Nother CarGuy

Seat unveiled the tiny electric Minimo at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, showcasing the brand’s vision “of the future of urban mobility”. While it’s badged a concept, the Spanish firm has confirmed that a production version will follow in 2021. The idea behind the electric quadricycle is to combine the smaller dimensions of a motorcycle with the safety and comfort of a car, which sounds similar to Renault’s own Twizy. Measuring just 2.5 meters and with a width of 1.24 meters, the new Seat Minimo can transport two people while taking just 3.1 square meters of space on the road, which is over 50 percent smaller than the footprint of a regular city car. Unlike the Renault Twizy, Seat’s Minimo comes with a fully enclosed cabin that features a 1+1 seating setup. The two doors are asymmetrical and are designed to open in the tightest of spaces, with the left one being the smaller of the two. The electric powertrain comes with a battery that can be easily swapped “in...

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold announcement isn’t even a week old yet, and we already have a competitor that is thinner, has a bigger screen, and folds flatter. Say hello to the Huawei Mate X. Launching at MWC 2019, the Mate X has an 8-inch wraparound OLED display, a folded thickness of a mere 11mm, and a formidable spec sheet highlighted by 5G, a 4,500mAh battery, and Huawei’s in-house Kirin 980 processor. The single OLED display of the Mate X actually serves triple duty. When the device is folded, you essentially have a dual-screen smartphone, with the second display on the rear allowing you to shoot selfies with the main camera or to share what’s on your primary display with a person on the other side. Open up the Mate X, and you get an almost square (but not quite) tablet that has minimal bezels on three sides. One of the sides is reserved for a thicker grip section that houses the three cameras, their accompanying flash, and a push-button latch that secures the folded tablet i...

Sony has long struggled to get its phones noticed in the sea of top-tier Android devices, so at MWC 2019, the company is trying a new strategy to make its phones stand out — literally — by featuring ultra-tall 21:9 displays. That starts with the Xperia 1, its new flagship. The Xperia 1 is the successor to the Xperia XZ3 that Sony released last fall. But as the name implies, Sony is viewing this as a chance to start fresh with its mobile phone brand, beginning with a new design centered on that very, very tall display. And make no mistake, the Xperia 1 — along with the more budget-friendly Xperia 10 and 10 Plus, which also will have 21:9 displays — is a tall glass of water. The screen itself is a 4K HDR OLED panel (supposedly the first on a smartphone) that measures in at 6.5 inches. The key thing here is that aspect ratio; sure, there are plenty of screens that are 6.5 inches on the diagonal, but the Xperia 1 is taller than basically all of them. There’s no notch, although ...

Last year, LG released the G7 ThinQ — by no means a bad phone, but certainly one that struggled to make its mark. At this year’s MWC, LG is announcing its successor, the LG G8, which brings some new features and upgrades to try to stand out where the G7 faded into the background. It’s hard to notice changes on the outside, but LG has done a lot with the updated front-facing camera setup, which it calls the “Z-camera”. What that actually means is that LG is using a ToF sensor that lets the G8 detect motion, gestures, and depth in front of it. And that camera system is getting used for a truly unique feature that LG calls Hand ID: by pulsing an infrared signal at your palm, the G8 can extracts a map of your veins based on how the hemoglobin in your blood absorbs the IR signal, allowing you to unlock your phone by showing it your palm. LG says that these vein maps are extremely hard to beat from a security perspective. And why would you want to use your palm to unlock your pho...

LG is getting in on the 5G hype with the new V50 ThinQ — an updated version of the V40 from last fall that keeps the same basic design, but adds support for the next-generation network. You’ll know that the V50 supports 5G right from the start, thanks to the literally glowing 5G logo on the back of the phone. From a spec perspective, the V50 is only different from the V40 in a few ways: 5G capabilities (obviously), a larger 4,000 mAh battery (since 5G takes more power), and a Snapdragon 855 processor (presumably to support Qualcomm’s X50 5G modem). LG is is also adding a new cooling system to help cope with the extra heat from the new processor and battery. The phone itself is also a bit thicker and a little heavier than the V40, although LG has taken advantage of that to remove the camera bump, which is nice. Otherwise, though, it’s a V40 with 5G, which LG says is very intentional — in order to get a 5G phone to market this quickly, the company had to use the existing V40 platf...

HMD Global has a new Nokia flagship, and it might be the company’s most ambitious phone yet: the Nokia 9 PureView, with a show-stopping five — count ‘em, five — cameras on the back that officially takes the crown for the most rear cameras ever put on a phone. It’s perhaps the biggest play yet by HMD to invoke the old Nokia, from back before it bought and resurrected brand. And while the Nokia 9 PureView may not have the staggering megapixel count Nokia’s phones were known for, it’s certainly a product meant to evoke those glory days. There’s a lot to unpack about the Nokia 9 PureView. Unlike other multi-camera phones, like the LG V40 or Samsung’s newly announced Galaxy S10, the Nokia 9 PureView uses the same key specs for all five cameras: each one has a 12 megapixel sensor and an f/1.8 lens. But only two of those five cameras shoot in color — the other three are monochrome. Whenever you press the shutter, all five cameras shoot different exposures at the same time, which t...

