Over the past week we’ve been present in Barcelona, at MWC 2013 and we did some hands on videos with the highest end and newest smartphones. They pertain to the biggest phone makers out there and we selected the 5 models we liked the most. Some are phablets, some are simply smartphones, but all of them are high specced. Let’s see which is best!
Believe it or not this top 5 also includes a Windows Phone device and the idea of having most of the Lumia 920 features at a decent price tempts us. This Windows Phone 8 device keeps the classic Nokia Lumia design, although it’s closer to the Lumia 822 compared to the 920, in the design area. The handset packs an 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, F1.9 technology, NFC, a 4.3 inch display with Gorilla Glass 2 and all of that with a price tag of 249 euros, which is fantastic. Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, now Here Maps are all here, plus City Lens.
I didn’t expect that a Lenovo device would blow my mind, but the IdeaPhone K900 did and guess what… it features an Intel CPU, not an ARM one. It relies on a dual core Intel CPU with a 2 GHz frequency and it also features a CloverTrail+ processor, a 5.5 inch Full HD display and all of that crammed into a 6.9 mm thin package. Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 uses materials like polycarbonate, stainless steel and it looks premium. At the back there’s a 13 megapixel camera with Sony Exmor technology, Android 4.1 and the ability to customize the back with 4 metallic backs.
Sony Xperia Z was actually unveiled at CES 2013, but the flagship is appealing enough to also make it into the news today. The smartphone is dust and water resistant, features a 13 megapixel camera with video HDR and it relies on an Exmor R sensor. The device packs a 5 inch Full HD display, a quad core Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2 GB of RAM and it runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. There’s also Sony Mobile Bravia Engine 2 technology, 16 GB of storage and a microSD card slot. The screen seems pretty crisp, the interface is fluid and the camera is very fast, plus the design is very slim, sleek and appealing.
The LG Optimus G Pro was impressive even before MWC 2013, when it leaked on the web a bunch of times and it finally became official courtesy of LG. We were very excited to arrive at the LG booth at MWC and find that the 5.5 inch phablet is even more pleasant in real life. It features an elongated design, user-friendly format and the best of the best specs. Those include a quad core Snapdragon 600 CPU, 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, a 5.5 inch Full HD screen and we got an interesting demo of a Pop Up Play style feature and some multitasking. The latter is done via a feature called QSlide, that runs up to 3 apps on the display at the same time. There’s also a function called Audio Zoom, that only picks up the voice of a person when you’re filming a group, which is incredibly cool.
The real star of the show in Barcelona was the HTC One and you can ask any participant about that and he’ll confirm it. The device features a 4.7 inch S LCD 3 Full HD screen and a 4 megapixel camera with ultrapixel technology. It’s also, the very first phone not phablet that uses the quad core Snapdragon 600 quad core CPU, that achieves crazy good benchmarks, like over 10k points in Quadrant and such. The device is also very thin and has a pair of front speakers that you may find appealing, thanks to the BoomSound and Beats Audio technologies. This sounds like the perfect phone and if you add a metallic case in the mix, which HTC did, you’ll see that this is love at first sight.
These were the devices we considered the best at MWC and I’m sure you can’t argue too much about that, since there weren’t that many phones in Barcelona to begin with. Would you have shaped the top 5 differently?
