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The Pixel 5 arrived at Google’s recent Launch Night In event, a few weeks earlier than expected in a year when the pandemic is delaying smartphone launches left and right. But the September launch isn’t the only thing that’s different. With the Pixel 5, Google is redefining what it means to be a flagship phone. This latest iteration isn’t the most premium and definitely not the most expensive. But it is the most Google-y, and perhaps that’s exactly what Google intended. A FLAGSHIP THAT ISN’T PREMIUM The Pixel 5 goes against the ‘flagship phone’ trend in some fundamental ways. It’s cheaper than the Pixel 4. It’s even missing some of the next-gen features that made the Pixel 4 interesting. It has the same Snapdragon 765G processor that’s in the LG…

Google’s new 4K Chromecast comes with a voice-enabled remote control, but the best feature will likely be the new Google TV user interface that sits atop Android TV. Rather than focus on apps and services, Google TV is designed to help you find content you want to watch on the streaming services that you subscribe to. Old timers – that is, tech enthusiasts whose memories date back to about this time in 2010 – will remember Google TV as an epic misfire that cost Logitech a ton of money. I’m sure Google figures people have forgotten all about that Google TV. In any event, the company didn’t give us a lot to go on at its 30-minute announcement event, but it did demonstrate how voice – using Google Assistant on…

Samsung’s follow-up to the Galaxy Fold, the new Galaxy Z Fold2 is now available to buy. The company revamped the foldable phone’s design to deliver larger displays both inside and out, along with new punch-hole selfie cameras, new colours and tweaks across the rest of the specifications to boot. PRICE The ‘Z’ which now forms part of the name, is borrowed from the company’s Galaxy Z Flip (which itself now comes in a new 5G variant), sporting a smaller form factor than the tablet-style Fold. Prices start at £1,799 and the phone comes with 256GB of internal storage. As with the Galaxy Z Flip, a limited-edition Thom Browne package is also being made available for £2,999. There are only 5,000 units globally and it includes a Thom Browne-styled Galaxy Watch 3 and Buds Live,…

If you own a Pixel 2 or later, your phone is about to get some new features. After months of betas, Google has begun rolling out Android 11 to select Pixel, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme phones, but if you don’t own a Google phone, you won’t see the full version yet. OnePlus, Oppo and Realme have announced that some customers will be getting access to public betas and previews while the full version is still being developed. That’s better than usual, but still a far cry from iOS 14, which is already available on hundreds of millions of iPhones. Still, if your phone isn’t on that list, you’re not missing out on all that much. Android 11 is very much a maintenance release, and as such, it has few new features that you’ll…

Price: £1,099 (inc VAT) from fave.co/32ZMK68 The Sony Xperia 1 II may have a confusing name but it’s a clear statement from the company that doubles-down on what its fans like and serves as the brand’s first step into 5G. Sony has cultivated a reputation of technical excellence and as experts in the realms of both media creation and consumption – thanks to the likes of its superb cameras, its TV and audio products, not to mention the PlayStation brand as a whole. Its smartphones, however, don’t neatly slot into either of these camps; serving as one of the few devices that encompass the entirety of Sony’s consumer efforts in a single product category – the problem is, they haven’t grabbed consumers in the way that the company has hoped thus…

While you can spend a thousand pounds or more on a phone if you want, you don’t actually need to anymore. In the past few months, Apple and Google have both released impressive mid-range phones that bring many of the features usually reserved for premium handsets, including wireless charging, all-screen designs and impressive battery life. But as with all things Apple and Google, the iPhone SE and Pixel 4a are not created equal. But I wanted to see just how different they are. I had been using the iPhone SE since receiving it in early June, so when the Pixel 4a arrived on my doorstep, I popped out the SIM and jumped back into the world of Android. Here’s what I learned: 1. SPEED ISN’T ALL THAT IMPORTANT The…

