Like their supercar counterparts, the biggest problem with premium flagship phones is their asking prices. It’s not uncommon for makers to ask north of $1,500 per handset. They’re great devices, a lot of fun to use – but that asking price is going to put them out of contention for lots of us with tight budgets to consider.

The good news here is that the phones you can get for half or less of the asking price of a flagship phone have quietly become very good.

The features that were common in flagships just a few years ago – and the speed of those handsets – has trickled down into what’s usually called the “mid-range” of smartphones.

Samsung’s cheaper phone ranges are its Galaxy A series phones. I’ve recently spent a few weeks evaluating its $597 Galaxy A33 handset.

At that price point, it’s not the company’s cheapest – that’s the Galaxy A13 – or its top end, which is either the Galaxy A73 or Galaxy S21 FE depending on how you want to count it.

The $597 price of the Galaxy A33 puts it in the middle of that middle class. It’s a mid-range, mid-range phone, in other words, but what do you get for your money – and is it worth it?

I’d say yes, based on my testing. The Galaxy A33 is a 6.4-inch screened phone, so it’s got plenty of screen real estate without being huge in your hand the way some phones can be. Its display offers up to 90Hz refresh rates, which means it can handle smooth web page scrolling and faster graphics effects if you like your mobile games. It’s also got water resistance built in, which you don’t always see in phones at this kind of price.

On the camera front, it’s equipped with four rear and one front-facing camera. The primary lens you’ll actually take photos with has a 48MP sensor, lined up above an 8MP ultrawide sensor and 5MP macro lens. The final lens on the back is a 2MP depth sensor, used to achieve that “soft focus” effect that many people like in portrait photos.

The Galaxy A33 shoots fairly well for its price point, and Samsung’s camera app does make it easy for new photographers. I’ve long been a fan of its “Single Take” camera app, which automatically captures shots and video as you move around a subject. It’s an easy way to get a striking picture most of the time, while guiding you as to how to make those kinds of shots happen yourself too.

Will it outshoot a Galaxy S22 Ultra or iPhone 13 Pro Max? In no way at all, but then it’s less than half the price of either, and that’s very much the point. For everyday photos, whether you like a selfie or two, or just want cute baby pictures of the grandkids or pets, it’s absolutely fit for purpose.

App performance was fair, but not exceptional within this price space. I didn’t hit too many instances of apps lagging, but comparatively it’s absolutely average within its category. The Galaxy A33 also supports 5G networks, and while that might not matter to you right now, it’s a nice future proofing step to have in a new handset.

Samsung has also impressively stated that it will offer four years of full software upgrades for the Galaxy A33. It ships with Android 12 on board but should still be good for fresh Android upgrades all the way to Android 16. You don’t see that with too many mid-range Android handsets!

The reality for smartphones in 2022 is that for most of us, a handset like the Galaxy A33 is more than enough. It’s not the fastest phone money can buy, but that’s 100% reflected in its asking price. For day-to-day usage, it’s absolutely fine, and the inclusion of multiple camera lenses and water resistance really is just icing on the cake.

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If your best mate told you they were now driving a “Ferrari Lite”, you’d want to think long and hard about what that meant before you jumped in the passenger seat, right?

This is exactly the case for the Oppo Find X5 Lite. It’s part of Oppo’s new flagship phone range, headed up by the pricey $1799 Oppo Find X5 Pro and slightly less expensive – but still in flagship price range – $1399 Oppo Find X5.

By way of comparison, you can walk out of an Officeworks store with an Oppo Find X5 Lite for under $800.

That’s quite the price gulf, but what do you get – and is it just Oppo throwing a brand name onto a significantly lesser phone?

In one sense, yeah, it is. The Oppo Find X5 Lite is sold overseas as the Oppo Reno 7 5G, so there’s some branding games being played here. As you’d expect, it doesn’t quite have the power or features of phones that start at twice its price, either.

Still, having tested out the Oppo Find X5 Lite over the past few weeks, and comparing against what you could get for the same money, I’m quite impressed overall.

The Oppo Find X5 Lite sells in either blue or black finishes, with a 6.43-inch AMOLED display capable of up to 90Hz refresh rates. That matters, because your typical smartphone has a 60Hz display, refreshing 60 times per second. Those extra 30 refreshes per second lead to a smoother display for scrolling webpages, viewing social media feeds, video, or gaming functions.

On the processor front, the combination of one of MediaTek’s Dimensity 900 CPUs alongside 8GB of RAM means that it’ll run most Android apps without any real issue.

