Next week, Huawei is set to reveal its P30 series of flagship phones at an event in Paris. That's all well and good, but there's one problem: the P30 series has been leaked to high heaven already. Even if just a portion of the leaks are accurate, we already know quite a bit about these phones. Details on the P30 series have been leaked yet again, but this time around, it's all Huawei's fault.
The lengths some people will go through to avoid working a 9-5 job are just incredible. What we're seeing here today is a fraudster campaign perpetrated by an unnamed "Company X" discovered fitting itself in-between ad networks and their final target, the everyday average Android smartphone user. They did it by hiding, and they did it by draining your battery while they hid.
In less than a week, Huawei will make its attempt to make you forget about the Galaxy S10, foldable phones, or even the fact that its flagships are not available in the US. That last part is going to bite consumers hard if the Huawei P30 and especially the Huawei P30 Pro are all that they're cracked up to be. With just a few days left, it's revving up the marketing machine and, unsurprisingly, it's pouring all its resources on advertising the phones' camera prowess.
The fanfare over the Galaxy S10 and the Galaxy Fold may be over, but it seems that Samsung may yet have one more big thing coming in a few weeks. Unlike the 2018 Galaxy A7 and Galaxy A9, the Galaxy A90 continues to be an interesting mystery. At least one mystery may have already been solved, though, and we have Samsung to thank for that. For a brief moment, a small footnote on its Galaxy A series confirms that the upcoming mid-range phone will, indeed, bear a "notchless infinity screen".
Gaming hardware maker Razer seems to be sending some fans mixed signals. It reportedly shuttered and reshuffled its employees away from its mobile division, causing concern over the future of the Razer Phone line. Now it has announced a partnership with Tencent, best known for publishing PUBG and Honor of Kings (a.k.a. Arena of Valor) to optimize the latter's games for the former's hardware. That, of course, has mobile gamers speculating that all hope is not lost and that a Razer Phone 3 might indeed be coming soon.
Sony has many businesses but, apparently, they don't like talking to each other that much, at least not the mobile and imaging ones. The internal rivalry between these two divisions has resulted in Xperia phones that, to be blunt, don't live up to the company's camera reputation. How bad is it? Almost a year later, DxOMark reviews the Xperia XZ3 and it lands near the bottom of the list, surpassed even by the ultra cheap Xiaomi Pocophone F1 or phones from 2017.
Mistakes and software bugs are a normal fact of life but some can be more damning than others. At a time when phone manufacturers, especially Chinese ones, are fighting to wash their hands clean of any perception of political bias, even an allegedly innocent mistake could become a PR and legal mess. That might be the situation Finnish company HMD Global might find itself in after it has been discovered that a number of its Nokia 7 Plus phones have been sending data to a still-mysterious server located in China.
Where are all the gaming smartphones? The way some companies talked about them from late 2017 to early 2018, you'd think they were the next evolution of smartphones. Mobile gaming may still be one of the most lucrative markets yet but the phones that empower them aren't exactly the extraordinary devices that gaming-centric phones advertise themselves to be. Still, with the announcement of the Black Shark 2 and this new word on an upcoming Razer Phone 3, the idea of a dedicated phone for gaming is one that refuses to go silently into the night.
Not everyone is an Apple, Google, or Samsung fan. There are those that swear by other phone manufacturers, including one of the most controversial ones of late. The hype and excitement around Huawei's upcoming new flagships are starting to rise and some retailers may have gotten swept up by the Huawei P30 fever. With a week left before its scheduled event, two European retailers have accidentally pushed the "Publish" button, revealing the last piece of the puzzle that we needed: the price.
Fraudulent robocallers, your days are numbered. Or at least that's what AT&T and Comcast are telling the sources of these calls designed to con people. In what is being touted as the nation's first, the two providers are joining forces to combat such kinds of robocalls by authenticating not just calls happen within their respective networks but also those that cross the lines between the two.
While fans are still wondering what form Motorola's 2019 Moto Z phone will take, it seems that the company is also busy preparing another odd option to this year's roster. Perhaps to show that the Motorola One series isn't just a one-time thing, the OEM is reportedly ready to launch a new model called the Motorola One Vision. Sounding more like a VR headset than a phone, this Android One handsets as a few interesting quirks that set it apart from its older siblings, including its choice of processor and a punch-hole screen.
Motorola's big 2019 splash so far has been limited to its mid-range Moto G family. It still hasn't announced a high-end flagship from the Moto Z series, the line of smartphones that are promised to be compatible with the extremely few Moto Mods available in the wild. It will probably launch one soon if this lone render of a Moto Z4 is any indication. That said, its appearance and its naming are already causing some confusion, raising questions about Motorola's strategy for this year.