Instant upgrades

ONEPLUS 9

FIRST ADD THESE…

ONE BELKIN 15W WIRELESS CHARGING STAND

If you’re about to cough up £70 on the official OnePlus Warp Charge 50W wireless charger made for the 9 Pro, don’t do it! Why? Because the 9’s wireless charging speeds cap out at a mere 15W. For just half the price, you can pick up a fancy Belkin charger that’s as fast as you need it to be. £35 / belkin.com TWO CHIPOLO ONE OCEAN EDITION

AirTag? Jog on, Apple – as an Android user, you ought to have an OS-neutral way to find your house keys. The Chipolo One is loud and water-resistant, and if you pick up the blue Ocean Edition you’re doing your bit in two ways: it’s made from recycled fishing nets, and $1 of your cash goes to an ocean cleanup charity. £26 / chipolo.net THREE ANKER LIFE P3

A smartphone earbud upgrade doesn’t have to cost the earth, even if you want the sort of smarts and active noise-cancelling offered by Apple’s AirPods. Anker’s new Life P3s have three ANC modes – indoor, outdoor and transport – plus sizeable 11mm drivers and a total of six microphones to ensure clear phone calls and voice commands. £80 / uk.soundcore.com

NOW TRY THIS… INSTANT UPGRADES

THEN GET THESE…

1 TOOL UP

OnePlus’s OxygenOS interface adds some handy shortcuts to Android – such as the Toolbox, giving you shortcuts to stuff like the selfie-cam or a timer. Swipe down from a home screen and you’ll see a load of boxes – step counter, quick notes and so on – but Toolbox is where you customise shortcuts by tapping on the pencil icon at top-right. This also works with Google apps, Twitter, Outlook and more. 2 LIGHT UP

Want to look after your eyes but make the most of that excellent AMOLED screen? Open settings and hit Display, then switch on Comfort Tone so the colour balance looks great whatever the ambient lighting is like. Next, control how much blue light the screen emits by tapping Vision Comfort (which will turn everything a bit orange); and fire up dark mode to save your retinas and your battery. 3 LINK UP

The OnePlus 9 can project from its screen to a monitor or TV through a wired connection… and if you have a laptop with a USB-C port that you hook up to a big screen, you probably already have the right dongle. Whether you need to improvise for a dead laptop at a meeting, want to blow up a video or fancy some not-so-mobile gaming with a Bluetooth joypad, the 9 is up to the challenge.

4 SHARPEN UP

If you think it’s only the 9 Pro that offers Hasselblad imaging, you’re mistaken. The whole series sees the legendary camera brand upgrade your phone photography experience, from the manual mode interface through to the level of polish in the pictures themselves. To fire up that manual mode with its pro features, open the camera app, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and select H Pro. 5 TIGHTEN UP

Sure, the Google screen (to the left of your home screen) is genius. It uses whatever info Google can get its mitts on to curate a newsfeed that couldn’t be more ‘you’ . But if ever there was a case of something being too good and therefore distracting, this is it. To shut down this recipe for addictive death-scrolling, pinch your home screen, tap on Home Settings and toggle Google off. 6 SHUT IT UP

Don’t ignore OnePlus’s handy little Alert Slider. It’s located on the top-right side of the phone and lets you quickly switch between silent, vibrate and sound-on, without having to unlock your phone. Slide up to mute the phone, slide down a little to switch the ringer back on, and slide all the way down to turn on vibrate mode. Deeper control is available in settings, under Alert Slider.

STOP MOTION STUDIO PRO

Push the OnePlus 9’s camera to the limits by trying to reboot Morph as a ninja assassin in your own stop motion movie. This app has all the tools you need. £4.99

MY HERO ACADEMIA: THE STRONGEST HERO

Anime fans! My Hero Academia is on Android, in a game that exploits the Snapdragon 888’s full power. £free (IAP)

NOOM

Coming out of lockdown to July heat, none of our summer clothes fit. You too? Noom could help. Not just a diet app, it deals in long-term behavioural psychology and education. from £17.25/m