Get to grips with the Glyph

So I've added the settings to the home screen just for quick access. If you want to get to it, you can swipe down and swipe down again to get to it here. You can also swipe up and get to it from your app drawer. Right at the top of the settings page, you will see the Glyph Interface, so tap on that. Here we want to switch on the Glyph Interface. Now, on this page, when you scroll down, you'll see the ringtones. This is where you can customise, as you would expect, the ringtones, but it also customises the Glyph notification on the back when your phone rings. So if you tap where it says “Nothing Signals”, you will find the ten different presets for Nothing Signals.

When you find one that you like, this will become your ringtone, and that will be the animation. Now, if we go back and go to “My Sounds”, you can actually add your own ringtones. You, of course, need to have some sounds on your device in order to do it. One of the apps that I like to use is Zedge. You might want to check that out. There are a lot of ads on there that you have to navigate around, but there’s some cool stuff you can find there. Now there is a really nice feature here which is quite smart, really. It’s called Generative Ringtone. This will actually use AI to create custom animations and ringtones, and then automatically assign them to certain contacts in your phonebook. So the more you use your phone, the more familiar you will become with which ringtones and Glyph animations are associated with which people.

Flippin Glyphs

Here’s another Glyph trick. Back within the settings, back into the Glyph Interface. If you swipe down a little bit, you will find “Flip to Glyph”. Enable this. So whenever you put your phone face down, this mode will kick in. So if you don't want to hear the ringtone or the notifications, you can use this feature, and now you'll just see the Glyphs. You can also filter all your essential notifications. But here is what I really want to show you guys: the Always-On Glyph Toy.

So if you enable this and then tap here, this is where you'll find some hidden features for the Glyph Matrix that allow it to stay on all the time. It’s essentially an always-on display for the Glyph Matrix. With this enabled, whenever the phone is face down on a table and you’re blocking the light sensor at the front, it will show whatever you've chosen for your Glyph Toy.

Visual Volume Level

Do you ever listen to podcasts or music on your phone or put your phone on loudspeaker? If so, I think you're going to like this one. Back into the Glyph Interface, scroll down until you see the Volume Indicator and enable this. Now, whenever you adjust the volume on your phone, that will be reflected on the back with this kind of expanding circle.

Advanced Glyph Customisation

If you're not new to Nothing, those last few tips were probably pretty standard, really, so let’s get a little more advanced. Now, here's a trick to help you identify phone calls and other things very quickly, whilst your phone is face down. So if we go into the settings again and go to Glyph Interface again, this time we're going to go to Essential Notifications. On this page, you can create routines for what the phone does when it receives certain notifications that meet certain requirements. You do have to tap to allow permissions on this first. Once you've done that, you can go to “New Rule” and call it whatever you want.

You can then choose the app that you want to set this up for. So just for example, I'm going to choose Gmail. If there are specific emails that I really want to keep an eye on, I can actually add the contact and even keywords that might feature in that email, which will then trigger this particular animation. Once that’s set up, you can then customise the Glyph, and you have this library of Glyphs to choose from. And if you really want to, you can create a custom Glyph pattern. Once you're happy with that, just hit the tick and there we go. We've created a custom Glyph animation for specific notifications.

THE LIT FUSE

Here’s a question for you: do you use Google Calendar, or have you ever used Uber or Zomato? If your answer was yes to any of those, you'll want to activate this feature. Back into the settings on your phone, back to Glyph Interface. Scroll down to where you see Glyph Progress and tap here. If you have these apps installed, they will be available to activate. I only have Calendar at this point in time because the phone has been reset. Essentially, what this does is it activates a Glyph timer on the back of the device for when things are about to arrive, whether that’s your Uber or your Zomato order. Then you'll see this progress bar on the back of your phone that lets you know when it’s time to go or when it’s time to head to the door to pick up your order.

IT’S LIKE LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

Now, let me tell you something you already know. The sensor behind your selfie camera is small, and the lenses are also small, whereas the image sensors and lenses on the back are far bigger and far superior. So wouldn’t it be nice if somehow you could use your best camera to take selfies? Well, you can, and you can frame yourself up nicely using this tool. So if you open up the camera, do not flip to the selfie camera. Just hit the downward arrow, and then here you will see the Glyph Mirror. With this activity, you can get a basic idea as to whether you're framed up nicely or not. And if the lighting is good, you can pretty much see the outline and shape of your face.

This should give you a basic idea of what the camera can actually see. Now, while we're here, there is another camera setting that you should be aware of. If you hit the dropdown menu at the top, the camera will default to 12MP photos, which is perfect for lower-lighting settings and even daytime settings. But in a well-lit scenario, you might occasionally want to switch from 12MP to 50MP to get even more detail in your photos. I don’t recommend leaving it on all the time, but just be aware of where you can find it.

DON’T WATCH THE CLOCK

Have you ever found yourself staring at the clock just waiting for your shift to be over whilst at work? I know that feeling all too well, and in those scenarios, it really feels like time slows down. Well, what if I told you there’s a better way to pass the time? So check this one out. Let’s jump back into the Glyph Interface settings. Scroll down again and go to Glyph Timer. Here, activate this setting: “Always open Glyph Timer popup”. This allows you to access it from your home screen pretty easily.

Another place you can access it is from your quick settings. Here you can dial in a custom time, and if you want, you can use one of the presets. Then, when you place your phone face down, this will start the timer. So instead of the ticking clock of doom, now you have this kind of hourglass-type animation that visually represents time passing in a slightly different and maybe less painful way. And once the Glyph Matrix timer has run out, it will alert you. And just so you know, you don’t have to go into the settings each and every time you want to use the Glyph Timer. You can bring down your quick settings, swipe across, and it will be there.

DAYS TO THE DAY

Now, I don't know about you, but when I book a holiday, quite often I count the days until I can finally sign off for a little bit. So let me show you a nice way you can count down the days to your holiday, for example, or anything else you want, so you don’t have to constantly look at your calendar and figure it out. To do this, you want to find a gap on one of your home screens, hold your finger down, and then go to Widgets. These are the pre-installed Nothing widgets, which have been designed exclusively for Nothing phones. You'll see one called Countdown. Activate this. Here you can customise the shape, give it a name, and set the date for when the event is.

I’m going with 2125 — that’s probably the same time I’ll hit a million subscribers here on the channel. If you do have something recurring that you want to track, you can go to Recurring and set it there. Once you've done that, it creates the countdown widget, and you can tap on it and choose the specific countdown you want to use. Right underneath it, it will show how many days and years are left. For some reason, it’s saying “Please subscribe today”. I think it’s a sign.

THE HIDDEN GLYPHS

So we’ve covered most of the stuff you can do with the Glyph at this point, and you might think there really isn’t anything else you need to know about, but in fact, there is an ever-growing library of customisation options for the Glyph Interface available to you — but only if you know where to find it. Hold your finger down on an empty part of the screen and go to Widgets. If you swipe across the default widgets, you’ll see all of your other app widgets. But if you swipe the other way, this is where you can find some more customised widget animations. And this is thanks to the Nothing community because here is where you'll find Essential Apps Beta.

These are community-created features for Nothing phones. If you hit the little hamburger menu here and go to Glyph Toys, you will find a bunch of Glyphs that you might prefer over the default ones. For example, that phone animation is pretty cool. And do keep in mind that some of the animations have been designed for the Nothing Phone 3, so a good way to filter them is by selecting your device at the top and filtering to the Phone 4 Pro. Then you'll only see compatible animations. And I want to give a shoutout to the people within the Nothing community who have taken the time to make these. So definitely check out Nothing’s Playground because there’s more than just Glyph animations here.

THIS KEY IS ESSENTIAL

We're going to escape from the matrix for a little while because here's an essential and exclusive feature that you need to know how to use. See this pill-shaped button on the side of the phone? This would look good in red, but more importantly, it is your shortcut to a very powerful tool. But it’s only powerful if you know how to use it, and there are a few steps you need to take when setting it up. So the first time you double-press the Essential Key, it should bring you to your Essential settings page. Now, here, if you scroll down, you'll likely find that Essential Memory is switched off straight out of the box. So switch this on. Something else you might want to consider, if you use Google Calendar as your main calendar, is enabling the Google Calendar integration. You’ll see why this is important in a minute. So now your Essential Key and Essential Space are set up and ready to go. Here’s how you use them. Let’s say, for example, someone sent you a concert ticket, a boarding pass, or some really important piece of information. What you can now do is hit the Essential Key. That will grab a screenshot of that ticket or pass. If you want to, you can crop in just by dragging the corners. If you press it again, it saves it to Essential Memory. Something else you can do is make a little voice recording explaining why you’re saving that particular screenshot or ticket.

Another good use case is researching a topic. You can navigate through multiple websites, hit the Essential Key on each page, and build a collection within Essential Space. AI will then extract the important information from all of those screen grabs. Now, something very important you need to know is that you can access Essential Space from your app drawer, or by double-pressing the Essential Key. This jumps you straight into your library. If you have captured anything with dates and times on it, if you go to the “For You” page, it will appear there. And this is where the Google Calendar integration comes into play. It detects the date, time, and even location. If you tap on it, it gives you the option to instantly add it to your calendar. And if you enabled the countdown widget feature earlier, this will also work with that. Now, just so you can see how the information is presented, I’m going to open my library where I’ve captured loads of stuff about the moon landing. Earlier on, I was also researching the Nothing Headphones 1. Within Essential Space, AI will recognise when there are related topics connected to the screenshot you’re viewing. For example, this screenshot up here is related to these others, which I grabbed from different websites. When you tap on one, it gives you a summary of the article and even pulls key information like prices, deals, dates, and times. And if you recorded any audio notes, you can play them back here, too. If you want to manually organise everything, you can also create separate folders at the bottom.

KEY TO BETTER MEMORY

Alright, so you’ve made it to the end of the list, but there are a couple more things I want to show you guys. Think of these as a bonus for sticking around until the end. So this tip involves the Essential Key again, but this one brings us back into the matrix a little bit. When your phone is face down on a surface, if you press and hold the Essential Key for around four seconds, this activates the Essential Recorder. You’ll also notice the recording light blinking as well, indicating that it’s capturing audio. Now, let’s say you're in a lesson, a meeting, or something like that, and something really important was said. You can tap the Essential Key again to add a marker to that recording. Once you've finished recording, just hold the button again for four seconds, and it stops the recording.

Because this feature is called Essential Recorder, the recordings automatically go to Essential Space. If you double-tap the Essential Key, you’ll find it right at the top. If you tap on that recording, you’ll then see the option to start AI analysis. This will transcribe the recording into text and even summarise what the meeting or lecture was about. There is a cap on how much you can use this feature, so you do need to be mindful of how many minutes you’re recording. I believe it’s around 300 minutes per month. So this feature will definitely be essential for you if you find yourself fading and struggling to pay attention during long lectures or meetings.

YOUR OWN PERSONAL REPORTER

Let me show you a newer exclusive feature for Nothing phones. It comes in the form of a widget. To find it, locate an empty space on your home screen, hold your finger down, and go to Widgets. Now scroll down until you see Essential News and add this to your home screen. When you first activate it, you can choose the topics you're most interested in. I’ve just chosen entertainment and technology. Once you’re happy with the setup, hit back and it will appear on your home screen.

What this does is use AI to collect the latest news from online and read it aloud to you. Think of it like your own personal news reporter. And the good thing about this is that it actually has a good sense of humour. So definitely try this out — it’s actually very good and surprisingly entertaining.

Sony has just taken their best ANC headphones to date, the XM6 and have gone super sayan on them. And have transformed them into their final form, the Sony WH-1000X The Collexion codenamed WH-1000XX. The X in the name represents the 10-year celebration and evolution of this line of headphones.  So if you’re a Sony fan or you already know how good the XM6 is, as soon as the new Collexions go on sale, you might be like ( do you accept cash? ) But my guess is that there will be some of you watching this, and looking at the £550 price tag and thinking…

- What's the more than £200 price gap all about between these and the XM6?

- What do you actually get for the money

- & How different are they really, from the XM6? Is it just a new skin?

Well, I can tell you right now, there’s a number of unseen upgrades, including a couple of world firsts & some very visible style improvements… But there’s one addition which I think could be the biggest game changer for you…depending on how you use your headphones, you’ll see.  Now listen here, real quick… Don't worry, I’m going to answer all those questions for you & show you all the upgrades. And to do this review justice and in an attempt to make my content not like the others, I’ve put in over 70 hours of playtime with the Collexion. So the drivers are properly burnt-in, loosened up, firing on all cylinders and sounding their best. And this also means I can also give you a good idea of the real world idea of the battery life.  I’ll also be doing a little side-by-side ANC test versus the XM6. It'll be interesting to see if you can hear any differences there. So stick around. It's going to be interesting.

Design 

Let’s start with the design changes and upgrades. So, something that’s held Sony back with the XM6 is budget constraints. They had to keep the design within budget to meet the price point….But that was not the case here with the WH-1000XX. Which means Sony took a more focused approach to style and comfort. But, not just that, there are also a lot of improvements across the board and a few exclusives & world firsts, which we will get into.

New Materials 

So some of the extra money goes towards the much more luxurious design, starting with more premium materials used on the earcup housing, pads and headband. I’m told that 2 years of R&D invested went into the development of these materials. So it’s entirely wrapped in this unique faux leather, which means no animals were killed in the making… so that’s good. The material could easily be mistaken for real leather; it feels nicer to the touch, which comes into play when using the gesture controls on the right earcups. With taps allowing you to play, pause & pick up calls, and swipes to skip tracks and lower and raise volume, and yes, it still has the very useful palm over the earcup to activate the talk-through mode… perfect for when you need to order another Gin and tonic on a plane.  In comparison to the padding material on the XM6, which is a smoother material, The Collexion pads use this new material, and they’re quite a bit more plush and softer on the skin. ( Pads are replaceable via customer service. )

The battery is also replaceable via the service centre. And a huge one up for the Collexion over the XM6 is that the materials are much more resistant to oils, which means they don't show any fingerprints. It’s kind of a big deal, if you’re familiar with black XM6 headphones… but maybe not so much for the new Sandstone colour they just released. Anyway… The cup sizes are slightly larger, the headband is slightly wider & the clamping force applies less side pressure. These are all upgrades to the comfort, also the padding up top is fuller and kind of fits the shape of your head and creates a wider surface area to better distribute the weight.  I can tell you right now, I thought the XM6 were some of the most comfy headphones I own…but these are noticeably more comfortable. Which is even more impressive because they are slightly heavier than the XM6, but there’s a good explanation for why.

New Button

Sony has also reinforced the USB-C port and headphone jack with metal, and that audio jack has some premium Sony Walkman tech behind it. That includes a Low-phase-noise crystal oscillator and advanced Gold solder. Put simply, Sony has optimised the components and circuitry to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio. Which is great news if you’re going to use the analogue cable a lot, and especially if you’re an audio purist who likes to use a separate HiRes DAC. They're also using metal for the power button, and noise cancelling button and the all-new listening mode button, which doesn’t exist on the XM6. And it’s this that could be the game changer, I mentioned, as it unlocks some unique features. I’ll explain that properly when we get to the app. Going back to the design, Sony has also managed to slim down the depth of the ear cups by 5.3mm without compromising the sound quality or comfort. They did this by splitting the battery to free up space. With the Collexion delivering up to 24 hours of battery life with ANC on, the XM6 are listed as up to 30 hours. Interestingly, I was actually able to get more than that, in fact, closer to 30 hours. And with noise cancelling off, you can get significantly more and if you’re not using Bluetooth and have ANC off, yes, even more. Yes, it’s slightly less than the XM5’s battery life, but 30hours in reality is more than enough for most people.

New Sound

And what might impress you the most is that Sony has made the comfort and style improvements, and at the same time has upgraded the sound. They’ve done this by fitting the Collexion headphones with all-new Bespoke 30mm Sony drivers. This is one of the two most significant upgrades to audio. Compared to the XM6 drivers that already sound amazing, the Collexion drivers have a softer edge, which increases flexibility, resulting in more bass when you need it. The centre of the driver is now firmer. They’re using a unidirectional carbon composite material on the dome, which is said to result in better responsiveness in the higher frequencies.  I’ll let you guys know my honest thoughts on the sound quality differences between these and the XM6 after the Mic & ANC test vs XM6. The second audio upgrade is unseen to the naked eye, but it’s the world's first, I mentioned, as these over-ear headphones are Sony’s first to use their new integrated V3 processor. This gives Collexion a better ability to process audio onboard the headphones without having to be connected to the app. All shall be revealed once we get to the new app features. Trust me, this is all good stuff, but the main difference to keep in mind here is that there are more options available. Another upgrade delivered by the new V3 processor is the introduction of DSEE Ultimate. It’s the first time Sony has used it on their ANC headphones. DSEE Ultimate is Sony’s latest and greatest AI audio upscaling algorithm, which comes into play when listening to lower-res compressed audio or older music recordings, or old movies. Put very simply, it’s designed to improve the audio and upscale it by filling in the missing gaps, and DSEE is also not app-dependent; it all happens inside the headphones. 

New Metal

And I’m sure you notice the most significant visible change. The upgraded and quite interesting metal hanger and stronger metal hinges. The headband has a matte sandblasted texture to it, which is true, but it’s the manufacturing of the hangers that’s most interesting. Each one is hand-polished and individually finished by skilled craftspeople.  Which sounds crazy, I’d love to know how long that process takes. Because they must have to shine the metal to a high gloss finish, then mask the Sony logo and then sandblast around it without marking up the hinge and sides of the hinge. It’s really quite impressive how they’ve done this. And they think that this is a finish that machines cannot achieve. Making this a good job to have when AI finally takes over the world. And like the XM6, the hinges do allow the earcups to swivel inwards and outwards, or you could have them halfway like I do. It’s great for hiding the double chin.

But one thing that’s different is that they don’t collapse down to fit into the case, and that's the reason why the case itself is different.  There are a couple of ways you can look at this redesign. You could say it’s like a little handbag, but I prefer to describe it as a giant knuckle duster. Either way, it's a hard shell case with a kind of denim texture. The handle makes it great for grabbing quickly or pulling it out of a backpack; it’s nice and slim, so it can slot into an aeroplane seat pocket. It’s got that nice magnetic buckle just like the XM6. Inside is a little cutout for your cables…It’s good, it's a good case. And just before we get into the mic and ANC tests. You should probably know that there are a total of 12 mics onboard that use multi-sensing technology. 4 Inside and 8 outside. And 6 of the beam-forming mics can be used for voice call pickup & of course, there are AI algorithms in place to isolate your voice and remove background noise & wind. So let’s test them out, and you let me know what you think.

Watch the video fro Mic Quality Test & the ANC test versus the XM6

App Features

Ok, now this is where the fun begins. The App, so on the face of things, the options are very similar to XM6. It shows the battery levels and codec being used. If you're on Android, it'll show LDAC for HiRes; you may need to switch that on in the BT settings manually, depending on your phone. You'll also see DSEE ultimate here when it's in use. However, it’s here in the listening modes section where you’ll find some new and exclusive features. This brings me nicely back to the new listening mode button. This button activates 360 upmix for music, movies, and games. Only the 360 Movie upmix was available on the XM6.  Essentially, the 360 upmix creates an effect that makes audio sound like it’s being played live in the room in front of you, and the movie mode gives you that feeling of actually sitting in a movie, and gaming upmix boosts frequencies so you get a better sense of direction when it comes to audio cues and makes everything sound more immersive. And it really works.

If you are the type of person who likes live music performances or watches a lot of movies on a plane, you’ll love this.  And it’s important you can go to all settings, controls and  ‘listening mode’ settings to pick and choose the ones you want mapped to the new button. Also, you should know adaptive ANC is available here, so the level of noise cancelling can adjust on the fly. So when things are extremely loud, it can adjust for that and turn down the ANC when it’s not needed so much. It’s effortless, as all good tech should be. Multipoint pairing is also available when you're not using LDAC, and you can customise wear detect and other power saving settings. There’s also the adaptive sound control feature that, if enabled, can learn about the normal noise levels in places you often visit and intelligently adjust for those locations. And there are lots of customisation options available when it comes to remapping the inputs, and quick access shortcuts can be mapped to double and triple pushes of the ANC button.

Now, something really important to know is that when you see that the EQ is turned off. That right there is the EQ that’s been tuned by Sony Koji Takamura, an acoustic engineer, in collaboration with Grammy award-winning sound engineers. I do wish they’d give this a more fitting name as opposed to ‘OFF’, where there are lots more options here, and of course, there is a manual EQ 10 Band to play with.

Sound Quality Vs XM6 Opinions

Ok, I literally A/B tested the XM6 with the Collexion. Here's my own opinion on the noticeable differences. First, I tried it out with a true Hi-Res Daft Punk FLAC track, not from streaming. Instantly, vocals sound cleaner and clearer, and there's no doubt there's more power in the bass. These are likely due to the new drivers that have a wider frequency response range. I then tested some very bass-heavy tracks, and there's no doubt the bass levels are deeper and more well-rounded, which is even more impressive when considering the XM6 bass output is one of the best out there. The best way to explain it is that you can feel the difference in bass straight away.

I then tried them both with an opera track, and while the soundstage and vocals are fantastic on both. You can definitely hear a much better separation between the vocalists and instruments on the Collexion, and honestly, the new Music 360 up-mix feature works amazingly well here. I genuinely think it can improve. the listening experience for live, less synthesised performances. It's surprisingly good. It seems to add even more separation between the orchestra and singers and significantly opens up the soundstage. I tried a few tracks without vocals and really focused on listening to the different instruments. There's a marked improvement in regards to definition, detail and bass. For live performances, I couldn't notice much clearer instrumental sounds, and breaths. And yeah, I had to test out a classic old school nineties dance track from the Prodigy. Which, when it drops, can get quite noisy. And again, the better range and separation don't blend all the sounds together as much.

