Week 9 in review: Xperia 1 II, Realme X50 Pro, V60 ThinQ, iQOO 3, Mate Xs are here
It was supposed to be the first week of the Mobile World Congress and while the MWC didn’t happen in Barcelona, many companies still went forward and announced new products at online presentations.
Sony, Samsung, LG, vivo, Realme, Huawei and even HTC all announced phones this week.
Let’s start with Sony. It gave us the Xperia 1 II (that’s One Mark Two) with improvements all around. The Mark Two has a bigger battery, more capable cameras, a headphone jack and better performance. It’s coming to Europe sometime in late Spring, priced at 1,200.
Sony also announced the Xperia Pro – a professional tool rather than a mainstream phone with an HDMI port and 5G with a 4-way mmWave antenna.
Sony also unveiled the Xperia 10 II – an attractive mid-ranger, coming in Q2 priced at 370.
The Realme X50 Pro 5G came with a Snapdragon 865 chipset, 65W fast charging, an OLED display with 90Hz refresh rate and six cameras – two on the front and four on the back. The Realme will go on sale in Moss Green and Rust Red. It will cost 599 for the base 8GB+128GB configuration, 669 for double the storage and 749 for the top 12GB/256GB version.
The LG V60 ThinQ 5G became official with the latest Snapdragon 865, a huge 5,000mAh battery, a huge 6.8-inch 60Hz display, a 64MP f/1.8 main camera (LG’s first dabble into pixel-binned sensors), 8K video and a new Dual Display accessory. The LG V60 will be available in blue and white colors and is coming later this spring.
Another Snapdragon 865 phone was unveiled this week from vivo. The iQOO 3 5G has 55W fast charging, a 60Hz Super AMOLED display, a quad camera and, naturally and 5G support. It will start at 475 and go on sale in India and China first.
Huawei announced its revised Mate Xs foldable phone with the new Kirin 990 chipset and an improved hinge. The Huawei Mate Xs’ display has a 2-layer structure with added strength over the foldable OLED panel – it is a sandwich of two polyamide films with optically clear adhesive between them. The diagonal of the unfolded display remains 8 with a resolution of 2480 x 2200 pixels. Huawei Mate Xs arrives with EMUI 10, based on the open-source version of Android 10, and unsurprisingly, there are no Google services.
The price of the 8/512GB phone is 2,499 and will start selling globally starting next month.
These were the highlights in our top stories of the week! Have a good one!
The Pro variant is still in development.
The latest Galaxy M-series phone will be available from March 5.
The Realme 6 duo will feature a 64MP quad camera setup and 90Hz FHD+ screen.
The Xperia 1 II costs more than Galaxy S20+, though it does come with double the storage.
Should Google be given an exemption Huawei could have Google Services immediately.
The phone has a 64MP quad rear camera and 32MP dual setup on the front.
Grab the popcorn – Realme and Redmi are at it again with the marketing flame war.
There is only one midranger, the company discontinues its Plus lineup.
LG’s sixth V-series phone will go on sale later this spring.
The gaming brand also brings a 48 MP camera and plenty of software boosters.
The square screen is going to have curved sides and two buttons on the right.
The launch date will be revealed tomorrow.
The Xperia 1 II is the first Sony phone to sport the ZEISS logo (but Sony has co-developed many lenses for mirrorless cameras with ZEISS).
It is going to be the first phone featuring ISROs NavIC – the Indian satellite navigation system.
The best all-rounder from last year at a reasonable price point.
Most of the specs remain the same as the Mate X, including the screen size and the cameras.
The phone has a Kirin 810 chipset, pre-sale is scheduled for March 2.
And we do mean feature phone and not a new KaiOS device.
Check out the Xperia 1 ll and Xperia 10 ll promo videos.
It’s an entry-level phone, but the 16MP main camera features large 1.4µm pixels and an f/1.75 aperture.
All three phones are expected to bring dual-mode 5G, Wi-Fi 6+ and periscope cameras.
