2x optical zoom is a little low compared to Huawei and Samsung, but we found that using the 50MP mode and cropping produced far crisper images than zooming in achieves.

Oppo Find X5 Pro review: Verdict

There's so much to love about the Oppo Find X5 Pro and we've hardly scratched the surface in terms of 'nice to have' additions, none of which interfere with an out-of-box Android 12 experience that will impress even the most ardent Pixel devotee.

Oppo clearly understands the value of its devices for high-end gaming and business users and tips its hat to both. More importantly, Oppo has committed to three years of device updates and four years of security updates for its Find X range. That means that it should see both Android 13 and 14 during its lifespan, and barring any quantum leaps in technology, the hardware should be as capable then as it is now, making for a good long-term investment worthy of the post-£1,000 price.

As such, we're giving this a mark that reflects not only its current brilliance but also its potential. We've been using this device on a daily basis for three months and it remains one of the finest phones we've worked with in 2022. The PC connection should improve in time, and Oppo's ongoing dedication to refinement and innovation within the Android space means that, if you don't feel the need to upgrade your device every year, you can buy with confidence that it'll do you proud into 2023 and beyond.

Oppo Find X5 Pro specifications

Last year's Pixel 6 was something of a game-changer for Google. With its innovative CPU, magic camera technology and complete design overhaul, it was a landmark device that elevated the Pixel range from an off-beat alternative to a genuinely market-leading brand.

As such, there is a bit more riding on the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro as the expectation has been raised. With a new Tensor G2 chip and a tweaked design, the question is, can Google make an even bigger statement with the Pixel 7 Pro?

Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Design

It's fair to say that the design of the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro wasn't for everybody. That ridiculously large camera bar, for instance, was hard to love. But the Pixel 7 Pro has taken that basic shape and refined it with a more streamlined design. The camera bar hardly protrudes at all and blends into the rest of the handset so that it now sits flush on a surface – it won't annoyingly rock as you press the display when it's on a table.

The tweaked design has made it bigger; the 7 Pro is 0.6mm wider than the 6 Pro at 76.7mm and 2g heavier at 212g. That is still less than the 228g of the S22 Ultra, but it's a chunky device in its own right and it makes the iPhone 14 Pro sound quite trim at just 206kg. The extra bulk matters as it can be unwieldy to use single-handedly and you will find you need both hands just to take photos. We nearly dropped it on a few occasions as we tried taking landscape shots, for instance.

Thankfully, the handset is a little tougher this year as it is encased in Gorilla Glass Victus and the metal chassis certainly feels a bit more solid. The only negative aspect of the design is a more traditional range of available colours. The 7 Pro comes in 'Obsidian' (black), 'Snow' (white) and 'Hazel', which is basically green, but not the fun 'Sort of Seafoam' green from last year – the peachy 'Kinda coral' is also sadly missing.

Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Display

There's little change with the display, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; The Pixel 7 Pro has a 6.7in AMOLED display with a 1440 x 3120 resolution and HDR10+ capabilities – practically the same as last year's Pixel 6 Pro. For the refresh rate, there is also LTPO technology which helps the display switch from as low as 1Hz to 120Hz depending on the content. This helps conserve battery life, while also giving you a super smooth scroll on social media.

Colour accuracy is a little down on last year's Pixel 6 Pro but not noticeable so. The 7 Pro scored 96.4% for sRGB gamut coverage compared to the Pixel 6 Pro's 99.1%. This is also a little lower than the iPhone 13 and the Samsung S22 Ultra, but, again, not enough to really suggest a massive difference in quality.

We found the Pixel to be a vibrant and luminous display with a good depiction of colour across all types of content. And it also managed a peak brightness of 608cd/m2, which is a significant improvement on the 6 Pro.

Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Specs and performance

With the Pixel 7 models, we also have a new Tensor processor. This time it's a 5nm G2 chip, developed in partnership with Samsung, that's matched with 8GB of RAM. As with the original Tensor in the Pixel 6, it doesn't produce particularly impressive benchmark scores. But the idea behind the Tensor is to take processing power and tailor it to specific tasks, such as machine learning workloads and image editing.

In Geekbench 5 the Pixel 7 Pro notched single-core scores of 1,030 and multi-core scores of 3,166. These are a decent improvement to last year's 1,034 and 2,767 on the Pixel 6 Pro. Unfortunately, they look pitiful compared to the iPhone, the S22 and Huawei's P50 Pro, but it's also true that a benchmark score doesn't really explain what the phone can do. There is nothing about the phone that would suggest it is more sluggish than the iPhone 13; it runs applications quickly, can handle multiple tabs, split screen mode, rapid image editing and much, much more.

Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Battery

Under our looped video test, the 7 Pro's 5000mAh battery lasted 18hrs 53mins, which is a good, if not fantastic, score. There are devices, such as the OnePlus 10 Pro and the S22 Ultra that are getting that little bit closer to 20hrs, but the Pixel 7 Pro has improved on the 6 Pro's 17hrs and 5mins.

It also does well in real terms, generally lasting a full day. Heavy use of the higher refresh rate (social media) and excessive gaming will deplete the battery super quick, but otherwise, it has staying power. When it comes time to charge, the Pro supports both 23W charging and the same calibre of wireless charging.

Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Features

Unsurprisingly, the Pixel 7 Pro comes with Android 13 and the upgraded 'Material You' interface. This is far and away the most customisable and recognisable version of Android with its changeable themes and simplistic navigation controls.

The 7 Pro also features an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi 6, a 30W USB type-C port and biometric security. We have to point out here that the fingerprint sensor is a big improvement on the 6, which suffered from an annoying glitch. However, over two weeks of use, we are yet to have any issues.

One of the more overlooked features of the Pixel 6 is back as the 7 Pro can automatically translate your voice recordings into a Google Doc. We used this a number of times and, while it is depending on the quality of the recording, it does transcribe as well as Otter.

Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Cameras

When it comes to camera specs, the 7 Pro has the same number and resolution of lenses as the 6 Pro. That is a 50MP f/1.9 wide lens, a 48MP f/3.5 telephoto one, and a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens. There is a change to the front camera which has a 10.8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens instead of the 11.1MP one in the 6 Pro.

The main 50MP lens does a lot of the heavy lifting with this triple lens setup, though the 48MP wide lens is great for capturing details at super wide angles. Picture quality is crisp with each of the lenses, no matter the lighting conditions. The telephoto lens is a little lacking, certainly compared to the Huawei P50 Pro and the S22 which both make better use of AI to focus subjects captured from long distances.

It is slightly odd that this phone doesn't quite get the best long-range shots because it is full of clever machine-learning capabilities. The Magic Eraser tool is back, the night photography features are as good as ever, and the whole point-and-shoot capabilities are on par, if not ahead, of almost everything else on the market. However, our favourite new feature is the unblur tool, which even seems to work with old photos – ones not even taken on the Pixel.

Unblurring is also used with video; one of the newer features is the 'Cinematic Blur' – Google's version of Apple's 'Cinematic Mode – which essentially adds a bokeh effect (background blur) to your video. There's also an 'Active Stabilisation' function that steadies video shots. Both features are impressive and further indication of the capabilities of the Tensor G2 CPU.

Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Verdict

With the Pixel 7 Pro, Google took all the problems with the 6 and 6 Pro and fixed them. Well, almost. There are still some software glitches; they're very subtle, but we noticed the navigation controls can occasionally get stuck when closing apps.

Beyond that, however, the 7 Pro is a massive improvement on the 6 with its longer battery life, Tensor-powered camera software, and streamlined design. The only issue here is how does Google top it next year. The Pixel 7 Pro is pound for pound, the best Android phone around.

Google Pixel 7 Pro Specifications

The Chinese brand OnePlus has been something of a dark horse in the UK. While it doesn't have the star power of Samsung and Apple, it does boast a dedicated customer base that loves its affordable hardware.

Its latest handset, the OnePlus 10 Pro, is the successor to the critically acclaimed 9 Pro. Our first impression when we saw the device at MWC 2022, was that the 10 wasn't all that different to the 9. But with a review unit now in our hands, that opinion may change.

OnePlus 10 Pro review: Design

To begin, the OnePlus 10 Pro comes with a rather classy design, particularly where the camera system is, with a smooth sheet of metal housing a triple-lens set-up, emblazoned with a shimmering Hasselblad logo along the side. Unfortunately, the camera section is the only real difference compared to the OnePlus 9 Pro, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The corners and sides are smooth and neatly rounded, the display has super thin bezels and also features a tiny cutout for the selfie camera. And, there is the company's squared logo on the back cover, which only becomes noticeable when it gets a bit of light to reflect.

What's more, it feels a lot different to almost everything else on the market, thanks to a slightly rubbery texture on the casing. Fair warning, though, it isn't actually rubber – it's glass with a matte finish – and it will shatter should you drop it. That is pretty much the case for most smartphones and the main reason to get a case and or cover. Although, the back has Gorilla Glass 5 protection and Gorilla Glass Victus on the screen, so it should offer plenty of scratch resistance.

OnePlus 10 Pro review: Display

There is a luminous 6.7in OLED panel on the 10 Pro, with a 3,216 x 1,440 resolution. It also supports the LTPO technology that allows the display to adjust its refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz. This is a great addition as it gives you that smooth scroll for social media, but keeps it low for video content where it's not needed as much. This ultimately helps regulate battery use.

Under our calibrator, the 10 Pro showcased 99.8% of the sRGB colour space, which is slightly above last year's 9Pro (99.7%), but not enough to notice any bump in quality. It is more than a match for the iPhone 13 (97.7%) and just that little bit more colour accurate than the Google Pixel 6 Pro (99.1%).

The display is also capable of handling most lighting conditions, with a peak brightness of 459cd/m2. Again, that is a match for the Pixel Pro (475cd/m2) and the iPhone 13 (414cd/m2). In day-to-day use, the automatic brightness controls kept the screen visible no matter where we took it, and there was very little need to move the brightness toggle all the way up ourselves.

OnePlus 10 Pro review: Specs and performance

Inside the 10 Pro is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor that can be matched with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. Much like the 9 Pro's Qualcomm 888 chip, the 8 Gen 1 has been developed in a way that allows for more power to be housed in a smaller space. However, it appears that the 9 Pro has a more efficient CPU.

In GeekBench 5, the 10 Pro notched single-core scores of 976 and 3,449 for multi-threaded workloads. That is actually down compared to the 1,132 and 3,557 results the 9 Pro managed. It looks a lot worse when compared to the A15 Bionic chipset in the iPhone 13 which hit 4,688 for multi-threaded performance.

It feels somewhat harsh to involve iPhones in these comparisons, simply because its CPU is out-benchmarking everything, by a long way. But OnePlus are no longer the affordable upstart of old and the 10 Pro is similar in price to the iPhone 13. So the latter, in this regard, offers that little bit more value for money. Though from our own use, the OnePlus 10 Pro is a perfectly speedy device capable of handling multiple apps and intense workloads.

OnePlus 10 Pro review: Battery

As mentioned above, the 10 Pro has a power-sapping 120Hz display and that same technology in the 9 Pro affected its battery life. However, OnePlus has increased battery size, switching out the 4,500mAh unit in the 9 Pro with a 5,000mAh power source for the 10 Pro.

That does appear to have paid off; under our looped video test, where a video file is played over and over with the phone's brightness levels set to 170cd/m2, the 10 Pro lasted 21hrs and 39mins – over 4hrs more than the 9 Pro. What's more, the Pro outlasted the iPhone 13 (18hrs, 5mins) and the Samsung S22 Ultra (20hrs, 15mins) making it one of the best phones for battery life for 2022.

As such, the 10 Pro is a bit of a workhorse and will often make it into a second day before it needs a charge. However, should you need to top up the battery earlier than expected, the Pro becomes even more impressive. With its 80Wh Supervooc flash charger the 10 Pro can go from 0% to full in around 30-minutes.

OnePlus 10 Pro review: Features

When it comes to features, the OnePlus 10 Pro is well stocked, though not everything is easy to use and it is missing an IP rating. The device sports OxygenOS over Android 12 – Android 13 updates are available – and it is still one of the best-looking mobile interfaces around; it isn't as customisable or quirky as the OS on Google's Pixel range, but it still has a more recognisable UI compared to other Chinese manufacturers like Realme, Honor and Huawei, which all seems to be working from the same blueprints.

There is a fairly decent multi-screen function, which is activated by opening one app and swiping up the screen with three fingers. It rarely works the first time and takes a few goes to get going. However, once that first app converts to half a screen, it works fine. It isn't as good as the application on the S22 – or the Fold 3 – mainly due to the limits of the screen size. But it's suitable for sending messages while keeping video running.

Elsewhere, the 10 Pro has Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and a fingerprint reader under the display. Again, there is a choice of special effects to select for the fingerprint reader, which is very speedy and fuss-free. Similarly, its facial recognition technology is very good, though it does struggle in low light settings.

OnePlus 10 Pro review: Cameras

Like Huawei and Leica, OnePlus has forged a fruitful relationship with Swedish camera brand Hasselblad. For the second year in a row, the pair have worked together to kit the 10 Pro out with DSLR-like camera software. Sadly that still includes an ugly orange shutter button, but in every other area, it's a great collaboration.

The 10 Pro houses a rear camera array with a 48MP wide lens, an 8MP telephoto one with 3 x optical zoom and an ultra-wide 50MP main camera. There is also a 32MP lens housed in the screen. On paper, there isn't much change from the OnePlus 9 Pro aside from the ultra-wide lens which is capable now of capturing images in both 110-degree and 150-degree fields.

For video, the 10 Pro can shoot 8K footage with up to 24fps or in 4K with up to 120fps, which is a big improvement on the 9 Pro. Beyond that, though, there is very little of an upgrade here. It's a decent camera setup, capable of capturing crisp photos, but there isn't anything on the OnePlus 10 Pro to trouble Samsung, Apple or even Huawei.

OnePlus 10 Pro review: Verdict

It is fair to say that OnePlus no longer offers the best value for money when it comes to smartphones. While its devices have gotten better, the 10 Pro still has room for improvement to really warrant its price.

The display is great, the processor snappy, and it has longer battery life than most. However, there's still work to be done with the camera technology and that may well be the deciding factor for consumers. The OnePlus 10 Pro is a good handset, but there's much better value for money elsewhere.

OnePlus 10 Pro Specifications

BlackBerry has reported an 8% decrease year-on-year in its cyber security revenue, although it increased its Internet of Things (IoT) revenue by 28% and attracted new customers to this part of its business.

The Canadian company reported its earnings for the last quarter today and revealed that its cyber security revenue was $111 million, 8% less than the year before. The revenue from this segment in the third quarter is expected to be flat year-on-year, BlackBerry added in an earnings call, as reported by Reuters.

In the security software industry, the company has had to compete with rivals like Microsoft, Citrix, and IBM, with BlackBerry also having to face customers spending less in general due to the uncertain economic conditions facing the global economy.

Despite this, its IoT revenue came to around $51 million, an increase of 28% year-on-year, with a gross margin of 82%. This includes its BlackBerry QNX software which is used in the automotive industry for the design of cars’ operating systems. It has managed to attract more customers here, adding Ford, GM, and Hyundai to its list of customers that already included Honda, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota.

“This was a solid second quarter for BlackBerry, where we delivered both revenue in line with, and EPS ahead of, expectations,” said John Chen, executive chairman & CEO of BlackBerry. “Our IoT business continues to gain market share, and design-phase revenue remained at near-record levels.”

Chen added that a major design win in the quarter was with Volkswagen, who chose QNX for its new VW.OS which will be deployed across all Volkswagen Group brands.

“In our cyber security business we delivered double-digit sequential billings growth, including securing significant business in both government and financial services, as well as in the middle market,” said Chen.

The total revenue for the company for the second quarter was $168 million, a fall of 4%. Its total software and services revenue was $162 million, with $6 million coming from licencing and other revenue.

Although bigger companies are suffering through the downturn in the global economy, it’s not potentially the same for smaller businesses. Recruiting giant Randstad said earlier this month that small businesses are in an unprecedented position to hire talent than would usually be taken by big tech companies. In an assessment of the market landscape, Randstad found that employers in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) should use this period to their advantage.

Your PC is emitting an unsettling burning odour; your smartphone screen has been smashed into a gazillion pieces. You need help and a Google search reveals your local area is teeming with repair “professionals”. How do you know which to trust?

If you need your boiler repaired, you might look for someone on the Gas Safe Register. If it’s an electrician you need, you might search the Registered Competent Person database. Other industries have established trust-marks which are instantly recognisable and give consumers that bit of extra confidence. But when it comes to fixing your computers or other gadgets, you’re largely on your own.

The repair ecosystem, and right to repair, is complex and messy, with technicians, safety experts, educators and consumer rights advocates generally agreeing we, as a nation, have lost our appetite to fix things. Legislators and manufacturers, too, clash over ways to make repairing more prevalent and sustainable. Because, meanwhile, literally anyone is at liberty to set up a business fixing hardware like smartphones and laptops, it’s vital that you don’t hand your kit to bad businesses; there are more than just a few pieces of advice to take on board when seeking out a technician you can trust.

A lost generation of repairers

It wasn’t so long ago that most high streets had a repair shop – a place that would fix household gadgets for a fraction of the price of a brand-new model. Sometime in the 1980s, society unconsciously embraced the linear economic model of ‘take, make, dispose’, and repair became unpopular and uneconomical. Professor Tim Cooper, an expert in product longevity from Nottingham Trent University explains: “Any small appliance is unlikely to get repaired because opening the item up costs money. If you’re buying a kettle for £20, nobody’s going to repair that”.

