HTC Press Conference at MWC 2014

HTC. The company makes great devices with designs that are one of the best in the business. So why does it lag behind Samsung? Well the answer is poor marketing. If HTC put more money into marketing and made a truly stand out device, then HTC would climb to the top of the charts.

HTC today announced two midrange smartphones and an app that could potentially turn your smartphone into a supercomputer.

Sadly, at today’s event, we won’t be seeing HTC’s next flagship. HTC has neatly tucked away a separate date : March 25th for the big reveal.

Blackphone : An Android phone for those who value their privacy

The phone you see above is called the BlackPhone. It is an Android phone focused around the concept of privacy and exists for making everything you do on your phone as secure as possible.

With Privacy increasingly becoming scarce and awareness about it spreading after the NSA revelations, this phone is there to protect your privacy.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 : The chipset that will power the flagships of 2014

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 was quite powerful and powered flagships from the latter part of 2013.

Now it is MWC 2014, one of the biggest mobile events of the year. Companies are going to refresh their flagships. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 is perfectly adequate, in fact it is more than enough, but when launching a new flagship, do you stuff it with the same amount of power as the previous flagship? No, you increase the power.

Sony Press Conference at MWC 2014 ( Xperia Z2 and Xperia Z2 Tablet announced )

We have already had 2 press conferences of Major  companies before this. Well what do you expect? It is Mobile World Congress, the biggest mobile show on Earth. A sacred week or so of excitement where larger companies showcase their flagships for the year to come while smaller companies relentlessly and defiantly stand against the might of the Big Three : Apple, Samsung and Sony.

Sony launched four products :  Two smartphones, A tablet and a wearable.

Yotaphone 2 announced

So why don’t we have it in our smarphones and Tablets you ask? Well eink has low refresh rates and is black and white ( Colour ones exist but are costly to mass produce).

 

So , what’s the solution to this problem?  Yota, a device maker, unveiled the YotaPhone, thinking it would be the best of both worlds. It had an LCD screen on the front and an eink screen on the back.

Yotaphone was released in 2013. It was an intriguing and innovative concept, but it had some issues, as many  first gen products often have :  Slow Processor, Poor Quality of Eink display, Awkard navigation, No apps for eink display, etc .

Well, at MWC 2014,  Yota showcased a prototype of the Yotaphone 2 with many improvements .

The screen is a bit bigger at 4.7 inches. The basic concept is that you would use the eink screen for calls, notifications, reading, etc with the only drawback being a slower refresh rate and black and white colours. You can then use the AMOLED display for multimedia. This can drastically improve a phone’s battery life as eink uses very less power.

The display resolution is now  1080p (1920*1080 pixels) AMOLED screen, up from the 720p (1280*720 pixels) resolution of the earlier version. Internal specs are also given a spec bump : 2.3 Ghz Snapdragon 800 processor and 2 GB RAM.

The E-ink panel on the back has been made fully touch sensitive, unfortunately, the issue of not many apps leveraging the use of it still remains. But fear not, Yota has made the SDK available to everyone and is  reportedly in talks with major app companies .

It will not release until later this year but if it fixes out some bugs and increases eink screen compatible apps, then this just might revolutionize the smartphone world.

UPDATE : We have done an MWC 2014 roundup where we have rounded up all of MWC 2014’s news in one place for your convenience. Do check it out!

Nokia Press Conference at MWC 2014

MWC 2014 has officially begun! Although some manufacturers held press conferences yesterday, today is the official day – 24th of MWC. Mobile World Congress is one of the biggest mobile events of the year. Today Nokia held a press conference at MWC and announced many new products : The much awaited Nokia Normandy and two feature phones.