Gadgetory

welcome back to another Mobile World Congress roundup / hands-on video covering the rest of the exciting stuff on show in Barcelona to kick things off in between a bunch of meetings I managed to get some hands-on time with the latest devices from hmd global under the nokia brand while a previous Nokia handsets since they entered the android market haven't really caught my eye this new set of phones which include the nokia 8 Sirocco the nokia 7 plus and nokia 6 are by far their best hardware yet let's start with the nokia 8 Sirocco which features a striking design with a curved OLED display on the front and curved clasp on the back the display isn't 18 9 or any other fancy aspect ratio instead of sticking to a 5.5 inch 2560 by 1440 panel but the bezels on this device is still very slim while the phone looks awesome the glass panels on both sides are so aggressively curved that the metal rim around the edge has become very slim and quite sharp as a result the phone is a bit hard to hold and very slippery similar to the early curved edge designs from Samsung I also have a few concerns about the hardware inside the phone has a retail price set around 750 euros so definitely at the high-end level however the Nokia 8 Soraka only uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 rather than the new Snapdragon a 45 though you do get 6 gig of ram and 128 gig of storage as standard plus a 3.5 ml headphone jack microSD card slot and ip67 water resistance for the camera were looking at a 12 megapixel wide-angle primary camera with an F 1.7 lens plus an additional 13 megapixel telephoto with an F 2.6 lens both with exclusive zeiss and class inside the pro camera mode is pretty neat but it's hard to draw any conclusions about a camera from such a short hands-on experience I was pleased however the the Nokia 8 Sirocco and the entire line of new devices uses stock Android 8.0 Oreo aka Android 1 with 3 years of promised updates perhaps the most attractive device Nokia had on show both from a visual and value perspective is the Nokia 7 plus this is a 6 inch handset with an 18 9 1080p a display and a price tag of 400 euros put it in the mid-range bracket however the all-metal fasces is one of the best I've seen with the beautiful easy to grip black finish and astonishing copper highlights this wood really doesn't do the phone justice it really has one of the best designs I've seen in this sort of mid-range product in the hardware inside isn't gonna wow you with the Snapdragon 664 gig of ram 64 gig of storage and a large 3800 milliamp hour battery plus things like you know USB C and a headphone jack it's all typical mid-range phone components here however the camera is largely the same as the Nokia 8 Scirocco aside from some very minor changes the front-facing camera though is actually better than the Sirocco at 16 megapixels with a neat low-light feature that combines four pixels into one for bright imagery in challenging conditions it might be slightly too expensive compared to last gen flagships and the bottom end of the flagship spectrum but it is a really nice piece of hardware rounding out the rest of the main Nokia phones on show is the Nokia 6 280 us here we're looking at standard stuff 5.5 inch 1080p screen and a base 32 gig storage with 3 gig of ram the rear camera is just a single unit not unexpected for a budget handset at 16 megapixels the build quality is also very good though my preference does go a little bit to the Nokia 7 plus here this device could sell well though in the US depending on the pricing over there and expect these handsets to become available in a few months time on the laptop front lenovo were showing off three new devices the yoga 7:30 in both 13 and 15 inch configurations along with the yoga 530 otherwise known as the flex 14 in some markets compared to the previous models in these series the main upgrade here is the shifter intel's eighth generation cpus which shouldn't come as a massive surprise the 13-inch yoga 730 model whacks a discrete GPU while the 15 does get a gtx 1050 in some configurations the yoga 530 uses an MX 130 again only in some configurations I had some hands-on time with all three laptops and the build quality of the yoga 730 miles in particular really impressed me the full metal chassis is exactly look for in top-tier laptops yet Lenovo provides this at a sub $1,000 price point in fact pricing starts at eight hundred eighty dollars or nine hundred dollars depending on whether you're after the 13 or 15 inch models that is a decent starting price though Lenovo didn't confirm the actual base level hardware you'll get instead mentioning things like you can get up to a core i7 and a 4k display again the build quality is quite impressive and the 360-degree hinge has been reworked a little to make the tablet mode more comfortable to hold that said its primary use case is as a laptop and even lenovo confirmed this is what users prefer to use the vast majority of the time both the yoga 730 models feature thunderbolt 3 though oddly you get two of these ports on the 13-inch and just one on the 15-inch the 13-inch also charges through USB see where the 15-inch does not due to its discrete GPU options the 14-inch yoga 530 is naturally less impressive than its more expensive brothers though that's no surprise at its $600 base price here we're getting a core i3 CPU though the inclusion of an optional NVIDIA MX 130 discrete GPU is great in its 14 inch chassis it's a shame Lenovo couldn't fit this into the 13-inch EOKA 730 the build here is mostly plastic with metal around the keyboard and while it looks nice most of the design degrees have gone into the yoga 730 and also of course the more expensive yoga 930 the official launch date for these products is just around the corner and it's also worth mentioning I guess that you know Amazon Alexa will