Table of contents for Issue 52 in Android Advisor

Price: £349 inc VAT from fave.co/2J5ILYN If the ZenFone 5 sounds familiar, it probably should – Asus released a phone of that name way back in 2014. Unsurprisingly, this latest version has had a few upgrades – not least a very familiar notch. It was first announced the phone at Mobile World Congress 2018, but Asus has unusually decided to wait until July to actually release the phone. We’ve spent some time putting the phone through its paces, and here’s what we think of the firm’s latest attempt to crack the smartphone market. Design If you thought the ZenFone 5 sounded familiar, that’s nothing compared to how it looks. No, that isn’t an iPhone X, but you’d be forgiven for making that mistake. Asus was one of the first of…

Price: £229 inc VAT from fave.co/2KsJyIO The Nova 2i is yet another great-value Android phone coming out of the Huawei/Honor camp. It’s clear there is a lot of crossover between the brands, and the 2i is in essence an Honor 7X with the Honor 9 Lite’s front dual-camera and dual-SIM functionality. It’s specifications are similar to, but an upgrade over the Huawei P Smart, as well. To put that into perspective, as we saw last issue the Honor 9 Lite is the current champion of our best budget phones round-up. So falling just a short way behind this is not a bad place to be, especially when you have a slightly better specifications for not a lot more cash. If money were no option, we could argue that the Nova…

Google has been dabbling in photo hosting for years, but it wasn’t until it released the revamped Google Photos in May 2015 that it really took photo archiving seriously. We can now back up all our photos for free, and even get our images printed in Photo Books. But Photos leverages Google’s machine learning muscle to do a lot of other cool things – you just need to know where to look. 1. Favourite photos Google Photos makes it easy to save all your photographs, but there are probably some you like more than others. When you come across those pictures, you can add them to your favourites for easy access in the future. To mark something as a favourite in Photos, just tap to view it and look for…

Podcasts may have started on Apple devices, but millions of Android users listen to them on their phones every day. And now Google is finally getting in on the act with its own standalone podcast player, aptly called Google Podcasts. While podcasts have always been available for listening inside the Google Play Music app or via searching inside the Google app, Google Podcasts represents the first real default presence for podcasts on the platform. But if Google wants Podcasts to become as synonymous with podcasts as YouTube is to video, it has a long way to go. The impact on you at home: Google Podcasts would have been a better app in 2016 than 2018, but it’s not a terrible first start. Yes, it’s light on the features, but Google…

Price: £579 inc VAT from fave.co/2Ks21VR BlackBerry is back again – sort of. The brand has been revived by manufacturer TCL, a company invested in cashing in on nostalgia. The BlackBerry KEY2 is a better phone than 2017’s KeyOne (£349 from fave.co/2IJvnt5), but still a stunted device compared to the rest of the market. It’s an undoubtedly slick smartphone, with a look clearly modelled on 2015’s BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition, a phone that supposedly was meant to run Android until the last-minute change to BlackBerry’s own software. History aside, the KEY2 is a device with limited appeal in 2018. Unless you really, really want a keyboard on your smartphone, this is not the handset for you, despite especially secure Android Oreo 8.1 and productivity-focused keyboard functions. If, however, you are…

It’s important to remember that, like PCs and laptops, it’s possible to come across viruses and malware on mobile devices. There are, however, antivirus apps available for Android to help make sure your phone or tablet doesn’t get infected, so we share our pick of the best here. Do you need Android antivirus? Unlike Apple devices, which only allow downloads from the iOS App Store to protect users from bogus apps, Android will allow you to install APK files that could be infected with viruses and malware created by cybercriminals. There is also less of an approval process for the Google Play Store, so dangerous apps can make their way onto the store from time to time. And even when they’ve been pulled from Google Play, they can reappear. Phishing…

The Google Android Messages app is one of the finest ways to send and receive text messages. It’s even ready for the future with RCS standard support and ample features. You might not even realize all the neat things you can do with Android Messages, so here are the five best. 1. Add a message subject A standard text message doesn’t have a lot of features, but there are some little-known tweaks you can make in Messages. Instead of just tapping Send, long-press it. That brings up two things in the compose field: You can add a title to your message by tapping in the new field and entering text. This makes the message behave like an MMS, but it should load normally on the recipient’s phone as there’s no…

Back in Android’s early days, the system’s open-source generosity offered a huge advantage to phone manufacturers. In the Android Eclair and Froyo eras, there was palatable whimsy in interface design. Owning an Android phone was fun, and manufacturers developed identity by interpreting the system in their own special ways. But the modern Android experience is a mess of unnecessary customizations, ugly designs, and bloated app drawers. In short, Android’s biggest problem in 2018 may be Android itself. But it never had to be that way. For years, Google has been trying to show phone makers that its pure vision of Android is best), even going so far as to demonstrate stock Android’s superiority on its own Nexus and Pixel handsets. Yet still, nearly every Android phone uses a version of…

Price: £699 inc VAT from fave.co/2x2FiJu HTC is having a funny old time of it since Google nicked a load of its employees. Having made the Google Pixel, Pixel XL and Pixel 2 (but not the LG made 2 XL), you’d be forgiven for thinking there wouldn’t be another HTC flagship. But the HTC U12+ is its high-end phone for 2018 – and the company is so convinced it’s a winner, there’s no regular model. It’s Plus or bust. The phone looks quite a bit like the chunky U11 Plus, but with some decent upgrades, particularly in the camera. HTC has been treading water for a few years now and needs a hit, despite the strength of the U11 line. But the U12+ is a buggy mess. It has bad…

In order for the search giant to identify you, you have to have a Google account. Without one Google may well have anonymous data about you as a cookie on a phone or computer, but it is impossible to know what data that is (just as it is impossible for Google to know who you actually are). So all of the information below relies on you being logged in to your Google Account, which I’m sure you have. Ever logged in to an Android phone or tablet, used Gmail, or used YouTube as a registered user? The email and password you use for those things (or Google Calendar, Docs, Drive, and so on) is your Google Account. You may – as I do – have several. In which case you…

It’s been nearly five years since Google shut down its Reader service, and we still haven’t gotten over it. We’ve tried our share of replacements – Feedly, Inoreader, NewBlur, and so on – but between subscription fees, cross-platform compatibility, and interface oddities, we’ve yet to find anything that completely fills the void Reader left in our feeds. But Google hasn’t given up on organized, personalized news feeds. Quite the contrary: After taking several swings with services such as Google+, Google Now, and News and Weather, Google unveiled at its I/O developer conference in May a brand-new Google News app, with a uniform experience across Android, iOS, and the web, a new philosophy, and a completely redesigned interface. The new Google News isn’t quite a resurrection of Reader. But with a…