Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15246/anandtech-year-in-review-2019-flagship-mobile



2019 is coming to an end, and it’s time again to look back at what the industry has brought us. This year, we saw a lot of hardware improvements from all the various vendors, with a big focus on bringing out new distinctive designs. We’ve seen some exotic devices in the form of foldable phones for the first time ever, and even some more traditional designs dared to implement design cues such as mechanical pop-out cameras. While designs were sometimes the main differentiating factors, most of the time the key selling points of 2019 devices were big upgrades in their camera capabilities. Here we’ve seen huge leaps from almost all the vendors, and the year definitely will be remembered mainly for the innovations in photography.

Triple Cameras Become A Must-Have in 2019

Undoubtedly the biggest trend in 2019 devices, affecting both design as well as features, has been the standardisation of triple-camera setups. A trend started in 2018 by Huawei, it’s essentially become a main-stay of almost every flagship device in 2019, and a must-have for any phone which takes photography seriously. The feature is now so widespread that we’ve even seen it trickle down to the mid-range, and even sometimes lower end devices.

In most cases, the new module being added to the camera array was the ultra-wide-angle unit. The UWA isn’t exactly a new innovation; LG was the first in the industry to employ it several years ago, and Huawei last year perfected it in the Mate 20 and 20 Pro by dramatically raising the bar in terms of picture quality.

The adoption of the UWA by Samsung, Apple, OPPO, OnePlus, Sony, Xiaomi and many others means that the new camera perspective is ubiquitous for almost all 2019 devices, and it’s a fantastic addition to the capture experience not only for still pictures, but also for video recording.

We’ve also seen some innovations on the telephoto modules by some vendors. Huawei and OPPO here are the two main vendors who attempted to differentiate themselves through implementing high level optical magnification in their units. This was mainly achieved by using a more innovative right-angled orientation of the camera sensor inside of the body of the phone, viewing the outside world through the help of a mirror prism. The system does work very well to achieve high magnification levels, however the limitation of the sensor size as well as the very small aperture of the optics systems generally results in lesser picture quality in terms of exposures or dynamic range, to the point that I found these systems to be more or less just simple gimmicks, rather than practical competitors more traditional optical 3x magnification modules.

Sony’s IMX586 – An Absurd Amount of Design Wins

The very first IMX586 device we’ve reviewed this year was the Honor View20 in January. Following that, we’ve seen a stupendous number of smartphones employing Sony’s new sensor. It’s been employed by Honor in many more product ranges, it’s the sensor powering Xiaomi’s flagship devices, OnePlus’s 7-series uses the new sensor, OPPO features it in their Reno devices, ASUS has it as the main sensor for their Zenfone 6 and ROG Phone II, and it’s used in a plethora of other devices from Realme, Lenovo, Samsung, Vivo, Nubia, and others.

I don’t think we’ve ever seen a single camera sensor have so much design wins in the industry as the number of phones featuring it is pretty absurd. Whilst the IMX586 isn’t the first modern high-megapixel mobile sensor, that title still goes to Huawei’s exclusive 40MP units introduced last year with the P20’s, it’s been the sensor that has popularized the new sensor technology for the mass-market. (Yes the Nokia 808's sensor was technically first; but with very different technology and no adoption)

Sony here has triggered a new trend, and frankly I’m not sure it’s based as much on technical merit rather than the marketing power of the 48MP figure. As we’ve seen in numerous reviews this year, phones with the quad-Bayer high-MP module didn’t necessarily perform any better than more traditional lower resolution Bayer sensors. In fact, it seems a key selling point of the IMX586 was that it wasn’t necessarily a high-end sensor, and was thus cheaper to produce and sell to vendors, hence its popularity across a wide range of phones at different price-points.

For 2020, it seems that Samsung LSI is aiming to disrupt the high-MP camera sensor market even more with their introduction of 64MP and 108MP sensors. The first devices with the new sensor generation have already been released, and I think the 108MP model featuring a new humongous 1/1.33” sensor size is very promising. It’s rumoured Samsung will be released their next-gen Galaxy-S with a sensor of this calibre, which will be very interesting to see how that pans out.

