As is traditional, I save this sort of accessory review for Friday. Bluetooth speakers are very common and commoditised by now, of course, but I chose this one to review because it has a single unique selling point. It has a carrying handle. Don't laugh - it makes a huge difference and is immediately likeable - every other speaker has to be held in a vice-like grip or cradled somehow. The DA150 here can be hooked around a finger while you carry other things, to the beach, to the garden, whatever. Read on...

I can't emphasise enough that I get offered a Bluetooth speaker for review every single week through the year and only the very, very best make it to acceptance and then review. The DA150 isn't perfect, but it's so much fun to use - and so flexible as a music player. But I'll come to that in a moment.

(All my smartphone testing with this 'dodocool' accessory was with a Windows 10 Mobile handset, the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro, by the way.)

Essentially this is a twin-coned speaker with decent bass reflex and tough cloth weave over front and back. It looks and feels great and the DA150 feels very solid in the hand. It's probably all plastic under the hood, but the materials are very well chosen. The outer edges are all rubberised for extra grip and there's one of those 'stick to anything' grippy pads on the bottom, ensuring that it doesn't slide off smooth surfaces when playing music.

Plus it has a handle! This clips on and is replaceable, should it ever break or wear out. It seems to be made of neoprene or similar and is smooth on the top and pitted underneath, for maximum grip again.

The main reason why dodocool has gone all 'cloth' here and not worried about waterproofing is that the back panel has so many ports, it would be tough to make them all water-tight. So you get maximum flexibility but zero waterproofing. Nothing's directly exposed in a dangerous way, but I'd try not to let this get caught in anything more than a light shower of rain. Still, it's so inexpensive (£25) that a water catastrophe wouldn't hurt too much. Different from when you have a £100 speaker!

The back ports are, clockwise from top left:

• USB Type A (e.g. for a memory stick/flash drive, but also for any other mountable storage)
• Aux/3.5mm input, though no cable is provided - you'll have to raid your drawers for your own!
• Power on/off. When turned on, it automatically connects to or starts playing from the last source.
• microUSB (charging only, and yes, a cable is provided)
• microSD/TransFlash card slot 

In other words, you can play music from your phone over Bluetooth, via whatever's driving a 3.5mm lead, or from memory card storage, though note that the latter options just play the tracks on your storage in order - there's no control other than to skip forward and back (using the + and - controls).

Staying with Bluetooth, in this case from a Windows 10 Mobile phone, volume control is multiplexed across the phone's media volume out and the speaker's own volume setting. In other words, for maximum volume, both have to be right up - one does not control the other. This is an important distinction, but you get used to it quickly. You also have to get used to volume up and down being a long press on the + and - keys, with the single press skipping tracks. As you might expect, the centre circle multi-function button pauses and plays, plus it answers voice calls if one should come in (there's a microphone included).

In use, the DA150 is really quite loud, with decent bass and treble, though not outstanding in either. This isn't the loudest and highest fidelity portable speaker you can buy (I'm tempted to plump for the AUKEY SK-S1 here), but for the price it's outstanding and... did I mention it HAS A HANDLE? 

No boring cuboid, this is rounded all over, has material to love, a superb handle to make this even more manageable, it's a hit with me. The promo material shows the dodocool DA150 playing music at a beach party and, while this is a great use case, it also works well in the garden in the summer. Or at least until the neighbours tell you to turn things down!!

Everyone loves a good 'Orlowski retrospective' editorial and this one, looking back at the last 20 years of Nokia, Microsoft and Windows (among other OS) is also well worth a read. In parallel with my own 10 reasons why Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile ultimately failed, of course.

From Andrew Orlowski's piece, provocatively and slightly misleadingly titled 'It's been 5 years already, let's gawp at Microsoft and Nokia's bloodbath':

Almost all of the 32,000 employees of Nokia's phone division subsequently lost their jobs, and CEO Stephen Elop was personally vilified as the agent in an elaborate conspiracy theory.

Some of this angst is justifiable. The deal had been done by outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who called it his "best idea". The deal formally closed weeks after Ballmer's successor Satya Nadella took the reins.

Nadella, though, didn't see the point of the acquisition – as he later admitted – and the Microsoft board had been lukewarm the whole time.

El Reg was told that Nadella had personally assured top staff who didn't know whether to stay with Nokia under the new owner that the future was bright. And in one-on-one situations, he can be incredibly persuasive. But public statements were ambivalent, and Nadella's would become notorious for their obfuscation. Jean-Louise Gasseé called the verbose, word-mangling Nadella "a repeat befuddler" and shrewdly predicted phones were for the chop.

The axe soon started swinging.

The article spans two 'El Reg' pages and is well worth a read. It's fascinating how, looking back on the last 20 years, it's impossible to pin any of the blame for the failure of Windows Phone, the lack of evolution of Symbian, or the fall from grace of Nokia, on any one factor or person. There are multiple failures and almost everyone involved is to blame to some degree.

Yes, Ballmer, Elop, Nadella and the Nokia board over a decade are the main culprits and it's easy to write a new 'what if' story at any point in the timeline. But as ever, the more one digs into the whole decade and industry-spanning saga, the more complications, factors and villains one finds.

You could argue that peak Nokia and Symbian/S60 'did their job' in terms of bringing in sales and market share (2004-2010), but 'Windows Phone' will always remain a project that never really fulfilled its potential.

PS. I'm glad it's not just me that finds Satya Nadella's buzzword-infused keynotes and interviews lacking in hard substance - it seems that Andrew agrees. 

One of THE most common requests I get, even though AAS isn't really being updated anymore, is for ways to grab offline maps for Nokia Maps on Symbian and S60 3rd Edition handsets. And, while I have some maps archived (i.e. as they were in 2012), I notice with interest that the Tienda SISstore team (who do a replacement on-device SIS store, a bit like the old AppList system) have launched Maps Now, a native downloader, or - easier - an online directory of world maps and resources. So just grab what you need and sideload it all to your old Symbian handset?

In theory, just grab everything you need from maps.tienda-sistore.com and sideload it into your /Cities folder on your phone's mass memory (typically). I haven't done this for a while, but if you're keen enough to be reading this news then you'll pounce on the files and be willing to experiment.

I did try the native Symbian maps downloader created by the Tienda team, but it got stuck on the Mediafile pages used to host the downloads. So perhaps doing the downloading via a protected desktop browser is the way to go. (As usual with Mediafire and similar download sites, make sure your malware protection is up to date and be careful what you click on!)

Hopefully the appearance of all these maps and resources will keep a few Symbian handsets going a little longer!

Note that the Tienda team's generic SIS 'store' app can be grabbed here, if you still want to go further and try out applications from the distant past that we all thought had gone for good. Just be careful, since platform protection features no longer work fully on Symbian.

As a writer, I get pitched Bluetooth speakers at the rate of at least one a week, so something has to be special to make me say yes and arrange for a review unit to be sent over. The Tribit XBoom is special - it's fully waterproof, fully rugged, has a genuine 20 hour battery life per charge, and - best of all - it lives up to its name with astonishing volume and bass, thanks to a unique design element.

Ignore the box photo, which makes it look like the XBoom is a micro-speaker, it's not. It's just over 17cm long, small enough to go in your backpack or day bag, but too chunky to fit any single pocket. 

It turns out that Tribit has done its sums just right, because the size is perfect in terms of a compromise between sound reproduction and portability. It comes with a handy carrying/hanging loop, the idea being that you just hang this from a door handle or coat hook or beach tent or whatever, and then the XBoom delivers tunes to all around. Big friendly play/pause and volume adjustment buttons let anyone around control the music, in addition to whatever you're playing music from, e.g. your smartphone.

This being a fully waterproof speaker (so pool parties are a go), all the controls are membraned in some way. Below is shown the main power on/off, Bluetooth pairing control for adding a second XBoom speaker*, and X-Bass, the pressing of which claims to boost bass frequencies in your incoming audio stream.

* You don't get stereo by pairing in this way, it just makes sure that the two speakers are connected together and delivering mono - just twice as loud.

Below these are the two jacks, sensibly behind a chunky rubber-sealed flap. Audio in via 3.5mm (though an AUX cable isn't supplied), should you not want to use Bluetooth, and microUSB to charge the 5200mAh Li-Ion battery inside. Tribit claims 20 hours between charges and I believe them, though cranking up volume and bass right up in my case saw not much more than ten hours. But that's still fine for any use case I can think of.

The unique design feature here is that the bass is driven by twin heavy duty speakers at either end. These move in and out - physically - by as much as a centimetre and are fascinating to watch. As music plays, you can see and feel the thud of the bass drum, and so on.

These drivers are (again, sensibly) recessed significantly inside the twin ends of the XBoom, to help prevent damage:

The upshot is the loudest portable Bluetooth speaker I've ever tested. When I first connected I was blown away as my hand vibrated from the bass and the room filled with music. And then I realised that it wasn't even close to being on full volume. You're going to get noise complaints wherever you take this, I promise.

Which all sounds like hyperbole, but it's true, this is a VERY loud speaker. True, fidelity is lost a bit at full volume, but there has to be a limit somewhere, and I think that Tribit has balanced things nicely here.

