Table of contents for 149 in iPad & iPhone User

Price: £729 (inc VAT) from fave.co/35jOdmT Last year, Apple introduced the iPhone XR (£629 from fave.co/30T3RSV as the ‘affordable’ offering in its new iPhone line-up. We liked the XR a lot, and we even said that it might be the best iPhone Apple has ever made. The follow-up to the XR is the new iPhone 11, and the fact that Apple decided to bless this model with the ‘iPhone 11’ title – and not call it something like the iPhone 11R – says a lot about where the company positions the phone. But can this phone carry the burden of being known as the iPhone 11? As a matter of fact, it can. The satisfying speed boost, dual camera setup, and long battery life combine to make the iPhone 11…

Price: £399 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2p2PkqI The Apple Watch Series 5 is so far ahead of anything that professes to be a peer, there’s only one reason not to buy one: You want multi-day battery life. Otherwise, you’re not going to find a smartwatch with a better screen, more advanced sensors, nicer design, or stronger app support. I’ve tested smartwatches from just about every manufacturer – Samsung, Fitbit, Fossil, LG, Huawei, Mobvoi, Withings, and so on – and nothing really comes close to the polish and performance Apple has delivered. Apple haters will scoff at that notion, but the truth of the matter is, if Apple offered an iPhone-free version of the Series 5 watch, it would instantly become the best selling Android wearable. Nothing under the Wear OS umbrella…

For years now the operating system Apple uses for its tablets has been evolving into a distinct beast, and this year Apple embraced that shift by forging iPadOS 13 from the framework of iOS 13. It’s still recognizably iOS 13, mind you, so don’t expect to flip on your iPad this week and find an interface that resembles what you’d find on a MacBook. On the other hand, iPadOS 13 certainly does a lot to take the iPad seriously as a MacBook replacement. File management has improved, websites in Safari usually look much like they do on a desktop, and the home screen is more more useful. There’s a whole bundle of stuff we think you should try out, but here’s what should take priority. First off, though: make sure…

Price: £1,049 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2MuoRKO If you were to ask people what they want in a new smartphone, they would probably say they want it to be fast, have a long-lasting battery, be nice and durable, and have a really awesome camera. It just so happens that’s what you get with the iPhone 11 Pro. It’s also what you get with the iPhone 11, which costs £300 to £400 less than the Pro. The Pro is certainly an upgrade, but it doesn’t do a lot to justify its ‘Pro’ moniker or very ‘Pro’ price. Still, the iPhone 11 Pro is a tremendous iPhone, with some noticeable (and not-so-noticeable) improvements over last year’s XS. As good as it is at what it does, it’s hard not to think Apple could…

Since the very first Apple-designed smartphone chip (the A4 back in 2010), the company has been a force to be reckoned with in mobile silicon design. It was with the A6 a couple years later, when Apple used its own CPU design instead of a licensed architecture, that its performance leadership really started to kick into high gear. For the past few years, Apple’s CPU has really been untouchable. The A11 Bionic featured not only a custom Apple-designed CPU, but finally ditched the PowerVR-based graphics processor for its own custom GPU. In addition, it introduced the Neural Engine, a custom block of silicon separate from the CPU and GPU, focused on accelerating Machine Learning computations. Since that time, Apple’s mobile silicon has held court over the smartphone chip world. Maybe…

When we first heard about Apple Arcade, long before we knew it would only cost £4.99 per month, I hoped that it would give developers an alternative to the freemium model that has plagued mobile gaming. Now iOS 13 has been released and with it, the Apple Arcade service. At £4.99 per month with family sharing, it’s a much better deal than anticipated. And the games are great – the variety and quality exceeds my highest hopes. I’ve only played about 15 of the games offered, and I can see myself spending a lot more time with at least 10 of those. But more importantly, playing the games in Arcade has really thrown into sharp relief just how bad mobile game monetization has made even otherwise good games. This is…

Price: £349 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2IyrTMW When I first saw the new 7th-generation iPad, I wondered why Apple even bothered to release an updated model this year. Sure, the 10.2in display reveals a slight boost in size over last year’s 9.7in iPad, and the latest model finally has a Smart Connector, but for all that, this iPad has the same cameras and A10 processor as last year’s model, the form factor hasn’t changed significantly, and it’s even ever-so-slightly heavier. Both models still only come in 32- and 128GB configurations, and both deliver around 10 hours of battery life. Let’s get this out of the way now: if you have last year’s 9.7in iPad, I see no reason to ‘upgrade’ to this one. But after a few days with the new…

The new iPhone 11 series of phones brings a new way to frame and shoot photos that gives you flexibility after you’ve snapped that shot. The iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max all bring in detail outside your framed preview from the next widest lens as you point at a scene in both portrait and landscape. First, you have to turn the feature on in Settings > Camera under the Composition section. Tap Photos Capture Outside the Frame to turn this over-capture mode on. By default, Apple has left the feature off, though the same option for video is enabled. (There’s a potential reason for this, which I’ll get to at the end of this article.) A related option works in concert with Capture Outside the Frame. Auto…