The smartphone industry is expanding then ever before and 2020 was not the limit either for new tech and innovations in the smartphone world. Despite of how the pandemic struck the world and shattered economies of the world, smartphones brands didn’t took a setback and tried to provide everything as per their schedule. Like we got to see tons of new launches, new innovations in smartphones 2020. Though for a couple of months during the initial phase of the pandemic, manufacturers faced supply chain disruptions due to highly strict norms of staying in homes but that’s just about it. Now the situation is in control since everyone realized this is the new normal and should sooner or later.
2020 was yet another compelling year for the smartphone industry as well as for tech geeks and enthusiasts. There were amazing offering by brands in both mid-range and high-end segments. We even witnessed some unexpected smartphone launches in the later part of the year. Oh and also 5G, the No.1 marketing element in 2020.
Innovations in the mid-range segment
1. High refresh rate displays – The year 2019 was a year of high refresh rates, we are glad that this innovation has trickled down to the mid-range smartphones as well in 2020. Phones like Poco X2, Poco X3, Realme 6, Realme 6 Pro and even the Realme 7 are the one under Rs. 20,000 to be equipped with 120Hz and 90Hz refresh rate. This brings about a change in how you navigate through the UI. Games are also on track utilizing the higher refresh rates but unfortunately fan favorite PUBG Mobile 90FPS is supported and won’t be either due to the performance limitations of the SoCs present in these phones. Though famous titles like Brawl Stars, Alto’s Odyssey and many more already support high refresh rate tech on even mid-range phones. High refresh rate screens will further trickle down to lower prices in the upcoming smartphones of 2020 and beyond.
2. In-display Fingerprint scanners in LCD Displays – Having an AMOLED display with high refresh rate and at the same time an in-display fingerprint scanner is certainly costly and therefore Samsung resides to back fingerprint scanners in its mid-range phones having AMOLED displays. With fierce competition in the market, it certainly becomes difficult for OEMs to provide everything all at the same time. There’s a prime evident to explain that further, like Realme 6 Pro had a glass back but Realme 7 Pro had a plastic one, but that has been compensated with an AMOLED display. In-display LCD fingerprint scanners were indeed revealed by Redmi early this year but we didn’t see any phone commercially available with the said tech. Most probably its yet not properly optimised as a final product and thus still in testing phase. Maybe 2021 would make debut of this tech finally on mid-range phones.
3. Flagship level fast charging – This is I think the best leap forward in terms of charging on mid-range phones. Forget about 20W charging, Realme had introduced 65W charging with the Realme 7 Pro at Rs. 20,000 and that’s not it, couple of weeks later it announced the Realme Narzo 20 Pro at Rs. 15,000. This is highly impressive as except few high-end phones, this is not seen in smartphones. Besides Realme, other brands like Redmi and Poco haven’t failed to impressed as their phones were equipped with 30W and 33W adaptors within the box too. It’s always great to have a level of satisfaction with these ultra high charging speeds that you’ll be able to go through the whole day with just couple of minutes of charging.
A new entrant: In a surprising move, we even saw Micromax re-entering the Indian smartphone market with two of its low cost phones: Micromax In 1B and Micromax In note 1. With the eruption of Indian sentiments, Micromax thought this was the right time to enter the market and thus delivered these two phones within a short span of time. Are the phones all hype or actually good? only time will tell and if Micromax will be able to deliver their claims like 2 years guaranteed updates.
Innovations in the high-end segment
1. A plethora of foldable phones – Galaxy Z Flip was the first foldable phone of 2020 but Samsung had something even bigger reserved for the later part of the year. Then debuts the Galaxy Z Fold2 5G. This one was way better from its predecessor in pretty much every sense and Samsung did consider the caveats with the original Galaxy Fold and improved it on the Fold2. Better hinge mechanics, a bigger outer display, better foldable display with a slight more scratch and damage resistance. The crease on the inner display remains and would do so until it’s a plastic/rubber material. Other major foldable phone of the year was Motorola Razr 2 5G. Moto also worked on the 2nd gen. of its folding phone by providing a batter build quality, metal instead of plastic to be precise, a way improved processor considering many phone use it too currently (SD765G) and also improved camera, though this time too only one. Next there was Microsoft’s own version of a foldable device or a phone, which was not that great welcomed by reviewers. It had plenty of software issues initially and was just not all-round good device. The folding aspects very exceptional though considering you can fold it at various angles.
On the other hand, LG’s all flagships launched since late 2019 have the functionality to use it with an additional knows as Dual Screen. It’s a detachable accessory which provides you with an exact similar duo displays side by side. This is more like a laptop where there’s space in between for the hinges rather than a proper foldable like the Galaxy Z Fold which has a foldable OLED display. It was firstly introduced on the LG V50 and since then all flagships are bundled with a Dual Screen like LG G8x ThinQ, LG V60 and even the slight low cost LG Velvet. These can be a differentiating of LG from other brands.
