Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

This was one of the few Studio Ghibli films I had not seen up to now - strangely, as it might be one of the titles most admired and talked about, apart from perhaps Spirited Away (2001). This one's a harrowing tale of war, poverty, pride and loss based on the real-life experience of the book's author (more on that later). Once again, I'm not going to try and hide spoilers here in order to have my say fully. So Spoiler Alert - watch it first!

The film's original Japanese title is Hotaru no Haka, and it's a story set at the very tail-end of WWII in Kobe, Japan. We join a small family - mum, son and daughter - as they duck and dive into shelters with air-raid sirens blasting while wave after wave of American B-29 Superfortress bombers drop their payloads. The campaign targeted major Japanese industrial cities, including Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka and Nagoya, between March and August 1945. The family lives in a large residential district in houses made of wood and paper, making matters worse and the bombings ended up with over 100,000 people left homeless and thousands dead in a single day.

In actual fact, we need to step back a bit because the real opening scene of the film depicts tragedy in advance of our story. A teenage boy named Seita (the son) dies of starvation surrounded by indifferent passersby. A janitor clears Seita's belongings and throws away a rusty fruit-sweet tin. When it hits the ground, the spirit of Seita's four-year-old sister, Setsuko (the daughter), emerges alongside a cloud of fireflies. Reunited as spirits, they board a ghostly train, reflecting on the months leading up to their deaths. So there's the major spoiler to end all spoilers!

Anyway, back to June 1945 during these air raids: we see Seita bury some supplies in the very wet yard of their home while sending his mum ahead to the bomb shelter. The air raid destroys their home and neighbourhood. Afterward, Seita finds his mother at an emergency medical station, critically burned across her entire body. She dies shortly after, though Seita hides her death from Setsuko to shield her from grief. Seita is significantly older than Setsuko, so amid all this chaos, it's up to him to try and protect her as they slip into survival mode.

Incidentally, their dad is a sailor away serving in the Imperial Japanese Navy. With little choice, the siblings head for their aunt's house in Nishinomiya. At first, things are manageable, but as food shortages worsen, the aunt grows increasingly bitter and resentful. She criticises Seita for not working or contributing to the war effort and accuses both of them of eating food they didn't earn or deserve. She's a nasty piece of work when under pressure and eventually forces Seita to sell his mother’s silk kimonos to buy rice. When Setsuko tells Seita how unhappy she is there, they decide to leave. They make home in an abandoned, damp lakeside bomb shelter. Initially, life feels peaceful. They catch fireflies at night to illuminate their shelter. However, the next morning, Setsuko digs a small grave for the dead fireflies, revealing that she already knew their mum had died because their aunt told her.

As summer progresses, their food runs out completely. Seita starts stealing crops from local farmers and looting homes during air raids. When caught and beaten by a farmer, the local police release Seita, recognising his desperation. Setsuko's health severely deteriorates - she suffers from chronic diarrhoea, skin sores and even hallucinations caused by malnutrition. Desperate, Seita withdraws all the remaining money in his mother's bank account to buy food. While at the bank, he learns that Japan has surrendered unconditionally and the Imperial Navy fleet has been completely destroyed - meaning their father is almost certainly dead.

Seita returns to the shelter with food, only to find Setsuko hallucinating and trying to eat marbles and mud-cakes. He feeds her a small piece of watermelon. She thanks him, closes her eyes, and dies shortly after. This is clearly the scene in the film with the most emotional impact and, by this stage, the outcome that the uninformed viewer fears but hopes against. Seita uses the remaining money to buy coal and straw, cremating Setsuko's body on a hilltop inside a straw basket. He places her ashes into the Sakuma drops sweet tin. Alone and weakened by starvation, Seita wanders back to Kobe, where he dies at Sannomiya Station, as seen in the opening scene.

Directed by Isao Takahata (co-founder of Studio Ghibli alongside Hayao Miyazaki), the film was released in 1988 as a double feature alongside Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. Studio Ghibli released them together to balance the heavy tragedy of Grave of the Fireflies with the lighthearted optimism of Totoro.

The movie is adapted from the 1967 semi-autobiographical novella by Akiyuki Nosaka. Nosaka survived the Kobe air raids as a child, but lost his adoptive father and his baby sister to malnutrition. Nosaka wrote the book as a personal apology to his deceased sister, feeling lifelong guilt that he had prioritised his own survival over hers.

While widely viewed internationally as an anti-war film, director Isao Takahata repeatedly stated that he did not intend it as a political critique of war. Instead, he meant it as a cautionary story about extreme social isolation and pride, showing how Seita's decision to cut ties with society rather than endure his aunt led directly to his sister's death.

It's clearly a deeply sad film, but in between the moving sadness, we spend time with the siblings during moments of happiness and hope. But there's no getting away from it: it's a harrowing tale which all but the most hard-nosed viewers will be reduced to shedding at least one tear over - especially when it is known that this was all based on the true life experience of the author. So be warned. But enjoy it for the usual amazing Studio Ghibli animation, characterisations and soundscape. It's a bittersweet experience, but well worth the viewing.

Below (2026)

This is no ordinary review - more of a deep dive with Gemini in tow, to understand more of what was going on in this intriguing and somewhat sinister Newfoundland mystery. If you want a teaser review then this isn't it, so spoiler alert! Anyway, I was fascinated by this Netflix show, which aired this month in six fairly succinct episodes.

First up, I looked into a bit of the history of why there's a kind of mixture of Irish and Canadian accents. Turns out that there was a migration of Irish labourers during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Unlike later migrations driven by the Great Famine (1840s), the early migration to Canada (especially Newfoundland) came almost entirely from the southeast counties of Waterford, Wexford, Kilkenny, South Tipperary and Southeast Cork. British migratory fishing vessels stopped in southeastern Irish ports to pick up seasonal labourers, provisions and salt meat before heading across the Atlantic to harvest cod in North America.

Over time, these temporary workers settled permanently along the bays and coastlines of Newfoundland, parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Once settled in remote outports, these communities had virtually no contact with outside populations for over two centuries, and many ports were accessible only by boat until well into the 20th century. The Irish-Canadian communities preserved archaic 18th-century Irish English phonetic structures, vocabulary and grammar. So there's that! They never taught us any of this in history at school. Or maybe I wasn't listening! So, anyway - onto the giant squid story!

The series starts 40 years before the rest of the series' current events, all in the remote coastal town of Snook's Arm, Newfoundland. Calvin, a boy at the time, is on a boat with his family, pulling their 'floating' home to another location due to pressure - which we'll come to later - to relocate. The 'house' is attacked and starts to sink. Calvin's dad tries to rescue it but only gets himself trapped inside and subsequently drowns. The quick-thinking lad cuts through the tow-rope in order to save himself and the other members of the family.

