Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review

The Note 4 is the big powerhouse in Samsung's Galaxy phone range and it just keeps getting better with each iteration. This latest model gets a new processor, an even sharper screen and a couple of improved cameras.

The Galaxy Note 4 is on sale now for £629 SIM free.

Screen & Chassis
Samsung recently moved away from its all-plastic aesthetic with the aluminium casing of the Galaxy Alpha, and there are echoes of that with the Galaxy Note 4, which still has an extremely thin plastic back, but which now clips onto a solid metal chassis, giving it a bit more heft and premium-style feel. The silver highlighting around the rim on both sides lends a bit of class too, though the weight has now increased from the Note 3's 168g to 176g.

There's a hard home button beneath the screen flanked by two soft buttons and pressing and holding each of them offers alternative functions -- home gets you Google Now; return pulls the TouchWiz menu up on the side; recent apps allows you to add or remove each of your home pages. On the back, the camera's LED flash doubles up with the Samsung heart rate monitor we've seen on other high-end Galaxy devices. Unfortunately, despite the sturdier casing, there are no grommets covering the power and headphone jack ports, so it's not waterproof like Sony's premium Xperia phones, for instance.

The screen is still a gem though. With 5.7 inches of Super AMOLED loveliness with strong, vibrant colours and sharp contrast, it offers a higher than full HD resolution of 2,560x1,440 pixels -- that's 515ppi, which is just about as sharp as you'll see anywhere this side of the LG G3.

Software & Processor
It's running the latest Android 4.4 KitKat of course, with Samsung's usual TouchWiz tweaks on top. TouchWiz has its fans but it tends to be an interface for aficionados -- very capable, but also very busy and not always intuitive. If anything though, Samsung seems to have scaled it back a little in this incarnation. The My Magazine news and message aggregator now appears as Flipboard (which was behind it anyway) and the S5's Toolbox feature seems to have disappeared altogether. There are still plenty of features to play with, including the shortcut menu that slides in from the right, but they're designed to enhance your experience rather than get in the way -- you don't have to use them. And if it all gets too much, you can always switch to the stripped-down Easy mode.

There's an S Health widget that displays the data garnered from your exercise, heart rate and now blood oxygen level too (the heart rate monitor on the back measures that too).

Helpfully, many of the features and apps that used to come preinstalled whether you wanted them or not, have now been consigned to the Galaxy Apps store, which is where you'll also now find Kids Mode, Dropbox (with 50GB free storage for two years for new users) and Kindle for Samsung.

Good to see that the Multi Window mode is still here, so you can keep your web browser open at the same time as you're reading your emails -- very handy. You can resize the window for each and now you can open little pop-up windows too which you can move around the screen.

Phablets are designed to be used with two hands of course, and the Note 4 wears this fact on its sleeve with its S Pen stylus. The S Pen slips unobtrusively into a slot on the bottom and this latest version is a gem. It's slim and light (but not too much of either) and includes a smart button that allows you to highlight multiple elements within an app, or to drag and drop images between apps.

The new version has over 2,000 levels of sensitivity rather than the Note 3's 1,000 and this shows in the delicacy of your pen strokes. Not such a big deal when you're writing perhaps, but it makes all the difference when you're trying to draw detail. The on-screen menu gives you plenty of options to play with, including colours and nib thicknesses, and there's now a calligraphy nib too that emulates a fountain pen.

The quad-core processor is clocked at 2.7GHz and backed by a full 3GB RAM, which unsurprisingly makes it very fast indeed. Our AnTuTu benchmark test gave it a score of 48,262, which has so far only been beaten by the Galaxy Alpha's octa-core powerhouse.

Photography
The 16-megapixel camera has just about every bell and whistle Samsung can throw at it, from basics like autofocus and the bright LED flash, to a variety of modes including Shot and more -- burst shots with effects -- and Dual camera -- which incorporates shots taken simultaneously with the Note's two cameras. Usefully, you can now choose to hide the modes you never really use in order to slim down the options in the menu. It also has Smart Optical Image Stabilisation, which helps to reduce the tendency to blur when there's motion involved -- especially useful when you're recording 4K video.

There's a 3.7-megapixel snapper on the front for video calls and selfies but for once the rear camera can also manage selfies -- the selfie mode tracks your face (and anyone else nearby for group shots) and beeps a warning when you're all in focus, then takes the snap.

Colours can sometimes appear a little saturated, but generally photos look great, with oodles of detail and exemplary sharpness for a phone camera.

There's 32GB of memory on board plus you can add up to 128GB more via microSD card.

You'd expect a handset with this kind of power and capability to exact a hefty toll on the battery. And it does, but the 3,220mAh power pack seems big enough and powerful enough to handle it -- we got a good day and a half of pretty intense use out of it, which will do for now. Usefully, it charges pretty quickly, and you can get back up to 50 per cent capacity in just half an hour.

Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has a terrific screen and impressively powerful processor, plus a huge range of useful and clever features. It's expensive compared to similarly specced big-screen rivals, but if you like to use a pen to scribble or doodle on your phablet, it's the best there is right now.

Apple iphone 6 plus Review

Design
The iPhone 6 Plus sports the same newly curvaceous design as its smaller sibling, but with one major difference: its beefed-up body frames a substantially larger 5.5in, Full HD display. This makes the iPhone 6 Plus something of a handful but, at only 7.3mm thick, the slender, curved profile fits surprisingly well in the hand. With the rounded edges nestling comfortably in the crook of each finger, it feels just as manageable as the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

The extra girth bumps the weight up a tad, but this is by no means a heavy phone. At 172g, the iPhone 6 Plus only weighs 43g more than the iPhone 6, so it isn’t the weight that will cause problems for your pocket – it’s the size. And, despite the reports from users who have bent their iPhone 6 Pluses by sitting on them, or keeping them in a pocket, our impressions are that the iPhone 6 Plus feels just as sturdy and solid as other big-screened smartphones we’ve tested. Rest assured, we’ll be testing its mettle in our tightest jeans pockets over the coming weeks and months.

