There are more than enough rumors about SGS8 on the network, but at the moment it's just fortune-telling on the coffee grounds and an attempt to guess how Samsung will behave. On the one hand, it seems that Samsung will try to throw all its efforts into testing the upcoming flagship, because the company will not forgive the repetition of the story with the Note 7. And given that the company clearly does not want to delay the release of the new flagship, all the planned innovations may well be put under the knife.
On the other hand, it is also necessary to rehabilitate in the eyes of fans for the failure of the Note 7, and just a slightly improved version of last year's flagship may not be enough. Following this logic, Samsung, on the contrary, may decide to squeeze the maximum out of SGS8, clearly showing that it is not for nothing that it is considered the market leader. Almost certainly Koreans have some interesting ideas left for a rainy day. And that day has clearly arrived.
How everything will turn out in practice is unknown, but the latest news for fans is not very bright. So, according to WSJ, Samsung was forced to interrupt work on SGS8 for two weeks, throwing all its efforts into finding and eliminating the causes of Note 7. But there is not much time left before MWC, where the flagship will be announced.
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The Note 7's troubles have forced not only Samsung to reconsider their plans, but many other companies as well. In particular LG.
Not so long ago, representatives of LG claimed that they were completely satisfied with their modular flagship and would definitely continue to develop this idea in LG G6. But, judging by the latest leaks (albeit not yet confirmed), the company decided to urgently revise its strategy and move on to plan B. The chance to at least slightly squeeze Samsung does not come out very often and it is not surprising that LG wants to squeeze the maximum from the current situation. There is no time for dubious experiments, here you need to beat for sure.
Even if the new flagship of the company turns out to be a standard candy bar, without support for additional modules, this will not mean at all that the idea of modular smartphones has been completely and irrevocably forgotten. They will simply experiment now not on the flagship, but on some separate model. This is quite logical and one should rather be surprised that the company did not go this way from the very beginning. Indeed, from the same LG G Flex, on which a number of promising technologies were tested, no one tried to make a flagship.
LG G5 was received ambiguously by buyers, and many have already managed to declare that the idea of modules from the very beginning was stupid and nobody needed it for nothing. But the point here is not at all in the idea itself, but in its implementation. A small number of modules, high price, ill-conceived design (the need to remove the battery when changing a module, unreliable fastening, and so on) and a somewhat peculiar design really scared off many. Especially considering that we are talking about a flagship, which from the point of view of users should be an uncompromising device without any serious flaws.
The company itself insists that the final decision on the 2017 flagship has not yet been made.
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Xiaomi refers to the actions of competitors differently, primarily paying attention to the successes, rather than the misses. There was a separate material about the announcements of this Chinese company on the site, if you missed it, I advise you to read it.
Xiaomi Mi Note 2, Mi VR and bezelless Mi MIX 
Frameless smartphones for example Xiaomi Mi Mix or 'road to nowhere'
Of greatest interest is the 'frameless' Mi MIX phablet, which looks quite fresh and interesting. And it will be much easier to purchase than Sharp products.
Considering that the design of the device turned out to be bright and memorable anyway, it is not entirely clear why Xiaomi it was necessary to embellish the real picture and edit its renders in Photoshop. But the company has already been caught in the fact that the thickness of the frames on press images is somewhat less than in real life. Trying to embellish the characteristics of the device, even knowing in advance that it will not go unnoticed is a typical Chinese approach, which is followed by many companies in the Middle Kingdom. Perhaps in the home market this is really perceived as an easy and innocent prank. But if Xiaomi has plans to conquer the markets of other countries, then it is better not for the company to deal with such things, buyers will not understand.
Mi MIX can be put on a par with the first Galaxy Note, LG G5, Moto X and other unusual devices. Not all of them showed good sales, but each such device is another step forward, which is certainly better than endless marking time. In recent years, the smartphone market has become too inert, most manufacturers are not at all eager to invent or try something new and prefer to focus on the actions of competitors. And it is precisely such devices that become the very impetus that makes the company move in a new direction.
Offtopic: display design
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HTC and Microsoft companies are very different, but the fate of their mobile units is developing in a similar way.
The head of Microsoft officially admitted the other day that the smartphone project on Windows has completely failed and the company has completely missed this market. Although to everyone who is even a little interested in mobile technology, this has long been clear and true. But for the device of augmented and virtual reality in MS they promise to take it seriously, taking into account all their past mistakes and drawing conclusions from all the failures.
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HTC has a very similar situation. The fate of the mobile division has been hanging in the balance for several months, but the company is investing a lot of time and money in the development of virtual reality. It may well turn out that soon HTC resounding success awaits again, but the company is unlikely to have anything to do with smartphones by that time.
But even with the most pessimistic scenario of the development of events, we will definitely see at least a couple of smartphones under the brand HTC. For example, HTC Bolt, also known as HTC 10 Evo.
There were already plenty of smartphone renders on the network, but the technical characteristics are not yet clear. And no matter how it turns out that the main 'feature' of the smartphone is the rejection of 3.5 audio input yes Android Nougat.
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Another question is, is it worth buying a flagship for the sake of being able to get the latest software? Moreover, lately manufacturers have been slowly coming to the idea of open beta tests, which will allow the owners of certain devices to test new software. And we are not always talking only about flagships.
For example, Meizu invites to participate in such a beta test not only for buyers of expensive Meizu Pro 6, but also for owners of budget Meizu M3S. By clicking on the link below, you can read the requirements for participants and sign up for the beta test.
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Enthusiasts quite often can get access to new software on their own. For example, Google Assistant, which is currently the exclusive feature of Google Pixel smartphones, can be run on any device with Android 7.0.
In fact, all you need to do is add one single line to one of the system files. Another thing is that you need root access for this, and no one will give you guarantees of a successful outcome.
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You can evaluate the capabilities of the new voice assistant in the video below. The author of the video compares the work of Google Assistant and Siri.
In general, both voice assistants work more or less the same, although there are still differences between them. Siri always tries not only to answer the question asked, but also to display additional information on the screen that may be useful. For example – the stock chart of the company you asked about or the history of past meetings of currently playing sports teams, and so on. And the output of the results is very nice.
Google Assistant has a slightly different approach. He will try to answer the question clearly, without displaying a bunch of unnecessary information on the screen and without requiring additional clicks and clarifications. After all, it is assumed that since you are using a voice assistant, then using a smartphone in a standard way is not very convenient for you at the moment. If the user wants to know something else on this topic, he can ask a short clarifying question ('When did they last play?', 'What year was he born?', 'Who is this?' And so on) the answer to which will be selected based on past phrases in the dialogue. Anyway, contextual search is one of the strengths of Google. So, when asked to show pictures of kittens, Siri will simply display a set of corresponding pictures from the Internet, and Google Assistant will first check if there are any pictures of cats among your own photos.