It’s worth noting if you’re a mobile gamer that other phones such as the Samsung Galaxy A53 and especially the Apple iPhone SE 5G do outpace the Find X5 for graphics performance. That’s especially true for the iPhone, although it won’t suit you if you don’t like Apple’s particular smartphone approach.

Oppo’s phones all use Android but with its own “ColorOS” launcher on top. Opinions split here; some people love its bright, big-buttoned style and controlled look, while others prefer a more pure Android look. Honestly, I fall into the latter group, but it’s very much a taste matter.

Where the Oppo Find X5 really impressed me – and surprised me – was in battery life. Most mid-range 5G phones can typically manage a day’s moderate use without issue these days – the previously mentioned iPhone SE 5G is an outlier in this case, sadly – but the Find X5 really ran rings around most of the other phones in this price bracket I’ve tested.

If you’re a light user, multi-day usage is absolutely within your grasp. You don’t get wireless charging, but you do get Oppo’s insanely fast SuperVOOC charging to top the phone up. When you do need to top up the Oppo Find X5 Lite, if you’ve got the supplied charger to hand, it’ll start charging faster than anything else at this kind of price. What’s more, you do still get a charger in the box, something that’s becoming a rarity in many phones these days.

The battery life of the Oppo Find X5 Lite did seriously impress me, but where that “lite” suffix did come into play was with the camera array. It’s an interesting shift for Oppo, which has long sold itself as a “camera phone” company.

At the front, the Find X5 Lite has a generally very good 32MP selfie camera, while at the back it features a primary 64MP wide lens, 8MP ultra-wide and 2MP macro lens. On paper that gives you a lot of tools to play with. In reality, you’re probably going to want to use the wide lens more than anything. The 2MP macro lens can take close-up shots, but they’re all too often grainy and hard to focus. The ultra-wide lens certainly works, but delivered shots that were just a little less bright than those shot on the primary lens.

I’m very fussy about phone cameras, to be fair, and for most folks you won’t have a bad experience with the Find X5 Lite’s cameras. It’s simply that it does slightly undershoot relative to other phones in this price space, so if camera shots are a key part of your phone buying experience, it’s worth keeping in mind.

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It doesn’t take too much usage to fill that space up, whether it’s with your own photos or videos, or apps. A full phone won’t let you take more photos, and what’s more it’ll likely run slower too as a result.

So, what can you do? You probably don’t want to delete your precious photos or videos. You should probably back them up, but the other way to get a little space back is to delete any old or unwanted apps you don’t need any more. Even if you’re not lacking in storage space, it’s no bad idea to effectively Marie Kondo your smartphone from time to time, clearing out the wasted space (and potential security risks) of old apps.

So how do you remove an old app? Here’s how:

Apple iPhone (all models)

The process for getting rid of an old app on an iPhone is very simple indeed.

Locate the app you no longer want on your phone, and press and hold on that app with your finger. A short tap would launch the app, but a longer one will give you the option to delete it. On older iOS versions – if you’ve got a very old iPhone that’s still running – all the apps on your screen will start to shudder. They’re not afraid (although maybe they should be) but you should see a small “x” icon just above them. Tap that to remove the no-longer-wanted app.

On newer iOS versions, a long hold on an app icon will bring up a menu allowing you to edit your home screen, share the app with others or finally, to remove the app, marked with a minus symbol in a circle. Tap that, and you’ll be asked if you want to delete the app, or just remove it from your home screen.

It’s an important distinction because newer versions of iOS put your apps into “App Library” folders. If you only remove it from your home screen, you won’t get its data space back. Of course, if you just don’t want the clutter of the app icon, that’s a perfectly fine approach to take. If you do want it deleted, though, then the red “Delete App” option is the one you should take.

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Google Android

Google’s approach to deleting apps varies by both Android version and phone maker, with some making it considerably simpler than others.

You can (generally) take the same approach as with an iPhone, long pressing on an unwanted app. That will usually bring up an option for App Info on newer Android devices. Tap on that, and you’ll get an option to uninstall or delete an unwanted app.

The other way to get rid of an unwanted app is through the Google Play store. Open that up and tap on your Google ID icon, located in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. From there, tap on “Manage Apps and Device”. Then tap on “Manage” and then find the app you no longer want in the list. Tap on it, and then select “uninstall” to remove it from your Android smartphone.

MORE: Get help installing and setting up new software and apps

What about apps my phone maker puts on there?