The X-Bass control is a tiny bit wasted. It does add a little more bass - and its use may well depend on the genre you like to listen to - but in most cases you can't actually tell without looking at the LED whether it's on or off:

So yes, a really cool and great-sounding Bluetooth speaker that's crying out to be used at garden parties and beach jaunts.

Now to the price. As you might expect from the internals and performance, this isn't a cheap no-name gadget, this is a serious piece of kit. It's currently showing, as I write this, at £70 on Amazon UK, making it one of the pricier accessories I've tried, but actual pricing may vary slightly, as is typical for Amazon. 

I can't say that the XBoom is good 'value', I think the price needed to be closer to £50, but I can say that if price is no object then this is just about the perfect outdoor event speaker for your kit bag.

My camera (phone) comparisons over the last few years have been gradually stymied by manufacturers choosing to over-sharpen, to edge enhance, and to reduce noise. All in the name of producing 'wow' images for social media. Yet, living in the UK, greenery - so trees and grass - and nature generally form part of many test scenes. And it's nature itself, with all its incredible textures, that proves hardest of all to capture using modern camera phones. By way of some data points, I investigate!

The divergence between what I expect camera phones to capture and what they end up producing does seem to be increasing in time. Eight years ago, we had the Nokia N8 (the first Symbian^3-running phone) and perhaps the pinnacle of phone cameras of its age, producing ultra-natural 12MP photos. Its shots were, allowing for lighting levels, essentially indistinguishable from what you saw with your eyes. No enhancements, no sharpening, no dramatic exposures for special effect. What you saw was what you got and, looking at the photos on a computer monitor, it was like looking out of a window onto the real world.

So grass looked like grass, leaves like leaves, trees like trees, and so on.

The 2012 Nokia 808 PureView continued in much the same vein, with noise-less 'PureView' results, albeit at reduced absolute resolution, thanks to the underlying 40MP sensor. But, elsewhere in the phone world, the rot was starting to set in. By the time the sister device, the Lumia 1020, running Windows Phone 8, appeared in 2013, it was starting to be accepted that users wanted more from their photos. Subjects had to be more colourful, more saturated, clearer, with sharper edges. 

And from there the likes of Samsung, Huawei and even (to a slightly lesser degree) Apple started cranking up the hyper-realistic aspects of images - everything exagerated, everything sharpened and edge enhanced so that it looked great on the phone screen and never mind whether the JPG was true to life or even useable later on, in terms of cropping it down.

The 2015 Lumia 950 and 950 XL straddled this gap, with image enhancement compared to the classic 'PureView' devices but with way less than the phone cameras of today, 2018. As I intend to show below with some suitable nature-based data points.

In this case, a corner of my garden, deliberately shot in overcast conditions so that sunlight contrast and shade didn't interfere with the comparison process. All the photos were taken from the same spot and, aside from the stated resolution notes, shot in full 'auto'.

Let's use our Famed Interactive Comparator (FIC). All 1:1 crops are at 900x500 for comparison, but see the links for full versions.

To set the deliberately overcast, deliberately greenery-heavy context, here is the garden corner as presented by the Lumia 950:

Pretty boring, eh? But also packed with natural detail in terms of leaves and grass. Even a few rocks, to add interest!

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, here's the central part of the scene above, at 1:1 in terms of image pixels, shot on the Nokia 808 PureView (in its 8MP mode) and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Now, and i can't emphasise this enough, both phones have a large 40MP (or so) main sensor, so this should be a level playing field. In fact, it should be skewed massively in the Mate 20 Pro's favour because its sensor is six years newer, an eternity in technology.

However, scan the comparator across the two crops above and see what you think. If you think the Mate 20 Pro photo is 'better' then maybe this feature isn't for you. I agree that the sharpness anc contrast help the Mate 20 pro image leap off the page, but look at the images more closely and you'll see that the 808's image is far more 'natural', in that you can see every blade of grass, with no edge enhancement at all. Again I'll liken it to the Nokia 808 PureView's photo looking as if you're seeing a scene through an open window, while the Mate 20 Pro's photo is akin to a photocopy of the 808 original.

Of course, you'll be wondering about other phones that are relevant - or which I happen to have lying around. After all, the two examples above are perhaps at the opposite ends of the spectrum. So here's the Lumia 950 XL camera, paired with the Pixel 3 Camera app/algorithms (actually hosted on a Pixel 2 XL here, but the results should be the same). I'm expecting both to be in the middle of the aforementioned spectrum:

I'd say that on a scale of 100% natural (Nokia 808) to 0% natural (Mate 20 Pro), the Lumia 950 XL would sit at 50% (and spoilt by a little colour cast issue), with the Pixel 3 Camera at about 35%. What do you think? On this scale, I'd say that I'd be happy with anything above 30% in reality - I mean, the example here is very grass heavy and slightly skewed from the average camera phone subject.

As noted in my Lumia 950 XL vs Mate 20 Pro showdown here on AAWP and in my Phones Show Mate 20 Pro review, there IS a way to get the new 40MP-sensored Huawei to shoot natural photos. It's just fiddly and inefficient. You have to shoot in 'Pro' mode and also turn on the saving of RAW images (which take up to 80MB per photo, hence 'inefficient'). Note that you don't have to use the RAW files, you just have to turn on their creation, which triggers the Huawei software to not mess with the image data at all.

As proof, here are some more image pairs. First of all, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro's 'normal' crop against the exact same scene when RAW is toggled on in Settings:

A dramatic difference, I think you'll agree (at least, if you've been keeping up with me in the pixel-peeping stakes!) The un-enhanced output from the Mate 20 Pro's 40MP sensor (so it's been pixel-binned/over-sampled down to 10MP by the phone, but no extra processing has been performed) looks almost perfect to me, in terms of a natural scene.

The acid test? Putting this naturalistic output from the 'RAW-ed up' Mate 20 Pro up against the original gold standard, the Nokia 808 PureView, with which it shares significant heritage:

These shots are practically identical - in fact, the Mate 20 Pro's output is better, more in focus across the frame, with six years of camera phone tech development under its hood, so it's perhaps not surprising.

Enough pixel-peeped shots of grass and leaves though - my conclusion, and hopefully yours too, is that modern camera phone hardware is capable of dramatically better, more detailed, more natural results - it's just that almost all users never see it because companies like Huawei love to 'enhance' photos for better display on the phone screen and damn the actual purity of the images. So they edge-enhance, they sharpen, they reduce noise, they boost colours, they deliver HDR whether you like it or not, and so on.

A lot of people will glance at such 'enhanced' results and think them superior, but you and I know better. It's easy to take a natural image and do things with it - including cropping it down - and the details will always be there. You can't take a typical 'enhanced' JPG and crop it down, as you'll just see ugliness and the real detail will already have been lost.

I do feel a little like I'm crying into the wilderness here - almost every other reviewer of (e.g.) the Mate 20 Pro has said how wonderful its imaging results are. But your own eyes will tell you above that, at least, at the moment, the default output is anything but wonderful. My suggestion for Huawei (and ex-PureView co-creator Eero Salmelin) is that merely shooting in Pro mode should disable all the image enhancement. You shouldn't have to throw away 80MB per image just to get the higher quality JPG!

For those on AAS, you can reflect smugly that the last great Symbian smartphone is still the gold standard for real image quality, over half a decade later. For those on AAWP, note that the Lumia/Windows Camera algorithms are far, far, less aggressive than those on many competing phones. And, rolling in the high quality OIS for keeping shots crisp, the use of a BSI sensor, plus the PDAF, it's not surprising that, across all lighting use cases and subjects, the Lumia 950/XL has been my overall imaging gold standard since 2015.

Next up in the world of phone imaging, and of interest to Nokia/Lumia owners looking for a modern device with as much attention to image quality, are the new Google Pixel 3 devices - and, as you'll have seen above, the Pixel 3 Camera application is similar in terms of image quality to the Lumia 950 XL. So I have high hopes that, especially with the use of stock, un-bastardised Android, the Pixel 3 or Pixel 3 XL might be a very valid choice for anyone appreciating a good camera phone for 2019 and beyond.

Watch this space!

One of the reasons why there has always been a big debate as to what exactly constitutes "a smartphone" is that the definition itself keeps changing. Once we had dumb phones, then high end communicators and touchscreen multimedia gadgets for geeks, and then - by 2010 or so - enough people had what we had been calling 'smartphones' that they became mainstream and just 'phones'. But just what functions got added in each era, where are we now, and where do the different platforms stand?

I've divided smartphones (roughly) into four eras, as shown above. And, for each successive era, I've marked the new functions in red. These are the things that we've expected from our (smart)phones that weren't a requirement in the previous era. And you'll hopefully agree that it's striking how much more our phones are required to do now, in 2018, compared to the feature sets back in 2002.

Fourteen years ago, in 2002, simply being able to install an add-on application made a phone smart. It signified a 'proper' operating system (usually Symbian OS, Palm OS or Windows Mobile) and said application usually had to be copied across from a Windows PC with a proprietary cable. That was it. And there weren't that many third party applications to try out, certainly not when compared to the bulging application stores for iOS and Android today. 

In 2018, the graphic shows just how much a modern (smart)phone is required to handle - and these are all essentials for most of us. In fact, our phones are so much part of our life that the fear of losing them is greater than ever before - lessened (thankfully) by the way everything's also (usually) backed up or synced online, so a brand new phone could be substituted and it wouldn't take that long to get back up to speed.

