LG pulling away from the Philippines

LG is preparing to announce a device with 5G, hover gestures, and Snapdragon 855 at MWC 2019. It will also showcase a foldable phone to the audience. This two news sound amazing, but it seems like not all countries will get the new handsets after a report from the Philippines suggested the Korean manufacturer is pulling away. According to one Filipino source speaking to an LG executive, all handset business in the country has shut down. The last flagship device that appeared in the Philippines was the G7 ThinQ - even the V40 ThinQ couldn't make it. There is no official confirmation...

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Xiaomi Mi LED TV 4X PRO 55 Review

We don't normally review televisions here at GSMArena. However, as we review most of the other products Xiaomi releases, it's hard not to look at and be fascinated by what the company has been doing in the television segment for the past couple of years. In case you are not aware, much like the smartphone market, Xiaomi has pretty much disrupted TVs with its series of Mi TV models, which offer features and performance at a price that you couldn't even dream of a few years back and has caused other manufacturers to stand up and take notice. So when Xiaomi decided to send us its...

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Top 10 trending phones of week 4

The fourth week of 2019 saw the Xiaomi Redmi Note lineup dominate our popularity chart. The Redmi Note 7 and it's upcoming Pro version hold onto the first two positions, while the aging Redmi Note 6 Pro takes fourth. Even the the two generations old Redmi Note 5 Pro staged a surprising return and captured the tenth position. The last position on the podium is taken by the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018), while Huawei's Y7 (2019) rose a spot to claim fifth. Xiaomi's Pocophone F1 also gained a position and is now sixth, ahead of another phone that's about to get its second successor - the...

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Week 4 in review: Here's your first clear look at the Galaxy S10

It was a fascinating week with many interesting stories to talk about. Stories about the conventional - Galaxy S10 and Sony Xperia XZ4 leaks, Lenovo Z5 Pro GT on AnTuTu - and stories about concept phones without buttons and foldable phones. The most popular stories of the week revolved around the trio of Galaxy S10 smartphones. We saw a blurry live pic of the Galaxy S10+, then a better-looking image of the Galaxy S10 showing a crypto wallet and finally revealing, high-quality Galaxy S10 and S10+ photos that left little to the imagination. The last batch of high-quality images of the...

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Opinion: All-display is the future and we have to embrace it

The dream of a mobile device that's all screen dates back to the times of Isaac Asimov. We are getting there, but we need to get take a few more painful steps. Last week my colleague Kaloyan said bezel-less is not the way forward, but I think he missed the point - he was simply making a point about the devices with curved edges that provide less than ideal grip. Side bezels were already practically non-existent more than a year ago Phones like the Honor View 20, Huwawei nova 4 and Samsung Galaxy A8s are the next step after the eyesore that was the notch. The infamous cutout is...

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Huawei Mate 20 X in for review

For a while there we thought the Huawei Mate 20 X will remain confined to China and we'll never get a chance to spend quality time with it. However, a surprising change of heart by the Chinese company saw it enter Europe and here we are with a unit in hand and ready to share our first impressions with you. This year's installment of the Huawei Mate line features four phones. The Mate 20 Pro is the defacto mainstream flagship and then you have the Mate 20, as a value-for-money proposition, which slightly downgrades the display, camera and drops the IP68 rating for a nice discount. Then...

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vivo Q&A: Pop-up cameras and the future of smartphones

We had the opportunity to interview vivo about the NEX phones with a focus on their pop-up camera and the great notch debate. That aside, we also talked about smartphones in general and where they are headed in 2019 - foldable displays, punch hole cameras, in-display fingerprint readers, 5G and more. A common thread in all these answers is that innovation for innovation's sake doesn't work. Instead vivo considered multiple options and picked the one that provided the best balance of user experience and aesthetics. The engineering team considered various different positions and...

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Counterclockwise: flip phones rise with the tide then sink

The first flip phone dates back to 1996 - the Motorola StarTAC - that's essentially the Jurassic Period of mobile phones. And at one point the hottest handset in the world was a flip phone (Motorola again with the RAZR V3). And now they are all but gone aside from the occasional featurephone with essentially 2004 hardware and the rare China-only flip smartphone. What happened? Well, we can tell you right now that the asteroid struck in 2007 - that year saw a precipitous drop in new flip models being introduced but also a major fall in consumer interest. Let's rewind. The "clamshell"...

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Weekly poll: are hole-less phones the future or just a gimmick?

We've joked about it before - what if USB cables go the way of the 3.5mm headphone jack? Well, we're not laughing anymore, Meizu and vivo were elbowing each other all the way to that particular finish line. In the end the Meizu Zero was announced a day before the vivo Apex 2019. Besides being first, the Zero is more committed and uses wireless charging and data transfer exclusively, the Apex has pogo pins as a fallback (similar to the old Xperia Z phones). Whether either phone will ever enter mass production remains to be seen. Okay, the Apex is certainly just a prototype, but last...

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