The fight is heating up at the Mobile World Conference where there are thousands of people lined up to learn about the next best thing. There have been so many great new technologies announced and reviewed, but the smartphone companies are in an all-out war over who has the latest and greatest. Larger companies are announcing their newest features and have a built-in fan base looking for what comes next, but small companies are just trying to get some recognition from MWC and are hoping to spread the word about their newest devices.

Big company announcements

So far, we’ve seen a lot of announcements of the newest generation of smartphones from these companies including the LG G5 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Even Sony announced a new line of Xperia devices, according to Forbes. The biggest news at the conference hasn’t been related to smartphones at all but to Facebook’s announcement to design virtual reality systems.

The LG and Samsung fight is real. These two are probably the biggest competitors in the fight for smartphone attention. They are very similar in features and have similar audiences. Samsung may have been disappointed by the LG G5 announcement coming right before theirs, but their show could not be beat. The question is which one of these phones will win out when there’s no more flashing lights and cameras and all that is left is a harsh customer base ready to criticize any feature that isn’t what they want. Though more information about the phones will be released soon, it seems the biggest advantage for getting an LG G5 is that there is a removable battery, which fans are really excited about. When it comes to the Samsung phones, the larger battery is a big draw, but a lot of fans are disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be anything new. Of course, they are happy to see Samsung revert back to some old features such as being waterproof and having an SD slot again.

The $4 smartphone

One of the most controversial announcements at the MWC was the announcement of a $4 smartphone coming from a company in India. People aren’t sure whether this is real or not, but it seems a lot of people don’t care and are willing to try anyway given that the company’s servers were crashed immediately after the announcement due to high traffic volume. The Freedom 251 Smartphone was shown off at MWC, and people who were able to work with the phones were highly suspicious. It looked as if white-out was used to cover up another brand on the demo phones, and the home screen made it look as if they were ripped directly from Apple’s iPhone. Not only that, but it is suspected that there is no way to make the smartphone they showed for less than $53 a piece, according to CNN Money. Only time will tell whether or not this is a reality (though don’t get your hopes up). It would be nice, however, to provide an inexpensive smartphone to people throughout the world to make mobile access available to everyone regardless of financial situation.

Sources:

Forbes

CNN Money