Mobile World Congress—or just MWC—isn’t one of our favorite trade shows just because it’s situated in the beautiful city of Barcelona during a seasonally appropriate time of year. (Cheap cava and tapas don’t have anything to do with it either.) No, this show is a favorite because it’s one of the easiest to navigate, and there’s always plenty of interesting, fun, or just plain crazy tech to scavenge through.
This year, such bounty includes transparent laptops, bendable phones, a Barbie flip phone, and more. Here are the highlights.
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HMD was supposed to be the rebirth of Nokia phones back when it made a splash at MWC 2017, but it wasn’t long before the company lost steam and it was clear that the Nokia brand name wouldn’t really compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple anymore. HMD instead put its focus on budget Android phones over the past few years and its feature phone business. At MWC, it announced that 2023 was the company’s first profitable year, and now it’s trying to change things up with a rebrand. First is the name—it’s leaning more on “Human Mobile Devices” (the full version of its acronym) instead of HMD. This year’s lineup of devices will include an HMD phone, an iconic Nokia phone, plus a Barbie flip phone.
Yep, you heard that right. HMD is collaborating with Mattel to launch a Barbie feature flip phone. It’ll be coming this summer, will obviously be pink, and is being touted as a digital detox device. That’s all we know. The only pictures of all the teased phones were pixelated.
What we do know about HMD’s other phone is that it will revolve around a system called HMD Fusion. Similar to Motorola’s Moto Mods or Google’s long-lost Project Ara, it sounds like a system of modular components that developers can build for the smartphone, from an extended battery and a barcode scanner to a payment terminal to medical equipment. It released a toolkit that developers can use to get started.
HMD also had a big focus on repairability—it expects half of its devices launched globally this year to be repairable. But this summer, it says it will have a system that dramatically reduces the number of steps it takes to fix a cracked screen.
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Late last year at Lenovo’s Tech World event, Motorola unveiled a bendable concept phone called the Adaptive Display. I got a chance to play around with it at MWC. It looks and feels like its Razr folding phones, except instead of having a hinge that snaps the phone closed precisely in half, you can bend the whole thing backward.
It can rest on a table in this arched position, enabling two people sitting across from each other to use the screen. For example, two people can watch a movie together; I watched two people play a quick game of Connect 4. There’s also a magnetic band you can wear that the phone clips to—wrap the device over your wrist and now you have a smart bracelet (of sorts). The interface adapts to show information on the top part of the screen. It’s fun and wacky, but I have to admit it looks quite janky.
Last year’s concept phone from Motorola was Rizr, which had a screen that rolled up to extend the display size despite the small design—I dare say I’d rather it be put into production than the bendy thing.
Motorola also announced a new software feature in conjunction with its parent company, Lenovo, called Smart Connect. This is an evolution of its Ready For platform, that enabled you to wirelessly connect a Motorola phone to nearby displays to stream apps, use the phone’s camera as a webcam, and share files.
Smart Connect expands on these features and will be available on Windows laptops via the Microsoft Store. If you have a compatible Lenovo tablet or a Motorola smartphone, you can then seamlessly move your apps between the screens, very much like Apple’s Universal Control feature. You can even use the laptop’s keyboard and mouse on the tablet and phone.
Lenovo and Motorola isn’t the only company that showed off something like this—Honor had the same functionality with its laptop, phone, and tablet.
I rated the original OnePlus Watch a 3/10. It was an inaccurate fitness tracker—exactly the opposite of what you’d want. The new OnePlus Watch 2 is a night and day difference. I’ve been wearing it for the past week—stay tuned for the full review very soon—but it’s remarkably better and feels nothing like the original.
It also has a really nifty trick that gives it a leg up over its peers—two operating systems run by two processors. It’s a Google Wear OS smartwatch, and this OS is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 chipset. Then there’s the Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), which is run by an ultra low-power BES2700 chip.
It looks and feels like a normal Wear OS smartwatch—the intensive tasks like using Google Maps, playing music, and using apps are powered by the Snapdragon chipset. The RTOS handles the always-on display, background activity, and some other tasks like calls and notifications. You never see any change in the normal operations of the watch.
This magical blend is what helps the smartwatch achieve multiple days of battery life. With the always-on display enabled, I didn’t have to recharge it for three whole days. It’s fantastic. I’ll have more details in my review soon, but the OnePlus Watch 2 is available for preorder now for $300 and goes on sale March 4. OnePlus has a fun promotion where you can trade in any watch (yes, even analog watches), to get $50 off your purchase.
Lenovo also had a concept at MWC—a transparent laptop. I’ve written about it in greater detail here, but this is called Project Crystal, and it’s not a real product. Well, not anytime soon at least. Lenovo’s showing off what a transparent laptop would be like, and it’s hard to say it doesn’t look futuristic.
