Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome to a brief Mobile World Congress 2018 ran our video on the show floor in Barcelona taking a look at a whole bunch of different things that have been launched at the show of course a big show for smartphone or other mobile device watches and to kick things off we're going to take a look at the biggest launch of the show the new Samsung Galaxy S 9 had plenty of hands-on time at the event and while it's not the biggest update ever as far as smartphones go it does pack some neat features as far as the design is concerned the 5.8 inch s8 and the six point two inch si plus fuel very similar to the last gen Galaxy s8 wine with curved glass on both sides and metal rim all the good features of the previous phone return including the microSD card slot and headphone jack however this new s9 does alter the position of the fingerprint reader such that you won't put grime on the camera lense every time you try to reach up and use it the key new feature is the adjustable aperture main camera which actually modifies the aperture physically rather than in software like a lot of dual lens smartphones the auto mode will choose between F 2.4 F 1.5 apertures depending on the lighting conditions with the wider F 1.5 preferred in low-light and you'll use the F 2.4 in daylight you can also choose an aperture yourself in the manual mode and there's noticeably more bokeh from the F 1.5 lens so a neat little feature there this is a feature I've been waiting for in smartphone cameras for a while so I'm really excited the galaxy s 9 is the first to include something like this also new to the camera is a 960 frames per second slow motion mode at a 720p resolution this is all made possible by the latest Sony CMOS sensors which include DRM snacked into the sensor module for extremely fast capture speeds of both photos and these slow-motion videos the slow-motion effect is very cool though the latest Sony flagships do the same thing at a higher resolution more on that later the s9 accruals to do a whopping 4 K capture 120 frames per second which is a bit crazy I should also mention the s9 plus is the only phone of the two that includes a second telephoto providing a two-time Zune on a 12 megapixel sensor with optical image stabilization in fact both cameras at 12 megapixels with oh is Samsung has been a fair bit of time at their launch event on their an emoji ripoff called AR emojis the feature allows you to create a cartoony 3d version of yourself that mimics your expressions though it's pretty uncanny valley and often doesn't work all that well and replicating your appearance once again the Galaxy S nine comes in both Qualcomm and Exynos variants for different markets those in the US China and a few other select markets will get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 inside while those in other regions will get the Samsung Exynos 9 810 there will be some performance and battery life differences as always they're both variants packed roughly the same cellular connectivity from their integrated modems the s9 also includes stereo speakers for the first time with the bottom firing speaker combining with the speaker above the display for a better audio experience it was hard to gauge just how good these speakers are in loud hands-on area at the Samsung event but it's nice to finally see the Galaxy line moving away from the single terrible speaker of the past Samsung are still using 29 60 by 1440 AMOLED screens for their galaxy s 9 devices and there's no word on whether these are improved in any way from the previous iterations they looked great at the event but once again we'll need to do a bit more testing at a later date that's really it for the Samsung Galaxy S 9 again not a massive upgrade the main things of course being those adjustable apertures for the camera design very similar as I said earlier so this would be a very popular release of deal I would think especially with a lot of those camera updates but yeah isn't really revolutionizing anything too much there from Samsung one of the coolest devices I saw the show is the huawei mate book X Pro the key selling point here is the thirteen point nine inch 3k full view display with extremely thin bezels leading to a 91% screen to body ratio the laptop looks awesome with such slim bezels thinner than the Dell XPS 13 by fairway display quality is bright up to 415 it's an excellent quality plus I prefer the 3:2 aspect ratio for laptops to you know the standard 16:9 its high-performance too with an Intel Core i5 8250 you or I 78550 you and discreet nvidia geforce MX 150 graphics it seems this you will be getting a lot more 13-inch ultra things with this intel + nvidia combination which would be a real challenger ii am these rise and mobile chips despite this hardware the made book x pro also includes a 57 watt hour battery which is you know fairly typical for this sort of laptop in other words you know the battery size is not hampered by the discrete GPU taking up physical space inside the build quality is outstanding if you love thin metal classes you'll love the mate book x pro it's a very solid chassis yet waste just one point three three kilos and comes in at under 15 millimeters thick this isn't you know particularly amazing for a 13-inch laptop however it is good to see why we didn't unnecessarily push for slimness instead ensuring a decent battery capacity and plenty of performance there are a couple of downsides I had some hands-on time with the unit and the keyboard has a pretty shallow travel distance similar to the latest Mac books which may get irritating after long periods of use there's also an unusual pop-up camera in between the f6 and f7 keys which allows Y way to get such slim bezels however the angle is just as bad as the Dell XPS 13 in my opinion so definitely some compromises there I'm not sure there's a good solution for webcams with slim bezel laptops but as someone that rarely uses the webcam I don't really care all that much the laptop looks outstanding in person could be one of the best ultra-thin laptops of the year however it won't