MWC 2015 Recap

Its that time of year again, the time of smartphone innovation, coming in from Mobile World Congress, one of the world's largest smartphone conferences. During this time,  brands like Samsung, HTC and Google do their annual unveil of many of their flagship products that will represent the best of each company's product line for the year. Devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the HTC One M9 are those that were highly anticipated prior to this event and they certainly held up to their high expectations set by their previous years of success. 

For HTC their award winning HTC One M8 received a slight upgrade this year in their HTC One M9. It now sports a new 20 megapixel camera, an upgrade long awaited by HTC fans who have long been faced with the struggles of a 4 ultrapixel camera, a camera technology that sacrifices megapixel count for images with HDR like quality. Also HTC's new operating system Sense 7 has given a large visual overhall in the bringing of Android 5.0 with Material Design, but has given few functional upgrade since last year's Sense 6. The most noticeable difference is in the new design, which has retained many of the HTC One M8's highly acclaimed unibody design and ergonomics characteristics, but combines it with the sharp and clean look of the HTC One M7. HTC also gave a slight upgrade in their boomsound speakers with Dolby 5.1 audio, a modest upgrade to their already best in class speakers.

Last year Samsung saw a colossal drop in their sales due to their failure of the Samsung Galaxy S5 which had poor design and software changes. This made Samsung redesign their entire phone, with every aspect changed to better compete with other phones. They did this with the overhaul of TouchWiz, which includes the removal of bloatware and unnecessary, even gimmicky software. This was a long awaited change that will make the software feel more polished and simplistic. This and the new Exynos chip makes the software speed through quickly with little signs of bugs and glitches, a problem past Samsung devices heavily experienced. The device's design changed drastically with a new glass backing and metal edges, giving a more luxurious feel that resembles the past iPhone 4's design. Although, this change did sacrifice the ability to swap out the removable battery and external memory with the removal of the plastic chasis. The design was further changed with the new Edge series to the S6 which gives an option to get an S6 with a slight curve on each side, providing new functionality and better side swiping controls. The new S6 is built off Android 5.0 but has only embraced a few material design cues. 

Mobile World Congress has brought excellent and innovative change seen in the HTC One M9's refresh of last year's model. It also showed the new design and software overhall in the Samsung Galaxy S6. These changes will represent the best products of each company for the year, and will ultimately decide what direction the world of mobile technology is working towards.