A Chinese Takeover

A lot of press inches have been given over recently to Apple and Samsung – the two giants of the smartphone world. But as greater expectations are placed on a brand, there are always two possible outcomes: greater prices, and/or disappointment. As such, the attention of many tech blogs has turned to the smartphones coming out of China. Often dismissed as poor copies of their Western rivals, we’ll show you that there are plenty of Chinese smartphones more than ready to hold their own in a global market.

Lenovo

Founded in 1984, it’s very likely that you’ll have heard of Lenovo, especially since their hiring of actor Ashton Kutcher as product engineer and spokesperson. However, the company are still more well-known for their computers and tablets than their smartphones.

One to watch: Look out for the Lenovo Vibe Z2 Pro. This 7.7mm metal smartphone has clean, edgy lines, and packs a 4,000mAh battery.

Huawei

Given their status as the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in the world, Huawei is a familiar name. We wrote last week about Huawei’s wearables from MWC15 – with their Android Wear watch more than holding its own against competitors from Apple and LG.

Ones to watch: The Huawei Ascend Mate 2, with a 6.1” display, offers excellent value for money, whilst the Ascend Mate 7, with a 6” display, has an attractive 7.9mm metal body, industry-leading fingerprint sensor, and a 4,100mAh battery. The Huawei Honor 6 Plus houses an innovative dual camera sensor, with two 8MP sensors allowing for better photography in low-light conditions.

Xiaomi

Pronounced shao-me, the company was founded in 2010, and is proving itself to be something of a game-changer. Makers of the bestselling affordable smartphone in Asia, the Redmi, Xiaomi are sometimes referred to as the “Chinese Apple” due to both the perceived design similarities, and the legions of dedicated fans.

Ones to watch: The Xiaomi Redmi Note, an almost unbeatable combination of quality and affordability in phablet form.

The Redmi 2 – a 4.7” screen, with 720 x 1280 display, running on a Snapdragon 410 64-bit quad core chip. If you can get hold of one, an excellent introduction to Xiaomi’s products.

The Xiaomi Mi Note. Described by many as the best Chinese smartphone, although not easily available outside of Asia. The Mi Note runs on a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 chip – not quite as powerful as the OnePlus One’s Snapdragon 8.1, but none too shabby – and has a 5.7”, 1,920 x 1,080 display. This is a larger screen than the iPhone 6Plus, but both thinner and lighter.

The Mi Note combines enough innovative new features, with familiar, comfortable ones, to make it incredibly usable. Despite the OS no longer requiring capacitive buttons, the Mi Note features three on the bottom bezel – I for one prefer this set-up. The structure of the phone is a metal ‘body’ fixed between front and back Gorilla Glass 3, with a slight curve making it more comfortable to hold.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is the custom MIUI Android skin, described as “strikingly refreshing” in comparison to Samsung’s TouchWiz.

If you’re looking for the best mobile phones for you and your employees, as well as the best support for your business, look no further than Fivebars Mobile.

Mobile World Congress 2015: The Highlights

Last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona saw over 93,000 visitors, from 200 countries. So much went on that it would be impossible to cover everything in one blog post, but we’ve trawled through all the product launches, all the speeches, and all the awards, to bring you the best of the best of MWC15.

Wearables

With rumours of Apple’s now-launched ‘iWatch’ doing the rounds in the run up to MWC, both Huawei, and LG debuted their upcoming wearable devices.

www.smarterwaching.com

Huawei offered their latest Android Wear watch, with circular display, text, email, and phone call notifications, and a number of fitness features. They also demoed the TalkBand B2 and TalkBand N1, which they say are designed for the business-person on the run. The TalkBand B2 received somewhat mixed reviews for its ability to be transformed into a Bluetooth earpiece.

LG launched two watches, the LG Watch Urbane, and the Watch Urbane LTE. The Urbane is stylish, and has a look which many find competitive with designer watches – for those who have, thus far, found the wearable device market to be somewhat lacking in beauty. It also claims a longer battery life than any Android Wear device to date.

arstechnica.com

The LTE, due to its mobile payment capability, uses webOS rather than Android Wear. It was perhaps a little early for both devices to be presented, but LG knew this, and gambled that getting something out there would be better than nothing, in order to have a chance of competing with Apple.

Apps

IBM announced that they have come up with another three iOS apps to add to the ten released last year, as part of their partnership with Apple.

RefMe – an app that has intrigued the Fivebars team for some time now – won best British mobile startup for its free student referencing app. Look out for more on this in an upcoming blog post about some of the best apps for students and academics.

There’s also a new messaging app – YO! – already available on Android devices. It may seem to many to be an already saturated market, but YO!’s offline capabilities make it a potentially major player in the likes of Bangladesh (where it was beta-tested), where limited data plans and slow connections mean that file-sharing isn’t as quick and easy as it is in the west.

Phones

MWC15 saw the 20^th Annual Global Mobile Awards, at which over 35 awards were given out in different categories. The phones that stood out were the Apple iPhone 6, and the LG G3 – joint winners of “Best Smartphone” as well as the Motorola Moto E, winner of “Best Low-Cost Smartphone.” Unsurprisingly it was the Samsung Galaxy 6 Edge which won “Best New Handset, Tablet, or Device.”

Honourable mention

As a company who specialise in finding the best mobile phone deal for our business customers, we are always on the lookout for anything that might streamline our work day. As such, IKEA wins our award! Beginning next month, the Swedish furniture company will be selling lamps and tables with Qi wireless charging pads – meaning no more wires everywhere to trip over.