It hasn’t been an earth-shattering show for mobile this year. CES 2013 has thrown up some interesting devices, but the big players in mobile seem to be saving their announcements for MWC (Mobile World Congress) next month. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, you’d do well to bide your time and wait just a little longer to see what else is on the horizon. There will be new releases from HTC and LG, RIM’s BlackBerry 10 will arrive, and there’s never a shortage of new iPhone rumors, but the device you can’t afford to ignore is the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Bigger and better
Check out our Best of CES 2013 in mobile to find full details on the devices that grabbed our attention. The “phablet” space is getting competitive with releases like the 6.1-inch Huawei Ascend Mate, and the market is predictably being flooded with new tablets, but there’s a lack of innovation in the smartphone segment. Sony’s new flagship, the Xperia Z, is a good example. It has a 5-inch 1080p display, a quad-core processor, and a 13-megapixel camera, just like the newly announced ZTE Grand S and the Huawei Ascend D2.
The Xperia Z definitely compares favorably with the Android leaders right now, but it doesn’t offer much beyond the HTC Droid DNA, which came out last November. A bigger camera and an impressive level of water resistance don’t qualify as big innovations.
We don’t have details on carriers or pricing yet, but the Xperia Z is a premium product and will no doubt have a price tag to match. The ZTE Grand S and Huawei Ascend D2 are launching in China, and we don’t yet know when, or if, they’ll reach the states.
The truth is that none of the smartphones announced at CES 2013 should have you running to the stores or phoning your carrier for an upgrade. When you factor in pricing, you could build a pretty strong case for the Pantech Discover being the most noteworthy release – it’s $50 on a two-year contract at AT&T and it has a 4.8-inch 720p display, a decent 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, and a 12.6-megapixel camera. A variant called the Pantech Perception will also be available on Verizon.
You’ll be sorry if you don’t wait
If you’re looking for something slightly better than the Galaxy S3, then there are definitely some options out there, but what will Samsung bring to the table with the Galaxy S4? Until we see what Samsung’s new iteration has to offer, it would be jumping the gun to upgrade your smartphone.
The brand that Samsung has built with the Galaxy S series is impressive. The Galaxy S2 really upped the ante for Android and the Galaxy S3 took it to a whole new level. The Galaxy S3 has surpassed 30 million unit sales worldwide, making it Samsung’s most successful smartphone ever. It was the best-selling smartphone in the third quarter of 2012, beating the iPhone into second place. It won a number of “phone of the year” awards and it is still going strong.
The S3 set the standard for Android smartphones and other manufacturers struggling to match it in the weeks and months following its May 2012 release…
Read more: digitaltrends.com