It’s very common for a lot of Android app makers to have their own app stores and preinstalled apps on a given device. Some of them won’t allow their own apps to be deleted (which is annoying) but many will, usually via the same methods as for a Google Play store app.

What if I accidentally delete an app I want back?

For the most part, you should be able to find an app that you’ve decided you want back via your phone’s App store. Bear in mind that you’ll need as much space back as the app originally took, and that it’ll need that much data to install – so it’s best to try installation of any app over Wi-Fi than pricey mobile data.

The one catch here is that some apps do vanish from app stores, either due to age or not being updated – or in some cases because either Apple or Google removes them. That’s typically due to them being no longer supported by a newer OS, posing security risk or because they’ve contravened an app store’s given policy.

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Most devices are pretty good at warning you that you’re running low on juice with notifications when you get low, but that’s not a lot of help if you’re nowhere near a power point, or if you’ve left your charger at home.

If that sounds all too familiar, don’t panic! There’s plenty of steps you can take to extend your device’s useful battery life in a pinch – or even if you just want it to last longer from a full charge.

1. Use your device’s low power modes

This one might seem obvious, but most of our battery powered gadgets will offer you a reduced capability mode when you hit around 20% battery or less. On Apple’s iPhones this is called Low Power Mode, and it’ll stop automatically fetching mail, refreshing apps or background downloads when enabled.

Most Android phones have a similar mode, and some may allow you to specify which apps you do or don’t need the most. On laptops, you’ll typically see the processor speeds wound down, as well as screen dimming kick in on low power modes.

2. Give it a reboot

It’s the oldest, most cliched trick in the support world, but turning your device off and on again can be beneficial for your battery life, as long as you’ve still got enough power to restart in the first place!

That’s largely because what your phone, tablet or laptop is doing most of the time is managing the memory and data needs of the apps you’re running. Over time, this can become a messy matter, with some app coding leaving memory fragmented, or background data tasks running that you just don’t need.

Restarting allows for a clean memory slate, and it could let you eke out just a little more time with your device. It’s sound advice to restart most tech gadgets on a regular basis this way, because it can also give you back a little performance if a given app is misbehaving.

3. Use your device’s radios in a smarter way

You probably don’t think of your phone, tablet or laptop as a radio. The reality is that it’s not just one radio, but typically 2-3 radios. That’s because it handles mobile data/calls on one radio, Bluetooth connectivity on another, and Wi-Fi on a third. All of these radios will use power, even when you’re not in range of a mobile signal, Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth device.

The trick here is to use them smartly. Wi-Fi is generally more power efficient than mobile network data usage, so preferentially jump onto Wi-Fi when you can for broadband-based tasks. However, if you’re never near a connectable and safe Wi-Fi network, you can disable it, because it’s always looking for nearby Wi-Fi networks even when not connected. The same is true for Bluetooth; if you don’t pair to a smartwatch, headphones or in-car Bluetooth system, you can extend your phone’s battery life by temporarily disabling it.

There’s also the nuclear option of going into “Airplane” mode, which disables all onboard radios. It’s largely an anachronistic description dating from an era where there were concerns about what those radios might do to onboard flight instruments, if you’re curious. Just be aware that disabling your phone’s SIM connection will cut you off from calls and texts as well as data specific activities.

4. Disable location tracking

Most phones – all smartphones and some feature phones – tablets and even some laptops can track where they are in real time. That’s functionally useful if you’re making your way to a destination via Google Maps or Apple Maps, but it does cost even more power. The mix of GPS location data and Wi-Fi triangulation that’s used to determine your location is power intensive. If you’re not using location-aware apps like maps or some fitness tracking apps, disable location tracking to save even more juice.

5. Go quiet, go dark

Another way you can make the most of your device’s inbuilt power is by limiting screen brightness and sounds. If your eyes can handle it, a dark theme – available for most smartphones and tablets, and across both Window and Mac operating systems for computers – will use less power than a light one. Dropping the brightness down on your phone can save power, as can dropping the refresh rate if your phone supports high refresh rate modes.

On the sound side, dropping the volume or even muting it entirely does mean you won’t hear notifications or calls incoming on a phone, but equally it means you’ll save power. One added bonus here is that it also means you won’t be distracted by less useful notification sounds while you’re trying to work

6. Put power hungry apps on the naughty step

You can do a little detective work to help out with battery life woes, because most devices will explicitly tell you which apps are hungry for electrons, and which ones aren’t. All you have to do is know where to look. On smartphones, head to settings and then battery (sometimes called power on some Android variants), and you should be able to access a list of battery sapping apps by percentage.

