Smartphones mentoring

iPhone X review: Apple finally knocks it out of the park The company’s most important smartphone in years does not disappoint, with Face ID and an all-screen design that spells the end of the home button The iPhone X is Apple’s most important – and most expensive – new smartphone in four years, bringing with it a significant change to the design, dumping the home button to usher in a full-screen experience. Thankfully, Apple nailed it. After four years of the company recycling the design of the iPhone 6, the iPhone X is a breath of fresh air. The beautiful OLED screen takes up pretty much the whole front of the device. It’s one of the best displays I’ve ever seen on a smartphone, and while it’s not quite as bezel free at the sides as Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and Note 8 devices, it’s a giant leap forward for Apple. Two concessions were made for the all-screen design. The most obvious is that there is no home button, axed after a decade of service. You might miss it if you have muscle memory

iPhone SE review: Apple's cut-price smartphone king Top performance, good camera, long support and manageable size make cheaper iPhone a bargain Apple’s latest iPhone SE is a surprise cut-price marvel that revives a classic iPhone design and trounces every other mid-range phone in the process. The £419 iPhone SE takes the important bits of the iPhone 11 – the processor and software – and shoehorns them into the body of an iPhone 8 from 2017. You get a phone design largely unchanged from the iPhone 6 of 2014, with traditional home button, but the performance and longevity of a brand new Apple phone for £310 less than an iPhone 11. It’s a tantalising proposition, competing on price with a load of mid-range Android smartphones, including Google’s Pixel 3a, but with top-level iPhone performance and service. The iPhone 8’s design was tired in 2018 and it is no different today. The 2020 iPhone SE’s 4.7in screen is tiny by today’s standards but the phone’s body isn’t, because it eschews t

iPhone 11 Pro Max review: salvaged by epic battery life A great camera, screen and performance can’t save horrendous ergonomics, but at least it’ll last two days on battery The biggest, most expensive new smartphone from Apple is the iPhone 11 Pro Max, and you’ll need a small fortune to buy it. The new 6.5in iPhone 11 Pro Max costs from £1,149 and is in effect its smaller 5.8in iPhone 11 Pro sibling put in a photocopier with a 12% magnification applied. It has the exact same aluminium and glass design, the same notched screen with Face ID, the same camera arrangement on the back and the same Lightning port in the bottom. It is the same phone. Except that enlarging everything (apart from thickness) by 10%-12% creates a very different experience. Like the iPhone XS Max it replaces, the iPhone 11 Pro Max is really difficult to use with one hand. At 77.8mm it is hand-stretchingly wide, wider still than the already massive OnePlus 7 Pro (75.9mm) and even the positively gigantic Samsung Gala

OnePlus 8 review: 5G and top performance for less Large 90Hz screen, slick software, speed and strong battery life at a price that undercuts top rivals OnePlus is back for 2020 with a revamped, lower-cost flagship phone with a slightly smaller 90Hz screen and 5G as standard. The £599 OnePlus 8 slides in under the £799 8 Pro, offering most of what you get on the firm’s top phone but in a smaller, more manageable package. On the outside the OnePlus 8 looks like 2019’s 7T Pro hit with a shrink ray and given a new paint job. Not that the phone is that small. It has a gorgeous 6.55in FHD+ AMOLED screen that is big by most standards, it is just not as massive as the super-sized variety. It runs at a 90Hz refresh rate too, which continues to be an excellent enhancement making all scrolling and animations a lot smoother than the previous 60Hz standard. A selfie camera peers through a hole in the screen in the top left corner. The rest of the device is the usual metal and glass sandwich with cu

OnePlus Nord review: top-quality phone is true bargain at £379 Cut-price Android offers a first-class experience, long battery life, good camera and great design With the Nord, OnePlus is returning to its roots with first-class smartphones at mid-range prices, which is a very good thing. The £379 Nord sits under the £599 OnePlus 8 as the firm’s mid-range offering, aiming to bring everything that makes its top-end smartphones so good but at a significantly lower price. Dimensions-wise the Nord is only marginally different to the 8, being 0.2mm thicker, 0.4mm wider, 1.9mm shorter and weighing 4g more. It has a gorgeous, bright and colourful, 90Hz AMOLED screen that is 6.44in on the diagonal with FHD+ resolution, which is only 0.11in smaller than the 8. The screen is flat, rather than curved at the sides, and a dual-selfie camera peers through the screen, taking up a fair chunk of real estate in the top left corner. The rest of the phone is fairly standard for a high-end device in 2020. M

  OnePlus 8T review: slick phone fully charges in just 37 minutes. Top phone with great screen, good battery life and software undercuts competition The OnePlus 8T replaces the OnePlus 8 released just six months ago, with a flatter and faster screen and incredibly quick charging. The smartphone costs £549 or £649 depending on storage and sits between the mid-range £379 OnePlus Nord and top-end £799 OnePlus 8 Pro. The design of the 8T has more in common with the Nord than its predecessor or the 8 Pro, due to adopting a traditional flat screen rather than one that curves at the sides. The switch makes the phone 1.2mm wider than its predecessor despite it having the same 6.55in screen. The screen also has a higher refresh rate at 120Hz versus 90Hz, matching the best in the business for smoothness, brightness and colour. The sides of the device are aluminium and the back is glass. The green colour variant has a new glass treatment that almost completely removes the nuisance of fingerprint

iPhone 12 review: Apple's best since the iPhone X Fresh, iPhone 4-like redesign is slimmer with long battery life, good camera and smash-resistant screen The iPhone 12 combines the designs of the iPhone X and the legendary iPhone 4 and comes out looking and feeling fresh, with 5G, a better screen and improved cameras. The new iPhone costs from £799 and sits between the slightly smaller £699 iPhone 12 Mini and the £999 iPhone 12 Pro and £1,099 12 Pro Max. The iPhone 12 marks the biggest change to Apple’s smartphone line since the 2017 iPhone X and feels like a greatest hits from the firm’s design teams over the last decade. It has the same all-screen design that shook things up for Apple in 2017 with the iPhone X but the flat aluminium sides look and feel like 2010’s iPhone 4 or the iPhone 5 from 2012. The combination feels fresh and is a significant upgrade on the design of last year’s iPhone 11. Compared with its predecessor, the iPhone 12 has thinner bezels but the same-sized 6.1