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GOOGLE I/O 2023 Samsung has had almost no competition for its Galaxy Z Fold phones in the West even though that line is now into its fourth iteration. Thankfully Google is here to rectify that, finally entering the fray with its first ever foldable: the aptly named Pixel Fold. A big screen, book-style foldable, the Pixel Fold has been built to be slim and lightweight. Google is also promising that its unique software position makes the Pixel Fold the best option around for apps optimized to use the larger display format. RELEASE DATE At the time of writing, you can pre-order the Fold now from Google's online store (fave.co/3MdzYGS). The phone won't actually ship until June, so there's not long to wait before you can get your hands on one.…

GOOGLE I/O 2023 Google's search engine has remained relatively unchanged for decades. With the advent of AI, look for that to change – and you can test the new-look Search today. Google Search's familiar interface, with a search box and a list of responses, is being overhauled to look more like Microsoft Bing's chatbot now does, with AI stepping in to provide supplementary information it never offered before. (In Bing, you can perform a ‘traditional’ search, with a list of links and a Bing Chat box to the side; you can also conduct the search entirely within the Bing Chat interface by selecting Chat from a list of options, or scrolling/swiping up on the Bing Search page). Google is trying something a bit different with its updated search engine, bringing…

GOOGLE I/O 2023 You've heard of AI art, and AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing. Now you can try out AI music, compliments of Google's MusicLM. Originally announced in January, MusicLM is now available for you to play with, compliments of what Google calls its AI Test Kitchen. Though you can jump directly to the MusicLM site to try it out, Google may throw up a popup requiring you to sign up for AI Test Kitchen first. You'll need to provide a Gmail address, and agree that whatever prompts you provide may be reviewed by human members of Google's team, though anonymized. Google announced the opening of MusicLM at its Google I/O developer conference, where it also unveiled a service to protect your email from the dark web, as well…

REVIEWS Price: £169 from fave.co/3VVVELO Nokia has a range of budget smartphones to choose from. However, the G22 has a very unique selling point above others in the range – and in the market more generally. The G22's build is designed with repairability in mind, meaning that you should be able to replace the battery, display and other parts at home, without the need to go to a specialist shop. In theory, this should save both time and money – plus, it's in-keeping with HMD Global's promise (as the current maker of Nokia-branded phones) to be friendlier to the environment with its products. But how does this budget buy perform? Here's got everything you need to know. DESIGN The Nokia G22 comes in a choice of two colours: Meteor Grey…

AUDIO Price: £219 from fave.co/436VYKn Fairphone is a brand usually associated with ethically and environmentally friendly smartphones. These devices, such as the recent Fairphone 4, buck the current trend of irreparable handsets that dominate the tech landscape by making them modular, allowing pretty much everything to be replaced. It will even sell you the spare parts directly so you don't have to scour eBay or AliExpress for cheap knockoffs that may or may not fit. Now, the brand is turning its attention to the over-the-ear headphone market with its Fairphone XL – the name a play on the word excel rather than denoting an extra large size. So, do they sound as good as their intentions? Let's have a listen. DESIGN Fairphone offers the XL in two distinct liveries. There's…

FEATURE Confession time: I write about Android for a living and obsess over my smartphone's software more than most reasonably sane people – and yet, I still find myself stumbling onto features that once seemed incredible and then promptly got forgotten. Android has had so many interesting options come up over the years that lots of stuff has been brushed away and buried deep within the OS. Here are six hidden gems. 1. CUSTOM NOTIFICATION ICONS Our first hidden feature is a system for assigning custom notification icons to your favourite contacts – so that way, when someone important messages you, you can clearly see their photo right in the status bar area at the top of your screen (1.). You don't even have to use their actual photo, either;…

GOOGLE I/O 2023 Google released its first selfbranded Android phone in 2010, and has been releasing steady new models at least once a year since then. Its history with tablets is more tumultuous: After getting early hits with the affordable Nexus series, Google tablets have lost out to Samsung and Apple at every turn, and it's been almost five full years since the ill-fated Pixel Slate. The £599 Pixel Tablet, fully revealed at Google I/O 2023 last month after a year of waiting, is taking a new approach by playing on Google's smart home prowess. WHAT'S NEW The Pixel Tablet is both a conventional, media consumption-focused slate, comparable to the iPad Air, and a smart home management station, a la Google's own Nest Hub or Amazon's more premium Echo devices.…

GOOGLE I/O 2023 I's hard to trust Google's new AIpowered search vision when it can't even correctly summarize the details of its own products. At its recent I/O developer conference, Google laid out the foundation for revaMping its iconic search engine, which has followed the same basic formula for years. The coMpany aims to power Google search up with conversational and generative AI – and, most importantly, put those responses before traditional links and everything else. For the most popular search engine in the world, this is a monumental change. The problem with that approach is that AI chatbots often make confidentsounding mistakes – and, true to form, Google couldn't even get the details of its latest Google Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet products exactly right, including the price. We…

