Best of IFA 2019: Top Phones at the event

A lot of people would never expect Samsung to announce a brand new 5G flagship smartphone at IFA 2019, but the Korean giant did it, a few days after the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 series in the global market. Unlike all the other handsets from the A-series, the Galaxy A90 5G is the only flagship not belonging to the S or Note line-ups. It is equipped with a Snapdragon 855 chipset and it comes with a wide 6.7-inch display boasting the AMOLED technology and a Full HD+ resolution. It also sports a triple rear camera and a 4500 mAh battery.

• Read More: Samsung Galaxy A90 5G with 6.7-inch display, SD855, triple cameras and big battery is official

Both Nokia 6.2 and 7.2 are new mid-rangers by HMD Global. Among their highlights, there are HDR displays and a rear triple camera equipped with Carl Zeiss on the Nokia 7.2. They both come with 600-series Qualcomm’s chipset: Snapdragon 636 and Snapdragon 660, respectively. And they both have 3500 mAh batteries, as well as Android One out of the box based on Android 9 Pie. They are going to hit the market with price tags of €200 and €300, respectively.

Nokia 2720 and 800 Tough are not smartphones: HMD Global decided once again to launch old-school feature phones. The first is a retro flip phone, while the second is a rugged phone with an IP68 rating and a MIL-STD-810G certification. Given that they are feature phones, battery life is undoubtedly their strong point. But despite not being smartphones, they still maintain some smart features thanks to the operating system KaiOS. Besides coming with a camera, they also have 4G connectivity and they support a few important apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Google Maps.

After delaying its launch several times, during the IFA 2019, Samsung finally announced the launch of the Galaxy Fold in the global market. The company made some tweaks in order to make its first foldable phones more resistant and avoid every kind of display issues. So now the handset finally went into commerce with a sturdier body. It is currently available in South Korea, but in a few days, it will hit select international markets with a price tag around €2000. Unfortunately, not every country will get it.

During its keynote at IFA 2019, Sony officially unveiled the Xperia 5: a compact iteration of its last flagship Xperia 1. We can define Sony Xperia 5 as the only really compact flagship released in the second half of 2019 globally, given that it is powered by the Snapdragon 855 chipset. Sony already started accepting pre-orders in a few European countries with a price tag ranging from €800 to €850 depending on the market.

After Qualcomm released the Snapdragon 855+ chipset that is an upgraded version of the Snapdragon 855 with a higher clock frequency and higher graphics performances, even Nubia decided to release an upgraded variant of its latest gaming phone Red Magic 3. Its name is Red Magic 3S and it is obviously powered by the Snapdragon 855+. After an initial phase of reservations, the phone went on sale two days ago in China with a starting price of CNY 2,999 which roughly translates into $419 at the actual change, for the configuration with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage.

The ROG Phone II was already official, but Asus took advantage of the IFA 2019 to launch it in the global market. The handset also came in a new configuration called Ultimate Edition equipped with 1 TB of internal UFS 3.0 storage. Before this launch, the ROG Phone 2 came with a max 512 GB of internal storage. The rest of the specifications remains the same as the previous version launched in the Asian market. The price tag for the global market starts from €899.

Buy Link: Asus ROG Phone 2

Alongside the new Kirin 990 which will power the Mate 30 series, Huawei unveiled two new color variants of its P30 Pro. The phone comes with exactly the same hardware specifications, but in the new Misty Lavender and Mistyc Blue color variants, it embraces the “panda” color scheme with two different textures on the back cover. Further, these color variants of the Huawei P30 Pro will hit the market with EMUI 10 out of the box based on Android 10, unlike the other color variants.

Buy Link: Huawei P30 Pro

After the announcement of three flagships at MWC 2019, not everyone expected LG to launch another flagship phone. But the Korean company came up at IFA 2019 with the LG G8X, which will also be known as the V50S ThinQ in its homeland. It comes with a revamped dual-screen accessory adding another display which is the same as the main phone’s display, as well as a monochromatic mini display on the external part, showing time, date and notifications.

Despite launching a couple of phones in Asia, Lenovo unveiled a camera-focused device called Motorola One Zoom, which is equipped with a quad-camera setup on its rear side. It is a mid-ranger, but it provides outstanding camera capabilities thanks to OIS, quad pixel technology for amazing low light performance, and a telephoto sensor with 3x optical zoom and OIS. The company also unveiled the Moto E6 Plus entry-level device with the Helio P22 chipset which will hit the European market with a €139 price tag.

Alongside a few Alcatel devices, TCL unveiled its first self-produced smartphone. Its name is TCL Plex and it is a value for money smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 675 paired with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage which you can furtherly expand with a micro SD. TCL Plex has a 6.53-inch punch-hole display with a Full HD+ resolution and a triple camera with a double LED flash and advanced software which improves colors in real-time. The battery has a 3800 mAh capacity and the phone integrates the T-Cast app allowing to remotely control TCL TVs. It will launch in Europe in Q4 and it will carry a €329 price.