Devices
What is actually inside a smartwatch, and why the battery is the whole design
Every decision in a wearable — screen, sensors, radios, thickness — is downstream of a cell the size of a coin.
Farida Osei
Networks writer, Tech Behind Things
Farida writes about wireless standards and spent six years in network engineering before switching to explaining it.
Contact Farida through our contact page — mark your message for their attention and it will be passed on.
16 articles
Data & Privacy
What a website knows about you before you click anything
Identification does not require cookies any more. Understanding what replaced them explains why blocking cookies changed so little.
Devices
Your phone camera is mostly software, and that is not cheating
The sensor is smaller than a fingernail. Almost everything that makes the picture look good happens in the fraction of a second…
Devices
What a higher refresh rate actually buys you
The number describes how often the screen redraws, which is only one of the delays between your finger and a response.
Devices
Why two laptops with the same chip perform very differently
A processor model number describes the silicon. What it can sustain depends on the cooling the manufacturer put around it.
Devices
The nanometre number on a chip stopped being a measurement
Process node names were once a physical dimension. They are now marketing labels for a generation, and the industry says so.
Devices
What a waterproof rating actually promises, and for how long
Ingress protection numbers describe a laboratory test on a new device. Most of the ways people get devices wet are not in the test.
Devices
More memory does not mean more apps stay open
Phones and laptops manage memory by predicting what you will need, and the prediction is tuned for battery life as much as for…
Devices
Why your device is glued shut, and what the glue is actually doing
Adhesive is not laziness. It is load-bearing, and understanding what it carries explains why repair got harder.
Data & Privacy
Your page view is auctioned in the time it takes the page to load
An advertising slot triggers a real-time auction among many bidders, and the bid request is where the personal data goes.
Data & Privacy
Anonymised data is frequently not anonymous
Removing names is not the same as removing identity, and combinations of ordinary attributes are often unique.
Devices
Why noise cancelling silences an engine but not a conversation
Cancellation is arithmetic performed against a deadline set by the speed of sound, and high frequencies arrive before the…
Devices
Where a phone hides its antennas, and why your hand is part of the circuit
The metal band around the edge is not trim. It is a set of radiating elements, and the gaps interrupting it are the design.
Devices
Why a device that thin cannot make bass, and what it does instead
Low frequencies mean moved air, and there is almost none to move. Everything you hear as depth from a phone is reconstruction.
Devices
How a receiver finds itself by listening to four clocks it cannot see
Satellites broadcast time, never your position. Everything else is arithmetic performed on signals weaker than the noise around…
Devices
Phone glass is strengthened by swapping atoms, and it still breaks
Hours in a hot salt bath leave the surface permanently squeezed. That compression is the whole defence, and a deep scratch walks…