Intel may have announced the end of its ultra-low-power Atoms almost two years ago, but the death of the platform wasn't instantaneous, it took some time. While it was sad to see another mobile SoC competitor drop out of the race, at the same time it seemed inevitable given Intel's x86-based approach.
However, Intel's mobile death-throes continue to be dragged out due to contractual obligations, and a couple new chipsets have been released based on the Intel's x86 designs.
The 2018 Mobile World Congress ended just last week, and over the course of the week-ish of announcements, there was a lot of news to cover. Just in case you happened to miss any, we've put together a quick little list of all the things we wrote about from MWC this year, plus a few things we saw that didn't merit their own post, all mixed in with a big gallery of photos.
This year's MWC just wrapped up a few days ago, but for almost a week, news from the event dominated our feed. Numerous individual product announcements occurred in Barcelona this year, now that it's over, we've handed out seven awards to different manufacturers. Some of them are things you can buy now, some of them are things you can buy later, and some are for things you'll never be able to purchase.
The Galaxy S9 and S9+ are both official now, but there's still the pesky question of where to pick one up. You can always go the unlocked route, but carrier deals can present a decent discount. Plus, you've got aesthetics to take into consideration. Will this retailer have that color?
ASUS' Android phones might slide under the radar for most, but the company's new ZenFone 5 series probably won't. The company has had some trouble historically trying to penetrate the US phone market to any great depth—perhaps a result of its crowded, sometimes confusing product portfolio—but nonetheless it persists. Some of its phones have even been pretty good. But now that the wraps have been taken off its latest line of phones, it seems like ASUS has found a successful way to attract the attention it wanted: by copying the iPhone X's notch.
ASUS formally announced the three new phones at its event in Barcelona just a couple of days ago, and though we had a bit of an idea what the ZenFone 5Q/Lite would look like, the 5 and 5Z were a bit more surprising.
In-display fingerprint scanners on phones had been prophesied for some time, but few expected relatively unknown Chinese manufacturer Vivo would be the first to release a consumer product to the market. The X20 Plus UD went on sale last month, exclusively in China, for around $565.
By all accounts, the fingerprint reader works pretty well, although the phone was mostly unremarkable otherwise. It shipped with dual rear cameras, a 1080p 6.43" OLED panel, and a Snapdragon 660.
Asus, as we expected, showed off the new ZenFone 5 family at MWC. Unlike years past, the Taiwanese company is keeping in step with modern smartphone trends, in some cases to the point of plain copying the iPhone X. Regardless, some of the new devices look fantastic and our initial impressions are relatively positive.
Besides the familiar design on two of the devices, Asus went all out with its talk of what it calls "ZeniMoji." I kid you not — pulled straight from one of the press releases: "ZeniMoji is a fun new ZenFone 5 feature that lets users animate cute avatars using their own voice, facial expressions and head movements.
Today Qualcomm has announced a whole new Snapdragon series that fits (in both number and performance) between the existing 800 and 600. This 700 series includes high-performance features from the more expensive flagship-bound 800s like custom Kryo cores, the Hexagon DSP, Spectra ISP, and Adreno graphics. But unlike the 800, this new line is destined for more affordable devices, bringing flagship-level features to an increasingly accessible price point.
Specifics at this point are sparse and no individual SoCs have been announced.
