Inhoudsopgave van November 2020 - Tech Advisor

The bad news is it’s US-only for now. MICHAEL SIMON reports A recent Microsoft blog post (see fave.co/3gtjesY) brought both good and bad news for those waiting for its dual-screen smartphone – the Surface Duo. The good news is that it will ship September 10. The bad news is that initially it will only be available to buy in the US, with a UK release thought to be some way off. It’s also very expensive. Microsoft will be charging $1,399 (around £1,050) for the base configuration of its dual-screen Duo with 128GB of storage (add $100 for 256GB). You’re not getting much for your money other than the pleasure of being first. It has last year’s top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, just 6GB of RAM, a relatively small 3577mAh battery…

If you have about 200MB of bandwidth to spare and a taste for the nostalgic, why not take a moment and download Windows 95 as an app? Felix Rieseberg constructed one of Microsoft’s iconic operating systems as an Electron app, which is downloadable from GitHub (fave.co/3linmj5) for Windows, Mac or Linux. It’s unknown whether Rieseberg received any help from Microsoft itself, or whether or not what he constructed is technically legal. At this point, really, who cares? ‘Windows 95 v1.0’, as it’s referred to, isn’t totally functional. Apps like Notepad and Solitaire work, though Internet Explorer can’t break out of the virtual machine and access the Internet. That’s a shame, of course, because there’s an AOL executable just waiting to be used. (We can confirm that Windows 95 v1.0 runs…

You might think the new £849 Galaxy Note20 and £899 Galaxy S20 are two peas in the same pod as ‘affordable’ counterparts to their high-priced Ultra siblings. They’re not. While the Galaxy S20 is basically a smaller version of the S20 Ultra, with the same chip, RAM, and screen tech as its pricier sibling, the Galaxy Note20 shares very little with the Note20 Ultra. Samsung has set the cheaper Galaxy Note20 apart from both the Note20 Ultra and the Galaxy S20 Ultra with a number of changes, many of which might make buyers think twice about buying one. Here’s why your £849 might be better spent on the slightly older Galaxy S20 – or not. 1. THE NOTE20’S PROCESSOR IS FASTER THAN THE S20’S… Samsung has opted to outfit…

The follow-up to the Galaxy Fold is such a departure from the original beleaguered model that Samsung gave it a new name. The Galaxy Z Fold2 would seem to fix much of what was wrong with the original Fold, bringing bigger outside and inside screens, better cameras and a smarter design with a stronger screen and sturdier hinge. Whether that fits into ‘the new normal’ Samsung is selling with the Galaxy Note20 is another story. While Samsung continuously stressed during Unpacked how its line-up of new ‘power devices’ are built for the new way of doing things remotely, the original Galaxy Fold doesn’t really fit that mould. It’s a device for traveling light and convenient, and, let’s face it, to be seen by others. Even for those able to afford…

Price: £2,699 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3aZg92L The Surface Book 3 continues Microsoft’s five-year mission to create the ‘ultimate laptop’, still uniquely melding a tablet and keyboard base that can be used to create, work, and game. But the goal is harder to achieve in 2020 than ever before. At £1,599 up to £2,899, the Surface Book 3 is pricey. Worse, it offers little improvement over a new and very strong generation of dedicated laptops, from gaming machines with Nvidia’s latest RTX hardware to consumer devices optimized for extreme battery life and connectivity. Even Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 7 provides a superior tablet experience to the Surface Book 3’s. It’s a fantastic product for the do-it-all niche it serves. It’s just that as laptops around it continue to evolve and improve,…

Price: £379 from fave.co/2DNYVZJ OnePlus made its name undercutting flagship phones, but over time the brand slowly became exactly what it had originally set its stall against. I loved the OnePlus 8 Pro, but – like many others – noted that it is a flagship through and through, with the price to match. Enter the OnePlus Nord. Much has been made of the company’s return to the mid-range market – even Apple couldn’t generate this much hype around an affordable phone when it launched the iPhone SE – and it’s fair to say that expectations were high. So has OnePlus done it again? Well let’s put it this way: I moved from the OnePlus 8 Pro to the Nord for this review, and even though that phone costs more than…

Microsoft Rewards is basically free money, and not enough people know how to use it. We’re going to show you how to use Microsoft Rewards to help buy all the things you want – an Xbox Series X, Starbucks, Amazon gift cards – beginning with the awesome Game Pass for PC subscription. Like the name says, Microsoft Rewards is Microsoft’s incentive programme for using its consumer services. Using Bing earns you points. Playing Xbox games can earn you points. Playing PC games can earn you points. You can ‘chase points’ as much as you’d like, and earn more and more. Or you can chill, go about your daily activities as you normally would, and still earn points. All of these points can be traded in for stuff you’ll actually want.…