So now, yes, leap forward 40 years and Calvin is all grown up and has two sons and a daughter - and his sister, Ruth, who was also in that tow-boat, is part of his life as well, acting now as the harbour-master of sorts. Calvin tries to scratch a living from fishing and anything else he can think of. His daughter, Mary, played by the very cute Ruby Stokes (Una), lives away but arrives back for a 'homecoming' event. She has a boyfriend with her, Noah, played by Kaleb Horn. One of the sons, Jay, played by Rohan Campbell (The Hardy Boys), has gone off to make money working on the rigs, but it turns out that he owes money to some people who, throughout the series, hound him for it. The other son, Wade, played by Charlie Heaton (Shut In, Stranger Things), has not left the town and supports his dad in whatever venture he's involved in. So those are the main players and characters.

One morning, the town awakes to see a huge iceberg in the bay; they discover a mysterious toxicity in the water and suffer power cuts. To make things worse, the town is haunted by historic trauma - decades prior, the wealthy Crocker family pushed for the town’s resettlement (back to that tow-boat and opening scene), ruining local livelihoods. As boats start to go missing and townspeople suffer strange symptoms, Dr Fonda Howander, played beautifully by Mackenzie Davis (Station Eleven, The Martian) at the Ocean Science Centre, investigates. Turns out that there's a huge, preternatural giant squid-like cephalopod defending that iceberg in the bay. She further discovers that the giant iceberg isn't just ice - it's an egg sac/nest. The sea creature isn't attacking boats and people out of malice, she is a mother protecting her unborn offspring, driven into warmer waters because of melting glacial ice caps (aha - the global warming 'message')!

While the town fears the sea creature, it turns out that the true villains are the Crocker family. Our leading man, adult Calvin, played by Josh Hartnett (30 Days of Night, Black Hawk Down), discovers mining permits proving the Crockers have known for years that vast reserves of cobalt and copper lie directly beneath Snook's Arm. They want to scare people off the land so they can buy it up cheap, mine the stuff, and make a fortune. Scooby-Doo episode, anyone? "If it wasn't for those pesky, meddling kids..!"

So the Crockers use the creature's attacks as an excuse to bring in the military, force an immediate evacuation of the town, and declare Snook's Arm uninhabitable. Realising what's going on, Calvin and his family defy the evacuation order. They take Calvin's boat (High Hopes) out into the bay, break the iceberg free from the harbour and tow the giant egg sac out into deeper, colder international waters. So the military stands down. In the deep ocean, the mother squid protects her egg sac until it breaks open. Because cephalopods reproduce semelparously (mating/spawning once before dying), she expends the last of her strength guiding her eggs into the deep and dies. Due to the warming ocean temperatures, Fonda later notes that none of the newly hatched baby squids survived.

However, back in Episode 5, Fonda had chipped a live baby squid out of an ice sample in her lab, which escaped into a cooler. That single hatchling remains unaccounted for. Aha - Season 2 afoot! A year later, Snook's Arm has survived. Armed with the truth about the mineral deposits, the townspeople refuse the Crockers' buyout offers and Calvin and his family open the "Big Squid Distillery & Brewery". There is a grand finale and a very final scene which certainly sets it up for a new season to be shot, as you might imagine. I hope they do it!

A word of warning about Episode 5. Apart from Fonda finding the little squid, the episode largely follows Calvin heading to a remote island after Wade goes missing following a sub crash. On this island, the story turns into a kind of folk horror, hallucinogenic hippy-trip with bizarre cult-like stuff going on. I got totally lost in that episode as to what was going on and how it fitted in, but I think I got there in the end! The family living there refused to be relocated 40 years back and developed a twisted local cult centred around worshipping the sea creature, which they call "Mudder", drugging people to keep them docile and impressionable! Calvin manages to snap Wade out of it and escape back to the mainland.

It's all quite complex, so keep watching and working out what strings fit where as you view, and you might keep up (better than I did)! It's very nicely shot, very well acted - certainly by the main leads - but the whole cast does well. It was created by Jesse McKeown, who made the whole series atmospheric and nicely produced. The word eerie comes to mind as low-lying fog often sweeps across the waters, and at any minute, we don't know what the creature might leap out of the water and do! There were clear nods to Jaws here and there - in fact, plenty of them, so that was fun to discover too.

It's a nice little series and kept my attention, even if it did meander off a bit during Episode 5! The six episodes and most are under 45 minutes long, so it's bingeable if you fancy. I watched it over two evenings and would recommend a viewing very much.

Starve Acre (2023)

As I headed into this film, I immediately thought of Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Lamb (2021), in which Noomi Rapace played a blinder. It captures that same slow-burn, grief-driven, atmospheric, isolated situation with something bonkers, surreal and unsettling going on (which I won't spoil here), wrapped up in a folk-horror envelope!

The tale is set in Yorkshire in the 1970s, and we are introduced to teacher/archaeologist Richard, played by Dr Who himself, Matt Smith! He's married to Juliette, played by Morfydd Clark (Saint Maud, Crawl), and living in the house with them is their son, Owen. Their son starts exhibiting disturbing and gruesome behaviour at a local school event, hearing voices before suddenly dying from a severe asthma attack (we see him with his inhaler during the early scenes).

Juliette falls into a deep depression, staying in bed mostly while local yoga/spiritualist folk try to cleanse the house and get her back on track. All a bit odd, and it plays out more like a séance than anything! Richard buries himself in his work, in more ways than one(!), on his late father’s land, searching for the remains of the Whistling Tree - an ancient, legendary oak associated with pagan rituals and a spirit named Dandelion Jack/Jack Grey.

While digging, Richard unearths the skeleton of a hare. Back in his study, the bones mysteriously begin generating tissue, muscle, and organs - eventually reanimating into a living, breathing hare! When Juliette discovers the creature, she becomes obsessively attached to it, viewing it as a chance to have something to love and care for following her loss. We now start to find out some stuff about Richard's father's abusive antics, and Richard becomes obsessed with his journals, which depict all sorts of folklore regarding the land and that tree.

We then head deeper into the 'needs' of said tree and land and what it is demanding of the people around the scene - by this time including Juliette's sister, Harrie, played by Erin Richards (Gotham), Richard's teaching colleague, and some neighbours (whom Richard and Juliette had previously distanced Owen from, as they claimed he was filling his head full of unhelpful stories). Things start to get a bit gory into the bargain, with some surprise twists!

The film is quite chilling in many ways: dark and sinister, perfectly set and filmed on those bleak Yorkshire moors, highlighting their isolation. Don't forget, also, that this was the 1970s, so no mobile phones or other mod cons - at one point, we see Harrie having to drive to an isolated phone box to make a call. The music and audio/sounds generally support this kind of eerie atmosphere too.

It's called Starve Acre because it was a derogatory name given by local farmers to a piece of land that was barren, infertile, corrupt at the root, or so poor that crops and livestock couldn't survive on it. The land is 'starved' because the ancient woodland spirit (Dandelion Jack/Jack Grey) trapped beneath the roots was drained of life when the tree was felled. As Richard's neighbour notes, "There's not an inch of soil that's still alive".

