Your emails: what does the Pixel 5 need to succeed?

Make sure to check back every Friday lunchtime for our letters to the editor – and get involved by sending your emails to editor@trustedreviews.com.

We’ll feature the best on this very page at the end of each week, with Nick’s and the team’s replies.

Samsung Galaxy Active 2 40mm Watch

Your review written at the end of November 2019 was one of the reasons I bought the Samsung Galaxy Active 2 watch 40mm. Due to the availability, I was only able to purchase the Under Armour edition at additional cost. 

Within a few days of having the Samsung watch it already had scratches on even though I had not done anything out of the ordinary. Worried, I bought the plastic shields and have worn it with those since. I wear it everyday and charge it when in the shower. I have not swum with it or got it wet. 

At the beginning of April (after less than 4 months of use), the HR sensor (the back cover) fell off due to the glue holding it on disintegrating. I had to take it to the service centre which was an inconvenience. I was thinking they would immediately replace the watch as I have since found out from googling that this is a known issue. However, they only agreed to reattach the back cover! 

This watch does look good and has many good attributes, but I cannot overlook the fact that there is a significant known fault of the HR sensor falling off the back in such a short space of time AND that Samsung thinks it is acceptable to just stick it back on. 

I am absolutely kicking myself for not buying the Garmin Vivoactive 4s instead. 

I really think you should consider amending your review so other people don’t suffer the same disappointment. 

— Clare Mann

We’re sorry to hear about your experiences, which we’ve reproduced here so others can see. It is difficult for us to reproduce the kind of long term wear and tear on a product that users see, unfortunately.

Flame of the week

You’re incredibly un-trustable. You don’t even put a publish date on your articles! EXTREMELY POOR!

Besides, it DOES NOT matter what YOU call yourself. It is 1000% MY DECISION! Just because you call yourself trusted, my alarm bells, whistles, sirens all go crazy: WARNING!!! THESE GUYS ARE TRYING TO MANIPULATE ME!

Have a good day.

— Anonymous

That’s great, thanks for cheering us up in these dark times, especially the polite “have a good day” at the end. It’s “untrustworthy” not “un-trustable”. We stick publish dates on all our articles of course, as a cursory look at almost any page would tell you. As to whether you accept our name or not, well that’s up to you, but at least we use one. 

Panasonic GXW804 Viera app

Based partly on your very good review I purchased the Panasonic GXW804 model.

Unfortunately, the provided Viera app is no longer working on current IOS versions (connection lost after 10 sec). Maybe you should include a warning in the article or even better can convince Panasonic to fix the issue.

— Martijn

Thanks for letting us know. That’s not great – we’ll look into it some more and get back to you.

Modern Warfare

I guess you didn’t play the game very long. It is rigged. Pistols take out armor and shoot down jets. Both sides look the same. People can run through claymores. It is not Modern Warfare –  it is not close to anything. Like you said snipers rule. BF4 had the best game for playing multiplayer. You get a small map for Deathmatch then your player who seems to have special skills. Some players have kills in the teen and 20’s while others have kills 40’s to the 80’s and 90’s. Which shows they have a clear advantage that others don’t have. You need to relook at this game. 

— Ken Bishop 

Thanks Ken. We review the games as thoroughly as we can – we tested the PS4 version – but we can’t guarantee everyone will have the same experience as we did.

Google Pixel 5

Your points are well made. I would say though that with the average number of years a user keeps their smartphone rising there are one or two features that are extremely important for buyers:

• 5G 
• and battery life

The above MUST not be compromised if the Google Pixel 5 is going to be a success.

— Ian

Agreed although the broad mass of consumers isn’t probably going to make a move to 5G just yet, and we think Google has bigger problems than 5G. But battery life does seem to have been a real bugbear with the Pixel 4, so we’d agree with you there. Individual specs aside, the bigger question for Google has always been what it really brings to the table that’s different enough to differentiate its phones from the tons of other really good Android handsets running Google services. Price could that thing, although arguably competition is even worse at the cheaper end of the Android ranges. We’ll see! 

That’s it for another week. Thanks again to all the people who emailed in, and keep emailing in to continue the conversation. Stay safe!