be about 1 in some markets if you care about that sort of thing earlier I touched on the new Nokia lineup and the budget Nokia 6 well ZTE also announced a budget handset at MWC the blade v9 which competes in the same price bracket at 270 euros like the Nokia 6 the build quality of the blade v9 is very good for a budget handset in my limited hands-on time with the phone it feels really good and includes an 18 92160 by 1080 display where a lot of budget phones are more sticking to 16:9 at the moment along with dual cameras on the rear the blade v9 differentiates itself by hitting all those 2018 smartphone buzzwords speaking of the camera the blade v9s rear unit a 16-megapixel main unit with 1/8 1.8 lens along with a 5 megapixel additional camera for depth and detail information again it is a bit hard to tell just how good this camera is with that extended hands-on time but it's good to see a dual camera solution come down to this sort of price point for phone that cost more than 250 euros I was a bit disappointed to see just a Snapdragon 450 SOC inside rather than something from the 600 series storage and RAM do start at 32 gig and 3 gig respectively plus there is a 30 100 ml and power battery those the ones something cheaper can get the 180 euro blade v 9 Vita instead with a 5 point 4 5 inch 18 9 display again and just a Snapdragon 435 SOC there is however still a dual camera solution though we're now looking at a 13 + 2 megapixel combination neither the blade v9 nor the v9 v 2 are slated for launch in the United States currently been Europe and Asia are in the launch calendar Kat and Fleur seem to pop up at MWC every now and then with a cool product this time the cat s 61 which improves upon the previous cat s 60 by upgrading the thermal imaging camera and adding additional sensors and features for those that aren't aware the cat s 61 is a ruggedized smartphone designed for workers with a built-in thermal camera air quality sensor and laser distance measuring tool the thermal camera from Fleur now supports a wider range of temperatures between minus 20 and plus 400 degrees Celsius and is a very handy tool for those that need to find hot spots in their work on the go the air quality sensor properly known as a volatile organic compound sensor measures dangerous particles in the air and provides a readout and warnings when certain levels are reached or exceeded there's also a temperature and humidity readout pretty handy there the laser distance tool is also very neat and works with distances up to 10 meters and provides accuracy to a tenth of a centimeter with a plus minus 2 percent tolerance these sensors and tools are clearly the standout selling point because the rest of the hardware isn't that impressive using just a 5.2 inch 1080p display and a Snapdragon 630 SOC though there is a 4500 milliamp battery the phone itself is very chunky as you'd expect for something ruggedized and its price tag of 900 euros or a thousand US dollars definitely makes it a niche device for those that really want those cool features and don't really care about having you know Snapdragon 800 series SOC is for example a quick note on the HTC vive pro here while the vive pro was announced at CES 2018 I did have a chance to use it in conjunction with HTC's wireless adapter and these two things were being shown together for the first time at MWC the headset is very impressive and the wireless connection that seemed to work pretty well you know with the increased resolution and things that need to be accommodated with the vive pro there were a few glitches and stutters but you know not too bad in general while Svea is definitely the way to go with these sort of things so I'm quite excited for these products to hit the market and for VR to continue although momentum has slowed a little bit in recent years the pro in particular with high resolution displays awesome and the screen door effect isn't nearly as pronounced as the older vibe of course still no word on pricing or a launch date here rounding out the more interesting things I saw at MWC there was naturally a lot of discussion in demo surrounding 5g what I found particularly funny it was the battle between Intel and Qualcomm with their 5g technology Qualcomm was showing off an engineering prototype phone with a millimeter wave 5g modem transmitting data at more than four gigabit per second the small antenna was clearly visible on the device and occupied just a fraction of the device's overall sizes you can see here Intel were also showing off a why 5g demo their prototype connected tablet looked very strange with massive flaps all over the place which also apparently doubled as antennas the guy at the demo booth claimed these flaps were there as kickstands or something but clearly they were needed to be pointed in the general direction of the antenna so not quite sure whether he was telling the full truth there Intel's prototype didn't look as much like an engineering sample as Qualcomm prototype it seems to be a more finalized and device at least far as these things are concerned but the flaps weren't impressive to say the least Intel were also only using their 5g demo to transmit a 4k video we is something currently possible over gigabit LTE and didn't really show off you know the actual true capabilities of 5g in these next-gen networks just on these demos it is pretty clear who has the leading 5g modem technology at this stage as we progress to 2019 availability anyway that's it for this second and final round up from MWC that we'll be doing this year perhaps not as many launches and cool consumer technologies as previous ease but definitely still a few interesting things on the show and we hope to get a lot of the products that we've talked about in these couple of videos in their hands for review very shortly but until then I'll catch you next time