You may want some of these apps running, of course, but knowledge is power here. Facebook’s app is a bit of a classic monster when it comes to battery sapping, as are mobile games. Limiting your actual usage can help, stopping the app when you’re not using it if you don’t need updates is even better. If you don’t use the app much any more and it’s a battery hog, kick it clear off your phone.

7. Cheat, and buy a battery pack

If all else fails, and you’re always finding you just can’t make it through the day without your device going kaput, invest in a portable battery pack. It’s worth noting that the charge rates from battery packs vary widely, as does the charge devices can take. Most portable packs won’t have an issue charging most phones, but some tablets and most laptops won’t take a charge from them, even if the plugs line up.

What you want to look for there is a battery pack that promises to work to the Power Delivery (PD) standard, because that should work with a PD-compliant laptop. Bear in mind that’s not every laptop by a wide margin, so check your notebook’s specifications before you buy. Also, remember to keep your battery pack charged, because, like your phone, a flat battery pack isn’t much more than a fancy brick.

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Smartphones have lots of additional features that could make them even smarter, but some are hidden behind menus you never open. Here’s five of our favourite lesser-known smartphone features.

Scroll around like a mouse with the space bar

We’ve all had those moments where you’ve typed out a long text, email, or social media post only to realise there’s a typo or awful autocorrect making it wrong, haven’t we?

You can try tapping near the mistake, but this can be frustrating as you tap around or behind or in the middle of the part you need to change. There’s a much simpler way to get direct control if you spot an error in something you’ve typed in.

Just hold down your finger on the space bar for a second or two, and you should get a full touchpad style interface to zip the cursor precisely where you need it to be. From there you can delete or edit as needed, and even use the same long press on the spacebar to then zip back down to the end of what you were typing. It couldn’t be simpler!

Tap the back of your iPhone to start apps

This one sounds like magic (and you might be able to fool people into thinking it is), but if you’ve got an iPhone 8 or newer, you can get it to perform most tasks not by tapping on the screen, but by tapping on the back of the phone.

It’s a feature called Back Tap, and you’ll find it within the Settings App under Accessibility and then Touch. Switch it to on, and you can select a whole range of features that will kick into life when you double, or triple tap the back of your iPhone. I tend to have camera on double tap and mute on triple tap, but you can pick what you like.

Bear in mind that some phone cases can make it harder for an iPhone to register your taps. One added neat trick here for owners of Google Pixel phones is that the Pixel 5 and new Pixel 6 phones also support rear tap actions; you’ll find them under Settings, then System, then Gestures, called Quick Tap in this case.

Use text replacements for regular messages

Everyone’s familiar with text-speak such as LOL, which was born out of the limitations of classic number pad based T9 text systems. They’re mostly long forgotten now, but often you’ll find yourself using the same phrases again and again in your messages without a handy well-known text-speak alternative.

Except you do, and you don’t even know it. It’s possible to create shortcuts for any sentence or text fragment you’d care to name, and have your phone automatically expand it into whatever you want to say.

On an iPhone, open up Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Text Replacement. Type out your phrase and the shortcut acronym you’d like to use – it’s best not to use a real word here – and whenever you type that acronym, your iPhone will suggest it as a correction, even for quite long sentences. On Android devices, it’s called different things, so you may need to search for text shortcuts on Samsung phones, or personal dictionary on other Androids, but the principle is the same.

Use a Samsung phone to charge other phones

Wireless charging isn’t a new feature, but did you know that some phones can act as wireless chargers themselves? First seen locally on select Huawei phones, and now found on a lot of Samsung flagship phones from the Galaxy S9 onwards, it allows you to use your phone’s battery like a portable wireless charging battery pack.

Samsung calls the feature wireless PowerShare, and you have to enable it in Settings, then Battery, then Wireless PowerShare. Once that’s done, if you put your Samsung phone back-to-back with any other Qi wireless compatible device, it’ll supply power to that device.

Yes, you can use this to charge up an iPhone from a Samsung Galaxy phone, even though they’re quite bitter rivals. It’s worth bearing in mind that this does sap your Samsung phone’s battery, and it’s rather slow, but it can be a great icebreaker if your friend’s phone is on its last legs.

One cool tip here: Most electric toothbrushes charge this way, so you can top up its charge while travelling direct from your phone.

Print (to an actual printer!)

