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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Hindustan Times
5 Best waterproof phone pouches for swimming that let you snap pics, scroll, and float!
Taking your phone into the water used to feel like tempting fate. Now, with the right waterproof phone pouch, you can keep it by your side without a second thought. These clever accessories aren't just about protection. They let you keep using your phone while you're swimming, floating or even just splashing about in the shallows. You might be filming underwater clips or texting from the hot tub. The best waterproof phone pouch does more than keep things dry. With proper sealing, clear plastic, and easy-to-use locking systems, these pouches are changing how we treat our tech around water. From pool days to beach trips, a reliable waterproof phone cover is one bit of gear that's surprisingly handy and worth having. CASEOLOGY by Spigen brings a waterproof phone pouch with a clever vacuum seal that hugs your camera lens for sharp underwater shots. It fits smartphones up to 8.3 inches, even with bulky cases. The pouch allows smooth touch and button access, has anti-fog tech, and includes a long adjustable strap for versatile wear. Perfect for active outdoor use. What are buyers saying on Amazon?Reliable seal, solid underwater performance and surprisingly clear photos. Users praise the vacuum feature, though a few find it slightly pricey. CASEOLOGY by Spigen Waterproof Mobile Pouch up to 8.3 for iPhone 16 15 14 13 12 Series, iPhone Pro Max, Samsung S25 S24 S23 Ultra, Pixel Series, Vacuum Pump Mobile Waterproof Pouch - Charcoal Grey The Spigen Waterproof Mobile Pouch (A601) is a clear, lightweight pouch that fits phones up to 8.2 inches. With IPX8 certification, it protects your device up to 30 metres underwater. The soft PVC lets you scroll with ease, even while submerged. It also holds essentials like cash and cards, making it a solid pick for swimming and travel. What are buyers saying on Amazon?Buyers love the secure seal, crystal clarity, and easy touchscreen use. It's compact enough yet roomy for the essentials. Spigen Waterproof Mobile Pouch (A601) for iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel and All Other Smartphones up to 8.2 Inches, Mobile Waterproof Pouch (IPX8 Certified, Pack of 1) - Crystal Clear The ESR waterproof phone pouch is built for the iPhone 14 Pro Max and 15 Pro Max, combining full underwater touch sensitivity with a float-ready design. Certified IPX8, it keeps your device dry up to 30 metres deep. Its snug fit, responsive buttons, and buoyant sponge layer make it a reliable pick for beach trips and underwater activities. What are buyers saying on Amazon?Praised for its snug fit, solid waterproofing and floating design, though some note the case must be removed before use. ESR 1 Pack Waterproof Phone Pouch for iPhone 15 Pro Max/14 Pro Max, Underwater Touch Sensitivity, IPX8 Floating Waterproof Cellphone Case with Lanyard, Dry Bag for Snorkeling, Black The BOBO Universal Waterproof Pouch is a practical dry bag-style case that fits a wide range of smartphones. With IPX8 certification, it offers reliable water, snow and dirt protection. Its transparent build keeps your phone visible on both sides, making it handy for snapping photos or checking notifications. Great for the beach or pool, with a basic snap lock and neck strap. What are buyers saying on Amazon?Appreciated for keeping phones dry and looking neat, though the screen response and fit vary across different phone sizes. BOBO Universal Waterproof Pouch (Big Size) Cellphone Dry Bag Case for Smartphone – Transparent (Pack of 1) The JOTO waterproof phone pouch is made for smartphones up to 6 inches, offering protection for beach days and poolside lounging. It features clear windows on both sides for easy photo-taking and screen visibility. The IPX8 rating promises water resistance up to 30 metres, while the simple snap lock and included neck strap keep things practical and hands-free. What are buyers saying on Amazon?Buyers like the fit and affordability. Opinions are mixed on water resistance and touchscreen performance during underwater use. JOTO Pouch Case For Apple iPhone 6S 6,6S Plus, SE 5S 7, Samsung Galaxy S7, S6 Note 5 4, HTC LG Sony Nokia Motorola up to 6.0 ( Polyvinyl Chloride|Black ) For anyone after a waterproof phone pouch for swimming that's reliable, touch-friendly and travel-ready, these options offer solid protection without fuss. Keep your phone dry and your snaps coming. Zouk: Meet modern vegan designs, rooted in Indian artistry Vegan handbags for the modern professional: Work smarter, carry kinder Vegan leather handbag brands that will transform the way you style! Bag the one you want: Get handbags that speak your language. Yes, many waterproof phone pouches are designed specifically for swimming and offer protection up to 30 metres underwater. Most pouches have a clear, touch-sensitive window allowing smooth screen use underwater or on land. Check the pouch's maximum device size; many fit phones up to around 8.3 inches diagonally. Yes, they are made to be durable and reusable for multiple water activities with proper care. Disclaimer: At Hindustan Times, we help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and products. Hindustan Times has an affiliate partnership, so we may get a part of the revenue when you make a purchase. We shall not be liable for any claim under applicable laws, including but not limited to the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, concerning the products. The products listed in this article are in no particular order of priority.
