Table of contents for 35 in Android Advisor

The specs for Bluetooth 5 have now been finalised, meaning we should soon see devices released which include the technology. So what changes does the new standard bring and how will they benefit you? We take a closer look. Bluetooth Bluetooth is a wireless method of communication between electronics devices. It’s cross platform, meaning it works on pretty much any technology device. The most common uses for it tend to be connecting wireless speakers or headphones to smartphones and tablets, but you can also transfer files to PCs, have your smartphone communicate with a smartwatch, connect a wireless keyboard or a wide variety of other useful things. New features Connects over longer distances At the moment Bluetooth 4.2 is good for around 10m (or 33ft) with a clear line of…

htc.com/uk We weren’t overly impressed with the HTC 10. Don’t get us wrong: it was a good all-round phone with a new design, but it lacked the stand-out features of some rivals and was therefore hard to recommend. If rumours are true HTC is upping its game with its next flagship, and the HTC 11 spec will blow you away. So, when is the HTC 11 coming out? It’s now widely assumed that no flagship phones running the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 will launch at MWC 2017. This is because Samsung, which helped Qualcomm build the chip, apparently has first dibs and won’t be launching its Galaxy S8 until April. Very sneaky. However, while a Snapdragon 835 phone won’t be announced by HTC at MWC one is coming later this…

lg.com/uk While the Android Wear front has been relatively quiet recently, two new Google smartwatches are heading to the market any day now, flaunting the Android Wear 2.0 OS with a gorgeous design. Here’s all we know about the Google Watch – aka LG Watch Sport and LG Watch Style. Android Wear 2.0 has been tipped by @evleaks to be released on 9 February 2017. According to the leakster, the two new Google watches will be announced at the same time and go on sale the following day in the US as the LG Watch Sport and LG Watch Style. Release date According to @evleaks the two new Google watches will be released in Q1 2017 with Android Wear 2.0. He now says the exact date of the announcement will…

£69 inc VAT • google.co.uk Google launched its new Chromecast Ultra when it announced its Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones in October 2016. The device looks to solve what is slowly but surely becoming the issue with cheaper mainstream media streaming devices – being able to stream in 4K HD. The Chromecast Ultra is £39 more than the regular Chromecast, but it solves that and ultimately justifies the asking price. Design The Chromecast Ultra is quite similar in design to the standard version, though this one adopts Google’s new ‘G’ logo that’s also on the back of the Google Pixel. Frankly, it doesn’t matter what the thing looks like, because it nestled behind you TV, hanging from a short piece of flat cable that you plug into the HDMI port.…

£177 inc VAT • elephone.hk Elephone’s S7 is a sub-£200 phone with a lot going for it – not least its gorgeous design – and in some respects it even bests its namesake Samsung Galaxy S7. But this is a decent phone in its own right, and not just a copycat. Price It’s available in several versions, so you’ll have to double-check which you are buying before you go ahead. We reviewed the blue model with a Helio X20 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, which ships free from TomTop’s Chinese warehouse for £177 at the time of writing. Because you are buying from China you may be asked to pay import duty upon its arrival to the UK, which you will need to factor into the total…

£29 inc VAT • ee.co.uk EE’s Robin is a children’s tablet with built-in 4G, so they can watch videos and use internet-connected apps wherever they are – without borrowing your phone. This isn’t the first version of the Robin, but the upgrades over the first model are pretty minor. It’s a 7in tablet that fits into a kid-proof case and comes with child-friendly software. Price You might think £29 is a fantastic price for a tablet, but this is only the upfront cost. The main expense is the EE contract, which is £17 per month for two years. This brings the total price up to £437, and that is a lot of money. However, your £17 per month gives you 2GB of 4G EE data for watching videos and more.…