While the basic premise of a foldable is simple enough, finding use cases and people who actually see themselves relying on this bleeding-edge hardware is proving a little trickier – especially right now. The newly-launched Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 (£1,799 from fave.co/3cOlJpK) is the latest entry in a small-but-growing assortment of foldable mobiles, primarily from Samsung, but also the likes of Huawei and Motorola/Lenovo. While the category as a whole is still relatively young, it’s clear that the Z Fold2 doesn’t just learn from its direct predecessor – last year’s Galaxy Fold – but every major foldable launched over the past few years. The design doesn’t deviate from the original Galaxy Fold all that much, although it does serve as a notable refinement; shrinking down every dimension (aside from height) while offering…

The Google Pixel 5, which was unveiled during the company’s recent Launch Night In event, was definitely a surprise – especially if you were paying any attention to the lofty rumours leading up to its debut. Rather than offering a giant screen, the latest Snapdragon processor, and state-of-the-art biometric security, Google’s new handset is surprisingly pedestrian. While we don’t mind that the Pixel 5 comes in with a lower price, if you start to compare it to the Pixel 4a 5G, the Pixel 5’s position becomes confusing. Google delivered on its promise to bring 5G to its affordable 4a phone back when it launched this summer. While it’s not shipping yet, it’s £200 cheaper than the Pixel 5 and has a display two-tenths of an inch bigger, with the same processor:…

Meet the successor to the Google Home, with Google finally taking the wraps off its much-anticipated (and well-leaked) Nest Audio smart speaker, complete with a funky rectangular shell and upgraded audio quality. On sale now for £89, the same price as the discontinued Google Home, the Google Nest Audio had been rumoured, leaked and teased for months, with even Google circulating images of its yet-to-be-announced smart speaker back in July. Unveiled during Google’s virtual hardware event, the 6.89in-tall Nest Audio is the same speaker we saw in those teaser images earlier this summer. Arriving in a rectangular, rounded shape, complete with a familiar fabric covering and equipped with four telltale Google Assistant LEDs, the Nest Audio is the first new Google smart speaker since last year’s Google Nest Mini, and it comes with new…

If you thought LG’s gesture-based ThinQ phones, water droplet-inspired Velvet and DualScreen cases were brilliant moves by a smartphone maker way ahead of its time, wait until you get a load of the Wing, a must-see concept phone that’s straight out of an episode of Westworld. The Wing naming is quite literal: it’s the world’s first 5G swivel smartphone, as LG claims. When the second screen is rotated, it kind of looks like the phone has wings, with one horizontal screen on top of a smaller squarish one. It’s definitely unique, but looking at the photos LG has provided, it’s hard to see how using it will be comfortable or natural. The primary use seems to be watching movies or displaying pictures on the landscape and getting work done on the…

You might not have noticed many changes to Android 11 when you updated your Pixel phone last week – unless you tried to take a screenshot on your Pixel 2 or Pixel 3. Depending on which navigation method you selected, you might have lost the handy screenshot shortcut that was built into the power button. While Google has taken away two-button navigation on the Pixel 4 and 4a, it remains on the Pixel 2 and 3, which is where the problems begin. If you were using two-button navigation on Android 10 – with the pill-shaped home button and back arrow – it’ll remain on Android 11. However, like the other Pixel phones, when you long-press the power button, you’ll get a whole new set of options. At the top are three buttons…

Price: £539 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2RV5vRY Five months after its release, the Red Magic 5G is still sporting the joint-highest refresh rate of any phone currently available and its Snapdragon 865 processor is still the greatest around. Why, then, has Nubia already decided to launch a follow-up in the Red Magic 5S? Upon hearing of its launch, that was the exact same question I was asking. The minuscule changes don’t justify a new release, so this review has to be approached without leaning on its predecessor too much. Is the latest Red Magic phone still among the best gaming handsets you can buy, or has the competition caught up? DESIGN Before you even open the packaging, it’s clear that the Red Magic 5S is a gaming phone through and through. The…

If your child’s school has been forced to close, Microsoft’s Office app for Android allows children to work on paper and submit their work electronically. It launched in February, a few weeks before the pandemic drove us all indoors. As my family hunkered down to work and study from home, we found that the Office app could be used to manage day-to-day document tasks for my kids, as well as my wife and I. And most people don’t know about it, either. Below, you’ll find a few quick tutorials on how to get things done with the Office app. But it’s amazing how much it can actually do. You can take a picture of a page of a book and use the Office app to extract the text automatically using…