Now, we’re all waking up to why repair is a key part of environmental sustainability. Governments around the world are clamping down on manufacturers who have normalised unrepairable and disposable technologies because lobbyists and economists have successfully demonstrated that a repair-driven economy is feasible. A 2021 report from the Green Alliance estimates “the government could help to create over 450,000 jobs in the circular economy by 2035”, which is hugely encouraging, but because we lost our faith in repair, we lost the repairers.

We packed 1980s houses with rented technology. High street names such as Rumbelows and Radio Rentals leased tech as buying was often beyond the average family budget. As part of the rental agreement, breakages were fixed by a small army of professionals, skilled in the art of repair. “There was a postwar payday for most things,” says John Dunton, electronics engineer and writer. “Vast numbers of people were trained during the war; the Navy, Army and Air Force trained huge numbers of electrical technicians.”

Manufacturers also encouraged these technicians to repair even cutting-edge technology. The Amiga 500, one of the best-selling computers of all time, had electrical schematics inside its manual. Commodore designed it to be repairable by competent technicians and if these people hadn’t been trained by the military, they’d probably been through City & Guilds (C&G).

What about the C&G 6968 standard?

C&G 6968 covered the servicing of consumer electronics such as TVs, Hi-Fis and kitchen equipment. Dunton co-wrote some of the accompanying textbooks for the course. “City & Guilds were aimed at the people who worked for companies like rental operations,” he says. Although the public was largely oblivious to the City & Guilds certification, it gave credibility to the technician, so repair shops knew who to employ to maintain the reputation of their business.

C&G 6968 was discontinued around 2008. “Stuff gets much more integrated and reliability improves dramatically,” says Dunton. “Repaired by replacement comes in, then the cost of getting somebody qualified goes up, because you’re teaching less of them, so you are less interested in repairing stuff, because the cost of your repair is high. A vicious circle.”

Today, when we’re looking for someone trustworthy to repair technology, scrutinising a technician’s qualifications isn’t a primary concern, which is fortunate because they probably haven’t got any. C&G 6968 wasn’t replaced and electronics training is niche. Statistics from Eduqas, one of the largest providers of qualifications across England, show that only 1,044 candidates took GCSE Electronics in June 2021, falling to 672 for A-levels. There are around 800,000 GCSE pupils in the year group. Philip Glover, Eduqas’ Electronics Subject Officer explains: “In schools, electronics is competing against other subjects and [there is] difficulty in recruiting teachers with electronics expertise”.

This is a shame, as Glover explains it’s a great springboard for further study. “GCSE electronics provides a foundation for the study of electronics and engineering at either AS or A-level, an excellent start for students moving onto further education or apprenticeships.”

Further electrical education is more widespread for those wanting careers in industrial and domestic installations, but is lacking for devices such as tablets and games consoles. Thankfully, this is being addressed by providers such as The Electronics Group in Leeds, the UK’s largest independent electronics training centre, which is putting together a fault-finding course in response to the right-to-repair directive.

The YouTube finishing school

If we consider that most repairers receive no support from manufacturers in terms of schematics or spare parts, alongside a black hole in skills training, we need to acknowledge the part YouTube plays in ensuring anything gets repaired at all. Graham Lord of Adamant IT is a professional repairer. “I’m entirely self-taught and I think a lot of repair people are,” he says. “You don’t go to university to learn repair, you go to learn electronic engineering”.

Four years ago, he introduced a new service to his business, and his only training outlet was YouTube. “I got into board repair via Louis Rossmann’s [YouTube] channel. He put up a lot of material and was asking real questions about: How is this done? How do we do it? How do we get better at it?”

Aside from inspiration, the YouTube community has proved to be a powerful tool in dispelling the repair myths that manufacturers perpetuate. “You cannot fix a motherboard, they say, despite the overwhelming evidence on YouTube to the contrary,” says Lord. “They can say ‘we don’t recommend this’, but they cannot say ‘it cannot be done’”.

Ugo Vallauri, co-Founder and policy Lead of The Restart Project also believes online resources are important. “YouTube and other resources show attempts at filling the gap left by the lack of documentation made available by manufacturers,” he says. “[Manufacturers] could make the most comprehensive video about how to repair a certain product, but they don’t”.

In the absence of official training, YouTube is powering the current crop of repairers, but is it safe? Martyn Allen from Electrical Safety First works with government, manufacturers and retailers to improve safety standards. “In the space of the last two years, many qualifications have been delivered online and if it’s done well, it’s absolutely fine,” he says. “There are good ones, but there are some very bad ones and, when I mean bad, I mean dangerous”.

How to find repair trust-marks

In a marketplace crammed with self-trained technicians, how do you separate the diligent from the dangerous? There are many recognisable trust-marks which assess business practices. “Which? Trusted Traders recognise reputable traders who successfully pass an assessment carried out by our trading standards professionals,” says Lisa Barber, Which? computing editor. “When it comes to proving to the public you’re trustworthy, independent repairers should keep up to date with reviews given as well as ensuring that customer service is exceptional.”

Trust-marks allow a customer to expect that they’ll be treated well, but they don’t assess any technical capabilities, which lessens their value in the eyes of some independent repairers. Graham Lord has an interesting idea to enhance public confidence in trust-marks. “Provide a guarantee that if [a customer] has a bad experience, they will guarantee [the repair] up to a certain value. That provides worth to that check mark,” he claims.

Professor Tim Cooper believes there’s merit in introducing a technical-based trust-mark to boost consumer confidence. “When it comes to the repair economy, you’ve got products that we ought to be able to repair ourselves,” he says, adding there’s a “desire for an independent verified company, so I know that person hasn’t just woken up and thought ‘I’ll call myself a repairer and see how I get on’. I think there is a case for a scheme like that”.

Reviews allow us to make judgements about a business and their services, and even if some review platforms are fallible, there’s a truism that given enough time, good companies should be better reviewed than bad ones. Companies that publicly respond to their reviews, even the poor ones, show more of themselves to potential customers and transparency is critical for increasing consumer trust. “I think transparency is an important way to increase consumer’s confidence”, says Ugo Vallauri. “What’s really useful is for consumers to have the confidence that when they’re purchasing refurbished, if it’s not what they were thinking it would be, they can return it”.

Barber agrees. “Know your rights when buying second-hand. If you are buying from a retailer, you have far more protection than if you buy from a private seller, including being covered by the Consumer Rights Act, which dictates goods must be fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality”.

Ultimately, when looking for trustworthy operators, Vallauri believes the traditional pillar of exceptional aftercare will win the business. “There are some platforms where you might get the same warranty as a brand-new product and, to me, that gives excellent reassurance that a product is just fine”.

Bargaining for a fair repair

Most tech repairers are trying to beat a system that’s stacked against both them and the consumer. Today’s gadgets weren’t intended to be repaired and many devices actively prevent it. As the public appetite for the right to repair grows, repairers need the manufacturers to change their mindset. “Manufacturers need to make products more repairable, more modular based,” argues Martyn Allen. “Some things are not able to be unplugged and replaced. That’s when you need the professional. It’s establishing the lines of what is possible by a normal person and what professionals need, and having clear information for the consumer.”

Repairers need access to documentation and spare parts, which is covered, for some device categories, by a piece of EU legislation known as the Ecodesign Directive. It contains a clause that Ugo Vallauri finds interesting. “It leaves an opportunity for each country to create a register of professional repairers eligible to access repair information and spare parts from manufacturers,” he points out.

Currently, no EU country has created a register of professional repairers and it’s unlikely we’ll see one in the UK as the government’s implementation of the same legislation is different. “That option [the register] is not included, which leaves it up to each manufacturer to decide whether someone has access to the repair information, spare parts and is considered a competent professional repair,” says Vallauri.

We’ve already explained that professional repairers often have nothing to prove their skills except a clutch of decent Google reviews, but some manufacturers are allowing independents to become ‘authorised repairers’. Apple’s Authorised Service Providers scheme allows some repair businesses to have access to certain tools and parts. Graham Lord looked at becoming an AASP and decided it wasn’t for him. “[AASPs] can buy the replacement motherboards directly from Apple,” he says. “They’ll charge the customer, say £700, but the customer will pay for it, because it’s ‘authorised repair’”.

One criticism is that certain manufacturer schemes dictate which parts must be replaced, instead of repairing the broken part. Paying £100 for a circuit-board fix is not an option presented to the customer because the scheme will only ‘authorise’ a more expensive circuit-board replacement. To be accepted into certain schemes, businesses are required to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), which can be unappealing to independents like Lord. “Having to control people through NDAs, that’s just a blazing red flag. I don’t believe in hiding stuff”.

Zoe Avison from the Green Alliance is very clear on where we need to go to increase our trust in technicians: “Making it easier to repair electronics is good for the planet and good for people’s wallets,” she says. “Standards for professional repairers would give consumers confidence when choosing a repair service and help to reduce waste.”

Apple has announced its latest range of iPhones, the iPhone 14, which includes the iPhone 14 Plus, Pro and Pro Max models, as well as a new 'Dynamic Island' notification system.

The standard iPhone 14 will be available for preorder from 16 September for $799, while the iPhone 14 Plus will cost $899 when it's released on 7 October. Both the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max will be available to preorder from 9 September - with full availability on 16 September - for $999 and $1,099 respectively.

The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus will come with OLED HDR displays - measuring 6.1in for the standard and 6.7in for the Plus. Apple didn't talk too much about the design of the handset - which looks very similar to the iPhone 13 and, essentially, 2020's iPhone 12. Both models are encased in the company's Ceramic Shield and come in five colours - Black, White, Red, Blue and Purple.

As predicted by various reports, Apple has opted to use its own A15 Bionic chip in the standard and Plus models. The 15 was used in the last generation's premium handsets, and features a six-core CPU. The processing capabilities will power a number of the iPhone's new photo features, such as the "Photonic Engine" which is a type of low-light capture software. There are also more video functions with a dynamic "Action Mode" which stabilises moving footage, such as running or driving, and a "Crash Detection" function that automatically alerts emergency services when its user is in an accident.

Again, the biggest and best new features have been saved for the iPhone's Pro lines. The iPhone 14 Pro has a 6.1in display, while the iPhone 14 Pro Max is fitted with a 6.7in screen. Both Pro and Pro Max have always-on displays, a 48MP camera, and the all-new A16 Bionic chip. However, the most eye-catching element is the change to the notch. There were reports that the company would finally drop the notch from the iPhone, but instead, it just dropped it slightly from the top of the display and gave it more purpose. So it's no longer called a notch, it is a 'Dynamic Island' that expands in different ways to suit notifications. For example, if there is a message, it widens to fit that alert into the top of the display.

The event also featured the launch of the Apple Watch Series 8, which features an always-on display and greater privacy settings for menstrual cycles. There was also an upgrade to the Apple Watch SE and an all-new Apple Watch Ultra, which is a rugged version of the device for adventures and outdoor sports enthusiasts.

The iPhone 12 mini took us all by surprise when it launched in 2020 – with Apple finally revisiting a smaller form factor. It then attracted an almost cult-like following over the next two years – so much so that some of us are devastated it hasn’t returned a third time with the launch of the iPhone 14.

For me, specifically, the mini was like having the iPhone 5c again; a small affordable iPhone that came in pretty pastel colours and actually fitted in my pocket. The 5.4in iPhone 12 Mini was literally a miniaturised iPhone, in that nothing was really taken away to make it so. It had a slightly smaller battery and obviously, the screen was reduced, but everything else – cameras, processor, software – was exactly the same.

In this age of supersized screens and foldable displays, the launch of a handset you could use single-handedly, that retained all the perks of its oversized cousins, was refreshing. Sadly, there’s no ‘mini’ version of the iPhone 14, much to my dismay – and I’m not alone, as it felt Apple was once again catering to an entire cohort of customers with smaller hands: women, children and, ahem, short kings. Not enough of us brought it, though, or, more importantly, upgraded from the iPhone 12 to the iPhone 13, to keep Apple happy.

“While some consumers argue the average smartphone has now become too big, Apple has found its standard and Pro Max sized smartphones have resonated best with its loyal customer base,” James Manning-Smith, a senior analyst at CCS Insight tells IT Pro. “The mini hasn’t been able to draw in enough sales from small form factor Android smartphone owners to maintain regular updates of the product line.

“The iPhone Mini looks destined to see a slower pace of updates, similar to the iPhone SE. With the iPhone mini’s unique selling point being its size, it's likely many who have opted for it are less motivated to upgrade following the yearly technology updates the standard iPhone and Pro Max models benefit from.”

Essentially, the majority of the world is very obsessed with great big screens, which is probably why we now have displays that fold. The other issue is attracting new customers, particularly those who’d have to jump from Android to iOS, which is almost like switching religion for some.

Thankfully, Apple hasn’t explicitly said the iPhone mini is gone for good. As Manning-Smith points out, it could just be a break in which the iPhone mini’s saved for a year when there’s a more fundamental update, like a new iteration of the Bionic chip. However, we might also need to take the financial climate into account.

“The difficult economic outlook in 2022 has weakened demand for lower priced smartphones, while the premium end of the market has remained strong during the year,” Manning-Smith explains. “With falling demand for lower-priced smartphones, 2022 has presented a good year to skip an update on the iPhone mini, as demand for cheaper mobile phones has declined.”

In essence, this is a good financial climate to build and deploy foldables and high-end handsets, but not cute little ones. Now, I can see both the skill that went into the development of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold and also the attraction to those larger Pro and Plus-sized devices. But there was just something appealing – and refreshing – about the iPhone mini, and smaller phones in general. I am of the generation whose first phones were the Nokia 3210 – and the original iPhone – so that little hit of nostalgia may also have been a strong lure.

Look, I’m not asking for a mini iPhone every year, but just reassurance me it isn’t dead. Releasing an iPhone SE every so often isn’t the same; it’s actually a lot bigger, and it really is a drop in quality. I don’t think I’m asking Apple for a lot here, my demands are mini – quite literally.

Huawei has designed a new smartphone that’s able to link up to the Chinese satellite system, deploying the new technology as a way to deal with US restrictions on its access to 5G technology.

The Mate 50 series, launched today, will allow smartphone users to communicate with short messages through the BeiDou navigation satellite system. This is China’s version of the Global Positioning System (GPS) developed by the US.

The Chinese company has no access to premium 5G mobile chips since it has been the target of a US crackdown, while competitors like Samsung or Apple already include this technology in their flagship devices.

“Basically, the Mate 50 series will allow users to send short messages together with location information using China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) for emergency uses when the telecom operator's mobile network is not available,” Arnold Gao, senior director analyst at Gartner, told IT Pro. “BDS offers a broader coverage for signals, higher reliability, and ubiquitous access compared to commercial mobile networks, which can play an important role for emergency communication in disaster senses, in the desert, at sea.”

Gao added that by launching this new service, Huawei has become the first smartphone maker to bring satellite communication technology to the consumer market prior to Apple.

“However, the ‘ground-breaking’ part is more on the satellite side as the global short message communication service offered by BDS is not available from other global navigation satellite systems such as GPS or GLONASS,” underlined Gao.

The Huawei Mate 50 includes a 6.7-inch OLED panel with 2,700 x 1,224 resolution, 90Hz refresh rate, 300Hz touch sampling rate, and 1440Hz PWM dimming, according to Huawei Central. It also has a triple camera system including a 13MP ultra wide-angle camera and a 50MP main camera.

The device comes in five colours including blue, orange, silver, black, or purple, and has plain leather or glass-back variants.

The company confirmed in August last year that its flagship phone, the P50, was set to ship without 5G support. Huawei blamed the decision on ongoing trade restrictions placed on the company by the US. The P50 handsets were only going to support 4G and run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 4G chipset, although the Pro version would use the company’s own Kirin 9000 processor.

While the weather still might be warm enough to class as summer, the arrival of September is usually time to switch to an autumn wardrobe and prepare for the launch of a new iPhone.

Number '14' is expected to be unveiled at the tech giant's 'Far Out' event which is taking place at 6 pm (UK time) on Wednesday. The launch will be virtual only and streamed live on the company's YouTube channel.

Despite global shortages for semiconductors and a looming cost of living crisis, there is thought to be not one, not two, not three, but four new models of iPhone 14 coming our way on Wednesday. This will include further looks at iOS 14, new Apple Watches and possibly more details on the company's rumoured hardware subscription service.

iPhone 14: Names, sizes, chips and notches

The predicted four new handsets are set to be divided into two distinct lines: the standard iPhone 14 and a larger model which is thought to be either iPhone 14 Max or iPhone 14 Plus. And then premium options, the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The standard 14 will likely have a 6.1in display while the Max or Plus model will be a sub-£1,000 handset with a 6.7in screen. These sizes are also thought to be the same for the premium devices, with 6.1in and 6.7in for the Pro and Pro Max respectively. Sadly it means there will again be no iPhone Mini, or a larger 'Ultra' type model if these reports are correct.

The Pro and Pro Max models will likely be loaded with the newest features; the standard is thought to come with last year's A14 Bionic chipset. An A16 process could well debut in the Pro and Max, along with an 'always-on' display, new lock screen widgets and potentially a hole-punch selfie camera at the top of the display. However, the demise of the iPhone's infamous notch is predicted every year so it could just be wishful thinking.

iPhone 14: Subscription service

The arrival of a new iPhone might also herald Apple's reported plans for a subscription service. The aim of this is simply to make even more money by offering another way for its customers to get their hands on the latest models as they are released.

It essentially works like a lease where users pay for the device monthly and have the choice to then upgrade what they have when the next version comes out. So if the subscription model becomes available with the iPhone 14, users can, in theory, trade it in for the iPhone 15 (if that's its name) a year, or so, later.

The subscription service may not be ready for Wednesday, but the 'Far Out' tagline does suggest something extra is being prepped for the show. It could well be camera upgrades, such as a telephoto lens, for instance, which would be a welcome addition to the iPhone 14.

