2020 summary for Android: this has been our year

We are already saying goodbye to the last hours of 2020 in Spain, and taking advantage of the end of the year we are going to remember some of the most important moments for Android of this peculiar year in which we have had everything and that has not left anyone indifferent.

Both due to unique events and certain releases, 2020 has been loaded with moments around Android, not all of them with the same importance but equally worthy of review. In these last hours we are going to talk about the 10 that have resonated the most in our heads, in no specific order.

And before starting with them and in case you go in the middle of the article,happy New Year. May we start 2021 as well as possible and may this next year be much better.

Goodbye to technology fairs

One of the most notable losses of 2020 was the massive technology events. The first big victim was the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ​​an event that remained in tension throughout the month of February, announcing reinforced security measures and inadvertently canceling while large companies began to withdraw.

At that time we all underestimated the impact of COVID-19, what innocence we had.

The Mobile World Congress 2020 has been canceled due to the coronavirus, now what?

After deliberating on the possibilities, the Mobile World Congress of Barcelona 2020 has been definitively canceled to avoid any risk.

And hello to video calls

And with the arrival of confinement, we have seen how technology can make everything more bearable. Be it Zoom, Duo, Meet, HouseParty or WhatsApp, among many others, millions of people have experienced video calls for the first time. And those of us that we already did from time to time, we have begun to use them more frequently, now that their use has been standardized.

The new generation of consoles consolidates streaming

2020 has also been the year in which the new generation of consoles has arrived, and along with them supply problems for new generation consoles. While Stadia and GeForce Now were already fully functional in 2019, 2020 has been their big moment, especially with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 (Stadia being one of the best platforms to play it on). It has also been a year in which Xbox Game Pass came to Android.

Wear OS hasn’t changed, but Qualcomm has taken the first step to change

Wear OS is a system that, although it is still the best in Android in terms of notifications and services such as Google Pay and Maps, its evolution is not being as favorable as it should be taking into account the success of Android. Part of this stagnation was Qualcomm’s fault, since the best chip for Wear OS was still based on the 2013 Snapdragon 400, but it is something that they have remedied with the 4100, a chip that finally seems to be designed to remove the full potential to Wear OS.

There is still work to do with Wear OS, but at least there is already a hardware platform that competes against Apple and Samsung on a face-to-face basis.

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The first Android Surface is real

Microsoft introduced it in 2019, but it wasn’t until 2020 that the first Android-based Surface reached us. In olden times Microsoft was Android’s competitor with Windows Phone, so seeing how they embrace this operating system on mobiles has been curious.

ARM processors in computers, now without compromise

Computers with an ARM processor have always been there to a greater or lesser extent with products like the Raspberry Pi, but until then the processor platform that gives life to our phones had not yet shown its capabilities in the PC world. Qualcomm and Microsoft showed us the potential of ARM in Windows with the Surface Pro X, but it was not the show of force it deserved, with performance problems and incompatibilities.

Apple has achieved with the very powerful M1 that ARM is capable of offering everything a computer needs, with greater efficiency and with almost complete compatibility for the majority of human beings. A success that will not remain only for Apple and that we will surely see how 2021 ends up surprising us.

The betrayal of Google Photos

Google Photos since its launch has been one of our favorite Google products, a service with backup copies of all our photos in the cloud, free and unlimited. Although this is still the case in 2020 and until mid-2021 it will remain completely free, Google has announced the end of this era.

Google destroys Google Photos: end to unlimited free storage

Google is going to change the behavior of Google Photos, making it not possible to have unlimited free storage for our photos.

The rise of 1,000 euro mobiles and the success of the moderates

1000-euro mobiles have been with us for years, but it was not until 2020 that we saw more brands join a trend that was previously reserved for Apple and the best Samsung models. These have been joined by OnePlus, Xiaomi, Sony, Oppo (although these had already reached this figure with the Find X) and even Motorola.

The second part of the year has been more interesting, with a success of more moderate mobiles with the Snapdragon 765 processor and some models with maximum power and more reasonable prices. Terminals like the Galaxy S20 FE, OnePlus 8T and Xiaomi Mi 10T have been the great protagonists of the final stage of 2020.

The landing of Vivo in Spain

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Vivo is one of the largest Chinese manufacturers in its homeland, and the last of the BBK Electronics group (a group that also includes Oppo, realme and OnePlus). Its arrival was very early, being the largest of the 4 (in a tough fight with Oppo, that if).

His arrival in Spain has surprised us by a commitment to a very clean personalization layer that contrasts with the personalization layer they have in China. Vivo has done their homework correctly and we are very interested in seeing what they do in 2021.

Huawei and the post-Android era

Far seems Donald Trump’s veto of Huawei, but the Chinese company continues to struggle to reinvent itself every day. Its catalog of new mobiles has had to do without Google, but the commitment to its mobile services is increasingly solid. It has also been a great year for the rest of the devices in its ecosystem, highlighting the Huawei FreeBuds Pro and the Huawei Watch Fit.

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