Early on a Saturday morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his phone as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London.

A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike – Akara gave chase, but they got away.

He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 “snatch thefts” in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months.

The prosecution rate for this offence is very low – the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot “arrest their way out of the problem”. They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

Victims of the crime have been telling the BBC of the impact it has had on them – ranging from losing irreplaceable photos to having tens of thousands of pounds stolen.

And for Akara, like many other people who have their phone taken, there was another frustration: he was able to track where his device went, but was powerless to get it back.

He put his iPhone 13 into lost mode when he got home an hour or so later – meaning the thieves couldn’t access its contents – and turned on the Find My iPhone feature using his laptop.

This allowed Akara to track his phone’s rough location and almost immediately he received a notification to say it was in Islington. Eight days later, the phone was pinging in different locations around north London again.

In a move says he “wouldn’t recommend” with hindsight, he went to two of the locations his phone had been in to “look around”.

“It was pretty risky,” he said. “I was fuelled by adrenaline and anger.”

He didn’t speak to anyone, but he felt he was being watched and went home.

“I am really angry,” he said. “The phone is expensive. We work hard to earn that money, to be able to buy the handset, and someone else says ‘screw that’.”

Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iPhone again – his prized possession was now on the other side of the world – in Shenzhen, China.

Akara gave up.

It is not uncommon for stolen phones to end up in Shenzhen – where if devices can’t be unlocked and used again, they are disassembled for parts.

The city is home to 17.6 million people and is a big tech hub, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley.

In the moments after Akara’s phone was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal phones, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did.

A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify those responsible”.

Akara subsequently submitted the pictures and information he had gathered from the locations where his stolen phone had been. The police acknowledged receipt but took no further action.

The Metropolitan Police had no comment to make on Akara’s specific case, but said it was “targeting resources to hotspot areas, such as Westminster, Lambeth and Newham, with increased patrols and plain clothes officers which deter criminals and make officers more visibly available to members of the community”.

Many other people have contacted the BBC with their experiences of having their phones taken. One, James O’Sullivan, 44, from Surrey, says he lost more than £25,000 when thieves used his stolen device’s Apple Pay service.

Meanwhile, Katie Ashworth, from Newcastle, explained her phone was snatched in a park along with her watch, and a debit card in the phone case.

“The saddest thing was that the phone contained the last photos I had of my mum on a walk before she got too unwell to really do anything – I would do anything to get those photos back,” the 36-year-old says.

Again, she says, there was a lack of action from the police.

“The police never even followed it up with me, despite my bank transactions showing exactly where the thieves went,” she said.

“The police just told me to check Facebook Marketplace and local second-hand shops like Cex.”

So why are the police seemingly unable to combat this offence – or recover stolen devices?

PC Mat Evans, who has led a team working on this kind of crime for over a decade within West Midlands Police, admitted that only “quite a low number” of phones that are stolen actually get recovered.

He says the problem is the speed with which criminals move.

“Phones will be offloaded to known fences within a couple of hours,” he said.

“It’s always a battle against the clock immediately following any of these crimes, but people should always report these things to the police, because if we don’t know that these crimes are taking place, we can’t investigate them.”

And sometimes just one arrest can make a difference.

“When we do catch these criminals, either in the act or after the fact, our crime rates tank,” he said.

“Quite often that individual has been responsible for a huge swathe of crime.”

But the problem is not just about policing.

In a statement, Commander Richard Smith from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which brings together senior officers to help develop policing strategy, said it would “continue to target” the most prolific criminals.

“We know that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” he said.

“Manufacturers and the tech industry have an important role in reducing opportunities for criminals to benefit from the resale of stolen handsets.”

Stolen phones can already be tracked and have their data erased through services such as “Find My iPhone” and “Find My Device”, from Android.

But policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said this week the government wanted manufacturers to ensure that any stolen phone could be permanently disabled to prevent it being sold second-hand.

Police chiefs will also be tasked with gathering more intelligence on who is stealing phones and where stolen devices end up.

A growing demand for second-hand phones, both in the UK and abroad, is believed to be a major driver behind the recent rise in thefts, the government said.

The Home Office is to host a summit at which tech companies and phone manufacturers will be asked to consider innovations that could help stop phones being traded illegally.

PC Evans said there was “no magic bullet”, but he said there was one thing manufacturers could do which would be “enormously helpful” to the police – more accurate tracking.

“At this moment in time, phone tracking is okay,” he said.

“But it’s not that scene in Total Recall yet, where you’re able to run around with a tracking device in your hand, sprinting down the road after a little bleeping dot.

“I appreciate it’s a big ask from the phone companies to make that a thing, but that would be enormously helpful from a policing perspective.”

Apple and Android did not provide the BBC with a statement, but Samsung said it was “working closely with key stakeholders and authorities on the issue of mobile phone theft and related crimes”.

Additional reporting by Tom Singleton

It’s just a few hours before reviews of one of the year’s biggest PlayStation 5 releases arrive, and its director is talking about food.