Telegraph
13-03-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2024) review: The best Kindle for most people
This article contains affiliate links. The products or services listed have been selected independently by journalists after hands-on testing or sourcing expert opinions. We may earn a commission when you click a link, buy a product or subscribe to a service. Our rating: 9/10 We like: A great reading experience IPX8 waterproof Heroic battery life We don't like: No page-turning buttons £30 more than predecessor £10 surcharge to remove ads What is the Kindle Paperwhite (2024)? The Kindle Paperwhite is the second rung on Amazon's e-book reader ladder, packing in a few extras that the regular Kindle can't match. Design-wise, it's an inch larger, measuring seven inches from corner to corner and it has an e-ink display that sits flush with the bezels, rather than being slightly indented. From a functional point of view, it doubles the estimated battery life from six weeks to 12, comes with an adjustable warm light to avoid eye strain associated with blue light reading and benefits from IPX8 protection, meaning you can leave it in two metres of fresh water for up to an hour without damage. These additional features will set you back £159.99 (or £169.99 for an advert-free lock screen), which is a £30 increase from the previous version. If you want to push the boat out, you can also buy the £189.99 Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. It's largely the same but includes an auto-adjusting front light sensor, supports wireless charging and doubles the internal storage from 16GB to 32GB. Why you can trust Telegraph Recommended Our thorough, real-world tests will always help you find the best product at the best price. No manufacturer ever sees copy before publication and we do not accept payment in exchange for favourable reviews. Visit our Who We Are page to learn more. How we test e-readers With limited functionality by design, testing e-readers like the Kindle Paperwhite largely boils down to a whole lot of reading. With their e-ink screens, battery life generally reaches weeks rather than hours, which makes for plenty of page-turning. Along the way, we're looking for the important aspects that impact the reading experience. We assess how the hardware feels in the hand, the battery life, the quality of the screen, how fast and usable the software is and whether the storefront book library has everything we might want to read. Though none of these can magically turn a turgid book into a gripping virtual page-turner, we do like our e-book readers to enhance, rather than hinder the experience. That means we're looking for comfort, stamina and as few distractions as possible. Design and features: 9/10 The 12th generation Kindle Paperwhite looks identical to the previous model, which was released back in 2021. Were it not for the fact that my older review model is scuffed from travel and use, I might have grabbed the wrong one when taking pictures and video for this review. I'm convinced you wouldn't have noticed the difference, even though it is marginally smaller with a 6.8-inch screen instead of the 7-inch panel in use here. Why change a winning formula, though? The Kindle Paperwhite is a great-looking device that is well weighted and comfortable for one-handed reading over long periods. Not only does it have a 16% larger screen than the entry-level Kindle – enough for around 30 more words per page at font size five – but the screen is flush with the bezels for a more premium all-in-one look. On the inside, the capacity has doubled over four years, going from an initial 8GB of internal storage to 16GB. That may seem like an unnecessary upgrade but once you realise that Kindles can now play your Audible books, it makes a lot more sense. 16GB is enough for around 8,000 text-based books but only 50 or so audiobooks. That's the same capacity as the cheaper Kindle, but the Paperwhite has one big design ace up its sleeve: it's waterproof. The IPX8 rating means it's built to sit in two metres of fresh water for up to 60 minutes. This drops to 0.25 metres and three minutes in seawater, but if your Paperwhite is deeper underwater than that, then you probably have more pressing problems to deal with. The only downside to the Kindle Paperwhite's design is the lack of physical page-turning buttons. However, as these haven't been a feature on Amazon's e-readers since the discontinued Kindle Oasis, it's hardly surprising they haven't been reintroduced here. Display: 10/10 The other big advantage the Kindle Paperwhite has over the basic Kindle is its adjustable warm light. This lets you tweak the white balance of the screen for a more comfortable reading experience, as blue light has been linked with eye strain and sleeplessness. In other words, if you read to help you drift off at night, the Paperwhite should help rather than hinder. The Kindle Paperwhite warm light can be adjusted across 24 levels, ranging from white to a sepia tone and if you don't want a yellow tint all the time, you can schedule the colour shift to change with the time of day. By default, automatic scheduling will kick in at sunrise and sunset, but you can set it for any time of your choosing in the settings. Even as someone who spends most of his life no more than a metre from a blue-light-packed screen, I've never had any trouble sleeping and it seems some people are more affected than others. Nonetheless, the customer reviews section of the various Kindle Paperwhites is packed with testimonials from those who swear by it and at the very least it's a nice option to have. Otherwise, the Kindle Paperwhite's screen has the same 300 ppi resolution and 94 nits of brightness as the other models. Text is crisp and easy to read and the paper-like look and feel of e-ink displays beats tablet and phone screens any day of the week. Battery life: 10/10 Other than readability, the other big advantage that e-ink screens have is their enormous battery life. Each page