IFA 2018 Impressions

Hello everyone, it’s IFA time again, my chance to be geeky ;) Here is what I saw and liked. Enjoy!

1 — DELL

DELL uses IFA to present their new range of Inspiron notebooks. Inspiron are the ones were you can flip the screen all the way back via those 2 hinges. It looks and feels great. But not being a big Windows fan, something else drew my attention: There is 14 inch Chromebook version! Unfortunatrely only with an i3 processor and no info whatsoever on prices and availabilities in Germany.

I wish Chromebooks would take off more in Europe and manufacturers would go for the pro market more than education.

2 — LG

LG shows about 1000 LG G7 ThinkQ phones on their stand — although it is not really a new phone. And a little further, I almost did not see the brand new Q7 — even less impressive. Too bad.

Their “Asian-ness” is being propelled to a new level by presenting a huge range of their CLOi robots: One that drives around and guides you the way, one that carrys your luggage and one that cuts your grass. All of them have big eyes and can sing and dance (I think).

3 — SONY

As always SONY has one of the nicest booths, if not the nicest, with a very warm and welcoming, even humble way of presenting their new pruducts and very nice and good looking hosts and hostesses.

This speaker made great a noise. It is basically like a SONOS with WLAN and Bluetooth, plus water- and dust resistence and Google Assistant. Bähm. The battery lasts over 16 hours and it only costs 315 EUR. Love it! Looks cool. Like a modern boom box. You should get it!

Not many phones impressed me this year. The Samsung Note 9 does, but that’s already my daily driver ;) A phone that I saw for the first time and that surprised me, was the new SONY XZ3. Great size, amazing OLED 6 inch display, great looks (love the silver version with that white-ish back), great feel, cool uncomplicated slo mo mode — maybe the battery is a bit small for that display (3300 mAh) — tbd.

4 — HUAWEI

There are so many different phones at the HUAWEI booth — it is easy to lose overview — especially as so many phones are so similar! They include their brand HONOR here, too. Which makes that situation worse.

I am a fan, I must say, and I did use the new HONOR 10 for a while and really liked it. And the P20(Pro) is still great. But for IFA there is no new Mate series, no new P series. New phones (at least for me) were the HONOR PLAY and the HUAWEI NOVA3.

5 — SAMSUNG

Samsung has the biggest stand as every year. It is impressive and there is a lot to discover. I think there is no other brand were you can spend that much time here at IFA.

Right at the entrance these amazing 8K screen say “hi” — the image is incredible. So, 8k is coming, but there is still no such content to view. I hear that China will produce all its Olympic Games 2022 content in 8k — but if you get a TV like this today for your living room — wouldn’t maybe make sense. You shoudl get one of those picture frame TVs or ambient TVs now to cover the next 4 years.

But there is a bright future ahead of us, obviously, lol.

Being a Samsung user now with my Note 9, I get (re-)interested in the new Samsung smart watch. They ditch the name “Gear” and call it simply “Galaxy Watch” now. And the small one is finally one that does not look like a laptop on my wrist but like a real watch. It starts at 309 EUR and is available from September 7th. Samsung keeps its great navigation mode by turning the wheel on the phone — works so much better than touch! Still no Android Wear OS, but their own Tizen, but works perfectly with Android still — I might get one … might.

The Verge said in their video that one should get the big watch, as the battery is so much smaller. I hear it is 270 mAh vs. 450 mAh, but the official wording is “both last very long”. Lol again. Oh, and the wristband comes in 2 lengths in the box, nice. And there is a SIM version too, in case you want to go out with bluetooth speakers and leave your phone at home, you can still make phonecalls. Love it.

Ok, I think I said “love it” a few too many times. But on the other hand I was also very often “not impressed”. There are still lots of invisible brands like Philips or Panasonic that do not make a huge impact. Anyways, I made my yearly tour, am happy I did — hope you liked my little impressions article. Let me know what you think and talk soon!

Kai.