[GizPoll of the Week] Which smartphone newcomer impressed the most this year

From our last poll, the votes shows that Xiaomi (46%), Huawei/Honor (28%) and Oppo/Vivo/OnePlus (11%) did the best business for 2018.

We often talk about the stiff competition in the smartphone market. This competition is not just as a result of increased production by the major players, it is also due to the upspring of many smaller brands or sub-brands which give the market more options. A couple of new brands or sub-brands were introduced to the market and today’s poll look at the newcomers that impressed the most.

From Xiaomi alone, we can talk about the Black Shark, Pocophone (popularly called Poco) and Mi Play lineups which were all introduced this year. In April, Xiaomi Black Shark released its maiden gaming phone and its successor Xiaomi Black Shark Helo with 10GB of RAM arrived in October. Black Shark is a lineup which comes with a lot of features suitable for gamers. The maiden version stayed on top of AnTuTu performance list for many months and this smartphone has gaming category medals to its name.

Pocophone is a sub-brand of Xiaomi which was launched this year in India. This brand is meant to unleash flagship smartphones at affordable prices and its first smartphone, Xiaomi Pocophone F1 didn’t disappoint. This smartphone comes with the Snapdragon 845 flagship SoC and still sold for below $400.

The “Play” lineup from Xiaomi was introduced a few days ago with the arrival of the Xiaomi Mi Play. The Mi Play can be best described as a top-notch entry-level smartphone with a $160 price tag. Not much can be said about the market performance of this device because it is only a few days old.

Realme, Oppo’s sub-brand arrived in May this year with the Realme 1. This smartphone has gotten two siblings which include Realme 2 and Realme 2 Pro

Red, a camera company ventured into the smartphone market with the Hydrogen One which was released on November 2. Since this is its first attempt, we might act like we didn’t notice its weird display and uninspiring camera even though it is a camera company.

So which of these brands is your 2018’s best newcomer? Let us have your say in the poll below and if there is anything else you need to add, use the comments.

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