Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category
iPhone SE (2020) – a journalist’s review
In August 2017, in the UK, I bought my first ever Apple iPhone. It was to replace a stuttering LG G3.
This phone was the SE – “Special Edition” – and shared internals with the iPhone 6S. It cost £299 with 32GB of internal storage. I loved it for its fluidity of use; its decent camera; and its compact size. The design: with machined speaker grilles, metal frame, and square-ish proportions, remains one of my favourites.
Unfortunately by June 2020 this iPhone SE had stopped working and I was forced to buy a new phone. I replaced it with the second-generation iPhone SE.
Five generations — the iPhones 7, 8, X, XS, XR — separate the old SE and the new SE. And it is the most modern phone I have ever owned. It shares the same processor as the top-end iPhone 11 Pro but costs far less. The 4.7-inch screen seems gigantic compared to the 4-inch screen I was using. I have to admit, I do miss the very compact size and lightness of the old SE, which didn’t move around so much in my pocket when I went jogging.
The new iPhone SE has an extremely fast A13 Bionic processor (although the latest version of iOS can be a bit buggy). The screen is colourful and contrast-y; the speakers could be better; it is water resistant; it is a bit heavy; the front-facing camera is quite good (7MP) which is important in this day of video-calls. The battery life could be a bit better but it’s not too bad.
I bought it in the Apple store in Fukuoka and it cost me £376.37 for the 128GB version.
From my freelance journalist’s perspective — we freelancers being somewhat price sensitive — I consider this a very good deal. I’m a fan of iMessage; the way the iPhone syncs with my iPad; the included EarPods, which have a decent mic and button controls; and the Apple ecosystem of apps, podcasts, etc.
It is not the most transformative gadget I have had. That accolade possibly belongs to the iPad Mini, which I snagged last year in Seoul. The iPad is my do-almost-everything gadget. I watch films on Netflix on it while simultaneously FaceTiming. YouTube is better on the bigger screen. Video-calls, such as Zoom, work better on my iPad than on my laptop. I have a Logitech keyboard which I use to write messages and emails, etc. I have an Apple Pencil to sign documents and to occasionally doodle. And I play Call of Duty, playing online Battle Royale and deathmatches. The iPad Mini was one of my best ever purchases. And the phone, for me, is of lesser importance these days, but I can highly recommend the new iPhone SE.
Makeshift offices and portable magic
A late night dinner of delicious beer and chips, washed down with an episode of Stranger Things. A micro-brewery in Seoul.
In July, while I was in Seoul, I bought a gadget that has made my freelance life better. I bought it in the only Apple store in Seoul, which I first visited in 2018 for a business feature I was reporting, a feature that paid out very well. Anyway, in July, in this Apple store in Seoul, which is located in the Gangnam district, on a famous street called garosu-gil, I bought an iPad Mini.
Seoul is a good place to pick up Apple products. You begin with cheaper starting prices compared to the UK and you also get a 10% tourist tax refund at the airport. I picked up an iPad Mini, a Bluetooth Logitech keyboard, and a Pencil.
I have found the iPad Mini a great addition to my gadgetry. It syncs seamlessly with my iPhone SE, so websites opened on my iPhone can also be found on my iPad browser, for example. The iPad Mini has an extremely fast A12 processor chip (the top-of-the-line iPad Pro has the A12X), a True Tone screen, and is a relative bargain compared to the overpriced iPhones.
I also downloaded the GoodNotes app which I use with the Apple Pencil to sketch down ideas, create PDFs and make annotations. I have Apple Arcade which I enjoy — playing Sayonara Wild Hearts paired with a PlayStation 4 controller, and headphones, is serious fun: an aural and visual delight.
In Singapore, I relaxed with a can of Harbin beer, at my friend’s apartment where I was staying, lounging on the veranda in the tropical evening, watching Netflix on the iPad.
I also use the iPad Mini for work. I find working in vertical orientation quite pleasing, and typing on the Logitech keyboard on the Mini is fun. I can put the iPad and the keyboard into a little sling bag, and it is a very portable set-up. I remember pulling it out for an impromptu typing session on the street using an outside table in Seoul. The machine is fast and capable and battery life is very good.
Using my iPad Mini in a Dunkin Donuts in Seoul.