It seems to have been produced by House Productions and BBC Film, distributed by the BFI, written/directed by Daniel Kokotajlo (Apostasy) and adapted from the 2019 novel by Andrew Michael Hurley (known for rural gothic horror like The Loney). Morfydd Clark is great, delivering a haunting performance, and Matt Smith plays the quiet, repressed grief-ridden role - turning into obsession equally well. Don't give up, though - slow-burn as it is, the finale is a great payoff! The film is just over an hour and a half long and available widely on streaming services, especially BBC iPlayer and BFI or course.

Exhuma (2024)

This Korean film plays out very much like a ghost story with all sorts of supernatural and religious mumbo-jumbo along the way. It's kind of a film of two halves really, with the first being a classic haunted-ancestor ghost story type thing and the second an occult-ish historical commentary about Korea's national trauma during Japanese rule between 1910 and 1945 (which covered the entire Korean Peninsula, not just the South).

A wealthy Korean-American family who lives in LA is haunted by a mysterious affliction affecting their newborn baby and eldest male heirs. They hire two young shamans, Hwa-rim and Bong-gil, who diagnose the problem as a "Grave's Calling"—the restless spirit of the family's wealthy grandfather in Korea calling out to his bloodline. (Told you!)

Hwa-rim partners up with Sang-deok (an expert geomancer/feng shui master) and Yeong-geun (a veteran funeral director). When Sang-deok inspects the grandfather's grave—located on an ominous, unmarked hill near the North Korean border—he senses extreme negative energy and initially refuses the job. However, the family agrees to cough up a shed-load of cash and they decide to perform a ritual (Daesal-gut) to safely exhume the coffin and cremate it without opening it. (Hope you're keeping up!)

While digging, a worker accidentally kills a snake with a human face (Nure-onna) buried near the grave, disturbing the site's spiritual balance. Due to bad weather (which suspiciously arrived just as the snake was killed), the coffin is temporarily moved to a local morgue instead of being immediately cremated (because if they do it in the rain, the person has a 'bad' afterlife, or something)! However, a greedy morgue worker unlocks the coffin looking for treasure (which local legend says might be in there), allowing the grandfather's vengeful spirit to escape. (At this point I was only hanging in to look at the pretty Kim Go-eun (Love in the Big City)!)

Anyway—back to the spirit, who goes on a killing spree, slaughtering his descendants across Korea and LA. Before cremation, Sang-deok learns that the grandfather was an infamous pro-Japanese collaborator (Chinilpa) who betrayed Korea for wealth. He was buried at this specific spot on the advice of a mysterious Japanese monk named Gisune. (At this point I was wondering if even she could keep me locked in!)

After cremating the grandfather's body, Sang-deok returns to the burial mound to 'apologise to the land'(!) and discovers a second, massive coffin buried vertically directly beneath the grandfather's grave. This is where things pick up a bit and the mystery becomes a bit intriguing—so I was back in! The team brings this whacking great big heavy second coffin (which was almost falling apart but held together by barbed wire) to a nearby Buddhist temple. That night, an eight-foot-tall monstrous samurai demon—an Oni—bursts out of the coffin. (Yay!) It kills the temple worker, severely injures Bong-gil by impaling him and summons a floating ball of fire (Onibi) before returning to its grave.

Bong-gil is hospitalised, his body possessed by the spirit, while Hwa-rim realises this entity is vastly more dangerous than any ghost: it is a physical manifestation of a Japanese warlord fused with a cursed sword. Sang-deok realises the entire setup was a trap. During the Japanese occupation, Japanese occultists (led by the monk Gisune) drove iron stakes into strategic points along the Korean peninsula to sever its "spiritual spine" (a geomantic belief known as Baekdudaegan, where Korea is shaped like a roaring tiger and its waist was staked to paralyse the country). (I'm beginning to lose it again!)

And on it goes. You really have to pay attention if you want to keep up with this, especially if you can't get a dubbed version and have to read subtitles! All sorts of scares and jiggery-pokery ensue as the cast leaps about from the burial plot to the temple, cook up decoys, find fish to appease the ghost, head back to the hospital multiple times (with ruthless editing of the narrative, incidentally), being attacked, having organs removed, bodies possessed, throwing up black stuff, drowning the nasty creatures in horse's blood (no, really), setting fire to stuff and leaping from one perilous adventure-point to another, trying to stay alive—so they can make it to a wedding in the final scene! It's completely bonkers on so many levels!

So as usual with these adventures, it's a question of who will survive, if anyone, and who gets their body parts lopped off instead! Or ripped off by the 8ft giant Japanese ghost! I don't mean to make light of it if it's about a nation's relationship with an abusive history, but it is horribly complex and hard to keep up with, making one seek out the humour in it. It's brilliantly acted by the cast, I will say that, especially the main four leads, imaginatively shot as a horror/thriller, and certainly once I'd got past the halfway mark of the 2 hours 14 minutes, it was quite a thrill-ride, even if I wasn't ever 100% sure what was going on!

The film is one part spine-chilling folklore, one part historical exorcism and three parts complete narrative chaos. It might leave your head spinning—and send you straight to Wikipedia or YouTube to figure out what on earth you just watched—but thanks to magnetic performances from Kim Go-eun and Choi Min-sik, superb atmospheric cinematography, and sheer unadulterated madness, it remains a wildly entertaining ride. Just leave your brain at the door and keep up with the subtitles!

Sony Xperia 5 Mk IV (in 2026)

It's almost exactly four years on since my review of this dinky phone. I come back to it to see if it has stood the test of time and is usable as a primary phone for anyone in 2026. It's stuck forever on Android 14 and, as we know, was abandoned by Sony after two measly updates. However, Google continues to push Play System updates to keep it pretty much safe to use, even with banking apps. So what's missing? What's still great? What's worthy of note?

The first thing I remembered was how dinky it was. Even dinkier in all directions than my Sony Xperia 5 Mk V. It really is a tiny phone, even taking into account that 21:9 ratio. Apart from Pixel 3 and 4 phones, I think it's the smallest I have (certainly that is in any way usable now). So thin and light. Of course, the payoff for that is the width - making typing on the keyboard sometimes a challenge - and sometimes screen elements/text not quite rendering properly with text-wraps mid-word, for example. But nothing catastrophic. In a world of 6.8-inch screened devices becoming near-ubiquitous, this is a delight to hold and carry.

I've bombarded it with app updates today whilst charging it up—a combination, in my experience, which often challenges thermals—but honestly, there is only a slight 'warming' on the back, not blazing heat. I haven't found any apps that refuse to run, update or load. It even plays beautifully with the Pixel Watch 3 in every way (that is not Pixel-exclusive).

I do immediately note that I'm no longer used to having to work with 128GB of storage on phones. The new standard is certainly 256GB and, with many phones—particularly out of the Far East—512GB. Still, Xperia phones still have trusty microSD card slots, so all one's data can be bunged onto an expansion card. It's a little slower to read/write, for sure, but once apps' libraries are loaded the first time, it speeds up considerably. Some may be fine with 128GB in this day of streaming what is wanted, but I do like a backup!

Notification LED (Deep Dive Warning!)

Then we come to the two things that really draw me back here: the Notification LED—which, actually, goes some way to negating the need for a smartwatch at all—and the Always on Display's Album Art (which I'll come to later)!