Since its separation from Huawei, Chinese manufacturer Honor has found a knack for developing eye-catching laptops and smartphones. Its latest handset, the Honor 70, which has been released ahead of the IFA conference in Berlin, is arguably one of its most accomplished offerings to date.

This is a midrange affair, with a sub-£500 price, but it’s stocked with a seriously impressive set of specifications. From super-sensored main cameras to a liquid-like 120Hz display, the Honor 70 is potentially the bargain of the year.

Honor 70 review: Design

Kudos to the design teams at Honor, because the 70 is strikingly beautiful. Previous links to Huawei may go some way to explain why it sort of looks like the P50 Pro, but there are subtle differences that work in Honor’s favour. Both phones sport dual-ring camera setups, curved screens and highly reflective finishes, but the 70 is slightly taller, a bit narrower and much lighter at 178g.

Measuring a hair under 8mm, the device is also noticeably thin and feels comfortable in the hand. Its rounded frame gives it an almost edgeless feel, which is further enhanced by the curved screen that seamlessly blends into the chassis. The only area of bulk here is the two protruding camera rings, which make it rock when you’re poking the screen on a flat surface. That is admittedly annoying, but we’re willing to ignore that based on how stylish those camera rings look.

You can get the 70 in four different colours: Midnight Black, Crystal Silver, Icelandic Frost (White) or, like our review unit, Emerald Green. The silver and green shades also have a lovely mirrored finish and Honor ships the device with a transparent case in the box so you can still enjoy that design without any unsightly finger smears.

Honor 70 review: Display

The display is a rather tall 6.7in FHD+ OLED unit with a silky smooth 120Hz refresh rate. This can be dropped down to 60Hz in the settings, though by default the device will pick and choose when to use the top tier of refresh rate. You can have it on 120Hz all day long, but this will deplete the charge very quickly.

The capabilities of this display are impressive and even match up to the likes of the P50 Pro and iPhone 13, despite being almost half the price of both of those devices. Tested with our colour calibrator, the Honor 70 showcased 97.9% of the sRGB colour space; that’s pretty much the same score as the iPhone 13 (97.7%) and just short of the near-perfect scores of the S22 Ultra and P50 Pro.

The phone also reached a peak brightness of 481 cd/m2, which is very good. It gets incredibly bright and even having the brightness toggle halfway is enough to handle any lighting conditions. This is a great display for playing games or watching CGI-heavy content, but more importantly, it’s just a great display, period.

Honor 70 review: Specs and performance

Inside the Honor 70 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ chip which can be paired with either 8 or 12GB of RAM. The octacore 778G+ was recently featured in the first Nothing phone, which has so far proved quite popular with critics.

In GeekBench 5, the Honor 70 produced a single-core score of 819 and a multi-threaded score of 2,909. That actually topped the Google Pixel 6 Pro for multi-threaded workloads, but not for single-core tasks (2,767 and 1,034 respectively) which does really underline its place in the market as a middle-tier offering.

This isn’t a super powerful iPhone with a bionic chipset, and it isn’t filled with clever machine learning workloads like the Tensor-powered Pixel. However, it is still a very snappy device; apps load quickly enough, they run in the background without too much bother, and overall it's a pleasant experience. The impressive bit is that you get all that for a very reasonable price.

Honor 70 review: Battery

The 70 is also a bit of a workhorse; In our looped video test, its 4,800mAh battery lasted 18hrs 12mins, which is as good, if not better, than most 120Hz devices on the market, bar the S22 Ultra.

Smartphone batteries are under more strain these days with all these power-hungry 120Hz displays. Around the 16 or 17-hour mark is usually a good score and the 70 offered up more than the iPhone 13, the OnePlus 9 Pro and the Google Pixel 6. That could well be down to the way it adjust the refresh rate, a feature not all manufacturers get right with 120Hz displays.

In day-to-day use, the 70 lasted from sunrise to sunset with a normal level of use, though lots of time scrolling social media will drain it faster. However, it comes with a beefy 66w charger that can top it up pretty quickly, with 60% replenished in just over 20 minutes.

Honor 70 review: Features

Turning to features, many of the usual suspects are present and correct, including connectivity via 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, as well as an under-display fingerprint reader. There are some cutbacks, though. For instance there’s no official IP dust and water resistance rating or headphone jack. Beyond that, though, there are a hell of a lot of handy features.

It’s built on Android 12 wth the company’s own MagicUI over the top. Much like the Pixel, you get lots of options to customise your interface with plenty of artistic themes to play with. There’s also lots of navigation shortcuts like using a knuckle for taking screenshots. Again, these are Huawei-like features Honor has held on to.

One new area which is very much worth your time is the 70’s splitscreen capabilities. Similar to the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4, you can pull up a taskbar full of apps and position two on the screen at once, opening one as a mini floating window that can be expanded or even shrunk to suit. You can watch videos or work on a document and have a little floating box to check notifications or even send whatsApp messages. It’s not a new feature by any means, but it’s a useful one we’re glad to see Honor adopting.

Honor 70 review: Cameras

The Honor 70’s dual camera rings house a triple-lens setup, including a 54 MP f/1.9 wide lens, a 50 MP f/2.2 ultrawide one with a 122-degree field of view and an additional 2 MP f/2.4 for depth. There’s also a 32MP selfie camera on the front.

With these the Honor 70 is capable of taking rather crisp photos via either front or rear cameras. The overall quality is very good, though the portrait mode is arguably the best as it makes good use of that depth sensor. As with all smartphone cameras, there are a wealth of AI-based settings and features to help you simply point and shoot, though these do tend to overdo the smoothing and post-processing effects, leaving your subjects with an unreal, almost anime-like finish.

Video is also well used here, and the Honor 70 is capable of shooting in 4K up to 30fps or 60fps with full HD. You can also shoot video simultaneously with the front and rear cameras, which is quite a cool feature - though it does limit you to full HD for it to work.

Honor 70 review: Verdict

If you want a phone with a big, bright screen, a fairly snappy processor and a decent set of cameras, the Honor 70 can offer all that for less than £500. What’s more, it can actually offer you a full day of use - something many of the top manufacturers have struggled to do since they all switched to 120Hz displays.

This is by no means the ‘perfect’ phone. It doesn’t have the processor or camera technology to compete with Samsung or Apple. But what it does have, for its price range, is shockingly good. There’s still a few months to go, but this is likely going to be the bargain of the year.

Honor 70 specifications

While on maternity leave, my phone sent a notification that I’ve never previously noticed, alerting me to the fact I’d spent upwards of seven hours staring at the screen the day before. Apparently that was down from the prior week.

Does that alarm you? Does it sound like a lot? It did to me, at first.

And no wonder, given the many headlines shrieking about smartphone addiction. The New York Times ran a story in February offering advice on breaking a phone addiction, and according to Newsweek, even a zoo gorilla is obsessed with smartphones. To help us, a Berlin-based startup called Not Less But Better just won nearly a million euros in funding to develop a tool to help us escape smartphone addiction.

It’s alarming to do anything for seven hours that isn’t sleeping, but the additional thought that I was wasting my infant daughter’s early life staring at my phone didn’t sit right. It also didn’t sound accurate.

But then I considered what my life was like at that moment in time and it involved many hours trapped beneath my baby, either playing with her, feeding her or holding her while she slept. The latter is when I get most of my screen time in, I would hazard a guess. While I do spend ages gazing adoringly at her face, I have also read entire novels in one butt-numbing sitting, grateful she had finally fallen asleep and unwilling to attempt moving her, and played hours of mindless games while she fed at 3am and then 4am and then 5am.

Go check your own screen time stats, and let’s compare. (There are settings you can acces in both Android and iOS; go to the Digital Welleing dashboard on the former and Screen Time on the latter). As my daughter is a bit older now and we actually leave the house — let’s see how much you get out with a newborn in winter in a pandemic — my daily average slid to five-and-a-half hours.

I’ll add the caveat that at least some of that time wasn’t spent actually staring at the screen, as I no longer turn my phone off, but chuck it aside because my daughter has a sudden need, leaving the screen to slowly fade out and lock on its own. That may not sound like a lot, but do it several dozen times a day and it adds up.

According to my phone, my two most used apps were Chrome (1hr 43mins) and our baby-tracking tool, Onoco (1hr 17mins). In the former, I was shopping, doom-scrolling Twitter and reading articles. For the latter, I not only enter relevant data but also check it constantly to know how long it’s been since a nap, feed or change, so I generally know exactly why the baby is mad at me. It’s deeply helpful, let me tell you. My next-most-used app was WhatsApp (1hr 14mins), largely made up of chatting with friends as family as well as begging my working-from-home husband to fetch me coffee and biscuits.

So far, nothing to be ashamed of. If I were reading the newspaper, tracking naps with pen and paper, or shouting at my husband, there’d be no problem, after all. And while I also spent nearly an hour on Instagram and equally as long playing a mindless game, quite a bit of time was with the camera app open — no wonder, given my baby is adorable. Again, if I spent my maternity leave photographing my child with a DSLR and mailing the photos to my parents in Canada, I’d be a diligent daughter, not a smartphone addict.

A friend of mine, also a mother, asked her own mother how she spent long late nights awake with a baby without a smartphone. The answer: she stared at her daughter’s face while she slept. I do that too, don’t get me wrong, but I also pay my bills, send photos to my in-laws, and keep on top of my messaging, meaning I don’t need to take care of such chores when my baby is awake.

Some people undoubtedly spend too much time staring at a screen, and I’d be worried if my daughter ever racked up seven hours of screen time in a single day. But my phone has helped me avoid feeling out of touch or disconnected when stuck at home in winter on maternity leave in a pandemic. Motherhood can be an existential crisis, where what used to fill your brain is replaced by no-less-important information about keeping your child happy and healthy. Being able to stay in touch with friends and on top of news helped me feel like myself, albeit a digital version of myself.

Several hours a day of screentime isn’t a sign of addiction, but evidence of just how important a lifeline my smartphone was for me. That, and it let me take about 30,000 photos of the new person we made. If nothing else, I admit I may be addicted to baby photography.

Samsung may not have been the first company to bring a foldable phone to market, but its Galaxy Z range has nonetheless gone some way to defining the category. It’s continuing to iterate on this formula, and the latest additions to its lineup - the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 - promise subtle tweaks and improvements in a range of areas.

While the larger Z Fold 4 is aimed at the power users of the world, the compact Z Flip 4 is geared towards much more casual use-cases. This newest model isn’t exactly a huge revision from the previous Galaxy Z Flip 3, but there are a few changes underneath the hood that may elevate it above its predecessor.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Design

Looking at the Z Flip 4, you’d be hard-pressed to find many obvious changes from the previous generation. Samsung tells us the hinge is slimmer and the bezels around the screen are smaller, offering a more immersive experience - if not quite the edge-to-edge display seen on other Samsung devices.

The hinge itself is easy to open and close one-handed, and the 22:9 aspect ratio made it comfortable for us to use without stretching our thumb, although larger-handed users may find it a bit of a struggle to type with both hands at once.

It still uses the same Armor Aluminium construction to protect the chassis and hinge mechanism (which is once again rated for 200,000 folds and unfolds), and both front and rear are protected against drops and scratches by Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus+. The rear glass has a frosted matte finish which is pleasing to the eye as well as the touch.

The whole affair looks and feels as polished as you’d expect, and the four default colour options - graphite, purple, pink and gold - are all elegant enough to suit any style. If you want something a bit more unique, you can also create your own bespoke colour scheme from one of 75 combinations. It fits in your pocket as well as it fits in with your wardrobe too, thanks to its slim dimensions; while the 7.2mm thickness is actually an almost-imperceptible increase from the last generation, the weight is the same at 183g.

If we have one complaint, it’s that the crease in the screen is still very noticeable. We found this off-putting when we reviewed the Z Flip 3, and we’re expecting it to be similarly jarring to move over while scrolling through social media. This is an inherent issue with foldable displays though, rather than with Samsung in particular.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Display

Crease aside, Samsung’s displays have always been top-notch, and the Z Flip 4 is no exception. The 6.7in main screen uses a 2,640 x 1,080 Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with a 120Hz maximum refresh rate, and while we haven’t yet put it through our suite of display performance tests, it looks bright, vibrant and colourful, with good viewing angles and excellent clarity. We’d be surprised if it doesn’t match the 100% sRGB gamut coverage of its predecessor.

The smaller 1.9in cover screen is also a super AMOLED model, with a 260 x 512 resolution, and while fidelity is less important than with the main screen - considering most of the time, you’ll only be using it to check notifications and the like - it looks sharp and colourful nonetheless.

Despite the visible crease, watching movies and videos is a joy on the Flip’s display, and content looks fantastic even when viewing it on half the screen with the phone partially folded.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Hardware

That lush display is powered by Qualcomm’s 4nm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, rather than one of Samsung’s first-party Exynos chips, which should offer plenty of horsepower for day-to-day tasks. Unlike the Z Fold 4, the Flip isn’t designed to be a productivity powerhouse, so the 3.2GHz octacore chip and 8GB RAM allocation won’t have to handle too much heavy lifting.

We’ll know more about its capabilities once we’ve had the chance to benchmark it more thoroughly, but in our hands-on session, we found it to be as fast and responsive as you’d expect, with no performance issues to speak of. Performance hasn’t been much of a factor in smartphones for several years, and it’s extremely rare to see a device that isn’t powerful enough to meet expectations.

The same isn’t always true of battery life, however. The previous Galaxy Z Flip featured a 3,300mAh power cell, and hit 12hrs in our battery benchmark tests, which was distinctly disappointing. With an expanded battery capacity of 3,700mAh, this updated model should perform at least somewhat better, but it’s unlikely it will be able to equal the impressive 20-hour result of the Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Even if it isn’t an absolutely top performer, though, the Flip 4 is now compatible with 25W fast-chargers and above (as opposed to the 15W limit on the previous generation), and Samsung promises it will manage 50% recharge in just half an hour. There’s also wireless charging and power-sharing on offer for extra flexibility.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Features

As you’d expect from a Samsung flagship, the Z Flip 4 is sporting the usual complement of usability features, including an IPX8 waterproof rating to protect against accidental dunks and splashes, as well as biometric security via facial recognition and a fingerprint reader embedded in the power button. Connectivity comes in the form of Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, with 5G support for good measure.

There’s no support for the company’s S-Pen stylus, as there is with the Z Fold 4, but software-based optimisations have been added to the UI. This allows various apps to take advantage of the folding screen, such as by previewing a photo on the top portion while providing expanded camera controls on the bottom.

It’s not just the main display that’s flexible; the smaller cover screen has been made a little more useful with expanded interactions and more widgets for things like timers and calendars. Samsung has also added the ability to send short responses to incoming messages directly from the cover screen, which was one of our biggest complaints with its predecessor.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Camera

On the subject of photos, this is one of the most obvious areas of improvement. The Z Flip 4 features a wider lens and 65% brighter pixel sensor to help improve night photos, while the Quick Shot feature (which allows you to take spontaneous selfies without unfolding the device) now supports portrait mode.

The handful of test shots we snapped were bright and clear on both front and rear cameras, with plenty of detail - although there was a touch too much post-processing on our selfies. We’ll have to wait until we can test it in more detail before reaching any final conclusions on quality, however.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Verdict

On first impressions, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 isn’t all that different from the previous generation, but there are a few key changes that make it worth a look. First of all, the expanded battery capacity should offer better longevity (up to a point, at least), while the camera improvements will be welcome for social butterflies.

The £833 price tag is a little steep compared to traditional smartphones, but isn’t all that extortionate for something in this category. This phone doesn’t seem like it’s going to set the world on fire, but if you’re after a compact foldable, it may be one to watch.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 specifications

It’s often said that our mobile phones are far more powerful than the computers used to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969. In fairness, that’s to be expected. Half a century is a long time in technology.

More surprising is that the computer on board the US space agency’s New Horizons probe, which reached Pluto in 2015, was also less smart than the best smartphones. So too is the computer on board NASA’s Orion spacecraft that will, one day, send humans to Mars.

It may appear rather strange. NASA has been at the forefront of technology for decades, giving us cordless vacuum cleaners, solar cells, wireless headsets and air purifiers among a host of other goodies. Yet it also tends to lean towards the tried and tested.

“For us, it’s all about reliability,” says Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission. “After all, you can’t fit technology on the way to Pluto, so reliability and long parts and operations experience far trumps the need to use the fastest, newest computers in the spacecraft we send off to the planets.”

In the case of New Horizons, which launched in 2006, astronomers made use of a 32-bit Mongoose-V RISC processor with a clock speed of just 12MHz. Created by Synova, it was based on the MIPS R3000 CPU introduced in 1988 – a CPU that actually got used in the original PlayStation a few years later. To ensure the chip could withstand its long and arduous journey into space (the probe is now more than 50 times farther from the Sun than Earth is), the processor was radiation-hardened.

Even though it perceivably lacked power, the computer has been responsible for the bulk of the spacecraft’s processing capability, guided by intricate flight software. It collects and processes instrument data, distributes operating commands to each of the probe’s subsystems and runs algorithms that check for problems, correcting them if necessary. It has been nothing short of a success.

“When we plan a mission, there’s always an involved process of parts selection,” Stern says. “We set technology requirements and then find a flight computer that meets our needs, same for all missions.” And yet at one time, NASA did rely purely on cutting-edge tech for its spacecraft.

The birth of Silicon Valley

Although the New Horizons computer is far more powerful than the one used aboard Apollo 11 that landed the first humans on the moon, the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was advanced for the time. Then, again, computing was still in its infancy so it had to be.

Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the AGC contained thousands of silicon chips yet it only had 74KB of ROM, 4KB of RAM and it operated at 0.042MHz. The use of such chips was relatively new. The first working integrated circuit had only been demonstrated in July 1958 by American electrical engineer Jack Kilby while working for Texas Instruments and a patent was filed the following year.

NASA’s Apollo Program seized the opportunity to make use of the technology, becoming the largest consumer of semiconductor chips between 1962 and 1967 – snapping up more than 60% of those made in the United States. It took 300 people seven years at a cost of $46 million to create the mission software, including the on-board programme Luminary, yet the move was pivotal.

NASA’s fierce appetite for integrated circuits led to the rapid rise of Silicon Valley and it helped the price of the chips to plummet so much, they were selling for $15 by the time Neil Armstrong was making his one small leap.

The important thing is that the technology – while primitive by today’s standards and no better than a pocket calculator – was more than sufficient. It not only got humans to the Moon, it ensured they arrived back.

Astronomers would use a calculator-style keyboard to input commands using numerical codes (the digits representing verbs and nouns) and these would tell the spacecraft what to do. It was a method that worked and the performance of the computer was so great, it would be another eight years or so before consumers could start to enjoy similar technology in the likes of the Apple II and Commodore PET.

Heavy-duty machinery

Apollo’s mission control computers on the ground were a tad more advanced, however. The engineers and flight technicians used five IBM System/360 Model 75 mainframes released in 1965, among other systems, and they were among the most powerful computing systems in the world.

One of these machines was used to calculate the lift-off data used in Apollo 11 for the flight back to Earth, according to IBM. “We use up-to-date computers in our Mission Control, too, because they can be repaired or replaced easily,” says Stern.

But that’s not always the case. James Mason, who today works as a research scientist and engineer at the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, recalls a visit to the US government’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. The laboratory contains computers that support the sensors on board NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory which launched in 2010.

As reported in the journal Nature, data was streaming to a desktop computer dating back to the 1980s. “It was a TD-plus and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find information about it,” Mason says. “But I’ve seen this kind of thing at NASA before, as well as at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, because, well basically, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

“If we had an abundance of time and money then we’d keep those systems up to date but we’ve just got other things to do that are more directly related to the end-goal of why we are at such facilities in the place – to get a new instrument calibrated or to launch a telescope into space to gather the data.

“Even without keeping all of the resources, like the computers, constantly up to date, and the whole team trained on what’s changed, we have months of work leading up to and after each of these events. So that’s why these systems get used.”

It suggests an underlying ethos that proven technology should be retained until it proves unreliable. Once a computer looks to be on its last legs or if there is a compelling reason to upgrade to do a job better and equally reliably, then it will be replaced – assuming it isn’t millions of miles away.

As further proof, Commodore Amigas were number crunching and analysing images in NASA’s research offices from the 1980s until 2004, long after the range was discontinued in 1996. The computers proved to be a good way of processing launch vehicle telemetry until something better came along.

Is the old 1980s computer at White Sands, though, still in use? Alas no. It ended up being ditched in 2015 because a connector and ribbon cable – “one of those old, wide rainbow ones,” said Mason – were starting to fail. Yet it would have made life easier had it continued to work well.

“The connector in particular was not staying connected and we’d get intermittent dropouts,” he adds. “But I have to say that working with the replacement has been a mixed bag. Yes, it’s got a really cool display that looks a lot like the Hollywood depiction of NASA but it’s also vastly more complex and it took us multiple weeks just to get it configured correctly at our most recent launch in September last year.

“The TD-plus was super simple and it never changed year-to-year so it would take about five minutes to get it set up for each launch. It didn’t look like much but that time we didn’t spend fiddling with something new was time we could spend on more pressing parts of the rocket schedule.”

Space invaders

The replacement would have been introduced after much research into its suitability, however, although personal preference and cost is also taken into account. An insightful video dating back to 1998, for example, in which Gary Jones, then NASA’s principal systems engineer, shows Amiga computers at Hanger AE. The machines were supporting the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the Russian Mir space station, but Jones says the first choice had been a selection of Apple Macs, until NASA realised they were too much of a closed system.

Jones also reveals the space agency had wanted to use PCs running Windows 95 and NT instead, but the engineers kept insisting they weren’t fast enough. DEC Alphas, based on 64-bit RISC architecture, were proposed but deemed too expensive.

Oddly, it was felt the Amiga didn’t cost enough, but they made it into the building nevertheless. As if to show how widely they were used, one Commodore computer – an Amiga 2500 released in 1987 – was also put up for sale on eBay 30 years later, having been used by NASA’s Telemetry Lab. It sold for more than $5,000.

But those are machines on the ground. The computers sent skywards as integral parts of spacecraft are generally tested much more thoroughly. “There’s an entire branch of NASA called the Space Technology Mission Directorate that, among other things, flies a lot of satellites specifically to see how new technologies will perform and ‘de-risk’ them for future science missions,” Mason says. “But even in those cases, most of the satellite will be heritage components so that we can be sure to get data back about the new technology in question.”

NASA is certainly more than happy for the Orion spacecraft to contain processors that are getting on for 20 years old. After all, it needs the craft to journey to Mars through the Van Allen belts above Earth where it will be bombarded with radiation. The Honeywell flight computer runs on two IBM PowerPC 750X single-core processors that have been around since 2002. Originally used in Boeing 787 jets, the processors are considered to be more than up to the job.

“In general, it takes about three years to build flight hardware and get it ready for flight,” Matt Lemke, NASA Orion avionics, power and software manager says. “We are limited in what processors we can select due to the need for extreme reliability as well as the radiation environment that ground systems don’t need to be concerned with.

“Once we have gone through the expense of selecting a processor and building it into the flight hardware, we don’t change unless there is a compelling reason. The selected processor for Orion has all the computing power we need and it has been working great. So far it has been used in our pad abort flight test, the Exploration Flight Test -1 mission, the upcoming Artemis I flight, and we anticipate using this processor all the way through Artemis XII.”

Even so, precautions have been taken. “We build them into a ruggedised custom design,” says Lemke. Indeed, the computer has been placed within a larger case and the hardware and circuit boards are thicker. Just in case the worst happens, though, three computers are going to be on board – the third one acting as a backup should the other two go kaput or at least end up have to be reset (if this happens, they’d be down for 20 seconds and that can be a rather long time when travelling at great speed).

Personal computing out of this world

Astronauts also use personal computers in space and these, too, are carefully selected. The first laptop to fly on the Space Shuttle was the GRiD Compass, which, after beginning development in 1979, was released three years later. Starting with model 1101, it used a clamshell case made of magnesium alloy and it weighed 4.5kg, which was less than half that of its main competitor, the Osborne 1.

Packing a 16-bit Intel 8086 chip, 340KB of magnetic bubble memory and a 1,200bits/sec modem, the computer also had a 320 x 240 8.5in plasma screen. It included a magnetic storage system, too, and the lack of moving parts made it ideal for the rigours of space, which is why NASA sent it on board the Space Shuttle Columbia on 28 November 1983.

Codenamed SPOC (or Shuttle Portable On-Board Computer), astronauts used it for on-board navigation, tracking fuel and checking other data on board the shuttle. Plus for planning their time, including photo shoots. NASA’s faith in the GRiD Compass was proven in January 1986 when it survived the terrible Challenger shuttle disaster, which claimed the lives of all seven crew members aboard. Once recovered, it continued to work.

There have been many other computers on board spacecraft since including a few Raspberry Pi devices. In 1997, Asus saw its P6300 laptop launched into space and two P6100 laptops lasted the full 600 days aboard the Mir space station the following year. Asus marked the 25th anniversary of this moment in its history by launching the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition this year. It says the new machine could also withstand going into space having been put through its paces by NASA and that standards have improved greatly over the years.

“The testing procedure is now rigorous and includes being tested at high altitudes, extreme temperatures (high and low), extreme shock pulses and being exposed to sand, dust, fungus and solar radiation,” says Ciprian Donciu, Asus UK country manager who adds that the device has to continue working throughout.

“But this was not the case 25 years ago. The requirements for space testing were completely different yet our laptops lasted. After the Mir station experienced electrical and some technical issues, the laptop itself was one of the few items onboard that was able to be successfully used by the Russian astronauts consistently. It was so reliable that the cosmonaut personally thanked Asus.”

It’s likely that space agencies will continue to mix old with new for some time to come, selecting tech entirely on its merit rather than age. Although NASA could afford the most cutting-edge computer components, there is simply too much at stake. “We have to work with a known quantity,” Mason says. “It simply poses a lower risk.”

With sustainability running through every corner of what the Fairphone 4 delivers, the eco-friendly company is back with the latest iteration of its planet-conscious line of smartphones. Built entirely from sustainable materials and with a focus on making devices that last, the Fairphone 4 aims to deliver rock-solid mid-range performance that minimises e-waste in the process.

Fairphone really has thought of everything when it comes to building the best eco-friendly phone on the market. From its modular, repairable design to minimise the need for total replacements, to choosing factories that pay a fair wage, the Fairphone 4 seeks to appease the right-to-repair purists, the eco-warriors, and the die-hard tech lover all in one breath.

Fairphone 4 review: Design

The Fairphone 4’s modularity really is one of the standout features on the phone, albeit not a new one. Fairphone proudly says that none of the device’s components are glued in place, making it easy for even a novice to replace components like the battery or display. Achieving a perfect 10/10 score from device teardown specialists iFixit is no mean feat and the company said the Fairphone 4 is “leagues ahead of most other smartphone makers” in this department.

Even though the phone is highly modular in design, the build quality feels solid, straight from the first attempt at prying open the phone’s case. Starting with the back of the phone, the backplate is secured with plastic clips that feel very secure, but don’t make it too difficult to remove either - we were able to get it off without any tools. Under the hood, each component is helpfully labelled with an icon that shows where the sound module is, for example, so you know you’re not pulling out the camera hardware or anything else you don’t need to be meddling with.

Available in three colours - grey, green, and speckled green - the Fairphone 4’s chunky design is symbolic of the compromises inherent to an environmentally friendly way of living. No, it’s not the most beautiful way of doing things, and some sacrifices have been made for the sake of sustainability, but it’s a solid effort and there’s nothing garish about it at all.

Some may even call the design ‘clean’. The colourful yet inoffensive housing options come in a matte plastic which makes for superb grip, and all tactile buttons are placed on the right side of the phone. There’s no getting away from the chunk of the device - it’s really quite girthy and weighty at 225g - but it’s a necessary price to pay for modularity which is ultimately much better for the planet and your pocket.

Fairphone 4 review: Display

The Fairphone 4’s 6.3in IPS display has a resolution of 1080 x 2340, one that’s not too dissimilar to the Google Pixel 6. The full HD+ resolution isn’t as visually striking compared to the better panels of modern times, but is by no means an eyesore. You might argue that you’re not buying the Fairphone 4 for the display, but Google offers a lot more in this department at a similar price, including a vibrant OLED panel and variable refresh rates.

The teardrop notch is an approach that also dates the phone a little, with many manufacturers opting for a hole-punch cutout for the front-facing camera nowadays.

Along with the Fairphone’s lack of modern display components and capabilities, this gives it a somewhat dated feel that isn’t especially redeemed with its maximum brightness score of 488cd/m2.

The display’s colours, on the other hand, were far more impressive. The Fairphone 4’s panel delivered 99.8% on the sRGB colour gamut, an almost perfect score, meaning it can display many different shades of the same colour. Its solid Delta-E score of 0.89 also means the colours appear on the display the way they should, making it a highly colour-accurate display, despite middling performance with brightness.

Fairphone 4 review: Hardware and specs

The Fairphone 4’s mostly-average display is joined by an equally average chip. Equipped with a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G, the Fairphone 4 produced some fairly substandard results when put through the Geekbench 5 benchmark. Scoring 594 on the single-core test and 1,491 on the multi-core, it came marginally behind the Oppo Find X3 Lite and considerably behind the Pixel 6.

The Snapdragon 750G is by no means a slouch but it’s being marketed as a “powerful processor” by Fairphone. Given that the chip isn’t exactly a world-beater, we’re not sure the phone is fully future-proof, although a positive sign was that we didn’t encounter any lag or other issues through normal browsing and use with business collaboration apps like Slack and RingCentral.

Depending on your business’ needs, there are two hardware configurations available for the Fairphone 4. The two configuration options are 128GB storage and 6GB RAM or 256GB storage and 8GB RAM - we tested the less powerful spec and for business use, you’re unlikely to need anything more weighty.

The Fairphone 4 underwhelms when it comes to battery life though, registering just 13 hrs 30 mins in our battery tests - a meagre showing that falls well short of competitors' scores, but in our experience, it was still more than enough to last us through the workday. Fairphone also says the device will keep 90% of its original capacity even after being charged over 547 full cycles - another win for longevity and sustainability.

Fairphone 4 review: Features

The Fairphone 4 is equipped with all the networking hardware you’ll need to take advantage of internet access on the move. It’s the first Fairphone to come equipped with great 5G connectivity that even supports mmWave frequencies - the fastest on the already souped-up mobile network. On the other hand, however, it misses out on the latest 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 standard, which means that its browsing speed is going to feel slower and slower as the technology becomes more widespread.

To prolong the battery life, Fairphone opted to limit charging to 20W, so there are no fast charging options here, nor is there any wireless charging support - a feature that could well have proven an incompatible engineering challenge with its modular design.

There are also no fancy facial recognition features - just a simple, yet highly accurate, fingerprint scanner located in the lock/power button. In our testing, the scanner worked every single time, despite the fact that our fingerprints are scanned incorrectly by most other sensors on the market.

Fairphone 4 review: Camera

As is the case with many mid-range smartphones, the cameras on the Fairphone 4 are decidedly poor. In our experience, we found that captured images were generally low quality and lacked clarity in finer details. For example, the keys on a keyboard were more difficult to read in images taken on the Fairphone 4 compared with other smartphones. We also experienced images looking somewhat washed out, which can be attributed to the low levels of on-device post-processing we observed compared to other smartphones.

The Fairphone 4 is a slightly better shooter than its predecessor though, having gained an extra camera in its array. It has two 48MP rear cameras (both shooting at a f/1.6 aperture) - one for regular shots and another dedicated ultra-wide lens, the newcomer. The two cameras at the rear are joined by a 3D Time-of-Flight sensor to finish off the three-part triangular array that protrudes slightly from the camera’s housing. The Fairphone 4 also has a 25MP front-facing camera shooting at f/2.2 and we found the shots taken from this to be slightly more vibrant in colour and sharper in clarity.

Fairphone 4 review: Verdict

From a purely technical perspective, there isn’t too much that’s impressive about the Fairphone 4. Most smartphone selling points can be found implemented better on rival devices and the phone’s mid-range price doesn’t reflect the performance of its hardware. However, if modularity, repairability, and eco-friendliness are at the top of your purchasing requirements, you’ll find nothing better.

Essentially, the Fairphone 4 is the phone to get if neither you nor your business really cares about getting the absolute best performance-per-pound. It’s the best eco-friendly device on the market and if your organisation is pursuing green initiatives, there’s no better device to represent your company’s values. What’s more, the modest price coupled with Fairphone’s five-year warranty makes it an attractive investment regardless of its perceived technical shortcomings. It’s a device for businesses that’s both as friendly to the environment as it is to your PR strategy.

Fairphone 4 specifications

There's something incredible about seeing a flip phone in the wild in 2022 - like an extinct animal suddenly being spotted in someone's pocket. Part of this resurgence can be credited to Samsung, which took the seemingly-outdated flip phone and revitalised it to meet the modern consumer's needs. This includes a touchscreen, 5G network connectivity, and wireless charging - features that its early-2000s forefathers could only dream of.

Apart from the addition of 5G and some design tweaks, however, the third generation of the Galaxy Z Flip doesn't seem to differ too much from its predecessors. But is it enough to bring the classic flip phone from a simple nostalgic relic to modern-day reality?

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G review: Design

Although looks aren't everything, the Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G is all about design - and that's not limited to its ability to bend open and shut. Topped off with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, the back of the Flip 3 5G comes in four colour options: black, a greyish dark green, a bright lavender, and a pastel-like light yellow described as "cream". We reviewed the latter, and the colour isn't as bad as it sounds, especially encompassed by the silver-toned aluminium frame.

As opposed to previous models, however, the new Flip has a thick black panel surrounding the two camera lenses and preview screen. This strip takes up more than a third of the top lid, and we're definitely not fans of the two-tone effect it creates; In our opinion, the Flip would look much better if it was allowed to shine in its yellow-and-silver glory. Instead, the contrast of the black strip makes the device look like a washed-out bumblebee.

That being said, Samsung has also introduced the option to customise your Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G model by mixing and matching differently-coloured exteriors in 49 possible combinations. The Bespoke Edition, as it is known, also comes in pink and white instead of the lavender, and was showcased during the 2022 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Overall, the Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G is easy to open and shut, with the device able to maintain the user's preferred angle of closure by itself. So you can choose to open the phone only halfway - at a 45° angle, for example - and place it on your table to conduct video conferences similarly to a very tiny laptop. Not a lot of smartphones can boast a similar function, and it's definitely a welcome change from trying to balance an iPhone using random objects when conducting hands-free calls.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G review: Display

The 6.7in touchscreen is one of the high points of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G. With a maximum brightness of 382 cd/m2 and 100% sRGB gamut coverage, Samsung once again takes the crown for an immaculately-designed display. However, this splendour is somewhat tarnished by the crease in the middle which enables the Flip 3 to fold in half.

Samsung says the panel is rated to withstand up to 200,000 folds; we obviously didn't have the device long enough to test its hinge to that extent, but the crease across the centre of the display is very noticeable, to begin with. The prospect of it becoming even deeper could make it very unpleasant. Additionally, the crease is especially noticeable under your thumb when scrolling up and down the screen. This isn't a complete deal-breaker but might take some getting used to if you previously only interacted with perfectly smooth displays.

The Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G also sports a second, smaller preview display which comes to life when the phone is clasped shut. At 1.9in, it's useful when checking the time, battery, and weather status, previewing selfies, or getting a glimpse at an incoming text message or call notifications during a business meeting, but unfortunately, it doesn't provide much use beyond that. It would be great if Samsung added a simple, one-touch function to allow users to quickly reply to a text message (for instance: "Ok") while keeping the phone closed.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G review: Performance

As expected, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor and 8GB RAM deliver a seamless experience without any lags or issues, and the Galaxy Z Flip 3 scored 941 in Geekbench 5's single-core test and 3,432 in the multicore section. This is a significant improvement from the original Z Flip, and is reflected in the device's day-to-day performance. It's also more or less on par with Samsung's other foldable, the Galaxy Fold 3, as well as the recent S22 Ultra.

Now for the bad part: we found the Galaxy Z Flip 3's 3,300 mAh battery less than impressive. The device lasted just 12hrs 3mins in our looped video test - a third shorter than the iPhone 13's 18 hours of battery life, not to mention the 22 hours offered by the Google Pixel 6 Pro.

The so-called 'fast' charging is also limited to 15W, rather than the 25W seen on the Galaxy Fold 3, which means refilling the battery isn't going to be as speedy as it could be - and even the Fold 3 lagged behind competitors in that area. On the plus side, the Flip 3 comes equipped with wireless charging as well as Wireless PowerShare, which allows the device to double as a wireless power bank.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G review: Camera(s)

The Galaxy Z Flip 3 comes equipped with a pair of 12MP rear camera lenses and a 10MP front lens, which seems lacking when compared to the Galaxy S22's 50MP main camera. Yet, despite being far from a photographer's dream setup, the Flip manages to deliver surprisingly well colour-recreated images, while its bendy design can be used to stabilise the device on surfaces for hands-free photoshoots and video calls.

Another impressive feature is the Flip 3's ability to preview a shot on its smaller screen, which allows users to take selfies using the 12 MP rear camera instead of the 10 MP front lens. This makes it easier for the subject of the photograph to preview what the image will look like, allowing for more seamless collaboration between the photographer and photographed -- and with better results.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G review: Features

Security-conscious users will be impressed by the array of authentication methods offered by the Galaxy Z Flip 3, which range from pattern, PIN, password and biometric facial recognition and fingerprint scanning. The latter deserves a special round of applause as it's by far the best-working fingerprint scanner we've tested recently, trumping the hit-and-miss TouchID technology previously offered by Apple.

The Galaxy Z Flip 3 also comes equipped with Samsung's usual fan-favourite offerings: a dual SIM slot, 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth 5, and IPX8-rated water resistance.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G review: Verdict

The Galaxy Z Flip 3 is a great smartphone that offers a fun experience alongside impressive capabilities if you choose to carry around a charger to top up its weak battery. However, many of its best features, such as its vibrant display or wireless charging, are also available on devices that don't have a crease right in the middle of its screen.

Hence, we would probably gravitate towards a less flexible Samsung phone offering or choose to wait for a smartphone which has perfected bending without any creases instead of shelling out for the Flip 3. Even with such a unique design, you need to nail the basics -- and the Flip just hasn't gotten there yet.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G specifications

MediaTek has unveiled its first mmWave chipset, Dimensity 1050. The system on chip (SoC) pools mmWave 5G with sub-6GHz to make switching between network bands ‌fluid‌ ‌and seamless.

Dimensity 1050 will be capable of delivering up to 53 percent faster speeds and greater reach to smartphones compared to LTE + mmWave aggregation alone, according to MediaTek.

Hosting two Arm Cortex-A78 CPUs and the latest Arm Mali-G610 graphics engine, Dimensity 1050 is set to offer end-to-end 5G smartphone connectivity. MediaTek also announced two additional SoCs, Dimensity 930 and Helio G99, furthering its 5G and gaming chipset line.

With 2CC-CA, Dimensity 930 will enable 5G smartphones to download data faster and stay connected regardless of location, while the new Helio G99 is optimized to support mobile gaming experiences on 4G/LTE with greater throughput and higher power efficiency than Helio G96.

In a separate statement, the Taiwanese semiconductor company announced its Filogic 880 and Filogic 380 Wi-Fi 7 platform solutions aimed at high bandwidth applications.

Filogic 880 comes with a 6nm Wi-Fi 7 access point solution with support for key Wi-Fi 7 technologies, including 4096-QAM, 320MHz, MRU, and MLO. Built-in networking crypto engine, EIP-197, allows for superior IPSec, SSL/TLS, DTLS (CAPWAP), SRTP and MACsec performance. Mediatek’s Filogic 380 is a stand-alone, single-chip 6nm Wi-Fi 7 solution that offers support for the latest Bluetooth 5.3 with LE Audio.

The firm will demonstrate the industry-first Wi-Fi 7 platform solutions, which can be used both in access point and client environments, at Computex 2022, taking place in Taipei from May 24 to May 27.

As for mmWave chipsets, Dimensity 930-powered smartphones are scheduled for the second quarter of 2022. Dimensity 1050 and Helio G99 will make their appearance in the third quarter of the current fiscal year.

"The Dimensity 1050, and its combination of sub-6GHz and mmWave technologies, will deliver end-to-end 5G experiences, uninterrupted connectivity and superior power efficiency to meet everyday user demands," said CH Chen, deputy general manager of wireless communications at MediaTek.

"With faster, more reliable connections, and advanced camera technology this chip delivers powerful features to help device makes to differentiate their smartphone product lines," added Chen.

The fact that Samsung didn't release a Galaxy Note handset in 2021 led to a lot of speculation about the range's apparent demise. In February, however, the South Korean giant offered up an unexpected plot twist by releasing a Galaxy S22 Ultra that looks suspiciously like a Note.

This is still the premium model of the S-series with top specs, extra cameras and a big beautiful screen - but it comes with lots of Note-like extras and business features. Oh, and there's a stylus, which is the clearest indication yet that the S22 Ultra has absorbed the Note, possibly for good.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Design

The death of the Note might actually just mean the name itself, because the design of the S22 Ultra has more in common with the Note than its fellow S-series devices. There's very little resemblance to last year's S21 Ultra beyond its size, and both the standard and plus models of the S22 look more traditional.

In fact, the S22 Ultra is very similar to 2020's Note 20 Ultra with the sides of the chassis curved so that the display blends with the back cover, while the top and bottom edges are both flat and squared off. Only the camera layout looks different, with a selection of lenses neatly dotted around the top corner, rather than housed in a bulky module.

Even without a protruding camera block for the lenses, however, the S22 Ultra is still a great big chunk of a handset. It's 8.9mm thick and 163.3mm tall, so it's very much a phablet that stays true to its predecessors. It's a device for those that want a massive screen, regardless of its weight or how it fits in the pocket. The problem here is that you're more likely to drop it, as we did, on a number of occasions. Thankfully it's encased with Gorilla Glass Victus+ and after a week of full use (and a couple of floor bounces), there wasn't a scratch or mark on it.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Display

This reinforced phone features a 6.8in WQHD+ AMOLED display with a 1,440 x 3,088 resolution, support for HDR10+ and a 120Hz refresh rate. There is a slight tweak compared to the S21 Ultra, with a smaller pixel density, but that hasn't affected the end result.

With the "Vivid" setting, the S22 scored 100% for sRGB colour coverage (including a colour volume of 148.4%) which is a smidge better than the 99.2% the S21 Ultra scored. Devices such as the OnePlus 9 Pro and Huawei P50 Pro can match this, but the Ultra leaves them in the dark when it comes to brightness scores. During HDR video playback, it reached a peak of 1,680cd/m2, which is blindingly good.

Unsurprisingly, we loved using the S22 Ultra's display; it's crisp and bright, with vivid colours and that high refresh rate gives you a silky smooth scrolling experience. What's more, the LTPO 2.0 technology helps to maintain the battery levels by switching between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on what you're using the screen for. We'll go into battery life in more detail later, but it feels like Samsung is so far the only vendor to get the right balance between refresh rates and power.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Specs and performance

When it comes to power, buying a Samsung S-Series in the US or Europe means different chipsets; American buyers get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 while punters in the UK can sample Samsung's own 4nm Exynos 2200 processor. Even though there's an ongoing issue with semiconductor supply, processing technology improves yearly. However, the actual experience for the average end-user might not feel much different.

In GeekBench 5, the Ultra produced lofty scores with 1,166 for single-core performance and 3,475 for multi-threaded. That's actually down compared to last year's Ultra, and quite a way off the iPhone 13's A15 Bionic chipset, but we can't say we noticed any significant differences in day-to-day performance between the three. They're all snappy devices, so there isn't much reason to choose one over the other based on processing power.

There have been split-screen modes on most large flagship smartphones for a number of years, and it was once a decent way to test processing power. With the S22 Ultra, we regularly used two apps at once, or multiple tabs, switching between each fast and seamlessly.

There was a brief issue with audio syncing though, which affected apps like Netflix, Disney Plus and YouTube. Samsung has said it will have an update to fix this, though we managed to sort it by switching the RAM Plus allocation, which allows you to increase the amount of virtual memory, from 4GB to 6GB. Our review unit goes up to 8GB of physical RAM - though a 12GB model is also available - and there are storage options for 128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 1TB.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Battery

There's no year-on-year change in battery size, with the S22 Ultra packing the same 5,000 mAh battery as the S21 Ultra. However, as we mentioned earlier, the South Korean firm has found a successful way of optimising a power-hungry screen.

In our looped video test, the S22 Ultra lasted 20hrs 15mins, which is admittedly less than the S21 Ultra but only by a mere hour. In the context of premium smartphones with high refresh rates, there isn't much else on the market that can match this; the OnePlus 9 Pro, Huawei P50 Pro and the Google Pixel 6 Pro all failed to get beyond 18hrs in the same test. The iPhone 13, meanwhile, offered up 16hrs 5mins with just a 90Hz refresh rate.

Battery life could well be the biggest 'pro' of the S22 Ultra. We absolutely hammered it with work and play and still had upwards of 15% at the end of most days. When you do need to top it up, the 45W fast charger can take it from flat to full in just over 50 minutes and it also comes with 15W of wireless charging capabilities, as well as reverse charging.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Features

For the first time on the S-series, we have a built-in S-Pen stylus, which is housed at the bottom left of the chassis. Push it in and the pen pops out ready for doodling and notetaking or even to use as a remote camera shutter button. Compared to the Note 20 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold3, the writing latency is shorter. Samsung claims this has decreased from 9 milliseconds on the Note to just 2.8 on the S22 Ultra, and it does certainly feel sharper.

Beyond that, the One UI software feels a little too similar to the S21 Ultra, though the retractable sidebar helps to offer up your most popular apps. This is also the place to access split-screen modes and make the most of that S-pen inclusion. This arguably works best on the Fold, but it is passable on the Ultra's large 6.8in screen. It does depend on the app to a certain extent; a YouTube video fits quite well on half a screen, for instance, whereas a Google Doc is just too difficult to use.

Elsewhere, the S22 Ultra is filled with the usual fare, such as an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, Wi-Fi 6e and Bluetooth 5.2. There's also an under-display finger sensor and facial recognition, both of which are as fast as one would expect with Samsung.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Camera(s)

When it comes to camera technology, Samsung's Ultra really does come up trumps. It features a 108MP f/1.8 wide lens, a 12MP f/2.3 ultrawide one and a pair of 10MP telephoto lenses, one of which has 3x optical zoom. Once again there is a "Space Zoom" function, which is Samsung's name for the AI-enhancing tech that clears up images taken at full zoom. The company claims that its neural processing unit works twice as fast as the S21 Ultra and that does appear true from our use of the telephoto lenses. Images were very clean, no matter the distance.

Samsung has implemented AI to great effect across the whole system and a new sensor that works with the 108MP lens is a great example of that with its "nona-binning" process. Here multiple images are taken at full resolution and then merged to create a sharper image. This was also the case for the portrait mode, with smooth finishes thanks to a combination of these AI enhancements and the 40MP front camera.

Video is also of high quality with the S22 Ultra capable of shooting up to 4K with 60fps or 8K with 24fps. The Super Steady mode, which is another AI-based feature, is also good for removing camera shake, though it doesn't work well with the higher resolution.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Verdict

The S22 Ultra is as good as it's ever been, but that doesn't necessarily make it better than the S21 Ultra. It has a lot of great features, fantastic cameras and a deliciously good screen, but there's a distinct lack of pizazz with this update. That might be down to the resurgence of quality in the iPhone and the very fun Pixel 6, both of which make the S22 seem a little dull by comparison.

It is also ultra-pricy at £1,149. However, the argument here is that you don't get these specs anywhere else; only the Fold3 is bigger and that hasn't got the same battery power or anywhere near the camera quality found here. What's more, this is the closest you'll get to a Galaxy Note anytime soon. If you want the very best then this is, by any measure, a truly noteworthy Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra specifications

Google gave users a first look at its upcoming Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro handset at its I/O developer event.

The tech giant revealed a breadth of new hardware and software products, including a Pixel 6a, more Android 13 features and a new mobile wallet.

I/O is traditionally developer-focused, however, 2022's event had a significant consumer theme with updates to software like Google Maps and Search, and new hardware including a Pixel Watch and Pixel tablet. The event was jam packed, so we've rounded up the biggest announcement below.

Pixel 6a, Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro

As expected, the "a" version of the Pixel 6 was unveiled at the I/O. The tech giant didn't dive too deep into specifications; it has a 6.2in FHD+ 90Hz display, a 4,500mAh battery and two 12MP camera lenses. But it appears to have almost all the same AI features and design as the Pixel 6. Users will be able to pre-order the handset from 29 July and it will cost $449.

Before anyone could really take the 6a in, however, it was almost immediately upstaged by a first look at the Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7 Pro, both of which will debut in the Autumn. The new handsets, shown on screen as two white models with an aluminium camera bar, will ship with the next generation of the company's Tensor processor and come with Android 13 straight out of the box. The pair of devices will also head up a new pixel hardware ecosystem that will feature a much-speculated Pixel Watch and a new Pixel Tablet, both of which will be released in 2023.

Android 13

Since it was first announced earlier this year, in beta, Google has revealed a number of features coming to Android 13. At I/O 22, the tech giant gave a few more, with a new Google Wallet arguably the most noteworthy. Along with credit cards and vaccine documentation, the Wallet will also be able to hold personal IDs, such as driver's licenses. Google is working with governments in the US and around the world to make that possible, though it expects it to be available in the coming weeks, hopefully in time for Android 13's full release.

Other updates for Android include more customisable features for the 'Material You' user face, end-to-end encryption for RCS messages, and a range of OS changes for Android tablets. The look and user experience of apps on tablets will see the biggest tweaks, though Google is also working on ways different devices can work together. These are mainly app switching/sharing functions, and also a faster process for pairing devices.

AI and machine learning

Language recognition and translation features took up a fair chunk of the event. The most eye-catching was the Google Assistant ditching 'wake' words for a new 'Look and Talk' feature. So instead of repeatedly saying "Hey Google", users will be able to look directly at their device and simply ask their questions.

A version of this in use already in the form of the 'Quick Phrase' function, which recognises common questions and commands. However, with six new machine learning models, the Google Assistant will be able to determine whether the user is in fact talking directly to it and not just muttering to themselves.

Workspace AI features

When it comes to Google's productivity suite, Workspace, there were a number of new AI and machine learning-focused updates. This includes automated summaries in Google Docs; this is a feature that will use machine learning to scan through a document that might be too long to read. The important details will be pulled out and automatically added to a summary at the top of the document, so a user can get the need to know information right away.

Machine learning is also being deployed to improve the Google Meet experience. 'Portrait restore' is a feature that will boost video quality by addressing issues caused by low light, low-quality webcams, or poor network connectivity. All of this will be automatically processed in the cloud without impacting device performance, according to CEO Sundar Pichai.

Workspace security is also being expanded with the phishing and malware protections that guard Gmail being deployed on Slides, Sheets and Docs. This system will automatically alert users to phishing links. Earlier in the year, hackers were reportedly exploiting the '@' function in Google Docs to embed malicious links in its automated email services.

With the Huawei P40 Pro coming out in 2020, you'd be forgiven for assuming that the company would be on the P60 by now. Instead, it's 2022 and we've only just gotten our hands on the P50 Pro, over a year later than expected.

There are a number of reasons for the delay, including the global semiconductor shortage, which might also be the reason the handset is only 4G-enabled. But was it worth the wait?

Huawei P50 Pro review: Design

The restrictions on what Huawei can put in its handsets don't appear to be much of an issue to its design teams, which continue to create beautiful pieces of hardware. The P50 Pro is arguably its most elegant smartphone to date. It features an aluminium chassis with a super shiny glass back cover and two black circular camera modules with fancy gold trimming. The phone comes in either 'coco-black' or, as with our review unit, 'black and gold' - although to be honest, this is actually closer to a bluish-grey with gold accents.

The camera modules emphasise the Leica partnership in that they give the device a DLSR-like look. But they're also a realistic way of housing more than three lenses in a smartphone without making it look like a silly monster. And they're less obtrusive than ones we've found on other flagship smartphones, such as the iPhone 13 Pro Max, or that massive camera bar on the Pixel 6. So the P50 Pro is a little bit slimmer than both iPhone and Google models at 8.5mm, and also lighter at just 195g.

