Back with a bang! MWC 2024 roundup

The post-pandemic years had been seeing a bit of a lull at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) expo. But, not anymore! This year, with an estimated 90,000 attendees and brands from across 200 countries participating, the 4-day tech show is back, bigger than ever before! 

Wearables

On the day that MWC was flagged off, one of the first launches was the OnePlus Watch 2. A comeback almost three yearsafter the first edition, the smartwatch sports a 1.43-inch display and is designed for ruggedness.

OnePlus Watch 2 | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

OPPO unveiled a prototype for its new generation of assisted reality glasses, OPPO Air Glass 3. Weighing just 50 grams, the glasses work with  AndesGPT on the smartphone. Users only need to lightly press the temple of the wearables glasses to activate the AI voice assistant and begin performing a range of tasks.

OPPO Air Glass 3 | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Although no one got their hands on it at the venue, the Samsung Galaxy Ring made a lot of heads turn. Designed in three different colours — black, gold and silver — the rings were also showcased in nine different sizes. However, there was no official word about any other specs or a possible launch date. 

Samsung Galaxy Ring  | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Smartphones

Coming our way are the premium Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro, with the brand continuing its partnership with Leica and putting imaging first. Both smartphones will run the same processor as most Android flagships this year — the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform. 

Xiaomi 14 | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

An AI-ready Honor Magic 6 Pro was also showcased. The company said that the smartphone will eventually support an eye-tracking feature. This might come in handy, for example, when you look at notifications on the smartphone to open them, instead of having to tap on the physical display.  The brand also showed off a Porsche Design Honor Magic V2 RSR, a special edition of the Magic V2 foldable with better specs, and the design an ode to the German car brand. 

Porsche Design Honor Magic V2 RSR | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

HMD (Nokia devices) teased a collaboration with Mattel to launch an HMD Barbie flip phone. It’ll be a very very Barbie pink feature phone, possibly hitting international markets by summer this year. They also teased HMD Fusion, a concept in which built-in hardware connectors on a phone can enable endless applications. The toolkit is now open to developers and the possibilities include add-on ‘smart outfits’ that could be an extended battery, a barcode scanner,  a payment terminal or even a piece of medical equipment. 

OnePlus 12R Genshin Impact Edition | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

A special editionOnePlus 12R Genshin Impact Edition was also launched, dedicated to the game character ‘Keqing’ and her spirit of individuality and determination. The limited edition, smartphone sports a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz adaptive refresh rate and a console-quality Genshin experience on a mobile device. 

Flip, fold, and roll

A smartphone that bends around your wrist. Yup, that’s coming. Motorola showed off its rollable adaptive display concept at MWC. When laid flat, the 6.9-inch display runs a full Android smartphone experience. When bent and propped to stand on its own, it becomes a more compact 4.6-inch display, and can of course be wrapped around the user’s wrist as well.  

Motorola’srollable adaptive display | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The Tecno Phantom Ultimate is a rollable smartphone that sports a 7.11-inch AMOLED screen. When retracted, the concept phone features a double-sided display, which wraps horizontally around the back of the device to serve as a secondary screen. When extended, the double-sided screen rolls around to become one ultra-large display.

Tecno Phantom Ultimate | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Laptops

What had a lot of jaws dropping on the MWC floor was the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptopconcept.Yup, a completely see-through laptop on which you can see content and also what’s beyond it in your physical surroundings. The company believes that this could have very real-life uses in the arts, illustrations, and even engineering and architecture when blueprints can be superimposed onto a physical space in front of it.

Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop concept | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop concept

Apart from this proof-of-concept, Lenovo also unveiled a long list of next-gen ThinkPads and ThinkBooks which also come embedded with better video conferencing AI tweaks, and Smart Connect that enables users to work across multiple devices — say a smartphone and laptop — seamlessly.

HONOR MagicBook Pro 16 | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The new HONOR MagicBook Pro 16 comes with AI capabilities that offer cross-OS collaboration and AI-generated content, enhancing the overall user experience. The laptop is powered by Intel Core Ultra 7 processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX40 Series GPU to handle demanding tasks. 

The final word

Considering all the launches at the mega tech exhibition this year, it’s safe to say that alternate form factors on smartphones are here to stay. And, what a refreshing change that’ll bring to ages of carrying around the same form factor. More competition in this specific genre will also likely offer the consumers more affordable price tages on foldables. The interest and work going into making augmented reality accessible on an everyday basis continues on, and hopefully soon it will be an everyday part of our increasingly virtual world we live in. 

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