Computational Photography: The New Normal

Computational photography has been one of the key innovation points of 2018 – it’s been mostly been pioneered by Huawei with the introduction of a tripod-less night mode in last year’s devices. Google was a quick follower with the introduction of Night Sight in the Pixel 3, but other than these two vendors, it still was a rather rare or inexistent aspect to photography for most devices.

2019 has now completely changed this around, and much like the new triple-camera setups, having computational photography modes exemplified by dedicated Night Mode has been a must for most vendors. The vastly improved computational processing power of new SoCs has made this possible for essentially all device vendors, however we’ve seen that software plays a much bigger role, and device vendors need to invest in a lot of R&D into enabling the features.

Click for full image
Mate 30 Pro       ] - P30 Pro       
[ S10+ (S) ] - [ S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - Pixel 4     
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Samsung notably started the year with the release of the Galaxy S10 without such a mode, but was able to add it in a firmware update in May, continuously improving it over the course of the year, and also making it a key feature during the launch of the Note10 in August.

Apple’s introduction of Night Mode as well as Deep Fusion also finally brought computational photography to iPhones – Deep Fusion particularly was an industry-first which brought new levels of detail to still photography.

Other vendors are also hanging in there – the implementations here range from bad (Xiaomi), to excellent (OPPO). The software development aspect of the camera firmware and processing means that things are continuously changing, and a device reviewed earlier in the year most certainly won’t showcase the same results if it were to be tested now. This also puts a lot of pressure on vendors to be able to deliver a representative implementation early on as it’s rare for reviews to go back and be updated. Alongside always having the same environmental test conditions, this has been another key reason why I always re-test the complete device line-up, in order to have the most up-to-date comparisons between devices for each new review, so make sure to always check out the newest pieces even if it’s about some other device that might not interest you.



SoC Improvements: Apple vs Qualcomm vs Samsung vs HiSilicon

The system-on-chip is a device’s single most important component. The SoC powers every feature of a phone, determines the performance of the device, and also is the second biggest factor in a device’s battery life (behind the display). At the high-end, the key SoCs this year were HiSilicon’s Kirin 980, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855, Samsung LSI’s Exynos 9820 and Apple’s A13.

The Kirin 980 was the first released amongst the bunch, actually being announced and used late in 2018. The chip was a big step-up in execution from HiSilicon, and was an excellent product that powered most of Huawei and Honor’s devices for 2019. Whilst it was still lagging behind a bit in GPU performance, the chip presented a well-rounded product that offered top of the line CPU performance for the Android devices it powered.

HiSilicon’s follow-up Kirin 990 released with the Mate 30 just a few months ago unfortunately didn’t bring quite as large improvements as its predecessor: whilst it’s still a good and well-rounded SoC, this time around the company didn’t manage to integrate the newest IPs from Arm, as the company’s design and product cycle didn’t match up well enough with the releases of the newer Cortex-A77 CPU and Mali-G77 GPU. We’ll have to see how things pan out in 2020, but I don’t expect Huawei devices to be as competitive in this regard as in 2019.

The Galaxy S10 in March also introduced two new generation SoCs: The Snapdragon 855 and the Exynos 9820. The Snapdragon 855 was amongst Qualcomm’s best executed designs, and went on to power essentially every other flagship device in 2019.

Samsung’s Exynos 9820 – whilst not quite as performant or as efficient as the Snapdragon 855, was a big improvement over the disappointing Exynos 9810 of 2018, and served as a solid alternative for the Galaxy S10. S.LSI released a 7nm shrink of the Exynos 9820 in the form of the Exynos 9825 in the Galaxy Note10 series: functionally it’s the same chip as its predecessor, offering the same performance and only minor differences in efficiency – with the Qualcomm counterpart still being the same Snapdragon 855. Unfortunately, it’s just no better than the Qualcomm alternative, and thus S.LSI has never managed to get a design win from a vendor besides Samsung’s own mobile division.

