Apple introduced MagSafe wireless charging in 2020 with the iPhone 12 series. In contrast to regular wireless charging, it uses magnets rather than relying on manual alignment between the charging coils or on gravity to keep the phone and charger together. It is a simple, cheap and effective solution. So why is it that smartphone makers have been so reluctant to adopt it, even years after the Qi standard officially added a Magnetic Charging Profile? Perhaps it’s better to ask this instead – do you care whether your phone has magnets for wireless charging? First, a bit of history....
Apple introduced MagSafe wireless charging in 2020 with the iPhone 12 series. In contrast to regular wireless charging, it uses magnets rather than relying on manual alignment between the charging coils or on gravity to keep the phone and charger together. It is a simple, cheap and effective solution. So why is it that smartphone makers have been so reluctant to adopt it, even years after the Qi standard officially added a Magnetic Charging Profile? Perhaps it’s better to ask this instead – do you care whether your phone has magnets for wireless charging? First, a bit of history....
After nearly a month of waiting, the Motorola Signature is finally out – but its €1,000 starting price may prove to be a tough sell. Meanwhile, there are some powerful flagships that used to cost €1,000 or so that may offer a better deal. The Motorola Signature is a fairly slim and light phone (7.0mm, 186g) that is equipped with a 6.8” LTPO display (165Hz, 1264p) and a 5,200mAh battery (90W wired, 50W wireless charging). It has four 50MP cameras – 1/1.28” main (OIS), 3x/71mm telephoto (1/1.95”, OIS), 122° ultra-wide and a selfie camera. The phone features the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 paired...
After nearly a month of waiting, the Motorola Signature is finally out – but its €1,000 starting price may prove to be a tough sell. Meanwhile, there are some powerful flagships that used to cost €1,000 or so that may offer a better deal. The Motorola Signature is a fairly slim and light phone (7.0mm, 186g) that is equipped with a 6.8” LTPO display (165Hz, 1264p) and a 5,200mAh battery (90W wired, 50W wireless charging). It has four 50MP cameras – 1/1.28” main (OIS), 3x/71mm telephoto (1/1.95”, OIS), 122° ultra-wide and a selfie camera. The phone features the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 paired...
It seems that makers are having a hard time hitting the right price for their new smartphones – a problem that will only get worse as the memory shortages start to affect production. We’re not there yet, but last week’s poll shows that Realme missed the mark with the 16 Pro and 16 Pro+. At least the latter has a shot, given the right promotional discount. While the Realme 16 Pro+ scored pretty low, a good number of people are willing to have a second look after the price falls to more reasonable levels. As we noted in our review, the Pro+ is a solid phone, but it costs more than the...
It is still early days in terms of OnePlus 16 leaks since the phone is slated to launch sometime in Q4 2026. Hence, take these preliminary specs with a grain of salt. Still, the OnePlus 16 is shaping up as one heck of a flagship. The phone’s display is said to be a flat BOE X5 OLED panel with a 1220p resolution and a whopping 240Hz refresh rate. Underneath the hood, we might see a Pro version of Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon Elite Gen 6 chipset, rumored to reach insane 6GHz clock speeds. It is paired with LPDDR6 RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. Unfortunately, the storage will be...
Most users tend to associate and purchase YouTube Premium to remove ads on the popular platform. However, there are a few other features Google locks behind that paywall as well. Most notably – background playback. That said, for quite some time now, crafty developers and their respective users have enjoyed ways of getting the feature for free. The simplest approach was to use a third-party browser like Samsung Internet, Brave or Vivaldi (to name a few) to play content in the background. After an avalanche of user reports over the past few days, Google has finally confirmed that it is...
Most users tend to associate and purchase YouTube Premium to remove ads on the popular platform. However, there are a few other features Google locks behind that paywall as well. Most notably – background playback. That said, for quite some time now, crafty developers and their respective users have enjoyed ways of getting the feature for free. The simplest approach was to use a third-party browser like Samsung Internet, Brave or Vivaldi (to name a few) to play content in the background. After an avalanche of user reports over the past few days, Google has finally confirmed that it is...
Huawei is no stranger to experimenting with device form factors and its FreeClip 2 are a prime example. These are the successors to the original Huawei FreeClip earbuds, which brought the C-bridge design, which “clips” around your ear and beams sound without making contact with your ear canal. The second-gen FreeClips come with a noticeably smaller footprint for both the earbuds and case, alongside updated sound which Huawei proudly claims offers 100% stronger volume output. Despite the sleeker size, Huawei still claims up to 9 hours of usage from the buds on a single charge and up to...
Ayaneo started teasing the Pocket Play, its first smartphone, back in November, and then in December it showed us what it would look like, Sony Ericsson Xperia Play vibes and all. Today, Ayaneo has finally revealed the chipset sitting at the helm of the Pocket Play. It's MediaTek's Dimensity 9300. That's an odd choice, given that the SoC in question came out in 2023. Sure, it was MediaTek's top dog of 2023, but it's more than two years old. And if, we assume for pricing purposes, Ayaneo wanted to go with MediaTek instead of Qualcomm (since MediaTek's top of the line SoCs are always...