Week 6 in review: Galaxy S20 craze intensifies, Poco X2 goes official

We're now less than a week out from the Galaxy S20 series' official announcement on February 11 and the hot stories are completely dominated by the upcoming Samsung flagships and their foldable brother Galaxy Z Flip. This week we got our fill of Galaxy S20-related stories. Starting off with the US pricing, which breaks down like this - Galaxy S20 is going to be $999, Galaxy S20+ will start at $1,199, Galaxy S20 Ultra at $1,399 - the first pre-orders will start on February 14 with shipments aimed at March 6. If you pre-order a Galaxy S20 in Europe by March 8, you'll get a free pair of...

Read More

Mobile is the largest gaming segment, most of the money comes from in-app purchases

The mobile gaming market is now the largest segment of gaming in general. In 2018, the mobile game market was valued at $68.5 billion, most of which ($54.9B) comes from smartphones and a smaller fraction ($13.6B) from tablets. The prediction for the next couple of years is for mobile to keep growing while PC and browser-based games shrink (the console segment is expected to keep steady). Currently, most of the revenue is coming from iOS devices, but according to forecasts Android will overtake Apple's platform before 2023. Clash of Clans was the highest-grossing iPhone game in...

Read More

Top 10 trending phones of week 6

It's the first full week of February and you can already feel the storm brewing up. In fact the first high-profile announcement came this week with the Poco X2 going official. Unsurprisingly it also topped our trending chart - it was already first last week before we had the full picture and the promo campaign wasn't underway. It will be interesting to see if it manages to hold off the Galaxy S20 and Mi 10 lineups which are coming next week. Anyway, the Samsung Galaxy A51 and Redmi Note 8 Pro retained their positions and are still second and third this week. Behind them the Galaxy...

Read More

Infographic: 11 generations of Galaxy S flagships

We're at the eve of the announcement of Samsung's 11th generation Galaxy S - the Galaxy S20. This is a very important product launch for Samsung as it's the first Galaxy S phone in the new decade (hence the jump from 10 to 20) and a phone that will be faced with a slowing market that's nonetheless full of capable competitors. Not to mention that the new Galaxy S trio will carry Samsung's banner into battle until the Galaxy Note arrives in the fall. So let's put the big Galaxy S line in perspective with this infographic courtesy of gadgetsdeck. It goes through the Galaxy S from June of...

Read More

Flashback: The BlackBerry Z10 was a new start for the company that proved to be a dead end

BlackBerry was the keyboard king - the company was built on texting. Its first products were two-way pagers (the first of which was released in 1996), telephony wouldn't be part of the equation until 2000. But we'll fast forward 13 years when the company was at a major crossroads. The company was founded as "Research In Motion" (aka RIM), but in 2013 it decided to rebrand itself "BlackBerry", adopting the name of its products. The other major event that year was the unveiling of its new operating system, BlackBerry 10. This was a brand new OS, built from the ground up for use with...

Read More

Weekly poll: is the Poco X2 the phone you were hoping for?

Poco is not a one-hit brand - it unveiled its second phone just this week. After a year and a half of lying dormant, it lifted the veil off the Poco X2. Sure, it's a rebadged Redmi K30, but it remains true to the brand's core value of offering insane value for money. The phone will be available in India starting on February 11 for just INR 16,000 - $225/€205. That's for 64GB storage, but 128GB is only INR 1,000 ($15/€13) more. This is relatively fast UFS 2.1 storage we're talking about here and unlike many other phones, this one has a microSD slot. That's a jaw-dropping price,...

Read More

Weekly poll results: phones with 90Hz and 120Hz screens will be in high demand this year

One in three people think that a 60Hz refresh rate is good enough for phones and the reason is simple - battery life. However, most of the people who voted in last week's poll are looking to upgrade to a phone with a high refresh rate screen. Most agree that 90Hz should be the minimum for mid-rangers and flagships. However, nearly as many people voted for the 120Hz option. It's more taxing, sure, but it's not unreasonable. The Redmi K30 scored an impressive 101 hour Endurance rating in 120Hz mode, down from 114h in 60Hz mode. And that's with a 4,500mAh battery, which isn't exactly...

Read More

Samsung Galaxy A71 in for review

Now that we've gotten the Galaxy A51 out of the way (review here), it's time to take a look at the other new member of the hugely popular Galaxy A series - the Galaxy A71. The Galaxy A71 is the natural progression of one of the most popular phones of 2019 and the second most popular Galaxy A series device to date - the Galaxy A70. It retains what was already great about the Galaxy A70 - the big 6.7-inch Super AMOLED screen, the 4,500mAh battery with 25W fast charging - and adds better cameras, a faster processor and more modern design. And compared to the Samsung Galaxy...

Read More