MWC 2016: the world’s biggest phone show as it happened

MWC 2016: what to expect

MWC 2016 is now over. The biggest event in the smartphone calendar has been and gone with major announcements from a plethora of manufacturers.

We saw the new Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge as well as the modular LG G5. But it’s more than just the big name phones. The show was stocked full of smaller, interesting tech and here’s your place to discover everything we saw at the show.

We reported the whole event live from Barcelona and below you’ll find everything we loved at MWC 2016. Before that, take a look at our five favorite phones from Mobile World Congress 2016.

Samsung

Samsung has managed to somewhat steal the MWC show for the past two years, launching the Galaxy S5 and the Galaxy S6 at the 2014 and 2015 events respectively. This year has been no different, with the smartphone giant launching both the S7 and S7 Edge (with part of the press conference done in virtual reality), and surprising us with an appearance from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

You can see the entire thing as it happened in our live blog. Or, go straight to checking out our hands-on reviews of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. While both phones turned out exactly as leaks and rumours had led us to believe, they weren’t the only thing Samsung was at MWC to talk about.

The company also announced the Gear 360, its 360-degree camera that can be used to capture footage to be played back in virtual reality.

But probably the biggest moment was when Mark Zuckerberg dropped by to big up virtual reality. Not only did Zuck explain why VR is the next social platform, he also announced that Facebook would be bringing many more apps to Gear VR. He also confirmed the launch of Minecraft on the platform.

Gutted you weren’t at the show? Well, now you can be! Sort of. We made a 360-degree video for you to immerse yourself in. Check it out below.

LG

LG revealed all at MWC 2016. As we expected, the new 5.3-inch G5 has an always-on display that never sleeps, letting you see the time, date, and notifications at a glance.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is the phone’s “magic slot”, which allows for additional accessories to be added onto the phone. LG has essentially made its first modular phone. Read our hands-on first impressions of the LG G5.

As well as the phone, LG is entering the virtual reality race with its first VR headset, which is powered by the G5. It’s also much smaller than its rival Samsung Galaxy Gear VR – and pretty much every other VR headset out there right now.

• Here’s how the LG G5 compares to the LG G4.

Sony

Sony, never one to shy away from a trade show, is here at MWC showing off some new smartphones – the Xperia X and the Xperia XA, both of which gave us some hints about what the Xperia Z6 might bring.

But the more interesting announcements from Sony, perhaps, weren’t phones at all. It revealed the Xperia Ear, a tiny personal assistant that sits in your – yup – ear. It looks very much like the one from the movie Her, although probably doesn’t come loaded with Scarlett Johansson’s voice.

We also got to play with Sony’s Xperia Projector, which will turn any surface into an interactive display. James Peckham already sees a lot of potential in the device.

Oh, and speaking of personal assistants, Sony showed us the one it’s been working on. It’s a bit like Amazon’s Echo and uses touch and voice gestures. You can read more about it here.

HTC

HTC used MWC 2015 to launch the One M9, but the HTC One M10 didn’t make an appearance at MWC 2016. There wasn’t a press conference, but the company did show off the new HTC One X9 as well as the Desire 530 and Desire 825.

Never been to MWC?

We made a short little video to explain why we love the best show in mobile tech. Check it out below.

Day three

Day two

Day one

MWC 2016: what we wanted to see

Every year techradar travels in force to cover MWC live and bring you all the latest news from the show. Mark it in your diary (Feb 22-Feb 25), submit your wish list in the comments and brace yourself for everything mobile. In the meantime, here’s what we want to see.

A truly bendable phone

Samsung and LG have teased us with the likes of the Galaxy S6 Edge, S6 Edge+ and the LG G Flex 2, but we want someone to take these ideas to the next step, with a bendable phone or at the very least a phone which makes good use of its curves. There’s talk that Samsung is readying a foldable phone for launch in early 2016, so it’s possible it could arrive at MWC.

But whether that or something else hopefully there’ll be at least one bendy phone at MWC 2016 and hopefully it will be a flagship, rather than being designed as a niche device.

Every new flagship smartphone

How about the Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC One M10, LG G5, Sony Xperia Z6 and Motorola Moto X (2016) all launching in Barcelona together? It would be the mobile holy grail.

It’s nothing more than a pipe dream, but seeing every major Android manufacturer drop a new flagship in Barcelona would cement MWC’s title as the most important technology conference of the year.

We’d be in dreamland, the crowds would love it and consumers will get to select from a bunch of top notch handsets at the same time, rather than having to wait weeks, or even months, for all the top players to show their hand.

Come on guys, one for all and all for one.