be cheap starting at 1499 euros for a core i5 eight gig of ram and a 256 gig SSD you'll definitely need to pay for the design with this one why we also showed off the media pad m5 which is a high-end 8.4 or 10.5 inch Android tablet powered by Huawei / gen cura 960 SOC I used it briefly and it's really well built with great performance but Android tell it's even a thing anymore it's actually pretty surprising Huawei has released a high in Android tablet in 2018 but I guess there's enough demand for that sort of product clearly the star wars MWC either the new mate book though the media pad may interest you in a handful of people another major launch at MWC was the Sony Xperia x10 2 and the XZ 2 compact with Sony choosing to increase the amount of letters and numbers used in their flagship handset name perhaps for the worst while the general design of these handsets remains similar to the Xperia XZ and the experience that lines evolved Sony has moved with the times and they have chosen to use an 18 9 aspect ratio display with these handsets unfortunately it is just a 1080p class resolution 2160 by 1080 to be specific which is overshadowed by the 1440p resolutions we see on a lot of other flagships these days however does support HDR including SDR to HDR enhancements through Sony's x-reality engine it's a feature that's never really impressed me all that much in the past but SDR 2 HD I should produce better results than just crappy saturation boost like their views previously moving to an 18 9 display has led to slimmer bezels but we're still not in the same realm as the best slim bezel handsets currently available Sony phones have always had very chunky bezels though so these new XZ 2 handsets are a big improvement in this regard the rear of the Xperia x2 has changed a fair bit compared to its predecessor moving to a glossy glass panel with sloping edges and a centered camera the design reminds me a fair bit of HTC s latest smartphones as well as the old Nokia Lumia handsets I reckon the lowdown camera position could get a bit annoying and easy this much during usage though so something to watch out for annoyingly there is no headphone jack on these handsets though you do get a USB C port and a micro SD card slot and while the camera is largely unchanged from a hardware perspective compared to the XF premium from last year there are two cool new additions HDR video recording which is a first for any smartphone and upgrade to the 960 frames per second slow motion mode that allows it to cat in 1080p while we are getting 9 60fps women with the galaxy s 9 it won't be able to match the clarity of what's provided with the ex said to and from what I used of the murdered MW see it produces some stunning imagery the exit 2 is also capable of 3d selfie simply move the front around your head in this selfie mode and will capture a full 3d model of your face that you can manipulate unlike the galaxy s 9s they are emojis this feature works really well and actually produces lifelike models it's a neat feature that I'm not quite sure what the real-world use case is it seems like one of those things it's cool in demos but not practically useful performance wise we're looking at a snapdragon 845 with both the XZ 2 and X sent to a compact getting essentially the same hardware across the board including the camera these phones are extremely snappy and support gigabit LT either of course the snapdragon 845 will be coming to plenty of phones this year on the XZ 2 compacts specifically I was surprised how chunky the phone felt to use it's a lot thicker than the standard 5.7 inch XZ 2 however with such a small 5 inch display and very little competition in the small high-end phone market the Compaq should once again be highly attractive to a certain segment of phone bias no word on pricing for these phones however they do seem like some of Sony's best devices in a while I'm a bit concerned that there haven't been many camera updates outside of the new HDR and slow-motion features but the design changes are a step in the right direction hopefully a few people actually buy these handsets this time sony has struggled in that regard in the past as for LG no major launchers at MWC this year no g7 or anything like that but we did get the LG V 30s think queue which I honestly don't know why this is a product that actually exists it is just no GV 30 with slightly more RAM and storage complete with new AI driven camera features that are being back ported to the LTV 30 so yeah considering is just the same hardware otherwise down to the chassis display battery and SOC it still uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 it's stranger than need to release this interim device at all they should have just released a new high-capacity v30 call it the same thing and released a software update to all V 30s that pushes the AI camera to also yeah not quite sure what LG is doing with the think queue and has a very strange prog name as well if you aren't interesting the air camera features basically it analyzes the scene and the objects within to determine which camera mode is the most appropriate to get the best shot it can detect objects in the can preview and puts text on the screens let you know what things are kind of neat to see it in action and there's also a new ultra bright low light mode that improves what the V 30 was offering before but again these features are being back ported to the V 30 so yeah not a really significant launch here for LG and hopefully we'll see some of these AI camera features come to their upcoming flagship launches throughout the rest of the year you know a successor of the g6 and a real successor to the V 30 anyway that's it for this first look video at some of the things I've been doing at Mobile World Congress 2018 still a lot to look at at the show we'll be back later in the week with another secondary ran up video you'd have to say looking at some of the other things I've seen so far at the show so yeah as always check back on Hardware inboxed and tech spot for more content from Mobile World Congress and I'll catch you in the very next video