In practice, though, the iPhone 6 Plus often feels more like a miniature iPad than an iPhone. Hold it in landscape orientation and, for the first time on an iPhone, the iOS homescreen spins around into a landscape view. And while it’s nigh-on impossible to reach every corner of the display (at least without unusually long thumbs), the iPhone 6 Plus shares the iPhone 6’s “Reachability” function: a quick double-tap of the home button slides the upper half of the screen downwards to bring icons, buttons and address bars within reach.

Apple has also taken advantage of the 6 Plus’ extra screen real estate to add extra keys to the left and right of the onscreen keyboard in landscape mode, with dedicated copy, paste, full stop and comma keys spread across each side. This makes it much quicker and easier to tap out longer emails without constantly switching back and forth through keyboard panels.

Display, performance and battery life
As you’d expect, the iPhone 6 Plus’ Full HD display is the centre of attention. Image quality is sumptuous from the off, with brightness soaring high enough to fend off even bright sunlight, and image quality that marries pin-sharp clarity with rock-solid contrast and rich, believable colour reproduction. And at 401ppi, the iPhone 6 Plus has the most densely pixel-packed display of any Apple device to date.

Interestingly, the iPhone 6 Plus’ display lags a little behind its smaller sibling in terms of its technical performance, but it’s not far off. We measured a maximum brightness of 493cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 1,293:1, and the colour accuracy is excellent, too. The IPS panel served up a very slightly wider range of colour than the iPhone 6, covering 95.5% of the sRGB colour gamut, and was only slightly less colour-accurate, with an average Delta E of 2.58 and a maximum deviation of 5.33. To the naked eye, the iPhone 6 Plus’ display is nothing less than superb; moreover, we noted none of the backlight inconsistency that afflicted our test sample of the iPhone 6.

In terms of power, there’s scant difference between the two. As the same 1.4GHz Apple A8 chip is the driving force in both handsets, it came as little surprise to see a nigh-on identical set of scores in the SunSpider, Geekbench and Peacekeeper benchmarks. What’s really impressive, though, is that the iPhone 6 Plus’ gaming performance doesn’t suffer due to its higher-resolution screen. Despite pushing twice as many pixels as the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus actually pulled slightly in front in the GFXBench T-Rex HD test with an average frame rate of 53fps. We suspect Apple’s new A8 chip is capping the maximum frame rate at 60fps regardless of screen resolution to prevent excess heat buildup and minimise power consumption – a very sensible design choice.

One area where the iPhone 6 Plus comprehensively betters the iPhone 6 is battery life. Even with the demands of GFXBench stressing the GPU, the iPhone 6 Plus achieved a projected runtime of 3hrs 26mins. This isn’t the best result we’ve seen by any stretch, but what’s impressive is that it maintained an average frame rate of 53fps throughout the test. By way of comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S5 lasts almost an hour longer, but it artificially limits the frame rate to less than 20fps.

The iPhone 6 Plus turned in some excellent figures in our other battery tests, too. In our 720p video-playback test, where we calibrate the display to a brightness of 120cd/m2 and activate flight mode, the handset used only 4.9% of its battery capacity per hour – a figure that puts it just ahead of every Android flagship out there. It didn't quite repeat the feat in the 3G audio-streaming test, but it still fared very well indeed. With the screen off, a pair of headphones connected and one of PC Pro’s podcasts streaming, the iPhone 6 Plus used only 2.1% of its battery capacity per hour.

Camera
Fittingly, Apple has equipped the iPhone 6 Plus with a superb pair of snappers front and rear. Apple hasn’t played the numbers game here – Nokia’s Lumia 1020 still rules the roost with its 41-megapixel sensor – but the 8-megapixel iSight camera has received a handful of behind-the-scenes upgrades, and the front-facing 1.2-megapixel camera has received a larger f/2.2 aperture to gather more light for those all-important selfies.

Although it has the same resolution as the iPhone 5s camera, “Focus Pixels” dotted across the iPhone 6 Plus’ sensor add speedy phase-detect autofocus to the camera’s list of talents. The dual-LED True Tone flash is still present and correct, though, and just as we found on the iPhone 5s, this does a fine job of providing more natural lighting in poor to non-existent lighting conditions – there’s none of the horrible, washed-out effect that afflicts shots taken with a single-LED flash.

The iPhone 6 Plus even trumps the iPhone 6 in one key area: its larger body has given Apple room to squeeze in optical image stabilisation. Disappointingly, though, this is activated only for low-light stills, so video recordings don’t benefit.

In practice, though, the iPhone 6 Plus is capable of capturing some beautiful shots. The speedy hardware inside means that the camera app flicks into view almost instantaneously from the lockscreen, and the lightning-quick autofocus does its bit to help grab pin-sharp impulse snaps. In most cases, the results are excellent: photographs look crisp and well-focused across the frame, colours are rich and true, and the low-light performance is second only to the Lumia 1020.

Still photography isn’t the iPhone 6 Plus’ only talent, either. Like its sibling, video can be recorded in both standard Full HD 30fps, timelapse and 720p 240fps Slo-mo modes, and the results are impressive in every case. Once third-party apps such as Horizon are updated to take advantage of the new hardware, we suspect 4K video recording may be on the cards, too – we’ll be sure to test this as soon as an updated version of the app becomes available.

Features and call quality
In terms of features, there’s nothing to separate the two new iPhones. We’re pleased to see that 802.11ac has finally made the cut; Bluetooth 4 is now accompanied by NFC in readiness for the forthcoming Apple Pay contactless payment system; and, of course, there’s the now familiar Touch ID sensor embedded in the home button. Call quality is nigh-on identical to that of the iPhone 6, that is to say crisp, clear and full-bodied. There is a difference, however, in speaker quality: the iPhone 6 Plus houses a larger, louder speaker than that of its stablemate. We’d have no qualms listening to radio broadcasts, music or even watching movies without using headphones. The clarity and quality on offer is highly impressive for a smartphone.