Apple’s A13 this year brought big improvements in performance, although not exactly visible at first-glance in benchmarks. On the CPU side, the new Lightning cores were relatively straightforward upgrades in performance, but it did come at a cost in power consumption which keeps creeping up with every new A-series SoC. Power efficiency however still remains excellent, and I think that’s mostly due to the new Thunder efficiency cores which saw a very large microarchitectural upgrade in performance and efficiency. Apple’s yearly upgrades on the efficiency cores put the aging Cortex-A55s to shame in terms of performance and power, and the Android SoC vendors are very much in a dire need of an IP upgrade from Arm.

GFXBench Aztec Normal Offscreen Power Efficiency
(System Active Power)
  Mfc. Process FPS Avg. Power
(W)
Perf/W
Efficiency
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm N7P 73.27 4.07 18.00 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak N7P 91.62 6.08 15.06 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Warm N7 55.70 3.88 14.35 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak N7 76.00 5.59 13.59 fps/W
QRD865 (Snapdragon 865) N7P 53.65 4.65 11.53 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) N7 41.68 4.01 10.39 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855) N7 40.63 4.14 9.81 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820) 8LPP 40.18 4.62 8.69 fps/W

On the GPU side of things, Apple has also been hitting it out of the park; the last two GPU generations have brought tremendous efficiency upgrades which also allow for larger performance gains. I really had not expected Apple to make as large strides with the A13’s GPU this year, and the efficiency improvements really surprised me. The differences to Qualcomm’s Adreno architecture are now so big that even the newest Snapdragon 865 peak performance isn’t able to match Apple’s sustained performance figures. It’s no longer that Apple just leads in CPU, they are now also massively leading in GPU.

For 2020, I’m not really expecting the competitive situation in the high-end to change much. The Snapdragon 865 and Exynos 990 will likely be excellent products, but largely won’t be able to catch up to the A13. I think the biggest surprise in 2020 will be MediaTek’s new Dimensity 1000 SoC: MediaTek’s return to the high-end comes with what seems an unusually well-rounded and solid approach. On paper, the chip should perform better than HiSilicon’s Kirin 990 and also be a very viable alternative to the Snapdragon 865, I’m predicting to see a lot more MediaTek devices and design wins than what we’ve been used to recently.

The OnePlus 7 Pro Brings 90Hz To The Masses, Starts a Trend

The OnePlus 7 Pro was one of the most important phones in 2019 for the fact that it was the first device to bring the high-refresh rate experience to the masses. The phone’s 90Hz display has been a resounding success for OnePlus to the point that the company said it’s been the key feature as to why consumers chose a OnePlus device this year. The refreshed OnePlus 7T also brought the 90Hz display to the lower-priced flagship variant.

Google’s Pixel 4 series represented the first mainstream follow-up from another vendor, however Google’s implementation here largely seemed not as well thought-out as OnePlus’, and was handicapped by lacklustre battery life, particularly on the smaller Pixel 4.

Gaming phones such as ROG Phone II even come with 120Hz displays, and the accompanying gigantic batteries of such phones means there’s no drawbacks to the user experience.

I’m expecting high refresh rate displays to be a key feature in 2020 flagships, with the usual big-name vendors also adopting them.

Battery & Display Improvements: Samsung and Apple’s Rise To Longevity

Another key improvement that I will keenly remember in 2019 will be Samsung and Apple’s battery improvements. For several years now the devices with the longest battery life were Huawei’s larger Mate-series phones with big battery capacities and efficient LCD displays, or mid-range phones which come with less power hungry SoCs and displays.

Web Browsing Battery Life 2016 (WiFi)

The Galaxy S10 (particularly the S10+) series I think was a game-changer in that it was the first flagship devices that combined top-of-the-line display and SoC, yet still managed to top the battery charts. Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro series follows the Galaxy S10 and Note10 series in these characteristics: the reason for the exemplary battery life of these phones is a combination of larger than usual battery capacities along with the newest OLED display technology. The S10, Note10, iPhone 11 Pro, along with the OnePlus 7T are the only devices in 2019 to use the new emitter technology to bring brighter and more efficient displays – and this advantage is it’s very much noticeable when it comes to each of these device’s battery life.

We expect the technology to trickle down to other vendors in 2020, with Samsung and Apple to continue introducing newer and even more efficient generations – a good tie-in with the expected higher refresh-rate displays next year.