So Sony says these are their best ANC Sony headphones to date. And I agree. Are worth the extra two hundred plus pounds. Well, here's what I think. If you are the type of person who buys a pair of headphones and keeps them for 3 or more years, when you break it down, they'll cost you just 20p per day. In exchange, you get a more classy-looking, more comfortable-fitting pair of headphones. With equally capable and arguably market-leading noise-cancelling. Noticeably better sound in regards to soundstage, clarity and bass. And you get the new sound modes, which are much better than I thought they'd be. DSEE Ultimate is onboard the headphones that work even when you're not listening on your phone. And of course, the Sony world’s first knuckle duster case, and just so you know, they’re available in platinum black and platinum white. But you know I would have wanted to see a midnight blue 

Welcome to WhatGear Reviews for a side-by-side comparison between the Poco X8 Pro Max and the Poco X8 Pro. You might be trying to decide which one of these would be better for you. And by the end of this video, you will know. So let's start with price. The Poco X8 Pro starts at £289 and goes all the way up to £349 if you need that additional storage. The X8 Pro Max is, of course, a bit more expensive. It starts at £359 and goes all the way up to £400.

Colourways available here are white, black, and blue, and Poco have very kindly sent me the X8 Pro Max in white and the regular Pro in black. So both phones have metal frames, which is quite surprising, especially on the more affordable one. But there is a difference when it comes to the material on the back. So the Pro model actually has a glass back. Again, this is quite a surprise for a phone at this price, but the back on the more expensive Pro Max is, in fact, fibreglass.

When it comes to dimensions, the X8 Pro Max is slightly wider. It's also slightly taller. But interestingly, the Pro Max, with the natural metal frame that you see here, is a tiny bit thinner than the Pro. And Poco have done a really good job of keeping the build quality and the design language pretty much the same on both phones despite the price gap. Both phones have this really nice red accent colour on the power button. I think it looks really nice on the black model. Both models have this rounded corner design, which is pretty much identical. So you'll notice the camera modules are pretty much identical. However, there is an additional flash here on the Pro Max. And also, if you look closely at the Pro Max, there are these really nice and subtle racing lines embedded underneath the surface that you can only really see when the light hits it a certain way, whereas the Pro is just completely matte black, or one colour. And actually, just looking at the two phones right now, I do kind of prefer the look of this one with the black and red accent on the side.

Now, here's an interesting difference. This is the top of the phone. You'll notice on the Pro Max that there is a speaker grille and a mic hole. On the Pro, there's in fact an IR blaster and a mic hole. And despite the fact that it doesn't have a speaker grille, it does still have stereo speakers. The difference here on the Pro is, of course, the fact that the speaker is the earpiece, whereas the Pro Max does have that dedicated element.Now, on the base of the phone, you'll notice there is another speaker grille, and both phones have this. They both have the same USB-C port and the same SIM tray. However, there is a difference on the Pro Max because this phone does support eSIM, whereas the Pro doesn't. And there's a really awesome design feature here built into the camera module on both phones. It is the RGB backlighting system that can be customised with eight different colours. It can work with notifications when you're gaming, and they can even keep in rhythm with music playing on the device.

And big props to Poco because both of these phones are very durable. They have the SGS five-star rating for crush, bend, and drop tests. So here is a significant difference that you need to know about. On the Pro Max model, you do get an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner, which is much more secure and superior to the optical scanner used on the Pro model. Also, when you look at the two devices, you'll notice the optical scanner on the Pro is much lower down, whereas the ultrasonic scanner is higher up. Also, I have noticed that the ultrasonic seems a bit quicker and a bit more reliable than the optical scanner in the Pro. Let's talk about the displays. Straight away, you'll notice there is, of course, a difference in screen size. Also, you'll notice the bezels on the Pro model are slightly wider, especially near the lower end of the phone, where the chin is just a little bit thicker than everywhere else. Of course, there's a difference in screen size: 6.83 inches on the Pro Max and 6.59 inches on the Pro model. Surprisingly to me, both displays are 12-bit with 68 billion colours supported. And check this out — both panels are 120Hz. They both support HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and 3500 nits when measured in a 25% window.

And when it comes to eye strain, there are a bunch of TÜV Rheinland certifications, as well as 3840Hz PWM dimming, and they also support Wet Touch 2.0. So if your hands are wet and you're trying to touch the screen, there is some software to counteract any mistakes on the display. I have heard some people say that off-axis viewing is different on the two phones, but I personally haven't noticed that on either of these devices. And both of these are M10 displays, which boast a 20% efficiency boost over other AMOLEDs, which, to be honest, these phones probably don't need that much because the batteries are insane. Poco are using silicon carbon batteries here, and the Pro model has a 6500mAh battery, which is impressive, but it's a little less impressive when you compare it to the 8500mAh silicon-carbon battery in the Pro Max, which is just mind-blowing.

Now, just for context, so you know how impressive the battery size is in here, right here, I have a dedicated power bank. This one is 5300mAh. And yeah, that's significantly less than what's in this phone. And look how chunky this is. And it's also pretty damn heavy, too. And this is why silicon-carbon batteries are so good. They can pack so much power into such a thin frame. And we're literally at the point where phone batteries are rivalling dedicated power banks. Now, here are some more similarities. Both phones support 100W fast charging and 27W wired reverse charging. However, it is a little bit unfortunate that neither phone supports wireless charging. I guess that's one of the things they had to scale back in order to keep the costs low. So it's been a pretty close contest at this point, but this is where the Pro Max starts to widen the gap, and it is in regard to the chipset. So the Pro Max uses the MediaTek 9500S, which is second from the top, I believe, in MediaTek's lineup right now. It is a 3nm chip with a clock speed of 3.75GHz. The Poco X8 Pro uses the MediaTek 8500 Ultra. This is a 4nm chip and is still very powerful and very efficient, but the clock speed is significantly lower at 3.4GHz.

And to give you a better understanding of the difference between the two chips, the Pro Max performs 36% better in an AnTuTu benchmark, and on a single core, it is 56% faster than the Pro's chip. Also, the GPU in the Pro Max is considerably better, and it also has a better name. It's called Immortalis. Now hidden from the human eye is the same LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. Also, beneath the surface, there is a difference which probably nobody's told you about yet, but I'm going to show you with this. The 3D IceLoop cooling system on both these phones is the same. However, the Pro Max 3D cooling loop is around 9.4% bigger. So what I'm going to do is run a 3DMark 20-minute benchmark test on both of these phones at exactly the same time, and then do a thermal scan afterwards so you can see the difference in heat dissipation.

Now, something to keep in mind is that the more powerful chip will likely get hotter because it is more powerful. So maybe the slightly lower performance on the Pro model will balance out the results when it comes to thermals. But yeah, there's only one way to find out. Let's run the benchmark. Okay, so with the thermal readout on the Pro Max phone, it did get very, very hot — 47.6 degrees — and heat is spreading down, but not as quickly as you would want. But of course, it did still outperform the Pro model. Now let's get a look at the thermals on the Pro. So interestingly, the temperature didn't rise quite as high on the Pro model. It reached just 43 degrees, and the heat seems to be spreading down a bit quicker. Also, you'll notice when you look at the graphs here, after the second loop, the Pro actually throttled the performance, and then again around the ninth or tenth loop it throttled again to keep the heat as low as possible, whereas the Pro Max was running consistently faster and therefore generating more heat.

Something else that might have played into this is the different material used on the back. Maybe the glass dissipates heat better than fiberglass. So long story short, the Pro Max is definitely more powerful, and it can run faster. However, it does run hotter than the Pro. Now let's talk about the cameras. So there is a difference. Even though both phones have 50MP sensors on the primary camera and both have an aperture of f/1.56 with six plastic lenses, and both can shoot 4K 60fps video with that main camera, the actual sensor itself is different. So on the Pro Max it's a more premium Light Fusion 600 image sensor. The image sensor on the Pro is the same size, same aperture, same number of lenses; it is the Sony IMX882. The selfie cameras on both phones are 20MP. And something else you need to keep in mind is the chipsets actually play a part in the image processing, so that can affect the camera performance.

So here are a couple of side-by-side shots with these two phones so you can see the difference for yourself.

Now, when it comes to software, out of the box, both phones are rocking HyperOS 3, which is running on Android 16. And both phones will get four years of OS updates and six years of security patches, which means you could keep either one for a pretty long time without ever having to worry about security or missing out on some of the latest features. And if you'd like to see a more in-depth camera test with these phones versus other phones, do let me know about that in the comments, and I will try my best to make them for you. Now, here are my final thoughts when it comes to deciding between these two phones. The price gap is £80 at the low end, but just £50 at the top end. And for that extra £50 you get better performance, a much bigger battery, better cameras, and a slightly more refined design. However, something you won't get with the more expensive phone, which you do get with the more affordable one, is this: the 100W charging brick. So you might want to factor the cost of one of those into your decision. I like both these phones. I'm really impressed with what Poco have done with the design.

And it looks like this. So what I'm getting at is, if you don't consider yourself a master of the AI Select tool yet, don't worry, because if you stick around to the end of this video, you will be. You will be. Now, if you don't have the Edge panel, you don't see it. Here's how you activate it. Go into the Settings on your phone, scroll down to Display, and then on this page, about halfway down, you will see Edge panels right here. Make sure this is switched on. And now you should see this little line at the edge of the screen. And if you're wondering why my line is purple, that's because I customised it. I do explain how to do that in my Customisation Tips and Tricks guide. I'll link that at the end anyway. Now, let's get into tip number one.

TEMPORARY TICKETS

Have you ever had to use an app that creates a QR code or a barcode, for example, like a boarding pass from an airline app? However, at the very moment when you need to show it to get through, the app doesn't load, you have no data, and for whatever reason, you can't bring up the pass. And now everybody in the queue is getting mad at you. Well, you can avoid all of that with this tip. So ahead of time, you can bring up that QR code, barcode or ticket for an event within the app. With it open, if you hold your finger down on the Edge panel, this is a quick shortcut to activate AI Select. Now you can select the pass that you need, and at the bottom of the page, you will see a little pin icon. So if you tap that, that pops that bit of information out of the app. Now, as you can see, it's taking up half of my screen, and it's getting in the way of everything.

And obviously, I'm not going to be using my phone like this. So what I'm going to do is tap on the image and hit the two inward arrows down here. And that shrinks it right down into this little floating bubble. This can then be easily moved out of the way and placed anywhere on your home screen. And when you get to the gate, and you need to show the ticket, you can just expand it very quickly, scan it, and get through without all the extra stress. Now, when you're finished with it, you can tap on it again and hit the little cross at the bottom to get rid of it forever. If you want to keep it, you can hit the download icon just here to save it to your gallery.

QUICK MARK-UPS

In some scenarios, you might need to elaborate on a point or highlight a key piece of information. Now you could spend some time writing out a full explanation, but don't you know a picture is worth a thousand words? So next time you need to convey a message, you could do this instead. Bring up an image related to the information you want to convey. Bring out the AI Select tool. Once you've done that, select the area, and at the bottom, you'll see the little crop tool with a pen next to it.

If you tap on that, you will then see the marker tool, and when you tap on this, you get a full selection of pens and paintbrushes to use, and you can select all the colours and even open up the colour spectrum. So choose your pen, choose your colour, and then mark up the image. You can then share this piece of information using the share button down here with whoever you like.

EXTRACT THE UNEXTRACTABLE

Now, the problem with images sometimes is that they hold important details, and sometimes the text within the image cannot be copied because the image is flat. Now, while you could screenshot the image, import it into your gallery, and extract the text that way, there is a much easier way with AI Select. So once again, I'm going to hold my finger down on the Edge panel right here to activate the AI Select button very quickly. I'm going to select the image that has the text in it. And in the top left corner, right here, you'll see the little “T” icon. If you tap on that, that highlights all of the text in the image. You can then select a smaller area if you want to. But let's say all of the information here is what I need. What I can now do is hit the copy button down here. And once you do that, it copies it to your clipboard, and it can then be pasted anywhere else on your device.

UN-DOWNLOADABLE WALLPAPERS

Have you ever been looking online for the perfect wallpaper for your phone, and when you finally find it, it won't let you download it unless you pay for it, or watch a thousand ads first? Well, that problem is solved with AI Select, because you can just do this. So once you've found an image that you want to use as a wallpaper — for example, let's say this one right here

you can activate AI Select, select the image, and straight away, if the image can be cropped into the right size for your phone screen, you can hit the three dots in the top right corner here and set it as your wallpaper. And it really is that simple. Now, this next use case is quite similar to the wallpaper trick that I just showed you. But let's say you don't want to set it as a wallpaper and you just want the image for later. Well, here's how you can do that.

GRAB ANYTHING FROM ANYWHERE

So let's say you found an image that you want to keep on your device. Again, we can either swipe out and tap AI Select, or hold our finger down on the Edge panel. This will highlight the screen. Select the image that you want, and instead of setting it as a wallpaper this time, you can just hit the little download button. That then saves that image to the Gallery. And this works even if the image is undownloadable.

RE-WRITE ANYTHING

Now, have you ever been online and read a phrase in an online article, or a paragraph in an e-book, or found a quote that you really like, and maybe you thought about including it in your own writing somehow? Well, here's a smart way to grab text from anywhere and modify it without ever having to write a single word. And it's so easy, it almost seems unfair. Let's take this quote here from Winston Churchill. If we hold our finger down on the Edge panel again and select the image that holds the quote, you can then hit the little text tool in the top left corner.

This will highlight the text. Now you'll see the Writing Assist option pop up above the image. Tap on this, and this brings up all of the writing tools that Galaxy AI has to offer. Now you can go to Writing Style, and it will analyse that text and give you other ways to say the same thing. Once you're happy with the selected text, you can either edit it down here and add your own spin, or you can just hit copy and paste it into your own work. And I'm sure you can see how this could be useful.

IMPROVE ANYONE’S PHOTOS

Now here is a fun one. Let's say a family member or friend sends you a nice photo. But the problem is that there are a bunch of photobombers in the image, or there are objects in the image which are distracting. Now, while you could save that image to your Gallery, go to the editing tools, go to the AI tools, and go from there — that, to me, sounds like a lot of work, especially if I don't even want to keep the image on my device. So here's an alternative way to do that very quickly and then send the improved image back to them. So once again, bring out the AI Select tool — that will analyse this picture. At the top of the image, you should see Photo Assist. This activates all of the Photo Assist tools that are normally only available within your Samsung Gallery app. But now you can make modifications to this image in an instant without ever having to save it to your device.

At the top of the screen here, you'll see the suggested erases. This will analyse the picture and detect things that it thinks are distracting. And as you can see, all of the people have been highlighted. I can then hit Erase, and there we go — they are gone. Now, let's say I want to make this image a bit more dramatic. If I go to Keep editing, I can then use the Create tool down here, which is similar to another tool that I'm going to show you in a minute, where you can write whatever you want in the text box underneath. And there we go — it has added an elephant in front of Five Guys. Now, if I wanted to, I could save this to my device and store it in my Gallery. But if I don't want to do that, I could just hit Share and then send it straight back to them.

Artistic Renditions

Let's say you want to create a meme or something like that, or you just want to make somebody laugh. Here's a quick way you can create some unique artwork from just about anything online in an instant. So let's take this picture of Samuel L. Jackson with this very tasty burger. Activate AI Select and choose the image that we want to recreate. Above the image, you should see the Creative Studio tool. Tap on this.

So within Creative Studio, you can tap where it says 3D Cartoon, which is the default, and change the style if you want to. I'm just going to go with 3D Cartoon for this one and hit Generate. And there we go — we have a custom version of that image, which we can use to create our own meme or share with someone just for a laugh. And if, for whatever reason, you're not happy with the result here, if you swipe across, you can give it another go.

Insert images

So sometimes it's useful to add infographics to your work. But the problem with this is that some apps make it pretty difficult to do. So let me show you how you can quickly add an infographic or an image into your work very easily using AI Select. So let's say, for example, this image right here — this was the face that I pulled when I found out I couldn't go to Five Guys before going to see Project Hail Mary in the cinema, and instead had to go to a healthy restaurant.

Anyway, what you can do is activate the AI Select tool, tap the image that you want to import into your own work, hit the little copy button underneath, and save the image to the clipboard. Now you can go back to your own work, select an area where you want to paste it, and then you should see the Paste option right here. And there we go — that's how you can add images and infographics into your own work very easily.

Location Detection

Now, has anyone ever sent you a screenshot of an address, or a picture with an address in it that you need to get to? If so, instead of copying and pasting or trying to extract the text, there is actually a quicker way to start your navigation straight from there. What you can do is open up the image that has the address in it, activate AI Select to highlight the bit of the image that has the address, and I think somewhere down here it says London Wembley.

So I'm just going to tap there. And even though it hasn't got the full address, it intelligently knows where Wembley Stadium is. And straight away, above it, you see the little map icon. If you tap on this, that will prompt you to then open up your navigation app of choice. So straight away, you can navigate to that location.

Send them a GIF

I did show this in part four of my five-part Galaxy S26 Tips and Tricks series, but it's so good I figured I might as well show you again since it does relate to the AI Select tool. So let's say you want to send a meme to someone, but you can't find the exact one you're looking for. Aligned with AI Select, you can just create one. For example, let's take this one right here. If we open up the video, activate AI Select, go to the video window and hit the three dots on the right side, you'll then see the option to create a GIF.

You'll now see the record button underneath, and you can even adjust the quality of the capture as well. Now, just before the scene is about to start, you need to hit the record button — so you have to time this right. Tap the record button, and once the meme has been captured, hit Stop. And there we go — we've created the Terminator smile meme. We can then hit the download button, or share it, or even copy and paste it into another app.

Extract & Create a Table

Alright, so remember how I showed you how you could paste images into your work — for example, infographics and things like that — to add to your own work? Only this time, we're going to show you how to do it in a table format, which could be extremely useful in certain scenarios. So, for example, right here, it might be the greatest jerk chicken recipe that you can find online. And in this scenario, let's say I want to keep a record of this in a nice, tidy format. What I can do is use AI Select, select all of the text for the recipe right here, use the text tool right here to select everything, and then I'm going to go to the Writing Assist tools.

Now you'll see the option underneath to create a table with the extracted text. And as you can see, it's created this really nice table, which I can paste into my own notes or a Word doc or whatever. And there's a little bonus feature here that I want to show you guys. When you select stuff like this, if the measurements are not what you're used to, with the AI Select tool, if there are certain measurements — for example, in this case it's using pounds instead of grams — you might see the convert option here to show you the conversions of what you actually need for this particular recipe.

Send Location

Here is a question for you. Has anyone ever sent you an invitation, and on the invitation, it has a date and time and location, but again, because it's a flat image, you can't instantly extract the text very easily? Well, with the AI Select tool, you can do this super simply. And just for example, let's go back to this. There are loads of dates and locations on here, so I'm going to try and pick one using the AI Select tool.

So I'm going to highlight the whole screen, I'm going to choose one of these down here, and straight away you'll see there's the option to add to calendar. This will automatically grab that date and that location in some scenarios, and also the time if it's listed, and give you the option to add it instantly to your calendar of choice. Obviously, this works a lot better when there aren't like 20 different locations and 20 different dates. But yeah, you get the idea.

Make it Make Sense

Alright, here is another very useful tool. When you're abroad, or someone sends you a flyer or an event poster or something that has loads of foreign text on it, and again, without importing it into your Gallery or using Gemini or ChatGPT to decode it, you can just use the AI Select tool to do this. So let's say, for example, this is what someone has sent me. I have no idea what all this stuff says. What I need to do is use the AI Select tool that highlights the whole screen, and straight away, you'll see the Translate option pop up at the bottom that overlays the English text on top of where the foreign text was. And in this case, Korean text. It's super simple, it's quick, and it's very effective.

Freeze Frame Trick

This might be the most unknown and underutilised feature of them all, and it works great with short-form content. So next time you're binge-watching short-form stuff and melting your mind, if you happen to see a funny frame within that video that you want to capture — maybe you want to turn it into a meme, or you just find it particularly eye-catching — you can use this. We have a video playing. Go past the point where you spotted the image that you want to grab, then hold the AI Select button here, and at the bottom, you will see the rewind tool. It will pause the video, and if you tap the rewind button, you will see a bunch of frames that you can grab and instantly extract from that short-form video.

It does work on long-form video — you do need to turn your phone sideways if you want to do that. Once you find the image that you want, you can just select it, and that then grabs the image and brings up the rest of the tools for you to play with, like Photo Assist, Creative Studio, the editing markup tools, the download, the share, the copy — all of the stuff that I've shown you in this video. And if you really want to, you could even create a GIF right here.

​This phone is designed for Sony fans. If you use a Sony camera as I do, you’ll appreciate it even more. And if you’re a content creator, Sony has a few secret weapons for you, too. Which I think you’ll want to see. And let’s not forget how Sony became the multi-billion-dollar corporation they are: it was originally due to their audio game… and that expertise comes into play here on the Xperia 1 Mark 8 too. And I will say now, there is one thing that’s really surprised me whilst dailying the Xperia 1 Mark 8 over the last ten days… we’ll get to that shortly.

​Design

​So let’s talk about the evolution of the Xperia 1 design. Previous models had this kind of dimpled back glass and ridged metal frame. This has been overhauled with what they are calling their Ore design, which is texture-inspired by natural materials and raw gemstones.  

​The back is still glass, but you wouldn’t know it by touch. It almost feels like suede when you run your fingers across it. It’s really nice… and check this out. It’s not a fingerprint magnet at all, and if you scratch it, the marks simply wipe off. And something you might only notice if you’re a true Xperia fan is that there’s no NFC logo this year… but don’t worry, it is still here.

​This same texture is carried over to the maybe biggest change to the Xperia 1's design: the new square camera module. When I saw the early leaks, I wasn’t sure I liked them. But, seeing it in real life… I really like it.

​You got a nice bit of subtle Sony branding here. It still has the rear-facing mic, which is fantastic for video, as you probably already know, and the rear-facing luminance sensor is still here. I’ll explain why this is kind of a big deal later in the video. And of course, there’s a good reason for this bigger camera module, and it's because there’s one big change to the telephoto camera this year.

​The Mark 7 had a 12MP sensor with a shifting optical lens for telephotos. The sensor is now larger and 48MP, with a prime fixed-focal-length lens. You will see it in action at the London Zoo, so definitely stick around for the camera test if you want to see how good it is.

Going back to the design, Impressively, somehow Sony has managed to apply the same Ore texture to the aluminium frame. So unlike most phones, which usually have two-tone textures, this one just has a unified, very unique feel. And something I’ve never seen before on an Xperia is this area just above the volume rocker, which I had initially hoped was a mappable capacitive touch area. However, I do believe it might be part of the newly improved antenna setup. As Sony mentioned, there has been a marked improvement in wireless signal strengths.

