Top 10 trending phones of week 11

Week 11 brought no change in the leaders of our popularity charts - the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro leads from the Samsung Galaxy S9 duo and its non-Pro version. However, there was plenty of action below those with the vivo V9 making its top 10 debut and going straight to fifth place. The yet-to-be-announced Oppo F7 is already gaining traction and is another new face on the chart - it got sixth, ahead of the Xiaomi Mi A1. The Redmi 5 is making its return to the top 10, getting eight place, while the Galaxy S8 had to settle for ninth this week. In the final position is Xiaomi Redmi...

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Weekly poll: Sony Xperia XZ2 takes on its Compact sibling

The Sony WM-10 was the smallest casette-playing Walkman, the Sony HX80 is the smallest camera with 30x optical zoom, the Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact is the smallest Android with Snapdragon 845. What can we say, the company loves its petite powerhouses. But is the Xperia XZ2 the better phone? It has a few things going for it, besides the bigger screen. It has a slightly bigger battery, for one, about 300mAh more. Plus, only the big one has wireless charging (Sony's wireless charger can do the respectable 9W). And while it's not standard, there's a version of the big XZ2 with 6GB of RAM while...

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Counterclockwise: the story of Galaxy S phones, part 2

Last time we chronicled the rise of Samsung's Galaxy S phones and we reached a critical point in its story - the first disappointing phone in the series. What happened is that Samsung designed the Galaxy S5 in a spreadsheet. It had great features (even if some weren't perfectly executed), but the result was a bland-faced powerhouse. Chief rival Apple has found success in talking about the design and user experience, leaving the phone's features as something of a black box - it works with Apple magic. It was time Samsung tried to do the same. Alpha is the beginning Before the S...

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In Past Tense: The story of Paul's phones

In Past Tense is our series of articles in which GSMArena veterans take you on a nostalgia-infused ride through the years. Hi, I'm Paul, the veteran here at GSMArena Towers and my journey takes us on a slightly longer track when compared to previous installments in this series. Before owning my first mobile phone I had access to one through the UK company I worked for, and I've racked my brains, but for the life of me, I can't remember what make or model it was. What I do remember though is pranking my friends, I used to call them up while stood outside their house, pretending I was at...

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Weekly poll results: Galaxy S9+ beats its smaller sibling 3:1

When asked to pick between the two new Samsung flagships - the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ - you, our readers, didn't hesitate to go with the Plus model. Interestingly, the larger size of the handset was not quoted as a positive, quite the opposite in fact. People want the S9+ for its telephoto camera, larger battery and 2GB extra of RAM. Now, if Samsung could fit that in Galaxy S9's body, we have a suspicion that the voting will quickly swing in favor of the smaller handset. Transferring all those features to the S9 would, naturally, bump its price up closer to the S9+. And a few were...

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