turn works like an Etch-A-Sketch, where content is removed and rewritten. Other than page-turning, the battery on e-readers is only sipped for the backlight, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, meaning they can last for weeks on a single charge. Even by e-reader standards, the latest Kindle Paperwhite's battery is impressive. Amazon says that it will last 12 weeks, which is twice that of the basic Kindle and 14 days more than the Kindle Colorsoft. Of course, usage will vary wildly depending on how much you read, but Amazon is transparent with how it calculates that figure. It assumes the average user will read for half an hour a day with Wi-Fi disabled and the screen brightness set to 13 out of 24. Even without the small-print mitigations, this largely matches my experience of the Kindle Paperwhite's battery life. After an hour of reading, the battery fell just two per cent, though audiobooks can be harder on stamina thanks to the added demands of enabling Bluetooth. That said, you may not notice a real difference: an hour's Audible use with the screen off saw the battery drop from 32% to 30%. Storefront: 8/10 The Kindle relies on Amazon's own book store which is both extremely liberating and rather restrictive. On the one hand, the choice of books is second to none with millions of titles available. Amazon's algorithms are also very good at guiding you towards titles that may be of interest. Unless you're hunting for something very obscure, chances are that it's here and competitively priced as well. For readers who aren't sure what they want, Amazon also offers the Kindle Unlimited service, which gives users an all-you-can-eat Netflix-style buffet of books to read for £9.49 per month. Add in the regular 99p daily deals and the fact that you can get free samples of books to try before you buy, it's easy to forget that the undeniable convenience comes at the cost of flexibility. That's the downside of the Kindle hardware. Unlike rivals from Kobo, which allow you to shop around storefronts for the best price, Amazon pushes you towards its own storefront. Yes, you can send other files to your Kindle, but it's more fiddly than just using the store and this is likely by design. In the great Kindle vs Kobo battle, that's a win for the plucky opposition. Software: 9/10 Aside from some note-taking specifics exclusive to the stylus-wielding Kindle Scribe, there isn't much difference in terms of software between Kindles. While it can take a little while to get your bearings, the features that are included are sensible and add to the reading experience without bogging you down in too much choice. A tap at the top of the screen reveals a handful of options related to different fonts and text sizes, notes, bookmarks and the ability to search within the title you're reading. Notes can be added to the page by touching and holding the text you want to highlight. By default, the Kindle will highlight text that's been seen as noteworthy by a sufficient number of other readers, too. It's a nice touch, highlighting details you might otherwise miss, but you can turn it off if you think you run the risk of foreshadowing plot points or seeing other inadvertent spoilers. You can also look up words you're unfamiliar with by highlighting them. This will provide either a dictionary definition or a Wikipedia summary of notable people and places. The only real annoyance about the software is that Amazon still insists on charging £10 extra to remove lockscreen adverts at the time of purchase. To be clear, these aren't the obnoxious pop-up ads that you might be accustomed to online but are instead book covers for titles you might like when the Kindle isn't switched on. However, it still feels cheap for a product costing over £150 to be ad-supported, no matter how discretely said ads are implemented. Technical specifications While the Kindle Paperwhite's more expensive siblings introduce a colour screen and handwritten notepad functionality, the closer comparison is the basic Kindle, which sells for £65 less. While it shares the capacity and screen resolution, it has half the battery life and no waterproofing to speak of. It also lacks the warm light, making it a poor choice for bedtime readers. Still, its smaller size does make it the best Kindle for travel. Telegraph verdict: 9/10 For most people, the Paperwhite is the best Kindle you can buy. While it shares a lot of its DNA with the cheaper basic Kindle, I'm satisfied that the extras it provides add up to £65 of value. With double the battery life, a larger screen, waterproofing and warm lighting, these are all great additions for e-readers, making the Kindle Paperwhite more flexible than its cheaper cousin. In short, it gets the balance right and while fans of graphic novels may want to spring extra for the Kindle Colorsoft (£269), if you just want the best e-reader for reading text, then you should look no further. FAQs Is the Kindle Paperwhite waterproof? The Kindle Paperwhite has IPX8 protection, which means it can survive in up to two metres of fresh water for up to an hour or 0.25 metres of seawater for three minutes. Does the Kindle Paperwhite support audiobooks? Yes, the Kindle Paperwhite audiobook support comes via Amazon-owned Audible if you have an account. If you own both the Kindle and Audible versions of a book, the e-reader will sync them to the same spot, so you can mix and match your reading habits without worrying about keeping track. How long does the Kindle Paperwhite battery last? The Kindle Paperwhite's battery will last up to 12 weeks, based on half an hour of reading per day. Our testing found that using the e-reader for audiobooks will drain it at a similar rate. Is the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition worth the extra money? The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition costs £189.99 and is £30 more than the ad-supported regular Paperwhite. For the extra money, the storage doubles to 32GB, the lighting adjusts itself automatically and it adds support for wireless charging. It also doesn't have lockscreen adverts. Whether these changes add up to £30 of value depends on how many books and audiobooks you have and if you would spend £10 removing the ads anyway. Can you adjust the brightness and warmth of the Kindle Paperwhite's screen? Yes, both screen brightness and warmth can be adjusted on the Kindle Paperwhite on a scale between 1 and 24.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Yahoo
