Mobile World Congress is easily the biggest mobile phone show of the year. While its January cousin, CES, may be waning in mobile relevance, MWC still reliably brings us major new flagship smartphones every year. Last year saw the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9, but what should we expect this year? What follows is a roundup of the more believable rumors that are floating around out there.
Samsung, LG, and Xiaomi all have events at the show, and are all expected to launch their new flagships. The major additions to just about every 2016 Android flagship will be the new Snapdragon 820, and with the addition of Android 6.0 Marshmallow's fingerprint reader support, if a device didn't come with a fingerprint reader before, it will now.
Samsung Galaxy S7—The S6 design gets a spec bump and 3D Touch
Samsung
Samsung's MWC invite.
Samsung
Samsung's MWC invite.
Evan Blass
Renders of the Galaxy S7 Edge.
Evan Blass
Renders of the Galaxy S7.
VentureBeat
The S7 Edge (gold) and vanilla S7 (black).
JKwan_嘉豪仔
Real life shot of what we think is the Galaxy S7 Edge. The top and bottom edges look rounded now. This is obviously an early version though—it lacks branding.
Review Dao
The back of the Galaxy S7, which seems round the back edges, like the Galaxy Note 5. Again, there isn't enough branding on this. It should say "Galaxy S7 Edge" on the back.
肥威
The camera sticks out a lot less than the Galaxy S6. Here you can also see the rounded back on the regular Galaxy S7.
The Galaxy S6 was all new last year, switching from a plastic body to a mostly glass device with a metal band around the side. Samsung also introduced an "Edge" variant, which featured a screen that curved along the left and right sides. It's rare to see a company do back-to-back redesigns, and this year it seems the Galaxy S7 will stick pretty close to the Galaxy S6 formula. A report from the Wall Street Journal has said the S7 "will look largely similar" to the S6, and press renders have been steadily leaking from Evleaks which mostly fit with this report.
There do seem to be a few minor tweaks based on the pictures. The regular Galaxy S7 has a flat front, but seems to have picked up a curved back, just like the Galaxy Note 5. The top and bottom of the Galaxy S7 Edge seem to be rounded now, to better match the curved screen. It also looks like both devices have a smaller camera hump—it's nearly flush with the back now.
With the move to a more solid body, the Galaxy S line lost its removable back, removable battery, and MicroSD card. This is more in line with the rest of the industry, but some customers were drawn to Galaxy phones specifically for these features. Samsung won't be doing anything about the battery, but multiple reports have said the MicroSD card is making a comeback.
Further Reading
Samsung Galaxy S6 review: It's what's on the outside that counts A great camera and premium materials offset the loss of power-user features.
The removal of the SD card on the Galaxy S6 was a victim of really bad timing. MicroSD card support got a lot better in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, just as Samsung removed it from its flagship devices. Marshmallow added the ability to turn removable storage into "permanent" internal storage, which treats the internal and SD card as a single pool of storage. This is pretty much the dream scenario for internal storage—letting a user pop in a card, format it, and forget about it—seamlessly boosting the internal storage.As for new features, the same WSJ report notes that the Galaxy S7 will have a "pressure-sensitive display" which "will be similar to that offered by rival Apple Inc. on the iPhone 6s earlier this year." The screen sizes will apparently change a bit from what they've been in the past. A report from the Economic Times of Korea claims the S7 will be a 5.2-inch device—0.1 inches bigger than last year, but the big change is coming to the S7 Edge, which would grow to 5.5-inches. Both devices are apparently getting a 1440p display again—good news for battery life but bad news for anyone hoping for a better quality Galaxy Gear experience.
There might be a bit of a disappointment brewing regarding the Galaxy S7's USB port. The Wall Street Journal has said that the S7 will ship with the increasingly standard-issue USB Type-C plug, but more recent leaks show a device that still has a MicroUSB plug. Maybe Samsung is aiming to keep compatibility with the Galaxy Gear, since a Type C plug would necessitate a whole new headset.