Bendy Phones: The Galaxy Fold & Mate X

While certainly not relevant to the average consumer, 2019 will be remembered as the first year that foldable phones became a reality. The Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X are the first serious big-name implementations of the new flexible screen technology. It’s expensive, impractical, gimmicky and has a ton of drawbacks, yet it’s also one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in years as it represents the first step in a new device form-factor category.

The new Motorola Razr seems like a much better thought-out implementation, and it seems to be the most sensible direction for foldable phones. We’ll undoubtedly hear a lot more innovation from vendors in 2020 when it comes to flexible display devices.

5G – A Reality … In Some Countries

It’s no doubt that 5G has been an incessant talking point throughout 2019, and we actually even saw the first 5G devices in the market. For anybody caring about longevity of their phones, the first generation 5G phones based on Qualcomm’s X50 modem are largely to be ignored – the modem does not support future 5G standalone networks. Second generation devices based on the X55 are certainly to be much more future-proof and much better performing.

We’ve seen the first 5G networks go live this year, but there’s a big difference in the deployment types, depending on your country and carrier. In the US, Verizon most famously launched first with the introduction of their “ultra-wideband” service in select city blocks of select cities. This is the mmWave side of 5G, which does bring the higher multi-gigabit speeds that are hyped up a lot. The reality is that such deployments are going to be extremely limited in terms of coverage and usage; it’ll take many years for such networks to be ubiquitous and even then, it’ll be mostly concentrated around high-density locations such as event centres or stadiums (Which is essentially what mmWave deployments are really intended for).

The rest of the world (And other US carriers) is focusing on bringing 5G to sub-6GHz spectrum. In a lot of countries such as South Korea we’ve already seen very wide-spread infrastructure deployments with coverage quickly catching up to 4G LTE. The speed increases here aren’t as substantial as mmWave, but the improvements here are actually more realistic, consistent and practical, and this will be what 5G will be about for the vast majority of users.

While 2019 will be the first year of 5G, that’s about it when it comes to how it’ll be remembered. I expect 5G deployment to be more of a slow-burn over the comings years as network coverage and capacity continues to improve.



Companies’ Product Strategies and Execution in 2019

Like last year, it would it would be fitting to summarise 2019 based on each companies’ general efforts and product strategies. Successes of individual devices is likely more linked to a company’s design philosophies for the year, rather than the exact implementations on a given device – especially valid for companies releasing multiple devices per year.

Huawei in 2019 – Successful First Half, Political Turmoil in the Second Half

Huawei began the first half of the year with quite a lot of success with the release of the P30 series. The phones generally impressed thanks to offering a good overall package, differentiating themselves again this year by innovating in the camera department and brining to market among the first prism-based telescopic camera modules, as well as showcasing the first ever RYYB main camera sensor module, offering even better low-light performance.

I felt that the P30 series were a continuation of the design philosophies of the Mate 20 Pro released late last year, which isn’t really a bad thing. Huawei’s success of the series might have been greater if they had priced the phones a bit more competitively, especially in the face of Samsung’s strong showing of the S10 series.

In the second half of the year, or more precisely following the U.S. Commerce Department’s ban in May, is when Huawei’s troubles began. The political move meant that US companies such as Google were prohibited from working with Huawei, essentially banning the company from access to Google’s Mobile Services which includes the Play Store and many other of Google’s first-party applications, not being able to ship new devices to the market with these components preinstalled.

The first major device to suffer from the blow was the Huawei Mate 30. Although the device still is able to use the Android operating system, its lack of a preinstalled Play Store represents a real commercial draw-back. It’s still possible to get access to it post-purchase and to side-load most applications, but that’s not a viable means for the average consumer.

The Mate 30 Pro innovated again in terms of camera hardware, but the rest of the phone didn’t quite impress as much. The edge-to-edge curved display felt more like a gimmick and was bad for ergonomics, and the new Kirin 990 was a smaller than usual upgrade over its predecessor. Given the compromises and the high device price, I don’t think Huawei will be able to repeat a similar level of success as we’ve seen in the P30 or Mate 20 series.

Huawei’s future in western market remains clouded in uncertainty – the company will have to double down delivering outstanding hardware and features in order to overcome its trade-sanctioned handicap.