There's a whole range of hardcoded system functionality built in by Sony, particularly around power and battery state: Solid Orange/Amber: Charging while battery level is between 15% and 89%; Solid Green: Fully charged (or reached 90%+ while plugged in); Flashing Red: Battery level under 15% when unplugged, or an overheating/charging error; Solid Red: Plugged in and charging, but battery is under 15%. Beyond battery status, the LED traditionally handled a full spectrum of app notifications: blinking white for standard SMS/RCS messages, missed calls and general system alerts; blue for Facebook, Signal, Outlook and X; green for WhatsApp, Spotify and Google Meet; yellow for Snapchat and Google Keep; cyan for Telegram; and purple for Viber, Discord and Twitch. I honestly never knew how extensive that list was!

However, a quick double-check with software developer Malcolm Bryant (of Freepoc fame) shed some fascinating light on how this actually works behind the scenes under Android 14—and why some of that functionality has shifted over time. As Malcolm explains, in the early days, Sony maintained a bespoke API that developers could tap into for fine-grained LED customisation. That was eventually discontinued. Today, LED control has to be handled strictly through standard Android "notification channels" (the granular categories you see under Settings > Apps > [App Name] > Notifications).

When a developer creates an app, they specify parameters for each channel: priority level, sound, and—though seldom used by modern devs—whether to enable an LED blink and what colour it should be. If an app developer explicitly codes a custom LED colour into their notification channel (like WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal still do), the app 'instructs' Sony's hardware to flash that specific colour. If an app doesn't specify a colour or relies entirely on default system notifications, Android 14 falls back to a basic blinking white light.

Back in Android 8, through to Android 11, the OS had a native system-level menu allowing users to manually assign custom LED colours to any app, regardless of what the developer intended. Google removed that native override menu in Android 13/14, so we can't blame Sony for its absence! The good news? If you want complete control back, Malcolm notes that third-party utilities (like Light Manager 2 or Notification Light/LED) work using a similar mechanism to his own Notification Reader. They hook into Android's notification listener service to detect incoming alerts, check for keywords or apps and trigger custom LED colours, pulse speeds and per-contact lighting.

So, to summarise Malcolm's neat breakdown

System Level: Sony directly controls the LED hardware for core phone states (like battery levels and charging errors); Developer Level: App developers can request specific LED colours via Android notification channels, though many modern devs don't bother; Third-Party Utilities: Apps like Light Manager 2 can listen for incoming notifications and force custom LED blinking for apps that lack native support.

A bit of a deep dive, but a proper look into a feature that Sony kept alive long after the rest of the market abandoned it!

Sony LinkBuds Clip vs Moto Buds Loop

I've recently been playing with the Sony LinkBuds Clip and Moto Buds Loop and, firstly, I think this form factor for casually worn earphones is totally the best, at least for me. No jamming stuff down the ear canal, no unwieldy over-ears all day—put these on, pair them up, and forget them. Particularly useful for notifications. A case in point is Malcolm's excellent Notification Reader. But before we get there, I'll just add that I was surprised that the Sony Sound Connect app gave me their own read-out notifications inside Scene settings for these Clips, just like it does for much newer hardware—in my case, the Sony Xperia 1 Mk VI. So kudos to them.

But further kudos to Malcolm, as his application only really started as an aside requested by one of our Phones Show Chat Podcast listeners who has no sight. I jumped on it and, I'm afraid, gave Malcolm loads more work ironing out bugs and stuff, which I don't think he was allocating his time for at the outset! But it really does well—and is much more developed with many more features than Sony's built-in one. For one thing, Sony's only works at all if you have their (recent) buds (or headphones) connected—it totally relies on their app. Malcolm's app makes that work for any headphones—or indeed via the phone's speakers. So when I use my Moto Buds Loop, it all works beautifully. And, into the bargain, I do think that they sound better—and have loads more battery life (like almost double)!

Always on Display Album Art (Deep Dive Warning!)

I told you I'd come back to this, and it's worthy of a section of its own for sure. It really is a feature that I like. Yes, it does use battery (but surely only a tincture if you have the AoD on anyway), but it's such fun to see the full album art on the AoD as soon as the screen times out. This is apparently down to Android's 'media subsystem' and how it handles streaming apps like YouTube Music, Spotify or BBC Sounds. When you stream a track on YouTube Music (even if you don't own the file or have it stored locally), YouTube Music's servers send 'the metadata payload' (Track Title, Artist, Album Name and a high-resolution Bitmap image of the cover art). When it starts playing, it creates a native Android service called a 'MediaSession'. As part of that session, the app pushes that artwork bitmap directly into Android's internal MediaMetadata cache memory.

So Sony doesn't need to hunt for local MP3 tags or search Google Images in the background. Instead, Sony’s AoD software simply asks the Android OS: "Is there an active MediaSession right now? If so, hand me whatever bitmap image is currently stored in MediaMetadata." Because YouTube Music (or Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music or whatever) fetches the high-res album art from its own cloud servers and hands it straight to Android, Sony’s display code just grabs that cached image from system memory and renders it on your screen. For local music files on your SD card, the music player app reads the embedded ID3 image tag directly off the file and pushes it to MediaMetadata.

So why don't I see a blank placeholder there if I play a locally stored file (which might have no image data)? Apparently, even in that scenario, modern media players and the Android OS handle missing metadata through a combination of local fallbacks: The Local Music Player App Does the Heavy Lifting: If you play an MP3 or FLAC file on an Android music player and the file itself has no embedded ID3 cover image, the player app immediately runs through a fallback routine before broadcasting its playback state: Folder/Directory Scan: The app checks the folder where the MP3 is saved. If there is a generic cover.jpg, folder.jpg, albumart.jpg, or .art file sitting in that same directory, the app uses that. Online Fetching: Most local players have an online artwork-fetcher enabled by default. The player reads the track/album title from the basic ID3 text tags, queries a public music database (like Last.fm, MusicBrainz, or Cover Art Archive) over Wi-Fi/cellular, grabs the matching cover, and caches it locally on your storage. App-Generated Graphic: If the app can't find anything online or offline, the app itself generates a fallback graphic — usually a coloured background with a stylised musical note, or a dynamically generated geometric pattern matching the artist's name.

Once the music player app settles on an image (whether real, fetched or generated), it passes that final bitmap image to Android's internal MediaMetadata buffer. Because Sony's AoD reads whatever image is held in the system's MediaMetadata cache: If the music app provided an image or generated art: Sony's AoD displays whatever bitmap the player app passed down. If the music app passed no image at all (null artwork): Sony's AoD doesn't crash or display a blank box. Its system software falls back to its own default system placeholder—a minimalist, blurred ambient gradient or Sony's clean, stock musical note motif. So you never see a completely blank space: either your music player app automatically fetched/generated something behind the scenes, or Sony's display software seamlessly filled the gap with its own system fallback graphic. I have to say though, having used a mixture of sources on/offline, connected or not, I don't ever remember seeing the album art not being there. For OEMs, this, then, doesn't seem like rocket science—so I wonder firstly why Sony took it away after the IV-series Xperia phones, and secondly why other OEMs are not doing it. I guess it must just come down to battery.

