Our editors talk: 2019 H1 highs and lows

What were your greatest disappointments in H1 of the year?

George

I've been babbling about foldables, and will babble on some more, this time complaining about Samsung's rather ridiculous negligence to actually put a bunch of Folds into real people's hands before the launch. This could have easily saved some embarrassment and we could be having foldable Galaxies out and about right now, as opposed to maybe later.

That's the specific thing that irked me in the spring, but I've also been struggling with this general sense that smartphones are plateauing hard. While I can appreciate that's been the case for some time now, it's like it has hit me with particular strength these last few months.

It's gotten increasingly difficult to find valid reasons to upgrade from generation to generation within the same lineup, but more worryingly there's been little truly unique to differentiate high-end models between companies. And if I can't find joy in switching phones, I might be forced to look for it in something more meaningful, which is scary.

Ivan

There haven’t really been that many lows this year, which probably deserves a mention in the previous page. But thinking hard enough I still came to a few.

The Huawei drama is causing one of the most innovative and aggressive smartphone makers to lose some of its traction and that’s bad for the entire industry. Huawei pushes Samsung to be at its best, which pushes the entire Android ecosystem forward and that’s a great thing. I hope things get back to normal in the second half of the year.

iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max

Apple. I used to be one of the Apple loyalists here at HQ but no more. These days Apple products seem behind the curve, overpriced and underachieving. While pretty much every phone nowadays has a Night Mode option in its camera, the iPhone is still at least two months away from getting the feature. And don’t expect old iPhones to get an eventual Night Mode, because Apple logic.

In September Apple will announce two phones with triple cameras and no 5G, Samsung has had a phone with triple camera, no notch and 5G since March. And don’t even get me started on the Lightning port - if Apple don’t put a USB-C port on the iPhone in 2019 it’ll look downright ridiculous.

Kaloyan

Unfortunately, the beginning of 2019 promised us revolutions, but none happened.

The foldable phones - supposedly the next major step in the phone business - failed to launch. It turned out that Huawei and Samsung, so busy in their one-upping game, didn't realize their "revolutionary" devices weren't ready at all for the mass market. The Galaxy Fold and Mate X turned out difficult to make, but the thing that probably killed them was the negligence in testing the folding mechanisms.

Then there is the Nokia 9 PureView. The next PureView phone! I should have seen this fiasco coming, but I was one of those believers, who wanted the Nokia 9 to make history. Well, it failed miserably. HMD's may have had the right idea at first, but until it was ready all other makers could stack images by using just one camera sensor. And from a revolutionary device, the Nokia 9 turned out to one that's way too late at that. Pity!

Finally, there is the Huawei/USA debacle. Having banned Huawei phone sales in the USA was one thing but to forbid US companies to work with Huawei was a whole new level of cavil. I don't think anyone could have anticipated the fallout from this USA/China fracas, but to call it messy is understatement. One thing was clear from the start - it was unnecessary, pointless if you will, and that it will be over in a few weeks. And over it is, but the industry starting with Huawei is still recovering from that. No matter if you like President Trump or not, this was not the right way to handle whatever that was.

Victor

There has been no shortage of drama in the smartphone realm as of late. Of course, the main thing that sticks out is the Huawei/US saga. More political than anything else and thankfully somewhat passing over and heading towards a resolution.

That being said, the scare was real and potentially indicative of a broader trend. With a lot of the software know-how in modern smartphones originating the the Western world and production and engineering concentrated in the East and primarily China, the balance is delicate and highly intricate. It is hardly a secret that most major player in the industry have at least one "plan b" already in place, preparing for any major break in favorable relations.

Plus, general software efforts out of Asia have started to really shine through on the international scene, regardless of any political tensions. Could we be right on the precipice of a major shift in the modern smartphone paradigm as we know it? If that is the case, we can only hope for a smooth and beneficial transition to this new chapter.

But, I digress. Plus, this line of though is a bit too abstract. So moving on to more tangible subject, although not by much - foldable displays and the phones around them. Or should I say phone concepts.

Full disclosure, I had already been riding this particular hype-train for a good few years before the Samsung Galaxy Fold or Huawei Mate X were ever present in the rumor mill. Since then we’ve seen both in action and had our Galaxy Fold review unit recalled to the Korean HQ.

I still firmly believe that the industry collectively forced itself to jump the gun on foldable displays. As much as I would love to see the tech show its true potential that is still at least a few good months away. Hence my feelings on the current state of foldable displays and the events surrounding them is a bitter-sweet mix of hope and disappointment from certain marketing decisions.

Coincidentally, this also pretty much sums up my thoughts regarding the ongoing "hole" and notch situation, which I find pretty upsetting. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but mine remains firmly against holes of any kind on a smartphone display. Old-fashioned or not, I feel most comfortable with an uninterrupted digital canvas to work with. Preferably one that is flat as well. But that's a whole other can of worms and one that is pretty much too late to even discuss now.

As a long-term Galaxy Note user I personally hate the prospect of a punch-hole on the Note 10. And potentially one on the Google Pixel 4. On the other hand, we have been seeing more and more interesting alternatives, like the Galaxy A80.

I am not saying this is the best solution, but it's definitely an option. So are phones like the Realme X, which represents a growing number of elevating mechanism adopters. And the Oppo Reno family with its odd take on the matter that accomplishes the same goal.

Yordan

Many of my colleagues already mentioned the situation with Huawei being a hostage in the negotiations between the United States and China. For me the low point of these six months was another - Samsung’s failure to realize what is going on in the world of foldable smartphones.

Yes, the Galaxy Fold wasn’t officially launched when it started to fail, so this isn't comparable with the Galaxy Note7 fiasco. However, rushing a device to the market only to beat your main competitor while overlooking major flaws is something amateurs do and Samsung isn’t one.

The full-screen experience today is achieved by moving parts until we get a better solution for the front-facing camera. I get it, it is the necessary evil, but that doesn’t make it less annoying. You pay a load of money for a flagship like the OnePlus 7 Pro or the Oppo Reno and you can’t take it out for a run unless you want your sweat to render it unusable - what a joke.

Peter

Look, I don’t care about pure Android. I don’t like Google’s aesthetic choices since Holo or how slow it is to adopt features that vendor ROMs have had for years. And I don’t appreciate how much functionality was moved out of Android’s core and into Google’s Play Services (Huawei doesn’t appreciate it either).

But here’s the thing – it’s a law of nature that hardware companies are bad at software. Samsung, Huawei, Sony, Xiaomi, Oppo and so on are hardware companies. All of their customized versions of Android find a way to be buggy, slow or packed with annoying oddities. Sometimes all of the those.

That’s not what disappointed me, though. It’s that new brands are cropping up seemingly every month yet none of them use stock Android (or something close to it). Did Realme really have to use Color OS? Is Honor married to EMUI? Can Xiaomi launch more than one or two Android One phones a year?

Again, “pure” Android isn’t all that important to me. “Not buggy Android” is, however. And close-to-vanilla is the least-bad option for now. So, despite all the new brands that have enter the market, I’m still stuck choosing between a Pixel, a OnePlus or an Asus (and one day a Nokia, perhaps, if HMD can finally produce a capable flagship).