The world mobile telephony fair was held this week in Barcelona. A 100% return for the Mobile World Congress, after the Covid years, and the opportunity to discover the smartphones of tomorrow.
The big trend is the explosion in the number of smartphones with variable screens. Who says variable, first of all says scrollable. Year after year, flexible and bendable displays have advanced enough to start being incorporated into smartphone prototypes.
This is the case, on the Lenovo stand, of the Motorola Rizr, a phone whose screen extends in height by stretching vertically, starting from the bottom up by about 30% to go from 5 to 6 .5 inches. Target use: games and watching movies or series. No release date announced.
Oppo, Honor and OnePlus
As far as foldable screens are concerned, we remember that Samsung burned its wings four and a half years ago by launching its Z Fold a little too early, a little too quickly. We were told that 2019 would be the year of the foldable. In 2023, we are really there!
In Barcelona, Oppo presented its Find N2 Flip, a clamshell smartphone with a foldable screen, a competitor to Samsung’s Z Flip 4, which has just been released at €1,099. Faced with Samsung’s Z Fold 4, whose hinge this time is vertical, Honor unveiled its Magic VS, positioned at €1,599, with its 12 mm 9 thickness, once folded. As for OnePlus, the Shenzhen manufacturer will announce its first foldable screen smartphone in the second half.
Another innovation concerns charging. Outdated, the basic 5W charger that came by default with phones, which you plugged in near the bedside table, because charging took several hours. In Barcelona, the Chinese Redmi presented a 300W supercharger prototype. Starting from scratch, in just two minutes, the compatible smartphone is already 50% charged. And it reaches 100%, in less than five minutes. It remains to be seen how many times we can recharge this battery so quickly, before it declines.
10 minutes for a full charge
In the meantime, the fastest marketed solution, and which seems to hold up technically, displays 9’30 on the clock, to go from 0 to 100%. It was, this week, on the Realme stand in Barcelona, with the GT3 and its 240W super-charger. When you forgot to charge your phone, it can really make a difference.
And then, a special mention for Nokia, the Finnish brand whose smartphone business – formerly owned by Microsoft – was taken over by former Nokia employees under the HMD brand. For the design of its G22, HMD approached iFixit, the specialist in the repairability of tech products, from the design phase.
In Barcelona, you could replace the battery of this G22 yourself: 19 steps, about 7 minutes with two or three tools, and some advice, to access the inside of the smartphone. 19 steps is three times less than the 60 steps required on the Samsung S23 Ultra. Unfortunately, HMD only commits to two years for major Android updates. And three years, for security updates. In the end, this may be what will encourage you to change your phone anyway.