It does 'time out' from the AoD—and so to another Gemini-infused deep dive! Skip over this if you're not interested, but I find it fascinating, so I'm including it! That "disappearing act" isn't a random glitch or an arbitrary timer built into Sony's display software—it is driven by Android's system-level 'Foreground Service' policies acting on the media app. While a song is playing, the app (YouTube Music, Spotify, VLC) runs a Foreground Service with a persistent audio session. Android keeps this service alive at high priority and Sony’s AoD continuously renders the album art provided by that active session. When you hit Pause, the app signals to Android that audio output has stopped (PlaybackState.PAUSED). The app drops out of the active "Playing" state, but Android keeps the session warm in memory for a brief grace period in case you tap Play again.

To prevent paused apps from silently eating up RAM and battery in the background indefinitely, Android imposes strict limits on idle background services: The 2-Minute Grace Period: Once an app remains paused for around 2 minutes, Android's MediaSessionService automatically drops the app from the system's "Foreground" tier down to background idle. Service Termination (onDestroy): After dropping to background idle (usually between 2 and 10 minutes depending on OS battery management and RAM pressure), Android destroys the idle background service. Session Teardown: When the app's playback service is destroyed, Android releases the active MediaSession and clears the MediaMetadata bitmap buffer from memory. Because Sony's AoD software is purely a "passive listener" to Android's MediaSession, the moment the system clears the MediaSession from memory, Sony’s AoD detects that there is no longer an active track, gracefully fades out the album art, and reverts to the basic clock and notification icons. Sure enough, I timed it—sad wretch that I am—and it disappeared (using YTM) in 3 minutes. However...

...it came back on when a notification came in for another fresh 3 minutes, which is as a result of how Android manages media states. When a notification pops onto the screen, Android sends a broad system update signal across all active layout managers—including the lock screen and AoD controllers—which forces Sony’s AoD to re-query the OS: "Is there still a MediaSession registered?" Since YouTube Music was still sitting paused in memory, Android re-exposed the cached track metadata to the display engine, and the 3-minute timer reset!

If you want the album art gone immediately without waiting for Android's background rubbish collection, you can either swipe away the media player card (swipe down the notification shade and swipe away or long-press and dismiss the media player card, which explicitly calls MediaSession.release()). The app tells Android to tear down the audio session and wipe the MediaMetadata cache instantly. Sony’s AoD sees NULL art straight away and reverts to the standard clock. Or, of course, one can just stop the app via Recents, instantly killing the underlying process. So as long as that playback card is sitting in your drop-down shade, the app maintains a "warm" session that any incoming notification can wake back up!

But there is an exception here—if you deal with that incoming notification and the Notification LED continues to flash, the album art stays alive! When an unread notification arrives and the LED is actively pulsing, Android enters an "Attention Required" state. Under the hood, two specific system behaviours keep the artwork alive: Low-Level Power Lock: Because the phone hardware is actively driving the notification LED (blinking every couple of seconds), Android's Notification Manager holds a low-level power lock (PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK). While this lock is active, Android delays its aggressive background cleanup process. The OS assumes you are about to pick up the phone, so it deliberately postpones killing idle background services—including YouTube Music’s paused MediaSession. System State Refresh: Sony’s Ambient Display engine is wired to refresh its lock screen layout whenever a system state changes (like driving the LED pulse and listening for user interaction). Every time it refreshes, it queries the OS: "Is the media session still in memory?" Android replies: "Yes, because the system hasn't cleared the background service yet!" So the 3-minute idle timer won't get a chance to run its standard cleanup routine until the "Attention Required" condition resolves. Once you dismiss or open that notification (stopping the LED from flashing), Android releases the system wake lock. At that moment, the standard background countdown begins, and 3 minutes later, YouTube Music's cached session will finally drop out of RAM, taking the album art with it!

I bet Malcolm's the only person to have got this far!

Dynamic Vibration

This is a wonderful feature in which Sony's haptic/vibration motor picks up on the 'beats' of music being played (or any sound really) and tries, pretty successfully, to allow you to 'feel' the music in your hands—much like Nothing Phone does with lights instead. Another feature that Sony has stripped out with newer Xperia devices, incidentally. Again, I can only assume, because of battery consumption. It's particularly impactful if you're watching video in landscape, holding the phone between two hands right in front of your face. Now, I guess many people wouldn't want to look at this small screen to watch a film, but it might come in useful when you have some time to kill and have no other, bigger screens as an option. Anyway, it's pretty neat to have rather than not! I guess it is designed primarily for video-watching as, yes, it goes off if playing music and the AoD kicks in. There's a slider to adjust the level of vibration, much like for volume: Off, 1, 2, and 3 (most effect).

Speakers

These remain very, very good compared to even the most modern of phones. The Xperia 5-series was never quite as loud/qualitative as the 1-series, and the 5 Mk V is indeed slightly better than this 5 Mk IV, but, as I say, it remains very, very good. Put up against the 1 Mk VI it's significantly less powerful, but then all the 1-series Xperias have much more space in the phone's shell to enhance the sound—and yes, components, technology and software get better with time. But I doubt that 99% of people listening to this 2022 phone would have any complaints—particularly in isolation, not on a comparison testbench!

The stereo speakers fire forward from each end of the screen, making use of those rather sizeable bezels top and bottom (something that, incidentally, even now, Sony sticks with), and the soundstage, given the size and data above, is really very impressive. There's also the full, extensive Dolby Atmos suite to play around with and change the sound, as depicted in my original review. Nothing's changed here since then and it works beautifully, so perhaps have a re-read of that via the link above.

Battery

I've been using this phone now on and off for 3+ years and the battery holds up pretty much as it did on Day 1. Well, maybe not quite as good—I see from my review that I was claiming 2 hours and 45 minutes on my 10% Reading Test, and I did another of those today and it was more like 2 hours 30 minutes. It's a Li-Po 5,000mAh cell (the same as for all Xperia phones, even today) and because it's small and driving a 1080p screen (which I have set to 60Hz refresh rate)—and I have the AoD on the whole time (except for when it switches itself off in my pocket)—with my average daily use it's giving me 50% at bedtime, even on long days. As always, it totally depends on how you use your phone and this data is for my use, so your mileage on this will indeed vary! There's nice-and-safe 30W wired charging, which charges from flat in only just over an hour—and halfway there in half an hour—15W wireless and even 5W reverse wireless.

Specs

I was just reviewing the general specs on GSMArena to double-check the data and, you know, on release in 2022, it was very well specified. Mind you, for £949 it should have been! 5G, Gorilla Glass Victus on front and back for a level of protection (especially for those risking caseless), a lovely black (in my case) Aluminium frame, Nano-SIM and eSIM capability including Wi-Fi calling (VoIP) and IP65 and IP68 compliance for dust and water. The screen can refresh at up to 120Hz (though, as I say, I have it on 60 to save battery and can't tell the difference—maybe for gamers, eh!). The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (4nm) chipset feels totally fast enough in every way to me and there's that 3.5mm high-res audio jack for those wanting to plug in with wired ear/headphones. Bluetooth v5.2 is staggeringly good still, even though at the time of writing we're up to v6, and there's that 100% reliable side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Don't forget USB-C 3.2, OTG, and video output, which means that we can hook up to thousands of other screens and devices with a cable (as well as wirelessly). Connectivity on all fronts seems great still, including NFC and GPS for mapping—all still solid.