The screen is also flanked by super slim bezels that curve around the corners in a very pleasing way. There is a slight curve at the edges, similar to the Pixel 6, and we didn't notice any annoying accidental palm touches when holding the device in one hand. Whatever issues we may have with the P50 Pro, none of them can be attributed to its build, because it is an absolute work of art.

Huawei P50 Pro review: Display

Keeping eyes on the display, it's a 6.6in OLED panel with a 91% screen-to-body ratio, 1,228 x 2,700 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR capabilities. The refresh rate can be set to three different modes; you can have 120Hz on all the time or drop it down to 60Hz. Alternatively, you can have it automated with the default "dynamic" setting which selects the right time or content to use the full capability. The aim here is to save battery life as scrolling sites with a silky-smooth display is a very power-hungry pastime.

Colour levels can also be subdued or boosted with "normal" or "vivid" settings but you get dazzling quality regardless of which option you select. Under the vivid setting, the display scored 100% for sRGB colour coverage (and 143.5% for volume) which is a percentage above the 99% scored by the Samsung S21 Ultra. That quality was very much apparent in day to day use, as we enjoyed a crisp and colourful display. What's more, its brightness peaked at 532 cd/m2 which not only looks good on paper, it was more than adequate for almost all weather conditions the UK could muster.

Huawei P50 Pro review: Specs and performance

When you look inside the P50 Pro, users will come across something unexpected; despite being one of the world's leading authorities on 5G hardware, Huawei has used the 4G version of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 processor, which is matched with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage. There are reports that Huawei will offer a Kirin 9000 version of the P50 Pro that will be 5G enabled, but there are no details of when or where it will be available - or for how much.

Thankfully, however, Qualcomm's latest is a 5nm chip and that means super-fast processing power. This is backed up by a very good GeekBench 5 score, where the P50 Pro hit 891 for single-core and 3,380 for multi-threaded performance. That's far more multi-threaded power than the Pixel 6 Pro and not too far off the S21 Ultra (3,549). How it compares to the Kirin 9000 chip in the P40 Pro is sadly a bit of a mystery as we couldn't download GeekBench on that. Its presence on the P50, however, is down to the hard work that has gone into building out Huawei's app gallery. More on that later on.

Huawei P50 Pro review: Battery

When it comes to battery life, we're spending more and more time pointing out refresh rates and their impact on the power supply. Having your screen refreshing 120 times per second for the entire time it's in use drains the battery ridiculously quickly, so you'll often find an adaptive setting on flagship handsets.

In this case, Huawei's "dynamic" display setting switches from 1Hz to 120Hz to give you more chance of having your phone last throughout the day. Under our looped video test, on the dynamic setting, the P50 Pro's 4,360mAh battery lasted 17hrs 9mins, which is just slightly behind the OnePlus 9 Pro (17hrs and 32mins).

Heavy use of social media is likely the reason your P50 Pro will die before the end of the day and that was certainly the case for us, but it does come with 60W fast charging and 50W wireless charging. Both work quite quickly, with the fast charger taking you from less than 5% to full in around 50 minutes.

Huawei P50 Pro review: Features

For European customers, the P50 Pro comes with its EMUI 12, rather than the HarmonyOS software used in China. It has a slightly messy default UI full of subfolders and apps you'll never use or see again if you leave the Huawei ecosystem. but these can be switched about effortlessly.

Unfortunately, we can't fully review a Huawei smartphone without mentioning the lack of Google services. To its credit, the Chinese firm has made great strides with its own app ecosystem which is now far better stocked than it ever has been. You can get many of your other favourite apps, such as Netflix, WhatsApp and Spotify, but as APK downloads. This is down to Huawei's Petal search, which does all the complicated bits here, such as scanning for the safest option and then double scanning what it recommends to check it's safe to have on your operating system.

As such, downloading WhatsApp is fairly straightforward, though you won't be able to access history logs because they're Google or iOS-based. However, the real game-changer, certainly for Huawei's smartphone business, is that you can download third-party email apps, like Microsoft's Outlook, where you can set up your Gmail account. While it isn't ideal to have it within a third-party app, or via an APK download, this does feel like a sideload that should be mentioned more often.

For those that use other Huawei hardware, such as its laptops and tablets, the P50 Pro has a new feature you might just love. This is Super Device, which is a type of Bluetooth-based screen sharing software that transports your phone's UI onto another device.

Huawei P50 Pro review: Camera(s)

As with every handset Huawei has launched since the P20, we find the company has gone big when it comes to camera technology. This is largely thanks to a brilliant partnership with Leica, which never fails to impress. On the P50 Pro, there's a quad lens setup featuring a 50MP wide lens, a 64MP telephoto one, a 40MP monochrome snapper and a 13MP ultrawide lens. Both the 50MP main lens and telephoto lens offer superb, crisp detail, though the latter is best if kept to 10 x optical zoom and below.

On the software side, Huawei's AI prowess is up there with the likes of Google and Samsung, with a range of automated features on the P50 Pro to improve the user experience. There's also a 'Master AI' option, but we found it was better to leave it alone as the normal settings take far more realistic images. Colours are captured as true to life as anything we've seen elsewhere and the amount of detail it picks up in low light settings is some kind of witchcraft. This also includes a very detail-rich night mode, which is on the level of the iPhone 13 - if not greater.

The company has also snuck in its own version of Google's 'Magic Eraser', which strangely hasn't even been mentioned in the phone's marketing. The experience is almost like for like, though the Pixel has functions that can recommend bits to remove, whereas Huawei simply lets you choose and rub it out yourself.

The video capabilities on the P50 Pro aren't as impressive though, with a little drop in quality compared to photography. It is perfectly capable of 4K shooting with up to 60fps, and it's not glaringly noticeable, but we found the detail wasn't as clear on the video side.

Huawei P50 Pro review: Verdict

Well, there you have it; a gorgeous smartphone with a beautiful display and a camera setup to rival the best in the business. However, all that will cost you a whopping £1,100. This isn't that unusual for a premium smartphone - but there are other devices available for much less, such as the Google Pixel 6 or the OnePlus 9 Pro, both of which have very similar specs.

That being said, the effort Huawei has put into building out its app ecosystem is really paying off. Both the Mate 40 Pro and the P40 Pro were almost wasted on Western Europeans because of the lack of Google services. But Huawei's P50 Pro might have that little bit more to offer.

Huawei P50 Pro specifications

The spectre of so-called ‘planned obsolescence’ has been hovering around the tech industry for years, with quasi-conspiracy theories claiming that manufacturers intentionally cripple their own products after a certain period in order to coax customers into purchasing an upgrade.

However, while the comparatively short lifespan of most tech products remains a bone of contention among users, this may be less sinister plot and more a natural result of the industry’s relentless pursuit of better specs and slimmer dimensions. This week, we’re looking at the factors affecting the lifespan of hardware, as well as what you can do to make your devices last that bit longer.

Highlights

“I used to work in a factory where we repaired certain models of phone. The process to get the LCD off is mad; you have to heat it up to a certain temperature, then pry it open as carefully as possible. This is usually where people get like cracks and things in their phones. So it cannot be done personally at home, replacing a screen.”

“If you know you've got a sizable chunk of your customer base that is using an older device, that should still be supported from a software perspective. Everyone's gonna have a different opinion, there will be people in one corner saying if you've made a device, you should be able to support that forever; the 'buy well, buy once' people. But realistically, no one's using an iPhone 1… in the same way that no one is still using a laptop from 2002.”

“For laptops in particular, one of the best ways to extend its lifespan beyond when it might give up the ghost is to actually replace the default OS with something a little bit more lightweight. So Linux is a really good example of this. ChromeOS has recently come out with a version that can be installed on any hardware. And both of those are great options for giving older devices that may not have the most powerful hardware a new lease of life, because cutting edge Windows and macOS builds are quite resource intensive in lots of ways.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• In praise of the early adopters
• Apple iPhone 12 review: Cutting edge nostalgia
• iPhone 12 mini review: Mini phone, major fun
• Apple iPhone 13 review: A video powerhouse
• Why I need a gaming monitor for work
• Chrome OS Flex turns old PCs and Macs into Chromebooks
• Windows would be better running Chrome OS
• Best Linux distros 2022: The finest open source operating systems around
• Dealing with legacy lethargy
• The IT Pro Podcast: There’s no such thing as obsolete tech
• BCS: Extend the lifespan of smartphones to tackle chip shortages
• How to virtualise Windows 7 inside Windows 10
• Make Linux look like Windows 7
• Will Britain’s “right to repair” law fix anything?
• Apple launches self-repair scheme for iPhones and Macs
• 16 ways to speed up your laptop
• Apple MacBook Air (Apple M1, 2020) review: The world’s best ultraportable
• How to turn off battery throttling on an iPhone

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I have always been fascinated by photography. The feel of the camera, the satisfaction of the physical action of winding the film forward by one frame. The reassurance of the clunk as the photo is taken. And, if you want to get into the realms of large format photography, using 5 x 4in film, then you open up a whole new delightful world of adjusting the lens position and orientation away from being parallel to the film. This allows all sorts of “movements” to alter the plane of focus, to correct for perspective. Best of all, given the high cost of each shot, you enter a zen state where you are happy to wait half an hour for that cloud to move into exactly the right place relative to the tree.

Then you enter the world of high-end 35mm, and discover it’s possible to have a serious addiction to the incredible glass made by Leica. Wallet meltdown rapidly ensues.

The arrival of the smartphone changed everything. As the quality of the images taken by phones rapidly improved, it became less necessary to bother with the hassle of carrying around a camera body and several lenses. Almost without fanfare, my trips to foreign climes resulted in proper cameras being left at home. What started as “just about good enough” was soon swept aside by the rise of much better optics, sensor capabilities and, most importantly, the software that could work with the images to improve them, correct issues, and produce a better picture.

One of these tricks was to build a high dynamic range (HDR) image by compositing together two images taken one after the other. One image would have the exposure set correctly for the bright parts, the second image would be exposed to be best for the darker parts. Then software stitched the two together to produce a composite HDR image that maintained the detail in the dark areas, without blowing out the bright parts. This was just the start, of course. Soon the CPU was being used for all sorts of cleverness, much of it utterly ridiculous. I could go to my grave a happy man if I never saw another set of bunny ears and glitter added onto a face shot on social media.

Whilst clever, this used computing power to create fun nonsense beloved of our dear youth. And that’s fine, but my interest continued to be driven by better picture quality.

Then came the multiple camera array, with up to three cameras of different focal length (and hence angle of view). Optical stabilisation came too, along with some deeply clever capabilities for taking night-time shots that weren’t covered in a fog of noise. The technology seemed to reach peak cleverness with the LiDAR capabilities on recent iPhones, giving depth measurement to the image and hence better and faster focussing, along with some quite eye-popping 3D visualisation and mapping tools.

But this rise of what I call “computational photography” hasn’t stopped either. It’s not enough to composite together an image, or to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to colour balance. Now you can shoot an image on the latest iPhones and decide after the event where you want the focus point to be. At the same time, capabilities have increased significantly on the high-end tools on your desktop computer, with Adobe Photoshop leading the way with some astonishing retouching and editing tools.

The latest arrival into my lab – the new Google Pixel 6 Pro – represents another new high watermark in the area of computational photography: the ability to remove items from the image and have the phone calculate what should have been there “behind” whatever it is that it removed. This isn’t a new concept, with Photoshop offering similar tools for a while, but I haven’t seen it before built into a phone.

Last night I was at the pub with some mates, and took a fairly close-up photo of one where he occupied a significant part of the image. Then I pressed the edit button, drew a line around his chest and head, and watched as he was magically removed from the frame. The background was intelligently filled in – the door panel pattern repeated, the brickwork extended. It would be easy to nitpick and find images where it might trip and stumble. But this sort of computational photography puts capability directly into the hands of the mainstream user.

The arrival of ProRes video recording on the latest iPhone 12 Pro is another such arrival. H.264 and H.265 video encoding is useful, and results in small files of reasonably good quality, but ProRes is way better in terms of quality, even if the data storage requirements can be eyewatering – around 6GB per minute. However, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities for B-roll video recording, or shooting in difficult locations, where a professional-grade camera such as an Arri, Red or BlackMagic might not work.

Evaluating computational photography cameras isn’t easy if you want to do technical benchmarking. Far be it for me to suggest that the vendors are being sneaky and spotting specific test charts, and then quietly compensating the image for any known quirks (although I wouldn’t put this past some companies). The toolkit still stays the same: Imatest for lens and sensor capabilities, dSCLabs for test charts, and the incredibly punishing XYLA21 test system from the same company. This last shows a test chart with 21 stops of dynamic range plus an array of test setups and rotating platforms to evaluate motion artifacts, blur and judder.

It would be naïve to think that we have reached peak picture quality with the Pixel 6 Pro and iPhone 13 Max Pro – there is more to come. But the arrival of both in my pocket has taken me back to the earlier days, where I sat on the side of the hill with a 5 x 4in plate camera, and waited for the correct moment to take one shot. At least back then the quality was from optical and mechanical excellence. Today, it is down to the algorithms and the AI engines.

Apple's newest iPhone SE is already said to be suffering from production cuts, according to reports.

Sources familiar with the matter have told Nikkei Asia that the budget handset will see a 20% reduction in expected production due to a combination of the invasion of Ukraine and inflation.

The drop amounts to around two-to-three million handsets for the quarter, according to the sources, which is all the more surprising given that the phone was released just a couple of weeks ago.

Apple has previously stated that it would be halting all sales in Russia following the country's invasion of Ukraine. Apple is routinely ranked as one of Russia's top five smartphone brands, so this is believed to have a detrimental effect on iPhone SE production.

A bigger factor is the global chip shortage which is continuing to plague a number of industries ans has further exacerbated by inflation issues brought on by the low numbers of available semiconductors and also the pandemic.

We have already seen reports of companies like Qualcomm struggling to meet demand, putting more strain on the lower end of the market. A similar problem now appears to be affecting Apple with production of the iPhone SE.

The problem has also affected other products, such as AirPods, production of which is said ot have been "significantly" reduced to around 10 million units for the whole of 2022. However, reports of a reduction in iPhone 13 production is said to be the result of seasonal demand fluctuations.

If true, this could be the first real hit Apple has taken over the chip shortage. Up till now, the company has enjoyed a sustained period of growth, with its latest earnings report showing a 9% increase, year-on-year, in iPhone sales.

IT Pro has approached Apple for comment.

When London-based Planet Computers launched its Indiegogo campaign for the Astro Slide 5G, way back in March 2020, it came across as ambitious. Both of the company’s previous products, the Gemini PDA and the Cosmo Communicator, were clamshell units that essentially updated the Psion Series 5 for the smartphone era, but the Slide takes a cue from the legendary Nokia E7 by using a sliding mechanism to reveal the mechanical keyboard. A tough trick to pull off.

Astro Slide 5G review: Design

On your first go with the Slide, you may wonder if Planet has met its match: the process can seem wobbly. However, you’ll soon learn to either push upwards with both thumbs on either edge or confidently grab it from the middle. Once in place, the screen doesn’t move a jot as you type. What’s more, thanks to some devious weight management, it will never topple over no matter how hard you prod the screen. It’s a great piece of design.

Another nice feature is the smart button on the left-hand side. Head into the dedicated Astro Settings section of Android’s Settings menu and you can program it in one of three ways: a short press, long press or double-press. For example, we set a short press to start the torch and a long press to launch BBC Sounds.

At this point, however, we must tackle the big problem for the Astro Slide compared to a normal phone: its bulk. It’s twice as thick and heavy as a typical phone, and that makes it far more noticeable in a trouser pocket. You might also feel self-conscious making phone calls with such a lump against your ear. It would be great for a future edition to lose a couple of millimetres from the base and for the lid to become even slimmer.

Astro Slide 5G review: Display

This brings us to the screen, which overall is a plus point: AMOLED technology ensures rich colours, while a 1,080 x 2,340 resolution equates to a 403ppi pixel density across the 6.4in diagonal. It’s protected by Gorilla Glass (third generation), reaches a highly respectable peak brightness of 400cd/m2 and covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space. If anything, it’s too keen with its colours, however: they whack you between the eyes with their sheer saturation. Nor is colour accuracy a strength, with an average Delta E of 2.77 well over our ideal of less than 1.

We’re not fond of the panel’s corners having such big curves cut into them either, but the more notable issue is the amount of space above and below the screen: there’s a 12mm bezel at the bottom and 13mm at the top. The only plus point of the latter is that it leaves space for the earphone speaker and the 13MP selfie camera.

Astro Slide 5G review: Keyboard

We are fans of the keyboard itself though, which is the closest yet to the original Series 5 in terms of feel. In fact, it’s arguably an improvement, as it also features a multi-level backlight, while a blue LED lights up if caps lock is applied. As a nice extra touch, the keys are now rounded in the four corners of the device, helping to maximise the use of space.

As with all such keyboards, you can’t expect to reach the same speeds as on a full-size alternative. We tested ourselves over the course of two weeks and the best speed we attained was 37 words per minute. That’s about half our usual pace and roughly the same as we reach on a Swyft keyboard on an Android phone, but the advantage the Astro Slide holds over predictive input is when entering non-standard text, such as code.

The inevitable limiting factor is the width of the device. Our wrists didn’t enjoy the cramped typing position for more than 15 minutes at a push. As someone who writes for a living, though, we can see the Astro Slide coming into its own during edits. It allows you to prod on the screen and jump in at the exact point you want to make amends, and the process is quicker and less fiddly than on a standard phone.

Astro Slide 5G review: Software

With the Astro Slide, you also benefit from Planet Computers’ years of learning through developing two similar products. For instance, it’s well worth teaching yourself the keyboard shortcuts as these will save you time, even when in Android. Fn+D reveals the desktop, for example, while pressing the planet icon brings up a macOS-style dock of your favourite apps.