LG in 2019 – Very Little Substance

LG’s execution in 2019 was one that seemed to cry out for despair in trying to stand out. Whilst the G8 is certainly a much better phone than the G7 last year, it just yet again had some obvious weaknesses such as very inaccurate display colours, for which LG in the past openly stated as not caring about. Features such as the floating hand gesture navigation were pretty much pointless gimmicks that don’t really bring any value to the user experience.

LG made great efforts in the camera department this year, and the main camera quality of the G8, V50 and G8X make it certainly as part of the better cameras of the year. Still, the company lags behind the aspect of computational photography, and the choice of segmenting the G8 series between dual and triple-camera setups depending on country, with western markets only receiving only the dual-camera version means that the device becomes even less interesting.

The G8X’s dual-screen accessory is just another attempt at gimmickry that’s just a cheap response to foldables; the two screens aren’t even able to be set to the same colour temperature / colour profile which makes things look ridiculous, besides the fact that it’s just overly of very little use.

I have no idea where LG is heading – most of the devices weaknesses I feel is just bad product management rather than the company not having the resources to execute. We want an LG device that is able to focus on the core aspects of a phone: A good screen, good performance, good camera and good battery life. If you can’t deliver on these four basics, any other gimmicks on top are just wasted development resources.

Sony in 2019 – Biggest Disappointment

We never had much opportunity in the past to cover Sony devices, so that’s why I was quite excited to be able to finally review a device such as the the Xperia 1. I don’t think that I’ve ever had a device turn my excitant into disappointment just as quickly as the Xperia 1. The phone had been promised as being the first development under new management at Sony, but unfortunately it seems it the phone was doomed to fail right out of its design phase.

The actual physical design of the phone is great; the 20:9 aspect ratio works very well, and Sony’s actual hardware is amongst the best in 2019. The issue is that the marketing choice of actually using a 4K resolution display means that the phone is severely handicapped when it comes to battery life, posting amongst the worst results of any 2019 device. Usually I’m very defensive about high resolution screens on mobile devices and will always immediately prefer a 1440p display over 1080p devices, but even I can’t tell the difference on Sony’s 1644 x 3840 display. It’s a design element that shouldn’t have ever been greenlit by management given its battery life drawbacks.

The cameras, while being excellent in their hardware, completely fail in terms of software processing and functionality, producing some of the worst results in 2019 when it comes to exposure, HDR, and low-light photography – although Sony is showcasing excellent detail in daylight.

OnePlus in 2019 – Ability to Differentiate

OnePlus’ phones in 2019 have been great mostly thanks to the company’s ability to be able to actually differentiate itself from the competition. The OnePlus 7 Pro’s design with a bezel-less 90Hz screen still makes it unique to date, and the company has been able to adopt the 90Hz feature in its more mainstream model with the 7T.

The company’s biggest weakness this year was in the camera department. Although featuring a triple-camera module setup, picture quality from the phones wasn’t quite as great as that of the competition. The problem here seems to solely lie in the company’s software processing. When I first received the OP7Pro it was in the midst of a major software update that promised to improve picture quality. The company purposefully changed the camera processing to be more similar to that of the Pixel 3, including actually introducing commonalities such as degrading crushed shadows which weren’t present on the OP7’s release firmware. I thought this was a stupid move, and do feel somewhat vindicated in my line of though given that the new Pixel 4 fixes this negative aspect of Google’s processing.

If OnePlus manages to get its camera processing in order, phones such as the OnePlus 7 Pro and the 7T likely represent one of the best devices in 2019, and I hope the company is able to continue on this trajectory.

Google in 2019 – Software Is Also Meaningless Without Hardware

Google’s Pixel 4 devices this year weren’t as big of a disappointment to me, but that’s solely simply because I wasn’t expecting too much.

Google has received a reputation of not being able to execute well on its hardware, and the Pixel 4 remains true to this cursed tradition. It’s a similar dilemma as for Sony’s Xperia 1: the design choice of going with a 90Hz display should have never been greenlit, or a least it should have never been greenlit along with the disappointing battery capacities of the phones. Whilst we reviewed the XL variant which ended up quite average in terms of battery life, the smaller Pixel 4 is said to suffer considerably more and simply not being a viable phone in 2019. Google’s choice of going with second-rate hardware components such as a cheaper Samsung panel on the XL as well an LG panel on the regular variant means the phones suffer from low brightness and low power efficiency.

