Technology | The Guardian

Posts lauding anything from running in the rain to tiredness and a comfy bed are springing up on Instagram and TikTokWhat a privilege it is to run in the rain. What a privilege it is to have a house I need to clean." Social media is usually criticised for being a toxic space, but an emerging trend is pushing back against negativity with gratitude.Posts entitled What a privilege" feature everything from images of cosy beds (What a privilege it is to be exhausted after a long day) to videos of travelling (What a privilege it is to carry a heavy bag) to kitchen hobs (What a privilege it is to think about what to make for dinner everyday) have sprung up on Instagram and TikTok. Continue reading...

Rail bosses admitted earlier this week they still use the surprisingly persistent technologyThere's not much Dolly Parton and Northern rail bosses can claim to have in common. Frustrated commuters from Manchester to Middlesbrough might complain the train service barely works 9 to 5. What does unite the two is that neither can let go of the fax machine.Banned by the NHS in England and dropped by the Premier League after one too many player transfers crumbled amid faulty transmissions, the persistence of the screeching and buzzing fax was this week blamed for commuter misery by the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. Continue reading...

Company reports $94.9bn in revenue, slightly beating Wall Street projections in first look at demand for its new phoneApple reported strong demand for the iPhone 16 in its quarterly earnings report on Thursday, though overall sales in China slightly decreased year-over-year. The company reported $94.9bn in revenue, up 6% year-over-year, and $1.64 in earnings per share (EPS). The company's earnings slightly beat Wall Street projections of $94.4bn in sales and an EPS of $1.60.The company saw $46.2bn in revenue from iPhone sales, up from $43.8bn year-over-year. Fourth-quarter revenue from its services division, which include subscriptions, increased from $22.31bn to $24.97bn year-over-year. Continue reading...

Feed is rife with posts of individuals deemed suspicious and calls for doxxing with little evidence provided of faultWhile Elon Musk faces his own election integrity questions offline, the X owner has deputized his followers to spot and report any potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities". The community he spawned is rife with unfounded claims passed off as evidence of voter fraud.Musk opted not to show up to a required court appearance on Thursday in Philadelphia to respond to a lawsuit challenging his political action committee's daily $1m voter giveaway. Meanwhile, online, he has started a dedicated community space on X, formerly Twitter, where he has asked users to share any issues they see while voting. Users posting on the self-contained feed, the election integrity community", quickly began pointing out what they deemed as evidence of fraud and election interference. Continue reading...

Shares rise as company reports quarterly revenue of $158.9bn - more than analysts had forecastAmazon became the latest of the magnificent seven" tech giants to report quarterly earnings on Thursday, with all eyes once again on cloud computing and any sign of a return on vast AI investments. Shares in the e-commerce giant rose in after-hours trading.The company reported revenue of $158.9bn against analyst expectations of $157.2bn, and earnings per share of $1.43, compared to $1.16 expected by Bloomberg analysts. Continue reading...

Canvassers discovered they were working to drum up turnout for Trump after signing non-disclosure agreementsElon Musk's get-out-the-vote effort for Donald Trump has come under renewed scrutiny after paid canvassers reported not knowing beforehand that they were being hired to support the former president.Workers recruited by Musk's America Pac to canvass in the battleground state of Michigan only discovered they were working for the Space X and Tesla entrepreneur to drum up voter turnout for Trump after signing non-disclosure agreements, Wired reported. Continue reading...

Vast datacentres are being built worldwide, amid growing concerns about the environmental costs. So should we all be considering a data diet - if not complete digital sobriety?Nearly 20 years ago, the British mathematician Clive Humby coined a snappy phrase that has turned into a platitude: data is the new oil". He wasn't wrong. We have an insatiable appetite for data, we can't stop generating it, and, just like oil, it's turning out to be bad news for the environment.So the Guardian set me a challenge: to try to give a sense of how much data an average person uses in a day, and what the carbon footprint of normal online activity might be. To do that, I tried to tot up the sorts of things I and millions of others do every day, and how that tracks back through the melange of messaging services, social networks, applications and tools, to the datacentres that keep our digital lives going. Continue reading...