As for the internals, VentureBeat is reporting that Samsung will return to an SoC strategy that sees the US version ship with a Qualcomm chip while international releases get Samsung's own Exynos line. The report says the international version will get an Exynos 8 Octa 8890 SoC, while the US version will ship with a chip we'll probably be very familiar with soon, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. VentureBeat also claims the S7 will ship with a whopping 4GB of RAM.
We also might see the Galaxy S line return to a water resistant build. The Galaxy S5 was water resistant, complete with USB covers, but the feature was omitted from the Galaxy S6. A leaked promotional video for the Galaxy S7 shows it being used in the rain, which suggests Samsung will return to a water resistant design.
We don't know the battery size for the smaller Galaxy S7, but the 5.5-inch Galaxy S7 Edge apparently has a 3600mAh battery, according to FCC documents spotted by SamMobile. The 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 5 only has a battery capacity of 3020mAh, so while the battery won't be removable, it seems like Samsung has focused on packing in a little more power than the previous generation.
The LG G5—Wild rumors of a metal phone with a modular "Magic Slot"
LG's MWC invitation.
LG's MWC invitation.
Phone Arena
A purported image of the LG G5 from a Dubai auction site.
Phone Arena
Another supposed image of the LG G5.
Cnet's recreation of the "magic slot" mechanism.
Amazon
A Spigen case render showing the dual cameras and fingerprint reader on the back of the LG G5.
LG G4 Review: More than competent, but less than stunning [Update] The G4 is a decent phone, but struggles to stand out against the competition.
Speaking of removable batteries, the LG G5 will be debuting at Mobile World Congress. LG sent out the above invite to the press for its MWC event, along with a note to expect "LG's next flagship model" at the show. The timing is a big change for LG—the company doesn't usually go toe-to-toe with Samsung. If the rumors turn out to be true, though, LG could have the stand out device of MWC.After Samsung nixed removable batteries and storage from its lineup, the LG G4 stood alone last year as the only major flagship with replaceable components. The G5 will supposedly continue these features—no surprise there—but the real shocker is that rumors are also claiming it will switch to a metal body. No OEM in recent history has pulled off a metal phone with a removable battery—usually you get a plastic body with a removable back, or a sealed metal phone.
LG will apparently manage to pull off a modular metal phone design with something called the "Magic Slot"—that's according to reports from VentureBeat, The Verge, and CNET Korea. CNET actually produced a render "based upon eyewitness testimony" which shows the bottom of the phone detaching and the battery sliding out the same way you would remove a deck of cards from a box. The reports also mention "modular accessories" that could go into the Magic Slot, with VentureBeat saying "The examples we were given range from an array of specified cameras — action, 360 VR, "party" — to an audio amplifier to a physical keyboard."
Of course, internally, the LG G5 will use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820—expect the 820 to ship in nearly every major flagship this year. Hopefully it won't have the heat issues that were present on the Snapdragon 810 and all of Qualcomm's early performance boasts turn out to be true.
LG is apparently also going to take advantage of one of the stranger features present on both the Snapdragon 810 and 820—dual rear cameras. We last saw this feature on the HTC One M8, which would use the dual rear cameras to simulate the depth-of-field you would get from a real camera. We weren't fans of the inaccurate, artificial blur lines on the One M8, and HTC removed the feature when it was time to design the M9. Perhaps two years of improvement will result in something a little more accurate, though.
Several reports and case renders show LG skipping out on the unique rear volume buttons and moving them to the normal spot on the side of the phone. The back of the device will still reportedly be a busy place, with two cameras, LG's laser auto focus and color sensor from the G4, LED Flash, and a fingerprint reader like the LG Nexus 5X.
Xiaomi Mi 5—Xiaomi joins the West at its first ever MWC
Manu Kumar Jain
Xiaomi's MWC invite. There are many 5s here.
Manu Kumar Jain
Xiaomi's MWC invite. There are many 5s here.
A lineup showing the Mi 1 through 4. Xiaomi usually doesn't recycle flagship designs from year to year, so don't expect the Mi 5 to look like the Mi 4.
幻想曲资讯
Is this the Mi 5? It's a render of what we'll call "The Samsung copy."
幻想曲资讯
A real-life shot of the Samsung-style Mi 5.