sony.co.uk Sony is a huge brand, and not just for smartphones. Purveyors of the Walkman and the best TVs in the world, it has in recent years fallen down the pecking order when it comes to the best smartphones. Its Xperia Z3 was debatably the pinnacle of its vision of flagship phones with full waterproofing and two-day battery – but that was in 2014. Since then, Sony has confused us (and probably you) by releasing the Z3+, the Z5, and then scrapping the Z altogether with the X, XA, X Compact and then the XZ (which is still an X series really). So – what’s next? Our money is on the Sony Xperia X2 debuting at MWC 2017 in Barcelona in late February. Release date The Sony Xperia X was…

htc.com/uk You might be waiting patiently for the HTC 11 but the Taiwanese firm has a new range of smartphones to tempt you with first. The new mid-range U handsets consist of the smaller U Play and this, the higher-end U Ultra. We got some time with the phones ahead of the announcement so here’s our HTC U Ultra hands-on review. Release date and price At our briefing, HTC said the U Ultra release date will land around ‘mid-February’ in Europe, although it should be available in Asia prior to that. It’s yet to be disclosed as to how much it will cost but Carphone Warehouse has a preregistration page. What we do know is that the new U range sits below the HTC 10 flagship and the firm describes…

£256 inc VAT • meizu.com/en First impressions of the MX6 from Meizu are good. On paper it’s got a decent spec that includes a deca-core processor, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and out the box it’s a well-made and good-looking metal handset with a design somewhere between the latest iPhone and the HTC 10 – and, oddly enough, it’s available in rose gold, grey, silver and gold. At £256.99 from Amazon this is a mid-range smartphone, but the MX6 offers more for your money than phones you might find on the UK High Street. As you’ve probably guessed from the unfamiliar name this is a Chinese phone, but from a company well-known in its homeland. In the past Meizu phones have reminded us of those of Xiaomi, of…

The more our phones and tablets are able to do the more we do with them, whether that’s taking high-resolution photos and video, playing intensive games or just downloading apps for everything from Pokémon Go to BBC iPlayer. It’s easy to run low on storage in Android, even with a phone that comes with 16- or 32GB as standard. Here are some tips for how to free up space on Android, plus some advice on ways you can get more storage in Android. Free up space Back up photos and video to Google Photos, then delete them from your phone Photos and video are one of the biggest space hogs on any Android phone, and more so as their integrated cameras come with increasingly high megapixel counts. Download the free…

Google has introduced a new app that allows you to give permission for select family members and friends to track your location. The idea behind Trusted Contacts is that someone knows where you are in case anything goes wrong, and it could be a very important way to stay safe. The app is free, easy to set up, and we’ll show you how in this quick tutorial. What is Trusted Contacts? Trusted Contacts is a way to share your location and status with a few close friends so they can make sure you’re safe. Once you grant them permission they can see if you’ve recently used your phone, moved location, as well as the general status of your smartphone battery. The intention isn’t to turn your friends into stalkers, but…

What is a foldable phone? A foldable phone is exactly as it sounds, one that either folds inward (like a clamshell phone) or outward and reveals a tablet-like device when stretched out. This is possible with the use of a bendable (rather than flexible, as seen in the Galaxy S7 edge) OLED panel. Samsung, Lenovo and LG have each showed off bendable displays and devices at various industry events, and have registered many patents for the technology. Previously called Project Valley, Samsung’s technology has become known as the Galaxy X, which may or may not be its eventual name upon release. Samsung originally worked on fold-in phones, which close up like a wallet, but having completed its work there it has moved on to fold-out phones. These should be more…

lg.com/uk Once upon a time HTC showed Samsung stiff competition in the Android market, but these days it has LG to fear. The G5 was a fantastic phone, and the G6 should be even better – potentially with waterproofing and wireless charging. So, should you wait for the LG G6 or buy the LG G5 now? We round up the LG G6 rumours, including details on the LG G6 UK release date, price and specifications. 7 Droid-Life has shared images (page 20) of what it believes to be a prototype LG G6. It’s far from a finished product, but it is possible to make out dual rear cameras, a metal frame, a slim screen bezel, a rear fingerprint scanner and a USB-C port. Release date A save the date email…

