Smartphones 2017: what are we waiting for | Articles | Phones

Very soon, Barcelona will host the Mobile World Con­gress, which will present new prod­ucts from major man­u­fac­tur­ers. It’s weeks away, so it’s time to decide on our expec­ta­tions, rumors and assump­tions about what smart­phones we will use in the com­ing year.

From new prod­ucts, we expect increased per­for­mance, greater bat­tery capac­i­ty. Fuel­ing the impa­tience is the new Snap­drag­on 835 chip, which promis­es 25% faster graph­ics pro­cess­ing with reduced pow­er con­sump­tion. Pre­sum­ably, in the most expen­sive smart­phone mod­els, it will be com­bined with 8GB of RAM and at least 32GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. New cam­eras, new dis­plays and new fea­tures.

Asus Zenfone AR

While every­one else is hold­ing off their new flag­ships until the Mobile Con­gress, Asus rushed to open 2017 with the new Zen­fone AR as ear­ly as Jan­u­ary. So far, this is the sec­ond smart­phone that sup­ports Google’s Tan­go aug­ment­ed real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy. In addi­tion, it is equipped with a 5.7‑inch AMOLED dis­play with a res­o­lu­tion of 2560x1440, 8GB of RAM. The 23-megapix­el cam­era and Snap­drag­on 821 proces­sor only increase our expec­ta­tions from this smart­phone.

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

What do we expect from the iPhone in its tenth anniver­sary year? Risks. Last year, with the iPhone 7, we received only a few changes, some of which were, more­over, quite con­tro­ver­sial. This year I would like to final­ly get a rev­o­lu­tion­ary smart­phone, at least with a large OLED dis­play from one bor­der to anoth­er. Accord­ing to as yet uncon­firmed data, at least one of the mod­els of the new iPhone will have a glass case, and the phys­i­cal home but­ton will dis­ap­pear alto­geth­er.

For the first time, atten­tion may be focused on the wire­less charg­ing option and bio­met­ric recog­ni­tion.

Of course, accord­ing to tra­di­tion, an increase in pow­er is also expect­ed — the new A11 proces­sor.

What we prob­a­bly won’t see is an upgrade to the SE mod­el, as it could affect sales of the iPhone 7.

Google Pixel 2

The release of this smart­phone is expect­ed no ear­li­er than the fall of 2017, so in the­o­ry, it’s too ear­ly to talk about it, how­ev­er, we already know exact­ly what to expect from it. Accord­ing to Google’s promis­es, the new mod­el will include a water­proof cam­era with improved qual­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to shoot in low light. This, of course, will raise the price of new items.

We know for sure that the new Google smart­phone will run on Android O, which will most like­ly be pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence in May.

HTC 11

In 2016, HTC skipped MWC for the first time and held their own event, where they pre­sent­ed the HTC 10. How­ev­er, we still expect to see the nov­el­ty in Barcelona and it is planned: an improved proces­sor and bat­tery capac­i­ty.

Accord­ing to the leaked infor­ma­tion, HTC is final­ly look­ing to get rid of its rep­u­ta­tion for mak­ing monot­o­nous and sim­i­lar smart­phones and, if true, the HTC 11 will fea­ture the new Snap­drag­on 835, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of inter­nal stor­age, fast charg­ing, and a 5.5‑inch Quad HD dis­play.

How­ev­er, these expec­ta­tions are very utopi­an — it is worth not­ing that Sam­sung was the first to be able to use the new Snap­drag­on and, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion, until the release of the Galaxy S8, not a sin­gle smart­phone will be able to boast of a new pow­er­ful chip. The S8 is sched­uled to be announced in March, so the HTC 11 will most like­ly be launched with Snap­drag­on 821. Also, the name may be dif­fer­ent — the code name for HTC’s flag­ship is Ocean.

LG G6

LG is rumored to be chang­ing its clas­sic pre­fab­ri­cat­ed design to glass. Most like­ly, the smart­phone will be water resis­tant, and the bat­tery will not be removed. It is log­i­cal to assume that, like LG’s rival — Sam­sung’s S‑series, the flag­ship will include wire­less charg­ing, a more pow­er­ful proces­sor and the abil­i­ty to work with VR.

A rather inter­est­ing rumor regard­ing the LG G6 is the fact that it will include a new type of iri­do scan­ner that uses the same sen­sor as the front cam­era.