MyDrivers
And here's this metallic-backed version. Looks awfully like an iPhone to us.
MyDrivers
A bottom view of the rear shell.
Xiaomi specializes in "bang for your buck"—creating high-spec, cheap devices that don't feel cheap. Consider the Xiaomi Mi Note, a beautifully made, all glass 5.7-inch phablet with specs that match most flagships, but for sale at about half the price. At MWC the company is expected to launch its newest flagship, the Xiaomi Mi 5.
Xiaomi is often one of the first companies to ship a new SoC, and representatives from the company have confirmed the device will ship with the Snapdragon 820. There has been a GeekBench result spotted under the name "Xiaomi Gemini" which claims to have a Snapdragon 820 and 3GB of RAM—both believable specs. We'd also expect the Mi 5 to have a fingerprint reader of some kind, as Xiaomi has said it would add one once Google officially adds an API for it (it was one of Android 6.0's major feature additions).
It's fitting that Xiaomi's MWC invitation is a bunch of "5"s in different styles overlaid on top of each other, because that's what the rumor mill looks like right now, too. There are several photos out there that claim to be the Mi 5, but they're too different to all be correct. We've seen pictures of a Samsung-style device with a curved screen and hardware home button, an iPhone 6-style design with a metal back and rounded edges, and a third design with a rear fingerprint reader and what looks to be laser autofocus. Every flagship Mi device so far has looked radically different from the previous version, so we wouldn't expect a copy of the Mi 4 design.
Further Reading
Xiaomi Mi4 review: China's iPhone killer is unoriginal but amazing A big iPhone that runs Android ends up being the best of both worlds.
A report from GizmoChina might actually explain two of these leaks, it says there will be two versions of the Mi 5, one with a "glass design with [a] 2.5D curved glass display" (so the Samsung copy) and one with a "metallic design" (like the gold iPhone copy). Would Xiaomi really release two different designs and copy both Samsung and Apple?Showing up at Mobile World Congress is an interesting move for Xiaomi. Sure, the show is called Mobile "World" Congress, but Xiaomi doesn't sell smartphones in the western world. The company's smartphone business has mostly stuck to Asian countries, and something like Mobile World Congress Shanghai, an Asia-focused version of MWC, would seem more in line with the company's market.
Xiaomi has a tiny online store up and running in the United States, but it only sells accessories—not the company's smartphones. Perhaps with the launch of the Mi 5 and an appearance at MWC, the company is finally ready to sell smartphones in the US and Europe.
HTC One M10—With no press event, the One M10 will come later Further Reading
Help This Company: A post-mortem of HTC's horrible start to 2015 How standing still caused HTC to lose half of its market cap in four months.
When we last left HTC, the company was having a horrible first half of 2015. The second half of the year was worse than the first, with year-over-year sales down 30-50% each month. It released a midrange iPhone clone called the HTC One A9 for $500 in the US and $622 in the UK. The pricing didn't seem to take into account the heavily-discounted state of the HTC's flagship One M9 on the market, and to this day, the mid-range A9 (currently $449 for 32GB on Amazon) cost more than the high-end M9 ($431 for 32GB on Amazon).Maybe HTC will turn things around in 2016, but with no event scheduled for Mobile World Congress, we'll have to wait to see the One M10. The rumors that are out there don't offer many specifics, other than the obvious news that the specs will be similar to every other 2016 flagship. VentureBeat claims that the device will have a "Samsung Galaxy-like home button" which houses the fingerprint sensor and will omit HTC's large "BoomSound" speakers.
The festivities start on Sunday, February 21!Our Mobile World Congress coverage starts on Sunday, February 21. While the show opens on Monday, Samsung and LG are kicking things off a day early with their press events. Xiaomi will follow up a few days later with the Mi 5 launch on February 24, and HTC... well, HTC is rumored for April. Sony is going to be at the event too, but it is only expected to launch a few mid-range devices. This is just the news we're expecting—there might even be some surprises!
We'll have boots on the ground and at home dedicated to bringing you the latest from the show, so be sure to tune in!
Source: MWC 2016—What to expect at the world's biggest smartphone show
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