Then there’s the OneSearch application, which couldn’t be simpler to activate: from the Android home screen, start typing on the keyboard and search results instantly appear. For instance, type “astro” and a selection of links appear that you can tap on, from pre-filled Google searches to shopping results on Amazon. OneSearch also brings up local matches, so typing a name will reveal contacts that you can tap on to bring up their details (or click on the email, message or dial icon next to their name).

Planet Computers also supplies a polished email app, a note-taking app and a calendar that should integrate with any Duo, Google or Exchange accounts you specify. However, we couldn’t persuade the Astro Slide to synchronise with our default Google account or add any others, so either we were unlucky, or some extra dev work needs to happen.

Astro Slide 5G review: Hardware and performance

A lag when shooting video was one of the few times that we wished for a higher-spec chipset, because otherwise the MediaTek Dimensity 800 proved more than a match for Android 11. Videos played smoothly, as did Minecraft. More demanding games will prove an obstacle – it scored 10fps in the demanding 3DMark Time Spy test – but this is a solid mid-range chip.

That’s echoed by its scores in benchmarks, with a single-core result of 504 in Geekbench 5 and 2,202 in the multicore test. Its result of 16hrs 45mins in our video-rundown test is again solid; you’ll need to use this phone intensively to drain the 4,000mAh battery over the course of a day.

It’s also good to see support for wireless charging here, up to a maximum of 10W. Switch to the 30W USB charger if you want quicker top-ups though, even if a figure of zero to 24% in 30 minutes is hardly stellar.

Astro Slide 5G review: Cameras

You should also play down your expectations when it comes to the cameras. The front one isn’t far off what you’d see from a mid-range phone, but firing up the Camera app reveals a lack of finesse and options – think self-timer, image size and that’s it. Its results aren’t awful by any means, but an iPhone this is not.

It’s a similar story for the rear camera, despite the comforting presence of a 48MP Sony sensor. This means you can push all the way up to 8,000 x 6,000 resolutions, but usually the benefit of such a huge sensor is for pixel binning to reduce noise in low light. Nothing so clever is happening here, and the end results were mushy and lacked detail compared to a half-decent modern phone.

You can take videos using both cameras, but there’s no optical image stabilisation and again you aren’t given many options. There are scene modes – sports, snow and night, for instance – but we saw little difference in the end results.

Astro Slide 5G review: Ports and features

You can charge the Astro Slide via either of its USB-C ports, which are placed on opposite sides. Both support OTG and video output, but not directly via USB-C; instead you’ll need to buy a USB-C to HDMI converter, such as the one that Planet sells for £33. Or you can buy its USB-C hub for £37, which adds two USB-A ports and an Ethernet connector. All of which makes sense if you plan to take advantage of this device’s support for booting into Linux-based operating systems, with plans for Debian, Kali and the phone-friendly Sailfish OS.

Further versatility comes through the Astro Slide’s dual SIMs, with space for two nano SIM cards in its extra-long SIM tray along with a microSD card (128GB of storage comes as standard). Or you can use an eSIM. Both SIMs support 5G, with the only blot on this phone’s connectivity being support for Wi-Fi 5 rather than Wi-Fi 6.

Astro Slide 5G review: Verdict

This yin and yang is typical of the Astro Slide 5G. In many ways, it’s a flexible and forward-thinking device, with some ingenious features that could save you time and hassle. In others, it feels basic and hamstrung (think the camera and accompanying app). You must also bear in mind that you’re buying from a small company rather than an international giant, which comes with drawbacks along with its advantages.

Overall, however, the Astro Slide’s positives outweigh the negatives, and let’s never forget that this is a unique device. If you have a compelling reason for a physical keyboard, it’s the best solution we’ve tested by some distance.

Astro Slide 5G specifications

Apple is said to be working on a way to offer iPhones and iPads as part of an ongoing subscription.

This has been in the works for "several years", according to Bloomberg sources, and could be announced by the end of the year, if it's not shelved completely.

Subscription models are already a key part of Apple's business, but these have so far only been offered as part of its various software services, such as music, TV, fitness, and gaming. Much of this has also been bundled together into the firm's Apple One platform.

The new project would represent Apple's first push into automatically recurring sales for hardware.

From an iPhone perspective, the company does have an upgrade programme, which lets customers pay for the combined cost of AppleCare and an iPhone over 24 months, with an extra option to trade in their device after a certain amount of payments over the course of a year.

This resembles a hardware subscription of sorts, but this is really more about spreading out the cost of a new iPhone. The new subscription model, if it ever emerges, will instead be an ongoing monthly fee, akin to a cloud subscription.

A new revenue stream is clearly the name of the game here, with the company seeking to offer more palatable methods for iPhone fans to get their hands on the latest models. At the time of writing, the standard model of iPhone 13 costs £779 or £32.45 per month.

This does make sense from a business perspective, with the iPhone generating more than 50% of the company's revenues – the next highest segment is Apple services, which only accounts for 18.7%.

Last year's sales of the iPhone accounted for almost $192 billion of the company's overall revenue.

Samsung has unveiled two new entry-level smartphones with 5G connectivity and 5nm processors for less than £400.

The A33 5G and A53 5G handsets are upgrades to the A32 and A52, respectively, but with a considerable bump in specifications.

Both devices are now available to pre-order as the South Korean giant continues to pack the first quarter of 2022 with smartphone and product launches.

The A-Series swiftly follows the launch of a new range of S22 devices and Galaxy Book laptops at MWC. However, these new handsets are firmly aimed at the lower end of the market.

The devices share an almost identical design, with a slight difference in size and texture on the chassis, and will come in shades of black, white, blue, and a new Peach colour, all of which are tagged as "awesome".

They feature the same 'halo' effect camera designs that are similar to those found on the S22, which has no module housing. What's more, both devices are fitted with the Exynos 1280 chipset, developed using 5nm technology, which potentially makes them extremely powerful middle-ranged handsets.

Samsung A33 5G

The cheapest of the two is the A33, which users can grab for as little as £329. It comes with a similar display to last year's A32, though its 6.4in screen is slightly smaller. However, it still features a FHD+ Super AMOLED infinity-U display with a 90Hz refresh rate.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference, however, is its build which is shorter, slimmer and lighter than the previous; The A33 is just 8.1mm thick, whereas the A32 was 9.1mm. It also weighs just 186g, 21g less than its predecessor.

Feature-wise, the A33 has a triple-lens camera system with a 48MP main camera, an 8MP ultrawide lens and a 5MP macro lens, as well as a 12MP selfie camera. There is also a 5,000mAh battery that has 25w of fast charging capabilities and an on-screen fingerprint reader.

Samsung A53 5G

The A53 is the larger of the two models with a 6.5in FHD+ Super AMOLED Infinity-O display capable of a 120Hz refresh rate. It still manages to remain 8.1mm thick and weighs just 189g, which is partly why the devices look and feel so similar.

It also has a slightly fancier camera set up with a 64MP main camera and a 12MP ultrawide lens. These are also matched with two 5MP lenses for depth and marco shooting for extreme close ups. These is also a 32MP selfie camera.

As with the A33, the A53 has a 5,000mAh battery with 25w of fast charging, as well as the on-screen fingerprint reader, but it will ship for the slightly larger price of £399.

Both devices feature the Exynos 1280 chip and are matched with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. However, Samsung has enabled new AI functions on both devices that help to save battery life and also aid the camera with image enhancements.

Apple is gearing up to host its first virtual event of 2022 on Tuesday, and speculation suggests a new MacBook Air and Mac Mini could be unveiled.

The event, titled "Peek Performance", will start at 6pm UK time, and might also feature updates to the iPad Air and iPhone SE.

We've rounded up everything we can expect from Apple's virtual broadcast this week, and will bring you all of the news from the event as it happens.

Apple Studio Display

The "Peek Performance" slogan appears to be a reference to a new external display, according to Bloomberg's 'Power On' newsletter, which claims that Apple completed development on a new monitor "months ago". The desktop display is expected to arrive as an "Apple Studio Display" complete with a 7K resolution, replacing the current 6K Pro Display XDR.

Maci Mini and iMac

A new monitor seems like a safe bet for Tuesday's event, as it's also being reported that an update to the Mac Mini is on its way - a device that was originally rumoured to arrive late last year. The 2022 Mac Mini could feature the M1 Pro and M1 Max processors that are currently only available in the latest MacBook Pro models, or even Apple's next-generation M2 chip.

There is currently a 24-inch iMac with the M1 processor, but the larger 27-inch version is still an Intel-based machine, so there's potential for a new iMac upgrade this week too.

MacBook Air and MacBook Pro

The MacBook Air, which has a design that dates back to 2018, could be a prime candidate for an upgrade this week. The 2020 model was one of the first to feature the M1 chip, and its rumoured that it could also be the first to feature Apple's new M2 processor - which is due to debut any day now. Rumours suggest the 2022 MacBook Air will also boast a better webcam and improved screen, which could feature a notch to house FaceID components.

It is less likely that the company would unveil a new 13-in MacBook Pro. However, reports suggest that a new MacBook Pro could launch this week, noting that while it isn't likely to feature much of a design overhaul, it could also pack the next-gen M2 processor. The next 13-inch MacBook might also ditch the TouchBar as it has done with the larger MacBook Pro models.

iPad Air (2022)

A new iPad is also reportedly in the works, and while this isn't expected to feature a major design overhaul either, it's heavily rumoured that new colour options will be made available. Apple's imminent iPad unveiling will likely focus on bringing the iPad Air in line with the sixth-gen iPad Mini that was released in September that featured the A15 chip. The cellular version, however, could also be 5G enabled.

iPhone SE (2022)

5G connectivity could also be coming to the iPhone SE, according to rumours. While the 2020 model has a similar design to the iPhone 8, the 2022 iPhone SE model might arrive with a design more akin to the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13, complete with squared-off edhes. That means it could look similar to the iPhone Mini, just with significantly fewer specs.

“Morning guys. Just had a text saying the flight is cancelled.”

I’d only just put my coat on when that message popped up in the MWC 2022 WhatsApp group. A cab hummed outside, waiting to take me to the airport. Thankfully that airport was Gatwick and I smugly arrived, untroubled, in Barcelona by lunchtime on Saturday.

The same couldn’t be said for other journalists and MWC attendees who were caught up in a British Airways IT meltdown. All short-haul flights were cancelled on Saturday morning due to “technical problems”, leaving thousands stranded, desperately scrambling to find alternative flights.

I was quite lonely on that first afternoon, tucking into some spicy patatas bravas in my hotel’s rooftop bar. Any happiness at being in a foreign country again was tinged with a fear that no one else was coming. We’re supposed to be getting back to some kind of normalcy and human connection, and physical events are a huge part of that.

The theme for MWC 2022 was “connectivity unleashed” but the troubles at BA had unleashed only chaos over the preceding weekend. My heart goes out to the Samsung PR team, who put on an absolutely wonderful hands-on session at an idyllic little beach hut, lit beautifully in the early morning sunshine. It was a photographer's dream. but most of its guests were living out a nightmare at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. More than 50 guests were scheduled to attend, but the troubles with BA saw just a handful of us there to capture shots of the new Galaxy Book2 Pro range.

Thankfully, companies like Lenovo and Oppo provided virtual launches so no one would miss out., including the former's first Arm-based ThinkPad, which boasts a 29 hour battery life. The latter, meanwhile, showcased its latest flagship handset, the Find X5 Pro, but the company was the star of the show on Monday after it revealed a revolutionary charger prototype. The Oppo SuperVooc 240W fast charger blew everyone’s mind with its promise of fully charging a flat battery in nine minutes. The OnePlus 10 Pro, however, failed to impress, given it's only a minor upgrade on its predecessor and there's no exact UK release date.

My favourite launch was from Huawei, meanwhile, which hosted MWC attendees at the Regency Hotel on Sunday to debut its updates of the MateBook X Pro and MatePad E 2-in-1. It also unveiled a handsome MateStation X desktop. We all sat patiently, expecting an executive to come onto the stage, but, instead, we were treated to a pre-recorded video of Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group. It began with Yu walking forwards as if he were about to break the fourth wall and appear on the stage. He wasn’t there, of course, which we assumed was down to the extra-long quarantine restrictions in place for people returning to China.

We’re slowly getting back together and meeting up at large international events, but it seems as though it’ll be an experience with limits and restraints for the foreseeable future. We’re still living under the shadow of COVID-19 and transportation faults – be it train delays or flight cancellations – are more common than they should be. There’s a positive way to look at it, though, and this is perhaps the real legacy of the pandemic; we’re a much more fluid and flexible workforce now than ever before. We have the tools and the know-how to work from anywhere that has an internet connection, and this was fully on display at MWC 2022 as exemplified by Huawei's Super Device ecosystem. In contrast with previous years, product launches were mainly virtual, too, and even available to watch on YouTube.

There are no guarantees the world will be completely free of COVID-19 or restrictions any time soon, and the same has always been true for transport disruptions. We appear to be better at navigating those challenges than ever before, however. A good example of this was in the MWC 2022 WhatsApp group, where a resourceful and fluid Huawei PR team rapidly found flights and alternative routes for their guests. Some even flew into Madrid to catch a high-speed train to Barcelona. I was amazed at how rapid and adaptable their approach was, although it seemed entirely normal to them.

The lesson here is, in the age of COVID-19, we can still enjoy large international events in-person, but to get them going requires a change of mindset. When things go wrong, you need to just simply move on.

The UK’s OnePlus aficionados may have thought they were getting the company’s latest handsets earlier than expected when the 10 and 10 Pro were unveiled in January - but so far the devices have only gone on sale in its native China.

What’s more, while the larger of the two new handsets - the 10 Pro - has been on display at MWC 2022, the standard model was missing from the company’s booth. It appears that only the Pro version is coming to Europe, and indeed the UK, when it's released in March.

OnePlus 10 Pro hands-on review: Design

When users do get their hands on the OnePlus 10 Pro, they may feel like we did at MWC because the device is far more impressive in person than it has been in its advertising. The camera assembly, which looks like a small sheet of black metal, has a lovely glow under certain lighting and the Hasselblad logo is less prominent than it was on the 9 Pro. The device also comes in green and black shades, with a matte finish that has a slight rubbery texture.

We can’t say the design has improved all that much over the 9 Pro, which was already a big hit at IT Pro, but the 10 Pro is still a very attractive device. The corners and sides are smooth and neatly rounded, the display has super thin bezels and also features a tiny cutout for the selfie camera. There’s also the company’s squared logo, which only really shows when it gets a nice bit of light to reflect.

OnePlus 10 Pro hands-on review: Display

While the design has some significant changes, the screen appears to be exactly the same; a 6.7in AMOLED panel with a 3,216 x 1,440 resolution. This isn’t a bad thing as the 9 Pro showcased a strong grasp of the sRGB colour space, and it’s also kept the LTPO technology that allows the display to adjust its refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz. This is an awesome feature that gives you that smooth scroll for social media, but not for certain video content where it's not needed as much.

While it's hard to tell with the naked eye whether there are any improvements compared to the 9 Pro, the display looked very sharp in person. It also looked bright and we expect a strong score here as it again has HDR+ capabilities.

OnePlus 10 Pro hands-on review: Specs and battery

There are new things on the inside, with the OnePlus 10 Pro switching to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, which is matched with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The 8 Gen 1 chip is similar to Qualcomm’s 888 processor found in the 9 Pro, in that both are 4nm chips. We fully expect a super score for multi-threaded performance here - maybe not on the same level as the iPhone 13, but it could well be one of the fastest Android devices of the year.

Power-wise, the OnePlus 10 Pro has a chance of lasting a little longer than the 9 Pro, as it has swapped out the 4,500mAh battery for a 5,000mAh one. Though the 9 Pro managed over 17hrs in our intensive video test, other smartphones in the premium bracket lasted much longer, such as the S21 Ultra which went beyond 22hrs.

Whatever length the battery does last, users can be reassured with OnePlus’ trusty charging cable and plug which gives 80W of fast charging. The 65W charger on the 9 Pro was an absolute monster, taking its battery from less than 5% to full in just over 30 minutes. Plus there’s also 50W of wireless charging, which is the same as the 9 Pro.

OnePlus 10 Pro hands-on review: Features

Featurewise, the OnePlus 10 Pro is still rocking the OxygenOS flavour of Android, with the red and white “Never Settle” mantra displayed proudly on the screen. It may not be as fun and quirky as what we find on the Google Pixel, but OnePlus does at least have a user interface that’s easily identifiable as OnePlus; you can spot it from a mile off, which you can’t say for devices from some of the other Chinese manufacturers, such as Realme, Honor and even Huawei.

The 10 Pro also supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and a fingerprint reader under the display. It wasn’t activated on the units we got our hands on, and we didn’t particularly want to lock it for everyone else, but this was one of the best features on the 9 Pro. It was super snappy and came with a choice of magical effects for when your finger hits it.

OnePlus 10 Pro hands-on review: Cameras

For the second year running, OnePlus has collaborated with the Swedish camera brand Hasselblad. This appears to be mostly with the camera software and also includes the company’s signature orange shutter button, but it was something that worked well last time around. The 9 Pro was not exactly perfect in this department, but it was a noticeable leap compared to older OnePlus offerings.

In its rear camera array, the OnePlus 10 Pro has a 48MP wide lens, a 8MP 3 x optical zoom telephoto lens and a 50MP main camera which is ultrawide with a 150-degree view. There’s also a 32MP selfie camera. The wider scope of the main camera is the only real change from the 9 Pro, and it might not deliver a great deal more quality. You may also be questioning the fourth hole on the camera array, but that is a ring flash.