This feature being hosted on AAS and AAWP, it's instructive to note where both platforms fade. Symbian OS was there at the dawn of smartphones (I was 'there' on day one in 1998 when Symbian was created. I had a phone call from one of the prime movers at Psion to explain - and to make sure that when I typed in the domain that I spelt the name right and didn't miss out the 'm' - cough!) and it dominated the first smartphone era above, with 60% market share for much of its life. It's fair to say that the launch of the finger touch-based iPhone/iOS and then Android in the second era gave Symbian a huge kick in the pants to evolve or die. It did evolve and embraced social media, navigation (in which it was a pioneer, thanks to Nokia), and even Store apps, but its time was drawing to an end as the third smartphone era dawned.

Era number three in my chart brought an increased focus on living online, with the likes of YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and so on, all being practical and expected. Symbian struggled with all of these, but AAWP readers will know that Windows Phone, Microsoft's re-invention of their mobile efforts, did rather better and largely kept up with the exponentially growing iOS and Android for a few years. The three functions listed in red above? Media streaming saw Windows Phone (and then Windows 10 Mobile) starting to struggle, with a 'spotty' Spotify client(!), a reliance on third party YouTube clients, a Netflix client that never worked as smoothly as on other platforms, and no practical way to watch Amazon Prime Video content at all. Remote Office worked pretty well, with virtual desktop solutions and Sharepoint, etc - this was one of the highlights of using Windows on phones, after all. But 'Online gaming', also quoted above, was extremely patchy on Windows and gamers usually had to make do with titles from a year or so back, if available at all.

And so to smartphone era number four. Symbian is a dot in the rear view mirror, Microsoft has pulled back from all Windows 10 Mobile development, and the extra 'phone as digital hub' functions that are now taken for granted just aren't possible under the two platforms. Developers flock to iOS and Android because of the sheer numbers of users and we've long since passed the point of no return in terms of any mobile platform other than the big two being commercially practical to develop for.

I wrote previously about 'moving goalposts' and this is still a fair analogy. It's not as if 'smartphone' was a fixed specification or target - the role keeps expanding, as shown in my infographic. I predict that era four will extend to 2020 and then we'll be looking at extra uses again. Perhaps augmented reality, genuinely proactive virtual assistants, 3D displays and holographic comms. Who knows?!

No, this isn't a phone. It's not even a 'communicator' in the purest sense, since the LTE version hasn't appeared yet. But the Surface Go is a half way house between a smartphone and a full-on laptop or even a 'Pro' hybrid. Paired with a phone (to provide mobile bandwidth), the Surface Go is quite a lot of computing power and familiar interface in a surprisingly small and light package, offering something different from traditional Macbooks, laptops, even Chromebooks now, and letting you bring the power of a traditional Windows PC everywhere you go.

I appreciate that I'm a little late to the party on this - the Surface Go has been available for a couple of months already in many markets. It's been on my radar to test out since launch, but, not being Windows 'phone' related, wasn't top of my to-do list for AAWP specifically. However, the run up to Christmas looks to be quiet on the phone front (especially so in the Windows world!), so it's time to see how the Surface Go copes with a typical daily workload. Could it be your perfect mobile PC solution?

Here's our opening gallery and first impressions anyway, the full multi-part review will be along once I've got some 'Go' miles under my belt! By the way, in terms of product links, try Microsoft UK and Amazon UK.

As usual with our galleries, click images to expand them and see any comments:

The review Surface Go bundle, helpfully including the Pen... Not everyone will need this, but surely all will need the Type Cover, I really don't see why this is bundled, with a £50 (say) bump in price.

The Surface Go itself, here in 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD form, which is probably the best option if you want to do anything serious on the computer.

Here without the Type Cover, the Surface Go is just so light, belying its complexity under the hood. It's just half a kilogramme, barely more than twice a flagship smartphone. The Type Cover brings this up by 50%, to 0.75kg, but it's still around half as much again lighter than the Surface Pro line.

Neatly closed up. The Surface Go is made from magnesium, partly explaining the low weight. Note the coated plastic top section, necessary for the various Wi-fi and Bluetooth antennae. And for the LTE antennae once a LTE variant is made.

Along the top are power and volume buttons, though you don't have to use them very often, since a keyboard press will often wake the Go and since volume adjustment can also be done using the Type Cover function keys.

The utterly amazing variable angle hinge, a modern day mechanical marvel. Essentially, the kickstand can be at any angle, including almost flat back, akin to the much bigger Surface Studio.

Hidden under the kickstand is this microSD slot, usually for keeping large media files and reference material. You'll find a use for it somehow, and microSD cards are now incredibly cheap.

On the Go's right hand side, from left to right, the Surface charging port (proprietary), USB Type C (which can also charge the device) and a welcome 3.5mm audio jack (not always a given in 2018).

The snap-on (with magnets) Alcantara (Burgundy) Type Cover, which looks and feels super-premium. Obviously, it's physically smaller than the Type Covers for the main Surface Pro line, to match the form factor of the Go itself.

The feel of the keys is first class. Qwertyuiop dimension is slightly smaller (10%) than on a traditional Type Cover or Desktop/laptop keyboard, but surprisingly useful once your fingers have 'recalibrated'. There's a full complement of keys, too, with almost the exact same layout as the other Surface devices - just 10% smaller!

The 'Precision trackpad' is AMAZING. It's coated glass, it's large, and it's a pleasure to use. In fact, it's so good that half the time I find myself using it in preference to the Go's touchscreen. The Go's Type Covers are over £100 on their own, but after using this trackpad I can see exactly where the purchase price is going.

Up top are the magnets and pogo pins to hook up to the Surface Go. Note also all the function keys, with screen brightness, media play/pause, volume control, keyboard backlight, plus the usual text editing functions.

The Type Cover finally connected to the Go, here reclined with its flexible kickstand. When the Surface concept was unveiled, I was sceptical about advantages over a traditional laptop, but once I'd thrown around first a Surface Pro and then the super-light Go, and experimented with a myriad ways to use them, I find myself a convert.

The ability to recline so far is actually transformative, in many ways, not least because the Go becomes more 'lappable' than the larger Surface Pros and definitely more than traditional laptops, for which the screen can only go 'back' so far, and often not enough for cramped train or plane seats.

The Surface Pen was bundled with the review Surface Go, it's another £100 but if you need it then well, you need it. Although I'm no artist, I couldn't resist giving it a whirl in my first 24 hours and can confirm how well made it is.

The tip allows for 4096 levels of pressure and tilt (through to a painting application), plus there's a configurable button. I'll have more on this in a future review part.

When activated, a little green LED flashes near the 'eraser' end of the Surface Pen.

Attempting an arty shot of the nib! It's higher tech than it looks and the feel in the hand when sketching is astonishing.

Paint 3D can be a bit daunting at first, but it's actually very powerful - here my wife is just getting started. Again, more on this in a future review part!

Several people have asked about the Type Cover in low light - there are three levels of keyboard backlight, this is the middle level - and all keys seem to have their own LED, so lighting is even. As you'd expect with such premium hardware.

Although the Go is aimed at numerous market segments, not least the family and education (explaining some of the RAM/storage variants), most AAWP readers will be interested to see how this new super-portable QWERTY-enabled tablet performs on the road - tethered to your Windows, iOS or Android smartphone, this has the potential to give you the power of a Windows PC in not much more than the bulk of an A5 sketchpad.

Future review parts here on AAWP will cover the hardware design, specification spread and use cases, and much more.

Last year saw Planet Computers bring back the spirit of Psion and the Nokia Communicators in their Gemini, reviewed here. But there were loads of caveats for the modern era: no NFC, no external camera or screen, no key backlight - these have all been addressed in the Gemini's successor, the Cosmo, now launched on Indiegogo.

Here's the video with everything you need to know, anyway:

And the Indiegogo page where you can sign up (for delivery mid-2019) is here. Note that it got to its funding goal almost immediately and that there are almost 800 people in the queue ahead of you as I write this. Prices start at $549 (£421)...

This does look much more convincing than the Gemini, plus all the teething troubles with the Gemini keyboard will hopefully have been sorted out now.

If there's a modern equivalent to the old Nokia 9500 and 9300 then this is it. Heck, whereas the Gemini's full title was 'Gemini PDA', this one is the 'Cosmo Communicator'. Top stuff, and I can't wait to try it!

The Business Casual YouTube channel has an interesting video up at the moment, with an overview of what went wrong for Windows Phone and, by extension, Nokia. Going from the Symbian glory years (60% market share for half a decade) through the belated launch of Windows Phone, through to the end of support for 8.1, the video is well worth a watch.

There are things missed and not covered, as you'd expect in a 10 minute video - not least the transformation of the titular platform to Windows 10 Mobile and the rolling in with Microsoft's desktop plans. And Symbian's eventual intended successor, Meego, is not even mentioned. But put that aside, for this still gives an excellent overview of the industry over a turbulent decade.

As usual with embedded videos, if you want to watch it larger then click through to YouTube or maximise:

The main blame for Windows Phone's ultimate failure (and thus Nokia's) is laid at Microsoft's feet for wanting too much control and alienating their manufacturing partners. Which is part of the story, though see here for my own take on the decade.

