Apple and Samsung both ran into big problems last year with their smartphone businesses. Long story short, iPhone and Galaxy phone sales plummeted in the holiday quarter. They can blame troubles in China all they want, but the bottom line is that both of these industry leaders phoned it in last year, no pun intended. Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S and Galaxy Note phones couldn’t have been anymore boring in 2018, and the same can be said of Apple’s iPhone lineup. Both companies chose to reuse old designs and release next-gen smartphones that looked exactly like their predecessors. That strategy is less of in issue when the new models offer novel marquee features to get shoppers excited, but that was the problem in 2018. Whether you bought an iPhone XS, Galaxy S9, iPhone XS Max, Galaxy S9+, iPhone XR, or Galaxy Note 9, there were no exciting new features to be found anywhere if you were upgrading from a 2017 flagship smartphone model. That means a huge portion of loyal fans who typically upgrade every year decided to skip their upgrades in 2018.
Of course, 2019 is where things will get interesting. Samsung has a number of exciting new smartphones set to debut this year, including the completely redesigned Galaxy S10 series phones and a new foldable smartphone that may launch as the Galaxy Fold. Apple, on the other hand, is reportedly using the same smartphone design for a third consecutive year, which could be a disastrous move. Only time will tell. 2019 is shaping up to be a wild ride for smartphone fans, but it turns out that one of the most exciting new phones of the year might not be an iPhone or a Galaxy phone. It’s a mysterious new phone from a vendor most people in the US have never even heard of, and now it has a launch date that’s much sooner than we expected.
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The mysterious new phone that’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before just got a launch date originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 15 Jan 2019 at 09:42:43 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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