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Qualcomm has announced Quick Charge 4, which will bring even faster charging and other new features to devices including smartphones this year. At its Snapdragon Tech Summit in New York, Qualcomm officially announced Quick Charge 4 ahead of its release in 2017. The platform, for want for a better word, is the leading charging method in more than 300 accessories and 100 devices. The headline feature of Quick Charge 4 is something called ‘5 in 5’ meaning you can get five hours worth of battery life from just a five minute long charge. Quick Charge will be available via the upcoming Snapdragon 835 processor which Qualcomm has given the first details on. Thanks to technologies such as ‘Dual Charge’, ‘typical premium phone users’ can expect to see up to 20…

£799 • xiaomi-mi.co.uk Previously a concept phone, Xiaomi has entered its Mi Mix into production. At its November unveiling this revolutionary new Android phone entirely overshadowed the amazing Mi Note 2, with a design quite unlike anything we’ve seen before. We’ve been reading rumours for months that the iPhone 8 and Galaxy S8 could come with a bezel-less display, and Xiaomi just beat both to the punch with the Mi Mix. Although the screen is huge at 6.4in, the loss of the top bezel means the phone itself isn’t much larger than most 5.7- to 6in phablets. The Mi Mix has an incredibly high screen-to-body ratio of 91.3 percent. Strictly speaking it’s not entirely edgeless – there is still a bottom bezel, plus a thin black border around the screen…

£349 • samsung.com/uk The Gear S3 Frontier is the new top of the range smartwatch from Samsung. Has the Korean tech giant done enough to convince people to get even more connected? Are smartwatches cursed, forever to be luxury items? Smartphones are a vital tool of modern life. Unable to fully function without one, the Gear S3 could be just another forgettable sidekick. A year on from the success of the bezel-controlled and undoubtedly well designed Gear S2 comes this, the Gear S3 Frontier. It is one version of two new Samsung smartwatches unveiled at IFA 2016 in Berlin in September 2016, released with the Gear S3 Classic. Both have exactly the same features (and price) and differ only in design. But smartwatch sales have taken a dip in the…

£TBC • casio.co.uk As we break in 2017 we have a huge range of choice when it comes to smartwatches. If you include fitness trackers like Fitbit then there are hundreds to pick from and it’s often hard to distinguish one from the other, let alone which is the best smartwatch for you. Casio has announced a new smartwatch for the outdoors. Part of the firm’s Pro Trek Smart range, the catchy-named WSD-F20 is a fully featured watch that caught our attention as it is one of the first smartwatches in the world to run Android Wear 2.0, Google’s long-awaited new watch operating system. We took the WSD-F20 for a spin at CES. Design Compared to last year’s WSD-F10, the WSD-F20 is a step up in design. Orange can be…

With VR headsets ranging from the budget Google Cardboard all the way to the high-end HTC Vive all readily available to buy in the UK, the 360 photo and video hype is gaining traction – fast. This is mainly due to Facebook support, offering users the ability to view 360-degree photos and videos without the need for a VR headset, directly from iOS and Android devices. With the functionality now available, how do you take 360 photos for Facebook? Here’s where we show you how to create VR-ready photos and videos on Android. What is a 360 photo or video? Before we explain how to take 360 photos and videos for Facebook, let’s first explain what a 360-degree photo is. Spurred forward by the VR hype train, Facebook is the…

Smartphones The best phones of 2017 will offer faster performance and longer battery life, thanks to the new Snapdragon 835 chip for which headline performance figures include 25 percent faster graphics rendering and half the power consumption compared to the Snapdragon 801. It’s also got 20 percent extra performance vs the Snapdragon 820, according to Qualcomm. You can expect this processor to be paired with at least 4- but potentially as much as 8GB of RAM, a minimum amount of 32GB of storage, large Quad-HD screens and class-leading cameras. HTC 11 Release date: April 2017 HTC has launched its new phones at MWC in recent years, but skipped the show in 2016 and held its own event to unveil the HTC 10 (pictured). We expect its successor to be unveiled…

Google recently announced the release of a new IoT (Internet of Things) platform that utilises the power of Android and will allow developers to easily create new smart devices. Android Things is its name and there’s a real chance that the platform could be a very big deal. We take a quick look at what is Android Things and why it matters. What is the Internet of Things? There’s been a lot of talk about IoT over the past few years. This is due to the fact that technology has now reached a point where small, low power, internet enabled circuitry can be cheaply integrated into a number of products. This explains the growth in internet security cameras, door locks, thermostats, lights and, yes, even smart fridges. The principle of…

£472 • xiaomi-mi.co.uk It’s nearly two years since Xiaomi unveiled its Mi Note and Mi Note Pro, and a lot has changed in that time. More akin to the recent Xiaomi Mi5s Plus than the original Mi Note, the Mi Note 2 was somewhat overshadowed at its launch by the awe-inspiring bezel-less Mi Mix (page 52), but it is nonetheless a fantastic Android phone. Not as revolutionary as the bezel-less Mi Mix with which it shared its launch event, and with much in common with the now discontinued Galaxy Note 7 in terms of its design, the Mi Note 2 has in the most part been wrongly overlooked by the technology media. That’s a real shame, because this is a really nice phone and, leaving aside its ‘only’ full-HD but…