Verdict
Thus far, we haven’t been universally won over by giant-sized smartphones, but with the iPhone 6 Plus we’re steadily beginning to see the appeal. In situations where we’d normally have found ourselves swapping our smartphone for a tablet – on the sofa in the evening, say – we simply didn’t feel the need with the iPhone 6 Plus. The display is large and sharp enough to make web browsing a slick, pleasurable experience, and the stormingly quick hardware makes for a device that never once slows down or lags in everyday usage. Factor in the superb screen and camera, and in many ways the 6 Plus makes a great halfway house between a smaller-screened iOS device and the iPad mini.

In our time with the 6 Plus, however, we did miss having a phone that we could sling in a trouser pocket or a cycle jersey without a second thought. If you’re the kind of person who values pocketability and portability over all else, neither this nor any of the giant-screened flagships from rival manufacturers will fit the bill. They’re all simply too large.

Even if you are one of the increasing number who doggedly subscribe to the “bigger is better” mantra, there remains one major hurdle to overcome: the price. Just as with its smaller sibling, we’d pointedly ignore the 16GB iPhone 6 Plus. With no recourse to add extra storage via a microSD slot, that simply isn’t enough to make the most of such a capable, powerful device. Set your sights on the 64GB model, however, and you’ll only get enough change from £700 to buy a packet of McCoy’s. It’s enough to put a lump in anyone’s throat.

Be in no doubt, this is the most luxurious, high-performance phablet that money can currently buy, but just as with the iPhone 6, Apple is demanding a daunting premium for its work. With competent smartphones available for substantially less, we’d think long and hard about spending this much on any handset.

Apple iphone 6 Review

Despite other companies’ attempts at mocking them, the launch of a new iPhone is an annual cultural event. No other yearly product launch creates as much buzz or has the masses talking like a new iPhone. For good or for worse, the new iPhone is always the next big thing.

However, the current state of the smartphone industry in 2014 is not the same as it was five years ago. Whether it’s the LG G3, the HTC One (M8), or the OnePlus One, there are actual serious competitors with the iPhone out there. This new class of Android smartphones isn’t just a group of big, fast, and feature-filled devices—these are smartphones that are smartly designed, made of high quality materials, and the very best software.

Apple has made its move on Android by increasing the size of the iPhone, but is that enough? We all know that the iPhone 6 will fly off the shelves faster than they can even be manufactured—in fact, it already has just in pre-orders alone. But is the iPhone 6 a smartphone that stands out as a standalone product or is it just running off the steam of the brand Apple has built around it?

Hardware
Whether it was the all-in-one iMac, the intuitive iPod, or the beautiful unibody MacBook Pro, Apple has always thrived as a company who understands industrial design. Technical specs and functions don’t make it to the end product unless they fit into the overall design aesthetic. This no-compromise approach to design has always been the thing that has separated Apple products from the crowds of lookalikes and imitators. That’s exactly why some of the imperfections on the iPhone 6 seem like glaring oversights rather than forgivable errors.

The iPhone 6 is no doubt a high quality, premium smartphone that was executed really well. However, I want to talk particularly about the two highly debated elements of the iPhone 6’s design. First, the protruding camera that just barely juts out from the back of the otherwise flat back (by only 0.2 mm). It might seem like an awfully small thing to make a big deal about—after all, it’s not nearly as large as the monstrosity that is on the back of something like the Nokia Lumia 1020 and only barely make the device tilt when laying on its back. What’s more, the iPhone 6 is impressively thin. It just might be the thinnest smartphone ever made.

However, it’s telling—especially considering the very average looking design of the forthcoming Apple Watch. With the increasingly difficult burden of again making the iPhone 6 thinner than its predecessor, Apple chose to compromise the integrity of the device’s design to adhere to hitting some kind of technical spec. On the other hand, the iPhone 5s is already thinner than every other flagship smartphone at 7.6mm and even with the additional 0.2mm, the iPhone 6 would have been thinner than both its predecessor and its competition. My best guess is that the mistake is indicative of Apple’s sense of confidence in the mobile phone industry as large Android phones take more and more of its share of the market.

The camera itself has the same size sensor that’s found in the iPhone 5s, once again proving that a higher megapixel count does not always equal sharper photos. While the standard for flagship Android smartphones in 2014 has become 13 megapixels, Apple is more than happy to hold on to its six megapixel sensor and keep improving its top notch imaging software. When I get to the software end of things I’ll talk more about it, but you should know that the iPhone 6 somehow blows every other smartphone camera out of the water and renders pretty much every point-and-shoot camera nearly irrelevant.

The second “glaring oversight” is a bit more subjective—but in my mind, could be a bigger issue in the long run. Overall, the iPhone 6 is a really well designed product. It’s as close to unibody as you’ll find on a smartphone (alongside the HTC One), and full metal finish feels incredibly premium. The part of the design that doesn’t agree with me is the two lines that cover the antenna bands on the back of the phone. I don’t have a grand explanation about why, but the design is the first that had me missing the looking of its predecessor. Again, I can’t help but feel like in its attempts to achieve the full unibody look, Apple has compromised on the design aesthetic and lost some of the creative high ground it has always had.

On the front side of the phone, you won’t see much difference between the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 5s. That same sapphire glass Home button is still there, along with pretty the same size bezels proportionally. The main difference is the display, which still reproduces colors better than most and has the highest pixel density count of any smartphone Apple has ever made. Apple calls it a “Retina HD” display, which is Apple’s slight marketing jab at Quad HD and Ultra-HD displays. The larger size of the iPhone 6 makes it that much more impressive and for the first time won’t have you envying your friends with large, flashy Android phones.

