IFA
I do not consider it necessary to discuss all the events, since the exhibition was widely covered on the site, and a few days ago a special navigator was even released on it. Therefore, I will focus only on the most interesting (from my subjective point of view) announcements.
IFA 2016. Exhibition Navigator
Sony
Sony has introduced two new smartphones, one of which should be the beginning of a new line and a kind of restart of the series. It was named Sony Xperia XZ and at the moment can be considered the company's flagship.
Those who have not seen a single Sony device in recent years will surely be impressed by the design of the new products. Fans of the brand, who are accustomed to the appearance of the devices and do not want any drastic changes, will also be satisfied. If you do not belong to the first or the second category, you may have an unpleasant feeling of déjà vu. It seems that all of this has really been somewhere and once, and it was often performed even more interesting. And, it seems, not in vain – this is exactly the case in reality.
Sony is stuck in time like a beetle in a lump of amber. Over and over again the company tries to start life anew, presents new lines of smartphones, it seems, even tries to experiment with design … but each time we get the same smartphones, similar to each other, like two drops of water. It seems that it is possible not only to schedule Sony's announcements for several years ahead, but also to predict in advance what journalists will write about the upcoming devices and what buyers will say.
Maybe this is not bad, because despite all the pessimistic forecasts of analysts, the company has been afloat for many years. But the old audience is slowly but surely melting away, every year more and more people for whom the phrase 'Japanese quality' and 'Sony Style' are an empty phrase Moreover, the company's devices have not been able to boast of any special quality for a long time. And the new audience needs to be attracted by something, in which the company is clearly not interested. In any case, after such 'relaunches' I have just such a feeling, this is work for the remaining fans, and nothing more.
Sony Xperia XZ – first look 
Sony Xperia X Compact – first look
Lenovo
Lenovo continues to actively develop the idea of modular smartphones. You can treat the company and its new products in different ways, but the fact that it is not afraid to experiment and stubbornly goes its own way is worth a lot. Maybe the results of these experiments are not exactly what some would like, and the new smartphones are in many ways ambiguous, but this is better than the cowardly trampling on one place that some other players are promoting.
On the other hand, admiring Lenovo is best done from afar. As soon as you think about buying a smartphone, everything becomes much sadder – the high price, peculiar design, limited set of replaceable modules and many other 'little things' noticeably spoil the overall picture.
New announcements slightly correct the situation – MOTO Z Play makes modular solutions from Lenovo more accessible, and the photo module created in cooperation with Hasselblad looks fresh and interesting.
The only pity is that the company continues to hide behind the banner Motorola, as if trying to hide the high price of the devices behind the famous brand. This will still not help much to promote the modules, but the brand will depreciate in the eyes of former fans very quickly. What Lenovo shows may be cool and interesting, but this is not Moto.
IFA 2016. Hasselblad photo module for Lenovo MOTO Z 
IFA 2016. Moto Z Play
Samsung
To get into the spotlight this time around, Samsung didn't have to show anything at all. The hysteria around the Galaxy Note 7 was gaining momentum, the network was filled with millions of caustic comments of varying degrees of wit, thousands of demotivators and hundreds of photos in front of fire extinguishers.
https://twitter.com/voi_sko/status/773436293736984576
I see no point in discussing this situation once again, everything has already been sorted out so many times. The company gave a reason to gloat, and a bunch of commentators took advantage of this with pleasure. You can recall the cases with exploding iPhone, warnings from various companies about the potential dangers of penny 'Chinese' US Type C chargers, and so on, but until the bulk of the debaters get tired of practicing wit, there is no point in this. Galaxy Note is just an excuse here; most of the discussion participants are not interested in it at all.
There is a phrase – 'a friend is known in trouble'. The chance to run into a marriage (and even more so to damage the device with cheap chargers or accessories) was, is and will always be. The only question is how the company will behave in this situation, hide its head in the sand or try to help. Cases when mass defects are stubbornly not recognized by the manufacturer are quite common, but the opposite examples are rare. Especially when it would be easy and simple to blame everything on the stupidity of users and the problems of cheap chargers, and even with less damage to reputation.
This is by no means an excuse for marriage, but it gives reason to think. Or a little more poignant.
Spillikins # 397. Exploding Note 7 and other stories from IFA
LG
The new X-line turned out to be very ambiguous for LG. To start with the very positioning of the device – you buy a cheap smartphone that will catch up with the flagship in only one single parameter, but will not be flawed in all the rest. It may be so, but in my opinion, this is exactly the case when marketers should not call a spade a spade.