With the Pixel 3 in for review for a short period, and with a glimpse of sun here and there in November in the UK, I wanted to pit PureView phase 1 (Nokia 808) and phase 2 (Lumia 1020, adding OIS) with the Pixel's (as good as) PureView phase 3, doing all the pixel combination in the time domain rather than across a high-res sensor. There's a lot to compare, it's our biggest and longest imaging comparison piece ever, so let's press on and do allow time for the page to fully load!

Why compare the 2018 Pixel 3 camera to the 2012 Nokia 808 and the 2013 Lumia 1020? Because these were the first real 'computational photography' devices - and the 2018 Pixel 3 is arguably the latest and most capable exponent of the same art. How has tech progressed in the intervening half decade and can the old tech surpass the much newer kit in any of the tests below?

In an unusual step for the All About Sites, I'm going to 'tag team' the two original PureView devices and use both of them against the Pixel 3, shooting roughly the same number of test shots with each through the article.

Some notes:

• As usual, I've mainly stayed away from 'easy' shots in perfect conditions - I want to try and make these phone cameras really work, so I'm deliberately trying to make things hard. This shows up differences in output much more clearly.
• The Pixel 3's shots are at 12MP in 4:3 or 9MP shooting at 16:9. I'm using the 808 in both Creative 8MP and 5MP auto mode so as to get a better match for the comparator below. Ditto the Lumia 1020, shooting only in its 5MP default oversampled mode, because I intend to make life very hard for these phone cameras in terms of lighting, and they'll need all the oversampling/combination processing they can muster to achieve detail and keep noise down. Plus I do use zoom on all the phones.
• Zooming is at roughly 2.5x in 5MP mode on the Lumia 1020 and roughly 2x in the Nokia 808 in its 8MP mode. Whereas the Pixel 3 lacks a scale for its zoom, so zoom factors are always a bit of a guess. But you'll get the idea!
• All photos were taken handheld on full 'auto' on all phones, unless stated otherwise, and with the phones handheld. Mimicking real life users.

Let's pit the results against each other, using our Famed Interactive Comparator (FIC). All 1:1 crops are at 900x500 for comparison, but see the links for full versions.

Test 1: Sunny landscape

A gorgeous November day. Here is the overall scene:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 1020 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Both fine photos, but I'm going to give the win to the Lumia 1020, as there's slightly better IQ (Image Quality), though it's a little hampered here by its forced 5MP oversampled output.

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 10 pts; Google Pixel 3: 9 pts

Test 2: Sunny zoom

Another sunshine test, this time with the Nokia 808 against the Pixel 3 and throwing in zoom for good measure. Here is the overall unzoomed scene:

I then tried to zoom to 3x or thereabouts. The 808 (and the 1020) limit their zoom to the pixel limit on the sensor, which is roughly 2x in 8MP mode here. The Pixel 3 has no figures on its zoom slider, so it's hard to judge how far to zoom in, but I aimed for 3x anyway. In hindsight (these test shots were done over a week ago), just 2x, to match the 808 would have done fine. Ah well.

In case you want to grab the original zoomed images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Nokia 808 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Obviously a much more natural image from the Nokia 808, here looking at pixel-level detail because of the zoom used, so there's no PureView oversampling. But the Pixel 3 did remarkably well, considering that it only has the one 12MP sensor. The multi-shot 'Super-res-zoom' feature, allied to good digital zoom algorithms mean that you can go in at least as far as the PureView pair (so 2x or 2.5x) with only marginally worse results. You can see the clear edge enhancement, noise reduction and general artefacts, but the Pixel 3's zoom results are rarely ugly.

Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts; Google Pixel 3: 7 pts

Test 3: Nature purity

Back to the Lumia 1020, a landscape with loads of natural detail, always hard to capture without artefacts. Here is the overall scene:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 1020 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Again there's the lower resolution of the 1020 (5MP oversampled), but that aside, the genuine detail in the 1020's photo is astounding. And, not for the first time, I'm tempted to compare the PureView shot photo as looking like real life and the competing device's attempt as looking like a 'colour photocopy'. In truth, the Pixel 3 isn't the worst culprit when it comes to sharpening and edge enhancement - the Samsung and Huawei flagships are worse - but you can see with your own eyes that detail and subtlety is rather lost at the pixel level. So display on a big screen or crop in slightly and the processing is there for all to see. Sadly.

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 10 pts; Google Pixel 3: 7 pts

Test 4: Macro time

It's the Nokia 808's turn again, this time looking at a small red flower close-up, in the sun. Here is the overall scene:

As ever with the Nokia 808, there's a 'production note' - in this case that the 808's large optics mean that it can't really focus very close-up. I had several goes with it and the one linked and cropped below was the one where I was finally happy that the 808 had managed a focus lock!

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Nokia 808 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Whatever you might think about natural versus processed images, the Pixel 3's shot is dramatically more impressive - its smaller optics let it get closer and the image processing does a great job of delivery super detail, even of all the small specks of pollen. Nokia 808 fans will already know the phone's aversion to shooting macros - the usual trick (in good light) is to shoot with 2x PureView zoom or thereabouts, letting you get 2x 'optically closer'. But it's not ideal.

Nokia 808 PureView: 7 pts; Google Pixel 3: 10 pts

Test 5: Extreme zoom

The Lumia 1020's turn again, and its turn to zoom, with a distant tower visible beyond the treeline. Here is the overall unzoomed scene:

I then used the maximum 2.5x zoom on the Lumia 1020 and tried to get close to its framing on the Pixel 3, again using its 'Super-res-zoom'.

In case you want to grab the original zoomed images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 1020 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The Pixel 3's zoomed shot isn't terrible, especially for a phone camera with only one lens/sensor. But with all the fancy software tricks in the world, it's no match for the 1/1.5" 40MP camera in the Lumia 1020, which smart-crops when zooming to give this truly losslessly zoomed image.

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 10 pts; Google Pixel 3: 8 pts

Test 6: In the rain

The Nokia 808's turn again, this time in the gloom, with no direct. Here is the overall scene, focussing on the clock, which should allow for good detail comparison:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Nokia 808 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

This is interesting - the 808's shot has higher natural image quality (see the IIII on the roman numeral clock face), but all the lines and regular textures suit the Pixel down to the ground, good subjects for its edge enhancement, such as it is. Plus the multi-frame combination system allows for gathering more light overall and a lighter, more pleasant image, with no post-processing needed.

Nokia 808 PureView: 8 pts; Google Pixel 3: 9 pts

Test 7: Night time

The Nokia 808 again, trying to take it out of its comfort zone by shooting in the dark (remember that it doesn't have OIS or even a BSI sensor). Here is the overall scene:

Again with the Nokia 808, there's a 'production note' - in this case that the 808 has no OIS, and I wasn't allowed a tripod, so I improvised by resting the phone on a wall. And, surprisingly, got a good result on the very first try! Having to go to these lengths and then hope for the best does rather make one appreciate modern phone cameras with OIS though!

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Nokia 808 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

I got lucky with the 808 shot and it's beautifully crisp and stable. And, if you look closely, has better detail than the Pixel 3, though I have to award the latter the win here by quite a way because of the amount of light gathered from the rest of the scene - the Pixel 3 just nails it, while the 808 is - understandably - way too dark. Grab the full images from my links above if you want to examine them yourself!

Nokia 808 PureView: 8 pts; Google Pixel 3: 10 pts

Test 8: Night, a different angle, no walls(!)

The Lumia 1020 this time, and truly handheld, from a different angle. The 1020 has OIS, of course, though rather crude by modern standards. Here is the overall scene:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 1020 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

There's not much to split the phone cameras in these shots - the Lumia gets the stone colour right but the Pixel resolves slightly more detail, at the expense of some noise and artefacts.  Let's call it a narrow win for the newer phone, but both great photos considering the tricky subject.

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 8 pts; Google Pixel 3: 9 pts

Test 9: Low light, dynamic range

The Lumia 1020 again, for another low light shot. Here is the overall scene:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 1020 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

When released in 2013, the Lumia 1020 was head and shoulders above the rest of the imaging world for shots like this (heck, for almost any shots), but what you're looking at here is five years of technological progress. The Pixel 3's shot is stabilised with modern OIS, is made up of 15 separate exposures combined together, and has dual-pixel auto-focus, rather than the 1020's simple contrast-based focussing, which rarely works well at night. As a result, the Pixel 3 shot is crisp and detailed and has better dynamic range. A convincing win.

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 7 pts; Google Pixel 3: 10 pts

Test 10: A Stained Shot

The Lumia 1020, with one of the biggest challenges facing a phone camera - a stained glass window with the sun behind it. Dazzlingly rich colours and intricate detail. And shot with the phones over my head - and still not able to get remotely level with the imagery. Here is the overall scene:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 1020 and Pixel 3, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Yes, yes, I know the lead-edged patterns play right into the Pixel 3's processed hands, but the shot here is still remarkable. This is pixel-level detail and it could almost be the full shot! In comparison, the Lumia 1020 image is less well focussed, with some detail over-exposed and lost and with less of the original window's detail captured. A landslide win for the Pixel 3, I think you'd agree?

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 7 pts; Google Pixel 3: 10 pts

Test 11: By popular request - the party mockup!