The part that Apple has nailed perfectly is the size and feel of the iPhone 6. With the jump up in size, not scaring off long time supports was most certainly Apple’s biggest problem to solve. By making the 4.7-inch device not as wide as some Android devices of a display size, Apple has managed to make it feel pretty nice to hold—even in one hand. In fact, moving from an iPhone 5s to an iPhone 6 won’t require much adjustment at all and pretty much makes it the ideal size.

Along with the bigger size comes a bigger battery, which should have iPhone users everywhere rejoicing. The battery life of Apple’s past couple of generations of phones were some of the worst of the flagship smartphones available. The iPhone 6 has an 1810 mAh battery, which is a nice improvement over the iPhone 5s’ 1560 mAh battery. Although the battery is still significantly smaller than those found in competitors’ devices (such as the new similarly-sized Moto X, which has a 2300mAh battery or a bigger device like the LG G3, which features a massive 3000 mAh battery). But a larger battery doesn’t always equal extended battery life and the engineers at Apple have always been particularly good at optimizing their proprietary software with the limited specs they often have.

Times have changed and so have smartphones. Despite some of the design missteps, the way Apple has handled this new size jump proves that the company still knows simultaneously give customers both what they want and what they need.

Software
The iPhone 6 comes with the newest version of Apple’s operating system, iOS 8. Apple made its giant leap into the world of flat iconography, transparent textures, and simpler design with iOS 7 last year. Rather than another massive upheaval of iOS, this time around Apple has made smaller adjustments and tweaks to the look of iOS. Animations have been sped up (most notably, the app opening “zoom-in”), more shading has been added to the bare minimalism, and Apple has pulled back the reins a bit on the indulgence of its UX. For people who were a bit skeptical about Apple’s drastic visual change last year, they’ll be happy to know that iOS 8 feels significantly more refined and polished than iOS 7.

One of the more notable things they’ve fixed in iOS 8 is the redesigned pulldown search, which doesn’t pull down all your icons, but instead replaces that animation with the familiar “frosted glass” texture. While it doesn’t look quite as nice, it fortunately makes the animation a lot faster. Most importantly, the new search is a universal search that will pull up queries from Bing or Wikipedia—as well as all of the local data on your device.

There are hundreds of new features in iOS 8 that we’ve gone into more detail elsewhere, but the biggest new thing is called Apple Pay. Apple has finally reversed its decision to not include an NFC (near-field communication) chip in its devices, but only to serve its new mobile payment system, Apple Pay. A number of retailers (including everyone’s favorites like Walmart and McDonalds) have already jumped onto the system and will soon have Apple Pay systems in all their stores. Although it seems like Apple is really trying to push get behind it, the effect that Apple Pay will have is still very much in the air. Previous attempts at digital payments systems like Passbook never quite took off in more than a few isolated situations (paying for your drink at Starbucks, namely).

The next part of the software that gets a notable boost is the camera app. As noted about, the iPhone 6 still has the same 6-megapixel camera that the iPhone 5s had, but still manages to vastly improve how photos look on a consistent basis. Lowlight shots have never looked sharper and focusing is now incredibly fast thanks to the new sensor in the camera that Apple calls Focus Pixels.

Along with the nifty additions of an improved 240 frames per second (fps) Slo-Mo mode and a new Timelapse mode, Apple has also finally separated focus from exposure. After all, just because you want a certain subject in focus, that doesn’t mean you want that tap to change the exposure of the photo. You now have the option of a separate slider that can adjust the exposure independent of whatever happens to be in focus. But here’s the bottom line on the camera: the iPhone 6 shoots better than any other smartphone on the market. Better than the LG G3, better than the Samsung Galaxy S5, and better than the Nokia Lumia 1020.

Unlike the iPhone 6 Plus, there isn’t much in iOS 8 that is unique to the iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 has a new camera sensor, the NFC chip for Apply Pay, and a larger, higher-res display—but not much on the software side of things. Using an iPhone 6 with iOS 8 won’t feel much different than using an iPhone 5s with iOS 8. You’ll still get the option of third party keyboards, you’ll still get iCloud Drive, and you’ll still get to reply directly to iMessages without having to switch apps. The tweaks and small features in iOS 8 returns some confidence that Apple may know what they’re doing after all.

In my mind, iOS 8 makes returns Apple to the forefront of smartphone software design and reminds us that they are a company that gives us what we want just as much as they give us what they think we want. The best part is that we haven’t even fully experienced features like Continuity and Handoff, which seamlessly integrate iOS with OS X Yosemite. The future of the Apple ecosystem is just beneath the surface of iOS 8 and I can’t wait to see how it will enrich the experience of using these products together.

Verdict
Despite how good iOS 8 feels, how promising Apple Pay is, and how incredible the camera shoots, the iPhone 6 might be the first new iPhone release that has left me feeling uninspired by its design. It’s certainly the first iPhone that made me wish it still looked like its predecessor. Don’t get me wrong—it’s still got a design that’s a mile ahead of most of its competition based on materials and build quality alone. But with Android devices like the HTC One M8 out on store shelves, it’s hard to look at what Apple has done with the iPhone 6 and marvel at its innovation. Perhaps it’s just the competition catching up—or perhaps Apple really is starting to lose some of its magic touch.

Either way, the iPhone 6 is still one of the best smartphones you can buy—if not the very best. Apple can still rest easy knowing that it’s successfully caved and given people a bigger iPhone without sacrificing anything that makes these devices so special. But if the trend continues with Android phones, Apple may need to have more up its sleeves than just a thinner, bigger iPhone come next year.

HTC One M8 Review

Design
Smartphones are very personal devices. They're always with you, either in your pocket, on your desk, or in your hand. Like a piece of clothing or jewelry, the device you choose makes a personal statement about you. When I'm ready to drop $600 or more on a phone, I want to make sure I'm getting something that looks good in addition to being functional.

Besides the iPhone, I think the HTC One is the only device that accomplishes that. I've tested dozens and dozens of Android phones over the years, but so far, HTC is the only manufacturer I've seen that's been able to match Apple's devices in beauty and build quality.

