MURMER GADGET

Imagine. Youre buying something exciting and expensive. The sales person makes you an offer. You can have 1/8 off the sticker price if you agree to just one thing: from time to time, the sales person would come round to your house and punch you in the face. The new iPhones and iPads are a bit like that. Apple has made the iPhone 5C cheaper and its brought the iPad 4 back from the dead, and in both cases its selling them with lower amounts of storage: 16GB in the case of the cheapest iPad and just 8GB in the lowest-cost iPhone 5C . 8GB ? My email signatures bigger than that. Size matters Okay, not really. But despite my best efforts to export my photos and videos, my ruthless culling of infrequently used apps, my diligent deletion of read messages and mail and my streaming from iTunes Match and Spotify, Ive still got 23GB of stuff on my iPhone and even more on my iPad. If youre reading this, youre clearly into tech. Youre an HD-shooting, app-using, downloading-for-offli...

Have you noticed that it’s easier to find a perfect mid-range smartphone than a high-end one? That’s because, alongside all the new mid-range devices, you also have the option of buying a former flagship that’s old enough to be downgraded to the mid-range category. There are plenty of ex-flagships that can still provide a great user experience - assuming that you don’t necessarily need the very latest CPUs, or crazy screen resolutions that were unimaginable some years ago.  Of course, in addition to having more options to choose from, getting a mid-range smartphone also saves you money (though, as you’ll see, that’s not always the case). This being said, check out our selection of ex-flagships that can now be purchased as mid-range handsets, and let us know if theres any other device that we shouldve included in the list - which, by the way, is in alphabetical order.   Apple iPhone 4S The iPhone 4S 8GB is Apple’s only smartphone that’s available for less than $500 off-contract...