As per the comments, looking at how people are handled. Here's my traditional party mock-up shot, in terms of lighting and movement. Here is the overall scene:

To look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central crops, resized slightly for the web since I don't think anyone is expecting to pixel peep a low light party snap! Just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

With the Nokia 808 (which I also tested, though its result wasn't as good as the 1020's, by a whisker) and Lumia 1020 both having proper Xenon flash, there's no real contest here. If you're shooting at an indoor evening event you use a real camera or dig out your old Nokia. Period. Having said that, the Google Camera result is pretty good. It takes multiple exposures of the scene as usual, but then spots where there's movement and doesn't try to average or blur the sections which are moving. All very clever, and - for a LED flash phone - the Pixel doesn't do badly, indeed capturing atmosphere better than the Lumia 1020, though it can't match the illumination or precision.

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 9 pts; Google Pixel 3: 8 pts

Test 12: By popular request, a person portrait

You're all fed up with seeing my ugly mug, but hey by popular request in the comments, here's an indoor portrait taken in good light - skin tones, hair, and more. Here is the overall scene:

To look at the images in more detail here, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The scaling is different, again, because of the Lumia 1020's 5MP output and also by the way the Pixel devices 'zoom in' to achieve their blurred background portrait effect. Regardless, the two crops do show the differences between the original PureView processing and the modern 'ultra-sharp' fashion. My natural inclination is to prefer the 'real' snap from the 1020, but you can't deny the detail from the Pixel, even if it's all a little artificially sharp. The Pixel also gets dynamic range better and equalises out to uneven lighting. And, for that reason - if not the sharpening - it gets an extra point here.

But I accept that this could be argued either way!

Microsoft Lumia 1020: 8 pts; Google Pixel 3: 9 pts

Verdict

Adding up the points gives us:

• Google Pixel 3: 107/120
• Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 'team'(!): 102/120

This set of scores is notable for the small-lensed, small-sensored Pixel 3 conquering the results from the best of the Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020, both with far larger sensors and oversampling. We really are at the start of a new era in phone imaging.

And note that the Google Camera software is far from perfect. It still goes into a tizzy when faced with capturing the subtleties of greenery and mother nature. Plus the 'Super-Res-Zoom' can be improved further, I feel, by at least another 50% in zoomed image quality. So both down to software then, meaning that more tuning by Google can improve results** while the hardware stays exactly the same.

Interesting times, eh? The Pixel 3 defeated the Lumia 950 too, so I think we can now say that the age of the champion PureView devices is well and truly over*.

* Unless you like snapping nature, in which case the 808 and 1020 still take some beating...!

** As this article was being finalised, Google released a big low-light upgrade for its Pixel 3 Camera, adding a special 'Night sight' mode. This is somewhat artificial, think HDR at night, but I'll investigate and report back if the feature warrants it.

You may recall that I picked my top 10 all-time best smartphone cameras over a year ago? Well, the idea's back and this time I've made it interactive (with a little help from Javascript wizard Indrek) - you can now put in your preferences and the top 10 will get sorted and ranked accordingly. Which phone camera (from this list, anyway) really is THE best for YOU?

To get started, head over to stevelitchfield.com/grid.htm and rate how important each of a zillion factors to you in terms of what you'd expect from a great phone-hosted camera. You can apply your own weightings, though, and the page will multiply everything up and work out rankings according to your stated criteria. Cool, eh?

I'd have hosted the grid here, but it's too 'wide' for Rafe's layout!

Comments welcome, of course. Which, in your opinion, smartphone cameras need adding to this table? I can do various additions and amendments in time!

PS. I wonder if any of the DxOMark people read my criticisms (this from a couple of years ago, for example) of their methods and results. I'd be happy to chat to them about all this, of course...

Regular 808 enthusiast Martin Roth has been at it again, this time with an imaging comparison against the brand new iPhone Xs. See below for the video, though notably he only had the latter for an hour, so there are no proper low light test shots.

As usual click through to YouTube as needed and maximise window size and quality:

From Martin's YouTube conclusion (sic):

• Pro Nokia: For me, the 38MP wide angle shots of Nokia 808 performs better in terms of image sharpness, than the iPhone Xs. If the camera of the Nokia 808 would have a modern, fast processor, it could create HDR pictures and more. The only downside would be the slightly larger size of this 5 year old camera. Okay ...don't forget the autofocus problem of the 808. ;-) 
• Pro iPhone Xs: Sometimes the sharpness of the 12MP teleoptics is a little better than the Nokia 808 8MP in lossless Zoom. As a negative point, I feel that the colours are too colourful. 

Interesting, as always. It's clear that the ultra natural output from the 808 looks unfashionably 'unsharp' in today's world, but as Martin shows, you can tweak sharpness in the Camera settings - a unique feature that i haven't seen on any other phone camera before or since....

A debate on Twitter earlier in the week (see below) put up one of THE most frequently asked questions about phone imaging. Why do I/we both pixel peeping when most phone-shot photos are only ever seen on 5"/6" phone screens? It's a good question, but I think I have a great answer. If you're a phone imaging enthusiast then you'll know where I'm going with this already, but for the casual user, here's why I do what I do and here's why enthusiasts care...

The question's often phrased in comments here, of course. But it reared up again after people watched MKBHD's latest phone camera comparison shootout. It was unashamedly looking at photos when compared on Instagram and Twitter, with polls for each and millions, repeat millions of votes were cast. With crazy results, such as the latest iPhone cameras being defeated in 'round 1', with the top-notch Google Pixel cameras going much the same way, and with mid-range phone cameras such as that on the Blackberry Key2 and Pocofone F1 almost managing to topple the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, a flagship I've largely dismissed for its heavy handed image processing. But it fits in well with the other results from this low resolution test.

You see, as MKBHD explains in the video, after the fact, people mainly voted on exposure and contrast, as expressed by these Twitter and Instagram (low resolution) expressions, and attributes like detail and purity were left in the rear view mirror.

Now, prompting this very article, @NiceChapHere on Twitter posted:

But most people see such photos on social media. They go through compression and lose detail. I can't think of a common case where one would view the full image on their desktop these days.

It's a fair point - if all anyone saw of phone-shot photos were phone-sized/social-hosted renderings then almost any phone camera from about 2014 onwards will fit the bill for most shots (extremes of low light excepted). "Good enough for Facebook" has been a cliche for the last decade and it's still true. A phone camera can be low end and with artfacts and glitches galore, yet when viewed in a 600-pixel wide Facebook or Twitter post it'll look just fine.

In fact, such low grade images often look better than 'high quality' photos at such low resolutions or on phone screens, because they're artificially sharpened and edge enhanced, to try and overcome the limitations of their sensors. Which is understandable, even if the end result of asking the general public which photos are 'better' ends up being counter-intuitive.

But, of course, there are genuine real world reasons why phone cameras needs to be better, and why I need to 'pixel peep' (i.e. look at 1:1 crops) in order to diffentiate the 'good' from the 'best':

1. Processing. The more natural, the more detailed, a starting image is, the more can be done to it later (e.g. in Snapseed, Adobe Elements, Lumia Creative Studio, or similar). In contrast, if you take the typical mid-range, sharpened, enhanced photo that impresses so much on social media, and try to do anything else to it, you'll quickly hit ugliness and you'll lose even more detail. 'Garbage in, garbage out', and so on. 
    
   Now, I'm the first to admit to loving to tweak my phone-shot images. A straighten here, a crop there, a little more saturation, and then 'heal' out that telephone wire. That sort of thing. But you can only do all this to create stunning results if the starting image hasn't had too much done to it in the first place. In my tests, the Lumias, iPhones and Pixels do well in this regard, while Samsung, Huawei and other phone flagships tend to overdo the pixel-level sharpening and edge enhancement, and lower cost phones even more so, and this all limits what can be done later.
    
2. Cropping later. Several of my favourite people shots, framed in the family house, are of faces taken from a 'group' shot. You know the drill - "Hey, Debbie looks great in that one!" or "Joe's really cute there, shame about the rest of your ugly mugs!" Or perhaps it's as simple as a landscape shot of a scene which is nice enough, but you love a particular section of the frame - maybe a house or boat or whatever. If your original 9MP image (say) was of low quality then even though it looks fine at 'social' resolution, once you crop down to 25% (i.e. a quarter of the original frame) then all you'll see are blocky artefacts and ugly edges. Whereas if the original was of high enough quality then there will be genuine detail to still admire, even at (here) around 2MP.
    
3. Noise and low light. Low light is what 'sorts the men from the boys', as it were. Shoot in dim conditions with a low or mid-range phone camera and you'll get a gloomy, noisy mess. Do the same on a really good phone camera (e.g. Lumia 950, Pixel 3) and you'll have loads of OIS, PureView and multi-frame noise-cancellation tech lending a hand, giving a clear and useable photo. When I pixel peep, I'm looking for noise and artefacts in anything other than perfect sunny conditions. And these will only get worse as the light reduces, of course.

A simulated example will help, I'm sure, using images A and B:

A nice shot of a group of people in good light. One taken with current smartphone flagship quality at 8MP and one taken with a current low-to-mid-range phone camera, also at '8MP'. Which one do you prefer, A or B? Just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

What's interesting here is that I bet many people would pick B as slightly 'better'. At worst, there would be an even split between opinions. Which just goes to show how much you shouldn't trust web/screen-sized photos as indicators of image quality. Because A is the quality photo and B is the low-grade version. Just because a photo looks sharp at 900 pixels (here) doesn't mean it's any good for anything else - post processing or cropping. 

