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Showing posts with the label lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)

I tested the iPhone 16e for a week and found it's a good phone that stretches the definition of 'budget'

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Apple iPhone 16e: Two-Minute Review The iPhone 16e is a good phone. It has a pleasing design, and it feels like a true member of the iPhone 16 family. It is not a great phone, though – how could it be with a retro notch in the Super Retina XDR display and just a single 48MP camera? There are 'budget' phones that cost far less and which have larger screens and multiple rear cameras. They're not iOS handsets, and that counts for something – any new iPhone joins an expansive and well-designed ecosystem offering connective tissue between excellent Apple services and other Apple hardware. I mostly live in that world now, and I appreciate how well my iPhone 16 Pro Max works with, for instance, my Mac, and how all my cloud-connected services know it's me on the line. It's been a while since I've had such conflicting feelings about an iPhone. I appreciate that Apple thought it was time to move away from the iPhone SE design language, one that owed most of its loo...

Amazon Kindle Colorsoft: The color Kindle you've been dreaming of is finally here

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Color me not surprised but genuinely pleased that Amazon has finally delivered its first color Kindle. In the 17 years since the first Kindle first arrived, e-reader display technology has moved at a glacial pace, especially when compared to, for instance, the iPhone, which was released that same year. While that product has seen significant updates across every aspect of the mobile device, Amazon's Kindle has more or less tried on different outfits, from the giant DX to the oddly-shaped Oasis. Amazon and its display partner E Ink gradually improved the pixels per inch to a robust 300 and the contrast ratio to something approaching paper (marked with the breakthrough product Paperwhite). Along the way, we got touch screens and far better LED support lighting for when there isn't enough sunlight. Nothing, though, has felt like a breakthrough or something that might fundamentally alter our Kindle e-reader experience. Not until today, that is. I get that a color screen in our ...

iPhone 16 Pro review – The first Pro gets its full zoom and a new button to use it

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Hands-on iPhone 16 Pro review: Two-minute preview Running from the Apple Keynote to the expansive demo room right behind it, I was confronted by long tables of new products, including iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max phones on pedestals (as they should be), and hoards of excited media and analysts who crowded so tightly around the products that I could scarcely get close enough to sniff them. Lucky for me, many Apple representatives were milling about who would almost surreptitiously remove the gleaming handsets from their pockets and then just as casually walk you through features.  That was how I finally got close to the iPhone 16 Pro, a now 6.3-inch iOS 18 device that is slightly larger than the iPhone 15 Pro while offering noticeably more screen real estate. Apple managed this trick by shrinking the bezel so it's just a thin dark line surrounding the Super Retina XDR display. Apparently, Apple figured out how to reroute some of the screen traces from the edges to undern...