Just when you thought BlackBerry phones were gone for good, a brand-new start-up is claiming that a new one is on the way. And in case you’re wondering, yes it will have a physical keyboard. In a press release (see fave.co/32l3X8Q), Texas-based Onward Mobility announced that is has entered into an agreement with BlackBerry and FIH Mobile Limited to deliver a new 5G BlackBerry Android smartphone with physical keyboard in the first half of 2021. Little else is known about the phone except that it will, according to the report, be “secure”, “feature-rich” and “enable productivity, without sacrificing the user experience”. The company’s CEO also told the Register that the phone will be an “everyday device” that’s “the most secure and productive” with things like “a top-notch camera, and the…

Microsoft’s beautiful and punishing Flight Simulator 2020 reboot will spur a staggering $2.6 billion in PC hardware sales, Jon Peddie Research (JPR) estimates. Flight Simulator formally launched August 17. Previews of Flight Simulator largely agree it’s one of the most sophisticated flight sims, if not games, to release on the PC. You can read our thoughts on page 101. Jon Peddie Research believes this will cause PC players to buy new CPUs, GPUs and monitors. Don’t forget the accessories. JPR also expects strong sales in flight sticks, throttles, rudder pedals and even simulation seats, frames, and VR gear. “Flight simulators are incredibly demanding on processing capability and reward high resolution, large displays, and VR use. When new flight simulators are released, the hardware to run them at max settings and…

If you don’t want to spend £1,179 on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra, Samsung has a more affordable option for you: the Galaxy Note20. Like last year’s Note10, the Note20 is a less-loaded handset, meant to bring the Note experience to a less-demanding crowd that still wants all the productivity benefits provided by the S pen. It could have been one of the best phones of the year. Samsung has made all the right moves with the Note20, prioritizing a big screen, top-of-the-line processor, 5G modem and excellent camera. Looking at the spec sheet, I’d expect the Note20 to cost about £650. This would make the Note20 one of the best premium Android values this side of the £549 OnePlus 7T. The only problem is it costs £200 more than that…

The Galaxy Tab might be a distant second to the iPad when it comes to tablet market share, but Samsung is hardly ready to concede the crown. Its newest tablet, the S7+, isn’t just its best and biggest, but it’s easily the closest you’re going to get to an iPad Pro without shopping in an Apple Store. Samsung’s Galaxy S tablets have always showcased the latest tech and specs, and the S7+ is no different. It offers the Snapdragon 865+ processor, up to 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, a giant 10,090mAh battery, and 5G support. But what gives the S7 its ‘plus’ designation isn’t the specs, rather it’s the 12.4in screen, the biggest in a Samsung-made Android tablet since the 18.4in Galaxy View. That’s about two inches bigger…

Price: £699 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2YzYv0z The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i is one of the most affordable gaming laptops you can buy anywhere thanks to a bargain-basement price of £699. That’s certainly low enough to prove tempting, but at this level there’s always a danger that too much has been compromised to meet the budget. If that’s the kind of money you have to spend on a gaming laptop, here’s what you can get for your cash. DESIGN Happily, the Lenovo looks good so we’re off to a good start. The matte black exterior is made from plastic, and the lid is enhanced at the corners with subtle angled sections. On the inside, the attractive blue backlight is paired with a smart logo finished in the same shade. The IdeaPad…

Price: £79 (inc VAT) from fave.co/31qrA0b These days, you’ve got endless ways to play retro games using emulation on PCs, Raspberry Pis, or even Android phones – most with varying degrees of performance or legality. But the new Evercade handheld console is tackling retro gaming emulation in a highly focused and legally legitimate way. Unlike the recent flood of Chinese-based handheld emulators like the PocketGo V2, Evercade (the company) works with major publishers to release physical cartridges featuring tailored emulation so that each game plays the way you remember. If you’re a retro game enthusiast looking to find easy, accurate and legal ways to play titles from a variety of gaming eras – outside of buying the original hardware, of course – then the Evercade is worth a hard, long…