The OLED screen is gorgeous still too, with those deep blacks and loads of ways to adjust that in Sony's own display settings. It's so cute and dinky—the main difference between this, in that respect, and the 5 Mk V is that the latter certainly got fatter. The latter got fatter! It's technically not much (0.4mm), but in the hand, especially when using Sony's own Style Case (in which the sides are 'open'), it really feels thinner. Even more so if you take the cases off both. Because it's small, it's light at 172g and it really is a delight to use and carry, as I said! I'm OK still with the 21:9 and, in some respects, it's better. The only thing that I'd add is that Sony, with the 1 Mk VI, introduced a 19.5:9 screen aspect ratio. And since they are no longer producing the 5-series, I guess we'll never see that here. They have also adopted it for the 10-series in the same timescale, so if they had kept making the 5, presumably it would have been switched as well. So, pros and cons on the two aspect ratios—the main one for me is having a slightly better/wider keyboard experience.

Cameras

It does, of course, have native Sony Alpha camera support for those who dabble and three 12MP sensors including a 2.5x optical telephoto, Zeiss optics and T* lens coating on them all, eye-tracking in various modes, 4K video shooting and a load of other stuff. Check the link above to my review, as nothing has changed with the cameras since then, and you'll find my thoughts and links to other folk deep-diving on it in video and writing. What has been recently added (and taken away) from more modern Xperia phones is a merged camera software experience for the benefit of Joe Public—they are clearly trying to make their phones these days appeal more to the mass market (by bundling most of the camera stuff into a single app—and it works well) rather than nerdy photography geeks! This phone has 4 separate apps for all the photography stuff and, yes, it is confusing for most people (without an Alpha camera)! Most people like me are not going to use video anywhere near as much as stills cameras, and the physical shutter button can be long-pressed to invoke the base Photography Pro app—and that works just fine. Oh - did I mention that the phone has a physical two-stage camera button just in the right place when holding the phone in landscape, like you would a camera? Joy.

Verdict

So, is the Sony Xperia 5 Mk IV still usable four years later, stuck on Android 14..? And hello to those who have jumped straight here! Yes, absolutely. In fact, far from being a compromised compromise, stepping back to the Xperia 5 IV highlights everything that modern AI-saturated, mega-sized flagships have lost along the way. It has unrivalled ergonomics and utility: At 67mm wide and 172g, its pocketability and single-handed usability are virtually extinct in 2026. You still get a notchless 120Hz display, dual front-facing speakers, a 3.5mm jack, a microSD slot, a physical shutter button and the beloved notification LED—hardware features almost entirely abandoned elsewhere. There's a 'Pure' Android experience, free from intrusive generative AI pop-ups, forced cloud assistants or heavy OEM skins. It's running Sony's clean stock-like Android 14 interface which feels fast and refreshingly clutter-free. While Sony's official OS upgrades ended at Android 14, ongoing Google Play System updates continue to keep the core OS modules, media frameworks and Play Protect definitions current, keeping banking apps and daily services fully functional and safe. Driven by 8GB of RAM, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and a 5,000mAh battery (set to 60Hz), it sails through day-to-day messaging, web browsing, audio streaming and companion gear integration without missing a beat. It proves that when a phone’s core hardware foundation and software philosophy are this clean, it doesn't need the latest OS version or fancy AI tricks to be a delightful main device.

Deadgirl (2008)

This is an indie horror/thriller directed by Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel. It's dark, involves body horror, is disturbing to watch (and indeed to consider that it was made) and dives deep into the abuse of women, macho claims of sexual entitlement and poses some challenging moral questions. Well, for the characters, anyway. I'm sure that almost everyone watching it would know where the morality lies!

Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and J.T. (Noah Segan) are two high school teens in an unidentified town in America, living in poor-looking home situations with broken families and little opportunity. J.T. is cock-of-the-walk, overconfident, experimental in life, pushes boundaries and wants experiential fun. Rickie tries hard to be his moral compass, but J.T. is convincing and drags Rickie into all sorts of stuff, though we can see that Rickie is often not comfortable with it.

We join the story as we see that Rickie has eyes for his childhood sweetheart, Joann (Candice Accola), who is being kept out of reach by one of the macho school 'jocks', whom Joann clearly likes the thought of being with for social standing. We then spend some time with J.T. and Rickie as they skip their classes and head off for the day looking for adventure.

They end up breaking into an abandoned psychiatric hospital and have fun vandalising it, drinking and smoking. As they explore deeper into the basement, they find a naked, mute woman (Jenny Spain) chained to an autopsy table with plastic all over her. While Rickie wants to call the police, J.T. sees her move and realises that she's alive! After much poking and prodding and trying to work out what's what, Rickie gets cold feet and leaves the scene, heading for home. He almost calls the cops, but is interrupted and doesn't get around to it.

He returns to the scene, where J.T. has by now had his wicked way with her and, in the process, physically abused her in order to "control" her. So now we're into the theme of male domination and assumed physical rights. He also discovers that she can't die. At one point he actually shoots her with a gun, three times, and she survives. It's clear that the girl has been there for a long, long time, so something supernatural has clearly gone on - though the characters, trying to piece it together, suggest that she might have been a patient who medics were experimenting on.

Anyway, things go from bad to worse - sinister and dark to morbid, grisly and gory. Rickie tries to free her at one point, but when J.T. discovers this, he is enraged that his friend would spoil his "fun" and think differently from him about what he sees as a golden opportunity to keep her chained up as a captive sex slave, nicknaming her "Deadgirl". Having lost Rickie, J.T. decides to share the opportunity with another friend, so the secret starts to get out. Deadgirl takes opportunities where possible to bite anyone (or anything) in the vicinity, and once bitten, terrible things happen to them - some dying, and some living on as "undead" like her!

Usually I find this kind of horror funny, but this example doesn't evoke that at all. The themes are too nasty, and J.T. seems to turn very quickly into a sociopath - abusive, cruel and dehumanising a body that is clearly human and female. Rickie tries, as I said, to uphold any semblance of morality amongst all this chaos, but the film clearly implies that, apart from him, the school is full of like-minded males with little moral compass who are easily swayed towards gratification by someone who has gone loopy!

The film has never been banned, as such, but has been given '18' status in the UK and because of its themes of sexual assault, non-consensual graphic nudity and necrophilia (kind of), many mainstream digital platforms and physical retailers refused to carry or promote it.