By way of illustration, let's take the smiling black lady on the right. "Hey", she says, "I love this shot, can you crop this for me, I want to frame it for my husband". OK, so you dive into Paint or similar on these two 8MP images, and then crop to just the lady. I've labelled the crops this time, partly because it's obvious which is which:

Again, wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

A dramatic difference - the higher quality 8MP original has been able to stand cropping down like this and still delivers a useable - even printable and frameable - photo, while the lower quality 8MP shot (typically from a £150 phone) produces something that's unsatisfying, to say the least.

So that's why I pixel peep - because until you do so, you don't really see whether a phone camera is delivering real image quality and not just something that wows on the phone screen but disappoints once you really take a look or need to work on the photo some more.

Comments and data points welcome...

Although not actually a retail product yet, I think GPD is onto something with its latest MiniPC design. Definitely a tool for professional engineers more than prosumers, it's geek porn for anyone who likes mobile gadgets with lots of connectivity. See the photos and specs below - heck this thing has an Ethernet port!

From Manguiro:

GPD has published images of its new device that it wants to present this coming year. The device in question will be called GPD-MiniPC, and is a new product line that wants to introduce GPD, aimed at offering a device not as powerful as its Pocket line, but in favor of gaining connectivity with more USB ports, and other types. 

• Intel N4100 processor
• 4GB RAM
• 128GB SSD 2242 drive (replaceable)
• 3 USB 3.0 Type A ports (full-size USB ports)
• 1 USB Type-C port (for charging and data)
• 1 MicroSD slot
• 1 Gigabit RJ45 port
• 1 HDMI port (standard size)
• 1 Serial port
• 1 touchpad built into the keyboard (for use with the right hand)
• Wifi Dual Band 5GHz
• Bluetooth
• Charger with PD (Power Delivery) and Standard support (5V charger), both by the same USB Type-C port (The device will come with a PD charger)
• 6200mAh battery (2 x 3200mAh)
• Backlight keyboard
• Touchpad panel on the right side
• Mouse buttons on the left side
• Hole to install a wrist strap (wirstrap).

...Initially, the Indiegogo campaign will open this February and will only have 2000 initial units.

The official description is:

"It is an ultra small handheld UMPC, suitable for engineers, technicians or industrial applications (configuration of industrial equipment, etc., and that can be connected through the ports, being a tool easy to transport, complete and compact) "

All very intriguing. I'm not sure I have a personal use for this sort of thing every day, but I'd sure as heck like it in my all year round toolkit, for all those times when I'm summoned to a friend's house to 'fix their computers'!

(via MSPU)

The SIStore team, the most active developer team in the Symbian world, has just released  - as a Christmas present to the world(!) - a whole new Delight Custom FirmWare (CFW) OS release for these three popular Nokia smartphones from the 2010-2012 era. All the details are below, though note that I personally haven't installed this, so the usual caveats apply in terms of risk. Mind you, if your six to eight year old smartphone's in need of updates and a complete refresh then look no further!

^{(Photo by Osenok)}

The URL you need for all this is http://www.ovi.h1n.ru/delight/

Max, from the SIStore team, says:

We have released a solid Delight CFW update for Nokia 808, N8, and E7 (e.g. for 808, there are English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Czech, Polish and Serbian; more languages by request). 

It took me some time to repair many possible errors caused by Nokia’s offline servers… That’s why new Delights moved to a new free hosting: http://ovi.h1n.ru/delight/ (i.e. certain Delight components will not work without direct links to the hosting, where back-end is located).

Delight 1.7 includes:

• Greatly reduced number of non-working garbage modules.
• More cool and beautiful widgets in Delight style.
• Python + Python 2.0 +  Qt IAP are embedded! Now you can launch any and I mean any 3rd party app designed for touch UI!
• Beautiful colourful top-bar above both native and even QtQuick apps and in power saving mode too! This is a unique mod created entirely by me (custom colours over QtQuick apps never existed before).
• Nokia Maps bear semi-transparent elements for a better usability + repaired Maps Loader! Do you want to download, for example, Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany? Maps Loader will be working by requests, as I cannot place 50 GB on free hosting…!
• Updated VoIP audio service to v2.3.1 (very rare and final update from Nokia) for Fring-like apps. Though Fring is dead, some other apps like MobileVOIP might still work.
• Included MemSpy and ScreenGrabber. These free rarities by Nokia were really saved from hell! There is no more powerful task manager for Symbian than MemSpy; and ScreenGrabber allows taking both screenshots and recording screen continuously in GIF animation.
• Amazing latest X-plore mod.
• Repaired downloads through Nokia Mobile Dictionary.
• Edited Converter app resources so that words don’t superimpose any longer.
• Music Delight widget skin now bears almost non-tangible half-transparent base. This is useful for white album covers.
• Internet connection popup for those who use limited mobile data plan and they will immediately see a notification if mobile data connection was initiated (very useful for full-screen apps and games)
• Updated SSL certificates!
• No more Limited WLAN Connectivity bug!
• Repaired Connectivity Analyzer (Get Host By Name module after the death of Nokia servers).
• Camera mod which doesn’t break PureView zooming (by Osenok and Timoxa)!  This mod is just awesome!
• Added stubs for all rom apps. Now, for example, Internet Radio is shown that it’s properly installed in AppList and can be launched from store.
• Mobile data tracker widget in Delight style just rules! I showed a demo to the female Delight users, and they felt ecstasy seeing this!
• Sound Improvement v3.5 by ExtraX7. Anna equaliser and loudness mod are now working from C drive with ROMPatcher+ patch.
• Small profiles widget with custom graphics. Credits go to ICE GAME.
• Top bar colours above native and QtQuick applications. Note: white colour will persist over Qt applications with custom QML files, for instance SIStore!
• Java permissions mod, exclusively fully adapted for FP2.
• Offline queries are fully or partially disabled for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FmTx. Thanks to CODeRUS for the first patch.
• USB OTG pop-ups patch (another thanks to ExtraX7).
• Colour gamma of mobile data tracker widget in Delight style.
• Ability to change user agent of the built-in Web Browser via Delight App.

...and much more, see the tech stuff in the main download link http://www.ovi.h1n.ru/delight/

A few screenshots to whet your appetite:

On the left, the 'Limited Connectivity' test server issue that has plagued Symbian for the last few years is now a thing of the past; (right) a newly skinned X-Plore file manager, in action!

There are downloads for the Nokia 808, mainly, though also images tested and working for the E7 and N8, with the C7 in 'beta'.

Comments welcome if you're geeky enough and have time to work through this new Delight release over Christmas!

Bluetooth headphones have existed for years, of course, though anyone who really cared about audio quality usually stuck to the traditional wired headphones and a phone's 3.5mm jack (this being AAWP, the DAC and output in the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro is exceptional). But over the years, with new codecs (e.g. aptX HD at the high end) and faster and more capable chipsets in both phone and accessory, quality has been rising, prompting me to experiment with the mass market 'state of the art', exemplified here in the Tribit XFree Color.

Again, for AAWP readers, none of this is enforced, since all Windows phones have 3.5mm jacks. But Bluetooth output also works well, for that (largely) cable free experience, plus establishing a decent Bluetooth headset in your pocket or kit bag will stand you well if you move to a 2018/2019 Android or iOS handset with no 3.5mm port and no adapter handy. So many options.

So this review is part of an experiment - can I, as a staunch 3.5mm jack supporter, live with a wholly Bluetooth solution? I tested this accessory with my Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro on Windows 10 Mobile and also with the latest Google Pixel 3 XL, on Android.

I suppose I should clarify my requirements, in the light of quite a diverse Bluetooth accessory marketplace:

• High audio quality, by which I mean gentle but firm bass (e.g. bass guitar), low frequencies handled solidly (so bass drums, etc,), plus the highest frequencies crisp and clear (hi-hats, vocals)
• Earbuds that are joined (so no risk of one falling out or getting lost), plus a cable would also enable...
• ...a control pod, so play/pause/call pickup, volume up and down, next track, previous track, and so on.
• In-ear seals - I can't stand outer ear options, where you hear everything from the outside world and they hear the tsk-tsk-tsk of my beats.
• Not too expensive (less than £50, ideally)

The Tribit Audio XFree Color in action with my IDOL 4 Pro...

I've found candidates over the years but they've always let me down on one of the above criteria, usually the first one. 2018 has seen the design featured here appear - some have assured me that the same OEM is making similar headphones for different Chinese brands, but Tribit Audio has a good name in my household, since I reviewed their super speaker here earlier this year. I might be naive, but it feels (and sounds) like Tribit Audio adds a little tuning of its own.

Regardless, the 'XFree Color' have proved something of a success over the last week or two here. And they come in at a rather impressive £25 or so, half my guide price (to myself). 

Packaging is basic but you get quite a lot in the box, see below...

Charging cable, three sets of silicone buds (S/M/L), three sets of ear hooks (S/M/L), carrying bag, a very decent manual, plus the XFree headphones themselves...

The earhook design is somewhat flawed in that the fit on the earphones is loose (it's just a push fit) and also depends hugely on the exact geometry of your ears. I've shown them fitted below (the hook bit fits into the top of the outer ear), but after some experimentation I found I was happier with the hooks removed. Still, good to have the option.