The project that began in the Canary Islands mimics the way leaves capture water droplets from fog in order to produce waterThey call it cloud milking, a zero-energy technique to extract water from fog that is revolutionising the recovery of forests devastated by fire and drought.The idea began as a pilot project in the Canary Islands. The plan was to exploit the moisture-laden sea of clouds" that hangs over the region in order to aid reforestation, and has since been extended to several other countries to produce drinking water, and to irrigate crops. Continue reading...

PC, PS5, Xbox; Deck Nine/Square Enix

Experts say top chief executives are treading a fine line to avoid any backlash in the event of a Trump victoryAfter the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, America's business leaders came out strongly in their criticism of Donald Trump. Now - as the Harris campaign brands Trump a fascist" and Trump threatens retribution against the enemy from within" - there appears to be a conspiracy of silence.In fact, as the nation heads to the polls in an election that is too close to call, some of America's most powerful chief executives appear to be cozying up to Trump again. Continue reading...

A fascinating fortnightly show explores the darker side of the scare industry. Plus: five of the creepiest podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereBrown Girls Do It Too: Big Boy Energy

District attorney says awards to registered voters from billionaire's pro-Trump America Pac are an illegal lottery'A judge ordered all parties, including Elon Musk, to attend a court hearing in Philadelphia on Thursday in a lawsuit seeking to stop a political action committee controlled by the billionaire from awarding $1m to registered US voters in battleground states before the 5 November election.The Philadelphia district attorney's office filed the lawsuit on Monday. It called the giveaway by Musk's America Pac, which backs Donald Trump, an illegal lottery" that entices Pennsylvania residents to share personal data. Continue reading...

Revenue from Azure cloud business increased by 22% as company focuses attention on artificial intelligenceMicrosoft reported better-than-expected earnings on Wednesday fueled by growth in its Azure cloud business, as five of the Magnificent Seven" tech megacaps roll out quarterly earnings this week.AI-driven transformation is changing work, work artifacts, and workflow across every role, function, and business process," the company's CEO, Satya Nadella, said in a press release. On an earnings call, Nadella said Microsoft's AI business was on track to surpass an annual run-rate of $10bn next quarter, which will make it the fastest growing business in our history to reach this milestone". Continue reading...

Company beats financial predictions but does not increase daily users as much as Wall Street thought it mightMeta's blowout year continues after the company reported another stellar financial quarter on Wednesday. But shares fell in after-hours trading after the company missed Wall Street expectations for daily active users.Wall Street analysts had high expectations for the Instagram and WhatsApp parent company, projecting an 18% jump in sales year over year. The company reported $40.6bn in sales, a 19% increase year over year that outpaced investor expectations of $40.19bn. Meta, which saw a 25% jump in its share price over the past two months, reported $6.03 in earnings per share (EPS), surpassing Wall Street's expectations of an EPS of $5.29. Continue reading...

Monthly users rose by nearly half thanks to AI translation feature, and deals for AI training with Google and OpenAI boosted revenueReddit on Tuesday reported a quarterly profit for the first time in its 20-year history. Shares of the company, popular for its user-led communities known as subreddits, rose more than 35% as markets opened the next day.The company reported nearly 100 million monthly users, an increase of 47% from the year prior, and a profit of $29.9m. Its revenue reached $348.4m, a year-over-year increase of 68%, handily beating analysts' expectations. Continue reading...

An expert in digital forensics and family violence says surveillance by spyware is rare - more often it happens via everyday features such as location sharing

Sony is shutting down Firewalk, the studio behind its live-service flop, Concord. It's the biggest, most expensive casualty of an increasingly crowded hero shooter market - and it won't be the last Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIt's official: after Sony pulled its struggling hero shooter Concord from sale shortly after it launched, the studio that made it will now be closing. Firewalk Studios was bought by Sony less than two years ago, as part of a strategy to improve PlayStation's live-service portfolio. The closure of Firewalk cements Concord's place as one of the biggest and most consequential flops in gaming history: the cost to Sony will have been in the hundreds of millions, with estimates of Concord's development cost ranging from $200m to $400m in total.Sony also closed Neon Koi, a developer with offices in Helsinki and Berlin, which focused on mobile action games with epic stories" but had yet to release a game. Continue reading...