​Of course it’s still IP68 rated and all the Sony fan favourite features are still, like the tool-less hybrid sim tray that allows you to add up to 2TB of SD memory expansion, the side-mounted fingerprint scanner, which is also the power button, the dedicated camera button, which a lot of brands seem to be copying these days. As well as the Walkman tech headphone jack with gold solder for peak, latency-free audio performance via a wire. Front-facing full-stage stereo speakers only. Sony says that they’re 12% louder than the Mark 7’s and have more bass. I ran a little experiment against the iPhone 17 Pro Max in the video

​Something else that makes it uncommon among ordinary phones is its uninterrupted display, no notch and no punch holes. Just one beautifully Bravia-calibrated display.

Display

​

Which is, I'm told, the same 6.5” FHD+ 120Hz LTPO panel that was used on the Mark 7. They haven’t gone back to 21:9; they’ve stuck with the 19.5:9 ratio that we first saw on the Mark 6. Sony doesn’t disclose the official peak brightness stats; we do know that the highest brightness measured on the  Xperia 1 Mark 7 is 1520 nits. That’s only achieved when the luminance light sensor recognises an extremely bright light condition. And because there's one on the front and one on the back, this makes the phone display vastly more energy efficient, and even more so because it’s an LTPO display that can dim to just 1Hz when idle.

​And something that Sony is a specialist at is their display colours and picture processing. And that brings me on to the display features, which use an all-new AI colour table. The Bravia Creator Mode is still here, perfectly calibrated for movies and for shooting photos and videos on the phone or with a Sony camera. The real-time HDR drive and video image enhancement features are here. If you choose to turn off the adaptive colours, you can calibrate your own.

​While there are certainly more dense and faster displays out there right now. There are really three big wins for Sony here. Power efficiency, accurate colours, and an uninterrupted panel are a big part of the viewing experience in most cases, and with this one, because the speakers face you, it’s very difficult to accidentally mute them with your hands.

​Camera

​Let’s clarify the main camera changes: The primary camera now uses a larger 1/1.28” 52MP sensor with a 48MP effective area and improved stabilisation. The ultra-wide lens remains a 16mm lens with a 1/1.56” sensor, a major upgrade from last year. The telephoto lens now features a new 48MP sensor, larger than before and a fixed focal length for better detail.

​The sensor size is, in fact, the same as the current iPhone flagship primary camera. However, the 16mm Ultra-wide. Is 167% larger than the iPhone's ultrawide sensor, with its size of 1/1.56”. This was the big camera upgrade Sony made to the Mark 7 last year.

​The big upgrade this year is a new 48MP telephoto sensor. Unlike the previous Mark 7’s smaller, shifting lens setup, this telephoto is the same size as the ultra-wide sensor and is four times larger than before, offering better quality and detail.

​Alright, now it’s time to head to London Zoo to get a look. And I’ll throw in a few cheeky side-by-side shots with the iPhone so you can judge the camera quality for yourself. Loop 1 close

​

24mm Wide / 48mm Standard: This primary lens uses an Exmor T™ for mobile 1/1.28-inch sensor with 48MP resolution and a brighter f/1.9 aperture.

​16mm Ultra-wide: Equipped with an Exmor RS™ for mobile 1/1.56-inch sensor, featuring 48MP resolution and an f/2.0 aperture.

​70mm/140mm Telephoto Zoom: Features the new Exmor RS™ for mobile 1/1.56-inch sensor (48MP) with an f/2.8aperture.

​Optics: The lenses continue to feature ZEISS T* coating to reduce reflections and improve contrast.

​

Thanks to the upgraded ISP, the Xperia can now use RAW multi-frame technology for much better HDR performance and better noise reduction in low light.  Also, the Macro mode is now available on all lenses, and the macro range goes from 15cm down to just 4cm if you need it. Also, Sony says it's improved the bokeh effect, making it more natural.

Let me know in the comments what you thought of the camera quality on the Xperia 1 Mark 8. Does it exceed your expectations? Ultimately, does it make the Xperia a true contender for your next phone? Your feedback will help others decide if this phone stands out from the competition.

​There’s definitely a part of me that would have liked to see how that new telephoto sensor would perform with the sliding lens setup on the previous model…but, instead of the 140mm zoom with sensor crop. I guess maybe Sony is saving that for the next one. If you’re wondering about the selfie camera, it is the exact same sensor and lens used on the Mark. Actually, it hasn’t changed for a while now. While some might wish for updates, Sony clearly believes the current setup delivers consistent quality.

​Now, something really nice and new regarding the camera UI is Sony’s new AI assistant, which appears as this little pop-up window. Essentially, when you’re lining up a shot, you can choose the perfect colour profile that you want. So you can quickly select the most realistic colours based on what your eyes can see, or, on the flip side, stylise it.

​Something else that’s really nice about the auto mode is that at any point you can hit this little icon to access the colour controls and use the sliders to get everything perfect, and once you’ve done that, you can even register that profile for quick recall later on. So if you’re doing lots of shots in a single location with consistent lighting, this could be very useful.

​You’ve also got the AI camera work feature that lets you film a wide and vertical video at the same time, and the phone will create two separate files. This is created for short-form creators. And there’s also the Auto framing feature, which allows the phone to track a subject by cropping to parts of the video to keep the subject perfectly framed in the centre. Again, another awesome creator tool.

​The pro photo and video modes are still here, which I’m sure anyone who's used a Sony camera will be very familiar with. You can shoot in 4K 120Hz on all three rear cameras. Focus peaking, face and eye autofocus, HDR, and even Sony's exclusive S-Cinetone are all available here & also work across all the cameras.

​In the Photo Pro app, you have a ton of settings to play with. And something quite nice is that you can turn off computational photography. So if you are more of a purist, I think you might appreciate that feature. We don't often get this option on phones these days. And of course, the continuous shooting modes are available for rapid-fire shots. Eye and face tracking do work with the fastest Hi+ drive mode.

Power & Performance

​Alright, let's talk about power and performance. As many suspected, this Xperia 1 Mark 8 is using the latest Qualcomm Flagship at the time of release. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. 12GB of RAM is standard. The storage is 256GB, which is ok…but if you need more, there’s another option. The Gold model comes with 1TB & 16GB RAM, but you know how much you’ll need if you want that one it’ll cost an extra £350.

​Performance has been very good here. I’ve had no issues with it at all. And that Snapdragon 8 Elite is enough to blitz through almost any game without breaking a sweat. And Sony has equipped it with a vapour cooling chamber for good measure. This also helps during those longer 4K shooting sessions.

​The game enhancer is also a bit of a game changer with lots of tools to improve your gameplay. I do wish Sony would allow for the shutter button to be mapped to a trigger action here, but that's unfortunately not possible. However, it can take screenshots. HS power passthrough is definitely handy for longer gaming sessions, as you can run the phone on mains power without charging, which keeps it cooler for longer.

​Battery

​This brings me nicely to what surprised me about the Xperia 1VIII. The battery is 5000 mAh, a pretty standard size for smartphones these days. The charging speed is 30 Watts, and the wireless charging is 15 Watts; it’s not the fastest. However, the battery life is crazy. I’ve gone nearly two full days without having to worry about recharging. Screen on time easily over 6 hours. And I’ve not had issues with the phone overly dimming the screen to save power or anything like that. So yeah, I’m impressed. Loop 2 close

​And the argument for the slower charging speed, which takes around an hour and a half to recharge, is that it’s better for battery health in the long run. And on top of that, Sony promises 4 years of healthy battery life (80% capacity) & 4 years of Android updates and 6 years of security patches.

​

Software

​If you’ve watched other stuff on my channel, you’ll know I do like my software features. There are some good little gems here. But I will say Sony doesn't seem to be leaning into its AI tools much. Things like generative image tools and the fun little AI feature. If you want that kind of stuff, I guess you’ll just have to create those via your preferred AI apps here. They’ve kept the operating system very clean and very stock Android.

​A couple of differences here are that the shutter button can be used to take screenshots, unlike the annoying button on the combo that most phones use. I like the squared quick settings buttons, and there are some interesting options here that I haven't seen on other Androids. Including this select-to-speak option, where you can highlight text and have it read to you.

​You can remap the double-tap on the power button to open the wallet. I did that straight away. The side sense is an interesting one; there's a bit of technique to it, but it’s pretty good. You can create an app shortcut here with a swipe down, and it also allows you to create pop-up windows, split screens, and get quick access to Sony’s Sound Connect app controls.

​And on the topic of audio, I’ve been testing this phone with a device that I think you guys will be very interested in discussing. I can say no more on that at this point… but trust me, I think you’re going to like it. So definitely subscribe with notifications on, if you’re intrigued.

​Oh, and that bit of good news about the price: at the time of this video, if you decide to buy the Mark 8, Sony is throwing in their incredible noise-cancelling headphones, the WH1000-XM6, for free. They retail for £329 on Sony's website right now. So that's. And do let me know in the comments if you want to see a dedicated camera comparison with the Xperia 1VIII and which phones you’d like to see it up against.

NO PEEKING

You don't want people to be able to read your private notifications and messages, right? Well, if that's the case, then you definitely want to do this. Go into your Settings and then scroll down to Notifications. Right near the top, you will find Hide content when locked. Tap on this and make sure you enable Hide when locked. With this on, you'll still be alerted to notifications, although they won't be able to be read until you unlock your device.

DON’T BECOME PHISH FOOD

So I'm assuming you do know that whenever you connect to someone else's Wi-Fi or a public hotspot, your data can easily be intercepted by anyone else on that same network. Well, it is true, but it won't be if you use this pre-installed Samsung security feature. Here's how you access it. Go into your Settings. Scroll down to Security and Privacy. On this page, scroll all the way down until you see More security settings, and right at the top of this page, you will see Secure Wi-Fi. If you tap on this, essentially, what this is is an official Samsung VPN that's free to use. Although this is completely free to use for Samsung owners, there is a data cap, and that data cap is 1GB. And it's for that reason I don't recommend you turn on the Auto Protect Wi-Fi feature, because you'll burn through that 1GB super quickly.

So what I recommend you do is bring down the quick settings, hit the pen at the top, and at the bottom of this screen, you will see Add control. If you tap on this, scroll down until you see the Connection section, and here you will find the Secure Wi-Fi button. Add this to your quick settings. If this sounds like it's going to be a feature that you're going to be using a lot, you could make it bigger, and you could drag it near the top of your quick settings. That way, it's much easier to find in the future. And then next time, whenever you connect to a coffee shop hotspot or Wi-Fi hotspot or anything like that, you can switch on your Secure Wi-Fi very quickly from your quick settings. Essentially, what this does with your private data when you are using these Wi-Fi networks is that it will KEEP IT SECRET.

LOCK THE DOOR

Do you have important documents, for example, backup codes or other sensitive information, on your phone? If the answer to that is yes, then you absolutely, positively need to be using this. Jump into your Settings again. We're going to scroll down to the Security and Privacy section. Again, we're going to scroll down till we see More security settings. And then right here you will find this: the Secure Folder. This essentially creates a folder on your device which has a secondary PIN number that adds an extra layer of security to your most private and personal files. Now, once you've entered an exclusive PIN number for your Secure Folder, what I recommend you do at the top is enable biometrics. This will just make it much easier to access in the future, so make sure you enable that. And then once you've done that, come back to your home screen. Now you might be wondering, how do I access the Secure Folder? How do I put files into the Secure Folder? Well, there are a couple of ways to do it. The easiest way by far, in my opinion, is this: just like we did before with Secure Wi-Fi, if you bring down your quick settings, hit the pen here, and go to Add control. Within this list of quick buttons, you should see the Security section. If you keep scrolling down, you will eventually find it, and you will find the Secure Folder quick setting. Again, you can make this a bit bigger and move it around on your quick settings page so that it's easy to get to. Once you've done that, hit Done.

Now that you've set up the Secure Folder, here's how you can move things into it. So there are a couple of methods. Let's say it's a photo or video. What you can do is go into your Gallery, find that photo or video, and hit the three dots in the top right corner, and then go to Move to Secure Folder. And it now exists behind lock and key within that folder. Now, let's say it's a document you want to move, like a PDF or a text file that has code on it. What you need to do is use Samsung's My Files app. It will look like this. It is pre-installed on your device. You might want to add it to one of your home screens. Jump into this. So, for example, let's say it's a document like this, a PDF. What you need to do is hold your finger down on that PDF, and then at the bottom, you'll see the three dots. Hit that, and here you will see the option to Move to Secure Folder. Very important: you know that if you copy to the Secure Folder, the original stays in place. But if you move it, it actually moves the file entirely into the Secure Folder so that it's not accessible through the regular My Files app anymore. And via the same app, you can actually move photos and videos as well. You can locate them via the browser or by tapping on internal storage.

COPY ALERTS

Have you ever copied a passcode or a PIN code to paste it into an app or web page to log in again? If you've answered yes, you need to take a look at this. Go into your Settings. Once again, we're going to go down to Security and Privacy. And this time, we're going to scroll all the way to the bottom to where you see Controls and Alerts.

Some people might not know this, but when you copy stuff to your clipboard, it actually remains there for a while. And this can pose a risk if someone can access that copied data. And that's exactly why you might want to switch this on. In fact, I don't see any downside to switching this on: Alert when clipboard is accessed.

STAY READY

Have you ever heard the saying that you need to stay ready so that you don't have to get ready? Well, here's a serious question for you. I think what I'm saying is that sometimes shit happens. Someone has to deal with it. And who are you going to call? So here is how to get ready and be prepared for the worst, so that in the blink of an eye, you can send out the bat signal when you need some backup. Go to your Settings and then scroll down to Safety and Emergency. Go to Emergency SOS. At the bottom of this page, you'll see Send SOS to emergency contacts. Now, I don't know what country you're watching this in, but if you're in the UK, you probably know you're more likely to get arrested for a social media post than for the police to show up and help you if there is an actual emergency. So you might want to add more than one contact here.

So to do this, you just need to go to Emergency Contacts. Add all your contacts here, where it says Add emergency contacts. Also, if you scroll down, you'll see the option to Share during emergency calls and texts. Essentially, what this does is it sends all your medical information to your emergency contacts. Let's say you've taken a fall or you've been in a car crash or something like that — that's when that could be handy. Now, if we go back, there are some more steps to this, which are optional. So if you want to, you can add Attach pictures. So when you trigger this SOS feature, it will capture photos and even recordings if you switch these two on. You do have to give it permissions, so definitely think about doing that if you are more security-conscious. Now, most important of all is that you know how to activate this SOS feature. You can do it by simply pushing the power key five times in a row in quick succession. So familiarise yourself with how to activate this, and also have a think about who you are going to call.

ARE YOU BEING TRACKED?

Now, there was a time when location trackers were huge and not hard to find, but nowadays they're so small and discreet, and they're commonly used by professional car thieves to track down and steal expensive vehicles. But did you know there is a Galaxy feature that could give you an early heads-up if someone is trying to track you or your vehicle? And, of course, any other property that could be stolen. Here's how to check that the tool is active, and how to activate it if it's off. Now, this one is so well hidden that the easiest way to find it is to use the search bar at the bottom and type in Unknown trackers.

This will reveal a shortcut to the Unknown tracker alerts feature, which you should definitely switch on. Now, the great thing about this feature is you can also scan around you if you're worried and you think someone is trying to track you. You can literally trigger this manual scan to find out if there are any unknown trackers in your vicinity.

ENCRYPT EVERYTHING

Nowadays, data is one of the most valuable commodities on the planet. That's why people are always trying to steal it from you. Here's a way to add an extra layer of encryption to your Galaxy data backups. Within Settings, go back to Security and Privacy, scroll down to More security settings, and then go to Enhanced data protection.

Here you'll see two options: one to encrypt your backup data and one to encrypt your sync data. You might want to switch both of these on if you are very security-conscious. You will need to put in your Samsung ID password to enable it.

PREPARED FOR THE WORST

Here is another way to stay ready so you don't have to get ready. And this is for those scenarios where disaster strikes and somehow you manage to lock yourself out of your device. So at the top of your Settings page, you will see your Samsung account and your little icon. Go and hit that. That jumps into your Samsung account settings. On this page, if you go to Account security, make sure these are all green. If they're not, you need to look at each one of them. But the most important one for when you get locked out of your device is this: the Account recovery methods.

So on the next page, what you can do is enter a backup method, which could be another email address that you will have access to if you do lose your phone. This would allow you to get access again to your Samsung account in the event of an emergency, and you will need this account for tracking down your phone if someone does nick it. There's a pretty high probability, if you are in London, that you may need to.

A PARTICULAR SET OF SKILLS

Okay, here's a bonus tip that you will really appreciate if your phone does get stolen one day. What I do is I add the Samsung Find app to my Edge panel. You can find it just by searching within your app drawer if you need to. But anyway, once you go into the Samsung Find app, make sure you set this up. Hit the three dots on the right-hand side here and go to Settings. And then here you want to go to Allow device to be found. Make sure Offline finding is enabled. And if you want to, you can encrypt the offline location. This just adds a bit more protection to your location data.

Now, if you go back to the main settings page here, what I recommend you do is go to this Samsung Find website. Copy the web address and email it to yourself, or save it in a note that you would have access to on another computer or device that you have access to. That way, if your phone gets stolen, you can go straight to this web page and locate where your device is, because who knows — maybe you just left it somewhere and someone didn't steal it. And if someone has stolen it, there's an affiliate link to a baseball bat below this video. Okay, I'm only joking. Seriously, though, don't take the law into your own hands because you'll be more likely to get arrested for that than the phone thief is for stealing your phone. At least that's how it works in England.

DIG A MOAT

So if you have followed along with all the security steps so far, your device is fast becoming a fortress. Here's another step that can metaphorically dig a moat around your impenetrable fortress that is your smartphone. And this one is slightly harder to find, so pay attention. Go into your Settings, scroll down to Google services. At the top of this page, you will see all services. Go to that. On this page, you've got to scroll down quite far until you find Advanced protection. So this feature is off straight out of the box. And as you just saw, it's pretty hard to find. Switch this on.

This gives you an extra layer of protection when on more vulnerable data networks, for example, 2G networks and things like that. And if you scroll down, you'll see all of the things that it does. It protects against a whole bunch of risks. And this acts on top of all of the stuff that is already in place on Samsung phones. So yeah, this is a great way to level up your security a little bit more.

ADD SOME BARBED WIRE

Okay, so now let's add some more barbed wire around the edge of the moat we've just created. So once again, within Settings, scroll down to where you see Security and Privacy. On this page, scroll down to Auto Blocker. This should be on. If it isn't on, switch it on and then tap on it. And then if you scroll down, you will see this section called Maximum restrictions. This is really for those of you who are the most security-conscious.

If you tap on this, it adds even more protection to your device. They do suggest that this is ideal for people who have very sensitive information on their phone, so if that is you, switch it on. And if you are, just like I said before, very security-conscious, you might also want to switch it on. Have a little read-through, though, as to what it actually does before you enable this, because it will restrict some of your phone's features.

PING LESS DATA

Did you know that your phone is constantly pinging data right under your nose? And while this is normally quite harmless, it can potentially leave the door open for some bad actors, right? I didn't mean literally bad acting. What I really meant was people with bad intentions. So here's a way you can stop the bleed of your data. So if you go back to Security and Privacy again, on this page, scroll all the way down to More privacy settings. And right here, you see Send diagnostic data.

If this is switched on, this probably means you skipped past it when you were setting your phone up for the first time. If you switch this off, your phone will no longer be sending diagnostics about how you're using your phone, what you're using, what features you're using, and all of this kind of stuff — and it won't affect the performance of your device in any way.

ANALYSE THIS

Here's another little hidden layer of protection that prevents data from leaving your device without your permission. And this is kind of harmless, but if it falls into the wrong hands, well, then, you know. So to access this, go into your Settings. Scroll down to the Google services menu. Go to All services. Scroll down to Usage and diagnostics and switch this off.

This reduces the amount of data leaving your device for diagnostic purposes. And if you want to read a bit more about what data they're actually capturing, you can tap on this link down here.

ANTI-CAPTURE TOOL

So one of the most likely ways that people can capture your data without your permission is via a web browser. There are so many ad platforms, some of which you might not be that familiar with, that collect data on you in order to sell it to advertisers, in order to encourage you to spend money when you don't necessarily intend to. So if you want to prevent this from happening, there's a really nice tool within Samsung's Security and Privacy menu. If you scroll down, you will find the Internet privacy protection menu.

Jump in here, and you'll see right now that the device's privacy and security is moderate. Now, if you really want to maximise this, here's something you can do. Just below this little graph here, you'll see the Smart anti-tracking feature is set to Standard. If you jump into this settings menu, you can set this to Strict. And if you really want to, you can set up automatic verification. Setting this to Strict will reduce the number of tailored ads that you get, but it also reduces the amount of data that websites are allowed to collect from your device.

STREAMLINE YOUR PASSWORDS

Question: When you got your phone for the first time, were you so excited to get up and running that you rushed through the setup process? If the answer was yes, well, then there's a very good chance your passwords will be stored in a number of places, making it harder for you to locate them quickly and easily. So let me show you how to streamline this. Once again, if we jump into Security and Privacy, then More security settings — not the more privacy settings — scroll down to Passwords, passkeys and autofill.

And at the top, you will see your preferred service. If you just rushed through the setup process, you might default to Samsung Pass. But what you might find more useful is the Google Password Manager, because it stores all your passwords from Chrome. So just make sure that it is switched on and then select it here. And that way, this one service will be handling all of the autofill and passwords on your device. And I recommend you switch off all the other ones that you're not using. And if you guys do want to try out NordPass, which is what I'm currently using, I'll have an affiliate link to that below this video where you can get it with a discount and possibly an extended free trial to test it out.

PASSWORD SHORTCUT

Alright. Have you ever been in a situation where an app or website has prompted you to change your password, so you did, and then you almost immediately forgot what you changed it to? This happens to me all the time. But here's how to solve this problem in the future very quickly. Once again, we're going to go to Security and Privacy. And this really applies to those of you using the Google Password Manager, which I think is one of the best free ones out there. So, within your Settings, if you go to Google services right here, go to All services, then Autofill with Google.

Here you'll find the Google Password Manager. If you open this now, on this page, if you hit the Settings in the bottom right corner, scroll down, and you will see this: Add shortcut to home screen. And this will add this little icon to one of your home screens in the free space. Now this will give you a very quick way to jump into your password manager right from your home screen, without having to go through all the steps that I just showed you to get to the password manager. And this will definitely save you time.

