Brad Bennett’s favourite stories

I started working at MobileSyrup as an intern in February 2018 and it has been a dream come true. I don't take for granted what a privilege it was to share my thoughts with you all every day and I will miss it dearly.

I'm moving on and you can follow me Topics or Twitter to see where in about a week or so.

However, it's impossible to move forward without looking back, so I remembered some of my favorite stories and thought I'd share them here in case anyone else wants to walk down memory lane with me.

My first story

When I first walked into MobileSyrup in 2018, the office was actually pretty empty because MobileSyrup execs Pat and Rose were at MWC, but it gradually filled up with people who would go on to become my friends and mentors over the next seven years.

After a brief tour of our space, then owner (and founder) Ian Hardy simply threw the story at me and said something like, “There’s no better way to learn to write than by doing it.” And with that little line, which I think about all the time and share with everyone who listens, I started my career.

Story one: Vivo showcases concept smartphone with pop-up camera and built-in speakers.

My first reviews

After about a month, I finally proved myself enough to be allowed to write a weekly column about an app or game I liked. I started with VSCOwhich I've given up on lately but has been a staple on my phones for years and is a great cheat code for all mobile photographers looking to get a quick fix energy.

This is not a very good storyBut I had to take another step two years agoand it's quite interesting to compare the two stories and see how far I've been able to come in my time here. (Unfortunately, some of the image links are broken as our site has gone through different owners over the past couple of years).

My first product review was UE Boom Speaker which my mother still uses today. This was after I bought my first camera and started learning photography. It's crazy to think back on now, but I was so happy with those photos and how I learned how to dust things off in Photoshop, a skill that has probably eaten up days of my life in recent years.

My first phone review came in 2019 when Dean let me try a low-cost Huawei device. It was a learning experience and I think I can now admit that I dropped my phone and broke the top back corner. That's when I had to learn a lot more about Photoshop to hide the spider web cracks in my product photos. I like to think my first real review was OnePlus 7T this appeared a few months later.

My first videos

For years I really wanted to become a video journalist. I grew up idolizing Edge video type Finding Paul Miller. So, after getting the camera, I tried really hard to make more videos on MobileSyrup. There was only one problem: I kind of sucked.

MobileSyup Device Editor Dean and I actually made one, maybe two videos together that had so bad audio that we weren't even allowed to post them. But we persisted in this and finally found someone to team up with. LG ThinQ phone. That first shot of Dean was actually shot in my old bedroom.

I continued in the same vein and made some more videos. including about Chromebooks it received over 100,000 views. I actually think that was the key because that early taste of success kept me going. I knew I could do it, I just had to find a way to do it repeatedly. (I have one too comment on my hair this led to me wearing hats in videos for years after that lol).

About a year after that, Blue Ant Media acquired MobileSyrup, and I bought my first Fuji camera, an older XT3 and a 16-55mm lens for it. This really allowed me to improve the quality and I decided to take up video again. This time I was able to allocate more work time to it, and over the summer I was able to accumulate several videos that taught me almost everything I know about creating content.

The first video I worked on was the music app linked above. This is actually the third version of this particular video. But I think it shows that if you stick to something, you can figure it out. From that era, my favorite videos are the ones where I take my MacBook Pro to battery test island and review Niagara Launcher at Niagara Falls. In my opinion, these videos really bring out my true personality.

It all came together when I had to cover my first Apple event. It was WWDC 2022.and the new MacBook Air M2 came out, so I also got to review a real brand new Apple product, which was a huge moment for me. After that, I created too much content to write a summary for each of them, even though I wanted to. But if you liked any of this, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My favorite videos

My favorite stories

It was nice

I love Brad B