motorola.co.uk Ah, the Moto G. One of the UK’s best-loved budget phones, and one of Android Advisor’s biggest headaches. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a great budget phone, but until 2016 when new owner Lenovo announced the Moto G4, Moto G4 Play and Moto G4 Plus, Motorola had launched a long string of very similar smartphones all called the Moto G. Trying to keep tabs on which is which is something of a minefield, especially when many of the SKUs remain available online. In this article we’ll break down the history of the Moto G, and look to its future: within the next few months we expect to see another brand-new Moto G, the fifth-generation Moto G that will (hopefully, for our sanity) be called the Moto G5. We were…

htc.com/uk HTC’s first smartphones of 2017 introduce a new U range to the firm’s portfolio where it’s ‘all about U’. The U Ultra (page 45) has an interesting dual screen setup but here we look at the smaller model with more basic specifications. Release date and price The new U phones will get release date around ‘mid-February’ in Europe, according to HTC but they will be available in Asia first. We expect the HTC U Play price to be around the £350 to £400 mark based on devices like the One A9. Design In essence, the U Play is a smaller version of the U Ultra so has the same glossy glass design which is a break from the norm for HTC. The polished glass back is far more glamorous…

£199 inc VAT • lenovo.com/uk If there’s been one universal feature of the smartphone era, it’s been battery gripes. Charging your device on a daily basis has become the norm, and almost all of us have a portable battery pack sitting around for when we can’t get to a charger in time. That’s where the Lenovo P2 comes in, offering solid specs and performance, an attractive price point, and what Lenovo claims is a whopping three-day battery life. But can the P2 live up to Lenovo’s claims, or does it simply run out of juice? We’ve spent a week putting the phone through its paces, and we think it might be one of the best mid-range Android phones around. Price The Lenovo P2 is currently available exclusively through Three in…

£240 inc VAT • vernee.cc We’ve been saying VR (virtual reality) is the next big thing for over a year now, but 2017 really will be the year VR comes to phones. Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 and LG’s G6 are among those expected to come with large, high-resolution screens and meaty processors and GPUs to enable the best mobile VR. Those are Snapdragon phones, so what of MediaTek? The current best (available) MediaTek processor is the Helio X25, which is a deca-core chip that combines two clusters of four low-power, efficient Cortex-A53 cores with a high-performance Cortex-A72 duo, and integrates the 850MHz Mali-T880 MP4 GPU. Don’t assume the Helio X25 is on par with – or with 10 cores even better than – the quad-core Snapdragon 820/821, which is paired…

WhatsApp scams used to focus on the idea that you would be charged for the service, but now they offer scam shopping vouchers and dodgy links that download malware. Here are some of the WhatsApp scams you should delete and forget, plus how to avoid WhatsApp viruses, scams and hoaxes. WhatsApp scam offers free £250 Sainsbury’s or M&S voucher One of the most common WhatsApp scams in January 2017 is one that offers a link with the promise of a free £250 gift card for either Sainsbury’s or M&S. The M&S version is pictured here. By clicking on the link you are taken to a survey page that asks you to answer various personal questions. This survey has absolutely nothing to do with the supermarket, and everything to do with…

While most people associate Twitter with short status updates, hashtags, or the inane ramblings of certain US Presidents, the company recently announced a new feature that goes beyond the 140-character limit - live video. Now you can broadcast your thoughts, surroundings, and highly questionable environmental policies to the world, all from your iPhone or Android smartphone without typing a word. We take a quick look at the new service and how to use Twitter live video. What is Twitter live video? Much like its close rival Facebook Live, Twitter live video lets users quickly livestream events directly to the social media site. Other users can interact with the feed in real time, leaving comments and likes, and once the video is complete it remains in your feed just like any…