ANTI TEA-LEAF

Okay, here's one more bonus tip for you guys. If you go back into Settings, and again back to the Google services menu, go back to All services. Right near the bottom here, you will find the Theft protection feature. Tap on that. And then right here, you will see Theft Detection Lock.

So if someone does grab your phone and rides off with it on a bike or something like that, your phone will be able to detect that this has happened and that it is quickly moving away from you, and it will automatically lock the device. Therefore, they won't be able to get into your apps, Gallery, messages, and all that kind of stuff. So you might want to think about switching this on.

MAKE YOUR MEMES COME TRUE

One of the most powerful, hidden, exclusive Samsung tools that not that many people know about is this. When you swipe out the sidebar, right at the top here is Samsung’s AI Select. So this is kind of a more advanced version of the Circle to Search tool, because it doesn’t just search for things — it can actually extract information and even create content. So let me show you how you can use it to create your own GIFs. So right here on YouTube, I’ve loaded up the classic Picard facepalm scene, and what I recommend you do is, when you load up a video you want to create a meme from, hit the little settings in the top right corner,go to More, and put it into loop. That way, the video keeps looping round and around. Now, once you’ve done that, here’s a little trick to access the AI Select tool much more quickly. See the sidebar? Instead of dragging it out and then tapping AI Select, what you can do is hold your finger down on the sidebar, and that automatically opens AI Select. If you tap the area that you want to capture, it will expand to that area.

You can drag the corners if you want to as well. Now that you’ve selected the part of the screen that you want to capture, hit the three dots at the side, and you will see the option to create a GIF. If you find a photo or image that you can’t download, you can actually extract that image and set it as wallpaper using this same method. But anyway, let me show you the GIF. Tap “Create GIF” — that starts the content playing in the background. Now all you have to do is hit the record button at the right time. Wait for it to start again… hit record… then stop. There we go — we’ve created a facepalm meme that we can now send to pretty much anyone. And that expression right there is exactly how I felt when I realised over 90% of people watching this channel are not yet subscribed.

THAT NOISE

In one of the previous videos, I showed you how to eliminate background noise when watching content. But here’s how to remove noise from your own videos. For example, here’s a noisy clip. If you open that video in your Gallery, hit the little sparkle icon at the bottom, and the phone will analyse the audio. Then you can reduce specific noise types like wind, road noise, etc. You can dial them all the way down or just hit Auto. Once you’re happy, hit save edits — this creates a new clean version while keeping the original.

CUSTOM ANIMATED WALLPAPERS

If you want to create your own animated wallpaper, Galaxy phones make it super easy. Open your Gallery, select an image, swipe up, and tap Live Effects. This separates the subject from the background and creates a motion effect when you tilt your phone. You can instantly set it as wallpaper — perfect for pets or portraits.

ENGLISH…DO YOU SPEAK IT?

Now, let’s improve how your phone works as a phone.

Go to the Phone app → settings.

• Enable Call Screening

• Turn on Text Call

• Use Live Translate for calls abroad

You can even mute your voice and let AI translate it for the other person, and vice versa.

DE-CLUTTER

Hidden storage tools. Settings → Device Care → Storage

Here you can:

• Delete unused apps

• clear old files

• clean junk

• empty recycle bin

You can even add a shortcut to your home screen.

TIME SAVING TEXT TRICK

Time-saving keyboard shortcuts. Go to Samsung Keyboard settings → Text shortcuts

Create a shortcut phrase (like “++”) → link it to a full sentence. Now typing two characters fills an entire paragraph instantly.

YOU MIGHT LIKE SWIPE TYPE

Swipe typing + cursor control

Enable Swipe to type

Also, hold spacebar to move the cursor like a trackpad — super useful.

LISTEN, HERE’S SOME SOUND ADVICE

Custom sound profile

Settings → Sound → Adapt Sound

You can:

• use presets

• or create a personalised hearing profile

This balances audio based on your hearing.

APPROPRIATE NOTIFICATION REACTIONS

Colour-coded notifications

Settings → Notifications → Edge lighting

Set colours based on keywords or contacts. So you instantly know what’s important without opening your phone.

MIGHTY S PEN SETTINGS

• Enable Air Command with the button

• Add useful shortcuts (magnify, translate)

• Install PenUp for drawing & creativity

PINNED NOTES

Pull out the S-Pen while the screen is off → write notes instantly

Pin them to your lock screen for quick access

CUSTOM BUTTONS

Create custom buttons using Modes & Routines

You can:

• create “quiet mode”

• change wallpaper automatically

• trigger actions with one tap

PRO CUSTOM BUTTONS

Use Good Lock + Routines+ → Touch Macro

You can automate ANY action

Example:
👉 Press a button → phone rings your SmartTag → find keys instantly

SHARE VIA WIFI

Quick Share over the internet

Enable:
👉 “Share over the internet”

Now you can send files without being nearby

AIR DROP EVERYWHERE

Use the Blip app for cross-platform file sharing

Works between:

• Samsung

• iPhone

• Mac

• Windows

Faster than AirDrop for big files

And what I'm going to do is tier each picture for you and give you a few pointers on things to look out for, and then it's entirely up to you to choose which one you think is the best photo. So right here we have a cast iron crown taken with the three phones at 100 millimetre equivalent zoom, which is around 4 to 5x. And at this range, you actually get some nice natural background blur. So you might want to consider which one delivers the nicest background blur. There's also a lot of shadows here and some bright areas. And when we crop in, you'll notice there's really nice detail and texture on this painted metal. So the key to victory here is, of course, the best balance of everything I just mentioned. So take a close look. Pick your champion.

This one was taken with the ultra-wide cameras. Now, typically, the wide-angle lens and camera sensors are not the top priority for smartphone manufacturers. Now, with that said, I do know Samsung have fitted the S26 Ultra with new, brighter lenses this year, so it'll be interesting to see if that's made a difference in your opinion.

Anyway, there are lots of details here, and it's a very bright scene. And sometimes, when it comes to ultra-wide shots, they can start to distort the image in various places, typically more around the outside. Can you notice any of that happening here? And when you're looking at ultra-wide, you might have also noticed there is quite a big difference when it comes to contrast. Now, this might be just a creative look, but is there one specific look that you like the most?

Okay, so this one is a great test of dynamic range, as this kind of concrete pipe thing in the foreground is in the shadows beneath a tree, and in the distance, it is extremely bright. So firstly, what do you think of the colours in the foreground and in the shadows of this image? And now let's zoom into the bridge way back there in the background and get a good look at those distant details to see which one is winning in this area.

Okay, so let me know so far — have the results surprised you? Is there one phone you think is going to completely outperform the others? Let me know in the comments. Now see that bridge? We were just looking at it through that pipe. Let's head over there for a maximum megapixel test.

So we have three flagship phones, three different-sized primary sensors, with three different megapixel counts. The iPhone has a 48 megapixel sensor. The Pixel has a 50 megapixel sensor. And the Galaxy S26 Ultra has an insane 200 megapixel sensor. But can you tell the difference?

Let me know — did you choose the highest megapixel count, the lowest, or somewhere in between as the best image? And regardless of what you choose, there is something important to learn from this: megapixel counts don't count for much if the sensor sizes are smaller and the lenses and coatings are not high quality. Also, the digital image processing and camera AI play a big part. And often this can actually make up for weaker sensors, rubbish lenses, and coatings. And really, I could talk a lot more on this subject, but ain't nobody got time for that.

So let's move on to the next one. Here is me and The Phantom Menace. Again, a bright sunset in the back, which poses a challenge for the cameras when it comes to handling dark details and shadows, as you see here on the dog. She is notoriously hard to take good photos of because her fur is kind of dark brown/black. So let's get a good look at the dog and see which one has captured the best details. And you could base the win just off that. But if you want to look at the overall image and choose which one looks the best in its entirety, that works too.

So now it's time for me to step out for a minute and grab a cup of tea. Coming up is a video stabilisation test, a zoom test, and then a duck hunt. You'll see what I mean. So I just want to chime in real quick here, because any smartphone can take a photo of a static object like a building and sharpen it up to make it look good. But you might be interested to see which one does the best when it comes to a moving target.

And here is that duck hunt I was talking about. Apologies — the shots aren't exactly the same. They were moving around and they were hard to track.Now, honestly, there is a really clear winner here. However, what I will say is that when you zoom into this picture taken on the Pixel, there are actually two ducks in the shot, and the one closer to the camera has its eye kind of blended into the feathers on the duck behind, which is quite bizarre. Anyway, let me know your thoughts on this and let's keep it moving.

Here is a shot through the trees of a little spooky cabin. This is to see which one has actually gathered the most amount of light and detail. I have noticed that sometimes when the primary camera sensor is so good, it's actually better to crop into an image than use the telephoto camera, because sometimes it gives better results. Anyway, let's pick your winner here. And then we're going to have a closer look at this with a telephoto zoom.

So yeah, I think this is one of those scenarios where the telephoto is definitely going to be better than cropping in on the primary camera. All three look really good, but this little round dial on the front of this building — let's zoom into that and see what we can see there. And let's start that timer.

So, HDR camera tests don't get much more extreme than shooting directly at the sun. And you'll notice there's a really nice cloud pattern back there too, which looks kind of cool. And in the foreground, the shadows cast by the tractor give us a good idea of which phones possibly have the best dynamic range. Again, this one is largely about balance. Because you can expose for the sun and make that look really nice with the clouds, or you could expose for the foreground and let the sun blow out. But I do believe we are seeing both approaches here. So choose your winner.

I feel like I've been talking too much, so we're just going to speed run through the next few photos, then we'll do a nighttime moon zoom, and then I will join you again for the low-light night shots.

So I know this looks well-lit, but trust me, when I was standing there with my own eyes, it was incredibly dark underneath this archway. I'm actually blown away by all three of the phones, just because of how bright these images appear, knowing how dark it actually was. And I do believe there is a clear winner here. One of them just has crazy shadow detail, but sometimes people like things to look more like real life, so maybe you'd prefer the more contrasty look. So you choose and mark it down on your scorecard.

This one is quite interesting. It was a clear night, and there were stars out. And in two of these images, you can actually see some. And in one of them — yeah, not so much. And if you look right at the top of this cathedral, you'll notice the details begin to darken and, in some cases, fade away entirely. Now, there could be two reasons for this: One, the sensor is not sensitive enough, or two, the image processing is better on a couple of the devices. There's also a bit of a colour difference here, but it is subtle. So let's start the timer, and you choose which one wins here.

So honestly, the difference here surprised me a lot. How about you? Let me know in the comments. Now remember how I said the ultra-wide sensor and lenses are usually kind of an afterthought when it comes to camera hardware for smartphone manufacturers? Let’s see which one actually has the most sensitive ultra-wide sensor by taking this extreme night shot of the night sky. I think we could pick a winner just based on which one is seeing the most stars. But when we zoom back out, you'll notice there is some good foreground detail here too, so you might want to factor that in.

So now let me introduce you to the oldest pub in Britain — Ye Olde Fighting. Back in the old days, around 793 AD, they used to bet money on fights, get drunk, and watch fighting. And it's kind of gone full circle because nowadays people get drunk and occasionally watch fights after they've had too many beers. I'm joking — it's actually a really nice family pub. And this is the last photo. So it is time to total up your scorecards to find out which flagship has won this blind camera comparison shootout. And please do let me know in the comments which one won on your scorecard.

I'm genuinely very interested to read those, and I will try my very best to reply. And if you guys enjoyed this blind camera comparison and you've got any tips for me on how to improve it even more, do let me know in the comments! I hope you've enjoyed this unique approach to camera comparisons. I think they're more enjoyable than the classic side-by-side stuff, but they're also much more difficult to make for me. But it's worth it if you guys enjoy it.

If you're the type of gamer who appreciates quality, and if you don't want to miss out on this, it's important that you know how and where to enable this, because it doesn't just happen automatically. And there's also some hidden tools that will help you optimize the speed, which I think you're going to want to see. So if your Portal has been sitting on the shelf for a while, well, this might be the refresh that you've been waiting for.

TIP 1

So let's run through the five UI upgrades first, starting with trophy animations. You may not have noticed this, but they weren't present before — but now they are, including the very nice platinum animations. So if you're watching this and you're thinking about jumping into the world of Sony PlayStation, well, there's never been a better time to do it, because with the PlayStation Portal, you can get access to all of those Sony exclusive games.

And on top of that, they've made it even easier now to onboard with this new QR code. And I know you might be thinking you will only have to use this once, but actually, whenever you get an update, and the system reboots, you will have to sign back in. So it's actually going to save you time. So by scanning this QR code, you can quickly sign into your PlayStation account via the web browser or the app on your phone. And if you don't have an account, you can literally just set it up on your phone instead of on the actual Portal itself.

TIP 2

And here is another little UI improvement. When you receive a game invite while on the PlayStation Portal, that little animation will appear. It didn't happen before. Now I realise that this might not be that exciting an upgrade, especially if you have no friends. But on the plus side, that makes you unbeatable — because how do you kill that which has no life?

TIP 3

If you have purchased a game bundle in the past on the Portal, it may have been a little bit tricky to get to the different games within that bundle. But now they've actually made it a lot easier to do. And just for example, this is how the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves appears now. And if there were more, you would see more of these titles. Again, this is a subtle upgrade, but definitely a welcome one.

TIP 4

Now listen, I know these updates haven't been that exciting yet, but trust me — you will want to see the next one. So this is again very subtle. Whenever there is a text field now, the keyboard pops up automatically. But this little time-saving upgrade might be the key to more victories because it could potentially save you time. And if you've heard the saying, “You never stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.” I definitely butchered that quote, but you get the idea.

TIP 5

Here's a question for you — why wouldn't you want to play your games in higher resolution? I genuinely think the only answer to that question is if you have some kind of data cap on your internet. But if you're not worried about data usage, well, then you need to be using this on your PlayStation Portal. The next time you load up a game on your PlayStation Portal, just hit the PlayStation button, and it's right here where you will find the brand new Max Resolution feature.

It is still going to be 1080p, but it's going to basically double the bitrate of the stream. Now, there are two things you need to know about this. Once you switch on the Max Resolution mode and set it to high quality, you need to apply and restart the game, so make sure you do it at a good time. For example, like I did, on the starting screen. The Portal will then, of course, have to reconnect to the game server in order to get you back in with that higher speed and higher bitrate, and ultimately higher graphics output. And this immediately looks way better.

Now here's the important thing you need to know about this. Once you set it for cloud streaming, it will remember that setting. But there is a second setting that applies to PlayStation Remote Play. So, of course, you need to reconnect to your PlayStation once again. Just hit the PlayStation button, and on the right side, you will see the Max Resolution option. And when you go into this, you'll notice straight away it's still set to 1080p standard, so you need to set this to high quality. Apply and restart.

And just like before, it's going to reboot, and then it will come back with that enhanced bitrate. And if you were going to ask, “Is it too much to ask for high bitrate on both?” Well, the answer is… no, it isn’t. So it's important that you know this, because otherwise you might be missing out on one or the other.

TIP 6

Now let me show you those hidden tools, which are now less hidden and extremely useful — and even more so now that we have the high resolution mode. So once again, when you're in a game, if you just hit the PlayStation button, you get the quick settings. And now, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the quick settings, you'll find the troubleshoot section. And this little tool here shows you the network status, so you can see what network you're on. You can see the downstream bitrate — that's the important one. Before, it kind of capped out around 12, like you're seeing now.

And just like you've just seen, when the speed dips to a certain level, the game stream will cut out. So what this does is it gives you some valuable information that you can work with. So the first and easiest thing that you could do would be to move closer to the modem or change the network. And then just underneath, you have all of the tips for how to improve the speed of your connection. And it's broken down into three nice categories: Wi-Fi, connection speed, and resolution. So if the new high-resolution mode isn't working as expected, you can go through these little troubleshooting steps and use the diagnostic tool to figure out exactly what's going on.

Hide Lock Screen Notifications

So here's a question for you: Do you want people to be able to read your private notifications when your phone is locked?. If the answer is no, then you should definitely, definitely do this. Go into your settings, and then go to notifications, and then here you'll see hide content while locked. Just go into this and set it to hide when locked. This doesn't mean you won't see the important notifications; it just means you have to unlock the phone to fully read them.

Private Album

Here's an important feature that you need to be aware of, especially if you are using this phone for work, or if you ever hand your phone to someone to use to play games or watch videos. Go into your gallery and then go to the menu at the bottom. Down here, you'll find the private album. If you go to this, you can create an album which you can lock down with your Pin number or biometrics. What you can then do is go to an image and at the top, hit the three dots and then move it to your private album right here, which can only be accessed by you. Now, if you want to find it again, all you need to do is hit the menu on your gallery, go to the Private album and then unlock it.

App Protection

Now, one of the ways you're most likely to get hacked on your device is if you install an app that opens up a pathway for hackers to get in. There's actually a security feature on your phone that can prevent this from happening, but it's not on. To switch it on, just bring down your settings, go to Security and Privacy. Right here, you see the app security. If you tap on this, you can turn on app protection. This will scan anything that you try to install on your device for potential risk, and it will let you know. Just be aware that this might be a region-specific feature.

Samsung Find

Alright, this next one is very important. If you ever lose your phone or it gets stolen, you'll be happy that you set this up. Bring down the quick settings at the top, and you'll see your account. If you tap on your account icon right here, it jumps into your Samsung account. And if you scroll down, you will see Samsung Find. If you tap on this, make sure this is set up properly. Now, if you do lose your device, you can log in to Samsung Find on the web browser and locate where it is.

Theft Detection Lock

But what if someone has literally just snatched it out of your hand? Well, this new feature here will help you with that. Go into your settings again, go back to security and privacy. Right here, you will see locked device protection. Tap on that. And this is where you'll find the theft protection mode, which isn't active on day one—it's right here: Theft detection lock. Tap on this, turn it on. Now, if someone does snatch your phone out of your hand, your phone will actually lock automatically, so they can't get access to all of your stuff. You'll also find the remote lock feature here as well, which allows you to lock down the phone if it is open and you don't know where it is.

Remaster and Object Eraser

And as I've mentioned in the intro, of course, I've saved some bonus tips and tricks for you guys. So if you've just migrated from an old phone, the pictures from your old phone might not be as good as they are on this phone. There is a nice little trick here to upscale low-res images. So if you choose an image, what you can do is hit the little sparkles at the bottom of the image. This will open up two options: Remaster and Object Eraser. Remaster will upscale that image using AI to make it look a bit cleaner, and Object Eraser will allow you to remove things from the image. You can tap on various parts to select them and then erase them. You can also use the magnetic lasso to draw around the object you want to remove, and it will select that area, and then you can erase it.

Webpage Read Aloud

Something else that is really cool, but not a lot of people know about, is this: if you bring out the edge panel, you should see Samsung's Internet app here. Within this app, instead of reading the web page at the bottom, you can hit the little sparkly stars and then have that page read out loud to you. And you can even lock your phone and walk down the street listening to this website being read to you if you want.

Edge Lighting Effects

Here's a fun little setting which can help you identify notifications very quickly. If you go into your settings, then go to notifications, then go to Pop Up Style and add the lighting effect. On this page, you can choose various effects like the eclipse or spotlight. You can then choose the colour, and if you want, you can go to advanced and change the transparency and the duration. When it comes to colour, if you leave it on auto, the colour of the animation will match the app that is sending you stuff.

Custom Notification Colours

Stay within the pop-up style; there is something really cool you can do here. If you want custom colours for people in your phonebook, you can type their name in here and actually choose a specific colour for their animation. Do keep in mind it is case sensitive, and it has to be exactly how it appears in your phonebook. This can also work with specific apps, as well if you want to customise those colours.

Sports by Google

Right, if you're a sports fan, you're going to love this one. Jump into your settings, go to Lock Screen, and here you'll find Now Bar settings. Go to this and go to see all. If you scroll down, you will see Sports by Google. If you tap on this and go to sports from Google Settings, you can choose your favourite sports teams. Now whenever those teams are playing, you will get live updates on your Now bar on your lock screen. And you can also add the Now bar to the home screen as well if you want, in the form of a widget.

App Pinning

Here's another really useful feature if you are the type of person who lets other people use their phone to play games or watch videos. Go into your settings and then go to Security and Privacy, scroll down to More Security settings, and you'll find Allow apps to be pinned. What you can do whenever you open up an app, now you can open up the background, hit the icon at the top and go to pin this app. This app has now been locked on screen, and whoever's using your phone won't be able to get out of this without your fingerprint.

AI Select

One more tip: see the little edge panel that we set up before?. This is where you can find one of Samsung's unique tools—it's a very powerful one called AI Select. You just hold your finger down on that edge panel there, and that activates AI Select, and now you can draw out anything and extract it, or use the information with other apps on your phone.

They say that when you lose one of your senses, the others become stronger. You know, like Daredevil. But what if you don't have to lose one of your senses in order to get an edge when it comes to hearing things when gaming? Well, that is the advantage that I'm told RIG are bringing to the table with their brand new AR Five Max HD. Now these are still sealed and brand new in the box, so I will give you guys my first impressions. And I have been briefed on these, and there are really three things that, when they told me about them, I was like, really? And I am interested to know if you will be surprised by these things too. Anyway, let's get this out of the box and see what it comes with.

So RIG actually have a few different names for these headphones, and one of them is the AR Five Sphere. And here we have a bit of paperwork where they are referred to as the AR Five Sphere Max HD. If you do buy these, I don't think you're going to get this bit of paper. I think this is exclusively for the press. So first out of the box is this — they are snap-lock mod plates. I will come back to these once we get the headphones out of the box. And we have a box within the box. I believe this will be more like the official retail packaging. Now I really like the black and gold theme that they've used on the packaging here, and these are cross-platform compatible, so you can use them with Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, PC, and even mobile.

And actually, one of the features that surprised me was regarding mobile gaming. You'll see something that I'm quite happy to see, which is this Dolby Atmos support for spatial audio. And if you are a PlayStation fan, you'll be happy to know that these also support Tempest 3D audio. “Audio above all” is the tagline for RIG. So these right here are the official mod plates that you get with this headset. So let's get a little look at them. So these are optional covers for the backs of the earcups. And the idea is that you can get your own ones made or add your own branding to them. So if you're a game streamer, you can kind of interchange the branding whenever you feel like it. You know what? Since we're here, we might as well see what these other ones look like, if they're any different from the ones that you get in the box.