The LG G6 will most like­ly be pow­ered by the Snap­drag­on 821, with 4GB of RAM.

Huawei P10

P9 may be replaced in Feb­ru­ary by P10, designed to strength­en Huawei’s posi­tion in glob­al mar­kets.

Spe­cial changes in the design of the smart­phone are not yet expect­ed, how­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble to trans­fer the fin­ger­print scan­ner to the front of the case. It’s also pos­si­ble, but not con­firmed, that Huawei’s new prod­uct could use a curved dis­play in the same way that the Sam­sung Galaxy S7 Edge did.

In terms of specs, Huawei is expect­ing a Kirin 960 proces­sor, the same as the Huawei Mate 9, and 6GB of RAM. The dis­play is spec­u­lat­ed to be 5.5‑inch Quad HD. Plus, the com­pa­ny is unlike­ly to change its suc­cess­ful coop­er­a­tion with Leica.

Microsoft Surface Phone

Rumors about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the release of this smart­phone have been around for a very long time, so we are used to believ­ing that this is pure­ly a myth. How­ev­er, Microsoft­’s man­age­ment is con­stant­ly fuel­ing inter­est. So, it was recent­ly announced that Sur­face Phone could become a uni­ver­sal mobile device.

If this is true and the Sur­face Phone will appear as ear­ly as 2017, expec­ta­tions from it are quite pre­dictable: 5.5‑inch Quad HD dis­play, 4GB of RAM, ver­sions with 64 and 128GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry, microSD sup­port, an Intel proces­sor, a main cam­era with a res­o­lu­tion of at least 21MP and front — 8MP.

It would not be sur­pris­ing if a Sur­face pen and a USP‑C port appear along with the smart­phone.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing rumor sug­gests a fold­able screen, as Microsoft has a patent on the tech­nol­o­gy.

Microsoft will hold its own event where the Sur­face Pro 5 will be announced, and per­haps that’s when we’ll hear about the Sur­face Phone as well.

nokia android smartphone

Once upon a time, Nokia was a leader in the pro­duc­tion of mobile phones, but when they switched to work­ing with Win­dows, the fairy tale end­ed. Already in 2014, Nokia almost dis­ap­peared from the smart­phone mar­ket, and only now, in Jan­u­ary 2017, the Nokia 6 on Android was announced, avail­able only in Chi­na.

The Nokia 6 fea­tures an alu­minum chas­sis, 5.5‑inch full-HD dis­play, Snap­drag­on 430, Adreno 505, 4GB of RAM and a 3000mAh bat­tery. And it’s not at all scary that it is only avail­able in one coun­try, since we can safe­ly expect Nokia to tri­umphant­ly return to the mar­ket with a series of Android smart­phones. Some of which are rumored to be fea­tured at MWC 2017.

One Plus 4

The One­Plus 3 and 3T proved to be incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful smart­phones, com­bin­ing price and great fea­tures. One­Plus 4 is expect­ed to be released in May/June 2017 and the late launch sug­gests that this par­tic­u­lar smart­phone will be pow­ered by Snap­drag­on 835. It is also expect­ed that the full-HD dis­play will change to a sim­i­lar 5.5‑inch Quad-HD.

The One­Plus 4 is expect­ed to be avail­able with 8GB of RAM, 21MP or 23MP cam­eras and a 3,500 or 4,000mAh bat­tery. One thing is cer­tain — One­Plus 4 will run Oxy­gen OS based on Android 7.0 Nougat.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

Since the Galaxy Note 7 deba­cle, Sam­sung has­n’t stopped being talked about. A severe rep­u­ta­tion­al hit leads some to think that Sam­sung might announce the Galaxy Note 8 along­side the Galaxy S8, while oth­ers believe the Note series will be com­plete­ly halt­ed. Sam­sung thinks oth­er­wise, and is not in a hur­ry to lose hope for the pos­si­ble suc­cess of Note. Accord­ing to assump­tions, Note 8 will appear clos­er to August.

