Phandroid Awards: Best of IFA 2022
With IFA 2022, tech trade shows are officially back! While CES and MWC were both held this year, many manufacturers scaled back their presence at both, allowing IFA to truly shine. To make sure they captured the attention of the press and regular show attendees, manufacturers pulled out all the stops to make sure IFA 2022 was truly memorable.
There were hundreds of new products that were announced during the week-long show, but only a handful were worthy of being awarded Phandroid’s Best of IFA 2022 award.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold
Lenovo isn’t alone anymore in the foldable PC segment, but their second-gen Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is definitely the best device in the category. In the two and a half years since the first X1 Fold was revealed to the world, Lenovo’s put in quite a lot of work to make its foldable PC significantly better in increasing the size of the folding display to 16-inches, packing in a new 12th Gen Intel Core™ i7 processor, Intel’s Iris Xe Graphics, up to 32GB of RAM and a maximum of 1TB of storage, all while keeping the body just 27.8mm thick when folded.
The new ThinkPad X1 Fold’s updated design makes it far more durable than its predecessor and the $2,499 price tag makes it quite compelling for anyone who wants a laptop replacement, but’s bored of the traditional offerings from the competition.
Honor 70
Honor showed up at IFA 2022 with a slew of new devices, including a new mid-range smartphone that promises to be highly competitive while looking sleek and stylish. The smartphone is powered by the Snapdragong 778+ with 8GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, and a 6.67-inch, FHD+ OLED display that offers a 120Hz refresh rate.
The camera system on the Hono 70 includes the brand new Sony IMX800 for the main camera, allowing the device to capture better low-light images than many competing devices, but it also features an impressive 50MP ultrawide camera that can double as a macro came, thanks to its autofocus lens. While the phone doesn’t feature wireless charging, the 4800 mAh battery can be charged to 60% in just 20 minutes, thanks to its support for 66W charging.
The Honor 70 is already available across Europe and the UK for €549 or £480.
Honor Pad 8
Android tablets come in quite a few sizes, but there really aren’t that many big Android tablets out there. The new 3€29 Honor Pad 8 is here to help solve that problem with a massive 12-inch display, making it ideal for watching videos, browsing the web, or playing casual games while you’re sitting on the couch.
Powered by a Snapdragon 680 with 4GB or 6GB of RAM, the table also offers 128GB of storage, 5MP cameras on the front and back with 1080p/30 video capabilities and a pretty hefty 7250 mAh battery. Honor has also packed in 8 speakers in the new tablet to ensure that the audio experience on the Pad 8 is as immersive as the 12-inch 2K display.
Zendure Superbase V
Zendure has been building portable power banks for your mobile devices for several years now, but the company now has much bigger ambitions, settings its sights on powering every electrical device in your house – including your EV. The Zendure SuperBase V is a modular home power system, featuring an incredibly powerful base station, satellite batteries and a smart electrical panel that ties everything into your home power system. On top of that, the SuperBase V comes with a new semi-solid state battery chemistry option that offers 43% higher power density, while improving the overall safety of the system when compared to traditional lithium batteries.
While there are other modular battery backup systems for your home, the Zendure SuperBase V is the first to integrate the daisy-chain connection between the satellite batteries into the cases so that you simply have to stack them one on top of the other rather than wire each battery individually.
Huawei Nova 10 Pro
The new Huawei Nova 10 Pro is truly a sight to behold. The mid-range specs of the device and attractive price should make the phone quite competitive, but the design is truly what makes this phone stand out with its blinged-out camera module on the back. It’s truly a sight to behold.
But the phone is more than just an intriguing design as it features a Snapdragon 778G chipset, 8GB of RAM, a 6.78-inch OLED display and a respectable thripple camera system with a 50MP primary camera. It also comes with a dual selfie camera system for secure face unlock, a 4500 mAh battery, and 100-watt charging.
JBL Tour Pro 2
True wireless earbuds are a dime a dozen these days, with very little differentiation. The new JBL Tour Pro 2 earbuds offer a unique take on the stagnant category by adding a display onto the case of the earbuds, allowing you to change the settings, view battery life, and even view incoming calls, messages, and other notifications by swiping on the 1.45-inch display. The earbuds offer adaptive noise cancellation, 10mm drivers for improved audio, and support for Bluetooth 5.3. Users should be able to get 10 hours of music playback without the case and a total of 40 house of listening time with it.
The JBL Tour Pro 2 earbuds will be available across Europe for €249 or £220 in the UK. We wouldn’t be surprised if we see other brands piggyback on this same idea and deliver their own true wireless earbuds with a display in the coming months.
Ring Intercom
The Ring Doorbell is the category leader for smart doorbells, but it’s simply not an option for the hundreds of millions of people who live in condo and apartment buildings across the globe. The new Ring Intercom aims to solve that by making your current intercom system a little smarter and allowing you to buzz people into the building from your smartphone, no matter where you are.
Ring Intercom comes with an easy installation kit that works with 90% of intercom systems across Europe and also features an Auto Verify system for Amazon deliveries (since Ring is owned by Amazon).
Asus ZenBook 17 Fold
Asus is joining the foldable PC segment for the new Zenbook 17 Fold. This first-generation foldable device from Asus transforms from its massive 17-inch tablet form factor into a 12.5-inch laptop and then folds completely in half so that you can easily carry it around in your bag.
Under the hood, an Intel i7-1250U processor can be found accompanied by 16GB of RAM, an Intel Iris XE GPU, and a 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. It will also come with Windows 11 preinstalled by default. There are also a bunch of ports like USB-C, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a 75Whr 4-cell battery that ASUS claims is good for about 9.5 hours.
ASUS is expected to launch the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED in the later part of the year where it will be priced starting at $3,499.