When you’re freelance many tables can become your office. And some of the tables I worked on when I was traveling seemed innocuous enough. The Dunkin Donuts “office” reached by escalator and opposite the Gangnam-gu Office subway station, in Seoul, offered fantastic doughnuts and decent coffee.
The café with a window which overlooked the river.
A café where I worked one afternoon in Singapore.
The wooden “table” where I placed my notebook and wrote one of these blog posts.
A makeshift office.
All of these, despite being banal and somewhat mundane things — a table, a chair — have picked up a kind of retrospective magic.
The perfect laptop
The laptop I have now is great, except it’s dreadful battery life
I’d quite like to buy a new laptop.
I am going to Hong Kong very soon and it’s a good place to buy tech.
I bought the laptop I currently use there two years ago. I like its portable form factor, touchscreen and excellent keyboard. A nice keyboard is a priority for me, as a writer.
It’s a Lenovo ideapad S210 Touch. It has a Core i3 processor, 4gb RAM, Windows 8.1, and a 500gb HDD. It cost about £325.
I sometimes open a dozen or more tabs in Chrome and occasionally edit photos and video. Its performance is fine and it has not let me down. Only one thing has been its bane. Woeful battery life.
If it’s not plugged in, it now lasts less than an hour on a charge.
I like to work in cafes, travel not infrequently, and sometimes I have to do some urgent copy-editing, and in those circumstances having a laptop where I don’t need to worry about having to find a power socket would be awesome.
My essentials for a laptop are great battery life and a good keyboard. Desirable would be an HD touchscreen, a light and small form, an SD card slot, and an SSD. The excellent placement of the scrolling buttons (I read a lot) are nice details my Lenovo has.
I’ve looked around a lot. And trying to find the perfect match has been nigh on impossible. The Macbook Pro, with its excellent screen and good battery life, is too heavy. The MacBook is very expensive with a disgusting keyboard.
The Macbook Air has good performance, stellar battery life, and the 11-inch is incredibly portable. I just wish the screen was better.
Windows alternatives are the Dell XPS, Lenovo Yoga 900, and the HP Spectre x360.
The HP is my choice from that list. But I am tempted by the Macbook Air 11-inch’s excellent battery life (which doesn’t deteriorate as fast as Windows laptops) and its extreme portability. I’ve also never had an Apple laptop so I am interested in looking over the OS wall. It’s just a crying shame Apple has not deemed to update the screen.
As we approach 2016 I decided to buy a brand new smartphone — from 2013. Here’s why.
I got a new phone to replace my old broken phone. I decided to buy exactly the same model. When it was released in September 2013, the LG G2 cost around £468.
In October 2015, you can buy the Apple iPhone 6S, with its “3D Touch”, for £539. Or you could plump for the super sized curved-edge screen (£629) of the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge +.
The two “hottest” phones on the market right now, for these “flagship” pieces of tech, you pay a premium for “killer” features; top-of-the-line processors, screens and cameras, and, admittedly, the best design.
In September 2013, the LG G2 represented the highest end of “high-end” phones. Numerous tech sites proclaimed it as the best Android phone in the world. A year later, some still thought that was the case.
So it’s worth asking whether a great phone in 2013 is a bad phone in 2015.
And it’s worth asking whether you need all those premium features.
The answer to the first question is obviously not. The LG G2 was described as an “absolute speed demon” when it came out; possesses a gorgeous screen that’s a large 5.2 inches in a relatively small body, and a good camera with optical stabilization.
The price I paid for a brand new LG G2 (colour: black; memory: 32GB) in 2015 was a steal. Exactly how much I’ll let you know later.
I bought my first LG G2 in a phone market in Bangkok in the summer of 2014. It was secondhand and in less than perfect condition. This would prove to be its undoing finally when the screen broke. That first secondhand LG cost me around £180. The iPhone 6S costs £539, about 3x the price. But is it three times better?
You may feel that paying that much more is worth it to buy the best of the best; an intangible feeling of product greatness further justified that perhaps by spending more now you bought a phone that will last longer. But that’s millions of dollars of marketing hype speaking through you.
You can’t blame Apple’s or Samsung’s marketing departments for upspeaking their products’s “flagship premium features”. But the fact so-called tech “journalists” go along for the ride too is reprehensible.
Anyway, enough proselytizing.