The drivers themselves are all aluminium and definitely premium in feel, while the back ends have magnets that keep the two buds together when the headphones aren't in use:

One of my requirements is to have a control pod, i.e. some means of controlling playback without having to rely on fiddly gestures on a touch sensor on the buds. And the XFree Color design includes such a pod, though the waterproofing here does mean that the controls are sealed perhaps a bit too stiffly in rubber. As a result you have to press quite firmly, or even pinch a button with a thumb and fingernail, for maximum leverage. Not a showstopper, but I'd have preferred softer touch controls:

Skipping (or jumping back) a track is done via a long press on the relevant + or - control, different to other pods in the past (a double press is more usual), but the system does work here.

And so to performance. Regardless of niggles over earhooks and control rubberisation, the Tribit XFree Color's sound is... amazing. Perhaps not totally 'flat', as in capable of being used as 'reference' headphones, but the way the DAC is tuned and the 8mm physical drivers deliver quite superb bass, a perfect sound in which I feel every bass drum thud, while still hearing all the crisp top end that I like. It's possible to catch these out with classical music, but for rock and pop these are outstanding considering the price tag. I've seen other reviews online quote these as sounding 'like £80 or £100' headphones and I fully agree. 

They're not perfect, but they're an order of magnitude better than I was expecting for £25.

I tested these with Windows 10 Mobile and Android 9 and had no issues in terms of control. Battery life is quoted at between 8 and 10 hours, depending on where you look - in real life, I got to 6 hours, but then I do like my music quite loud, so....

In daily life then, with a couple of hours use, I was recharging every few days. A little rubber flap pops up on the control pod to reveal a microUSB socket and the headphones charge very quickly, 15 minutes or so. But you do have to remember to charge them, otherwise you'll be left - as with any Bluetooth solution - out of luck!

Of note is the 'CVC noise cancelling' listed on the product page. This is a chipset thing for when you're on a voice call and it tries to isolate voice frequencies and remove ambient noise. It works OK, but don't confuse this for active noise cancelling for general listening. Not that you really need it because the silicone in-ear buds block out the world very effectively in my experience.

The XFree Color Bluetooth Headphones are on Amazon UK for £26, but also for the same $ amount on the Tribit web site Internationally.

I think this is cracking value and all things being equal could in theory make this my main set of headphones for all daily use. There are a few drawbacks to going on in on Bluetooth, mind you, and I'm including listing these after the break because they're not a reflection on this particular accessory but are generic and common to all Bluetooth solutions:

• They need charging at all. This is a biggie, not because they're hard to charge, but because you need to remember to do so. If they charged wirelessly (i.e. from a Qi plate) then sticking them on this (e.g. by the bedside) once a day would be perfect. As it is, you have to remember to charge every couple of days, an odd schedule, and then it takes a few moments to uncover the charging port and find a suitable microUSB charging source. I'm exaggerating slightly, it's all a bit trivial, but it's a chore you can't forget. Ironically it's less of an issue when travelling as you'll then have a power bank and cable (or two) to hand in your bag, I'm sure. 
   
• There is some loss in fidelity. Although it's hard to tell with most of my rock music, simple physics tells us that taking an already heavily compressed MP3 or M4A music track and then recompressing it with different algorithms, sending it by radio to another DAC, where it's decompressed and played, will degrade the intended waveforms. So there's always a nagging feeling that "this would sound even better if I was hearing the decompressed original without the Bluetooth compression cycle in the way". Oh well. Maybe it's just me worrying over this?
   
• There is confusion over what's connected. This might be a first world problem for me, with more than one phone, but more than once I was trying to work out why nothing was happening in terms of 'connecting' when in fact the headphones had auto-connected to the last thing I had them hooked up to, which still had its Bluetooth on! So if you do have more than one phone or computer/tablet that you use with Bluetooth headphones then in practice you have to micro-manage which ones are enabled/disabled at any given moment. Which is a bit of a pain.

Comments are welcomed on all this. Am I being too grumpy in listing objections when balanced against the main Bluetooth headphone pro - the lack of a cable needing plugging into the music source?

What do you think? (And what do you think of the Tribit XFree?)

'MySmartPrice' is the source for this leaked (oddly portrait) promo video for the upcoming Nokia 9 PureView, embedded below. Yes, 'PureView' is back, albeit under Android and now Symbian, Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile. Oh well, it still looks very interesting, though there's an awful lot we don't know yet. I have err..... some questions!

There's no guarantee that this video is genuine - it could conceivably be based on renders - but hey, let's assume it's kosher for now...

The Nokia 9 PureView will have five ZEISS cameras. The ad talks about 'Impossible Detail', '5 Simultaneous Shots', '10x more light captured', 'Incredible Texture', and 'Stunning crisp HDR photography'. Plus, as you'd expect, you can refocus after the fact. Interestingly, there's no mention of zoom capability, and I wonder - I just wonder - whether the way the renders are done is accurate and that all five cameras are identical. In other words, it's doing in hardware very much what Google is doing in software in the Pixel range, i.e. taking five 'identical' shots and then combining them for maximum detail and minimal noise. With that facility to focus at least one of the lenses differently in some modes, for the 'refocus' feature.

All rather interesting. Anyone looking forward to a Nokia 9/ Lumia 950 head to head?(!)

Away from imaging, the Nokia 9 PureView will have a notch-less 5.99-inch 2K (QHD) 'PureDisplay' with HDR10 support, plus an in-display fingerprint scanner. It will be powered by a Snapdragon 845 chipset with 6GB of RAM and it will come with 128GB of built-in storage:

The Nokia 9 PureView will have Qi wireless charging and will run Android One, based on Android 9, making it very 'stock' and also guaranteed updates.

Take all this with a pinch of salt anyway, but whatever happens, it's great to see the PureView brand back in use officially again!

Linus Tech Tips posted a video which I thought might be of interest, one of the first with hands-on with the new Cosmo Communicator, the followup to the Gemini PDA, covered on AAWP last year. I have my own sources at Planet Computers and I'll be doing my own hands-on once they've made a prototype with fully working external display. Watch this space!

The Cosmo Communicator is the follow up to the Gemini PDA, of course, adding camera, external screen and keyboard backlight, the three biggest user-requested features from the Gemini.

Specs include:

• Full backlit physical keyboard
• Primary 6” touchscreen
• External 2” touchscreen
• Android 9 (Pie) OS
• 8-Core Mediatek P70 processor
  
• 6GB RAM
• 128GB storage plus microSD
• 24MP external camera
• Fingerprint sensor
• NFC capability
• Stereo speakers
• Twin USB Type C ports (one for charge, one for data)
• Wi-Fi and 4G connectivity

Linus Tech Tips grabbed the latest prototype, with just a slideshow running on the external display, and it made for an interesting video for anyone steeped in the likes of the Nokia Communicators from the 'old days'!

See the Indiegogo page here. The Cosmo Communicator should be available mid-2019 and you can save quite a bit of money if you get in early, etc.

What would you say to a Bluetooth speaker that really delivers in 2019? 40W of music power, USB Type C Power Delivery Charging, NFC Tap-to-pair, IP67 water, dust and shock proofing, microSD and Aux input, all for less than £50? That sounds a lot like the Tronsmart (slightly pretentiously named) 'Element Force'. Yes, it's a Bluetooth speaker, but on steroids.

As the name might suggest, the Element Force is built like the proverbial brick house, not ashamed of its coated metal frame and screws, this is a black beast that means business. It comes with a Type C charging cable (yay, this is the first Bluetooth speaker I've seen that doesn't use microUSB!), and a 3.5mm to 3.5mm AUX lead for occasions when Bluetooth isn't suitable.

The 'interface' is a set of tiny LEDs hidden underneath the top surface and six embossed rubber control buttons along the top. These are incredibly hard to photograph and impossible to see in real life when the light's not perfect. So the idea is that your finger feels where each is and instantly recognises which ones which - and this does work once you get the hang of it. In fairness, a 'feel'-based approach might even work better in a party environment, where you're unlikely to see standard control labels, so I'll give Tronsmart a pass here.

Anyway, the controls, from left to right, are power, playing mode (i.e. 'source'), volume down/skip back, play/pause/answer call, volume up/skip forwards, and 'EQ', which cycles between an as-is sound, 'extra bass' and '3D stereo enhanced'. Most people will settle on the EQ mode they prefer and then just leave this control alone - the 'Extra bass' sounded great to me, more of which below. 

The small square icon on the right is the NFC target - the Element Force supports tap-to-pair and this worked just fine with both Windows 10 Mobile and Android handsets. One tap and you're prompted to pair, with no need to 'scan' and then wait to find the right accessory, etc. Tap-to-pair isn't common these days (it debuted with Symbian handsets in the 2010 era) and it's good to see it make a come back!

On the back, covered by a water-resistant plug, are the various ports, helpfully(!) labelled:

I think the ports are rather obvious once you've peeled the plug back, but there we go... And yes, Type C in a Bluetooth speaker - welcome to 2019. This charges at a full 3A (so effectively 'Power Delivery'), so the internal 6600mAh battery charges in just over two hours if you plug in a charging source with enough oomph.

