Samsung announced a new Galaxy Tab S3 tablet, controller for their Gear VR headset and a new stylus but really all anyone gives a shit about is its tease for the new Galaxy S8 phone, which will be launching in New York on March 29th. Instead of announcing the S8 at MWC, they’ll do their best to control the message and exposure by spending millions on their own event.
Nokia has risen from the dead. The iconic mobile phone brand that is now nothing more than a licensed name to another Finnish company, HMD Global, is launching three Android handsets. The best thing about them, they’re running a pure instance of Android Nougat. No third party apps or BS UI changes as well as receiving regular security updates. Win!
Riding the Nokia train, they announced that their recent acquisition, digital health manufacturer Withings, will be rebranded under the Nokia moniker by this (Australian) winter.
Lenovo, also in the business of making phones under iconic brand names announced their new Moto G5 and G5 Plus phones. Both running a bare bones install Nougat they’ll begin shipping in March their backplates branded with that big “M”. Sadly though, neither include NFC however the smaller G5 does have a removable battery if that’s what you’re really after.
If removable batteries are your thing than you can skip over LG now. The experiment that was “modular design” with last year’s G5 is completely gone. The new LG G6 is a return to sanity for the brand – in my opinion – with an increased screen size and resolution, stretching it vertically (2880 x 1440) and reducing it’s bezels even further to almost non-existant. I’m not sure it’s a rival for the upcoming S8 but it’s got a much better chance now.
To round off what is somewhat of a Walking Dead episode-cum-MWC BlackBerry decided to make an appearance with their new KeyOne handset, of course manufactured under licence to someone else, in this case: TCL. The new KeyOne has a physical keyboard, as is iconic to the BlackBerry brand, and like it’s failed predecessor the Priv, is touch sensitive for gesture controls and assignable shortcuts to open particular apps and other cool things. The physical keyboard does of course eat into screen real estate (1620 x 1080) however you’re really buying this for the keyboard and not watching YouTube all day long.
Other notable mentions; Motorola announced a bunch of gadgets under the Moto Mod brand, one of which adds Amazon’s Alexa to your phone, a really stupid nostalgic Nokia 3310 was shown off and Huwaei introduced the new P9 & P10 phones.