The Micro-LED transparent screen lets you see through it, but I was able to see normal apps just fine thanks to the super-bright display. Unfortunately, this also means the people sitting across from you can also see what you’re doing. Lenovo says there are ways to adjust the transmissiveness of the display to create an opaque privacy layer when you need it, but it didn’t show anything like this off. Not very enterprise friendly, but hey, it’s a fun concept.
Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Ring to much fanfare at its Galaxy Unpacked event last month, but then provided almost zero details about it. Well, today, it teased a bit more. You can read my full hands-on experience here—I even got to try on a non-working prototype!
The Galaxy Ring will not have features like auto-workout detection at launch, but it will have period tracking, and something called My Vitality Score. This works similarly to Garmin’s Body Battery and Fitbit’s Daily Readiness Score, which suggests how ready your body and mind are to take on the day. There’s still no price or firm launch date yet, other than “later this year.”
If I took a shot every time Honor mentioned “AI” at its press conference, I’d probably be dead. Many of the features it touts in all of its new hardware, whether it’s the Magic 6 Pro or Magic V2 RSR smartphones, or the MagicBook Pro 16 laptop, aren’t really powered by artificial intelligence. But that doesn’t stop them from being cool.
The wackiest demo I had was of the eye-tracking feature on the Magic 6 Pro. The phone goes on sale soon, and this feature will come via a software update later, but it essentially lets you expand notifications just by staring at them as they come in—handy if you’re carrying a bag of groceries with your other arm. (The brand hosted WIRED at its media event at MWC and paid for a portion of our reporter’s travel expenses.)
Hilariously, Honor decided to demonstrate the eye-tracking capability with a car (an Alfa Romeo at that). There’s an app on the phone with four options: Engine Start, Engine Stop, Forward, and Backward. Look at one of the buttons and the car will follow the command. Obviously, for safety’s sake, there were a lot of limitations placed on the car with its speed, and it would only go a certain distance back and forth.
Honor was also worried that since it had largely trained the eye-tracking feature on only East Asian eyes that it would struggle to work, but I didn’t have any issues. I stared at each of the buttons and the car revved up and moved back and forth. Fun! Again, I must repeat that this feature is not going to be controlling cars or anything like that—it was purely to show the eye-tracking capability in an unnecessarily extravagant way.
If you get tired eyes reading on a vibrant AMOLED display, you might appreciate TCL’s NXTPaper range. The company is bringing a bunch more of its devices to the US, most notably the flagship TCL 50 XL NXTPaper 5G, which has a 6.8-inch screen with a 120-Hz refresh rate that is designed to resemble paper and be more comfortable to stare at for hours on end.
While the rest of the specs are average or below, the $229 price might be enough to tempt bookworms who like to read on their phones.
TCL also unveiled the TCL NXTPAPER 14 Pro, which has the same eye-friendly screen technology, with an e-ink mode, in a 14-inch display. Described as a “productivity powerhouse,” the tablet’s hustle comes from a MediaTek Dimensity 8020 processor with a hefty 12 GB of RAM. It also has a sizable 12,000-mAh battery and 256 GB of storage, which seems a little light.
One final TCL gadget that caught our eye was the TCL Linkkey IK511, which is basically a 5G dongle with a USB-C port that you can connect to anything and set up with an eSIM contract.
The AI formerly known as Bard is creeping into Android as Google showed off some nifty Gemini integrations at MWC. Most notable was Gemini popping up in the Android Messages app to help you compose the perfect missives.
You can have it auto-generate messages for you, tweak the style from formal to casual and beyond, and generally be super lazy about writing your own messages. There were also AI improvements for Android Auto with text summaries, group chat support, and it can suggest suitable replies or actions, such as sharing your location or ETA.
Google is also expanding the AI-generated descriptions for images in the Lookout app globally, but only in English. This is a handy accessibility feature for folks with impaired vision. Another related feature uses Android Talkback to read out information when you point your camera at your surroundings, using Lens in Maps to tell you things like business hours. Google Docs now lets you add hand-written markup with your finger or stylus on Android devices, Spotify Connect has been added to the output switched on your home screen, and Health Connect pulls more fitness data from sources like Oura and MyFitnessPal into the redesigned Fitbit app.
There were also a couple of new features announced for Wear OS. Google Wallet passes for event tickets, boarding passes, and more can now be scanned directly from your wrist with a Wear OS watch, and you can finally get public transit directions for Google Maps on your Wear OS watch, so there’s no need to slip that phone from your pocket anymore.
When we reviewed the chonky Nubia Z60 Ultra (6/10, WIRED Review) recently, the PR folks were at pains to point out the company is independent from ZTE, but its latest releases at MWC were on the ZTE stage. The first foldable from its one-time sub brand is the Nubia Flip, and it’s super cute.
When open, the 6.9-inch 120-Hz display feels like a regular phone, but it snaps shut to a very pocketable size. Instead of a square or rectangular screen on the front you get a circular screen with a thick border around it that contains what Nubia is calling a “50-MP AI dual camera.” It has a few nifty modes that help you perfect your selfies with a live view of the photo on the front.