It's the same story with this year's HTC One. The body is almost all metal and comes in three colors: silver, dark gray, or gold. I think the gold model looks tacky, but the silver and gray versions are really nice. Because of all that metal, the One is a lot heavier than other phones with similar-sized screens. It's also significantly thicker than the iPhone. But HTC added nice curves to the device, so it's still easy to hold in your hand. It's also much lighter than it looks.

I have one minor gripe with the design: HTC stuck the power button at the top of the phone, which is kind of difficult to reach on a large 5-inch device unless you have Shaq-sized hands. HTC's solution for that is letting you switch on the device by swiping or double tapping the screen, but you still have to stretch to reach the power button and switch it off. Samsung and other Android makers put the power button on the side of their big screen devices, which I think is a much better solution.
Overall though, the new HTC One is just as drool-worthy as the original.

Features
All that beauty is pointless unless the phone works well, too. The One is your standard Android device, but HTC layered some special features on top of all the goodies Google normally offers.

The most notable addition is the second camera on the back, which is used as a depth sensor to shift the focus. If you've ever seen a Lytro camera, you're probably familiar with the process. The dual cameras can focus on multiple objects at once when you snap a photo. After that, you have to go into the photo editor and double tap the part of the image you want to focus on.

Here's a portrait I took of my colleague Jillian. Notice how the One is able to blur out everything in the background thanks to the the secondary camera. If I wanted to, I could blur her out and focus on something in the background instead.

It works pretty well, but I don't see many people taking advantage of the feature. I care more about being able to take good photos quickly, which the One is more than capable of doing. Photos didn't look as good as they did on my iPhone 5S, but they're good enough. I also liked the new camera interface, which makes it easy to switch between shooting modes. And yes, there's a selfie mode.

Another major part of the HTC One is BlinkFeed, an app that lives on the home screen and pulls in news from social networks and several major news outlets, sort of like Flipboard. BlinkFeed originally debuted on last year's One phone, but has a cleaner look this year. It also syncs with some other third-party apps like Foursquare and the FitBit fitness tracker. BlinkFeed used to be the default home screen on the One phone, but you now have to swipe over from the home screen to view it, which I think is a good decision. I care more about getting to my favorite apps than reading the news when I switch on my phone.

HTC also made a clever case for the One called Dot View, which flips over the screen and lets you view incoming notifications. When you slip on a Dot View cover, the One's screen adapts and lets your notifications shine through dozens of tiny holes punched through the cover. It sort of looks like a Lite Brite toy. You can also double tap the cover to get a quick look at the time, weather, and missed notifications. The Dot View cover is clever and cute, but probably not worth the extra $49 HTC sells it for.

Finally, buying an HTC One comes with a big advantage that other Android phone-makers haven't been able to match yet: the guarantee that you get the latest and greatest software updates for two years. Rivals like Samsung and LG tend to abandon major software updates for their devices whenever a new phone comes out, but HTC says it'll update last year's One with the same software the new model is getting. That's impressive.

Conclusion
If you want an Android phone, the HTC One should be the first phone you consider. It looks and feels better than its closest Android competitors, and can handle all the stuff you care about.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Review

Design
If you read our preview of Samsung’s previous Galaxy Note II handset, released in Australia some 12 months ago, you will remember that at the time we wrote that the design of the handset was very similar to Samsung’s more mainstream Galaxy S III model. If you thought of the Galaxy Note II as a stylus-equipped fatter, wider, taller version of the Galaxy S III, you would have been pretty much on the money with respect to its design.

However, Samsung has not taken this same approach with the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note 3, with the latter being markedly different from the S4 in many ways.

The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up the Note 3 is its plush, leathery back, which is reminiscent of the kind of leather casing you used to see on pricey cases wrapped around corporate BlackBerrys and Palm Treos. There’s even faux stitching, which appears to anchor the case onto the rest of the smartphone.

We’ve seen criticism of this back case online, but in our opinion it’s a very nice addition to the Note. It makes the smartphone very grippy, it doesn’t retain fingerprints and the way it reminds one of the leather smartphone cases commonly found in corporate environments is entirely appropriate to the Note 3′s most common usage scenarios. It comes in black, white or pink.

Apart from the back case, the other thing you’ll mainly notice about the Note 3 is just how large and brilliant this model’s screen is. It’s a little larger at 5.7″ than last year’s model, but it’s had a substantial resolution bump, up to 1920×1080, and it’s bright and deliciously clear. This is one screen which you will definitely enjoy spending a lot of time using. In fact, out of all the smartphones we’ve reviewed this year, we prefer the screen on the Galaxy Note 3.

All of the Note 3′s other design features fade into the background a little behind these two major aspects. There’s a metallic rim around the unit’s edges, and you can find all the normal ports and inputs in all the normal places. The stylus socket is on the back at the left bottom as the Note 3 faces you, and it’s easy to dig in and out with a fingernail.

One notable aspect to the Note 3′s design is that its charging point at its bottom is not a standard microUSB plug. Instead, the unit actually supports the USB 3.0 standard, which makes transferring large files to the phone significantly faster if your PC supports USB 3.0, as well as speeding up charging the Note 3′s battery. You can use standard microUSB cables with the Note 3 as well — but you’ll probably want to use USB 3.0 if possible, because the new standard makes for a significantly upgraded experience.

Overall, the design of the Galaxy Note 3 is great. It has a fantastic large screen, its case material is very functional and classy, and its build quality is also very high. It’s not as thick as you would expect, and for its size it’s still relatively light at 168g It is, of course, large — and hard to hold in small hands — but then, you already knew that.

Features
Headlining the Note 3′s featureset is its gorgeous 5.7″, Super AMOLED touchscreen, which runs at a fantastic resolution of 1920×1080. The unit’s processor is a beefy 2.3GHz quad-core CPU, and it comes with 32GB of on-board storage space. You get a 13 megapixel main camera and a 2 megapixel front-facing camera, and 4G support (although not on Optus’ TD-LTE network) is included, as is a NFC chip.