The Pixel 4 is also the only flagship device in 2019 which didn’t come with an ultra-wide-angle camera module, Google evidently didn’t get the memo what the market actually wants, and instead chose to go for a telephoto module for Google’s first ever dual-camera phone, catching up to 2018 devices instead of the new 2019 competition.

Google’s solutions to the situation should be easy: either give up on launching the Pixel phones as super-high-end flagships with top-tier pricing and aim for a lower market segment, or go and actually deliver flagship hardware for that price.

ASUS in 2019 – The Biggest Surprise

I wanted to keep this page limited to the most popular vendors on the market, but one vendor that this year seemed to have punched above its weight was ASUS. The company has had its Zenfone line-up for multiple years now, but never really managed to differentiate itself very much, or always had some big drawbacks. The Zenfone 6 as well as the new ROG Phone II this year seem to have followed a change in philosophy at ASUS, with the company now able to more consistently deliver on the core aspects of a phone.

The ROG Phone II was a stand-out phone this year, and most of that notably had nothing to do with the device’s gaming-oriented design and features. The huge phone impresses through its brute-force approach to hardware. With a 120Hz screen, a Snapdragon 855+ and a gigantic 6000mAh battery, it’s been able to reserve itself a special place in the performance and battery rankings this year. Along with a reasonable camera setup, stereo speakers, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, the device isn’t just a good gaming phone, it’s just an overall good phone.

ASUS should continue with this formula as evidently it’ll be able to carve itself a piece of the pie not only among the gaming audience, but the overall phone market in general.

Samsung in 2019 – The Best of Android

When I reviewed the S10 earlier in the year I had mentioned that it was the first device I had considered giving an award to, and only fell short of it due to the Exynos version’s camera processing weaknesses. Samsung over the course of the year largely fixed these shortcomings via software updates, meaning what we’re left with now is amongst the best devices in 2019.

What makes the S10 series so great is that it doesn’t have any particular weakness. Performance, screen quality, outstanding battery life and camera are all core aspects of a phone which Samsung was able to deliver on. It’s true that in the camera segment it’s now been bested by Apple’s newest iPhones, but that’s also half a year into the S10’s product cycle. The S10 checkmarks all the feature boxes that a phone should have in 2019.

Pretty much the same can also be said for the Note10 series (although the 1080p screen on the regular Note10 is at odds with Samsung’s design history). The sad exception that Samsung has now also fallen prey to abandoning the 3.5mm headphone jack. The Galaxy phones had been the last bastion of resistance against the removal of the jack, but it looks like corporate greed and profit exorbitant profit margins on wireless headphone accessories are just too great a temptation for the company’s management. The integrated 3.5mm headphone jack is now dead for good in the mobile space, and it’s a sad day for the consumer. F.

Apple in 2019 – Boring Excellence

On the outside, the iPhone 11 series are extremely boring phones. Comparing an iPhone 11 Pro to an iPhone X from 2 years ago you wouldn’t know the difference unless you flipped them over to showcase the new camera setup. Yet, these are amongst the best phones in 2019, and Apple’s execution of the core aspects of a phone has seen tremendous improvements for the user experience.

Apple’s vertical silicon integration and in-house development continues to pay off, and leads the industry in terms of performance and efficiency. The A13 maintains or even widens this gap to the competition.

Battery and camera improvements are what makes the iPhone 11 outstanding phones. Apple has finally opted to integrate bigger battery capacities this year, and along with Samsung’s flagships, these are amongst the longest lasting devices in 2019. Apple’s triple-camera setup is fantastically executed, and offers one of the best shooting experiences in 2019. Apple still has to work on the quality of its ultra-wide-angle module, but everything else is class-leading.

There’s not too much to say about the new iPhones other than they’re extremely solid phones. I do wish a new design refresh as the current one is getting a bit long in the tooth, but hopefully that’s in queue for the 2020 models.

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