If your home or office printer is on Wi-Fi and reasonably recent, the odds are very good that you can print photos, documents, or web pages straight from your phone to your printer. This is generally true whether you’re using an Apple iPhone or one of the many Android-based smartphones from makers such as Samsung, Google, Oppo or Motorola.

All you typically need to do is select whatever it is you want to print, and then choose the share icon. From there, select Print, where at the very least “Print to PDF” (which just creates a file) should be available. If your printer is natively supported, you should be able to select it from there, as well as choose print size and quality. If it’s not, check whether your printer maker has its own printing app to handle this kind of function.

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Apple recently announced its annual iPhone upgrades, with the iPhone 13 Mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max now available for consumers to buy.

Apple does this every year, so it’s not a surprise. Not that it releases the iPhone 13 every year, but that there’s a fresh updated model. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks testing out all four new iPhones to see where they excel – and who they’re really for. If you’re thinking about an iPhone upgrade, or indeed a switch over from the Android side of the smartphone market, here’s what you should consider.

Don’t upgrade from a nearly new phone!

Did you last get a new premium phone in 2020, or even in 2019? If so, I’d strongly argue that none of the new iPhones are a good buy. Not that they’re not good phones, but simply that if you’ve got an iPhone 12 or iPhone 11, they’re still very capable handsets that will see iOS upgrades for some years to come. The jump in power and features also won’t be so noticeable. Apple always charges a premium for iPhones, so it makes the most sense to keep an existing recent model rather than upgrade for the sake of it.

iPhone 13 mini

Best for: Those on a tight budget with small hands

Pros: Colourful, compact, powerful processor

Cons: Very small screen, poor battery life

For folks who loved iPhones back when they had very small screens and were more easily pocketable, there’s the iPhone 13 mini, the cheapest of the iPhone family. That’s cheapest, not cheap, though with outright prices starting at $1,199. The iPhone 13 mini is cute, and I do love the wide choice of colours. Like the rest of the iPhone 13 family you get a powerful A15 Bionic processor and the ease of use of iOS. However, you do also only get dual cameras, and the smaller casing of the iPhone 13 mini means it’s got the smallest battery of any of the new models. In my tests it’s generally OK for a day’s usage – and thankfully a bit better than the iPhone 12 Mini was in that respect – but only if you’re using it lightly.

iPhone 13

Best for: General all purpose users

Pros: Range of colour choices, powerful processor

Cons: Doesn’t get the new tech only found in the Pro models, dual cameras at this price isn’t great

The vanilla iPhone 13 is a good phone by most standards, with the same A15 Bionic processor as the iPhone 13 mini, and also the same dual camera setup. That’s a little mediocre by flagship phone standards at the iPhone 13’s $1349+ asking price, even though it does make it pretty easy to shoot some nice photos and especially video with the new cinematic mode. Battery life is better than the iPhone 13 Mini, and in some cases even slightly better than the similarly sized iPhone 13 Pro. It’s a good phone, but it’s not my favourite of this year’s Apple crop.

iPhone 13 Pro

Best for: Camera enthusiasts and those that want a gorgeous smartphone screen

Pros: ProMotion display, triple cameras, best processor

Cons: Pricey, battery life is a tad lower than the iPhone 13

The iPhone 13 Pro genuinely surprised me. Typically the smaller Pro phone in Apple’s lineup has been limited compared to the Pro Max, but I really didn’t find that this year. You get a better A15 Bionic processor with higher graphics capabilities, matched to a 120Hz capable “ProMotion” display that simply looks gorgeous in use. Like prior Pro phones though it’s the cameras you should buy it for, with triple 12MP sensors that make it really simple to take good photos even in very low light. The downsides here are the asking price, starting at $1,699 or more, and the battery life. It’s good, but it’s slightly outpaced by the similarly sized iPhone 13.

iPhone 13 Pro Max

Best for: Those who like a big old slab of a phone with good cameras

Pros: Triple cameras, good battery life, best A15 Bionic processor

Cons: Super expensive, very large in the hand, heavy

The iPhone 13 Pro Max is the “flagship” of the iPhone 13 line, and it absolutely should be given you’ll have to part with at least $1,849 to walk away with one. Like the iPhone 13 Pro you get a 120Hz capable ProMotion display, but it’s much larger at 6.7 inches. Apple’s iOS doesn’t always make the most of that space, but if you do want or need a larger reading or display area, the difference is notable. Like the iPhone 13 Pro it’s also got some of the best cameras I’ve ever tested on any smartphone, although the larger size here is something of a challenge for holding and framing compared to the iPhone 13 Pro. That hand feel is a vital component to its value, too, because if you find using those larger phones tricky (especially one handed) while iOS has some tricks to make that simpler, it’s still a lot of phone to have to hold.