The Note 3 also comes with a microSD card clot that can take up to 64GB, as well as the aforementioned USB 3.0 support. It supports Android 4.3, although we’re sure it will be upgraded to Android 4.4 (KitKat) in time.

Beyond these admitted high-end specifications, the smartphone’s most visible features are largely in its software. And here it’s all about the S Pen stylus. Samsung has introduced what it calls ‘Air Command’, which allows you to hold the stylus above the screen and touch its button to access a number of features specific to the stylus.

There are new or updated scrapbooking, memo, search, notetaking, image recognition, magazine and voice-guided GPS apps, and many of these revolve specifically around the use of the S Pen, or at least function in a streamlined way when they S Pen is used.

In some ways, the larger screen of the Note 3 allows the unit to become more like a traditional PC in terms of its user interface. Multi-windowing features are gradually becoming more sophisticated in Samsung’s user interface, and the S Pen makes management of these windows easier.

And of course, you also get all the native software features already built in to Samsung’s version of Android, which we’ve detailed extensively in our previous review of the Galaxy S4.

When it comes to the extended software featureset on the Note 3, we’re really in two minds.

Firstly, your writer has long been on record as vastly preferring the cut-down, slick and consistent user interface offered by Google’s ‘Nexus experience’ devices. Stock Android is the best Android, in our opinion. And the Note 3 is anything but that, with a plethora of Samsung-only applications, features and UI elements that boggles the senses.

To be honest, a lot of these features didn’t make a huge amount of sense on a more limited smartphone such as the GS4. But on the Note 3, with its S Pen and its larger screen, they start to make more sense as consistent parts of a more capable experience. We’d still recommend you switch a lot of the Note 3′s features off, and it’ll take a while to work out how to navigate all of the UI elements. But Samsung’s gradually bringing it all together, and we find it harder to label a lot of the included features as ‘bloatware’ than we did with the GS4.

Performance
To be blatantly honest, there’s really nothing to complain about with respect to the Note 3′s performance.

As with the GS4, which makes sense, because the Note 3′s main camera is the same one found on the GS4, camera performance is great, as is the software integration. As we wrote with respect to the GS4, and also bore up with the Note 3:

“The shots we took by and large were amongst the best we’ve taken with a smartphone, and we’d rank the S4′s camera easily up with top of the line models such as the iPhone 5, the HTC One and even the model found on Lumia’s flagship 920. The only thing you’re missing out on here through not having the One’s ‘Ultrapixels’ is that you won’t get quite as good shots under low lighting conditions. But we don’t really mind. In addition, the extra software features found with the S4 really push the whole smartphone camera market forward, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these make their way into Android or iOS as standard.”

Battery life on the Note 3 was very decent, especially considering its large screen, and the unit was also quite quick at charging, given its USB 3.0 capabilities. The screen quality was fantastic, and audio quality was also very solid. We loved watching movies on this thing, and found ourselves using it for video action more than our household tablet devices. Performance was pretty much flawless, and you’d expect that to be the case, given the Note 3′s chunky CPU.

But more than all of this, there is just something here with the Note 3 that suddenly works. The device’s S Pen integration has taken a quantum leap somewhere along the line, and there’s a little magic happening here with respect to its Samsung-specific apps and UI elements and the S Pen usage.

Your writer hasn’t spent much time using a stylus with a smartphone or tablet for many years. But suddenly, it feels natural again with the Note 3. The larger screen, the quality of the S Pen, the integrated apps — it all works, at a level beyond that which we saw with the first Note and the Note II. Samsung is reaching a new level with the Note 3.

Having said all that, there are many times when we got frustrated with Samsung’s UI elements. The Note 3 is great for sophisticated, multi-function use, but it can fail sometimes when you’re trying to find a basic setting in Samsung’s labyrinthine maze of options, or when you’re just trying to move a window and things aren’t quite connecting. If you don’t like Samsung’s app bloatware, and its layers on top of Android, then you will often get frustrated with the Note. Everything hangs together better than it has on previous Samsung models, but it’s still there.

Conclusion
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 is not a cheap phone (the cheapest you’ll get it for is probably $659 from Kogan). It’s not a phone which sits easily in your pocket, or in your hand for that matter. It’s chock-full of Samsung’s apps, and many readers will have no problem describing its software philosophy as ‘bloatware’.

But having said that, there’s also something just a little bit magical going on here. If you want every option — processing power, a huge, vibrant screen, great speakers, removable batter, a microSD card slot, heaps of on-board storage, a stylus, a modern Android version and even USB 3.0 — you’ll find it here. This is the smartphone with the lot, and that’s a wonderful thing. The Galaxy Note 3 is a “no compromise” phone, and you have to admire that.

It is perhaps because of this no-compromise philosophy that something else emerges with the Note 3. Some of the software innovations which Samsung has introduced on prior models start to feel more at home with the larger screen and the stylus. If you want to complex tasks more quickly on your smartphone, the Note 3 is one of the first phones we’ve reviewed that will facilitate that, and it clearly shows the way for smartphones in the future.

In terms of a buying recommendation, this is not an easy decision. A lot of people will be put off here by the Note 3′s stylus, but they shouldn’t be. I recommend that if you’re in the market for a high-end smartphone of any kind, you should drop into a retail store and check out the Galaxy Note 3 for themselves. It’s not a phone which is directly comparable to an iPhone, and its featureset really distinguishes it from a less complex model such as the Samsung Galaxy S4.

I think many people will criticise the Note 3 on paper as being too large and having an unnecessary S Pen. But I also think that many of those same people will come to love this overpowered beast if they spend a little time with it. The Note 3 points the way to the future of mobile computing, and I came away with a fond feeling for it. I suspect many other people will too.