So those have got a completely different style. This is a good example of what you can create. And if you do happen to have a 3D printer, RIG do provide the files that you need in order to create your own RIG mod plates for the headphones. And I really like what RIG have done with these ones. I like the style. Anyway, let's get the headphones out of the box now. So, taking these out of the box for the first time, something I really appreciate is the weight that they have. They're not extremely light, which can make them feel cheap. They're not extremely heavy, which could make them feel uncomfortable. Just like with the packaging, they've got the black and gold theme going on here. And something that's really, really nice about these headphones is the all-metal headband. These apparently have been thrown at the wall — quite literally — to make sure that they can survive rage quits.

So, first impressions are that I really like the look of these headphones. They do kind of look like studio monitor headphones without the mod plates. And when you put the mod plates on, yeah, they take on that gamer look a bit more. hidden away underneath here are a few more things, including one of the things that I mentioned in the intro that really surprised me. So this right here is a magnetic broadcast-grade microphone, and you'll notice it can be detached when you don't want to use it. It's got a flexible arm here. It does use a cardioid pickup pattern. It very simply magnetises onto this little area. And it does have the flip-up-to-mute feature. And there is something else quite special about this microphone, which we're going to come back to in a moment. But let's see what else is in the box first.

So right here is another attachment. And it is another magnetic attachment. And this attachment is purely for those of you who are not into game chat. This one is just for audio. You've got 3.5mm here, and you've got the adapter here if you do have more pro equipment. Of course, there's paperwork in here, including a QR code to some support videos, a quick start guide, and this — because these are Dolby Atmos certified headphones — they do kind of prompt you to download the Dolby Atmos software for PC if you are going to be gaming on PC. And it also shows Xbox here, so Dolby Atmos via Xbox is supported too. Okay, last but maybe most importantly is this — the RIG deck. If you are watching this and you are a more serious gamer, this might be the audio game changer that you've been looking for, and I will show you why.

DESIGN

Let me give you a quick guided tour of the design, and I'll explain what that feature is with the deck. So customisation is a big deal when it comes to these headphones. You can easily interchange the mod plates and change up the look entirely whenever you want. I actually do like them without the mod plates. I think they look, as I said before, like studio monitors. The microphone can be detached, and if you wanted to, you could attach it to the opposite side. This is something that I have never heard of before when it comes to gaming headphones. And this is one of the features that I was like, really?

And when it locks on, it's super secure as well. It's not like you're going to snag that and it's going to get ripped out of the headset whilst gaming. They've really done a fantastic job at making sure that that's really locked in there. And I'm giving this a lot of force now, and it's not detaching. It's only when you pull it straight outwards that it comes off. And the mic does have inline controls built in, so you can adjust the levels there very easily with this nice little slider.

Here's a little mic test for you guys. This is how the mic sounds in a very quiet room. But let's say you're gaming in a coffee shop — here's a coffee shop background noise. And this is how the mic sounds now. Because it is a cardioid mic, you can really point it towards your mouth and away from the sound. Let me know how it sounds in your opinion. For the mic test, please watch the video

The modularity and flexibility of this make it very different from other headphones. And of course, like I said before, if you don't want to use the mic, you can just use the audio cable just like that. Something I know a lot of people will appreciate is the look — the gold accent on the headband — but maybe more so than that is the durability of this headband. I really don't want to damage them before trying them out for the first time, but I've seen you can fully twist these up. You’ve got a bit of subtle branding across the top and a lot of padding across the inside at the top of the headband, which is very nice. And it has very soft padding here, and it's very breathable.

And one of the reasons for that is this — so hopefully you can see this — inside this leatherette area is actually perforated, which means it can breathe better. When you do squash it down, the air can actually escape, and I'm assuming the other way as well. So when you start to get hot, there's some good ventilation built in here. And something else that I know a lot of you guys will appreciate is this — the earcups are magnetically attached, which means you can replace them when they get worn down. And behind them is the second thing that I was like, really? When I heard about it. It is the type of drivers that RIG are using here. One of the big differences between these headphones and all of their similarly priced competitors is the fact that this RIG headset uses graphene 40mm drivers, with the membrane being 45% pure graphene.

Now, the reason this is important is because graphene has a certain amount of stiffness to it, but it's incredibly light. It's also very thermally efficient. And when you push it, it doesn't fall apart like other drivers. And compared to most traditional types of drivers used in competitor headsets, the harmonic distortion is far lower — less than 0.3% with these headphones. Most regular headphones are around 0.5%, and this might seem like a minimal difference, but it's a huge difference when it comes to audio distortion and ultimately clarity.

And because they can be pushed so far without distortion, of course, they do support high-res audio. The frequency response here is 20Hz to 40kHz, which exceeds human hearing. But the fact that it doesn't start to degrade outside of that range means that the accuracy within the hearing range should be much clearer and far more detailed — they say, in fact, maybe twice as detailed compared to other 20Hz to 20kHz headphones.

I show you how you can easily customize and personalise your galaxy, and I even show you a few tricks that only the pros know. You just have to think 14 moves ahead, that's all. Remember us. Welcome to part two of three in this Galaxy A57 Tips and Tricks series. In part one, I showed you how to unlock max performance; here in part two, if you stick around by the end of this video, you'll understand how to customise your phone like a pro. And trust me, it is easier than you think.

Quick Panel Reorganisation

So let's start with the customization of the quick panel. So if you bring down the quick panel top right corner hit the pen here. You can actually resize and reorganize this entire area. So if you want the Wi-Fi button to be a bit smaller, just grab it by the line there and drag it inwards. Just drag the Bluetooth one inwards as well and put it over here. And if you want to, you can expand this quick settings area to be much bigger. And here's a little customization trick that not everybody knows about. If you delete the volume and the brightness slider from here and then go to add at the bottom and then re-add them, it will add them to the bottom here. And you can actually drag this inwards and down so it becomes vertical. We'll do the same with the volume slider into the long shape like that and bring it up. There we go, we got a volume and brightness slider in the vertical format instead of horizontal like everybody else.

Wi-Fi Calling

Here's a quick setting that you absolutely need to know about. If you ever get stuck with bad signal and maybe you're on Wi-Fi, let's say a hotel abroad or something, this will be extremely, extremely useful to you. So bring down the quick settings. Hit the pen here, hit the add control at the bottom. Right near the top, you should see Wi-Fi calling. Tap this and add it as one of your easy-access quick settings. With this active, whenever you have a bad signal, you can make phone calls from your own phone number as usual over Wi-Fi instead.

Home Screen Grid and Icon Size

Now, the Galaxy A57 has a fantastic display and it's a big screen, so I personally do this. This is entirely optional, but you might want to know about this. So if you hold your finger down on an empty port screen and go to settings here. This jumps you to your home screen settings, where you can change the size of the home screen grid. So I actually like to have five by six. This gives me more room per page so now you can have five docked apps and five apps per row.

Yes, the app icons do get a little bit smaller, but if you want to increase them back to the original size when you had less icons per page, I want to show you how to do that right now. So once again on your home screen, hold your finger down on an empty space and go to settings. Right here at the top you'll see this slider. If you want the apps to be larger, you can just slide this to the right and that increases the size of the apps.

Clean Home Screen

Now something else you might want to do, especially if you're very familiar with all of the app icons, is this. Hold your finger down on the home screen, go to the home screen settings again, and then switch off "show app labels on home screen". This cleans up the home screen a lot. I'm personally very familiar with all the app icons—I don't need the text underneath to tell me what they are, and if you feel the same, then definitely switch off the labels.

Folder Styling

Okay, here's an organisational tip. So if you're the type of person who likes to create app folders, I think you'll appreciate this. So let's just drag this into a space like this. If you hold your finger down on a folder, you can enlarge it and make it bigger, of course. And if you hold your finger down on it again and go to settings, you can even colour-code that folder. So let's say all of the Google apps, I want that folder to be green. And we can adjust the transparency here. And if the green isn't quite right, you can just go to the little swatches here and choose the specific colour that you want. And do keep in mind they don't need to be big in order to recolour them—you can have them in the small format as well.

Edge Panel Handlebar

Here's another little colour-coding tip. See the little faint line here on the edge of the screen? That's your edge panel handlebar. You can actually restyle this to contrast nicely with your wallpaper. To do this, just slide out the edge panel real quick, and you see the settings down here. Tap on that before it disappears. Here you see the handle menu; tap on it. And this is where you can customise the colour—so let's make it purple. Actually, just make it a bit more of a bright purple, something like this, and we can change the transparency. So if you want it to be faint or bold you can do that. You can also change the size of the handle and you can adjust the width as well if you want it to be less visible. Keep it thin. And there we go, and you've got these little arrows here to adjust the exact position. I do recommend you keep it higher up the screen, because when you're swiping between pages, you don't want to accidentally hit that handlebar.

Advanced Wallpaper Customisation

Now, I do realise that the first thing you probably will do with your phone is customise the wallpaper, so I might as well show you how to do that. It is very easy to do if you hold your finger down on an empty part of the screen, go to Wallpaper and Style at the bottom. Here you can go to change wallpaper and that will change both of these at the same time. At the top you'll see all of the featured wallpapers. I do like this dynamic one—it actually adjusts this colour throughout the day. You have various other options below as well, like a wallpaper carousel. But if you want one from your photo gallery, this is where you'll find it. So I'm just going to choose the Master Yoda one. This will apply that wallpaper to both of the screens, and if you just want to use it on one of them, you can untick one of the ones down here. And if you're happy with it, you can just hit done.

Now once you've found the wallpaper that you want to use, you can actually customise it on both of these screens independently. So here's how you can do that: hold your finger down onto the screen again, Wallpaper and Style again. This time I'm just going to tap on the home screen wallpaper. If you hit the suggest button, the phone will suggest various layouts for this wallpaper. Sometimes they're good, sometimes not so much. I'm going to hit back and then go to effect. Now here's a bit of advice for your home screen wallpaper: you don't want it to kind of distract you from the apps, or wash any of the apps into the background so they're hard to see. So I like to add a blur effect that just softens the wallpaper and makes the app stand out a bit more. But there are other options here, for example, grayscale colour, where you can adjust the colour of that wallpaper behind and still keep some of the image visible. And you can even change opacity here as well. There's also the dark mode, and you can add a little bit of a tint to that if you want to. Definitely have a little play around with the different effects that you can add to your wallpaper. But like I said before, my favourite by far is just the general blur.

Adaptive Lock Screen Clock

Once you're happy, hit apply. Now let's go to the lock screen. This is where things start to get interesting because you can do a lot of customisation here. If you hit effect again you can do the same thing—you can add these filters. But check this out. If you resize the image, I'm going to make it about that big. I'm going to tap the clock here and choose this one. This is the only clock that can adapt to its surroundings. I'm going to hit style to make it a bit bigger that way. And as you can see, it's kind of shaped around Master Yoda's head. This works best if you have a picture with a person in it; it can separate the foreground from the background. And if you want to watch the weather, you can activate the weather at the top of this clock. I think this is the best one by far. A couple of other things you might want to look at on your lock screen is this: when you tap on the lock screen, you can add various widgets just underneath the time, and you can also remap these shortcuts here at the bottom if you want as well.

Google Search Bar Styling

Here is another customisation to tweak to add a bit more colour to your home screen: see the Google search bar?. This is the bog standard search bar in dark mode. It will be lighter in light mode, but you can actually take full control over how it looks by doing this. Hold your finger down on the Google search bar, go to settings and this jump straight into the customisation settings for the search bar so you can go to custom. Here we can choose a specific colour, let's say green, for example. We can change the transparency of that search bar so the image actually shows through it. And then if you scroll down, you can go to Add shortcut. The two most useful ones, in my opinion, are song search and the AI mode. But you can only have one. Once you're happy with your customisation, you can go back and straight away, that change takes effect. You can also adjust the size of the search bar—it doesn't need to be right across the screen like that. You can shorten it, but it will restrict the number of shortcuts that can be shown.

Modes and Routines Widgets

Let me show you one little customisation tweak that I have recently started to use all the time on my Samsung phone. So if you bring down the settings and then go to Modes and Routines, you will find some recommended routines that you can set up. Sleep is a very good one—we can hit the set-up, go through the setup guide and customise this however you want. I'm going to set my sleep time, and you can choose the days at the bottom. There are various other things you can do, like changing the alarm background. Once you've done that, you can scroll down and choose a different wallpaper for when you're in this mode. Now that this is set up, you'll know whenever you're in this mode because the wallpapers will change on your device.

But here's a little customisation tweak: on your home screen, go to an empty space and go to widgets at the bottom, then go to the Modes and Routines widgets over here and choose the sleep widget and add it to your home screen. Making it much more accessible, and you can just toggle this on and off whenever you want. Now what I do is set up a bunch of different routines and modes for various occasions, and I have them all stacked on top of each other right here. So I can slide between these buttons on the home screen. Now, if you want to do the same, you just hold your finger down on that widget and go to Create Stack, and then you can add more widgets on top of that one.

If you've just picked up a Galaxy A57, I'm here to show you some tips and tricks and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of bubble. So let's kick this off with some performance upgrades first. Then we'll get into some customisation, and then some of the very important security settings. And if you stick around to the end, I may or may not have some bonus tips and tricks. Kind of hard to find, and most people don't know about. All right, so let's get this off.

Bixby and Perplexity AI Integration

You might not realise this, but Samsung have recently upgraded Bixby, and they've introduced Perplexity, which has been optimised specifically for your Galaxy. However, you won't be able to use it unless you do this. First, go into your settings. So if you swipe down from the top, you can find it here. Scroll all the way down to Advanced Features. Here you will find the voice wake up settings. So if you tap on that, straight out of box, Bixby will be on, but Perplexity will be off. So if you switch this on, it will then prompt you to set it up for the first time by repeating the sentences on the screen. Once you've set up Perplexity, it can now work alongside Bixby and even control functions on your phone.

Camera Tips and Tricks

Megapixel Settings

Here are a couple of camera features that you should be aware of, and not everybody knows about. Open up the camera app. At the top here, you see it says 12M—that's 12 megapixels. If you set it to 50 megapixels, you can capture more detail. However, keep in mind that 50 megapixels is best for well-lit scenarios, and 12 megapixels is much better in low light conditions.

Camera Assistant

If you hit the little folks down here, go to the camera settings. You can unlock some hidden camera settings that might be very useful to you. So on this page, if you scroll down, you should see this right here: Camera Assistant. And you will very likely see a downward arrow indicating that you can download it, and install that app. And once you've done that, you've unlocked this new menu where you can actually tell the phone to prioritise focus over speed. If you find you're getting blurry photos, this will solve that problem for you.

Dual Record

And something else you can unlock here, if you scroll down a little bit, is these two features right here: Single Take, which is great for creating short content, but this one is my favourite: Dual Record. With this enabled on your phone, you can now film picture in picture, which can be located in the more section at the bottom of the screen. So if you go to this, you should see Dual Record. You can actually grab this and then drag it onto the bar at the bottom so you have quick access to it. Now, when you activate Dual Record, you notice you have this little screen up here. And if you tap on this, you can actually make it a bit bigger. And you can also move it around on the screen. This can be a great way for creating content as well, if you want to show how you're reacting to what you're seeing. This is a nice little trick.

Composition Guides

Here's another little camera tip that can improve how you use your camera. If you go into the camera app again, hit the folks over here and then go to settings. On this page, scroll down a little bit, and you will see the composition guide. If you switch this on and then tap on it, you can choose what kind of guide you want. I think the grid lines and the level is obviously the best ones, because now when you use your camera, you have the rule of thirds grid, and you also get this little crosshair when you're doing top-down shots. And when you are taking regular photos, you get a little crosshair in the middle or a little spirit level so you know when you're perfectly level.

Performance Optimization

RAM Plus

Now let me show you how to speed up your device a bit more. I'm assuming you have a lot of free memory since you have a new phone, but you might want to look at this and just be aware of where to find it. So go back into your settings, go to Device Care. Here where it says memory, tap on this. Right now I have eight gigs of RAM. 1.8 gig of it is being used, and the phone is barely out of the box for five minutes. So yeah, you get an idea of how quickly that RAM can be used up. If you want to, you can hit Ram Plus down here and expand it all the way up to eight gigs. This can help with loading times, backgrounding tasks and things like that. And if later on you start to run out of memory, you can always scale it back to 4 or 2 if you prefer.

Auto Optimization

Now on a rare occasion, what you might find is that your phone is running lots and lots of processes in the background without you knowing, and it starts to warm up and slow down the phone's performance. Now, if you want to prevent that from happening, there is a tool within the software that you need to be aware of within the settings. Again, let's go back to Device Care and then this time just below these graphs you'll see auto optimization. If you want to be extra cautious you can go to auto restart and then set this to restart when needed, which if you are a light phone user, will probably be never. But if you switch it on, and the phone does start to do something in the background that drains all of the resources on the phone, well, this will sort that out for you very quickly. And if you prefer, you could set it as a schedule so every night a specific time it can reboot and refresh your device.

Security and Personalisation

Fingerprint Accuracy

My guess is when you set up your phone for the first time, you probably did 1 or 2 fingerprint scans for your unlock, and that's fine. But here's a way to make them even more accurate. If you go into your settings and then go to Security and Privacy, right here. On this page, you should see screen lock and biometrics. Tap on that, tap where it says fingerprints and then tap on the first fingerprint that you registered and then go to improve accuracy.

Now you can re scan that same print again. And this will just expand the amount of detail that the phone holds about your fingerprint. And it's a bit more of a thorough process. But once you've done it, your phone will unlock much, much faster. And if you're the type of person who rushed through the set up process and only did one of your digits, I highly recommend doing three: the thumb and first finger on your dominant hand, and then maybe your thumb on your other hand, and you can just hit the plus here to add those additional fingerprints.

Side Button Remapping

Now if you're a bit old school when you're used to a power button being a power button, or you've just switched from iOS, well, I think you're going to appreciate these settings. So if we go into the settings menu, scroll all the way down to Advanced Features. This is where you'll find the side button menu. It used to be called the power key, but it's not actually your power key anymore; you can make it one if you want it to be. So the long push and hold of the power key right now activates Gemini. But maybe you're not going to use that so much. And if that is the case, you might want to go to long press and then set it to the power menu. That way, when you push the power key, you get the power menu just like the old days.

Wallet Shortcut

And if we go back to the side button menu, you'll notice that the double press of the psyche opens up the camera, which is okay, but if you're coming from an iPhone, you're probably used to double tapping to get to your Apple Wallet. On this phone, you can remap it. So if you have your Google Wallet installed on your phone or any other wallet that you might use, you can go to apps here and then choose it from this list. So with that set up now whenever you need to pay for something, you can just double tap here that will jump straight into your Google Wallet.

Galaxy Store Updates

Now, if your phone is literally box fresh, it's going to look quite similar to this. And something you absolutely need to do straight away is go to your Galaxy Store, because this is where all of your Galaxy apps get updated. If you don't activate the store and update it out of the box, it'll be a while before you get the latest updates for all of your apps, so make sure you go through the original update process for the Galaxy Store. Once you've done that, go to the menu and at the top here if you see any updates, make sure you do all of those on day one. This just guarantees that you get all of the latest Samsung Galaxy features.

Multimedia and Sharing

Dolby Atmos

When it comes to watching content on your phone, you can actually improve the sound quality of the content. Here's how you do that: Go into your settings, go to Sound and Vibration. Scroll down on this page until you see sound quality and effects, and tap here, and you'll notice Dolby Atmos is available at the top.

Whenever you're watching movies, I recommend you use Dolby Atmos, and if you want a quick way to activate it and switch it off when you don't need it, here's the best way to do that. Bring down your quick settings by swiping from the top right corner. Hit the pen and then if you hit the add control at the bottom, scroll to see the sound section. And if you tap where it says Dolby Atmos, this adds it to your quick settings.

And then you can resize the quick setting to be a bit bigger. And now when it comes to using Dolby Atmos, you can just tap this button right here and that will activate it. But if you hold it down, this actually jumps you into another menu, which again, a lot of people don't know about, where you can select the type of content—movie, music or voice—and this will enhance that audio.

Quick Share and Blip

Now, one of the most useful quick settings, in my opinion, is the Quick Share. So if you are on Android and all your friends are on Android, the Quick Share can be found in the quick settings, and it looks like this. This allows you to send files, photos and things back and forth between the devices very quickly.

But here's a little pro tip for you guys. If some of your friends are on iOS, or if you work on an Apple Mac, for example, you'll appreciate this. Go into your Google Play Store—this is your app store for Android phones—and search for this app right here called Blip.

Make sure your friends also get this app, and if they do, you can now use it to send files back and forth between Android and iOS devices seamlessly and very, very quickly. Just to show you how effortless this is, if I go to the photo gallery here, I have this wallpaper of Master Yoda. I just hit the share button and then I hit Blip from the list. Now I can simply send this to an iPhone like this. I've now got access to that image, and it works fantastic for video too.

WALLPAPER REMIX

So the first customisation tweak that most people will do with a new phone is customising the wallpaper. And there are some really cool ways to do this now on Galaxy S26. And this is a fairly new one. So if you swipe up to bring up your app drawer, in the list here, you should see Creative Studio. This is a new and improved Samsung app. And essentially, what you can do here is type in text prompts to create images. But what I want to show you is something a bit different. So in the bottom right corner here, you'll see this little pen. If you tap on this, and then instead of typing something in, if you hit the little image icon right there, you can bring in an image from your gallery. And for this demonstration, I'm going to grab this very popular wallpaper of Darth Vader. And as you can see in that bottom left corner there, the theme selected is 3D cartoon. And we'll leave it as that.

And in this box at the bottom, what I want to do is adjust this image so that it matches my purple Galaxy S26. So I'm just going to type in, “make this more purple,” and then hit generate. And there we go. Instead of just adjusting the image with effects, this has actually recreated and kind of remixed the already very popular wallpaper that I had to match my phone, and it actually creates something different every single time. Here's another version of that same wallpaper remixed using the same app, using pretty much the same prompts as well. And you can see I've got a completely different result, and you can keep modifying the picture just by altering the text at the bottom. Once you have created something that you do want, you can hit the little download icon at the top and save it to your device. You can set it as your wallpaper, or you can even just create a sticker from that image.