Halloween is coming, and our minds are turning to scary games. But which titles are genuine fright fests? Our writers decided to find out in the most ill-advised way possibleShepton Mallet prison in Somerset is the world's oldest correctional facility. It is also reportedly one of the most haunted. Between its opening in 1625 and its closure in 2013, it saw hundreds of inmates, from Victorian street urchins to wayward American GIs to the Kray twins. Now a tourist attraction, it occasionally opens to paying guests who want to spend a night behind bars. Some are paranormal investigators, some are brave tourists, and others are video game journalists with a silly idea: how scary would it be to play five recent horror games all night, locked in a haunted prison?Carrying just a torch, an electromagnetic field (EMF) detector, and a laptop, we wandered the prison finding spine-chilling locations in which to play these immersive supernatural masterpieces. Here is what happened ... Continue reading...

As the Long Read turns 10 we are raiding the archives to bring you a favourite piece from each year since 2014, with new introductions from the authors.This week from 2018: How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies - written by Jacob Rees-Mogg's father - inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific. By Mark O'Connell Continue reading...

Analysts expected 12% year-on-year revenue gains, but company reports 15%, buoyed by performance in ads and cloud servicesAlphabet, parent of Google and YouTube, saw a third straight quarter of better-than-anticipated gains as it reported earnings on Tuesday. The tech giant had largely exceeded analyst expectations for the previous two quarters, and Tuesday's results showed growth in both digital advertising and demand for Google Cloud. Shares rose in after-hours training.The momentum across the company is extraordinary. Our commitment to innovation, as well as our long-term focus and investment in AI, are paying off with consumers and partners benefiting from our AI tools," said the CEO, Sundar Pichai. Continue reading...

A French newspaper has revealed the whereabouts of world leaders with the use of the hugely popular running app. So is it time to stop it tracking your location?

Campaigners say 21% of people at workshops did not disclose on their applications relationships with firms being discussedMore than one in five attenders at EU events on regulating big tech companies did not disclose links to the industry when applying to take part, according to transparency campaigners who say hidden networks are distorting public debate.Researchers at three NGOs analysed nearly 4,000 registrations at European Commission workshops organised earlier this year to test companies' compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law to curb anti-competitive behaviour. Continue reading...

As a new show co-created by an AI performer opens in France, industry leaders including Wayne McGregor, Tamara Rojo and Jonzi D contemplate the technology's possibilities and perilsI think AI's going to change everything," Tamara Rojo, artistic director of San Francisco Ballet, told me earlier this year. We just don't know quite how." The impact of artificial intelligence on the creative industries can already be seen across film, television and music, but to some extent dance seems insulated, as a form that so much relies on live bodies performing in front of an audience. But this week choreographers Aoi Nakamura and Esteban Lecoq, collectively known as AE, are launching what is billed as the world's first AI-driven dance production, Lilith.Aeon. Lilith, the performer, is an AI entity, who has co-created the work, with Nakamura and Lecoq. She" will appear on an LED cube that the audience move around, their motion triggering Lilith's dance.Nakamura and Lecoq insist they're interested not in chasing the latest technology for its own sake but in enhancing their storytelling. Working as dancers with theatre company Punchdrunk turned them on to the idea of immersive experiences, which led to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and now AI. Their question is always: How can we make this tech come alive?" But not in a robots-taking-over-the-world way. Continue reading...

The tech titans have picked up the phone and called the ex-president. Plus: AI chatbots and sharing your baby's photos Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWelcome back. Today in the newsletter: tech executives play phone tag with Donald Trump, the liability of AI chatbots, and talking through sharing your baby's photos online with your family. Thank you for joining me.The CEOs of the biggest tech companies in the world are looking at the neck-and-neck polls, picking up their phones, and putting their ducks in a row for a potential Donald Trump presidency. The former US president has never shied away from threatening revenge against his perceived enemies, and tech's leaders are heading off retributive regulatory scrutiny. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Treyarch/Raven/Activision

After resignations and loss of subscribers, billionaire owner pens piece saying endorsements create perception of bias'Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, has penned a column in his own newspaper defending the decision not to endorse a candidate in the US presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, widely seen as a crucial stress test for American democracy.The decision not to endorse has rocked the Post, one of the most storied names in US journalism since breaking the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, and seen newsroom unrest, resignations from its editorial board and the loss of 200,000 subscribers who have cancelled their accounts with the newspaper. Continue reading...