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Apple recently announced a slew of new hardware to tempt consumers with at a “virtual” streamed launch event it called “California Streaming”.

The headline act was without doubt a very much expected upgrade to its iPhone lines, bringing the iPhone 13 family to market. Every year, roughly around September or October, you can expect a “new” iPhone with faster processor, improved cameras and a few new hardware tricks up its sleeve.

That’s precisely what Apple’s delivered with the iPhone 13. As it was in 2020, there’s not just one iPhone 13, but four of them. For those who like smaller phones, there’s the 5.4 inch iPhone 13 Mini, then the 6.1 inch iPhone 13. For those who hanker for camera features specifically, there’s the 6.1 inch iPhone 13 Pro and the 6.7 inch iPhone 13 Pro Max.

As expected, there’s a new processor – the Apple A15 Bionic – and the promise of better battery life. The Pro model phones also get variable refresh rate screens up to 120Hz, a feature Apple markets as “ProMotion” display. Higher refresh rate screens have been a feature of Android phones for some time now, but it’s certainly a welcome addition on the iOS side of the smartphone fence for sure.

I’m waiting to more formally test out the new iPhone 13 range at the time of writing, but my basic advice any year when it comes to iPhones remains the same. You should aim to keep a premium smartphone for at least 3 years, preferably longer given their premium price points. That timespan will give you a much bigger performance jump relative to your old phone when you do trade up to a new model. You’re also then avoiding any issues with battery life on older batteries, whereas if you switch out each year, you’re paying a premium simply for having the “newest” phone.

What wasn’t quite as expected was that Apple would also refresh its iPad lines. There’s a new basic 10.2 inch iPad, upgraded to the Apple A13 Bionic chip. In many ways, it’s an iPhone 11 without the calling features. There’s some solid value in Apple’s entry level iPad, but the surprise launch at the California Streaming event was instead Apple’s smallest iPad, the iPad Mini.

The iPad Mini has long been an option for those who wanted a smaller tablet device, but it was almost always an afterthought in the Apple line-up, with lesser processors and battery life. Battery life is somewhat a function of its size of course, but the new iPad Mini definitely shows some differentiated thinking around what people might use a smaller tablet for.

Where the new iPad has an Apple A13 Bionic, the iPad Mini gets the A15 Bionic, putting in a performance discussion more with the iPhone 13. It’s also shifting away from Apple’s Lightning connector standard to USB C, meaning a wider range of peripherals will work with it. Apple will also sell it with 5G capability as an option.

The downside here is that the tablet that used to be Apple’s smallest was also its cheapest, and that’s just not true any more. If you want the new iPad Mini, it’ll set you back $250 more than the base model new iPad at $749 for a Wi-Fi only model. As with any iPad there’s no way to expand storage, and if you do want that 5G capability you’ll need to buy the appropriate “Wi-Fi+Cellular” model, again at an additional cost.

Again, I do need to put the new iPads through their paces, but it’s pretty clear that Apple’s differentiating them broadly on use cases. If you use a tablet mostly for reading web pages, watching Netflix or the odd game of Candy Crush, then the base model iPad is just fine for your needs. If you want or need a more mobile solution with a bit more power for, say, business needs, the iPad Mini could be a good match. It’s cheaper than the Apple M1 processor based iPad Pro models, but that A15 Bionic under its hood should give you plenty of scope for more intensive application use.

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At a technology level as we see the spread of 5G going wide and the emergence of mmWave, it’s a fascinating time in 5G.

For the average consumer, however… less so.

I’m not getting into the whole 5G conspiracy nonsense there – there’s simply nothing credible to suggest risk – but more simply the challenges around devices and applications. 5G is fine, and if you can get it and already have a 5G device there’s no issue there, but at the same time there’s not much that should spur you right away to upgrade to a 5G device in most situations.

The first problem here is one of devices and wavelengths. With one exception, all the 5G capable devices sold in Australia to date only operate on what’s called the “Sub-6Ghz” band. It has better propagation – meaning that a 5G tower can send signal further, which is no doubt how Telstra’s reached that 75% figure so quickly – but not the full promised next-gen 5G speeds that the standard is capable of.

