Weekend phone talk: Ivan

As the first half of 2018 gets further back in the rear-view mirror it gets easier to see the full picture. These are Ivan's musings on the highs and lows of the first six months of the year as well as his hopes of what's to come in the second half. Paul and Yordan already laid their ponderings for your couch enjoyment but if you missed them, feel free to catch up. Ivan: I'm loving 2018 so far but bring on the real stuff! First half recap Let me preface this by saying that half a year is a long time so this will be a long-ish article. You can still get your money back if...

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Weekly poll results: bring back full bezels until cams go under the screen

Since the advent of touchscreen phones designers have had one persistent goal - how to make the screen take as much of the front panel as possible. Keyboards were the first to go, then the last few buttons, bezels started to shrink and even the earpiece had to go behind the screen on occassion. Only one thing remains - the camera. So whether it's a wide notch like on the iPhone X or a narrow one like on the Essential phone, a lot of new phones have a notch of some kind. And seemingly everyone hates it. Our poll shows that people want phones to go back to full bezels. There's a growing...

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YouTube will no longer discriminate videos with different aspect ratios

YouTube has just announced that the videos with an unusual aspect ratio watched on the desktop - hence on a desktop browser - will no longer appear with black bars. Instead, they will be optimized and stretched to appear bigger. It does so by removing the default 16:9 frame and optimizing the UI to adjust to different screen sizes. Could this change finally make vertical videos less annoying? (Short answer: No.) Anyway, you can see the difference in the screenshots below. Before the update and after the update The change should be gradually rolling out to everyone after being...

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Counterclockwise: the history of Siemens phones and their many innovations

I still remember the first time I saw a Siemens ME45 - a black phone with amber lighting and it was water, shock and dust resistant. It was like a stealthy bat-phone. The ME45 internals are identical to the Siemens S45, the company's first GPRS-capable phone. Both are from 2001. A year later the Siemens S45i came out, it added email support. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Siemens ME45 • Siemens S45 • Siemens S45i Siemens' history with telephony dates back to the 19th century when the company got into building telephone exchanges (it was building telegraphs before...

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Review: Huawei's GPU Turbo update

What is GPU Turbo? Huawei recently unveiled an interesting software project to the public. It is called "GPU Turbo" and should provide great graphics performance improvements to most recent Huawei smartphones. It definitely sounds like something to get excited about. The enhancement will come as a part of a software update which will start seeding in stages in August. We got the chance to test the update in beta form before the general public and we're happy to share our impressions. But, before we get into our actual test findings, let's explain just what GPU Turbo is about. How...

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OxygenOS 5.1.4 for OnePlus 5/5T brings new features and July security patch

Strangely enough, the OnePlus 3 and 3T got their July security patch before the OnePlus 5 and 5T but the wait is worth it because the last two handsets are now equipped with some brand new features. The OxygenOS 5.1.4 OTA update bumps up the security patch of both devices to July 2018 but more importantly, it introduces a cool new battery-related feature. It's called "Sleep Standby Mode," which reduces the amount of power drained while the device is not used. In the OnePlus forum post, the company explains that the device intelligently tracks your usage patterns and when you are...

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Rumor: 2018 iPad Pros will have smaller footprint and no headphone jack

There's not much info on this year's upcoming iPad Pro lineup except that it should be equipped with the iPhone X's advanced face recognition tech. The latest report confirms that and contributes to the whole story. According to the Japanese website Macotakara, both the 10.5-inch and the 12.9-inch iPad Pros will have reduced dimensions overall. The 10.5-inch model will go from 250.6 x 174.1 x 6.1mm down to 247.5 x 178.7 x 6mm while the 12.9-inch one will get an even more extreme side cut - from 305.7 x 220.6 x 6.9mm down to 280 x 215 x 6.4. Obviously, Apple will shave off the bezels...

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