PHOTO WALLPAPER TRICK

For the next tip, we're going to use a photo from my gallery because there are going to be some people out there who want to use photos they've taken themselves as wallpapers. And let me show you how you can tweak them and improve them using some Galaxy AI tools. So first thing to do: open up your photo gallery. Choose an image that you might want to use as wallpaper. Once you've done that, you hit the little AI sparkles at the bottom of the phone, and then you get your AI options. If there are photo bombers in the image, you can use the AI eraser to circle them and get rid of them. You can adjust the image and actually straighten it up, and it will use generative fill to fill in the outside of the image.

And if you want to, you can hit Style on the side and use one of these image generation tools to completely restyle the image using a preset that you like. Let's go with the sci-fi one and see what it does. So yeah, that's pretty cool. You get the idea of what you can do with that. But what I really want to show you is this. Go back to the original image, and this time I'm going to hit Create. And you'll notice the text field pops up at the bottom of the screen. Here's where things start to get really interesting. You can literally type in stuff here to add to the image. Let me add a DeLorean in the background. And there we go. It's added the car to the back of the shot, and it's actually even moved my arm a little bit, so you can see a bit more of the car.

And then if you go to Keep Editing, we can keep stacking more things on top. And check this out. If you hit the little image icon right here, you can even go into your photos and add parts of other images into that image. So this is Yoda, just to see what happens. And once you've extracted that bit of that image, you can ask it to blend it in a specific way. So I'll just put “sitting on the ground” and generate. What you might find is that if the image is copyrighted, which Yoda definitely is, it might not work. So you can extract parts of images and have them blended into the existing image. And you can also change outfits. So let's say I change my outfit to a “business suit.” There we go. It's very convincing. And you can see how it could be extremely creative when it comes to creating a background for your phone. And once you have created something that you like, you just save a copy and then go to the three dots in the top right corner and then set it as a wallpaper.

THE VARIATIONS

I do realise that some of you guys will not be into any of this AI stuff, or Star Wars wallpapers, or anything like that. You probably just want to keep things simple, and if that is you, I think you'll appreciate this little customisation trick. So if you haven't changed anything on your phone, your wallpaper will probably look something like this, with the default Samsung animated wallpaper, which is very nice. But this is also customizable, so let me show you how to do that.

If you hold your finger down on an empty part of the screen and go to Wallpaper and Style, bottom left corner, and you tap on the wallpaper you want to customise — so let's just go to the home screen one — at the bottom of this screen, you should see Variations. If you tap on that, you will see the other versions of that same wallpaper that also animate. So maybe you prefer this one, for example. So have a look at these and see if you prefer any of these. And before we move on to the next tip, I do want to show you one more thing. If we go back to this little icon in the top left corner, this brings us to the wallpaper menu. And when you scroll across here, you'll see some of the other Samsung defaults. And when you scroll down, there are even more. Some of the cool ones worth checking out are these down here — the interactive ones.

They actually shift colours throughout the day, so they become darker as the day goes on. And by the time you get to the evening, they'll actually turn into a more comfortable hue, so it doesn't strain your eyes. So yeah, these are very nice. And just like before, if you do choose one of these, at the bottom of the page here, you can go to Style and actually even modify the style of these dynamic wallpapers too.

WALLPAPER MODS

Here's one more wallpaper trick, and this one's ready for anyone who has wallpaper downloaded that they want to use. But maybe it doesn't match the colour of the phone or the case that you're using. So I'm going to use this wallpaper right here just for demonstration purposes. This is definitely one of the fan favourites here on this channel, but this kind of pinky grey doesn't really match the purple of the phone. So here's what we can do about that. First of all, we need to set it as the wallpaper. So if we go to the top right corner, hit the dots, and go to Set as wallpaper, I'm going to set this just as my home screen wallpaper. Now, once you've done that, you'll notice some extra options pop up across the bottom of the screen. If you go to Suggest, the phone will try to predict what you might want to do. I don't suggest you do that. If you go to the Gallery, you can change the image entirely, and if you want to put a frame around it, you can do that.

But what I want to focus on here is the Effect. So this is completely different from remixing the photos as I showed you at the beginning. This one takes the existing image and kind of modifies it. So for home screens, I do like to add the blur effect sometimes if there are lots of sharp edges on the image behind. This allows you to focus on the app icons. But for this particular image, I want to show you something different. There is the blurred background option, so if you have a photo of a person, it will blur the background, which can be quite nice. There's a grayscale background, which does look pretty cool, but it's still not what I had in mind. And then there's this one: custom colour background. Now this is where it starts to get a bit more interesting. See the little colour icon in the bottom right corner? If you tap on that, this brings up your colour options. And if you really want to be pro, you can go to the colour wheel and dial in the exact colour, and even use the spectrum if you prefer.

Once you've done that, it applies the colour to the background, and you can even use the opacity slider to change how much of that colour is overlaid. So you can bring back some of the details that exist underneath. So this is kind of nice, but it's still not my favourite. So let's go back and go across to the next one, which is this one: dark background. So essentially, this just modifies the back of the image. And again, you have the little colour icon. So if you tap on this again, you can adjust the intensity of that overlaying colour, but it just applies it to the background. And I think that looks pretty cool. You've kind of got a little bit of purple tones in there, and you've got a darker colour that allows the icons to stand out from the background. So I'm going to apply that. There are a couple more effects that you might want to check out here as well. So if you scroll across, there is the ink drawing background, the pastel background, and there's also an oil painting, which looks very cool, actually, but I'm sticking with this dark background.

CUSTOM COLOURS

So here's another tip that would differentiate your phone from your friends, even if they have the same phone. So if you hold your finger down on the home screen, go to Wallpaper and Style. This time we're going to go to Colour Palette. It's kind of important that you do your wallpaper before you do this, so hopefully you've done that. When you tap on the palettes here, you can enable it. Essentially, what this will do is grab colour schemes based on the wallpaper that you're using, and it will present them down here. And up top, you have a little demo of how this will affect the user interface. So have a look at the options that are presented to you and pick your favourite one.

If none of them is what you like, you can swipe across, and there will be more options, so you can spend as long as you like finding the colour scheme that you like. But if you want to keep it basic, just go to Basic Colours. Here, you could choose a solid if you want, and if you go across, there are two-tone options as well. And once you are happy with the colour configuration, you can just hit Apply, and that will apply it to all of your system settings and menus. And just to show you how that's affected the UI, when I bring down the quick settings, it's all colourful now. Before, it was all kind of grey and black and white.

COLOUR ICONS

And there is one more step to this, which you may or may not want to do. And you may have to change your entire colour palette setup just to make this work. But let me show you what it is. If you go back into the Colour Palette right here, you can apply the palette to app icons as well. Now, when you do this, it changes all of your app icons to a colour from that palette. And up here, you'll see what colour they will be.

So right now they appear blue, which is not really ideal for the wallpaper that I've chosen. Now I've got dark blue app icons, and to be honest, I'm not a big fan of how this looks, so you do have to spend a bit of time to get it right. So I switched it to grey, and this looks way better now.

LOCKSCREEN TIME

Now let's set up a custom lock screen. So an easy way to get there is to hold your finger down on an empty part of the screen, go to Wallpaper and Style, and then tap on the lock screen. Now, to make this demo a bit more interesting, I'm going to add an image to my lock screen. So I'm going to change this to my Yoda wallpaper and hit Done. And now that I’ve got that set up, I can customise the clock to work with this image. So when you tap the clock, you can change the different styles, the different fonts, and even the size of the numbers. There will be different options depending on the fonts that you choose. So, for example, this one here, you'll notice there are a bunch more options. And some of the other ones I showed you already. And you can even have full-on calendars here on your lock screen if you want to.

And when you are choosing the style of your clock, do have a look at this as well. You've got the option to enable the weather information, which will sit either above or next to the clock that you've chosen. Once you've done that, you can adjust the size of the clock as well. And the cool thing about this particular clock is that it actually adjusts to the image that you're using. So you can see how it kind of changes shape based on where it is in the image. If I move it across to the side, for example, the numbers adjust around his head. So definitely play around with your lock screen clock and the overall style.

LOCKSCREEN CUSTOMIZATION

Here's another tip for your lock screen. Again, if we jump in using the shortcut here, tap on the lock screen here, and just underneath the clock that you've just set up is a space for up to four widgets. I'm just going to delete the ones that I have. You can choose from any of the widgets available here. One of the ones that I think is probably most useful is the Voice Recorder, because you can actually activate this from the lock screen without opening your phone. So that's one that you might want to add. Another one that you can activate as well is the Interpreter listening mode. If you are in another country and you think some people might be talking about you in their language, well, you can activate the listening mode and find out what they're saying. So make use of the space, but be aware that you only get four spaces. You could just use individual one-by-one icons if you prefer, but I do like using this one so I can see how long it's been recording if I need to record.

And before we leave this page, there are actually three more things I want to show you, and one of them is very useful. So the two icons down here, the phone and the camera — those are the default shortcuts on your lock screen. If you find you're never going to use those, you can customise those two just by tapping on them. You'll see the options that you have available, and you can remap them to do whatever you want them to do. And the last thing is this: across the bottom of the screen, if you go all the way to the end, you will see the weather option. If you tap on this, it adds a dynamic weather effect based on your location on top of your lock screen, so you can figure out what the weather is like outside without even looking out the window. And there's really only one downside to adding this effect, and it's this: you get the little AI-generated thing at the bottom because it's adding this weather effect over the top and altering the image. So yeah, because it's modifying the image, it has to show that badge. I think it's a legal thing.

GRID SIZE

So if you've just got a brand new Galaxy S26, your home screen layout is going to look like this: four icons across, possibly five app icons at the bottom. And if you did get one of the bigger phones like this one, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, I'd recommend you make the most of the screen real estate, and you'll see why when we get onto the next tip. But first, let me show you how to do that. So if you hold your finger down on the home screen and go to Settings, this brings you to your home screen settings. And here is where you will find the option to adjust the grid size for your home screen. I do recommend you set it to 5x6. This allows you to have five columns and six rows. And also, if you go back in, you might want to adjust the app screen to five columns as well, and your folder size to 4x4.

Since you do have so much screen to play with — if you do have the smaller S26, you might want to skip this one anyway. Now you've done that, you've got a lot more screen space to play with, and you can also increase the size of the app icons if you want to. So now you can see how much space that's freed up. And if you do want to declutter your home screen even more, what you can do is go back into the home screen settings and switch off Show app labels on the home screen. This is something that I do all the time now, because I'm very familiar with what the app icons look like. I don't need the text underneath to tell me. So if you want a more minimal look on your home screens, then yeah, you might want to do that too.

MAXIMUM SPACE

Now, let me show you something that you should definitely be using to maximise all of the spaces on all of your home screens. This is really quite fundamental, but it is also extremely useful. That's why I'm showing it to you. So when you've got a lot of space to play with, you can start to populate your home screens with widgets. So all of these bigger icons here, these are all widgets. And here's the basics of how to add them and how to add even more behind them so that you can maximise the amount of shortcuts that you can have in one space. So here's the first step. If you hold your finger down on an empty screen, at the bottom of the screen, you will see Widgets. Tap on that. Up top, you'll see some of the suggested ones. And when you scroll down, you'll see all of the other options that you have. One of the ones that I really like to have is the Digital Wellbeing and Screen Time widget. So this just lets me know how much I'm using the phone and what I'm actually using it for. So this is just kind of a visual cue.

But you can add functional widgets as well, and you can add them to the same spot. To do that, just hold your finger down on the existing widget and then go to Create stack right here. So if you want a functional widget that can actually help improve the speed of your device when it starts to slow down, the Device Care one is a good example of that. So if we add this to the stack, we've now created a stack for the first time. And this widget right here allows you to clear RAM usage very, very quickly. And now that we've created this stack, you can add more to it even more easily. So just hold your finger down on it and go to Edit stack. And this brings up a slightly different user interface where you can hit the plus at the end and add more stuff to it. For example, maybe you have lots of Samsung gear, and you want to add the battery widget. So definitely play around with your home screen layout. Create widget stacks to make the most of the space on each one of your home screens.

WIDGET TRICK

Now here's a little customisation tip for widgets. See this one that I've added up here? The Device Care one is a bit ugly, and I feel like it's ruining the entire look of the home screen, but you can actually do something about that. So if you hold your finger down on that widget and then go to Settings, you can customise the opacity of the background, so we can reduce it right down. Some widgets will let you remove the background entirely. And when you scroll down, you'll see you can customise the shape of the background too, to make it less ugly.

Now there is one widget that I do want to show you guys, because it's very cool and I use it on my work and business page. So once again, I'm just going to go to the widgets, and then in the list, I can go all the way to the bottom to Samsung's own weather app. Now, if you scroll down, there's a pretty big one that looks like this. If you add that, it's all bright and colourful, and it will match whatever time of day it is. But if you want to keep it more minimal, hold your finger down on it, go to Settings, and then right here you can switch off the background.

CUSTOM FOLDER

Here is an organisational tip that can help you get to where you want to be on your phone more quickly. And this is going to be extremely useful for you if you like to keep things in folders. So this is kind of my practice screen, just to show you guys. So your home screen will probably look like this on day one. And you'll probably have a Google folder that looks just like this. Here's how you can customise it to make it more useful. If you hold your finger down on the folder, you will see the option to Enlarge folder. So if you go to that, it does exactly what you think it does. It enlarges it, but it also makes all of the apps inside the folder that you can see openable without having to open the folder first.

So that's pretty cool. But this is what I really want to show you. If you hold your finger down on the folder and go to Settings, here you can rename the folder to be whatever you want it to be, and you can also colour-code that folder. For example, I have all of my money apps in one folder, and I make that folder green. If you don't like the shade of green that it is giving you, you can go to the colour wheel on the side here and choose the exact colour. And you can even use a spectrum if you want to. Once you find the colour you want, you can adjust the opacity. And again, you want to choose colours that work well with your background. So this one's quite nice there, I think. Definitely customise those and colour-code your folders so that you can find things faster.

NO NOTIFICATIONS…FOR NOW

So here's a question for you. Do you have an app on your phone that is constantly blowing up and distracting you when you're trying to be focused and productive? If the answer to that is yes, then you definitely want to change this little setting to take control and customise when you will receive these notifications. So to find this setting, we need to jump into the actual Settings menu on the phone and scroll down to Notifications. And on this page here, if you scroll down again, at the bottom of this page, you'll see Advanced settings. Go to this, and here you'll discover a feature that's switched off, and I highly recommend you switch it on. It is the Show Snooze button.

So when you are getting bombarded by notifications for whatever reason, and you don't want to read them, or you're not interested, what you can do is swipe down your notification pane, expand the notification that is annoying you, and then you should see this little alarm icon right here. If you tap on that, here you can choose how long you want to snooze those particular notifications for. The maximum is up to two hours. If it needs to be longer than that, well, then you need to go into your notifications and manually turn off all of them. But this is a nice, quick way to mute them for a limited amount of time. So let's just say two hours.

HANDLE IT

This next customisation tweak is to a feature that I think more people should utilise, and I'll explain how you can maximise its potential. But first, let me show you what I'm talking about. So if you go into your Settings and go to Display and scroll down, you should see this little switch for Edge panels. If it isn't switched on, switch it on. Now, once you've done that, tap on where it says Edge panels, and this brings you to all of the settings for the Edge panels. Now the first thing to do is tap on Handle. And this is the little line here at the edge of your screen. You can customise the colour of the handle, as well as its transparency. So if you want it to be very, very minimal, you could reduce the transparency all the way down. You can make it smaller so it's less distracting, and you can even change the width so it sticks out a bit further. Since my wallpaper is kind of purple, I think maybe a blue or something like that might work quite well. So let's go with that. And you'll notice the little lines here as well. You can drag this up and drag it down. And I recommend you keep this further up on the screen because you don't want to swipe it by mistake when you're trying to swipe across screens.

And if you're left-handed, you can of course switch it over to the left side if you prefer. Now that you've customised the handlebars, let me show you what you can use the Edge panels for. So when you bring out the Edge panel, you will see a little pen at the bottom. Here you can customise the apps that exist on the Edge panel. Now, what I recommend you do is populate this with apps that are important to you, but that you don't necessarily need all of the time. For me, I found that having my authenticator apps here is the very best use case for the Edge panel. Also, sometimes I need access to all the files on my device. If I've downloaded something and I can't find it, I can use the file manager to find it, and the Samsung Find app lives here on my phone as well. I'm always losing my keys and my earbuds, and this helps me find them. And I've also got my security apps here as well, which again, I don't use all the time, but it's nice to have quick access to them. So now whenever I'm logging into something, and I need an authentication code, I don't have to look around — it's right there at the top.

MORE PANEL

So when you swipe out the Edge panel, you'll see the little settings icon pop up down here in the bottom left corner. If you tap on that before it disappears, this shortcuts you to the Handlebar and Edge panel section. So right here is where you can add more panels. If you tap on Panels, here are some recommendations. The clipboard is very useful. Let's say you've copied a very important address or something like that, and then the next thing you know, you've had to copy a one-time passcode. You might feel like you've lost that address which you had previously copied, but if you have the Clipboard panel, it actually keeps a log of the last few things that you've copied, so you can still recover that information, and it's not lost.

Another very useful Edge panel is Tools. So when you enable this, let me show you what you can do. When you bring out the Edge panel and swipe across again and again, you get a compass by default. But that's not it. There is more to this. If you hit the three dots at the top, there are even more tools, including a surface level, which is very handy. As you can see, my desk is almost perfectly flat. There is also an emergency tool here, which could be a lifesaver, quite literally. If you go to the torch tool, you can switch the torch on and adjust the brightness, but also baked into this tool is this S.O.S. feature. So this will actually use the torch to emit Morse code patterns to let somebody know that you're in trouble. So just be aware of these tools because, as I said, they could save your life one day.

WHERE TO GET THIS CLOCK

Now, I know at some point someone's going to ask, “Where did I get this clock from?” I get this question all the time. So I'm going to show you guys how you can get it for yourself. So if you go to the Google Play Store, type in Google Clock, and you should find the official clock app from Google. Install this, and that widget comes with it. And there's more than just the one that I have set up. If you hold your finger down on it and go to Settings, there are some other styles to choose from as well.

But the scallop one, in my opinion, is by far the best. And you should be aware of the fact that the colour of the clock will be affected by the colour palettes that you choose, and also by Light and Dark Mode. So this is how it looks in Dark Mode. And if you don't know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about Dark Mode and Light Mode, definitely check out my absolute beginner's guide to this phone. I'll link it at the end of this video.

CUSTOM SEARCH BAR

Okay, here's another Google-related customisation tip, and it is in regard to this. So this is the Google search bar. Pretty much every single Android phone has one. On the Samsung phone, you can delete it entirely, but I do find it is quite useful, and you can really tailor it now, which is really cool. If you hold your finger down on that search bar, go to Settings. Now it jumps straight into the customisation options. It was so well hidden before. So if you want to, you can go to the device theme. You can set a custom colour theme for it and change the hue to whatever you want it to be, the saturation, and even the transparency.

And if you scroll down, you can add shortcuts. One of the cool ones to add is the AI mode. So if you are researching something on Google with the AI mode, as opposed to just searching the entire internet, it can pull information from lots of different places and bring it all into one area. There are some really useful things, including song search, but just be mindful of the fact that you can only have one. So for me, it is the AI mode. So there we go. We've customised the home screen, we've customised the colours, the wallpaper, the widgets, all of that good stuff. And I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you for making it this far into the video. It's much appreciated. I do have four other parts, so this is a 26 Tips and Tricks series. And as a reward for you guys making it this far into the video, I have saved a couple of bonus tips and tricks.

CUSTOM CALL DISPLAY

So let's start with a customisation tip for your Phone app, which is this one down here. If you open it, go to the three dots in the top right corner, go to your settings, scroll down, and you will see this option right here: Call display while using apps. If you tap on this, the default setting is a small pop-up. This will appear as an overlay on top of whatever it is you're doing on your phone now. If you want it to be less distracting, you can set it to mini pop-up, and it will still appear; it will just be much smaller.

And if you really want to focus on the phone call fully and allow it to block out everything that you were doing before the phone call came in, you can set it to full screen. And there is a fourth option, which is actually on by default, and that is Keep calls in the pop-up window. So if you don't want to be distracted from what was going on on your phone before the phone call came in, you could tick this box here, and a little pop-up call window will disappear once you've answered the call. It is kind of a feeling-out process with this one, so test out the different options and see which one you like.

CUSTOM CALL BG

Here's another phone customisation tip. Let's go back into the Phone app again. Hit the three dots, top right corner. Go to Settings again. This time, we're going to scroll halfway down, and you should see the Call background option. The default one is what you see right here at the bottom of this page. You'll see the background. If you tap on that, you can choose from any of the featured backgrounds, which are quite nice.

And there's even this one here, which is a video background, which can be customised with your own Galaxy avatar. And if you go back, you can even choose a custom image from your library. And it could even be one that you've created yourself, like this.

CUSTOM CALL CARD

And here's another customisation tip for your phone. If you go into the Phone app again, this time you're going to go to your Contacts. At the top, you should see My profile with your name. If you go to that, you should see your phone number, your name, and if you go to Edit at the bottom, you can customise the profile card. You can add a style, you can add text, and you can choose the image that you want it to be. And you can also customise your own little picture icon.

And once you have created that, you can actually share a QR code, which will give that person all of your details, essentially your calling card, just by scanning your phone with their camera.

THE DOUBLE TAP

Here's another very quick customisation tip that can save you time in the future. If you go into your Settings, go all the way down to Advanced features, and in here go to the Side button. This is the power key on the side of the phone. If you go to Double-press, you can remap this to do anything. If you have the Galaxy S26 Ultra, you could even set it up to activate the privacy display. What I like to do, though, is I like to set it as an app.

And if you hit the little settings next to the app here, you can choose which app it is. For me, I always set this to Wallet, so whenever I'm in the shop, and I need to pay for something quickly, I double-press the power key, and it jumps straight into my wallet, and I can pay. I can find all my loyalty cards and all that good stuff.

FOR SPORTS FANS

And here's the last tip. And if you are a fan of any sports at all, you will really appreciate this one. So if you go into your Settings, scroll down until you see the Lock screen and AOD, tap away. You'll see Always On Display, and make sure you've got the Now Bar switched on here. Also, you might want to set this to Auto as well, just so that this works a little bit better. Now, if we go back to Lock screen and AOD settings, and go to Now Bar. And on this page, go to See all. And this is where you'll find all of the things that can be shown on the Now Bar, on your lock screen, and on your Always On Display, and in your notifications.

