Category: Phones

Tested Technology complemented Wileyfox hugely on its initial choice of the Cyanogen operating system. And we don’t take that back, even now that Cyanogen Inc, the operating system provider, has gone to join the Norwegian Blues (the name might have been a clue—it means “Blue Maker”, and also happens to signify a class of poisons). When Wileyfox launched its first phones nearly two years ago, Cyanogen was an improvement on stock Android, and a clear… Now read on…

The smartphone market is slowing down. IDC reports that last year growth in worldwide shipments fell from 28pc to 10.4pc, and will remain on a downward path this year. The biggest dent in the market is at the high end. As Tested Technology predicted over a year ago, those bling phones are being overshadowed by the rise of commodity phones, utility items that deliver what users need—and no more—in a plain package at an affordable… Now read on…

When I started this review I never intended it to run to three parts. But living with the P9 day-to-day has uncovered such a bunch of interesting features I haven’t been able to restrain myself from passing all the news on to you. In part 2 of this review I covered the fascinating rear-facing Leica cameras in some depth, but there remain some other important features of this combo-camera I haven’t covered so far. I… Now read on…

  Part one of my Huawei P9 review is here, but I’ve postponed my review of the P9’s cameras in order to gain as full an understanding as I can of  the principles behind them. And, of course, to work my way through all their myriad functions. I was intending also to cover here other features I’d omitted from part one. But it turns out there’s so much to be said about the cameras that… Now read on…

In my review of the Cyanogen-based Wileyfox Storm I welcomed the arrival of the new generation of modestly priced smartphones, functional without being flashy, more “burners” than “bling”. I saw the nearly disposable utility smartphone as a trend worth encouraging. Flagship phones, I argued, have had their day. Hardware is transitory; don’t fall in love with it. Huawei’s latest sleek and slim top-end P9 has gone some way to changing my mind. I’ll try to explain why.… Now read on…

The first 10″ iPad at the beginning of this decade took two hands to hold comfortably, so you’d need a third hand for pointing, tapping and swiping. Three years earlier the iPhone had introduced us to a new sense of touchy-feely intimacy with the device we held, but its 3.5″ display was too small once you’d popped up a virtual keyboard. And then came the 7″ tablet. There was room to work with an onscreen… Now read on…

The Google guy who showed me my first Android phone some six years ago was very keen on the flexibility of the new operating system. “Look,” he said, “see how screen rotates from portrait to landscape when you turn the phone round!” I said that seemed like an intelligent feature, but then Google was clearly an intelligent company. “What happens,” I asked, “if you rotate it now through 180 degrees to the upside-down landscape mode?… Now read on…

“…defiantly recommended!” I BORROW THE PHRASE from a user’s enthusiastic review on the Vodafone Web site. It may not be exactly what she meant, but it seems to sum up the mood. You’d be hard-pressed, I think, to find a cheaper equivalent. In fact you might reasonably expect to pay twice the price Vodafone is asking for its latest Smart Ultra 6. It’s a very good if unexciting large-screen Android phone that seems to be… Now read on…