My new LG G2 was bought for RMB 970, through Taobao.com — China’s eBay. The best phone of 2013 cost me in 2015 £99.
Six things I really like
My Redwing boots. They are comfortable, weather resistant, and look great.
My Accurist watch. They’re a British brand producing watches that are tough and reliable, with a strong sense of style and identity. I’ve had this one since my student days. I’m very attached to it. It cost me £35.
My Canon camera. It’s kind of a perfect camera, for me. It won’t produce as immediately impressive photos as a Sony RX100 or a DSLR. But the S120’s combination of size, speed, and technical ability makes it super easy to take good, usable photos. As a tool, I’ve sold photos from this camera to Al Jazeera and CNN, more than making back what it cost to buy.
Six Dream Gifts For A Freelance Journalist
These are six things a freelance journalist rarely can afford, and so she or he would love to receive them as gifts. This summer why not treat your friendly freelancer to one of these items, any of which would make him or her very happy.
The Sony A7 II (left) is a full-frame camera like the Nikon D800 which it is pictured next to. A big selling point is its small size compared to DSLRs.
Sony a7R II, £2,063 (body only)
DSLR vs Point-and-Shoot: a Journalist’s Consideration
My Canon Powershot S120, and Canon 450D DSLR; the photo was taken with my crummy mobile phone camera.
Lately I have been using my digital SLR. It’s a Canon 450D (also known as a Digital Rebel XTi). I’ve had my DSLR since 2008 but in the past two years I’ve neglected it, preferring to use my compact point-and-shoot: a Canon Powershot S120.
I dug out the DSLR as I wanted to walk around my neighborhood, shooting. It’s a very different experience. It’s the physical tangibility, that reassuring weight of a DSLR that is, I think, most influential in changing the approach you take to photography.
However, on journalism assignments and on freelance trips — to Burma, to North Korea — I have left behind the DSLR, and only brought my little camera. This is because the agility of the S120 and the ease of taking a usable photo with it is far quicker and more efficient than a DSLR.
Another thing I noticed when I was out and about with the DSLR was that the mere sight of it, the fact I was stopping and using this quite obviously noticeable camera changed my surroundings. People noticed me more, people actively tried to avoid the camera’s glare, and I, in turn, tried to be more conspicuous.
This is perhaps even more important.
If I used my DSLR in North Korea I would’ve taken fewer pictures and fewer photos of sensitive things, and the North Koreans would’ve been more sensitive to my presence. People have an almost instinctive reaction to a big, professional-looking camera far more than they do to a little compact.
Also, the quality produced by my point-and-shoot compared to the photos coming out of the DSLR are not massively different. With a DSLR, you can see more clarity, more cinematic colours, more depth of field, things that contribute to a more “3D” effect in the photo. But looking at photos taken with my S120 on the internet, you barely register the “inferiority”. For evidence see the photo galleries, which I took with the point-and-shoot, here and here.
I’ve sold photos using the S120 and the value of those images are in the fact they tell a story. The camera was inconsequential.
Sometimes I do feel wistful when I see fellow freelancers scoring photo galleries that I know would be difficult to manage with a compact camera. My friend Brent Crane’s photo story for Condé Nast Traveler is a case in point. The 12-picture gallery — ‘China to Pakistan: Road Tripping Across the World’s Highest Border’ — was shot on Brent’s DSLR and the vibrancy and sweep of the landscape shots are quite detailed in the way only the larger sensors found in DSLRs are capable of.
But I still trust in my little Canon compact to deliver the goods and I don’t foresee myself replacing it with a DSLR on journalism assignments.
Top 5 mobile phones for journalists
Most productive
The stylus helps to frame the Note 4 as a productivity tool
Samsung Galaxy Note 4
The Note 4 has a large screen, a top-of-the-line processor to handle multitasking, a very capable camera, and, best of all, a multifunctional stylus with features journalists may find very handy.
The phone has two-day battery life and there is the option of expandable storage with a MicroSD card slot.
The larger screen, which is one of the sharpest and most vivid on the market, is an important feature. Web browsing, having multiple windows open (which the phone allows you to move around and resize), and typing out emails or memos, are all made easier when there’s extra screen space. The downside to this is the phone really has to be handled with two hands in use. But few other phones has the ability to act as a very portable computer as the Note 4 does.
Lu-Hai Liang 