A quick aside on that 75% figure, by the way. Whenever you read figures around telco coverage, take them with a grain of salt. That’s partly because they’re mostly based on projections and can’t always take into consideration real-world factors that can block signal, but also because they nearly always talk about percentages of population. By an overwhelming degree the majority of Australia’s population lives around the coastlines and in major cities, so actually covering them is nowhere near covering the entire “country” to speak of.

Where 5G gets more interesting is when you bring in the faster mmWave capabilities, but those travel much smaller distances, and all the telcos have pretty much said they’re more planning to build them where there’s large scale business calls for the capacity – which means they’ll be more prevalent in, say, the CBD of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane than they will on the outskirts of Coober Pedy, at least at first.

Telstra’s claim here is that we should see the first consumer-facing mmWave devices in Australia before the end of the year; right now the only device with mmWave capability being regularly sold is one of Telstra’s mobile hotspot devices primarily focused on business users.

For those business users there’s all sorts of use cases around the lower latency of 5G and its promised speed upgrades, but for consumers, there’s not quite yet that “killer app” that would make 5G by itself a must-have feature in a new smartphone, tablet or laptop. The speed is nice, and for some it’s totally a suitable alternative to fixed-line broadband. Optus reckons it’s got around 830,000 homes that can take its 5G home broadband service as an alternative, and while Telstra’s been quieter in this space, there’s little doubt that it (and TPG/Vodafone) sees 5G broadband for homes as a potentially lucrative market.

However, that’s not the same thing as having actual applications that need that speed and low latency. It will also be interesting to see how new 5G devices are marketed to make it clear (or not) if they’re only Sub-6Ghz or mmWave compatible to the non-technical consumer crowd.

The other side of this is the speed at which you might need to upgrade your devices anyway. Telstra’s announced it’ll shutter its 3G services by June 2024, so if you’re holding onto an older 3G only smartphone or USB modem or similar, that’s living on borrowed time. 4G will be a factor for much longer than that, and it’s more likely that you’ll end up “getting” 5G as part of your next phone (or perhaps the one after that) simply because that’s what the market will be selling by then anyway. For now, there’s not much call to rush.

Even the cameras on mid-range and some budget phones are pretty good these days, where once you would have to pay premium money for even passable photos.

However, with a little care and attention, and using some of the inbuilt features of your phone’s camera app, you can get even better and more pleasing photos. You may well already know some of these approaches – and they won’t likely be new to camera pros – but everyone has to start learning somewhere.

1. Use your volume keys as a shutter button

Nearly every camera app, whether you’re using an iPhone or an Android handset supports using the phone’s volume buttons as a camera shutter. It’s generally preferable to using the onscreen buttons, because it gives you a physical shutter release that will shake the actual phone – and therefore the lenses – a whole lot less.

It’s especially true if you’re taking landscape mode photos, because you’ll also be steadying the phone in your hands
 

2. Anything can be a tripod

Ever seen a pro photographer at work? Odds are they’ll be using a tripod, and you can certainly invest in a phone-specific tripod to give your handset even more stability for shots.

However, you can also make do with any other stabilising surface, whether that’s the top of a fence, a nearby paving stone or anywhere else you can safely place your phone. Again, a more stable camera will lead to fewer issues with focusing and more pleasing photos
 

3. Use the grid to frame your shots

There’s a rather well known principle in photography called “The Rule Of Thirds”, which breaks up the image into a grid pattern. Generally speaking, placing objects of interest on the intersection lines of the grid leads to more eye catching images, and as an added bonus, having the grid (which only appears on the camera, not in any photos you take) makes it very easy to level out landscape shots to avoid wonky angles.

For iPhones, you’ll find the Grid option within Settings>Camera>Grid, while on Android phones it’s usually a setting within the camera app itself.
 

4. Lock down your focus

For most photos, you probably know exactly what you’d like to have in crystal sharp focus, and where other areas could be more pleasingly soft. However, your phone doesn’t know this, and has to make its best effort guess based on what it sees in the shot.

You can pick a focus point by tapping on the screen of your phone before shooting, but if you hold your finger there, you’ll lock its automatic focus and exposure point to wherever you left it “looking”, even if you then move the camera slightly. This will also (typically) bring up an exposure dial, sometimes represented as a sun icon, so you can change the exposure and give your shot more or less light.

They might seem like small tweaks, but they can turn an overexposed, blurry shot into something with real focus and character very quickly.