Some acting notes of interest are that Jenny Spain, Deadgirl, had never acted in a film before and spent nearly the entire shoot nude, cold and covered in prosthetics! Shiloh Fernandez (Rickie) went on to star as David in Fede Álvarez's Evil Dead (2013). Candice Accola (Joann) shot Deadgirl just before landing her role as Caroline Forbes in The Vampire Diaries and Noah Segan (J.T.) went on to become a staple in Rian Johnson's films (Looper, Knives Out, Star Wars: The Last Jedi).

Anyway, the takeaway here amongst the mayhem is that usually in "zombie" films, the "creatures" - the undead - are mindless monsters, and humans are the survivors defending society. Here, the 'zombie' (though the filmmakers avoided using that term) is a victim and, actually, it's the living human teenagers who are the monsters. It's a challenging watch if you fancy it. It reminded me somewhat thematically of the film The Corpse of Anna Fritz (2015), which I reviewed previously. Deadgirl is actually quite hard to get hold of to watch in the UK just now, but it'll come around on streaming services.

Lanterns (2026) - A Guest Review by Chad Dixon

I've now finished watching this eight part HBO MAX TV series. If you come cold into this show without any previous knowledge of the 'Lantern' comics or haven't seen the 2011 'Green Lantern' film, then lots of it could seem a little bit confusing. However, I thought that the tale they told in this season was fairly straightforward.

Rushville is a small town in Nebraska and the strange goings on in this seemingly sleepy hamlet is something that Kyle and, on his first official outing, John have to investigate. Early on it's clear that there is a extraterrestrial entity involved - and a powerful one at that - so caution is needed!

I liked all the lead characters and the acting was pretty decent from everyone. Kyle Chandler is playing the Ryan Reynolds character and all those dysfunctional 'buddy cop' scenes with his protégé, John Stewart, played by Brit, Aaron Pierre was very entertaining. Kerry, the town Sheriff played by Kelly Macdonald is the other main player here and she is also brilliant! I personally find it amusing when there's a scene, just between two Brits when both of them are speaking in their American accents!

I didn't mind that there wasn't much all-out superhero smash-and-crash action and that the many dialogue-heavy scenes didn't contain too much banal exposition. The few flashback episodes were well done, providing good context for the motivation of the main protagonists and their various arcs all felt well-placed in the overall plot. It reminded me of the 'Watchmen' TV series that came out in 2019 which I also really enjoyed! I'm looking forward to Season 2 already.

30 Days of Night (2007)

This was a film directed by David Slade and adapted from Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's graphic novel - and it's a corker of a vampire tale which had passed me by until now. Seems like everyone else knew about it, however, as it is apparently one of the most eye-opening and stylised vampire films of the 2000s. I must do better tracking things down!

The opening scene of the film shows us a man standing in the snow, gazing across an icy landscape towards a dark and sinister-looking ship, appearing to be trapped in the ice. He turns around and walks slowly towards the isolated town of Barrow, Alaska (the most northerly town in the USA), where the townsfolk are preparing for - you guessed it - 30 days of night! The stranger, played by Ben Foster (Hell or High Water), arrives in town and systematically cuts Barrow off from the world! He burns all the town’s mobile phones, slaughters the local sled dogs, destroys the town's only helicopter and disables the power grid! He then heads for the town's café, tries to order a 'raw' burger, falls out with the waitress and gets himself thrown into the town's jail to cool off by the Sheriff (who we'll come to shortly), at whom he sneers "They're coming!"

Right - a bit of background - it's '30 days of night' because, actually, it happens every year up there and it's called the Polar Night. The sun sets and does not rise again for 30 days. In actual fact, the most famous location where this happens is Utqiaġvik (the setting that inspired 30 Days of Night), the northernmost city in the USA. The sun sets in mid-November and does not rise again until late January. It is not completely pitch black - while the sun never breaches the horizon, Utqiaġvik experiences several hours of twilight around midday before returning to complete darkness. However, in late December around the winter solstice, even that twilight shrinks to just a brief window.

Anyway, leaving the science lesson (and opportunity for this tale) behind, most residents leave, but Sheriff Eben Oleson, played by Josh Hartnett (Black Hawk Down), stays behind - referenced above, in action in the café! He's previously fallen out with his wife (of course he has - he's a cop - in a film), though we're not really sure why! So Stella, played by Melissa George (Triangle), has left him and has been living separately away from the town anyway. She's heading off to the airport for the last flight out, like many others. She's a State Fire Marshal and was visiting the town from her base in Anchorage, by chance, for work purposes. Anyway, she missed the flight - so is stuck there!

Once complete darkness falls, a clan of feral, ancient vampires - led by the cold and calculating Marlow, played by Danny Huston (Frankenstein, The Professor, The Dead Don't Hurt) - invades the town. Unlike traditional romantic, cool vampires, these creatures act like nasty predators, communicating in an unrecognisable language which involves 'clicking' and screeching a lot! They proceed to slaughter any of the townsfolk they can find, totally indiscriminately!

Eben, Stella, Eben's younger brother Jake, and a small group of survivors hide in a boarded-up attic, keeping quiet with lights dim to avoid being attacked and having their blood drained. They can see people outside from their peepholes running into the vampires and what they do to them. Days pass slowly. The vampires use horrifying psychological tactics, including leaving a wounded, crying girl in the middle of the street as bait to draw out any remaining humans!

As the weeks drag on, the survivors are forced to move around town for supplies, losing members who aren't quick or sharp-witted enough to avoid being nabbed along the way! Unlike the Eli Roth films I've been recently reporting on, the gore is subtly presented. Often off-camera and much more left to the imagination than in Roth's comedy-horror gore-fests! The after-effect is usually the more impactful here, with bloody scenes left after a neck-gnawing or three! There are some nasty scenes shown, but yes, all more subtly. The film heavily prioritised makeup and prosthetics over CGI. The gore, severed limbs, dark black vampire eyes and jagged teeth were apparently all physical appliances worn by the actors.

So at this point, it turns into something of a survival story with the remaining people - fewer than a dozen - hiding out, finding food and supplies whilst not being spotted, and the tension and suspense are often well done. Not quite edge-of-the-seat stuff, but certainly thrilling and chilling for the viewer! We head towards the finale of course, which is bombastic and which I won't spoil for you as to who, if anyone, survives!

It seems that the vampires chose this town because of there being no risk of sun to frazzle their skin while they feast for a month, but why this hasn't happened in previous years which had the same conditions, I'm not sure - nor is that explained. Maybe it has something to do with the stranger coming off that ship at the start.

The film was actually shot in New Zealand, as Alaska would have been too cold, where the production crew built a complete, snow-covered replica of Barrow at Auckland Film Studios, alongside outdoor sets in the Waitākere Ranges and snow scenes at the Waiorau Snow Farm in Wanaka (South Island). Sam Raimi produced the film but handed the directorial reins to David Slade (Hard Candy), though much of Raimi’s style shows through.

Danny Huston is scary in his makeup, beautifully portraying the leader of the vampires; Josh Hartnett is solid in the lead; Ben Foster as the stranger is gripping and somewhat terrifying - made very much so by camera angles and lighting, which, incidentally, were impactful throughout; and Melissa George almost steals the show, acting very well in the leading lady role. It's a cracking thriller, highly recommended and now all over streaming services in the UK.

