Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The top 2020 Smartphone fails!”.
It’S 2021 happy new year guys. What we thought we’d do is look back at some of the smartphone fails from 2020 to see where the industry went wrong and how it could do better. Next year. This video was originally an article done by the wonderful hadley simon. So do check out the link in the video description to that, but without further ado, let’s jump straight into the list.
First off is the delayed nokia, 8.3 hmd unveiled the mid-ranger with some pretty decent specs and a nice design. The phone itself wasn’t actually that bad, but its release was delayed by six months, by which point there were better options from the likes of xiaomi and real me already out. There hmd never gave a clear reason why the phone was delayed so long, but it was the launch phone and the partner phone of a james one film that came out again six months later. It made sense for it to be delayed six months to match coming out with the film.
But again we didn’t get a clear statement on that, maybe not so much a phone flop but more like a terrible launch. Next, the microsoft surface duo which microsoft unveiled in 2019, it looked pretty exciting, with a new kind of form factor given the thickness or lack thereof, and the cool hinge. When the reviews came out, however, yeah it wasn’t pretty. First off the reviews were only able to talk about the hardware in the first videos and delayed talking about the software in the next set of videos and for good reason.
The software was plagued with issues, and the list of supported apps that went across both screens was so small that it really wasn’t worth it. You couldn’t even use a custom launcher to fix the microsoft launcher issues because it was a new form factor and due to that uniqueness, there weren’t any launchers that supported it. Also for fourteen hundred dollars, you really didn’t get a lot of smartphone.
You got something with an outdated flagship. Chipset, you didn’t get 5g, you didn’t even get nfc. The camera was pretty poor and overall support didn’t look very good.
There were definitely better foldables on the market, not that the escobar fold. 2 was one of them because it never really was on the market. Was it as a follow-up to the re-badged royal flex pie. The fold 2 was really just a rebadged original galaxy fold that doesn’t sound too bad for 400. Us dollars, except you’d, never really got the phone. The money just disappeared from your bank account.
Who would have thought that the brother of pablo escobar would be cunning money out of people onto affordable. You can actually buy the motorola razer. It definitely caught mainstream attention when it launched it shed the iconic folding design as the original razer, but with 20 20 goodies for the amount of money you were paying.
You got a fairly out of date and mid-range chipset. You didn’t get the best camera. The screen was a little meh and there were a few notable build quality issues for a lot of people.
That is not worth 1500 us dollars. It was a cool phone for sure, but nostalgia really wasn’t enough to get people to spend 1.5 k on a smartphone that wasn’t really ready for the mainstream. Oh to make things worse.
Samsung released its galaxy zed flip, which was a much better smartphone in a lot of facets around the same time, at around the same price, and a lot of people picked that instead speaking of samsung, the galaxy note, 20 ultra was expensive, but it was kind of Worth it with heaps of premium flagship level features and a glass and metal build. As for the regular galaxy note, 20, it had a plastic back and a 60hz 1080p display and it cost 999 us dollars yeah. In fact, it would turn out that the later release galaxy s20 fan edition a comparatively budget, smartphone actually trounced, the note 20 in a lot of areas.
Sure it didn’t have the s pen, but it did have a 120hz display and a three times optical zoom camera. Those things the galaxy note didn’t have, in fact, for the value for money, we’re probably better off going for the note 20 ultra, which costs a fair few hundred dollars more sure, you’re more out of pocket. But at least you’ve got a lot of flagship features and flagship, build quality.
Who could forget motorola launching its first proper flagship in a long time? Probably quite a few of you to be honest and me too, for good reason, really motorola’s commitment to just one major software update on a phone with a price tag that matches some people’s first cars was not a good start. Motorola did back pedal and said that they would offer two major upgrades, but the damage was kind of already done. It also didn’t help that in the us it was a verizon exclusive and smartphones from samsung apple and other big names up at the premium level were already selling comparatively very good smartphones.
Let’S talk about oneplus for a moment because it started the year off actually pretty strongly with a great oneplus 8 series. The pro with its qhd plus 120hz oled and sensational speed was a particular strong point heck even the oneplus nord was a pretty good launch. It was actually towards the end of the year that things started to go wrong.
To start off. With the launch of the nord n series, wasn’t a good look. The n10 was only slightly less expensive than the nord and was significantly worse.
The n100 was just a re-badged oppo a53 and was a colossal contrast with the company’s never settle. Tagline, oh and oneplus, said for both of those devices that they would only give one major software upgrade. That’S not great. Oneplus is one you uh, i mean oxygen.
Os revamp also caused a lot of divide amongst the community. It was seemingly unnecessary and a cop-out oneplus is clean. Software has always been one of its main selling points and the switch to a more samsung aesthetic was a significant switch. Those were the biggest smartphone blunders of 2020.. There were some sweet smartphone releases, however, 2020, wasn’t all bad. The pixel 4a series, the galaxy s20 fe, the xperia 5.2 and the iphone 12 mini just to name a few. Please let us know more smartphone blunders. In the comments below we’d love to see them whilst you’re down there, please do hit like and subscribe to never miss a video like this one.
Also, please do check out the original article by hadley simons in the video description. I’Ve been writing thomas with android authority and i’ll catch. You later .