2. In-display Cameras – In-display cameras are a thing now and we can expect phones with this tech from 2021 Q2. There’s even a phone called ZTE Axon 20 5G commercially available with in-display tech. But guess what? in-display camera is would not even be present on the Galaxy S21 series which will debut on Jan 14 2021 according to some rumors. Now the thing is, the ZTE phone dies have in-display camera but its just well over baked tech. If you would look closely, you certainly can notice the cutout of the front camera on the ZTE phone. That being said, tech giants like Samsung and Apple are probably working on this tech with various phases of testing. Once they achieve the level to the point where its extremely perfect, they can implement it on a phone. On the other hand, ZTE Axon 20 5G is a upper mid-range phone with specs and features just like any other upper mid-range phone like the OnePlus Nord. They want to get retained within the minds of people and create a hype around it. It’s more of a marketing move rather then a technological advancement. Therefore expect full fledged phones with in-display camera in later 2021 from brands like Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi. Checkout more about it from Verge.
3. Constant Improvements Made – Apart, from the upper two, there’s hasn’t been something that innovative in smartphones of 2020 but rather brands have been working on the existing hardware and finding & implementing ways to further make improvements or changes that would yield result. For instance, the most the displays have been similar just as before but there have been changes in order to produce more colours, battery efficiency and just making improvements on the sheer viewing experience. Similarly, the cameras have taken leap steps in smartphones with computational photography being more evident than ever before and also the bigger sensors have played a big role in capturing maximum details.
I would certainly hope to see the next bleeding edge tech like graphene batteries which can last for a couple of days and even a small capacity is more then enough. Or QLED displays which is an advanced display technology already being used in TVs. QLED is brighter, vibrant and have a longer life span than OLED displays. This involves the use of quantum dots which produces all the RGB (red, green, blue) colours and has a filter which is made of an aluminium compound which makes the dots produce more light in an efficient way thus saving power.
A New Segment Arises: Upper Mid-range
Gone are the days when the extremely top end Snapdragon powered phones were available under the Rs. 30,000 price point. Before 2020, this was pretty evident with phones like Redmi K20 Pro, Asus Zenfone 6/ Asus 6z, OnePlus 7 and even more older phones like Zenfone 5z and OnePlus 6, all had the latest gen flagship Snapdragon processors and were available more or less around Rs. 30,000. That’s not the case anymore with the arrival of 5G. Brands have shifted away from providing the Snapdragon 800 series in this price point if even did offer, those were old ones like the Snapdragon 855. Now we have phones like OnePlus Nord, Realme X3, Realme X3 SuperZoom, Galaxy M51, Vivo V20 Pro. But Samsung, Oppo & Vivo never really offered a flagship experience at this price anyway. But if we look at Realme and Redmi, there’s none phone with Snapdragon 865 considering in 2019 these were extremely aggressive with the likes of Redmi K20 Pro and Realme X2 Pro. Now there’s barely a phone with top of the line SoC at Rs. 35,000 let alone Rs. 30,000.
To compensate with this, as Realme being Realme won’t leave launching phone at various price points untouched played a clever game. Enter Realme X3 series which is literally a Realme 6 Pro but with a Snapdragon 855, 120Hz high refresh rate and improved optics. Both have same dimensions, camera placements and even same battery capacity. Though both Realme 6 Pro (better buy Realme 7 now) and Realme X3 are great phones for their respective prices.This is the establishment of a new smartphone segment: upper-mid-range where phones are mostly powered by the less powerful counterparts of the flagship processors. This will also undoubtedly be the way the smartphones move forwards with now brands delivering even more phones in this range for the years to come. This is by no means that these are powered by less powerful hardware, and are average in terms of performance, rather are more then enough but it’s just the point that to get a extremely high end phone, you’ll now have to shell out even more money which was not at all the case a couple of years back.
The innovations in the smartphones of this segment are pretty similar to that mid-range phones. There’s bits of upgrades here and there and the most being in the raw power as these are equipped with a slight better hardware. For instance the OnePlus Nord isn’t much of performance beast then the Realme 7 Pro considering it has SD765G meanwhile the latter has the SD720G. There are other parts where the OnePlus Nord would excel like a high refresh rate display and a better in-hand feel and of course, how can we forget the 5G support which has been bombarded by brands in 2020 everywhere.
In 2021, seems like Realme and Redmi are gonna drop some big bombs with Realme X7 series and Redmi Note 9 5G series respectively. This will further enhance the options available in this segment. At the end, it’s the customer who has a variety to choose from.
What’s next?
Now it feels like smartphone form factor is at its peak. If this candy bar form is changed then that would not be called a smartphone but rather would have each and every function like a smartphone. But that’s still a long way to go as this would not happen all of a sudden and everyone won’t adapt to it anyway. In the year 2021, we can expect mid-range phones with 5G considering cheapest 5G phone currently is the Moto G 5G at Rs. 21,000. So if Moto could do it, it won’t be difficult for Xiaomi or Realme to pull it of in either of its upcoming phones like if and or the Redmi Note 9 5G lands in India. If it does, I would say it would be renamed to Redmi Note 10 as a plethora of Redmi 9 series devices are already available in India. As for flagships go, Samsung’s and OnePlus‘ is not far of considering the leaks of these two phones have been popping up on the internet right & left. Nothing ground breaking would be included rather some major improvements in optics, design and not to mention the yearly upgraded in terms of processors which would be the Snapdragon 888 on both of the Galaxy S21 series (US & China) and OnePlus 9 series.
But surprisingly, neither the Galaxy S21 nor the OnePlus 9 is the first smartphone with Snapdragon 888 but there’s one more upcoming smartphone 2020 that is the Mi 11 from Xiaomi. It has been leaked that the reveal date is said to be December 29. Mi 11 would have extremely thin bezels as per the leaks.
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