Perhaps spurred on by the hype surrounding Samsung’s Galaxy Fold and Huawei’s Mate X, Oppo VP Brian Shen has revealed images of his company’s own take on a foldable phone. Shen makes it clear in his Weibo post that Oppo isn’t yet planning to ship the prototype device unless it sees a lot of demand, but the pictures show that the company is leaning towards Huawei’s design more than Samsung’s. That’s to say there’s a single large OLED panel that wraps around both sides of the phone when it’s folded, rather than being folded away on the inside. There’s also a thicker bar on one side that houses cameras and other components. Whether Oppo decides to ship this phone or not, it’s clear that we’re approaching the point where similar phones become relatively commonplace. Sure, Samsung and Huawei can charge $2,000 and up for their first flagship foldables as halo devices. But the tech is out of the bag now, and you can expect a lot more to come soon from Chinese makers in particular...

Sony is putting effort into its smartphones again. The company’s new XZ2 and XZ2 Compact shrink down the chunky bezels of their predecessors (to an extent) and feature the same taller, slimmer displays that helped Samsung, LG, and other companies roundly outclass Sony’s smartphone design last year. Both new Sony phones are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 processor, the latest and greatest silicon that will be inside most of 2018’s Android flagships. They’re scheduled to ship this spring, with pricing to be announced later. This time around, Sony isn’t overdoing it with a gimmicky 4K screen. The XZ2’s 5.7-inch, FHD+ (2160 x 1080) display has a 2:1 aspect ratio. The top and bottom bezels have been significantly downsized. There’s still enough room for Sony to put its name at the bottom of the phone, so the company isn’t quite at par with Samsung, LG, or OnePlus. But this is certainly an improvement. The screen supports HDR and Sony says it automatically up-converts SDR content ...

Last year, Samsung walked out of the ashes of the Note 7 debacle and launched the Galaxy S8, which was one of the best phones of 2017 and one of the best products Samsung ever made. So it’s not much of a surprise that this year’s Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, which will be available for preorder on March 2nd and arrive in stores on March 16th, aren’t hugely different from the S8 phones. In fact, the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are so similar to their predecessors that on passing glance, they look and feel exactly the same. The S9 pair maintain the S8’s attractive and efficient design, with extra tall 18.5:9 screens, curved sides, and glass front and backs. The 5.8-inch (S9) and 6.2-inch (S9 Plus) screens are the same Super AMOLED panels with 2960 x 1440 pixel resolutions, though Samsung says they are slightly brighter this year. Also interesting, though the phones look and feel the same as last year’s models, they have slightly different dimensions and weigh a little more, so don’t expect to b...

Sony’s Mobile World Congress plans seem to have leaked out ahead of time: details for its new flagship Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact smartphones have hit the internet a few days early, according to Evan Blass at VentureBeat. According to Blass, Sony will be announcing the 5.7-inch XZ2 (a follow-up to last year’s XZ1 model) alongside a smaller 5.0-inch XZ2 Compact model (which had a prototype show up online earlier this week). Both phones are said to offer Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 845 processor and ship with Android Oreo. Sony will reportedly be offering the same 19-megapixel, ƒ/1.8 camera from the XZ Premium. (That might not be a good thing, given that my colleague Vlad Savov found it to be fairly unreliable in his tests last year.) Also included is a rear fingerprint sensor, as opposed to the button-based sensors Sony has used in the past. Hopefully the company will continue the trend from the Xperia XA2 and offer fingerprint functionality in the US. There are a few...

Seat have followed in the footsteps of mother-brand Volkswagen by introducing an all-electric version of the Mii. Dubbed the eMii and based on its German cousin, the e-Up!, the zero-emission city car is being referred to as a prototype by the company's officials, who pulled the covers off it at the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, Spain. "What we see on the stand is the car that will allow us to test the operation of electrical technology in shared use vehicles. This does not mean that this is going to be our first electric car, but it is the ideal vehicle for carrying out these tests in Barcelona", said the brand's President, Luca de Meo. Powering the new Seat eMii is an electric motor that generates 81 horsepower and 210 Nm (155 lb-ft) of torque, according to Autocar, quoting the automaker. This allows it to reach 100 km/h (62 mph) from a standstill in 11.3 seconds - more than a second faster than the e-Up!, and up to a top speed of 80 mph (129 km/h). ...