Marketing and sale of model prohibited after tech giant fails to meet rule 40% of phones be made from local partsIndonesia has prohibited the marketing and sale of the iPhone 16 model over Apple's failure to meet local investment regulations, according to its industry ministry.South-east Asia's biggest economy has a young, tech-savvy population with more than 100 million people under the age of 30, but Apple still does not have an official store in the country, forcing those who want its products to buy from resale platforms. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; Bioware/Electronic Arts

As the software used by millions around the world celebrates its birthday, here are some of the low pointsFor millions of people, from accountants to the person in charge of the work rota, Microsoft Excel has been been a godsend.But as the spreadsheet software celebrates its 40th birthday, spare a thought for those who misplaced a decimal, left out a row or got their cut and paste wrong. Here are some of the most memorable examples. Continue reading...

Advertising executive, 58, shares old-school tricks of the marketing trade, enjoyed by millions of viewersRory Sutherland is reaching for an analogy to describe his newfound status as one of the UK's most viral TikTokers. It's a bit like Lord Byron, I woke up and found myself famous."That he conjures up the name of a 19th-century romantic poet tells you a lot: Sutherland is not your average social media influencer. Continue reading...

From baby names to wedding planning, fans of the 40-year-old spreadsheet program reveal how it has transformed their livesI'm a boring man," says Mike Elwin, an energy management consultant from Warrington. My friends think it's ridiculous how much I use Microsoft Excel. But it's a dead handy tool."Elwin, 56, has long used Excel to organise his life - from mapping finances, to plotting medical test results, to monitoring his household energy use. When his son was born in 2007, he made a spreadsheet for the feeding schedule. Continue reading...

Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, jailed after transforming normal pictures of children into sexual abuse imageryA man who used AI to create child abuse images using photographs of real children has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.In the first prosecution of its kind in the UK, Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, was convicted of 16 child sexual abuse offences in August, after an investigation by Greater Manchester police (GMP). Continue reading...

The Washington Post reports Chinese state-affiliated hackers intercepted audio and texts from unnamed adviserChinese state-affiliated hackers intercepted audio from the phone calls of US political figures, including an unnamed campaign adviser of Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.Various media outlets reported on Friday that the Trump campaign was made aware last week that the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate, JD Vance, were among a number of people inside and outside of government whose phone numbers were targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems. Continue reading...

Pair stream themselves playing Madden in effort to secure votes just nine days before electionVice-presidential candidate Tim Walz and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed themselves playing an American football video game against each other on Sunday as the two Democrats continued their party's efforts to secure votes from young men just nine days before the White House election.During the stream of their showdown on the latest edition of the Madden game series, Ocasio-Cortez and Walz exalted the importance of regaining Democratic control of the US House, maintaining a majority in the Senate and ensuring Kamala Harris wins the 5 November presidential election against Donald Trump. Continue reading...

The platform's billionaire owner has seen its value plunge as advertisers run shy, revenues drop and user numbers fallTwo years ago, there was some trepidation among advertisers, anti-hate-speech groups and staff about Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.Those concerns have been borne out: advertisers have sharply reduced spending on the platform, Musk has sued nonprofits over their coverage of a rise in controversial content and about eight out of 10 employees have been sacked. Continue reading...

The Harvard ethicist and author on the similarities between digital technology and religion, the value of scepticism, and how to develop a positive relationship with our devicesGreg Epstein is the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT. He was also TechCrunch's first ethicist in residence". In his new book, Tech Agnostic, he explores the idea that tech", by which he means modern digital technology, is a new global religion, with messianic leaders, dutiful followers, daily rituals of worship, and an inescapable influence on all facets of life.Why did you decide on religion as the analogy with which to understand the modern role of tech?