If you loved the Note II, of course, you should upgrade immediately. The Note 3 is a significantly better model and worth trading up for.

LG G Flex Review

The Curve
I had my doubts about curved phones, be it the LG G Flex or the Samsung Galaxy Round. But once I used the G Flex for a few hours, I found it more ergonomic and the screen produced fewer reflections than flat phones like the 6" Nokia Lumia 1520 and the 5.7" Samsung Galaxy Note 3. The 700mm radius curve isn't just there to fit the curve of your face; it also makes sense in the back pocket of your jeans (particularly if you have a 700mm curve to your bottom). I found videos more enjoyable on the curved display, even though there's no clear reason why this should be so: after all, it's not a 60" TV where a curve makes more sense to replicate big screen viewing at a movie theatre. Does the curve make this otherwise big phone feel easier to handle or more hand and face friendly? Yes, but this is still a very large phone.

It takes quite a bit of force to bend the phone, so it won't boing against your face or flap like a banana peel. The flexibility is there to make the phone more durable-- exerting force won't break it, it will simply flex a bit instead of cracking. Sure, if you try hard enough you could probably break it, but using bare hands that would be hard (I tried).

Design and Ergonomics
The smartphone has a bizarrely glossy gray striated back--does it look like metal? Nope. Does it look like classy plastic? Nope. It's a drab color and the high gloss attracts fingerprints and lint like iron shavings to a magnet. The saving grace is that the back isn't quite as slippery as you'd think and it's a self-healing polymer that can handle light scratches. Don't take your Xacto knife to it; we mean minor scratches from keys in your pocket or grit on the patio. It can take a few hours and some magic genie style rubbing to make scratches disappear: heat and friction are the key.

Like the LG G2, the volume and power buttons are on the back of the phone just below the camera lens. LG is sticking with this design element, and they feel it's ergonomic because your fingers will naturally fall on those buttons and it keeps the sides tidy. I'm not sure untidy smartphone sides bothered many of us, but the buttons do fall in approximately the right location for tactile use. I still find myself looking at the backside of the phone to make sure I don't accidentally hit the power button instead of volume when watching a video.

The phone has a micro USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom, and the micro SIM card slot is on the left (you'll need a paperclip to eject the SIM tray). Overall it's a cleanly designed phone and the front face is dominated by the big display thanks to tiny side bezels. The G Flex uses on-screen Android buttons rather than hardware or capacitive buttons, so the phone's front is broken only by the earpiece and LG logo at the bottom.

The single rear-firing speaker is loud enough for personal playback in a quiet and it's not terribly shrill or harsh but it's not among the best in terms of volume or fullness. For visual notifications, the G Flex has front and rear notification LEDs and you can customize the LED colors.

Display
The one spec that isn't flagship? Display resolution. It's a 720p (1280 x 720) display rather than the usual full HD 1920 x 1080. The technology just isn't there yet to make a full HD flexible display. 720p isn't horrendous, but on a phone with a bigger than average 6 inch screen, we noticed text wasn't quite as sharp as we'd like. The 245 ppi display also has a minor blue color bias that's more pronounced at the top. Honestly, most folks will look at this and think it's a colorful display with wide viewing angles before they notice the lack of pin sharpness. Since it's AMOLED, colors are very saturated and blacks are rich, and it's bright enough to combat outdoor light. We did note some temporary image retention, where the ghost of the previously viewed web page showed very, very faintly. This is something we've seen on some laptop touch screens, but not on phones. It's temporary, so it's not worrisome unless you notice it and find it distracting.

Calling and Data
Before we get lost in the thrall of the first flexible, curvy phone and speak of megahertz and graphics chips, let's stop to consider the LG G Flex as a phone. It's available on several major carriers, and both signal strength and call quality will vary by carrier and their coverage strength in a given area. That said, we tested both the AT&T and Sprint models, and AT&T has very strong cover in our area (Dallas, TX), while Sprint's isn't as strong. In both cases, calls were clear with average volume, but not as clear as the LG G2, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and iPhone 5s. Data speeds on AT&T and Sprint's network were typical and in line with other phones from those carriers: the AT&T model's LTE connection delivered very quick download speeds averaging 24Mbps according to the speedtest.net app, while Sprint averaged 7.6 Mbps. In as much as we can separate a phone from its network's strengths and weaknesses, the LG G Flex has average call quality and LTE 4G data speeds are as good as they get with current high end 4G phones.

Horsepower and Software
Nothing has changed here from the LG G2 and other Android phones running on the same 2.2GHz quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core CPU with 2 gigs of RAM. It's a fast phone and that's the fastest CPU you can get in an Android device. LG's UI, though not light, doesn't bog down the device and it feels responsive at all times. Thanks to the fast CPU and Adreno 330 graphics, combined with the relatively low pixel count, 3D games fly.

The LG G Flex has 32 gigs of storage with approximately 24.5 gigs available for your use. It does not have a microSD card slot, so you're limited to internal storage and the cloud or a USB flash drive if you buy a USB OTG adapter.

Sorry, no Android 4.4 KitKat here, at least not until LG issues a software update. The phone ships with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and LG's custom UI, which bears similarity to Samsung's TouchWiz, right down to the 4-tabbed settings interface and split-window multitasking. Not that we mind the multi-tasking, which LG handles nicely, though the list of supported apps is shorter than Samsung's.

Cameras
This is the same camera used in the LG G2, and we found a lot to like then and now. It's a 13 megapixel camera with LED flash, HDR and a variety of shooting modes like VR panorama, beauty shot, Intelligent Auto (a feature found on Sony cameras since this is a Sony module), burst shot and time catch (several frames captured over time to show a figure or object as it moves across the screen). Some have complained about the G Flex camera, but I found that like the G2, it captures sharp photos with plenty of detail. Colors are lifelike and natural and exposure is pretty good. The camera can shoot 1080p, 30 fps and 60 fps video, and it can shoot 4K UHD 3840 x 2160 video. It's a bit ahead of its time since few folks have 4K displays, but it's a great marketing point even if the video isn't mind-bogglingly pin sharp (hey, it's a camera phone).