£299 • samsung.com/uk Samsung’s CES 2017 offerings were exciting, with a new Chromebook and the company’s first gaming laptop, but the bad news is that neither of those are coming to the UK any time soon (probably not at all). We did, however, get to spend some time with the company’s new mid-range phones on the show floor. The firm has updated its A series for 2017, which comprises the A3, A5 and A7. The best-seller is the A3, which is the smallest of the three models with a 4.7in screen. Design The first thing that struck us about the new A3 and its bigger siblings is its design, which now looks even more like Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S7 thanks to its slightly curved back and rounded edges that feel…

Netflix has finally introduced a feature that lets you download TV shows and films to watch offline. This follows Amazon’s lead after the company introduced of offline viewing for Prime Video last year, but does come as a surprise because an interview in November with Netflix COO suggested that the company wasn’t intending to introduce the much sought-after feature for the UK or US any time soon. In an interview with CNBC in November, Netflix’s COO Ted Sarandos said that the company is looking into making movies available to download, but that this would only be for countries that have low broadband speeds. Other sources suggested that Netflix would introduce downloads but only for its Originals. However, while the selection is still limited, there’s much more than just Netflix’s Originals…

In the cold weather you don’t want to have to keep taking off your gloves whenever you want to answer a phone call or check your email. But that’s exactly the scenario in which many smartphone owners find themselves. This is due to the fact that touchscreens work by interacting with the small electrical charges in our fingers, something that warm woolly mittens negate. Of course you can buy specialist gloves that will work happily with your iPhone 7 or Samsung S7, but if you’re handy with a needle then it’s easy to make your own. We’ll show you how. What you’ll need The materials for DIY Touchscreen gloves is about as simple as it gets. Aside from your gloves all you’ll need are a darning needle and some conductive…

In November 2016 Qualcomm announced that its next-generation flagship processor would be the Snapdragon 835 – not the Snapdragon 830 as expected – and that it would be manufactured using the 10nm process in partnership with Samsung, which also made the Snapdragon 820 and 821 as part of a decade-long collaboration between the two companies. Few details were available at the time, but at CES 2017 Qualcomm has offered new information, which we have outlined below. See also: Best smartphones 2016. Now in production and expected to make it to devices by the first half of 2017, the Snapdragon 835 is exciting because it’s the processor expected to be used in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone, and likely a whole host of other flagship phones in 2017 including the…

First, we should explain that this is not the kind of scientific test where we put phones on tripods in ‘lab’ conditions. No. The aim here was simple: to use the phone cameras exactly as people do in the real world, and present the photos and video so you can see them all side by side. Some people will only be concerned by photo quality, others video. For some the selfie camera is the most important. Comparing cameras is a tricky business at the best of times, but we hope that the slideshows below help you to decide which you like best and offer the chance to see how they perform in real-world conditions. If your priority is video, it is worth going for a phone with good stabilisation as…

£190 • meizu.com/en Meizu makes decent but affordable Android phones, and its Meizu M3 Max will appeal to those looking for a large-screen phone on a budget. The M3 Max is currently available from Meizu’s online shop for $259.99 (£210.08), although the usual price is $329.99 (£266.62). Be warned that when buying from China you will be expected to pay import duty upon its arrival to the UK. How this is calculated depends on the value written on the paperwork, and when we received our package containing the M3 Max and MX6 (review coming soon) we were hit with a bill for £95.51 from DHL. Although that is for two phones, it’s still a fair bit more than the usual £20- to £30 we’re charged, so should certainly be factored…

£189 • nvidia.co.uk CES 2017 was full of new TVs from the likes of Samsung, Sony and LG but what about some cool products to plug into them. Well Nvidia has a new version of its media streamer – Shield TV. Design The new model of the Shield TV looks basically identical to the original so you’d be forgiven for confusing the two. It’s still black with a slightly angular design with the Nvidia green lighting. As mentioned above, the Pro model comes with a 500GB hard drive if you need it. Otherwise, the regular Shield TV has 16GB and this time around does not have the SD upgrade option which may annoy some. The biggest news in terms of specs and features is that the Shield TV 2017 support…

Google has updated its Chrome mobile browser to allow offline viewing of web pages and video. This is great news if you’re going to be away from a web connection with little to keep you occupied, although as always you’ll need to prepare before you leave. Fortunately, that’s a piece of cake. Here’s how to download web pages in Chrome and how to download video in Chrome. Download web pages for offline viewing Launch Chrome and browse to the web page you want to be able to read offline. Tap the three dots at the top of the Chrome window and hit the download icon (in between the star for bookmarks and the information icon). If you don’t see this icon you will need to update Chrome. The web page…

Black lights can be a lot of fun, causing teeth, white clothes, and neon colours into glow-in-the-dark. They’ll give your party a seventies or nineties (depending on your age) feel, and the kids will be mightily impressed. It’s incredibly easy to make a black light with your phone and we’ll show you how. What you’ll need The requirements for this particular project are very minimal. You’ll obviously need a smartphone with a flashlight capability (pretty much every one built in the last few years), some clear tape, plus blue and purple markers. You might also want some highlighter pens to create artwork that the black light can bring to life. We found yellow, pink, and orange worked the best. Creating the Black Light Take a small strip of clear sticky…