Buffets, to be precise.

You might get a lot for your money, but how do you feel afterwards?

“Bloated, you’ve eaten too much and you just want to go and sleep,” says Nicolas Doucet, head of Sony-owned studio Team Asobi.

Gamers are fond of food metaphors. Developers don’t just make games, they “cook”. If you’re spoilt for choice with high quality new releases, you’re “eatin’ good”.

But Nicolas is referring to the sense that blockbuster publishers have tended to have an all-you-can-eat approach when it comes to making games.

For a while now, the industry’s biggest players have been focused on producing open-world titles offering dozens of hours of gameplay, or on attempts to muscle into the lucrative online market.

Both genres have produced some huge hits, but Nicolas wonders if there is an appetite for something more like “that two-course meal that is going to be just the right amount”.

Astro Bot could be just the recipe Sony has been looking for.

Earlier this week the Japanese company announced it was pulling Concord – one of its other recent big games – from sale after a tepid response from critics and players.

The online shooter is the latest high-profile bid to corner the so-called “live service” market dominated by the likes of Fortnite and Apex Legends that’s failed to attract a large audience.

But in a quiet year for first-party PlayStation releases, Astro Bot has received some of the highest review scores of 2024 and some critics say it’s one of Sony’s best in ages.

At its heart it’s an old-school 3D platformer that’s crammed full of references to PlayStation’s 30-year history.

The game’s main objective is to rescue 300 Astro Bots hidden around various themed levels, with about half of those decked out in cosplay to resemble characters from the console’s past.

But as much as it’s a nostalgic reminder of Sony’s great successes, could it also be a lesson for the company’s future?

If you’re one of the world’s 60 million PlayStation 5 owners, you’re almost certainly familiar with Astro Bot.

The cute mascot character appeared in 2020’s Astro’s Playroom, a short, three-hour adventure pre-installed on every machine.

It was designed to act as a tech demo for the hardware and its advanced controller, but people loved it.

“And it did highlight perhaps the fact that people are craving for these kind of games,” says Nicolas.

Releasing a 3D platformer in 2024 is, on paper, a daunting prospect. Nicolas admits the genre – a staple of the PlayStation 2 era – isn’t very common these days.

And, he says: “The ones that do exist are very, very high quality from people who’ve been making them for years and years.”

It’s also a genre Sony has moved away from recently, and its biggest releases have been more adult, cinematic titles such as God of War and The Last of Us.

Nicolas thinks this is a sign of audiences, and the developers making games for them, maturing.

But he admits that left a gap which Team Asobi – a relatively young studio – was eager to fill.

“I think there needs to be more games that are there just to relax, have a little bit of fun, that are not dramatic, that are not necessarily heavily story driven, where you can just mess around with a game and it’s fun,” says Nicolas.

“But, of course, it needs to be executed well.”

Astro Bot’s been widely praised for its polish, attention to detail and the way it plays, drawing comparisons with Mario – for many, the undisputed king of 3D platformers.

Nicolas considers descriptions of Astro Bot as “old school” a compliment and that going “back to basics” helped with the game’s development.

As concerns grow over spiralling budgets, Astro Bot was made in three-and-a-half years by a team of about 65 people – a relatively short time and small staff by modern standards.

Nicolas says the game’s bite-sized nature – it’s divided across 50 short, playable stages – helped to simplify development and made it easier to “swap things around”.

“Whereas when you’re tied to something that is one storyline, one timeline that is set, it’s very difficult,” he says.

“You have less flexibility.”

Sony will now be hoping that Astro Bot’s glowing reception translates into big sales, but comparisons with Concord’s swift fall have already begun.

It’s also shone a light on characters Sony could revive, and prompted some people to question whether the company will shift its recent focus on the live-service market.

Under previous PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, the company announced plans to launch 12 online-focused games. It’s since scaled that back to six.

As for single-player titles, some of Sony’s biggest in-house studios haven’t yet revealed PS5 projects.

Hermen Hulst, one of two new CEOs in charge of Sony’s gaming division, told the BBC in a statement it was “very important we offer a wide variety of titles to our community” and that “Astro Bot fills an important part of our portfolio”.

He praised Team Asobi for creating “something special that is light-hearted and delightful” with “incredibly fun gameplay”.

Astro Bot is also “a great opportunity for families to game together”, he said.

Nicolas opts not to comment on the Concord situation or bigger, strategic moves, but he does agree with his boss that Astro Bot has given PS5 a game that can “bridge generations”.

Many reviewers have remarked on how cameos from the past have reminded them of growing up with Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter or the cast of Ape Escape – characters that set them on the path to becoming gamers.

Nicolas says he often gets messages from parents who’ve played Astro’s Playroom with their children talking about their experiences, and he hopes that the new game will create more shared moments.

“I’m really happy that, besides the game itself, there’s a greater good, if you like, that we’re able to tell stories like that,” he says.

“And I really hope that we can brighten some people’s homes thanks to that experience.”

Additional reporting by Tom Gerken.

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