The setting that I recommend you switch on, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, is Sports from Google. Now, once you've done that, tap on where it says Sports from Google, and in here go to Sports from Google settings, and then this will load up the official Google Sports page, where you can search for your favourite teams and follow them. Once you've done that, you will now get live updates via the Now Bar whenever your team is playing, and it will show on your lock screen. So if you find yourself stuck at work behind a desk and you're not allowed to watch TV or even listen to the radio or anything, you can keep an eye on the scores even while your phone is locked.

The Sonos Play speakers are some of the most unique portable speakers available today. Visually, they look like mini Sonos Move speakers, but they have distinct features that set them apart. At a launch retail price of £299, they are an investment, so let’s dive into who they are made for and why they carry a premium price tag.

Design and Build Quality

Most portable speakers are designed for a younger demographic, featuring brightly colored plastics and flashing lights that look great at the beach but out of place on a bookshelf or mantelpiece. Sonos has taken a different approach, designing the Play to be classy and premium so it seamlessly fits into a fashionably designed living space. This upgraded material choice contributes to the manufacturing cost.

• Premium Materials: The speaker features a beautiful metal mesh that wraps completely around the sides.

  
  

• LED Indicators: Behind the mesh are two LED indicators: one for charging/low battery and one for connectivity status.

  
  

• Shape & Base: It sports an oval shape from the top—a recurring design theme in modern Sonos speakers—and has a thin rubberized base to absorb shock and reduce unwanted table vibrations.

  
  

• Controls: The top panel includes physical, clicky buttons (play, pause, volume up/down) beneath a rubberized surface, full cutouts for microphones, and an LED-equipped voice command button. This is very similar to the design of the Sonos Roam.

  
  

• Rear Panel: The back features a signature Sonos groove, a Bluetooth pairing button, a microphone switch with a green accent, a power button, a multi-functional USB-C port, and a handy loop for hanging the speaker.

  
  

• Durability: Despite its premium look, the speaker has an official IP67 rating, meaning it is watertight and dust-resistant. You can confidently take it to the pool, the beach, or out in the rain.

Connectivity: Wi-Fi vs. Bluetooth

While most portable speakers rely entirely on Bluetooth connectivity, the Sonos Play stands out by offering both Bluetooth and newer dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi chips. While Bluetooth is excellent for portability, unlocking the full potential of the speaker requires a Wi-Fi connection.

The Advantages of Wi-Fi Connectivity:

• Performance: Wi-Fi offers better signal strength, faster speeds, greater distance, and superior overall audio quality.

• Smart Features: It unlocks Apple AirPlay, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Sonos's own hands-free voice control.

• App Integration: Through the Sonos app, you get access to Sonos Radio, customizable EQ settings (treble and bass), and all your favorite music streaming services in one place.
  

• Trueplay Tuning: You gain access to Sonos Trueplay, which automatically adapts the speaker's sound signature to its surrounding environment.

• Multi-Room Grouping: Over your home network, you can group an unlimited number of speakers together and control their volume levels individually, turning the Play into a fully-fledged multi-room smart speaker. These multi-room features are not available over Bluetooth.

  
  Note: When you are out and about, the Bluetooth connection is still highly capable. The Play can pair with almost any device, be grouped in stereo, and its multi-functional USB-C port can even charge your phone on the go.

Battery Life and Charging

One of the most mind-blowing similarities the Play shares with the much larger Sonos Move (which is about three times its size) is its impressive 24-hour runtime. This massive battery life is exceptionally impressive for a compact speaker and factors into the higher price point.

The Sonos Play ships with its own dedicated charging dock, featuring a long, non-detachable USB-C cable. It does not come with a charging brick, so you will need a 45W charger (standard for fast-charging modern smartphones) to get optimal charging speeds.

Sound Quality

Under the hood, the Sonos Play features a mid-range driver, two outward-angled tweeters for high frequencies, and dual passive radiators to enhance bass output, all powered by Class-H amplifiers.

• Audio Performance: It punches well above its weight class, particularly in the mids and bass frequencies.

• Clarity and Volume: At volumes below 70%, the vocal clarity and detailing are fantastic. You can push it way past 70% to get very loud, though the highs may start to sound slightly sharp.

• Sound Dispersion: Even as a standalone mono speaker, the bass radiates beautifully, and the sound travels an impressive distance.

• Stereo Pairing: While a single unit lacks massive audio separation, pairing two Play speakers together in stereo dramatically expands the soundstage, offering much richer detail and instrument directionality.

The "Hot Take": A Missed Opportunity?

If Sonos wanted to move boatloads of these speakers, there is one feature they should add: the ability to use them as rear surround channels with a Sonos soundbar. Many users with Sonos soundbars don't want to run permanent cables for a 5.1 setup. Being able to temporarily place two Play speakers behind the couch on movie night would be a game-changer and a massive selling point.

Who is the Sonos Play For?

Ultimately, the Sonos Play seems designed for users who plan to use the speaker indoors about 70% of the time, while taking it out to the garden, pool, or on holiday the other 30% of the time

This speaker is for you if:

• You want a portable speaker with serious firepower that looks classy enough to sit on a desktop or mantelpiece.

• You are already invested in the Sonos ecosystem, as this will seamlessly integrate into your existing multi-room setup (which third-party speakers cannot do).

• You have older analog equipment; Sonos sells a £20 USB-C to analog adapter, allowing you to use the Play as a wired desktop or stereo speaker.

  If you need more raw power and don't mind a larger footprint, you might prefer the massive Sonos Move. Conversely, if you need something incredibly lightweight for your backpack, the smaller, Wi-Fi-enabled Sonos Roam is a highly portable alternative, though it won't match the audio quality of the Play.

You know what the problem is? Sometimes people are listening, but they ain’t really hearing. And that is precisely why products like this — the Sony LinkBuds Clip — exist. These are open, free earbuds. And really, there are two big advantages that these types of earbuds have over regular earbuds. One — based on the fact that they don't go in your ears — means that they're much more hygienic, especially if you're going to use them for the gym.

And the second big advantage is, if you are the type of person who does a lot of street running with earbuds in, or rides a bike to work whilst listening to music… with these types of earbuds, you can listen, and you can hear, avoiding that plugged-in feeling. So you could be more like Agent Smith in The Matrix.

UNBOXING

So let's do a quick unboxing. As usual, we're trying to come up with fully recyclable packaging. There is a QR code for the app on the front, up top. A few of the key features for these earbuds are shown, and also the battery life is displayed here — you get up to nine hours on a single charge in each bud, and up to 28 hours with the charging case combined. So as always, we get a whole bunch of paperwork, including Sony's map of the Midwest. And here is something quite interesting. These are little adjuster slider things to adjust the tension of this C-clip that wraps around your ear.

When it comes to the setup process, it is super simple. You just download the Sony Sound Connect app, clip the LinkBuds Clip onto your ears, and then you're ready to go. First, let's get a look at the case design and the earbud design. So the case design is quite similar to other LinkBuds that I've seen in the past. This is kind of like a little hamburger shape, and it's two-tone. So you've got the nice shiny bit up top with a little bit of Sony branding, and then you've got the matte surface at the bottom, which makes the case a bit more grippy, which is nice. I really like how this is presented, and unlike some other popular open earbuds right now, the case on this one is nice and compact. So let's get one of these out of here so I can show you what Sony has done with the design.

DESIGN

So as you can see, they have a C-bridge. This allows the earbuds to clip onto your ears, as opposed to being plugged into your ears. And there are two parts to it — this part that houses the battery, and then there's the driver unit. And then there are these little pieces, which Sony calls the air-fitting cushions. These will literally just clip onto the C-band, and they can be adjusted backwards or forwards to increase or reduce the strength of the grip.

Alright, so let's try this on. It just clips onto my ear there, and then I can adjust the little air-fitting cushion. And if I want to, I could really make this tight onto my ear. So if I go for a run or anything like that, it's not going to fall off. So you can see how these are firmly gripped onto my ears.

THE APP

And something else that is important to know about these earbuds is that they do have an official IPX4 water resistance rating, which makes them splash-resistant and, more importantly, sweat-resistant — and this makes them perfect for outdoor activities. And if you are on Android, you'll see the pop-up pairing options straight away on your phone. As you can see, Gemini is supported via the earbuds, allowing you to have a full-on conversation with AI if you want to. So when you pair them up for the first time, it walks you through how to fit them correctly, and then it talks you through the touch operation. So you tap the main unit at the back of the earbud, and you can also tap on the band. And here are the inputs that are recognised: double tap, triple tap, and repeat taps. Tap on either side to raise or lower the volume. And this is how the app looks — at the top of the screen, you get the battery life in each bud, and also in the case. There are three different listening modes:

• Standard

• Voice booster (if you want to hear what people are saying around you)

• Sound leakage reduction

So this is kind of a reverse noise-cancelling feature that reduces the amount of sound that other people can hear when they're sitting next to you. And you'll notice on the app the codec defaults to SBC, and if you scroll down, you can switch the codec to prioritise quality instead of stability. Quality is what you should switch to if you care about audio quality. And I will tell you guys, what I think of the sound quality in a minute. But before I do that, I should do this software update for the earbuds. So one of the exclusives that you'll get with the Sony LinkBuds Clip is Sony’s DSEE — Sony's Digital Sound Enhancement Engine — which can upscale lower-res audio to sound more like high-res audio. So if you listen to the radio or lower-quality audio a lot, you’ll appreciate that feature for sure. And my first impression of how they feel when wearing them is that they’re extremely comfortable.

SOUND TEST

Anyway, let's do a sound test of these earbuds. The touch controls are quite sensitive. Here are my opinions on the sound quality. The loudness and sound will change depending on how you position the drivers in front of your ear canals. So it might take a little time to find the sweet spot. But generally speaking, it’s pretty nice. It’s not the bassiest I’ve ever heard — and recently I’ve been spoiled by Sony’s XM6 earbuds — so that has affected my opinion. But compared to other open earbuds, they are definitely on par, and the bass is respectable.

For the sound test, please watch the video.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

So here are my first impressions of the Sony LinkBuds Clip. I really like these earbuds. I think they’re going to be very useful for anyone who needs to be aware of their surroundings at all times. I personally think these are really cool, really unique, really futuristic — and more stylish than a lot of other open earbuds out there right now.

The sound quality is exactly what you would expect from open earbuds. The loudness is more than enough for me. The comfort is incredible — very lightweight, very secure on the ears. The battery life is very good. The software features are also very good. And the case is nice and compact.

You'll notice instantly that there is a difference in the field of view. Some are wider. The center image has been hit with a lot of cool tones to balance out that warm light, which is interesting, and it does look good. The colors are closer to real life in the image on the right. But aside from that, which one actually looks like the best overall in your opinion? And definitely keep a little tally as to which one is winning here. I would be very interested to know which phone wins overall on your scorecard.

This is a 1x shot, and there is, in fact, a bright spotlight right on this. So this would be a good time to zoom right in and check those highlight details. Now, while all three phones have delivered fantastic details, I'm sure there's one here that's standing out to you. And also, while we're this close, check out the details on the mechanical elements here — all of this money printing, shredding device.

You'll also notice that there's a similar theme when it comes to the white balances. So based on that alone, you might actually be able to guess which one is which. Anyway, now's your time to decide.

There's a pretty big difference between the phones when it comes to skin tones and also AI processing. In the photo on the left, my skin looks incredibly smooth, which is nice, but maybe not true to life. I do like the warmth in this image, though. In the center image, my skin looks less smooth and ultimately more true to life. However, I don't think I was that pale on that day. I do really like the details and the shallow depth of field here in that centre image. And finally, the photo on the right: the details are really nice. There is not much AI in play, but there is some, and I'm not sure my face was actually that red. That looks like the face of a person who'd been up late the night before drinking…

Here's a 2x shot. Typically, the phones will use a sensor crop as opposed to a zoom, so we shouldn't see any loss of detail here versus 1x. This is another good one for white balance, and again, you might be able to guess which phone took which just based on that, but also on the details. And that's really what I'm going to say about this one. But there is one question for you: war — what is it good for?

Here's another ultra wide, and this one is in a much darker setting. And this is interesting because it's in such a challenging lighting scenario. There are bright back lights, there are red lights, there are blue lights, there's a lot of shadows — and all these things can kind of throw off the accuracy of colours. And on top of that, to make it even more challenging, I'm wearing dark clothes, so this would also be a good test of the dynamic range when it comes to ultra-wide. So let's zoom in and check the details here.

And just while we're here zoomed in, see that little portrait just over my shoulder in the back? Let's do a long-range Zoom test. Let me know what you think. Which one won the Zoom test in your eyes?

And now I'm going to just roll a few more photos from the Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience exhibition in London, and then we'll get into some more natural lit and lower lit scenes.

So now I am at Leake Street, the famous graffiti tunnel started by Banksy. So I kind of figured, let's take some graffiti-centred shots from here, because it takes a lower light source around here. Let me know how the three cameras are performing against each other. And again, you get to have a look yourself. Here is a portrait shot. This is where the phones add this kind of blurry background effect to the image using post-processing. And this really is an interesting balancing act for the phones.

I think the real key to success here is making the subject of the image not look like a sticker on top of a background. And I think there is one phone here that's kind of doing that, and there's also another one that's doing surprisingly well. I'm sure you can figure out which ones I'm talking about anyway. It's not up to me now — it's up to you.

So this one is a fantastic test of the three phones' HDR abilities. It's also a great test for the sensitivity and the quality of those primary sensors. And I'm going to draw your eyes to a few things to consider. Look at the shadow detail on the ceiling — there's a big difference there. Also, look at the details on the tarmac. You can see the points at which the details start to fade and disappear altogether into the darkness. And the reality is, there are a number of reasons why this could happen. It could be less light intake through the lenses, a less sensitive sensor, or it could actually be a creative choice by the brands to crush the shadow details and create this more contrasty look.

Also, zoom in to where I'm standing in this image so you can see how much detail has been retained on me and my clothing, because phones that have better HDR processing will typically look better in these kind of areas.

Here's a lower light ultra wide, and I think generally speaking, they all look really good to me. Here are some of my thoughts: Maybe the highlights are a bit too bright in the image on the right. I like the wider field of view in the centre image, and maybe the colours in the photo on the left are a little bit too warm. That's just my personal opinion. What about you?

Now this photo is pretty decent, but you know what would make it a lot better? It would be a lot less people. So let's test out the AI eraser features on the three phones real quick and see which one does it best.

Allow me to introduce this genius work of art. It is a pretty awesome piece, and there is, in fact, a light shining down onto it, which could completely disrupt the colours, but actually, the colours are pretty close in all three. Let's get a zoom in, get a good look at the details, and then you can decide which one wins.

If you've watched any of my other camera comparisons in the past, you know it wouldn't be a great camera comparison without a burger shot, because everybody takes photos of their food from time to time. So this is the BrewDog Oklahoma burger. In terms of colour accuracy, I know which one I like. However, in terms of which looks the tastiest overall, well, that's another question. So I'm going to leave this one to you. Once you've decided, add up your scores, and then you'll find the answer to which phone won this camera comparison.

Just for context, so you know how big the battery inside this phone is, it is, in fact, double the size of the battery found inside the regular iPhone 17, and here is another power move by iQOO: there is, in fact, a power brick in the box, and it is a 100-watt charger, which is the peak charging speed supported by the iQOO 15. This is especially useful because it is powerful enough to recharge laptops or even portable gaming devices. Now listen — if you’re thinking about getting an iQOO device, or if you already own one, stick around, because I’ve got some really good news for you. But first, let me give you a guided tour of the design.

Design

iQOO has designed the iQOO 15 with the golden ratio in mind. It’s much more compact than a typical flagship, which of course makes it much easier to hold. The frame is metal, the sides are flat, the corners are rounded, and it’s got these sleek, angled curves. And if you look closely at the top, you will notice there’s an infrared blaster for when you inevitably lose your remote control down the side of your sofa. The device is thin at just 7.9mm, and the weight is just 202g, which is hard to believe when you consider the size of the battery inside this phone. They’ve also managed to make extra room for another game changer in regard to connectivity, and we will come back to that when we get to the gaming segment of this video. Hidden under the display is an ultrasonic 3D fingerprint scanner, and around the back, hidden beneath the surface here, is a 6.5K vapour cooling chamber known as the Ice Core At 6.5K, it’s just another way of saying a 6500mm² vapour cooling chamber, which is on the larger side for a phone of this size. And just to make the gaming segment a little more interesting, I will show you guys what the Ice Cool looks like after a prolonged gaming session with a thermal imaging scan.

And before we move on, I should really address the elephant in the room. The pattern on this version of the phone is so nice. This particular colour is actually called silver, but it’s kind of a checkered silver. And actually etched beneath the surface are these kinds of fabric-like patterns, which kind of gives it this organic look. And I really like it. It stands out from pretty much every other phone. And not only is the iQOO 15 built to withstand the heat, but it’s also built to withstand pretty extreme conditions. It has an official IP68 rating, which is flagship level, but it’s also IP69 rated, which means it can survive high-pressure water jets. The camera module floating design is also pretty interesting. I will run through the camera specs and show you some camera samples in a moment, but first, let’s get a good look at this display. It is a 6.59-inch, 1.5K AMOLED, 1260 by 2750 resolution, with up to 5000 nits peak brightness in high brightness mode. And it does support HDR10+, and I think you’ll agree it is impressive. The colours are nice and accurate, the brightness is incredible, and the animations are fluid. But what is most impressive is the fact that this display does support 144Hz, which does make it perfect for gaming. And when you combine this display with that game-changing feature that I mentioned in the intro of this video, you will truly understand why this deserves the title: powerhouse.

Camera

Now let me show you what these cameras are all about. The floating camera module houses two cameras: a 200 megapixel Sony LYT-700V with optical image stabilisation, which is of course, the primary camera and star of the show. There’s also an 8 megapixel ultrawide, which is certainly handy to have around. Around the front, the sensor behind that selfie camera is 32 megapixels. So check out these photo samples from these cameras and let me know what you think. When it comes to video, it can shoot up to 4K 60 frames per second. Around the front with the selfie camera, you can also shoot 4K 60.

Performance

Now, let’s talk about a secret game-changing weapon that the iQOO has equipped the 15 with. It is, of course, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor. This is a 3-nanometer chip, just like the flagship elite chip from Qualcomm. And even though this is one step down from the top, it is still more powerful than almost all of the smartphone flagships released in 2025. And this doesn’t just make this phone a beast for gaming — it also makes it much more power-efficient.

When you combine that with the massive battery, you could expect two-day battery life here. And not only that, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 assists with its camera abilities and improves the AI processing speeds. And this chip isn’t the only bit of good news for you gamers out there, because there are actually two more upgrades inside this device that I think you’re going to want to know about.

Gaming

One is iQOO’s own Q2 supercomputing processor. This takes some of the workload off of the Adreno 829 graphics built into the Snapdragon chip, and it’s this that allows the iQOO 15 to upscale lower-res games to 1.5K resolution to match the display. And if the game you’re playing doesn’t support 144Hz or even 120Hz, the Q2 chip can boost the frame rates using frame interpolation, which ultimately makes the game’s motion look smoother than it actually is. Now, this all sounds good, right? But what happens when you have bad data signals? Well, here is that second game changer: iQOO have equipped this with a third chip designed to do one thing — boost and stabilise signal strength. They call it the Z1, and apparently, it can reduce latency by 20%. And also when it comes to signals, because this is a new phone for 2026, it also supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. So you’re going to get fantastic wireless speeds here for audio and for data.

And something you should know about this phone is that you can actually enable bypass charging, which allows the phone to run off the external power source as opposed to the built-in battery, which can potentially keep the device even cooler. All right, now let’s do the thermal imaging scan after more than 20 minutes of intense gaming here on PUBG. Okay, so this is a pretty interesting thermal scan. I’ve not seen one like this before. Typically, the heat is stored in the top right corner of the device, but on this phone, the heat is spreading down so quickly that the hottest part is just below the camera module. And the temperature there is just 35 degrees, which is very good. Anything close to 40 is not so good. The sensor mark is actually 34 degrees as well. So that shows that the heat has been evenly spread across the back surface of the phone, which is great because it allows the heat to escape more quickly. And this, in turn, helps the processor run at maximum speed. So it’s a big thumbs up for iQOO’s Ice Cool.

The Software

Let’s talk about software. This phone is currently running on OriginOS 6, the same software running on vivo smartphones, and iQOO offer four years of operating system updates, and six years of security patches. And this software is packed full of awesome features. And here is that bit of good news that I talked about in the intro of the video: I have made a dedicated tips and tricks guide to highlight the best features of OriginOS 6. If you guys have a Vivo phone or an iQOO phone right now with OriginOS, you should definitely check that video. And if you don’t have one of the phones yet, well, definitely take a look at that, because then you’ll get a good idea of what you can do with phones like the iQOO 15.

THE FOUNDATIONS

The very first thing to do when you connect up your earbuds for the first time is this: familiarise yourself with how to get to the settings for the earbuds. So jump into your Settings, and at the top you will notice there's a dedicated section for the earbuds settings, and we are going to be using this a lot throughout this video, so make sure you know where it is and how to get there. Now there is a little hack to get there a little bit quicker, which I'm also going to show you. Now, if you hold your finger down on your home screen and go to Widgets, you can go to the Galaxy Buds app right here, and then you can add one of these widgets to your home screen.

Just make sure that you have room for it. And if you don't, and your phone is already fully set up with widgets and things like that, you could add it to a stack. So if you hold your finger down on an existing widget, go to Create Stack or Edit Stack, swipe all the way to the end, and then hit the plus. And then you can add the Galaxy Buds widget here. So I'm going to go with this one because this is the right size for that particular stack. And there we go. So this little button here will allow you to switch between the ANC modes very quickly, but if you tap the top of this widget, it will jump straight into the settings. So it's a nice little shortcut.

PERFECT THE FIT

And now that that is done, let's move on to tip number two. You have to put the Buds in your ears for this one. Just place them in your ears the natural way that you would. Don't adjust them or twist them. Just place them in and check that they're comfortable. And now, if you jump into the Buds settings using the shortcut you've just created, you can scroll down and go to Sound Quality and Effects. And right here is where you're going to find the Earbuds fit test. If you go to this and hit Start, it will play a tone in your ears to check if the seal created by the ear tip is the perfect fit for your ear or not.

