Counterpoint Research has published smartphone and feature phone shipment numbers for India for Q4 and the whole of 2018, and none of them look pretty for Samsung. Like in many other reports before, Xiaomi is ahead of Samsung in smartphone shipments, while Reliance Jio leads in feature phone shipments in the country. Samsung was the market leader in both these categories not very long ago, but all that changed in the last few quarters. According to the latest data, overall mobile phone shipments in the country grew at a healthy 11% to reach more than 330 Million units last year. Smartphones shipments registered a 10% growth, making India, according to Counterpoint Research, the fastest growing smartphone market in the world last year. Xiaomi beat Samsung both in Q4 2018 and the whole of last year to emerge as the largest smartphone vendor in the country. The Chinese OEM captured 27% of the market share, up from 25% in Q4 2017, and topped the charts, while Samsung came in second with … [Read more...] about Xiaomi beats Samsung in smartphone shipments in India
Smartphones
2019 Smartphone Trends: Foldable Display, Punch-Hole Adoption Could Boost Sales
Jan 28, 2:09 AM EST Newsletter Signup BusinessTechnologyWorldNationalMedia & CultureOpinionSportsLuxury Technology By Jerome Santos 01/28/19 AT 2:04 AM Smartphone trends have shifted more into innovations of designs and features rather than purely focusing on phone style and size. So far, the Android phone market has some incoming devices that will have a foldable display, and punch-hole cameras. These features are potentially the best route for this year and could interest many users in buying these phones.According to DigiTimes’ report, Samsung has been noted to have a strong start this 2019 with their upcoming punch-hole camera features on their devices. The punch-hole cameras are barely noticeable take up a small space of the device’s display hence the “punch-hole” name. Sometimes, the punch-hole camera are part of the phone’s screen. Moreover, these cameras have its front and back versions which work well with most photo ops for social … [Read more...] about 2019 Smartphone Trends: Foldable Display, Punch-Hole Adoption Could Boost Sales
Can we all agree that all smartphones need wide-angle lenses?
The cameras on our smartphones have come a long way from back in the day when they were fixed and you couldn’t even zoom in. Nowadays we’re starting to see phones that have cameras that supports 5x optical zoom, and there are reports claiming that 10x optical zoom could be on the horizon as well! But forget that, how about giving us ultra-wide angle lenses instead? Speaking as someone who dabbles in photography as a hobby, I get so much more general use out of wide-angle lenses compared to zooms. This is because as a street photographer, a wide-angle lens lets me capture more of a scene at once. This lets me convey how notoriously busy the Shibuya crossing really is in Tokyo, Japan; or how expansive and breathtaking the Great Ocean Road is in Victoria, Australia. How often have we raised our cameras only to realize that we can’t quite fit everything we need into the frame? How many times have you seen Instagrammers standing on chairs in cafes and restaurants trying to … [Read more...] about Can we all agree that all smartphones need wide-angle lenses?
Wild foldable smartphone prototype is better than what Samsung has shown us
Earlier this year, famed leakster Evan Blass shared a short video which was allegedly that of a Xiaomi foldable phone. Blass himself could not guarantee that the video was the real deal, but it seems that he didn’t have to because Xiaomi’s President and co-founder Lin Bin has pretty much confirmed it for him. In a post made on Weibo, it showed a video of Lin Bin using what appears to be a tablet-like device. It was not shaped like a conventional tablet, but later we find out why. This is because the sides of the device can be folded in, in which the device then transforms into a smartphone. We say that this is a pretty wild concept because most foldable phones we’ve seen, such as Samsung’s foldable phone, have mainly focused on folding in half, so this really takes the cake in terms of design. Unfortunately, Lin Bin does not mention when the phone is expected to go on sale, so it is possible that we might have to wait quite a bit before it is available. … [Read more...] about Wild foldable smartphone prototype is better than what Samsung has shown us
The first smartphones without ports aren’t from Apple
By Roger Fingas Thursday, January 24, 2019, 06:08 am PT (09:08 am ET) Perhaps beating Apple to the punch on where many people see the iPhone headed, two Chinese brands have teased the first smartphones without any physical buttons, or even any connector ports.The Meizu Zero, on the right. The one intended for commercial release is the Meizu Zero, which has a 5.99-inch, edge-to-edge AMOLED display with an integrated fingerprint sensor. The phone even lacks a SIM slot and speaker grills, replacing them with an eSIM and piezoelectric transducer, the latter turning the screen into a speaker. Charging is handled using an 18-watt wireless module, making it the fastest on any smartphone. For comparison, Apple's latest iPhones support 7.5 watts. Other specifications include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and a dual-lens rear camera with 12- and 20-megapixel sensors. The front notably has a 20-megapixel sensor, sharper than most other selfie cameras. Meizu hasn't said when the device … [Read more...] about The first smartphones without ports aren’t from Apple