SIM Only Guides & Advice

In-depth information to make you a smarter shopper.

We spend hours searching, trialling and testing – then make these guides so that you don’t have to.

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How to make your existing handset last longer

On: Wednesday, 2 September, 2020

Like the unmistakeable yet fleeting smell of a new car, the appeal of a new smartphone fades quickly. Within weeks of peeling off those protective plastic strips, your ‘new’ phone may begin to look scruffy, while its inner mechanics wil...

How smartphone cameras have evolved since 2000

By: Neil Cumins

On: Tuesday, 1 September, 2020

Today, consumers take for granted having a high-quality camera integrated into their phones. But it wasn’t always like this. Millennial phones weren’t particularly smart, and few had any form of image capturing technology. Even years la...

Are smartphones really covered in germs and bacteria?

By: Neil Cumins

On: Tuesday, 1 September, 2020

Firstly, a word of warning. If you’re eating while reading this article, keep the page open and come back to it in half an hour. Because today’s subject is hygiene. If someone asked whether your smartphone was dirtier than your toilet, ...

Introducing sideloading

By: Neil Cumins

On: Sunday, 30 August, 2020

To anyone who came of age during the 8-bit home computing boom of the 1980s, loading was something to be endured while a program was accessed on cassette or floppy disc. To anyone whose first exposure to computing involved the internet, loa...

How the absence of Google affects Huawei handsets

By: Neil Cumins

On: Saturday, 22 August, 2020

Thousands of years ago, the Roman Emperor Claudius declared that “To do nothing evil is good, but to wish nothing evil is better.” Twenty years ago, Google adopted “don’t be evil” as its unofficial motto, and even wrote it int...

Technologies you might find in the smartphone of 2030

By: Neil Cumins

On: Thursday, 20 August, 2020

Technology often evolves at breakneck pace, so it tends to surprise us when progress is more leisurely. In the last decade, cars evolved from passive vehicles to semi-autonomous machines, capable of braking when they detect a pedestrian and...

Smartphone manufacturers you may have forgotten about

By: Neil Cumins

On: Saturday, 15 August, 2020

Later this year, the 1980s TV game show Family Fortunes will return to our screens. Younger readers may wish to imagine Family Fortunes as a reverse Pointless, where the answer is to choose the most common responses, rather than the least c...

How do QR codes work?

By: Neil Cumins

On: Friday, 31 July, 2020

Many supposedly modern technologies can trace their origins back to a time before the internet, even though they require connectivity to function. The barcode was developed in the early 1950s, based on Morse Code, but it took two decades to...

Easy ways to speed up device charging

By: Neil Cumins

On: Monday, 27 July, 2020

It might seem bizarre – even indulgent – to have a phobia dedicated to the fear of not having a smartphone to hand. Yet nomophobia is understandable when you look past its groan-inducing name, and the inevitable sense of Millennial enti...

Ten ways to personalise your Android handset

By: Neil Cumins

On: Friday, 24 July, 2020

Arguments about the relative merits of Android and iOS smartphones have raged for over a decade, and will continue for many years to come. One fact which cannot be denied is that the Android ecosystem offers vastly more choice in terms of h...