The best foldable phones for 2025
Foldable phones are no longer a gimmick — they're here to stay, and they're better than ever. Whether you love the nostalgia of a flip phone or want the versatility of a near tablet-sized display that fits in your pocket, today's new foldable devices are packed with cutting-edge tech. Brands like Samsung, Google and Motorola are leading the charge, pushing the boundaries of what a smartphone can do with sleek designs, powerful AI features and seamless traditional smartphones, foldable phones give you the best of both worlds: a compact form factor when you need portability and a big screen when you want to stream, game or get work done. Plus, with advancements in durability, better outer screens and flagship-level specs, these phones are more practical than ever. Whether you're eyeing the latest Samsung phones or curious about what's next for foldables, we've rounded up the best options to help you For this guide, we're focusing on devices that are widely available in North America and Europe. That's because while there are even more options for people who live in Asia (especially China), they are often difficult to buy from abroad and may not support your local carriers. Best foldable phones for 2025 How we test foldable phones Are foldable phones worth it? A note on durability When evaluating new foldable phones, we consider the same general criteria as we do when we're judging the best smartphones. Devices need to have good battery life (at least a full day's use), bright inner displays (peaks of at least 1,000 nits), sharp cameras and responsive performance. That said, foldable phones come in different shapes (and sizes); there are varying designs that may appeal to different types of people. For those who prefer more compact and stylish devices, flip phone-style foldables resemble old-school namesakes but with flexible interior displays (typically six to seven inches diagonally) and smaller outer screens, often referred to as the cover display. Alternatively, for power users and people who want to maximize mobile productivity, there are larger book-style foldables (with seven to eight-inch main displays) that can transform from a candy bar-style phone to essentially a small tablet when opened. Aside from their displays, the biggest difference between foldable phones and more traditional handsets is durability. That's because while some models like the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung's foldables offer IPX8 water resistance (which is good for submersions of up to five feet for 30 minutes), their flexible screens – which are largely made from plastic – present some unique challenges. Most foldables come with factory-installed screen protectors. However, unlike regular phones, users are instructed not to remove them without assistance from approved service centers. Thankfully, Samsung phones do offer one free screen protector replacement for its foldables, while Google charges between $29 and $129 depending on the warranty status of your device. That said, while we can't do long-term testing for every new foldable phone on the market, after personally using the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Fold 4 each for a year, I've found that Samsung's pre-installed screen protector tends to start bubbling nine to 12 months after purchase. So you'll probably want to factor in that your foldable may need some sort of servicing after about a year unless you plan on removing the screen protector entirely (which is possible, but goes against most manufacturers' instructions). Furthermore, foldable phone owners need to be mindful about keeping sharp objects away from their flexible displays, as rocks, keys or even pressing down very hard with a fingernail can leave permanent marks. In the event that you need to get a flexible screen serviced, you're potentially facing a much higher repair bill when compared to a typical phone (up to $500 or more depending on the model and the severity of the damage). In short, while the ruggedness of foldable phones has improved a lot, they're still more delicate than traditional handsets, which is something you need to account for. However, foldables continue to evolve, with better AI features, improved specs and a more refined form factors that makes them even more practical. Whether you're after a flip phone for nostalgia or a big screen device for multitasking, today's foldable phones offer exciting possibilities — you just have to decide if they're the right fit for you.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The 2024 Kindle Paperwhite drops to its lowest price of the year
If you're not one for carrying lots of books around then an e-reader is the way to go. Right now, you can get the 16GB Amazon Kindle Paperwhite for $135, down from $160. The 16 percent discount brings the device to just $5 more than its Black Friday price. Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite came out in 2024 and offers a seven-inch glare-free display with 300ppi resolution. It also has up to 12 weeks of battery, an adjustable warm light and a flush-front design. Plus, its IPX8 certified waterproof and Audible through Bluetooth. The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which retails for $200, is our choice for best premium ereader. It offers 32GB of storage, wireless charging and an auto-adjusting front light sensor. We gave it an 85 in our review when Amazon released it late last year. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
