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MWC 2024: What to expect from the world's biggest phone show
Mobile World Congress is back — here's what you need to know
Mobile World Congress might not attract the same sort of attention it used to, especially as larger smartphone brands have minimized their appearances at the show. That doesn't mean it's not one of the most exciting times of the year for smartphone fans, though, especially if you prefer brands like OnePlus or Motorola over Android behemoths like Google and Samsung. As Android Police preps to send four — yes, four — of our intrepid reporters out to the show floor (including yours truly), here's what to expect from MWC 2024.
Samsung teases what you can expect at MWC 2022
The electronics giant promises big news about the Galaxy Book
Samsung just launched its flagship Galaxy S22 lineup not even two weeks ago, but the electronics giant says more reveals are on the way before the end of the month. This week the company announced its Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 event and hinted at what's in store.
Watch Samsung's virtual Mobile World Congress event here
We might get our first glimpse at a revitalized Wear OS today
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Google raised eyebrows back at the I/O developer conference, saying that the next iteration of Wear OS would be developed alongside Samsung. The company's Galaxy-branded smartwatches have eschewed Wear OS for years in favor of its own in-house Tizen operating system. Our first real glimpse at this hybridized Wear OS might just come later today when Samsung shows off its "vision for the future of smartwatches," and you can watch it right here.
MWC 2021 optimistically postpones event until summer
Let's hope it actually takes place this time around
MWC 2020 was the first big tech event that fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it looks like things aren't going back to normal in 2021, either. The GSMA, the consortium behind the fair, has just announced that next year's MWC will take place from June 28 to July 1, 2021, instead of the planned date in early March.
Mobile World Congress 2020 is officially canceled (Update: Statement)
The news comes just hours after GSMA said the show would go on
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- GSMA has released an official statement, confirming the cancelation and promising that there will still be an MWC next year:
The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has thrown a wrench in plans for Mobile World Congress, the annual mobile technology showcase that takes place in Barcelona, Spain. Hours after the GSMA insisted the show would continue, the show has been canceled entirely.
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- According to local newspaper NIUS, the GSMA has decided not to cancel the fair after all, despite the dropout of many exhibitors. The body has communicated this decision after an emergency meeting on Wednesday. The meeting was initially scheduled for Friday, but the GSMA decided to pull it forward to decide the fate of the conference earlier.
The coronavirus outbreak is shaking up MWC quite a bit, as many major companies have already withdrawn from the event slated to start February 24. It looks like this has lead fair organizer GSMA to plead with the Spanish government to declare a health emergency so it can cancel the event.
In what is an increasingly dismal downward spiral, MWC 2020 appears to be on the verge of collapse. The fate of the world's biggest smartphone event, an annual convention held in Barcelona for a decade, will allegedly be decided on Friday. That this news comes on the day of Samsung Unpacked and the launch of the Galaxy S20 feels especially... weird.
Xiaomi intends to press on with its MWC event on February 23 in the face of coronavirus concerns, but it will be taking the necessary precautions to ensure the safety of its staff and guests. Since the Mi 9 smartphone series was launched around this time last year, we were already expecting its successor to be announced in Barcelona. It looks like it will be unveiled in China ten days before then, on February 13, and the company has taken to Chinese social platform Weibo to tease the Mi 10.
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The novel coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 20,000 people, killed hundreds, and has put millions of people in China under quarantine is increasingly affecting travel not just within, but into and out of the country. Nearby countries are handling cases and deaths of their own. All of this could throw a wrench into the Mobile World Congress as the trade show is set to begin in Barcelona on February 24. Two major participants, LG and ZTE, have announced that they won't be there.
At the beginning of the month, we reported Energizer was planning on announcing a myriad of phones at MWC. The rumors had it some would feature a pop-up camera, and one could even sport a jaw-dropping 18,000mAh battery. Given the brand's expertise in power storage, it was only fair to expect the handsets to receive respectable battery sizes, but we were far from thinking it would present something as enormous as an actual brick.
At MWC 2019, Lenovo announced its new Android product, the Tab V7. The pitch here is that you'll get all of the benefits of a tablet along with normal phone capabilities like calls, texts, and data. It's priced to impress, that is if you're in the market for an over-sized phone with budget-tier specs.
At a private briefing during MWC (that evidently wasn't all that private), TCL showed us some concepts of foldable screens and devices it's been working on. The devices don't have names, release dates, or even really a considered use case - they're just explorations of form factor and engineering, not reflections of upcoming product designs. They're neat to look at, but that's really all you can say about them at this point. Well, almost.
By holding its event ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC) for the first time in a few years, Samsung ensured maximum hype surrounding the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy Fold. Some of that hype may have died down once the design and the $1,980 price tag came to light, but the general vibe is that it's nice to have an exciting new form-factor in what has become a relatively stale industry. As the press conferences from the other major tech companies get underway here in Barcelona, we expect to see a few more devices with flexible screens, and the first of those to be unveiled is the Huawei Mate X.
As we're closing in on MWC, manufacturers are starting to tease us on what to expect. Nokia is also joining the party and hinting about announcements in Barcelona on February 24th, which aligns with the date and location of Mobile World Congress. What appear to be two promotional images also corroborate this, showing off what may be the N9 PureView and another phone.
Move over, notch. 2019 is all about 5G and foldable screens — the two buzzwords we keep hearing at every event, with every major announcement, and in every teaser. Not knowing which one to pick, Huawei seems to have decided on landing a double-punch by teasing the world's "first" 5G smartphone with a foldable display, to be revealed at MWC in Barcelona.
Just like Kodak and Pepsi, Energizer is the latest mainstream brand that is becoming a smartphone brand. It's planning to release a whopping 26 models at Mobile World Congress in a few weeks, two of which have pop-up cameras. Unlike most phones debuting with these fancy mechanisms, neither is particularly high-end.
While the main challenge Android manufacturers are facing this year is to get rid of the infamous notch, many by simply punching holes in their screens, LG seems to be taking a different route altogether. In a short video published yesterday, the company teased a device with hover gestures to be announced on February 24 at Mobile World Congress.
Remember LG's ill-fated Friends modules — you know, that one camera grip thing and the other DAC add-on that never came to the US for the poorly-made G5? The company apparently didn't learn its lesson, as CNET is now reporting that it could be unveiling a phone with a second-screen add-on at MWC next month.
The 2018 Mobile World Congress ended just last week, and over the course of the week-ish of announcements, there was a lot of news to cover. Just in case you happened to miss any, we've put together a quick little list of all the things we wrote about from MWC this year, plus a few things we saw that didn't merit their own post, all mixed in with a big gallery of photos.
This year's MWC just wrapped up a few days ago, but for almost a week, news from the event dominated our feed. Numerous individual product announcements occurred in Barcelona this year, and now that it's over, we've handed out seven awards to different manufacturers. Some of them are things you can buy now, some of them are things you can buy later, and some are for things you'll never be able to purchase. But Mobile World Congress (as the name suggests) is about phones, and here are our favorites from MWC 2018.