Washington Post contrasts the episode with the South African multibillionaire's anti-immigration viewsElon Musk briefly worked illegally in the US after abandoning a graduate studies program in California, according to a Washington Post report that contrasted the episode with the South African multibillionaire's anti-immigration views.The boss of Tesla and SpaceX, who has in recent weeks supported Donald Trump's campaign for a second presidency while promoting the Republican White House nominee's opposition to open borders" on his X social media site, has previously maintained that his transition from student to entrepreneur was a legal grey area". Continue reading...

New research reveals how app usage affects grades, adding to parents' worries about mental healthFirst, the good news. We middle-aged Brits are no longer condemned to the conversation- and soul-destroying monomania of debating house prices.Less good is what has displacedit - an epidemic of angst about when to allow teenagers a mobile, and what kind. I'm in the very late and a brick" camp, but parents end up discussing the options for a smartphone-free childhood, inevitably, on WhatsApp. Continue reading...

Child actor Kaylin Hayman fought back after she learned that a man had used AI to make child sex abuse materials from images on her Instagram pageLast year, Kaylin Hayman walked into a Pittsburgh court to testify against a man she'd never met who had used her face to make pornographic pictures with artificial intelligence technology.Kaylin, 16, is a child actress who starred in the Disney show Just Roll With It from 2019 to 2021. The perpetrator, a 57-year-old man named James Smelko, had targeted her because of her public profile. She is one of about 40 of his victims, all of them child actors. In one of the images of Kaylin submitted into evidence at the trial, Smelko used her face from a photo posted on Instagram when she was 12, working on set, and superimposed it onto the naked body of someone else. Continue reading...

The megalomaniacs who control X and Facebook are only able to pollute the public sphere and undermine democracy because of our deference to moneyThere are two kinds of aphrodisiac. The first is power. A good example was provided by the late Henry Kissinger, who could hardly be described as toothsome yet was doted upon by a host of glamorous women.The other powerful aphrodisiac is immense wealth. This has all kinds of effects. It makes people (even journalists who should know better) deferential, presumably because they subscribe to the delusion that if someone is rich then they must be clever. But its effects on the rich person are more profound: it cuts them off from reality. When they travel, writes Jack Self in an absorbing essay: The car takes them to the aerodrome, where the plane takes them to another aerodrome, where a car takes them to the destination (with perhaps a helicopter inserted somewhere). Every journey is bookended by identical Mercedes Vito Tourers (gloss black, tinted windows). Every flight is within the cosy confines of a Cessna Citation (or a King Air or Embraer)... The ultra-rich never wait in line at a carousel or a customs table or a passport control. There are no accidental encounters. No unwelcome, unapproved or unsanitary humans enter their sight - no souls that could espouse a foreign view. The ultra-rich do not see anything they do not want to see." Continue reading...

Get ready for a silk shirt undone to the navel, necklaces and big T-shirts, all aimed at humanising Meta's founderFor more than 20 years Mark Zuckerberg has made a Macbook grey T-shirt and equally drab-coloured hoodie his trademark. But now the Facebook founder has ditched his signature look in favour of something with a bit more oomph.His new wardrobe features jazzy embroidered floral shirts, boxy black T-shirts emblazoned with Latin phrases, chain necklaces and a shearling coat that would not look out of place on the set of the western drama Yellowstone. He has even grown out his tightly cropped Caesar cut for looser curls. Continue reading...

Trump campaign immediately blamed Biden White House and Kamala Harris for Chinese government-linked hackChinese government-linked hackers are believed to have targeted phones used by Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as part of a larger breach of US telecommunications networks, according to a New York Times report.The Trump campaign was informed this week that the phone numbers of the Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominee were among those targeted during a breach of the Verizon network, the paper said, citing sources. Continue reading...

Media mogul and leading artists join fight to stop tech firms using creative works for free as training dataIt is an unlikely alliance: the billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and a panoply of leading artists including the Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke, the actors Kevin Bacon and Julianne Moore, and the author Kazuo Ishiguro.This week, they began two very public fights with artificial intelligence companies, accusing them of using their intellectual property without permission to build the increasingly powerful and lucrative new technology. Continue reading...