Of fall the PC components, few require more care and attention than a hard drive. We’ve all heard the admonishments to defragment drives, and clean up junk files to keep all our 1s and 0s sparkling. No matter how well you care for it, however, at some point that drive is going to fail. Sometimes you can hear it coming, sometimes it happens suddenly in the middle of a project, and other times it just refuses to boot one morning. Whatever way your hard drive meets its end, it’s a certainty you’ll see it happen if you use a PC long enough. Hard drives are complicated little devices. The primary components are the magnetic platters that contain the data, as well as the head that reads and writes the data.…

Intel’s Alder Lake chip will build upon its predecessor, the first hybrid core known as Lakefield, by prioritizing performance over battery life for thin-and-light laptops, small-form-factor PCs, and other compact designs. Announced last month as part of Intel Architecture Day, the chip will be available in 2021. Alder Lake’s performance focus fills an unmet need in the prior generation, Lakefield, which Intel unveiled about a year ago. At the time, the company talked about using its Foveros technology to stack a ‘compute’ die on top of a ‘base’ die, saving space for small-form-factor PCs. But Lakefield also steals a page from rival Arm processors, combining four low-power ‘Tremont’ Atom cores for low-intensity tasks, with a single ‘Sunny Cove’ Core CPU for heavier burdens. Lakefield quietly debuted in a version of…

Price: £1,179 (inc VAT) from fave.co/34uV3Il Our Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra review found three clear reasons to make the jump to this new flagship phone: Mystic Bronze, laser autofocus and the S Pen’s new 8ms latency. And if you’re looking for any reasons not to, well, there are plenty of those in this review too – namely, it’s gigantic, expensive and not a huge upgrade over the S20 Ultra. But if you’re a Note fan, you know exactly what you’re getting and you know you want it: the biggest, fastest and most powerful Android phone you can buy. For everyone else, it’s not so simple. Samsung’s flagships have become so good that reviews of them are all basically the same: yes they have the best specs, but they’re also the…

The Galaxy Note20 Ultra is without a doubt the best phone Samsung has ever made. It’s loaded with the specs and features that Android enthusiasts and Note loyalists want and need, and can take on any and all contenders, including the upcoming iPhone 12 Pro Max. There really isn’t a thing I’d change about it. And yet, I’m finding a hard time justifying its existence. As the designs, performance, and features for Samsung’s two flagship lines continue to blur, the difference between the flagship Galaxy Note and Galaxy S phones has become little more than the S Pen. Take a look at the specs for the two phones: Galaxy S20 Ultra Dimensions: 166.9x76.x8.8mm Display: 6.9in (3,200x1,440; 496ppi) Dynamic AMOLED 2X capacitive touchscreen Processor: Exynos 990 RAM: 12GB LPDDR5 Storage: 128GB/512GB…

If steady updates are your priority when choosing which Android phone to buy, you basically have one option: the Google Pixel. Google famously promises three years of Android version and security updates with all Pixel purchases, which is at least a year more than any other Android phone maker. Now Samsung is stepping up to change that. As part of its Unpacked announcements that brought the Galaxy Note20 and Galaxy Note20 Ultra, Samsung announced that its new phones will receive OS updates for “up to three generations”, including the “latest features” and “latest security”. That’s a huge commitment over the two generations it previously promises and excellent peace of mind for anyone buying a new Galaxy phone. Samsung said that the guarantee applies to all “[Galaxy] S, N[ote] and Z…

Price: £349 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2CdDOzA It may have felt as though Google’s new mid-range phone would never arrive, but the Pixel 4a is finally here. On the whole, Google has done another fantastic job of getting the key things right here and at a cheaper price than the Pixel 3a. However, tech nerds are likely to be tempted by some rivals due to a couple of missing features. When I say the Pixel 4a is here, that means the phone is official at long last. However, you can’t actually pre-order it until 10 September, then it won’t start shipping until 1 October. The question is whether the Pixel 4a is worth waiting for. DESIGN It’s a case of the same but different when it comes to the Pixel 4a’s…

It’s 8am on a clear, sunny day in Oakland, California. No, it’s a rainy afternoon in Hong Kong. Or is it evening in Paris? Microsoft Flight Simulator doesn’t care. At a time when gorgeous ‘open world’ games are the norm, Flight Simulator helps set the bar even higher. Yes, it offers a stunning recreation of a virtual world, with weather and realistic landscapes, real-world traffic and ocean waves, and even, apparently, animals. But the virtual world is our world, our planet, and you can go anywhere in it. For me, that’s the whole point of Flight Simulator. Even if we weren’t severely limited in our movements by the current pandemic, most of us will never see the entirety of our planet. Travel to exotic locales also comes with costs –…