What exact­ly can you expect from this new prod­uct? 5.7 inch Quad-HD dis­play or Super­AMOLED dis­play with S Pen sup­port. Water resis­tance, dual cam­era, pow­er­ful proces­sor and mem­o­ry that will allow the nov­el­ty to sup­port vir­tu­al real­i­ty. In a word, the best is expect­ed from this smart­phone. That’s just the trust of users to return will not be so easy.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus

Sam­sung usu­al­ly intro­duces new smart­phones the day before MWC at their own event. How­ev­er, this year the com­pa­ny decid­ed to do oth­er­wise, with­out con­firm­ing its pres­ence at the con­fer­ence. It is not known exact­ly where and when the Galaxy S8 will be announced, with spec­u­la­tion that we will hear about it in March 2017, as the expect­ed start date for sales is April.

With the infa­mous Galaxy Note 7, Sam­sung has already tried to com­bine the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the stan­dard mod­els and the Edge mod­el. That being said, the Edge turned out to be a very suc­cess­ful mod­el, so we assume that some­thing sim­i­lar awaits us with the S8. The dif­fer­ence between the base mod­el and Plus is like­ly to be only in the size of the dis­play.

Most like­ly, the home but­ton will dis­ap­pear alto­geth­er, and the fin­ger­print scan­ner will be built into the dis­play. The head­phone input may also be gone as Sam­sung may move to USB‑C for audio.

What is known for cer­tain is that at the time of its release, the Sam­sung Galaxy S8 will be the most pow­er­ful smart­phone with the lat­est Snap­drag­on proces­sor and specs to match it.

Samsung Galaxy X

The S8 and Note 8 aren’t all that peo­ple keep talk­ing about. One of the most antic­i­pat­ed new prod­ucts is the Galaxy X — a con­cept that has been around for a long time, but it has only just begun to be expect­ed. The Galaxy X is a fold­able smart­phone that turns into a tablet. As unre­al­is­tic as it sounds, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble when look­ing at the com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy patents. Accord­ing to rumors, it will be a device with a 4K dis­play and of course, the lat­est Snap­drag­on 835 mod­el.

Sony Xperia X2

After the Z series, Sony got a lit­tle lost among the big­ger names in the indus­try. How­ev­er, we did not cease to expect a new wor­thy replace­ment for the for­mer flag­ship. Accord­ing to assump­tions, at MWC we will see the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the Sony Xpe­ria X smart­phone.

Most like­ly, in terms of char­ac­ter­is­tics, this will be a rel­a­tive­ly “last year’s” smart­phone, but the best at the moment that Sony can offer.

Per­haps, the announce­ment of the Sony Xpe­ria Z6 mod­el is also expect­ed at the same time.

Xiaomi Mi6

The absolute­ly suc­cess­ful Mi5 series from Xiao­mi can­not be left with­out a con­tin­u­a­tion and the con­tin­u­a­tion was expect­ed at MWC exact­ly until the rep­re­sen­ta­tives denied their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­fer­ence, say­ing that they sim­ply had noth­ing to present. How­ev­er, now is the time to con­sol­i­date the suc­cess.

Per­haps Xiaomi’s dif­fi­cul­ties are relat­ed to the depar­ture of the com­pa­ny’s vice pres­i­dent to Face­book, but this is not a rea­son not to wait for the Mi6, just that it will prob­a­bly be announced lat­er.

Accord­ing to rumors, the smart­phone will be avail­able in three ver­sions, with a Helio X3 chip and pos­si­bly even a Snap­drag­on 835.

A new dual cam­era is also expect­ed on the flag­ship, but the fin­ger­print can replace the pupil scan­ner.

ZTE Hawkeye

A com­plete­ly unique pro­to­type was pre­sent­ed at CES 2917 — this is the ZTE Hawk­eye, the sup­port cam­paign for which was launched on Kick­starter.

This smart­phone is able to read the move­ment of the eyes, which is why it is announced as the first hands­free smart­phone that can be con­trolled with­out touch­ing it. ZTE can be posi­tioned on a ver­ti­cal sur­face and scroll through pages using eye move­ments.

The spec­i­fi­ca­tions of this smart­phone are also quite inter­est­ing, it runs on Snap­drag­on 625 and Android Nougat. The dis­play is 5.5 inch Full HD, the main cam­era is dual 13MP and 12MP, the front cam­era has a res­o­lu­tion of 8MP. Built-in mem­o­ry — 32GB expand­able up to 256, and RAM in it 3GB.

How­ev­er, the most inter­est­ing thing about it is undoubt­ed­ly the eye move­ment sen­sor.