Now, if you see something pop up, you might be tempted to just adjust the earbud in your ear and repeat the test, and that actually can return the result you're looking for. However, what I recommend you do is actually talk a little bit, maybe even chew some gum or something, because then what will happen is the earbuds will fall into their natural position within your ear, and then run the test again. If you still get the same result, that's when you want to think about changing the ear tip.

THE VERY IMPORTANT TIP…TIP

And I know it sounds simple, but there is a bit of a trick to it. So let me show you that. So if you find yourself in a situation where you're going to have to change the silicone tip on the end of the earbud, here's how you do it successfully without completely destroying or ripping the existing ear tip. What you want to do first is turn it fully inside out so that it looks like this. Now, once you've done that, you want to grab this lower part of the silicone.

Grab it as far down the stem as you possibly can and pull it from here. Now the ear tips actually lock in beneath the surface of the earbuds this year, so it creates an even better seal, and that's why they're so difficult to take off. Just make sure you do it using that technique, and that way you can test the different tips to find the appropriate size without damaging them. So there we go. It turns out my right ear requires a smaller silicone tip than my left. Okay, so that's the very fundamental stuff out of the way.

SOME SOUND ADVICE

Now let me show you how to make your Galaxy Buds 4 or 4 Pro sound even better. Once again, we're going to jump into the settings for the Buds within the Settings menu. Again, we're going to scroll down to Sound Quality and Effects. And then here is where we go to the Advanced quality options. And at the top of this page is a setting you should absolutely, 100%, turn on on day one. It is the UHQ audio quality.

This essentially unlocks Samsung's own high-res audio codec designed specifically to work with Samsung audio devices like your brand-new earbuds. So if you're already happy with how the earbuds sounded before switching on UHQ, you will be even happier. And if you stick around, I'm going to share with you guys my custom EQ, which I believe makes them sound even better, especially if you're into more of the heavy bassline types of music.

VOICE PICK UP UPGRADE

And let's move on to the next one within the earbud settings. Once again, we're going to go back to Sound Quality and Effects. We're going to go to Advanced quality options. And underneath the UHQ audio setting, you will find Samsung's Super wideband speech feature, which will be switched off by default.

If you leave this off, the audio quality that people will hear from your earbuds when they phone you or when you're on a conference call will literally be halved. So this doubles the quality of your voice, and I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to switch this on. So switch on Super wideband speech on day one.

UNDERSTAND THE AUTO-SWITCH

Let's jump back into the settings for the earbuds. And right here at the top, staring you right in the face, is a feature that you might actually overlook. And it is a pretty awesome feature, so let me explain what it does and how to set it up. Where you see Auto switch to ambient sound, if you tap on this, now here is where you'll find two options that could be very, very useful. So if you enable Voice detection, when you start to speak, the earbuds will auto switch into ambient mode so that you can have a conversation with the person you're speaking to and actually hear what they're saying. That could be very handy. However, if you do like to sing along to your music when you're on your own, you probably shouldn't switch this setting on. Now, one scenario where you absolutely should switch this on is when you're on a flight or something like that, because when they're bringing the drinks round and the snacks, you can just start speaking, and it will auto toggle into ambient mode so you can actually hear what they're saying to you.

Now, the next one, which I highly recommend you switch on straight away, especially if you're the type of person who likes to go jogging or cycling with your earbuds, is this one: Siren detection. So with this on, your earbuds will be listening for sirens—for example, police cars, ambulances, fire alarms, those kinds of things—and it will allow those particular types of sounds to switch your Buds into ambient mode. And there is another little hidden setting here, just beneath the two, which is very useful as well when you are on phone calls: Switch to ambient mode. This is good because you'll be able to hear the sound of your own voice. It kind of reduces that sort of boomy effect that you get inside your ears when you're talking on a phone call. I do think it improves the voice call experience. So yeah, you might want to test it out and see if you prefer it too.

UNLOCK MORE MODES

Staying within the Buds settings, there is something I need to make you aware of. When you toggle between modes using the Buds stems, it will actually switch between noise-cancelling and Ambient mode, and that's it. So that one right there in the middle—the Adaptive mode that adjusts on the fly to the surrounding noise in your environment—isn't accessible unless you open the app and switch to it here. You can also do it from your widget on your home screen. You just have to remember what the icon looks like. It's this one with the person with the little lines. So this actually is a pretty cool feature that you need to be aware of. And let me show you now how to access it even easier than having to go into the app or use a widget, and you'll only need to do this once.

So, back within the app, if we go to Earbud controls at the top, this is the page where you can take control of your controls. And the default controls are very basic, and most people might never need to change these. But let me show you this on the right earbud, just for example, because I am right-handed. If you tap where it says Switch noise controls, go to the noise controls, and tap on this. Right here is where you can add the Adaptive mode to be part of the pinch and hold gestures to enable it. As you would expect, you just highlight the box and hit Done. And if you want to, you can turn noise controls off completely, which, if you're power-conscious, is a mode you might want to use from time to time. So now that that's been set up properly, when I pinch and hold the earbud, it will switch between all four of the available noise-cancelling modes instead of just the two that most people will have access to.

A LITTLE ASSISTANCE

Here's another tip for improving how you use the earbuds. If we go back into Earbud controls again, let's go to the left controls. You'll notice they're set to the same as the right controls. And if you are right-handed, I'd recommend you keep your noise controls on the right side—and vice versa if you're left-handed, which means we can free up the left-hand side to do something completely different. So if you go to the left controls, you can choose whether you want to map this to a digital assistant like Google Gemini, the brand new Bixby with Perplexity, or if you want to, you can even use one of the Samsung apps. Now, I've found that this mindfulness app from Samsung is brilliant for trying to get to sleep or just relaxing. And if you want to customise this, you can hit the little settings to the side and change it to another Samsung app, which you might find useful.

So if you are on holiday, you could use the Interpreter, or the Voice recorder if you want to record meetings. And if Spotify is your streaming service of choice, you can choose that here. Just be aware of the fact that Spotify doesn't offer high-res audio, which is a bit disappointing, really. I think it's because so many people don't realise that they're getting lower streaming quality, and because of that, probably Spotify won't ever change, and so we would have people complain about it. Anyway, moving on: if we go back one step and go to the digital assistant (I set it as Google), there will be some permissions that pop up, and with this set up, you could actually just start a Gemini conversation using the pinch gesture on the left earbud.

PLAN AHEAD

Here is another little setting that you might not want to switch on, but you might find some scenarios where it could be useful: Head gestures. So if you go to this, with this enabled, you can answer calls by nodding, and you can cancel calls by shaking your head. The problem with this is you might end up accepting a call that you didn't want to accept, or you might reject a call that you didn't want to reject.

So I would suggest only switching it on when you know that you can't use the gestures, but you are expecting a call, and that way you can kind of be ready. For example, if you're in the gym lifting weights, or your hands are dirty while you're cooking, or your hands are busy, and things like that. I'm sure you can think of some more scenarios, but yeah, just be aware of this. You don't necessarily have to use it.

TALK TO ME

Let's get into some of those more well-hidden features within the settings. If you scroll down, you will see a section called Advanced features. Tap on this. Right here is where you can enable Read notifications aloud, which can be extremely useful, can also save time, and can also be extremely annoying from time to time. And that is exactly why you need to do this. At the top, you can choose whether you want the notifications to be brief or detailed, so you can select that there. But more importantly, underneath you'll see the option to customise for individual apps. Tap on this. This is an absolute must if you're going to use this feature. Go through all of the apps that you do not want read out in your ears and switch them all off. For example, I get so many emails—if I left Gmail on, I would be interrupted continuously whilst listening to music, so there's no point in that being on in my opinion.

Messages I don't mind, and WhatsApps I don't mind either. Maybe my security alarm is a good one to leave on. If something kicks off whilst I'm listening to music and I'm away from the house, I might want to know about that. And maybe I'll set this to detailed so I know exactly what's happening. So you get the idea: go through your apps, switch off everything that you don't want read out, and choose whether you want it to be brief or detailed. And there we go. You've done it once. You don't have to do it again unless you install a new app. This is going to be important to you.

I’M LISTENING

Here is another advanced feature to look at on day one. If you scroll down the settings menu for your earbuds and go to Advanced features again, surprisingly, this feature is actually switched off. It is In-ear detection. And essentially, it gives you control of the wear-detect sensors in the earbuds. So by default, when you take the Buds out, and you're on a phone call, it will switch to the phone's earpiece and microphones, which is cool. But while playing, the media is actually switched off. So if you are the type of person who listens to podcasts or audiobooks, I think this feature is one you want to switch on, because as soon as you take one of the earbuds out, it will auto-pause the media until you put it back in again.

And here's my opinion on this: if someone's talking to you or about you, you might want to take out an earbud. For example, if you're at the gym and someone's being annoying or something like that, you might want to take out an earbud to hear what they're saying, and you don't want to miss a key part of your podcast or the audiobook that you're listening to. Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this, but you get the idea. If this sounds like something that might happen to you—or has happened to you—yeah, switch this on. So when you take one out, they'll know that you're paying attention.

DON’T BREAK YA NECK

let's do another quick advanced feature within the settings page. Scroll back down to Advanced features, and then here you will see the Neck stretch reminders. If you're the type of person who spends a lot of time staring at their phone—which is a lot of people, if we're being very honest—if you enable this, this will start the calibration process, and then it will give you reminders from time to time when you should be stretching your neck a little bit. Once you've set that up, whenever the phone feels like you've been staring at it for too long, it will tell you to stretch your neck a little bit.

SYNC UP

Let's stay in Advanced features for this other little bonus feature. If you go into the Labs section, you will see that there's the option for Gaming mode, and it's greyed out. Now, you might be wondering why this is greyed out, and it is because the UHQ codec is enabled right now. So if you are a gamer and minimal latency in your audio is more important to you than the sound quality itself, you need to go back to Sound quality and effects. And then in the Advanced quality options, switch off UHQ. Now you have to go all the way back again to Advanced features, and in Labs, and in here you can enable Gaming mode. This brings down the quality of the audio, but also brings down the lag on the audio significantly. So your gunshots and things like that, when you pull the trigger, will be perfectly in time with the animation.

360 / SPATIAL / ATMOS SOUND

Here is another setting that you need to be familiar with from time to time, and it is this. If you go into the settings, once again, go to Sound quality and effects at the top of this page. You probably spotted it earlier: the 360 audio feature. Now, the only time you'd really want to use this is when you are listening to 360 audio via one of the streaming services. The only problem with finding these kinds of tracks is the fact that all of the different companies call them something else. So we've got Dolby Atmos, we've got spatial audio, we've got immersive audio, you've got 360 Reality Audio. So, for example, in Tidal, if you type in Dolby Atmos, you'll find entire albums and playlists with Dolby Atmos support. The 360 format will work perfectly there. And you might feel tempted to use this for watching movies, but there is, in fact, a better way to get a similar—actually, maybe a better—effect when watching movies. And that's what I'm about to show you next.

MORE IMMERSIVE MOVIE SOUND

So on your home screen, if you swipe down from the top right corner, you get your quick settings. These are the default ones. I've played with the layout a little bit here. What you want to do is hit the pen at the top and then tap Add control at the bottom of the screen. Here, if you scroll down, you will find, eventually, the sound menu, and you'll notice the Dolby Atmos feature is not added to your quick settings yet. So if you tap on this, that adds it to your quick settings.

You can resize it if you want to, so it's easier to find. And whenever you're watching movies now, you can simply swipe down from the top right corner and enable Dolby Atmos. And this is definitely more well-suited to Atmos formats. The 360 audio will work on pretty much anything, but this particular calibration was designed with Dolby, so this one might be more accurate—and is fantastic for movies too.

CUSTOM LEVELS

So this next tip is going to be extremely useful for you, especially if your ears have taken a bit of a hit over the years. Maybe you party too hard. But even if you haven't, you still might want to take a look at this. So if you scroll down, go to Accessibility. There is a feature here called Adapt sound. If you enable this and then tap where it says Adapt sound: if you want to do this the quick way, you can just choose your age group. And then if you want to test it, just go to the settings, and then you will hear the difference that it makes just by using these two buttons down here.

However, I don't recommend you do this. The better option is to do the Add personalised sound profile. This essentially is a very thorough hearing test, so make sure you set some time aside to do this. And once you complete the hearing test, this bit of software will detect any deficiencies in your hearing abilities and create an EQ to balance that all out so that you can hear the music properly with your own custom EQ. I'm not going to do it right now because it does take quite a while.

AURACAST AUDIO SHARING

This is something that's kind of a rare use case, but it's worth knowing because you do have it in your Buds settings. If you scroll down, you'll see the option to Listen to Auracast here. You can actually broadcast your own audio as well. So if you share at the bottom, whatever you're listening to on your phone can be shared with another pair of Galaxy Buds or another pair of earbuds. This supports Auracast. And if you want to broadcast your voice via Auracast, you can do that too. Just by toggling across to Voice, they will need the password in order to tap into your Auracast broadcast.

But let's say, for example, you've got a group of friends with you, and you're in another country, and you're the tour guide. You can actually speak to all of them using Auracast, but the only limitation is that their earbuds must support Auracast. Anyway, you might find you never use it, but at least you know you have it, and now you know what it does. Remember, you can also log in to someone else's Auracast broadcast using the Listen feature right here.

THE EQUALIZER

I did promise you guys my own custom EQ, and also I want to show you how to use the EQ. If you go into the Buds settings, go to Sound quality and effects at the top. Here you see Equaliser, and right now it is set to Custom. This right here is my own custom EQ. I have spent a number of days fine-tuning this to perfection for the types of music that I listen to. If you do like kind of bass-heavy stuff, I recommend you give this a go.

If you just want a simple EQ that sounds really, really good, Dynamic is definitely one of the best. But for those of you who know what they're doing when it comes to EQ audio, nothing is stopping you from creating your own one. I do wish they would allow you to save your custom presets, but at this point, you only get one.

Unboxing

this is a really nice box, probably the nicest I've seen on this channel. And I do believe this will open up like this. I'm liking this presentation so far. There are a few compartments here. So we'll go through them one at a time. We have what I believe is the cables, charging cables. And there's more than one. So maybe there is more than one device in this box that requires cables. These are actually wired earbuds. And they're quite nice ones too, that they are in fact the classic earbuds with the inline remote and microphone built in here with usb-C on the other side. Now, right here, I believe we have the wireless charger. Yes, this is a magnetic wireless charging puck. And the Infinix Note 60 ultra charges wirelessly at 50W, which some flagships charge out via a wire. And this can do it wirelessly. So that's pretty incredible. Let's see what else is in the box on this side.

So I've got a feeling that this is going to be a phone case. But it's not just a case. It's also a screen protector. Have a look at this as well as a little install guide with the wet wipes and dry wipes inside. Let's get a look at the case itself. This is kind of a hybrid aramid fiber with a plastic edging. So that really is quite nice. And it's got this kind of v shaped aramid fiber pattern on the back, which is really cool. And this gives you a good idea of how big the camera module is on this phone. Next out of the box is this. This is the charging brick. The charging speed on this one is an incredible 100W, which means you could use this charger to recharge laptops and other devices that require a bit more power. And that is it for the left-hand side of the box.

Let's see what's in the right-hand side. What we have right here is a Pininfarina desk ornament designed to look kind of like a car. And this is in fact a very stylish wireless charging dock, which this fits into. So underneath it, run the cable through the back here and then plug it into the wireless charger. Then you can just place your phone on top of that and get your 50 watt wireless charging on the go. And there's some really premium materials used here, and a nice bit of branding there on this aramid fibre. It's got this really nice solid weight to it to. And the last thing on the right-hand side of the box, I believe, is this. This just might be the most unique SIM ejector tool that I've ever seen. It kind of looks like a car.

First Look at the Phone

You'll notice straight away some of the key specs for this phone are on this little cover. And don't worry, I'm going to highlight all of the main need-to-know things about this phone. This is truly unique amongst phones right now, so this looks really, really nice. The back of it itself looks like aramid fibre, a very tight weave and are actually four colours. There's this one, the Torino Black. There's also the Monza red, Amalfi blue and Roma silver. There are some really nice details on this phone, and the material is also very, very premium.

The frame is a high-strength aluminium alloy polished with high purity. 205 zirconium is nicely rounded at the corners and even at the back. The volume rocker is located on the right side. It feels nice, and then you've got the red accent button for the power key, and then beneath it is a very unique little sensor. Now, you might assume that this would be a camera button, but actually, it's not. I'll explain what this is in a moment. And on the left side, we've got the Pininfarina branding, plus an additional Mappable button. And up top, you'll see the speaker grille, micro and infrared blaster, and a bit of JBL branding because they have tuned the speakers on this device for Infinix, and yes, it does have stereo speakers and that bit of glass on the back there is so nice and something that some people don't know about Pininfarina. They didn't just design Ferraris; they've also had involvement in other sports cars like Alfa Romeos.

Something that I really like about this camera module design is how everything is all hidden underneath that one piece of glass. There are no extra bits and pieces. It's all just under that one piece of glass. And I don't know if you'll be able to see it on camera, but this actually has a little bit of a red tint to the glass. It's also got these really nice little ridges down the side. The glass, as well, which looks really cool, adds to the premium look of the phone. And of course, there are a couple of hidden features which I'm going to show you in a minute. Yeah, this is really, really nice.

The Case and Accessories

Now, before I get logged in and show you guys all of those unique features that separate this phone from the other flagship phones out there right now, let's try on the case real quick. Now, sometimes cases can really ruin the look of a phone, but this case right here looks like it's actually part of the phone. And something you should know. The phone itself doesn't have magnets, but the case does. So now with this on, you can use magnetic attachments like this one that I have from Peak Design. This is a little magnetic kickstand. So that will just lock in there. And then you can kick the legs out. It does also magnetises onto the charging dock as well.

Software and Standout Features

Let me walk you through some of the software aspects, and then we'll get into those standout features, including that Wolverine one. I know how you feel about it, Wolverine. But the first thing to note about the Infinix Note 60 Ultra is that it is running on a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 Ultimate chip. This is the first of its kind. It uses all large cores. It's designed for power and speed, just like a Ferrari. This is backed up with 12 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage.

The software itself is highly customizable. You do have built-in Infinix AI. This kind of works with ChatGPT. You can, of course, have Gemini on here. There are so many customisation features, including the ability to map that one tap button on the side. Now, on the other side, this little area, which I showed you guys when unboxed, is in fact a heart rate sensor. So you can set this up to take measurements and keep tabs on your health without having to wear a ring or watch to do it. There are a lot of personalisation options here which are really, really nice. You got 3D effects and all that good stuff. You can customise the Always-on and all of the lockscreen stuff. Very similar to some very popular phones out there right now.

Hidden Camera Module Features

Now remember how I said this camera module has some hidden features? Well, check this out. If I shake the phone, it shows the time. There is a dot matrix display built into the camera module, and you can use it to show various notifications. You can have it show where music is playing when you're using the AI, and if you want to, you can even have little animations on there. When you jump into the Matrix Studio and go to Lighting Effect, you can choose the kind of animation you want.

Now, something else that is really cool that you can do here with this area is you can actually play games with the matrix mini play feature. You use the built-in gyroscope to move your little spaceship back and forth and shoot the little aliens. It's essentially Space Invaders, and there is another little hidden feature within the camera module. There is a little Knight Rider light that runs underneath the camera module, kind of like a tail light on a car, and you can use this for notification alerts. It will also show when you're charging the phone and when you're wirelessly charging the phone.

Camera Hardware

But let's talk about the real highlight of the camera module. It is, of course, the hardware underneath. So the main camera here uses a 200 megapixel sensor from Samsung, which utilizes 16 in 1 pixel binning. So this essentially uses all of the information from that two and two megapixel sensor combines it together to create better images. So here are some samples from that camera.

Something exclusive to the ultra variant of this phone is the periscope zoom. So you can go 100 X with the periscope and get fantastic detail. And I will apologise for this really badly painted AR two-unit, but you get an idea of the kind of quality you can get from this camera, and it will use AI to upscale. I'll be honest with you guys, Periscope Zooms might seem like a bit of a gimmick, but they do come in handy. There's been plenty of times when I've been at airports that I've wanted to read the timetable from far away, and the scenario is that that way is super, super useful. The selfie camera also has an impressive sensor. It is a 32 megapixel sensor.

Self-Healing Battery

Now it's time for me to tell you about the Wolverine feature on this phone, which I think might be the absolute highlight of this device, and it is in regard to its battery. So you already know 100 watt wired charging, 50 watt wireless charging, and even reverse wireless charging are fantastic specs, but this phone has something that I've never heard of before, and although Infinix don't state that is a world's first, I do believe it just might be one of the concerns some people have about silicon carbon batteries and super fast charging speeds is that they can degrade quickly because you're pushing them to their limits, but not on this phone.

Apparently, this phone is quite the opposite. The battery in the Note 60 ultra actually recovers 1% of battery for every 200 charge cycles, and that's because of the type of battery it's using. The battery type here is titled Silicon carbon negative electrode battery. The silicon content is 10% versus 5% on pretty much all of the other batteries that you see out there today of this type, essentially doubling the amount of silicon. And it is this that separates this phone's battery from pretty much every other phone right now. And that is what this phone has in common with Wolverine. It does self-heal its battery.

Full Satellite Network Use

There is another awesome feature hidden within the settings, and this again separates this phone from pretty much every other phone out there right now. If you go to satellite network, this phone, unlike other phones that can connect to satellites for emergencies, can be used entirely via a satellite network connection.

So Infinix have partnered up with Three in order to make the most of this particular feature; you will have to get a SIM from them. But if you do, this basically means you can use this phone anywhere. So if you live somewhere with zero signal all of the time, this literally would be the perfect phone for you. And the satellite connection is powered by Infinix Direct to sell technology and it's very, very unique to this phone and the other Infinix Note phone.

Price and Final Thoughts

And here's that bigger news that I mentioned in the intro of this video. This isn't priced in line with Ferrari stuff. If the rumours are true, apparently this phone will retail in the US for under $600, which is kind of incredible for the cutting-edge tech that this phone has, the style that it has and the power and speed that it has. So when it comes to ultra phones, this one has kind of raised the bar.