5. Shoot video now to get photos later

If you’re trying to shoot a tricky subject – and especially if it’s a moving subject – you may find your phone struggles to grab focus at just the right time. There are pro settings you can use to try to help with this, and many phones offer a burst mode to take lots of sequential shots, but the other way to handle this is to shoot video instead, even if you’ve no intent of keeping a home movie anyway.

Video will capture sequential images, because that’s what it is, allowing you to spend more time thinking about which of those shots you’d like after the fact. You can either then screenshot your video on playback for a quickly “taken” photo of a specific moment, or slice it up on your computer after the fact for more fine-grained control.
 

6. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

One of the great changes that digital cameras have brought to photography is the ability to play around at essentially no additional cost. Each photo costs you nothing until you print it (if you ever do), and you can instantly see which shots have worked and which haven’t. As such, it can be immensely rewarding to simply experiment with your phone’s camera modes, even the “Pro” modes. If you take a shot you don’t like, you can bin it in seconds, but even the dud shots can make you think about improving your photographic technique, little by little.

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It brings to an end LG’s smartphone ambitions as it sought to take on the other big South Korean smartphone player, Samsung. Over the years, LG’s brought a number of unusual innovations to the smartphone space, more than a few excellent handsets, and a handful of not-terribly-good phones. Whether the handsets were good or not didn’t seem to matter that much to the wider Australian phone buying audience, which tended to mostly buy either Apple or Samsung handsets.

It’s fairly likely that while LG will cease producing phones under its own branding, it’s not the end of its work in the smartphone market. LG is actually a group of companies that produce both LG-branded products and a wide variety of components such as batteries and displays. As an example, if you’ve purchased a fancy OLED TV in the past few years, the odds are exceptionally good that while it might bear branding such as Sony or Panasonic, the underlying panel was in fact produced by LG.

Still, LG’s exit from the smartphone business does raise a few questions worth pondering.

What happens if you’ve just purchased an LG phone?

In essence, not too much that wasn’t already in play. Australian consumer law protects you in terms of a reasonable warranty period for normal use, for a start. Just because a company opts to no longer sell a product doesn’t mean it washes its hands of its obligations towards existing customers, especially for a company like LG which still very much trades in Australia for a wide variety of other technology products.

LG has also confirmed that it intends to provide updates for what it deems its “premium” phones for up to three iterations of the Android operating system. That’s in line with what other vendors such as Samsung are currently offering, although LG’s track record in OS upgrades in a timely fashion wasn’t always the best. The choice of the words “premium” there are important as well. If you purchased one of LG’s 2020 Velvet 5G handsets, that would apply, but less so for the cheaper lines. LG’s official line on this is that “LG premium phones released in 2019 and later (G series, V series, VELVET, Wing)” will get the three year upgrade promise, while select 2020 models such as the Stylo and some K series phones may see two updates. We’ll have to wait and see.

LG’s promise for OS upgrades means that it’ll also have to keep on track for Android security updates for its phones as well. Again, LG’s track record here wasn’t the best or the worst, but it remains a vital step for smartphone users to make sure their phones are up to date.

Is it worth buying an LG phone now?

It’s obviously a rather open-ended question. There won’t be “new” LG phones coming to Australia, so we won’t officially see the rather weird sliding LG Wing phone officially for example, but if you can get a decent LG phone for a reasonable price, it could still be worth considering. LG isn’t a junk brand, and while its phones didn’t excite consumers in the way that releases from Apple or Samsung have, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t produce a decent phone. I’d definitely be looking for a discount from the regular RRP if I were you, and I’d also suggest that you check reliable online reviews to ensure that the phone you’re getting does what you want it to do, relative to its price point.

What does this mean for smartphone competition in Australia?

LG’s local market share wasn’t huge – after all, if it was, it wouldn’t be dropping out of the smartphone race – and at one time, losing LG would have been a bigger drop in the competition space than it now is. We’ve seen a few brands leave the local market before, Sony being the most obvious example. Sony still makes Android phones, but opted a few years back to quietly exit the Australian market on the basis of low sales. Like LG, it supported the phones it had sold for a while after it departed the local market, but it had a different story to tell, as internationally you can still buy new Sony phones. That won’t be the case for LG.

At the same time, however, we’ve seen a lot of new brands in the smartphone space, mostly Chinese brands such as Oppo, Xiaomi, Motorola, HMD Global/Nokia and realme bring phones that range from budget-space models to the fanciest premium brands. There’s still going to be a fair amount of choice open to you when you buy your next mobile phone – it’s just likely that it won’t include LG in the mix.