Down at the right end surface is a very sturdy  fold-out hanging hook. The idea is that at an outdoor event, where there likely wouldn't be any nice level shelves or furniture, you can hang this on any convenient pole or protruberance. To keep blasting out 'tunes', as they say in the cool kids world, I believe....(!)

So it's virtually indestructible and charges in a heartbeat from your Type C chargers, but what about the sound output? It's pretty phenomenal, the high end isn't quite as crisp as on my previous champion speaker, the AUKEY SK-S1, but then that doesn't have anywhere near the same bass volume, doesn't have any rugged attributes, is microUSB and doesn't have tap-to-pair.

The Element Force easily wins out overall in terms of feature and functionality - the maximum volume is very impressive. I quickly discounted the '3D' effect mode, since it sounded too obviously 'widened' and processed, but then settled on 'Extra Bass' when using the speaker at up to 80% volume, and 'Standard' mode when going for maximum volume, since otherwise it felt like the bass was overdriving the speaker cones too hard, possibly damagingly so.

Playing time is quoted as 'up to 15 hours at medium volume' and this doesn't seem far from reality. Of course, the point of getting something like this is that you use the high volume and massive bass to good effect, at which point the exponential laws of physics leap in - if you're pushing that much air around with twin speakers then the energy has got to come from somewhere. At an event, where you're playing at 90% volume with the Extra Bass turned on then expect closer to five hours playtime. But it's enough, just charge this fully before putting to the ultimate test...!

This is currently £45 on Amazon UK, which I think is rather excellent value, considering what this can do....

Guest writer By Michael 'Mivas_Greece' (surname withheld by request) brings us the first part of a tale of prototypes (one of which he has access to) and what might have been, featuring some of the various uses of Nokia's 'Pre-Touch' technology. A Lumia 1030 anyone? Part two of this feature will be published in due course.

The year is 2013. A new chapter for Nokia after the last hurrah of Symbian with the legendary and unique Nokia 808 PureView. Despite abandoning an OS that was a king once (and is still popular in the enthusiast community, e.g. with the SIStore and Delight team), Nokia had something fresh and different to present in the mobile industry. Windows Phone 8/8.1, in combination with unique, colorfully designed and tough unibody Nokia devices. Something completely different from the competition. After releasing the "most innovative smartphone of the year" (Lumia 920), Nokia transferred and readapted the technology of the Nokia 808 PureView into the other legendary camera phone, the Lumia 1020. But they were already planning something much greater and innovative.

In 2013/2014, Nokia was working on something highly innovative. Something that would change the way we use our smartphones. A 'Game Changer' technology. The so-called '3D Touch' or 'Pre-Touch' or 'Projective Capacitive Touch'. A future technology that was never released...

Various leaks over the years have shown devices with codenames like 'Midas/Catphone' and 'Goldfinger'. They were some of the first Nokia devices built to support the '3D Touch' technologies and the first to have Windows Phone 8.1. The Catphone was an entry level Lumia phone and the Goldfinger was a high level Lumia phone. Although the glossy unibody Goldfinger device (an evolution of the Lumia 920 in terms of design) was designed to be released in the '30' series (e.g. Lumia 1030), later a different prototype was built to be released as the (actual) Lumia 1030 and the Goldfinger prototypes were used for testing purposes only.

Nokia “Goldfinger”, Image source; nokiamob.net

The new prototypes codenamed as Nokia 'McLaren' were of a different design, much closer to the lumia 1020, with a big camera module (which means that its camera was meant to be better than the one on the Goldfinger), but with bigger size and screen, and full aluminum unibody instead of polycarbonate, which makes it feel much more premium compared to the Lumia 1020 (or the Goldfinger). It also has smaller bezels, size and weight compared to the Goldfinger. The Nokia 'McLaren' would have been the Lumia 1030, the flagship of the Lumia '30' series (i.e. the 3rd generation of Lumia), the first with WP 8.1 out of the box and the first with the innovative, but never released '3D Touch' technology, if… it hadn’t been cancelled.

Nokia Lumia 1030, a.k.a. McLaren

Here are some specs that I’ve collected from various sources and from my personal experience with McLaren prototypes:

• 3D Touch Screen, Projected-Capacitive Touch Technology
• PureView Zeiss Camera (captures RAW/dng or Full Resolution + PureView mode), OIS, Dual LED flash, RAW (dng)
• OS Windows Phone 8.1 (out of the box), Cortana, Downloadable Lumia Camera, HERE Maps/City lens/Drive/Transit etc
• Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 (Surround sound) with bass filter
• Directional Stereo Recording
• Body Metal (Black, Silver, Grey) with plastic bottom (antenna)
• Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974) Quad Core Processor 2.3GHz
• RAM: 2GB
• Storage 32GB
• microSD slot up to 128GB (SDXC compatible)
• Display 5.5" LCD Full HD (1920 x 1080)
• Battery BV-F4A, 2600mAh
• Front camera 2MP, fixed focus
• Dedicated camera button
• HAAC microphones
• SIM Single nanoSIM tray
• Charging micro USB
• Light sensor, G sensor, E-Compass, Proximity sensor, Gyro Sensor, GPS/AGPS
• Bluetooth, WLAN, NFC

As we can see, its hardware was comparable to other high-end Lumia phones (e.g. the Lumia 930 or the Lumia 1520) but with various improvements. However, what makes it unique among the best Lumia and among all other smartphones today is its innovative never-released 3D touch technology.

Pre-touch tech...

Unlike any other smartphone out there, its groundbreaking 3D Touch digitizer allows sensing of nearby objects (i.e. our hands) without touching it at all. It recognizes with high accuracy the 3D position of up to 5 fingers at the same time and it utilizes no other sensor to achieve such a thing. No proximity sensor, no camera sensor, no nothing at all. Only its evolved 3D sensing digitizer. This offers the opportunity to use the device without touching it at all in many cases. The possibilities of such an innovative technology are endless.

Let’s see some examples of what this technology offers. Although, some of them we have already seen elsewhere, I thought it would be nice to go deeper and present them here in more detail.

1. Complete non-touch experience.

This means that we can use our smartphone without touching its screen at all. In theory, we can swipe our fingers in the air or 'press' the air to fully use our smartphones. In fact, some firmware versions in the McLaren prototypes offer this experience. (Of course we can also touch the screen if we want, it is still a touch screen!)

Lumia McLaren running WP8.1

2. Exploding Tiles in submenus – 'MixView' (This and all following features are available only in newer firmware)

This feature would simplify the way we use an app. It would make it easier and faster. Briefly, by using the Pre-Touch technology, (i.e. without touching the screen), we can hover our finger over an app, hold it there for a second and it explodes in smaller tiles - submenus. This means that without opening the app at all we already have access to the submenus of the app to have a quick look or open a specific submenu. As an example, we can see our favorite contacts and click directly one to call – this is way faster than opening the contacts, search for the contact then call. It is also more convenient than having many shortcuts of favorite contacts on our screen. Another example is the web browser. We can access our favorite sites or the last site that we opened without even opening the browser. This feature, although it supports the inbuilt Internet Explorer and Contact tiles, could in theory apply on any app to make our life easier!

Exploding Tiles demonstration on a McLaren using the Internet Explorer Tile

3. Grip-to-lock/unlock orientation

This feature does what it says. The 3D digitizer can detect objects not only above the screen, but also around it. In this case, without touching the screen, but only the shell from the sides, the grip and also the intensity of it can be measured and translated into a function, e.g. locking or unlocking of the screen orientation. A much faster and easier way to lock-unlock-change orientation without creating shortcuts and tapping again and again all the time or - even worse - looking deep into settings to change it.

Demonstration of screen orientation lock by grip sensing on a Lumia McLaren

4. Pre-Touch handwriting or typing.

Although I haven’t found a finished app, dedicated to either pre-touch typing (non-touch 'Swype' keyboard) or pre-touch handwriting & translating handwriting to typing words (only the second half exists in a few apps available for any phone), this is a feature that is possible with this technology and that would make writing much faster and easier. Through testing some apps, however, I could use this function for handwriting. With a pen and a further translation to words etc, this would be what I call the 'Galaxy Note Killer' feature that would surpass the famous Samsung Galaxy Note series and the precise and unique S-Pen.

Demonstration of random handwriting just with fingers on a Lumia McLaren

These are just some of the features I noticed myself, and when the second part of this 'Days of Future Past' feature is ready, I will also demonstrate one last feature, the Pre-Touch Camera that is extremely rare.

I have also found a very interesting video presentation (from 2016, I think) that shows a few more features that utilize further the Pre-touch sensing, with combinations of grip and hover, or touch and hover etc, offering an even better experience with the smartphone. These applications include Microsoft Office, an evolved web browser, a UI-less Media Player and even games.

I re-uploaded the above mentioned video (that I found on a Chinese website, bilibili.com) on YouTube, so that more people can watch it. I do not own this video and all rights are reserved by Microsoft. The video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOSfynTghtQ but also embedded here:

All of these amazing gems of innovation and technology were started by Nokia and further developed by Microsoft… I wonder what would have been if all this technology, taking full advantage of the innovative projective capacitive touch screen, had been released… A game changer in the way we use our smartphones? A breakthrough in mobile industry? Something similar to what happened when the first iPhone came out? We will never know...

Michael “Mivas_Greece”, guest writing for AAWP