Google Now draining iPhone battery

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

Google Now was added to the Google Search app for iPhone and iPad earlier this week, and already appears to have infuriated many users with excessive battery drain.

Google Now provides a series of cards that deliver location-based data, such as how long it will take you to get home from your current location, local restaurant reviews, and how far you’ve walked this week. This obviously requires the app to make use of the iPhone’s GPS chip, and users of the app may have noticed that the GPS notification icon is now almost permanently displayed in the status bar at the top of the home screen.

GPS is one of the more battery-intensive tasks on a phone. Anyone who’s used a satnav app, such as TomTom, will attest how quickly the battery drains when the GPS is in constant use.

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How to move from iPhone to Android

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

For the past three years – since the launch of the iPhone 3GS – I’ve been firmly in the iOS camp. For the past week, however, I’ve been testing the HTC One (you can read my verdict on the device in our HTC One review).

Making the move from iOS to Android was a damned-sight less painful than I anticipated. Within a matter of minutes, I had all of my contacts, music and other data transferred or accessible from the HTC One.

If you’re thinking about making the move from iPhone to Android, here’s how to make the transition as easy as possible.

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Is Apple rattled by Samsung? Let’s hope so

Monday, March 18th, 2013

Defensive, prickly and occasionally flat-out disingenuous, Apple’s attempt to swing undecided buyers to the iPhone is great news. For Android users, it confirms that the long wait for an alternative mobile platform that you can bring home to your parents is almost over. Apple’s anti-Android potshots are an indication that Android has finally come of age for consumers.

That’s good news for everyone. If Apple now sees Android as a real threat, it will have to find ways to stop users drifting away. In the long run, Apple on the back foot should mean nicer, better-value products. In the short term it means snippy, linkbait anti-Android marketing barely worth the HTML it’s written on – but still, Apple’s rattled. That can only be a good thing.

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The one iPhone accessory that I wish was at CES 2013 but isn’t

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

We’re drowning in iPhone accessories here at CES 2013. Cases, speakers, even sensors – you name it, you’ll find it. But the one thing that I wish was on show here sadly isn’t. Now, draw!

The techs to watch in 2013

Monday, December 31st, 2012

With the January sales looming, you might be wondering whether it’s time to grab a bargain, or whether you should  hold out a little longer and see what technologies the new year brings. I’ve been closely watching the industry in 2012, and keeping track of announcements for the coming year – and below you’ll find my predictions of what’s going to happen in various areas of technology in 2013.

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How to “fix” an unresponsive home button on an iPad/iPhone

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

Last week, my iPad 2’s home button – the physical button in the bottom bezel – started behaving erratically. It would take two or more presses to return me to the home screen, or occasionally register double-clicks when I only tapped once.

So I did what any member of modern society does: I moaned about it on Twitter. Before you could say “trip to the Apple Store”, my old chum and editor of iOS magazine Tap, Chris Phin, shot back “Google ‘recalibrate home button’”.

I did as I was told, and followed the top result detailing a simple procedure to supposedly recalibrate the home button. In a nutshell, you launch “one of the stock apps” (such as Weather or Calendar), hold down the top power button until the “slide to power off” prompt appears, release it  and then quickly press and hold the home button down until both the power-off prompt and app disappear.

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Four ways to get PC Pro every month

Friday, November 9th, 2012

At the risk of sounding like a Stephen Fry voice-over, it’s never been easier to get your hands on PC Pro every month. We now have four different ways to pick up the magazine in either print or digital form, and to help you decide which suits you best, I’m going to run through the options here.

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How much mobile data do you use?

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

When signing up for a new phone contract, the amount of data allowed each month is often a stumbling block. Is 250MB enough for me or would I be safer with 500MB? What kind of user hits those 1GB allowances? How much data do my favourite apps even use?

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Apple iPhone 5 review: first look

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

As is now customary, the internet was smoking hot with guff and nonsense this week, to the point where even the mainstream press was joining in. Thank heavens it can all stop now (at least until the next time), as the iPhone 5 is officially here, and we were at the London launch to get our hands on a brand new sample.

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ZTE Grand X review: first look

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

ZTE isn’t well known on these shores, as the only handsets we’ve seen from the Chinese firm have been budget efforts like the Skate or Orange-branded devices such as the San Diego. ZTE hopes that’ll change with its Grand X.

First things first: this isn’t a phone to put the Samsung Galaxy S III in its place. For starters, the chipset isn’t anything as powerful as Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 but the weaker, dual-core Tegra 2. There’s also no sign of the hand-stretching panels that now appear in high-end handsets – ZTE has made do with a 4.3in, 540 x 960 screen that’s typically favoured by more modest phones such as the HTC One S and Sony Xperia P. We certainly spotted some pixels, but the screen is bright, vivid and usable. (more…)