We can vouch for the quality of the OnePlus 9 Pro’s cameras, but they weren’t in the same league as what we’ve seen on the iPhone 13, the S21 and the Google Pixel 6 Pro. And, unless Hasselblad has made some major improvements to the software, that sadly might be the case again here.

OnePlus 10 Pro hands-on review: Early verdict

We like the OnePlus 10 Pro but what we have here is a minor update and a complete lack of clarity. According to the company’s blog, only the Pro will be coming to India, North America and Europe for the time being and although that’s slated for sometime in March, an exact date is still unknown. There’s also no regional pricing for Europe, but going by its recent offerings it could be upwards of £800.

If it’s OnePlus you’re after, the 9 and 9 Pro might serve you and your wallet better. However, if you do want the 10 Pro, there are a lot of plus points, such as its 80W fast charger and crisp display. Our first impression of the OnePlus 10 Pro is good, but it is lacking that wow factor this time around.

With our vaccine passports at the ready, we’re once again heading to Barcelona and the Fira Gran Via for MWC 2022 to catch the latest and greatest in mobile and business technology.

Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2020 was among the first to be cancelled following the initial COVID-19 outbreak, with organisers hosting only a streamlined edition last year. Some 20,000 people attended a later-than-scheduled summer event but this was again marred by the number of companies that pulled out in the months leading up to it.

While we should expect more attendees this year, there are some firms still keeping away, such as Lenovo, which will instead only hold a virtual product launch. Sony, too, is avoiding the conference like the plague. If participants needed any more reminding the pandemic very much isn’t over, there are requirements too for negative tests upon arrival. Beyond that, we expect a jam-packed event with plenty of new smartphones, PCs and tablets designed for the new world of hybrid work.

MWC 2022: PCs, laptops and tablets

For the last few years, Huawei has enjoyed being front and centre of MWC and it appears to be the case again this year, with a new range of laptops and tablets scheduled to launch just before MWC begins. While its smartphone revenues continue to decline, the Chinese firm still has a successful PC business, and this year we expect updates to the MateBook X Pro and its 2-in-1 MatePad, as well as relevant software tweaks. There are, however, also rumours of a new all-in-one desktop PC, which would be a first for the company.

The 2020 MateBook X Pro was beautifully designed and featured a stunning display

Samsung will also launch new products at the start of the event, but have so far only teased a new laptop range. There are no specific details or specifications around these devices, but it’s said to be a new Galaxy Book that might also hint at the South Korean giant’s plans for seamless integration between devices.

While Lenovo isn’t attending MWC physically, it’ll still host a virtual product launch towards the end MWC. This will could be a very large presentation, given the amount of hardware set to be unveiled, and will include tablets, monitors, Chromebooks as well as PC accessories for its ThinkPad and IdeaPad ranges.

MWC 2022: Smartphones and foldables

Despite being in Barcelona we expect most of the handsets on show to come from Chinese manufacturers, with Oppo, OnePlus, Honor and Realme all scheduled to present new devices.

OnePlus fans will have a chance to see its latest range – the OnePlus 10 and 10 Pro – which will launch in the UK in th spring. Both will again feature Hasselblad camera technology and upgrades to the display and design. What’s more, the Hasselblad partnership has slid across to OnePlus’ sister company Oppo, which will also debut a new handset at the event.

Realme is also set to launch a new flagship smartphone – the GT 2 and GT 2 Pro – which has already been released in China. When it finally makes it to the UK market, it’ll be among the first handsets to be powered by the Snapdragon 8th-Gen processor. The device will also feature a 150-degree ultrawide camera and a colour-changing back cover made from a biopolymer material. Rounding up the Chinese offerings is Honor, which will unveil its Magic 4 5G series on the first day of the event.

European offerings will primarily come from HMD Global which plans to show off its latest Nokia C-Series handsets. These are follow-ups to the G-Series devices the firm revealed at CES 2022, which we also expect to see at MWC. We also expect MWC regulars Motorola to have some kind of presence at the event, though no handsets are currently rumoured for unveiling.

Beyond devices in the works, participants will get a chance to see recently launched offerings from Samsung, such as the Galaxy S22, and Huawei’s P50 Pro. For foldable smartphones, we wouldn’t expect any new models to be revealed at MWC 2022, although Samsung will likely have its Galaxy Fold 3 and Flip handset on display, while Huawei is no doubt keen show off its P50 Pocket flip phone, fitted with a foldable 6.9in OLED display and Snapdragon 888 4G processor.

Stay tuned to IT Pro for all the latest hardware news from MWC 2022.

OnwardMobility, the company that promised to launch a 5G-enabled BlackBerry by 2021, has closed down, ending yet another attempt to resurrect the once-famed brand.

The Texas-based firm was working on an Android-based BlackBerry device, complete with classic physical keyboard, for release in the US and Europe.

BlackBerry phones haven't been made by the company itself since 2016 due to poor sales. Instead, the company offers the brand name under a license, and all handsets released since have so far come from the Chinese firm TCL communications.

OnwardMobility picked up the license in 2020 but was unable to bring a product to market.

"It is with great sadness that we announce that OnwardMobility will be shutting down, and we will no longer be proceeding with the development of an ultra-secure smartphone with a physical keyboard," the company's statement reads.

Onward picked up the BlackBerry torch in August 2020, and at the time promised to release a "secure, 5G-enabled device" in 2021. However, the year came and went and the only BlackBerry news was an announcement on 4 January that older devices running the 7.1 OS and earlier would no longer be supported with updates.

In the days following that announcement, there was a barrage of social media posts and messages directed at OnwardMobility, with BlackBerry fans apparently upset that the firm had missed its self-set deadline without explanation.

On 7 January the firm addressed the issue with a statement claiming it was "not dead". It said that 2021 had been a "truly challenging year to launch a new phone", especially with the "high expectations" it had set for itself. The statement also appeared to suggest that a device had been built, but was held back by shipping difficulties.

Just over a month later, however, the company have posted a new statement to its website announcing that it is shutting down and, as a result, will no longer be releasing a 5G-enabled BlackBerry with a keyboard. The reasons why are still unclear, with OnwardMobility unreachable for comment at the time of writing.

"Please know that this was not a decision that we made lightly or in haste. We share your disappointment in this news and assure you this is not the outcome we worked and hoped for," its statement continued.

Smartphones and laptops should be manufactured to last longer in order to combat chip shortages, BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, has said.

The ongoing issues with the production and supply of semiconductors has exposed the "underlying problem" of pushing consumers towards frequent upgrades of smartphones, tablets and other devices, according to the IT industry body.

Both US and European governments have announced plans to tackle the global chip shortage, though the situation is not predicted to ease until the end of 2022.

However, the billions of pounds invested in these plans should have more focus on the growing mountain of electronic waste, according to BCS, which argues that it has the potential to add years to the lifespan of our devices.

"The underlying challenge that must be addressed is the very short lifespan of devices," said Alex Bardell, Chair of BCS Green IT Specialist Group. "The business model for electronics firms is to push their products, like smartphones, on ever-smaller time cycles as a way of generating revenue."

Bardell argues that users wouldn't need as many new devices if laptops, tablets and smartphones lasted for 10 years without "grinding to a halt". The idea goes against the business models of most manufacturers, but Bardell points out that there are not many other consumer products that become obsolete after three years.

A number of smartphone manufacturers have made changes to combat e-waste, though none of these appears to be due to the chip shortage. Companies like Samsung and Apple no longer ship chargers with their new handsets, for example, nd update cycles are extending for some smartphones.

However, the consumption rate of electronics is increasing by 3% annually, particularly in the smartphone industry, which is a key contributor to e-waste, according to the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Forum.

Consumers themselves also want longer device lifespans, according to data from CCS Insight, with 46% of UK consumers citing it as the most important thing a company can do to address environmental concerns.

"We fear that the desire for more prolonged use and repairability will fall on deaf ears as the electronics industry doesn't have a big vested interest in prolonging its product life cycles nor is it particularly beneficial to them to make their products more repairable at present," Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight told IT Pro.

"We note that most device makers continue to develop products on an annual cycle and to change that would be to fundamentally change the way the industry largely works."

Turning to the past can be a funny way of inspiring future innovations, especially in a fast-moving industry such as technology. Indeed, the search for ways to contend with Moore’s Law will not be found in boxy monitors and content cartridges.

Trends and technologies from times gone by can obviously have a resurgence. The revival of vinyl records over the past decade is a classic example of a technology many had feared lost in the digital revolution making a comeback.

In the mobile world, one of the stories of 2017 was the revival of the Nokia 3310 – a classic analogue handset synonymous with the 2000s. This feature phone, designed to appeal to those hoping for a digital detox, or simply needing a backup handset, shifted approximately 13.5 million units worldwide in the third quarter of 2017 alone.

The Nokia 3310 was relaunched in 2017 at a purchase price of £50

This overwhelming positive reception would inspire Nokia’s parent company, HMD Global, to revive modern versions of other classic devices, including the 8810 (also known as ‘Banana Phone’), 210 and 2720 Flip amongst others. With a dearth of innovation currently plaguing the market, manufacturers are pushing nostalgia to its limits.

Future nostalgia

Such success is great evidence of leveraging ‘glory days’ to make a device more appealing, especially considering more than 120 million units of the original Nokia 3310 were sold. The popularity of an original product paves the way for businesses to “wield nostalgia” to gain sales, principal analyst at Canalys, Ben Stanton, tells IT Pro.

“The number of people a brand can touch, just by having a new version of an old device in the media, is huge as it throws the brand into the limelight and touches on some of that positive sentiment people have. The newer Nokia 3310 laid the groundwork for the Razr and several design elements in that respect.

“We're getting to a stage in the smartphone era where I can see companies that might try to play on that nostalgia. If Apple were to launch a revamped version of the original iPhone, with an updated iOS and a decent battery life, the device would sell to collectors and people that like a retro or nostalgic feel. You even see influencers and celebrities moving away from new technologies like wireless earbuds and going back to wired headphones, because it's the retro, 90s look, which is coming back not just in devices, but in fashion as well.”

Smart casual

The idea of fashionable tech is also one that extends to business. It may not be applied in the same way and, fear not, nobody is predicting a return of the Compaq Deskpro. Computer design, however, is important in the modern enterprise environment.

Last year, for instance, Apple launched new iMacs that burst out of the silver box to be widely available in vibrant colours that can’t help but remind us of the original iMac. It’s an example of how Apple understands the way it slots into its customers’ lifestyles, says head of commercial for broadband and mobiles at uSwitch, Ernest Doku.

The colourful 2021 iMacs tapped into distant memories of the iMac G3

“Apple offers shades of their colourful and striking looks in modern all-in-one iMac computers, which continues their ability to break into the mainstream, where nearly every desktop PC in a 90s movie or TV show was one of their attractive unibody efforts.

“There remains a desire for consumers and enterprises alike to have devices which fit into their lifestyle and brand ethos, but with a move to remote working, there has certainly been a rise in the desire for simple, utilitarian design as much as nostalgic appeal.”

Recipe for success

There are limits to how much a nostalgic take on a modern design can inspire sales. One key example of this is the Motorola Razr – the 2019 revival of the market-dominating flip phone.

With meaningful competition in the foldable space only coming from Samsung at the time, the Razr may well have been on a hiding to nothing in the first place. Reviewers, though, were critical of its camera quality, the lack of fast charge or wireless charging, and no water and dust resistance, despite a $1,500 price point.

“Motorola is a brand heavily trading on a historic fondness, marrying the clamshell form factor of the Razr with its latest folding phones, complete with an option to mirror the original physical keyboard and menus on the touchscreen,” Doku says.

The Razr revival was highly anticipated but fell flat in terms of functionality

“While subsequent iterations of the Razr strive to solve some of the critical feedback, it showed that getting that nostalgic device's core functionality correct is key for sustained success for Motorola, and brands in general. These devices are an indication that nostalgia only goes so far, and consumers are still eager to enjoy modern functionality in tandem with retro stylings.

“All of the most successful efforts have been able to merge the two – beautiful looks while retaining all of the core functionality that’s needed today. There's a reason why efforts to bring back T9 texting and pagers have ultimately been less successful than those bringing an early 2000s feel but with features grounded in 2022.”

Another brick in the wall

Designs inspired by years gone by, Stanton counters, can get in the way of innovation. Round smartwatch displays, for example, largely come at the “expense of the applications used on that watch”, he says, adding various demographic challenges arise if you fixate on the past.

“There are some demographics that have no interaction with brands like Nokia and Motorola,” he says. “Anyone below the age of about 18 has probably never come into contact with one of the glory devices, and these brands are specifically creating initiatives to target younger people.”

These brands, he continues, might encounter a demographic black hole of people who aren’t tech-savvy and don’t really care much about technology. Ironically, therefore, retro designs appeal more to customers who buy flagship devices, and may only get a ‘brick phone’ like the Nokia 3310 on the side as a second device.

While nostalgia may be a powerful marketing tool, it doesn’t mean tapping into this force will render your business successful, Stanton concludes. “These brands need a very strong portfolio of products in the modern day to back up that marketing play.

"BlackBerry is the perfect example of a company that was leaning on nostalgia greatly, and never had the product to back it up. Likewise, with Motorola and Nokia, the vast majority of their sales don’t come in the categories we've talked about, so even if they can steer people onto the brand, they still have to execute.”

A developer preview of Android 13 has been released offering a first look at the mobile operating system's new design and feature updates.

The preview is available now to download on all Pixel smartphones from the Pixel 4 to the latest Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. A fully finished version of the OS is not expected until later in the year, presumably sometime in Q3, but the developer preview is often a good indication of how it will ultimately look and feel.

At face value, the user interface doesn't appear to have any significant design changes, though there is a further expansion of 'Material You'. Launched with Android 12, Material You is a customisable feature that takes the colour themes of a user's wallpaper and applies it across all elements of their display, such as buttons, sliders and even the Google icons.

For Android 13, the feature now includes all apps; so for example, the WhatsApp icon will switch to a silhouette version and take on the colours of the wallpaper. It isn't a very big change from a technical standpoint, but visually it will be very noticeable.

Android 13 privacy features

There are more substantial changes for privacy and security, with tweaks to how Android handles permissions. Many of these changes are aimed at making it easier to create bespoke settings at the app level, rather than system wide.

Photo Picker will allow users to share photos and videos with individual apps without the need to permit the app to access their entire library. Instead, the users can select specific content to share. Google says it plans to bring this feature to all phones running Android 11 and up.

A similar function is also available for apps to connect safely with Wi-Fi points. The new Wi-Fi permission feature allows apps to connect without needing location permissions, which has historically been problematic for apps that needed to connect to nearby Wi-Fi devices. Apps targeting Android 13 will be now able to request the "NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES" permission with the "neverForLocation" flag instead, which Google says should help promote a privacy-friendly app design.

As it is a developer preview, that also means new developer tools. These include API functions to add setting shortcuts directly to an app with custom tiles. A new system dialog lets the user add the tile in one step, without leaving the app, rather than having to go to Quick Settings to add the tile.

There is also 'Per-app language preferences' for apps that let users choose a language that differs from the system language. These apps can now use a new platform API to either set or get the user's preferred language, which Google hopes will reduce boilerplate code. This is where sections of code are repeated in multiple places with little or no variation.

Developers will also be able to use faster hypenation to make wrapped text easier to read for a more adaptive UI. According to Google, hyphenation performance will be up by as much as 200% on Android 13. To enable it, developers can simply input 'fullFast' or 'normalFast' frequencies.

How to access the Android 13 changes

To introduce these changes, developers need to flash a system image to any Pixel device from 4 onwards. However, If you don't have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio.

Samsung has unveiled three new Galaxy S22 series smartphones that may worry fans of its popular Galaxy Note series.

The South Korean giant launched the Samsung Galaxy S22, the Galaxy S22+ and the Galaxy S22 Ultra on Wednesday, with each featuring a new Note-like design.

The Samsung Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ have very similar spec sheets, with the latter only different in screen size, battery capacity and charging capabilities. The regular model has a 6.1in FHD+ AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, whereas the Galaxy S22+ boasts a larger 6.6in screen. Both models share the same camera setup, with each housing a 50MP main camera (wide), a 12MP ultra-wide lens and a 10MP telephoto lens. They also both come with a 10MP selfie camera.

However, both the standard Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ are dwarfed, both in size and specifications, by the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, a device that perhaps signals the demise of the Galaxy Note series.

Samsung fans might have suspected the death of the Note range when the first 'Ultra' model launched in 2020 due to its similarly-sized screen and business-focused software features. With the Galaxy S22 Ultra, it looks like the Note and S ranges have now been fully merged, with the latest version featuring both S-Pen support and a holder built into its chassis, which could be seen as the final nail in the Note's coffin.

True to its name, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra packs the biggest and best capabilities of any S22 series phone. It's 163mm tall and weighs 229g, features a 6.8in Edge QHD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate, and packs a 4,855mAh battery. Even its memory is ultra with an option for 12GB RAM and 1TB storage. Add to that a 108MP main camera and dual telephoto lenses that have its 100x Space Zoom feature.

Is the Galaxy Note gone for good?

The future of the Note series has been uncertain for some time, with rumours of its demise circulating early in 2021, partly fuelled by the news that the S series would start offering support for the stylus (S Pen), which the Note was famous for.

Perhaps the most ominous sign the Note is no more can be taken from the fact that Samsung didn't release a new version last year. Instead, the company has focused on its foldable range, the Galaxy Z Fold 3, which does appear to be an expansion of a Note, and the Galaxy Z Flip.

From a business perspective, this does make sense, especially given the ongoing chip shortage. Sales for the Galaxy S21 were a little lower than expected, which could explain why a Note 21 never materialised, so rather than trying to maintain two flagships, it makes sense to simply merge the two.