TCL is aggressively carving out a niche for itself among affordable Android phones that don't force compromise on display, camera, or design, and three new additions to the 20 Series today suggest that strategy isn't going anywhere. The TCL 20 Pro 5G leads the charge, championing the company's homegrown OLED and throwing in some styling details that rivals like Samsung don't seem to be able to manage.
TCL plans to launch a commercial flexible smartphone this year, but until then it's unveiled an even more unusual concept, with the TCL Fold 'n' Roll combining both folding and rolling mechanisms. Tapping the company's own CSOT flexible OLED panel business and its homegrown hinge design, the Fold 'n' Roll does basically just what the name suggests: morphs from a regular smartphone form-factor to a 10-inch tablet.
Sony unveiled a trio of new smartphones today, and one of the offerings is the Xperia 5 III. It's almost identical in features to the Sony Xperia 1 III that we mentioned earlier this morning. One of the smartphone's big highlight features is the variable telephoto lens paired with a dual PD sensor. The smartphone offers object tracking in photography mode.
Sony has revealed its latest Android flagship smartphone, and the Sony Xperia 1 III 5G continues the company's push to make photography its biggest selling point. Tapping features previously only offered on Sony Alpha cameras, along with a 6.5-inch 120Hz 4K OLED 21:9 display, the Xperia 1 III also introduces the world's first variable optical telephoto lens.
It's still a few months before Android's next major update gets locked for new features and we're still waiting for the third developer preview to land. That doesn't mean that development is stagnating, of course, just that there's still a lot of things cooking in Google's kitchen. Many of these are still unavailable for the public to see but, fortunately, there are a few leaked builds that give us a bigger picture of what to expect from Android 12 later this year.
Bluetooth is such a pervasive wireless technology that most people take it for granted until they have to go through pairing processes. Despite how widely it is used in wireless audio accessories, smartwatches, and even smart home appliances, pairing Bluetooth devices has never really become painless or consistent across platforms. Android, however, is catching up to the former and the newly redesigned Fast Pair feature promises a smoother experience for over a hundred Bluetooth devices from different brands.
In the multimedia experience, audio almost always gets the short end of the stick compared to video and graphics. Lately, however, there has been a growing awareness of the role that sound plays in the overall experience, especially with the rise of Bluetooth earphones and earbuds. Technologies that were once limited to large speakers are now coming to accessories as small as TWS buds and Android might soon be embracing one such technology, marketed as 360 Reality Audio, thanks to the partnership between Google and Sony.
Security is a big topic in the smartphone industry, especially as phones become extensions of ourselves. The technologies used to secure our phones, however, may not always be the most sophisticated, mostly due to reasons of economy. Behind features like fingerprint scanners, PIN codes, and the like, is the ability of a device to generate random numbers to provide some level of security. That is the specialty of Samsung's "quantum cryptography phones" and the Galaxy Quantum 2 takes another stab at that extremely niche market.
When Pokemon GO was first released, it seemed like a dream. It was as if the stars had aligned, bringing together the most awesome parts of Pokemon as a real-life game and the potential for mobile gaming in-effect. With the Route system, Pokemon GO could, once again, be reborn in the potential for mobile gaming combined with satellite-based global positioning (GPS, for example,) tracking in our global community.
With LG officially bowing out of the smartphone market, eyes will be turning to the other ailing Android OEMs and what they will do next. While HTC remains mostly silent, Sony actually has an event this week where it will attempt to prove that it's business as usual for its own mobile business. Its next Xperia product is just around the corner but a fresh dump of unofficial details seems to paint a picture of an Xperia 1 III that is teetering between past and future.
Clubhouse has become the new darling of the social media world. Naturally, that has made it the target of acquisition rumors, hacking attempts, and scandals. All of that while the audio-centric social network is still limited to an invite-only membership system and only on iPhones. Android users are still waiting for their chance to find out what the fuss is all about and, if recent tweets are any indication, that wait might soon be coming to an end.
Samsung's premium flagships have always been up there when it comes to camera performance but there are areas that could still use some improvement. Last year's Galaxy S20 Ultra was criticized for its autofocus problems and stabilization in smartphones is still undergoing constant evolution. The latest trend, started by Apple's iPhone 12 no less, seems to be shifting away from the once highly-popular OIS towards a sensor shifting strategy, a technology that Samsung is now rumored to be planning for its Galaxy S22 flagship next year.