Devices of the middle price segment can be original and interesting and do not have to be pale copies of the flagship. But LG thinks differently, probably focusing on those who dream of LG G5, but cannot afford to spend that amount. The entire X line is an attempt to shuffle the specs in different ways to surely please every potential buyer. If the G5 had a brand new iPhone or, in extreme cases, some really desired device on Android, such a trick could work. But the G5 itself is a rather controversial device that cannot boast of popular love. Especially in the CIS countries, where the market share LG is not at all amazing.
It makes sense to discuss the prospects of the devices only after the official price is announced in the Russian Federation, they can stand out from the general mass precisely due to the price / quality ratio. But looking at the specs of the same X Style with its 1.5GB of RAM and a 2100mAh battery, it's hard to believe.
IFA 2016. New X-series from LG
Ara
In early September, it became known that Google had decided to close the project of modular phones called Project Ara.
The founder of the project, Den Makovsky, said that he was extremely upset by the cowardice of Google, which actually gave up promising development halfway through. He considers the refusal to further develop Ara a huge disappointment for all fans of modular devices around the world.
Link to news
In fact, it was predictable. The most you would expect from Google is one or two Ara models in a limited number of markets. The reason is simple – Google is not interested in this device as such, nor in the possible profit from its sales. For the search giant, this is just one experiment aimed at finding new promising areas and directions for development. It is for such 'shots on the moon' that the Google X laboratory was created, which can be read about in a separate article.
Offtopic: Google X Lab and Project Loon
Now that the idea of modular devices has been taken up by large manufacturers of mobile equipment, the need for further development of Ara has disappeared. The experiment continues, it is simply being carried out by someone else's hands.
Many people think that smartphones LG and Lenovo are not modular in the full sense of the word. And this is really so, here we are talking more about attaching accessories than a full-fledged modular structure. But from the user's point of view, the difference is not so big, and the idea behind the devices is exactly the same. Only a few are ready to change the processor in a smartphone, and in Project Ara, in the end, they decided to abandon such an opportunity. There are just batteries, cameras, speakers and additional modules, and this is what Lenovo and LG offer. The main difference is that it is about adding a module, not replacing it, which does not have a very good effect on the design and dimensions of the smartphone. But a commercial project differs from a research experiment in that it cannot hover in the clouds and must work with what really exists and works.
How this modular epic will end is not yet clear. Maybe this is the near future of smartphones, maybe no one needs an idea that will be forgotten in a year or two. But Google cares about this insofar as a negative result of an experiment is also a result.
Someone said that in science, 90% of all experiments and developments do not bring any practical benefit. But without them, there would never have been those 10% that change our world.
LG V20
The company LG announced the V20 smartphone, which should be the first out of the box device to receive Android 7.0 Nougat. At first glance, the device turned out to be interesting – an additional display, a dual camera, a shell LG UX 5.0+, a camera with a combined stabilization system Steady Record 2.0, good audio capabilities, a metal body, shock resistance and a bunch of other things.
LG V20 was created taking into account the experience of the previous devices of the series, all the complaints and wishes of users. It is not a flagship, but a good option for those who were not inspired by the controversial G5 for some reason.
It remains only once again to regret that the models of the middle price segment LG are paid much less attention and they turn out to be much more boring.
Main technical characteristics LG V20:
- Support for communication standards: 4G / LTE Cat.12 (600 Mbps)
- Dimensions: 159.7×78.1×7.6 mm
- Processor: Quad Core, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820
- Platform: Android 7.0 Nougat
- Display: 5.7-inch, IPS Quantum, 2560 × 1440 pixels
- Main camera: 16 MP with optical image stabilization system + 8 MP; hybrid autofocus system (laser + phase)
- Front camera: 5 MP
- Memory: 4 GB of RAM (LPDDR4), 64 GB (UFS) built-in, slot for microSD memory cards (up to 2 TB)
- Communications: Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac, Bluetooth v4.2LE, NFC, USB Type-C, GPS
- Battery: 3200 mAh, removable; Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging system
- Other: Fingerprint scanner
- Other Features LG V20:
- Android 7.0 Nougat with user interface LG UX 5.0+ supporting multi-window application mode on a large 5.7-inch QHD display
- Support for 'In apps' search function
- Premium materials: cover made of aircraft-grade AL6013 grade aluminum, and top and bottom shell made of silicone polycarbonate (Si-PC), used in helmets, which reduces the effects of falls and bumps by 20%
- Shock protection meets military MIL-STD 810G standards
Link to news