IFA 2019 officially kicked off on September 5th and will run through September 11th in Berlin, Germany. Most of the world’s major tech brands are in Berlin for IFA to introduce a range of consumer electronic products. Strategy Analytics has a team of analysts from our devices teams in attendance to cover key news and device introductions.
You can access our device blogs covering the most prominent announcement at the event below:
IFA 2019 Device Blog: Preshow Announcements is available here
IFA 2019 Device Blog: Smartphone and Feature Phone Announcements is available here
IFA 2019 Device Blog: Wearables Galore is available here
We continue to follow the devices-related new launches from multiple vendors at the event. Here are few of the most interesting ones:
Samsung Galaxy A90 5G
Not content with just being the current 5G smartphone leader, Samsung launched the new Galaxy A90 5G with the aim of making 5G affordable. Although it is not necessarily cheap, the new device can claim to be the first non-premium 5G smartphone, priced at around US$580 (wholesale).
Galaxy A90 5G also sports an impressive camera setup with a 48MP main camera, 8MP ultra-wide one, 5MP depth sensor at the back, and a 32MP selfie camera on the front.
The 6.7-inch screen with a 2,400 x 1,080 resolution is decisively mid-range, but the smartphone is powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 855 processor with an X50 5G modem backed up by a powerful 4,500mAh battery.
Available immediately in South Korea and next month in Europe, Galaxy A90 5G is a powerful, and yet affordable proposition by Samsung, for consumers ready for the 5G smartphone experience.
LG G8X ThinQ
Same as with V50 ThinQ, launched at MWC earlier this year, the new LG G8X ThinQ comes with a Dual Screen case, which is LG’s solution to having a foldable display. The accessory has the same 6.4-inch OLED FHD+ display as the smartphone that makes the overall design symmetrical and complete. It allows to easily move objects from one screen to another. You can use the second screen as a keyboard or game controls; it allows adjusting the angle between the two screens, which makes the productivity of the new device close to the one of a laptop.
LG G8X ThinQ has no 5G connectivity and has only incremental changes to the original LG G8 ThinkQ, but the Dual Screen should prove to be a differentiation factor, and a much cheaper and sturdier foldable alternative to Samsung Fold.
Moving away from smartphone launches, IFA 2019 was also the stage to make announcements regarding the next generation chipsets. Samsung announced the Exynos 980 – an eight-nanometer mobile processor with an integrated 5G modem capable of downlink speeds of 2.55 Gbps and 1.28 Gbps uplink.
Not to be left behind, Huawei unveiled the Kirin 990, a 5G chip with integrated AI capabilities that can support up to 2.3 Gbps down and 1.25 Gbps uplink. The new Kirin 990 5G is set to power the upcoming Huawei Mate 30 flagship, expected to be launched on 19 September in Munich, Germany.