2020 is the year of big phone families, and Samsung's Galaxy S20 Series is nearing Brady Bunch numbers. Latest to arrive is the Galaxy S20 FE 5G, described as the "Fan Edition" but also the most affordable of the line-up. As always that means what's absent from the spec sheet is as important to note as what's present, but for once the compromise may all be worth it.
There's a thing magicians do called misdirection, where they catch your eye with one thing while something more important happens elsewhere. Whether modern smartphones count as magic is probably a little too philosophical for here, but I certainly got the misdirection feeling from the Pixel 4a 5G. The headline feature, its 5G connectivity, is right there in the name, but I'm not sure anybody should buy one simply for its potential for higher-speed data.
Smartphones have come a long way in just the past few years alone, rapidly changing in design as well as introducing new, sometimes outlandish features. Almost every smartphone has a gimmick these days in an attempt to stand out from the crowd and it gets harder to think of novel ways to differentiate one model from the next. That's true even for "mid-range" tier phones like Vivo's latest selfie-centric phone, the Vivo V20. But does it have enough to actually make it worth noticing? We dig in to find out.
The Pixel 5 has a lot to prove. Google's 2020 flagship not only needs to convince shoppers to open their wallets in an unusually challenging year, but demonstrate that the sins of last year's Pixel 4 are not to be repeated. If there was anything to give us confidence it could do that, it was the pitch-perfect Pixel 4a: now, the question is how much of that magic can rub off on the Pixel 5.
This is the official OnePlus 8T review as conducted by SlashGear. The OnePlus 8T may not agree with you if you've become accustomed to living the "Pro" smartphone life. Over the past few years, smartphones with "premium" features have clobbered our pocketbooks and looked to capitalize on the latest trends in "new for the sake of newness" in ways I've not been particularly pumped about. With the OnePlus 8T, it feels to me that OnePlus has returned from a brief stint of wild indulgence in over-the-top flashy features - back, here, to a place where the company's delivered a smartphone that's solid for all the right reasons.
Vivo made a big splash when it launched its new Vivo X50 Pro to global markets, giving particular attention to its unique gimbal system, a first in smartphones. That, however, wasn't Vivo's top of the line phone, a distinction that belongs to the Vivo X50 Pro+. It had none of the non-Plus model's compromises but also none of its special tricks. How does that make the Vivo X50 Pro+ fare in the end? We take a deep dive to bring you that answer.
Spending four figures on a new smartphone never feels exactly sensible, but in 2020 it seems positively profligate. Enter, then, the Pixel 4a, long overdue by all rights and intents, but still turning heads by virtue of Google's camera chops and a $349 price tag. Like the second-gen iPhone SE, that's not much money for a brand new phone, and with budgets tight yet expectations high it sets the Pixel 4a up nicely.
There's a sense of deja-vu around the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Samsung's stylus-toting smartphone won't get to be its 2020 flagship - that honor is reserved for the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 2 - but with its combination of S Pen, big screen, big spec sheet, and big price tag, the newest Note is a familiar formula. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," goes the old adage, but I don't know how well that holds up in today's cutthroat mobile world.
The availability of components like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 700 series and Sony's IMX586 has become a double-edged sword for phone makers. On the one hand, these have made often high-end functionality available on mid-range phones. On the other hand, the sudden explosion of these mid-range phones has also made it harder for devices to differentiate. Often it takes some design gimmick or marketing stunt to stand out from one another but the OPPO Reno 4 Pro goes beyond the surface to deliver something more substantial. But is it enough to truly rise above the rest? We take a deep drive to find out.
OnePlus Nord was released in the Summer of 2020 in just about every global smartphone market but North America. If you're living in Europe or India, you're in luck, this is a surprisingly high-quality phone for a very reasonable price. If you live in the United States, this smartphone is a very big, but very promising, tease indeed.
Vivo has made a number of its smartphones available to markets outside of China but it is making a big splash with the Vivo X50 series. As the first of its camera-centric X family, Vivo wants to put its best foot forward, showcasing technology no one, not even the likes of Samsung or Apple, has seen in a smartphone before. It has indeed done so with the Vivo X50 Pro and its unique Gimbal Camera System. That isn't, however, the full picture, no pun intended, and cameras alone do not a smartphone make. We take a deeper and longer look at the Vivo X50 Pro to see if it has more to say beyond what some may call a gimmick.
The Motorola Edge+ (or Edge Plus, if you prefer) is one of the most interesting Moto phones released in years. It's very tall and thin, works with a decent set of cameras, 5G connectivity, and a waterfall display. That means we're not just getting curved left and right sides here, we're getting a curved display that reaches all the way down to the side, beyond the point at which it's functional. It's certainly a beautiful phone - but is it necessary?