A front 2.1MP camera handles video chat on Skype and other services nicely. Given the fairly high resolution, video isn't as blocky or noisy as on competing phones with lower megapixel ratings.

AV Remote
What's an Android phone without an IR blaster and AV remote app? The LG has QuickRemote, and it can control your TV, cable box, AV receiver, DVD player, Blu-ray player, projector and air conditioner. This is a pure remote control minus the TV grid found on the HTC One and various Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets. Unlike the LG G Pad 8.3 tablet that has a very pared down remote, this one controls all kinds of gear and many, many brands and models are supported.

Battery Life
Big phones need big batteries, and the LG G Flex has an ample 3500 mAh Lithium Ion polymer battery that's sealed inside (yes, it's curved too). Given the power efficiency of the Snapdragon 800 and the relatively low resolution display, battery life on the G Flex is very good. With moderate use, we managed two days on a charge with brightness set to 50% and LTE turned on (we tested both AT&T and Sprint models).

Conclusion
New designs are polarizing, but I suspect curved phones may be the future in a way that 3D phones were not. It's more comfortable to hold in the hand and against your face and it mitigates the hugeness of phablets a bit. The LG G Flex has top specs and it's fast, but I'm afraid the 720p display and higher price tag will turn off some folks. Honestly, the display is by no means bad so I suggest you take a look for yourself first.

LG G2 Mini Review

The LG G2 Mini took the spotlight away from everyone in the ‘mini smart-phone’ category at the Mobile World Congress 2014, in Barcelona, Spain. Lining up as a ‘sister’ phone to the LG G2, the G2 mini has a 4.7 inch display, which is strikingly similar to the flagship HTC One.

The MWC 2014 was the stage for LG to showcase their cheaper version of the LG G2, and it must said; the G2 Mini steals the show. Expected to be officially launched somewhere in April this year, the G2 Mini will have the affordability as well as the essential features to set it apart from its ‘mini smart-phone’ rivals.

So let’s start with the design of the LG G2 Mini.

LG G2 Mini: Design
The GS Mini is comparatively much smaller than the G2; both in width and height. The display screen, as already mentioned, is 4.7 inch, which compares to 5.2 inch with the G2. The weight is extremely light, weighing only 121 grams. This actually makes the G2 Mini quite a good fit in your hands. The only downside in the exterior design is the plastic feel, which is understandable, but it does take away the ‘premium’ effect from the phone.

The overall look of the phone is quite similar to the G2, just everything’s a bit smaller in ‘stature’. The term, ‘like a smaller brother’ can fit pretty accurately to the Mini G2 while describing its overall visual features. The phone has the same ‘Rear Key’, which gives control to the user for power and volume control. What you do get in the Mini version is a very nicely finished and textured back cover, that’s not present in the LG G2 version. It helps in getting a good grip on the phone, which is always nice. However, the overall feel is of an ‘affordable’ smartphone. The display is slightly on the dull side, and tapping the screen does not feel so good when comparing with high-end smartphones.

The G2 Mini is available in a total of 4 colors including the standard black, white, red and a special gold version.

LG G2 Mini: Hardware
As expected, the G2 Mini’s hardware capabilities and features have been reduced to present it as a ‘cheap’ alternative to the LG G2. The specs include a 540 x 960 HD resolution, where it’s higher spec version has the full on HD of course. But that shouldn’t be that much of a worry, as the display screen, although slightly dull, is still pretty good in terms of color quality and sharpness.

The news is that the G2 Mini will be run by a 1.2 GHz processor (quad-core), with a 1GB of memory. The phone will come with a default 8GB of internal storage space, with the standard availability of a microSD card slot to allow expansion of storage. Word of caution here, that the LG G2 Mini is rumored to support only up to 64GB storage cards for its microSD slot.

Apart from that, the G2 Mini will continue to have the ‘infra-red’ beamer similar to the LG G2. Regarding the connectivity options, the G2 Mini will have full support for LTE and 4G mobile internet.

LG G2 Mini: Software
The G2 Mini comes pre-loaded with the Android 4.4 KitKat version. There’s a very nice feature termed as ‘Knock Code’, which basically allows you to turn off your screen with mere a double tap. With this feature, you won’t be needing to press the power button every time you need to turn off your screen. This essentially means that you can tap the screen twice, while the phone is off, and it will detect your command and turn the screen on. The tapping on the screen only works in certain portion of the screen (kind of like a set pattern that you need to follow), which adds a certain level of security to your phone.

Moving on, there’s a ‘Guest Mode’ feature, which lets you give certain access to your phone, while making sure, nobody can delete anything off it without your permission. This is particularly helpful when you need to lend your phone to someone for a certain time. With the Guest Mode feature on, you can be trouble-free of any mishaps to your data stored on the phone. For example, you can block access to your dial-pad, literally barring any user from making outgoing calls from the phone. Or you can password-lock your messages screen, preventing anyone from your conversations.

Then there’s the ‘Easy Mode’ feature, which makes your smartphone basically change to a very simple interface. You will see all widgets disappear, giving you a plain and basic feature set, including a dial-pad, your messages, the phonebook and the like.

Conclusion & Final Verdict
The overall verdict on the G2 Mini is that it’s a great alternative to the high-end smartphones, especially when you’re tight on a budget. It contains all the best features of the LG G2, and even gives out quite a decent score on the things that are not really up to the mark. The display might be bit of a turn-off, but considering that it’s a solid ‘middle-class’ smartphone; the screen quality isn’t all that bad.

The 4.4 KitKat OS, the sharp 8MP camera, and a smooth performing overall phone certainly gives out great impression, and is certainly the next big thing to the flagship LG G2.

What are your impressions of the Mini G2? Please share your views with us in the comments below!