Google has unveiled a 5G version of its Pixel 4a smartphone. Priced just £499, you can pre-order it now from fave.co/2EODdph. It’s due to be released on 19 November. FEATURES Although you might think that the Pixel 4a 5G is simply a version of the regular 4a but with added 5G connectivity, you’d be wrong. And not just slightly wrong, the phone is considerably different. You could think of it as the Pixel 4a XL or even, in some ways the Pixel 5 XL. That’s because it has a much larger 6.2in display, still OLED with a 60Hz refresh rate for those interested. Although it looks visually similar (beyond the larger size), the 4a 5G shares some specs with the Pixel 5 starting with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G and also…

Ever since Apple hit on a formula for success with the iPhone XR and iPhone 11, Samsung has been trying to replicate that formula: selling premium-grade smartphones with lower points of entry. The Galaxy S20 Fan Edition is the latest attempt to try. Samsung is stylizing its new phone as the FE, and it’s hard not to see the visual similarity with the iPhone SE. Even with ‘fan’ out of the name, however, I’m still not 100 per cent sure what sort of fan this phone is built for. Fans of Samsung’s phones will obviously want the latest and greatest phone the company sells – and likely already own it – and fans of bargains already have several handsets to choose from in the A51 and A71. Even fans of…

The original Samsung Galaxy Fold never really got a chance to make a name for itself. While it launched to a ton of fanfare, by the time it landed on shelves following a months-long delay due to design and manufacturing deficiencies, the Galaxy Note 10+ and iPhone 11 Pro were stealing the limelight and the wow factor had long faded. But Samsung persisted and now the follow-up has arrived with a new name (Galaxy Z Fold2), a new price and a new lease on life. Unsurprisingly, Samsung is sticking with a very similar form factor as the one introduced with the original Fold, but every aspect of the Galaxy Z Fold2 has been given an upgrade, from the outside cover display to the inside screen ratio. But while the hardware is…

Ever since Google launched the first Pixel phone in 2016, its main appeal, even more than the camera, has been the delivery of Android updates before every other phone. From security patches to full version releases, Pixels are consistently at the front of the line, forcing other phone makers to catch up. Many of them have come close. Earlier this year Samsung was able to match Google’s speed with a few security updates, as well as a guarantee of three generations of updates for most new Galaxy phones. OnePlus and Oppo have already launched near-final public beta previews for Android 11, and One UI 3.0 is starting to roll out to developers. Budget phones are now launching with the newest version of Android onboard. But even if Samsung or LG…

Price: £499 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3093UfN The Nokia 8.3 5G was originally unveiled as Nokia’s first 5G smartphone back in March 2020, but it has taken the smartphone giant months to actually get the smartphone to market. It was exciting back then, but since then we’ve seen the likes of the OnePlus Nord, Pixel 4A and iPhone SE all revealed, so does the Nokia 8.3 5G still offer enough to tempt mid-range consumers? With a large display, Zeiss-engineered cameras and all-day battery life, there’s certainly a lot to like about the Nokia 8.3 5G, but it’s not the perfect smartphone experience. DESIGN The Nokia 8.3 5G isn’t radically different in design to other Nokias we’ve seen in recent years, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sporting what Nokia refers…

Some of us just never got over our love of pens and pencils, and Samsung’s latest Note20 phones are here to scratch that itch. They cost a pretty penny (£1,199 for the Galaxy Note20 Ultra), but now you can do even more useful things with the S Pen stylus, assuming you can sort out the myriad features Samsung bundles with the phones. Here are eight awesome features of Samsung’s new S Pen to get you started. 1. AIR ACTIONS Air Actions, one of Samsung’s signature S Pen features, is back on the Note20 with even more functionality. You can use the S Pen button to launch the camera (long-press) and snap photos (short-press). It also supports more apps including, Samsung AR Doodle, Samsung Gallery, Snapchat, and Spotify. The gestures vary…