X owner renews hostilities with Center for Countering Digital Hate after it is linked to US election interference rowA UK-founded anti-hate speech campaign group dragged into the Labour US election interference row has vowed to carry on its work after Elon Musk's latest declaration of war" against the organisation.The Center for Countering Digital Hate returned to the crosshairs of the world's richest person this week after Musk alleged that it was violating laws against foreign interference in US elections. Continue reading...

Collaboration between leading garden designer and Microsoft to go on display at Chelsea flower show 2025Hardcore gardeners sometimes, when no one else is listening, talk quietly to their prize blooms. But at next year's Chelsea flower show, visitors will be encouraged to have a chat with its first ever AI-powered garden.The garden designer Tom Massey has partnered with Microsoft to create the Avanade intelligent" garden. Sensors in the soil are partnered with an AI trained on Royal Horticultural Society plant data and gardening advice, meaning visitors can ask the garden: How are you?" Continue reading...

State attorney general alleges without providing evidence that Google is manipulating search results, as tech firm says claim totally false'Missouri's Republican attorney general has said he is launching an investigation into Google over allegations it was censoring conservative speech, as the tech corporation dismissed the claims as totally false".I am launching an investigation into Google for censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation's history," Andrew Bailey said in a post on X, without citing any example or evidence for his censorship claim. Continue reading...

The invitation to EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate that comes with the game's unfortunately spelled sixth iteration is hard to resist, harder still to playI am feeling anxious about the world. We have had mayoral elections in my part of Canada in which one candidate was backed with more gold than Croesus, so it wasn't even a contest. In the UK people have not got the Labour government they hoped they were voting for. And as someone who lives a few hours' drive from the US border, I can only pray that Orange Hitler doesn't get in again. Or maybe I pray that he does, lest our neighbours to the south end up in an election-denial-driven repeat of the civil war. So I thought I'd play a game where I get to direct the rise and fall of civilisation myself instead. As a treat.Civilization 6 is what's known as a 4X game. 4X stands for EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate", a phrase that offends my pedantic spelling sensibilities. Unfortunately the four exes" I spent a lot of time doing here was Exert, Expire, Exclaim and then Exit due to this game's Execrable gamepad controls, which are as intuitive as a Heston Blumenthal recipe. I lost count of the times I moved the wrong unit, or had brain freeze trying to remember what button did what. I would have preferred a more common sense control system, mouse and keyboard support, or an interface that uses the power of thought, like that one Elon Musk pretends he has. Continue reading...

Car company sees biggest single-day stock gain since 2013 as CEO Elon Musk forecasts up to 30% in sales growthTesla shares closed up nearly 22% on Thursday - their biggest single-day gain in over a decade - as Elon Musk's bold forecast of surging sales reassured investors he was still looking to grow its core business of selling electric cars. At close, nearly $150bn was added to the company's market value.Musk forecast 20-30% in sales growth next year, promising to launch an affordable vehicle in the first half of 2025, and said efforts to slash production costs boosted margins in the third quarter. Continue reading...

You've decided you don't want to post pictures of your baby online. What about all the requests for cute photos from grandparents?Welcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. The last column covered how to protect your baby's photos on the internet.You're a parent, and you've decided publicly posting your baby's face on the internet is just not for you. You've got a handle on how to actually protect your baby's photos on the internet (perhaps because you've read our guide!). Now it's just a matter of doing it. Continue reading...

Our tech expert is back with an updated guide to the top-tier Android phonesNeed an Android phone, but not sure which to go for, or whether to buy new or refurbished? There is much to consider, so view me as your guide as you trek through the process of picking the best handset for you.The latest Android smartphones come in various sizes, at different prices, and with assorted capabilities and software features, all powered by the fastest chips. Whether your priority is battery life, camera, screen size, software support or the best balance of top-tier features and price, there is more to choose from than ever. But if you're thinking of buying Apple instead, we have a guide for iPhones too. Continue reading...