The mobile trends of 2015: which excite, which repel?

It’s hard to believe, but we’re already more than a half year into 2015! In that time, we’ve seen a number of interesting trends rise up, including the emergence of more budget-friendly devices that don’t actually suck from the likes of Alcatel OneTouch, Asus, and others.

2015 has also seen the emergence of a dual-edge display with the Galaxy S6 Edge, a rise to more premium materials for Samsung, and a near-death for devices with a removable battery. We’ve also seen HTC lose a lot of attention due to an arguably lackluster flagship and too many flagship-level market-specific iterations. Sony has also fallen into a similar position.

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Back in May we asked our readers what they thought of the crop of devices that had surfaced in early 2015, both on the flagship and budget-friendly front. In the flagship sector, Samsung led with 50% of the vote (combining GS6 and GS6 Edge), with the LG G3 not too far behind with 32%. On a separate poll for the budget-friendly options, the ASUS Zenfone 2 commanded 55% of the vote, with the OneTouch Idol 3 only managing 17%.

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So it’s pretty obvious what phones people have been most impressed about, but what about the bigger picture? Which rising trends are you most excited about as we head into the second half of the year and beyond?

On the flipside, what trends most concern you in the mobile space?