Hi-tech interspersed with nostalgia characterised an avalanche of smartphone announcements in two days at a global mobile industry conference in Barcelona.
The annual Mobile World Congress is hosting dozens of keynote addresses and product launches and in 48 hours the range of premium Android phone models has been written afresh. Last night Sony, Alcatel and Oppo added theirs to many models already announced.
And just as we see retro VWs and Morris Minors on the road, “retro tech” is gathering momentum: China’s TCL Communication released a BlackBerry KEYOne Android smartphone with an old-style BlackBerry Qwerty keyboard. TCL is licensed to use BlackBerry branding in most countries.
Finnish company HMD Global meanwhile produced an attention-grabbing, colourful version of the popular Nokia 3310 of Year 2000, when Nokia sold 126 million 3310 handsets.
“In 2017, we will enter the global smartphone market with the next generation of Nokia phones running Android,” HMD Global says on its website. Sadly the reborn 3310 is too retro: it uses old 2G networks for talking and texting. In Australia, Vodafone is the last vendor due to switch 2G off, in September, so the window of usefulness is short. HMD Global also launched Nokia 6, 5 and 3 as serious contenders in the Android market.
The nostalgia didn’t end there. Samsung showcased a Staedtler Noris pencil lookalike version of its S-Pen for stylus input on its new Galaxy Tab S3.
Sony last night unveiled its flagship phone, the XZ Premium, along with two mid-range phones, the XA1 and XA1 Ultra, and a projector called Touch.
Sony was a market frontrunner in offering water and dust resistance with its Xperia Z range, but also for its enhanced camera features. The XZ Premium adds a Motion Eye function that captures a fraction of a second of video at 960 frames per second and plays it back at 30 fps. You take regular video and at chosen moments hit the button for a burst of super slow motion.
Sony’s XZ Premium also has a 4K 5.5-inch screen that supports high dynamic range video. Not only is video crisp and clear with 4K, you should also see more detail in darker and lighter sections of the screen with HDR.
China phone vendor Oppo, which is active in the Australian market, overnight unveiled its “5x project’’, which recreates 5x optical zoom by bending light through the phone. The concept is not unlike the management of light inside some telescopes. Light entering the lens bounces at 90 degrees and travels along the width of the phone, creating space for optical magnification.
TCL-owned Alcatel yesterday announced four devices. One of them, Alcatel A5 LED, has rows of LED lights on the back that can be configured to represent various notifications, such as social media alerts and messages, and calls from particular people.
This is in additional to phones launched the day before, such as the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus, which sticks to the basics of offering fast performance, a great camera, super fast charging and fast operation.
With its new 5.7-inch G6 smartphone, LG ditched the “Friends” system of modular add-ons for the G5. The G6 is a more traditional handset. LG touts being able to handle a big phone in one hand, and its unusual 18:9 screen format is as suited to cinematography as highlights.
Reader comments on this site are moderated before publication to promote lively and civil debate. We encourage your comments but submitting one does not guarantee publication. We publish hundreds of comments daily, and if a comment is rejected it is likely because it does not meet with our comment guidelines, which you can read here. No correspondence will be entered into if a comment is declined.