It’s not the most powerful smartphone, with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 inside, but that’s reflected in the relatively low $599 asking price. While the circular display isn’t the most practical shape, Nubia has added some fun extras, like a 3D interactive pet (my daughter would love the cat), and a wide range of customization options that make it a bit more interesting.
The other big release was the Nubia Pad 3D II. This tablet displays a 3D picture without you having to wear any glasses, and it does it by tracking your eyes and serving a slightly different image to each one. It’s actually quite effective. I played around with a 3D car model and it genuinely felt like it was popping out of the screen.
If you saw last year’s Nubia Pad 3D, the next generation adds 5G connectivity and a bunch of vague “AI concepts.” The tablet has dual cameras on the back for 3D image and video capture, and there’s an AI feature that is supposed to be able to convert any 2D content to 3D. There’s no word on pricing for this tablet just yet.
MWC used to be the place for smartphone releases. Outside of Apple, most major phone makers would set out their stall for the year in Barcelona. But with Samsung and Google spinning off their own events, LG and Sony in decline, and Huawei a shell of its former self, there was room for Xiaomi to shine in 2024. The Chinese manufacturer rose to the challenge with the Xiaomi 14 (£849/€999) and 14 Ultra (£1299/€1499) smartphones, the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro (€699) tablet, the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro (€69), and the Xiaomi Watch S3 (€149) all coming to the global market (minus the US). (The brand hosted WIRED at its media event at MWC and paid for a portion of our reporter’s travel expenses.)
You can read our Xiaomi 14 review to find out about its most affordable flagship, but it was the 14 Ultra that really caught our eye. Last year’s 13 Ultra impressed, but the 14 Ultra cranks everything up to 11, or, eh 14?
Once again, the quad lens camera features four 50-megapixel lenses developed in partnership with Leica. But this time the main lens features a stepless variable aperture that automatically adjusts from f/1.63 to f/4.0 to let in the right amount of light. There’s also a floating telephoto lens with an f/1.8 aperture that offers 3.2x optical zoom, and a periscope telephoto lens with an f/2.5 aperture that offers 5x optical zoom. An ultrawide with an f/1.8 aperture and a 122-degree field of view completes this versatile camera. Xiaomi has also beefed up the quality of HDR video capture.
Intriguingly, the company also showed off an AI feature capable of scanning your photos and then creating new pictures of you using text prompts.
Throw in a superb display, with a toned-down curve, a much more durable body, better cooling, and seriously speedy 80-watt wireless charging (90-watt wired), alongside this year’s Snapdragon and support for Wi-Fi 7, and the Ultra lives up to its name.
But all this hardware comes at a steep price and is likely overkill if you’re not a shutterbug. And, while Xiaomi’s revamped user interface, HyperOS, is more elegant and refined than MIUI, it still apes iOS and comes with bloatware. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra starts from €1,499 and there’s an optional Photography Kit (€199) that adds physical controls, a grip, and extra battery. You can expect a full review soon.
Running through the rest briefly, the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro is its biggest tablet yet, at 12.4 inches. The Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro is an affordable fitness tracker, and the Watch S3 is a HyperOS smartwatch with interchangeable bezels and a 1.43-inch AMOLED.
Xiaomi also announced the Xiaomi Watch 2 (€199), which has a similar look but runs Google’s Wear OS. While none of these devices will be officially sold in the US, they are landing in Europe hot on the heels of the Chinese release, as Xiaomi advances its global ambitions.
Everything now comes with added AI. It’s an unstoppable trend at MWC and it includes laptops. We saw the Tecno Megabook T16 Series, all of which comes with a range of AI features. The headlining Pro has a whopping 99.99-Wh battery that’s good for 22 hours. It has the Intel Core Ultra processor (5 or 7) and supports Microsoft’s Copilot AI to pop up in its suite of apps to help you work faster. Tecno also includes an AI image generator that you can enter text prompts into to create images. I asked it to show me the Android mascot on vacation in Paris and it generated a few possible images, though one had multiple Eiffel Towers in it and in another the Android mascot looked extremely drunk.
Honor was also talking up AI in its MagicBook Pro 16. Once again, powered by an Intel Core Ultra processor, you can expect Microsoft Copilot help. But Honor also highlighted AI as key to its cross-device window sharing, enabling you to drag a messaging app window from an Android smartphone or tablet to a PC or laptop and vice versa, which doesn’t really sound like something you’d need AI for. Honor also highlighted other, more AI-sounding features, like smart picture search, document summary, text comprehension, and AI subtitles.
Lenovo was also looking to jump aboard the AI bandwagon, and once again, you can expect AI in Microsoft Copilot, powered by the Intel Core Ultra. A demo also showed on-device AI adjusting background blur and picture quality on a video call. But the coolest AI feature was in its transparent concept laptop which uses a camera to appear transparent. You can also use the camera to take a photo of an object and ask what it is, or to overlay digital info onto your live view. Though that is something you can already do much more conveniently with your phone, so maybe it’s not that cool after all.