Motorola Signature with Android 17

It's arrived! Beginning of October 2026, so having heard of those in other regions getting it in the last few weeks, I can now dive in and have a look at the differences. It was a fairly sizeable download at nearly 6GB, but with today's connectivity, generally, that's not a big problem - and it installed quickly enough. Reboot, done!

First up is September Google Security Patches, so that's good. Yeah, OK, it's October now, but in its first week we don't even get Pixel updates these days! So September is just fine. The Play System Update was already on September, but as you will know if you're reading this, Google is in charge of that, not the OEMs.

Talking of which, it's useful to separate what's Google's doing (and available to any OEM pushing Android 17 out) and what's Moto's in-house own doing.

The Battery Pill Dilemma

First, the Battery Pill. This one sits at the core platform level, standardising the 'pill' container for battery status and percentage readout. It was the one I was fearing - the Pill sitting behind the percentage number in the Status Bar being too small. Like it is with the Fairphone 6+ for example (even before Android 17), Samsung (until they released a Good Lock module feature to hide the pill completely) and Nothing Phone too initially (after much complaining they did make it a bit bigger, but still no way to remove it) - the list goes on. So Google, with base Android, needlessly copying Apple and screwing it up. Strangely the Pixel itself, although having a pill, kept it big - so no complaints there.

Moto has followed Pixel on this for the Status Bar - hurrah for Moto! But sadly, they haven't done the same on the Always on Display - boo! It's tiny and virtually illegible. Looks like the Fairphone one, in fact. Still, the Status Bar one is more important, at least for me, so I'll give them a pass on the AoD for now. I will give them feedback and hopefully, that will be fixed in a future update.

Upgrading to Android 17 on Motorola’s flagship hardware brings a real mix of core Android platform refinements and custom HelloUI features. Here is a list of what I'm finding as actually new, noticeable and worth having a look at.

Base Android Foundations (Inherited from Google)

Resizable Quick Settings Tiles

This is the most immediate visual change when pulling down the notification shade. When editing your Quick Settings grid, just like on a Pixel, you can now drag resize handles on individual toggles to switch them between compact 1x1 circular icons and 2x1 double-wide pills. This lets you double the density of available controls on a single view. There's no switching of orientation yet, like there is on other implementations from various OEMs, but that's bolt-on stuff by them, not core Android. Anyway, it's nice to be able to move stuff around up there and resize the tiles now.

Single-Tap Quick Settings Toggles

Google has finally restored single-tap toggling in base Android 17. Instead of forcing a pop-up sub-menu every time you touch the Bluetooth or Wi-Fi tile, a single tap on the tile icon now instantly switches the connection on or off. Long-pressing (or tapping the tile label) still opens the full device management panel when you need to switch networks or pair new earbuds. A handy feature that allows for quicker execution of tasks and less rooting around.

Independent Voice Assistant Volume

Android 17 natively splits voice assistant audio from general media playback. When you hit the physical volume rocker and tap the expanded panel, you now get a dedicated Assistant volume slider to keep voice responses at a comfortable level without altering your music or podcast volume. This is very useful as so many times I've needed to up the volume of the digital assistant's voice but found it hard to track down. All or nothing, it seemed - or try to get the assistent to do it - which never seemed to work very well!

Native Screen Recording Reactions

The built-in system screen recorder toolbar now includes a direct selfie-cam overlay option. This allows you to record real-time commentary and screen actions simultaneously without needing third-party capture apps or complex setups.

Unified Photo & Contact Pickers

A major system-level privacy upgrade. When an app requests to attach a photo or a contact, Android 17 opens a secure system pop-up that feeds only that specific selection to the app - eliminating the need to grant full read/write access to your entire storage library or address book.

Under-the-Hood Motion Smoothness (MessageQueue)

A core AOSP platform rewrite that eliminates micro-stutters. By refactoring thread handling under the hood, high-refresh-rate gesture navigation, app switching and dragging floating elements feel noticeably crisp and consistent. So that's the stuff from Google, baked into Android 17 - now for the goodies from Moto themselves.

Motorola's Custom Layer (HelloUI Additions)

Moto AI (Qira Suite)

Motorola’s signature AI software suite operating alongside Gemini. It was MotoAI until now, now changed to QiraAI and unified across Motorola and Lenovo devices. I've done another blog post detailing more on this - so click through to my Motorola Razr 70 Ultra and Moto Sound Flow Speakers piece for more.

Catch Me Up is accessible via a quick power-button gesture. Qira condenses stacks of unread notifications into a concise bullet-point summary. This seems to have taken off properly now. Under MotoAI, I hardly ever saw anything in these summaries, but now, it's meaningful, drill-down and somthing that I might actually use - depending on how cute you are on seeing notifications anyway! I can see that it would be useful for people who disappear into meetings for hours or got to the cinema, dinner parties or sporting events. When all's done, fire it up and get a summary of what you missed.

Pay Attention Performs real-time audio transcription and summaries for live conversations, meetings or voice memos on the fly. This works well and once recorded, transcribed and summarised, it can be 'shared' wherever you like via the base Android Share Menu system. It's all on-device so no limits on how much you can use it - only the phone's memory capacity. Looks nice and works well. In fact, the makeover Qira brings is significant and much nicer than MotoAI's. Very 'purple' too!

Hands-Free Voice Commands Direct "Hey Qira" hotword activation baked straight into the system for hands-free queries, but which you can use via the Qira Key on the side of the phone or assign to the power button, the button on the screen (if you allow it) or any other number of ways. It also has a nice British voice for us in Blighty! In testing here, the voice command works well, but only if there's no lock screen - or rather the device is locked. There is face unlock or fingerprint scanner to get in, but I don't see a way of bypassing that when the device is secure.

Depth Effect Wallpapers

Moto’s local 'spatial parsing engine' for the lock screen. It automatically separates the subject of your wallpaper from the background, letting lock screen clock digits and widgets layer seamlessly behind photos for a 3D depth effect. We've seen this broadly now from other OEMs and people seem to like the effect. It is smart and when playing with the options it is engaging with a bit of a 'wow' factor! There are options as to what pictures which can be used but also limitations - it won't work properly unless the image 'lends' itself to the theme/scene. Have a play around and see if it's of any use, or ultimately a bit of a gimmick.

Haptic Recalibration

Motorola fine-tuned the haptic motor profiles for flagship hardware, delivering sharper, higher-intensity vibration feedback across navigation gestures, typing, and lock screen shortcuts.

I'm still digging around looking for more changes and will update this post here if I find more significant ones. It's a nice coat of paint, I think. Motorola have adopted Android 17 well, from what I see so far, and with the added new-look HelloUI and QiraAI-from-MotoAI, added plenty of interesting options of their own. And yet - it still retains and feels very much like it's not too far from AOSP and Pixel. So kudos to Moto for moving along with the times but not bombarding happy users with lots of changes at once. Now, if they would only fix the battery pill on the AoD, I'd be happy!