There are phones that fold and phones that don’t, but what makes phones exciting, and can a budget price be defined that way? Find out in five minutes.
Transcript
For the week ending October 25, you’re tuned into The Wrap, Australia’s fastest technology roundup, and depending on when you last upgraded your phone, you might be looking at a new one. Phones can be a little complicated to pick between, partially because there are so many and at varied price points.
You can spend a hundred bucks on something cheap, a little more on something better, a thousand or two on something high-end, and you can even spend a good three grand, more than what a lot of people pay for a computer.
In fact, by the end of the year, there will have been over 60 phones released in Australia. That includes at least five brands this year, offering even more choice on top of what launched last year.
However as varied as the selection is, the excitement might just not be there. While the camera quality definitely improved this year, and phones saw some of the biggest screens and batteries yet, most phones are largely the same.
A screen that takes up most of the front, three or four or more cameras on the back, a battery built to go all day if possible, and a few other features; that’s normal for a phone in 2019, with options like reverse wireless charging so you can charge a pair of wireless earphones or a toothbrush, or 5G or emoji modelled off your face or something else that stands out.
That’s normal for phones in 2019, but it’s not the case for all of them.
In fact this week, Google’s Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL rocked up, and they’re a little different from what you might expect. Google’s new Pixel is one of the least expensive flagships of the year, competing with the iPhone 11, not the Pro or Max. It’s lower priced than Samsung’s S10 and Note10, and lower than the Huawei P30 Pro.
At $1279, the Pixel 4 XL is a big flagship at a relatively low price, and that’s important, because it’s where Google is playing. The phone itself comes with a fast chip, decent amount of memory, and a solid camera that works really well at night, even working for astrophotography. We used the Night Sight mode to capture pictures of our little one while she slept, and it was almost day time in the dark.
The portrait mode is excellent, and the addition of a zoom lens means Google’s Pixel 4 camera can let you get closer.
But as nice as those things are, the battery is fairly underwhelming and will need to be charged nightly. Plus there’s nothing that really stands out about the Pixel 4. It has a nice and fast screen, and it comes with a thoroughly useless feature of gesture controls, but that’s largely it.
And that’s a problem. Many phones this year were great, but not exciting. The Pixel 3a is a great mid-range phone, and the P30 Pro comes with excellent cameras. And the iPhone 11 Pro Max is a wonderful example of the entire package.
If you want exciting, you may need to look at the $3,000 Galaxy Fold, which is arriving in Australia next week. It’s a little different, with a 4.6 inch screen at the front and a 7.3 inch foldable screen when you open it up. It’s something very different and very intriguing, even if it is very thick when you close it flat. It seems perfectly suited to handbags and suit jackets, and it’s not your standard phone.
Yet it’s definitely eye catching and very cool. While 2019 was supposed to be the year of the foldables — and didn’t really happen that way — the Samsung Galaxy Fold is genuinely exciting despite its size and remarkable price tag. And credit to Samsung, it does come with wireless earphones and 512GB of storage, making it not much of an increase in price over the maximum $2500 iPhone 11 Pro Max.
It’s not a phone for everyone, but that’s ok, because it could just start the trend for where phones will go, and for what’s exciting coming up.
There are of course plenty of options if you don’t want to pay that much. In the mid-range, at the $500 part of the market, there are more choices than ever. You’ll find new models from Oppo and Huawei and Motorola and Samsung, but joining them are new players, too. You might not know Realme, Mintt, Xiaomi, or Vivo, but they’re releasing models, too. Plus TCL, the TV company, has phones now as well.
The point here, perhaps, is that while the excitement of phones is beginning to die down until new technologies arrive, price might be the new excitement in phones. After all, if you can save a little money and not spend up big, you can reserve that extra cash for a little more excitement in your life.
If you do happen to spend up big, you might get something genuinely eye-catching and exciting, and if not, the money you’ve saved might be perfect for a wearable, a nice new pair of headphones, or even a holiday away.
You might not even need your phone to be exciting, and that’s ok, too. A phone can just be a part of your life without the glitz or glamour, but if it is, even better.
If anything, 2020 is looking like the year more foldables and more excitement comes to phones, so if you’re hoping for excitement and can wait a year, that might just work out well.
You won’t have to wait as long for a new episode of this show, but for now, you’ve been listening to The Wrap, Australia’s fastest technology roundup. You’ll find this show every Friday on Podcast One, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, but until then, have a great week. We’ll see you next time on The Wrap. Take care.
