Mobile World Congress 2015

MWC '15 is here, so it's time for all the leaks in the past weeks to be confirmed/put to rest.

So far, HTC has officially announced the One M9 along with several other new accessories including the Grip wristband and a VR headset:



Samsung is due to officially announce its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge as well, with new metal and glass build:



And, Huawei has made a surprise reveal of a new Android Wear smartwatch. What are your guys' thoughts?

 

I'm surprised that Samsung dropped microSD from the S6. A glass back necessarily results in a loss of a swappable battery, but they could have kept the microSD despite the case materials. Just look at recent Xperia phones, which are also glass sandwiches with a metal rim, yet still have microSD expansion.

 

The M9 look shweet!

I will have to figure out how to trade out my M8 for the M9.

The Huawei Watch also looks awesome!

I would be interested to see the Huawei Watch compared side by side to the LG G Watch R.

 

Me too. The GS6 looks like a worthy successor for my aging GS3, but the only thing that's missing is the microSD slot. I don't have a very large data plan, so relying on music streaming is unrealistic for me.

I wish HTC went a bit farther with its M9. A larger screen within the same body size, perhaps. Or maybe their equivalent of a fingerprint sensor for electronic payments/quick unlocking.

 

I'm kind of getting sick of everyone going to larger screens as an update. Even cramming more pixels on the same size screen is getting ridiculous. Don't go over 5" screens for me, and at that really a 1080 screen is fine. I'm ok with higher res as long as it also comes with better battery life. Lets get the cellphone that I only have to charge once a week instead of once a day or more.

 

Improvements are all incremental like PC already. the booming era is gone?

 

The Galaxy S6 (or S-s*** as I will call it) is highly disappointing. Bigger screen? Big deal. Better SoC? That's expected.

Here's how I've rated it:

The Good: +More RAM is always a better thing.
+The camera is kept at 16MP but with a better aperture. This is a big step in the right direction.
+Android 5.0.
+Samsung Exynos 7420 (64 bit).

The Bad: +Removal of microSD card.
+What's the point of a qHD resolution on a 5 inch screen?
+Touchwiz...oh, how ugly you've become (need I say more).

The WTFH!?!?!: ~Gorilla Glass on the back and sided? Is Sammy so desperate to copy an iPhone's design flaw or do they just want to out do Apple in the number of phones with broken glass backs?

I'm on the fence about the battery being non removable. It worked out well for me with my HTC M8. But if Samsung has proven anything recently, its they can take a positive and turn it into a royal f*** up.

 

Never mind the G Watch R...have you seen the LG Urbane? That and the Huawei watch are neck and neck for best-looking smartwatch out there.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/lgs-new-watch-urbane-is-an-all-metal-luxury-smartwatch/

 

The styling of the S6 is annoyingly derivative. It's almost like Samsung is trying to play into the hands of people who claim it's all about copying Apple. Meanwhile HTC and Motorola each have their own distinct design language (which I personally prefer over Apple's anyway).

 

Wow.

That watch looks beautiful. Each successive smart watch makes me want to get one more and more.

In other MWC News, the bad news for Galaxy S followers just keeps on coming:
http://www.cnet.com/news/sandisk-bets-smartphone-crowd-wants-more-flash-storage/

 

Pff, you enthusiast. This is a PC forum and I thought you guys should know better.

Don't you see, it is just another dell 2015 alienware thingy.

What sells in 2015 is 1.brand, 2.look 3. "features"

 

It'll be interesting to see how the HTC One M9's camera fares once reviewers get their hands on some production units. Word is that the 20MP sensor is coming from Sony, so if HTC gets the software all worked out, the camera should be much better than before in most lighting conditions.

No microSD card is a big issue for me with the GS6, so if the M9's battery life is significantly better and the camera is good enough, I might just spring for that over the GS6...

 

The sensor was said to be Toshiba and early reviews have been very disappointing.

I'm not interested in any of the new phones and that's a shame because I love HTC - had the M7 and the M8 then jumped to the Nexus 6 and wanted the M9... Now I'm underwhelmed.

Samsung... No thank you.

LG is overheating... As usual.