REVIEWS Price: £449 from fave.co/42MCjiz Few phone brands make midrangers like Google does these days. Its Pixel A-series phones are direct descendants of the company's flagships, with so much shared DNA that at times they feel like flagships in their own right. That's never been truer than with the Pixel 7a, which once again shares the chipset of the flagships it follows, but now throws in the same display tech and wireless charging to complete the illusion that this is a Pixel 7 in all but name. A slight price hike isn't enough to disrupt the value on offer here – if nothing else, it's within the bounds of the last year's inflation – and the Pixel 7a does enough to put every other mid‑range phone out there on notice.…

REVIEWS Price: £449 from fave.co/3VWhzT4 The Android tablet renaissance is showing no signs of slowing down. Not too long ago, this was almost exclusively Samsung's domain, but we now have decent slates from the likes of Xiaomi, Oppo, Nokia and Lenovo to choose from. OnePlus is the latest company to join the party with the appropriately named OnePlus Pad. This £449 tablet doesn't reinvent the wheel, but does provide a compelling experience for the money. Does that mean you should buy one, though? I think yes, but only if you use your tablet in a particular kind of way. DESIGN The OnePlus Pad has the usual blend of glass and aluminium we've come to expect from modern tablets, yet it still manages to stand out. That's primarily due to the…

AUDIO Price: £195 from fave.co/3HZWCAW The Shure brand might have you thinking of pro audio gear more than consumer electronics, but the Aonic 40 noise-cancelling headphone deserve to be compared to what market leaders Bose and Sony have to offer. And considering that Shure started out building innovative microphones starting in 1925, this does a great job with phone calls. The Aonic 40 is a closed-back, overear headphone with 40mm dynamic drivers. Those drivers utilize neodymium magnets and have a frequency response range of 20- to 22kHz. The headphone features a sleek and stylish design, with a matte black finish and chrome accents. The earpads are plush and comfortable, and they create a good seal around the ears, which helps to block out external noise even before you turn on…

GOOGLE I/O 2023 Is Bard back? Google unveiled fundamental new improvements to its AI chatbot during the company's I/O 2023 keynote, with new Duet AI powers fundamentally improving its Workspace productivity apps as well. AI has been one of the unexpected breakthroughs of the past year, with nearly daily updates from tech giants implementing AI. Even the US government wants to use AI. Google, long the dominant player in search, has had its reputation undermined by AI models such as ChatGPT (fave.co/3MrzIoL) and even generative AI art from Midjourney (fave.co/3Aebast). Google has lagged behind OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing in terms of AI, launching its own Bard chatbot in February, a day before Microsoft had publicly launched Bing's AI chatbot. So far, Bard has seemed to prioritize search, ‘knowing’ up-to-the-minute…

GOOGLE I/O 2023 At the recent Google I/O developer conference, the company's chief executive Sundar Pichai pledged to use AI responsibly, by improving knowledge and learning, boosting creativity, and deploying AI responsibly to help maintain equality. He showed off three apps that will use AI to improve them: GMAIL (HELP ME WRITE) Gmail has been a pioneer in predictive responses, and it's continuing with a new feature called Help Me Write. Help Me Write uses your previous history to create an email on a given topic, so you can ask for a refund on a travel reservation, using the previous email history to help negotiate a settlement. All you need to ask Help Me Write to craft the email. This feature will start rolling out as part of the company's…

REVIEWS Price: £1,399 from fave.co/42Ma2Zo Ever since the first Galaxy Z Fold phone launched – four years ago – Samsung has enjoyed essentially zero competition in the West. Huawei has released a string of book-style foldables that no-one will buy because they don't run Google; Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi have pushed their models in China but nowhere else; and unusual players including Pablo Escobar's brother have run a string of small offerings (and sometimes scams) to build out the marketplace. Finally though, that changes. Honor is officially bringing its Magic Vs foldable to markets worldwide (except North America), and for a price designed to undercut its big Samsung rival. With a hinge that closes fully flat, a pretty powerful triple rear camera, and an exceptionally slim body, the Magic Vs…

BUYING GUIDE Android tablets are much like iPads. The main difference is the operating system on which they run: Google's Android platform. Android, as you're likely to find it on most devices, comes with an app store all its own, called the Play Store. Chances are all the popular apps you'd find on an iPad running iOS will also be available to Android users too, however, there are the odd exceptions or those times where an Android version of an app takes a little longer to appear than it does on iPadOS. As for Amazon's Fire tablets, things are a little different, as they run on a forked version of Android that's heavily customized, locked down and employs Amazon's own app store in place of the Google Play Store. SIZE…

FEATURE Still signing into your Google account by tapping out an actual password? That's, like, so 2022. Now, don't get me wrong: the tried-and-tested password is perfectly fine, especially if you're using it in conjunction with two-factor authentication. But particularly for something as important as your Google account, you want to have the most effective security imaginable to keep all your personal and/or company info safe. And now, you've got a much better way to go about that. GOOGLE PASSKEYS Google has announced the first official availability of something called passkeys as a way to sign into Google services. Using a passkey means anytime you'd traditionally be prompted to put in your Google account password, you'll instead be able to securely authenticate yourself via your phone's face identification system or…