Guess I'm holding out.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

Yup, only time will tell with the M9's camera. But in looking at it closer, I wonder why HTC decided to bezel the sides instead of sticking to sloping the back into the sides like on the M8? Bezeling the sides (with a different material) makes the sides look too sharp. HTC phones aren't meant to be sharp on the edges.

 

Virtual reality. The Galaxy S6, like the Note 4, is compatible with Samsung's VR headset, the Gear VR. In that context, 1440p is substantially better than 1080p.

Whether VR compatibility is enough to justify a decision that has no benefit in day-to-day smartphone use is another issue entirely though. I don't think it is, and have never once said that my 5.2" 1080p phone needed more pixels.

 

Why are you "underwhelmed" and "holding out"? You've got what I consider to be the best Android phone on the market right now, and it can't be more than about 3 months old.

 

If it had the Snapdragon 810, I would agree but the decision to use the 805 hampers GPU performance big time at 1440p. I play one game on my phone - Brave Frontier - and when I really get going, the graphics slow to a crawl. In a game where you need to be able to time attacks to coordinate, lag is a real pain and turning off the animations makes the game unplayable for me.

I also don't like the forced encryption. I know how to take it off but it's tedious.

But you're right, it is one of the best phones on the market and battery life is not bad for AMOLED and it charges insanely fast. I just wish qualcomm had their crap together so it would have had the 810 to take advantage of 64-bit and the faster GPU that's actually made for these displays.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, I did read some comments that image quality was underwhelming, but I assumed it was poor software optimizations since the 20MP Sony sensor is capable of some amazing pictures. But if it's an entirely different sensor altogether, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I think it was to improve ease of gripping the phone, but from seeing pictures alone, I don't really like it. I'd imagine it'd make the phone feel thicker as well.

If the GS6 had a microSD slot, it'd be a much simpler choice for me (GS6 or GS6 Edge), but not so much anymore. I'd have to spring for at least the 64GB model, and depending on the cost, that may not make sense over the M9.

 

Here's the info on the sensor in the M9.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/HTC-...-sensor-with-proprietary-pixel-design_id66390

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

I like the new Galaxy 6 Edge. Samsung claims to have trimmed down the horrendous TouchWhiz but I am still suspicious

 

In looking at the reviews further, the M9 does use 2 separate materials for the back and sides. Both are metal, and both have a very distinct feel. Why they would Frankenstein the outer shell of the phone is beyond me...

Fat chance of that. I used to love Touchwiz. Until I saw it on KitKat. Only Samsung...only Samsung...

 

If you experiment with things then you will come to know about the right combination. So I think Samsung by dropping Micro SD from S6 can be good

 

I think the crying about MicroSD can really stop. Plenty of flagships are sold without it (HTC, iPhone, Nexus, etc). As long as a manufacturer is UP FRONT about no MicroSD, I don't see an issue. Don't like it has MicroSD slot? Nobody is pointing a gun at your head to buy it. Who knows, maybe Samsung will add it back next generation S7 if this model doesn't sell well, but I highly doubt it. And it's not like the S6/Edge aren't selling well, they absolutely are. So case in point, people don't care.

 

I think it matters to some consumers and not others, and that's okay. Different consumers have different needs, wants, and expectations from a smartphone. That's one of the reasons why it's good that there's a number of Android OEMs instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. Samsung and Motorola do not include microSD slots in their flagships; LG, Sony, and HTC do (HTC didn't on the M7, but does on the M8 and M9). Each customer can decide whether or not that's a selling point for them and buy a corresponding device.

 

Right but people act like the apocalypse is going to happen if they don't have a microSD. There are phones with and without it. If you find a device that doesn't have one, and you need one, clearly it isn't it for you. If it's a model you really like then you need to decide if having a microSD slot is really that important to you. My newest Galaxy Note and Z3V now have microSD slot, but if they didn't, I honestly wouldn't have cared. I've learned to live with limited space. Heck my old 32 GB iPhone 5 had over 20+ GB free. I mostly stream the stuff at home on Wifi and had but a few hundred songs. And before that my Nexus 4 had no microSD. And I was in the Apple ecosystem (with my old iPod touch) that I had again learned to deal without expandable storage.