More Windows phones

Windows Phone has had a tough time up against the might of Android and iOS, but Windows 10 Mobile is finally here and it’s accompanied by the impressive Microsoft Lumia 950 and Microsoft Lumia 950 XL.

We probably won’t see any more new Microsoft flagships at the show, but hopefully a new OS will lead to a boost in popularity and with it a slew of new Windows Phone devices from other manufacturers at MWC 2016.

A brilliant Lumia camera phone

Remember the Nokia Lumia 1020? A solid smartphone with an absolutely stonking 41MP camera bolted on the rear. It’s about time the Lumia brand treated us to another super smartphone camera, and MWC 2016 would be the perfect venue.

With Microsoft now at the Lumia helm, there’s enough drive (and money) to push Windows Phone to the fore – and a cracking cameraphone will have everyone talking.

A stronger Chinese presence

Huawei and ZTE always have big stands at MWC, and MWC 2016 won’t be any different – but the devices they’re peddling are usually less eye-catching than the more established names.

We’d like to see a real flagship contender from each firm, which will actually launch in a timely fashion around the world (with prices revealed up front) and minus the weirdness the brands can sometimes suffer from.

We also want a solid presence from the likes of OnePlus, Oppo, Honor, Meizu and Xiaomi. These Chinese firms are producing high quality, low cost handsets which could give Samsung and co. some serious headaches if they manage to crack the Western market. Show us what you’re made of!

Bigger batteries rather than slimmer phones

The Samsung Galaxy S6 is a brilliant phone, but in focusing on design and making it as slim as possible Samsung forgot about one of the key things – good battery life, and many other manufacturers are almost as guilty of this.

We’ll happily take a thicker phone if it means a bigger battery, we’ll even pay a little more, so hopefully the powers that be, or the people that make, are listening, and many of the phones announced at MWC 2016 have great battery life.

Battery innovation

As well as thicker batteries how about new batteries? The same type of juice packs have been powering our phones for years and the reality is that they’re just not very good.

New battery technology is being researched all the time and hopefully by MWC 2016 some of that will have gone past the research stage and been implemented into smartphones. Origami batteries anyone? Or how about super-fast charging ones?

We’re also hoping to see more phones at MWC 2016 adopt the new USB-C standard found on the OnePlus 2. It allows you to plug your charging cable in either way round – like Apple’s Lightning connector – for easy top ups at night. Thankfully a number of late 2015 phones have started using this, so we’re hopeful that the flagship crop at MWC will.

More power, without the heat

Each year we see ever more powerful phones, but this year the mobile chip of choice – the Snapdragon 810, has been subject to overheating concerns.

No-one wants a toasty phone, especially not when excessive heat can risk damaging the innards too, so we hope whatever phones are announced at MWC 2016 are even more powerful, but without the heat. This shouldn’t be a problem, in fact Fujitsu already claims to have the answer.

Given the bad press the Snapdragon 810 got we’re sure Qualcomm and the other processor manufacturers are making cooler chips a priority, so we’d say this is one thing that’s very likely.

An amazing Nokia tablet you can actually buy

Nokia (yes Nokia, not the Microsoft owned Lumia) teased us ever so cruelly at MWC 2015 with the gorgeous Nokia N1 tablet. It ran Android, looked like an iPad Mini and it’s fair to say at least one of us fell in love with it.

Now all we’re asking is for Nokia to give it a cheeky spec bump, a sweet software upgrade and actually make it available to buy outside of Asia and we’ll marry it in a heartbeat.

Smartwatches hitting their stride

It’s still early days when it comes to smartwatches. The latest ones like the LG Watch Urbane, the Samsung Gear S2, the Apple Watch and the Moto 360 (2015) are finally starting to look less like tech and more like fashion, but they still have a way to go before they’re likely to convince the masses to ditch their dumb-watches.

There needs to be other improvements too, with battery life key among them. We hope that by MWC 2016 many of the problems faced by smartwatches will have been solved and they’ll be ready for prime time.

Modular mayhem

We were hoping Google would show off Project Ara at MWC 2015, but sadly that didn’t happen and the company has now confirmed that it won’t be launching the hardware until sometime in 2016.

That could mean we’ll see it at MWC 2016 and given the long wait we hope that Google will hit the ground running with a whole heap of modular phones, or at least a whole heap of modules for phones.

Then we’ll be free to fix whatever the manufacturers inevitably get wrong/not to our tastes. No fingerprint scanner? Add one. Rubbish camera? Switch it for a better one. Battery too small? Put a bigger one in. And never buy a whole new phone again. Maybe.

Surprises

Surprises are always fun. Well, not always, there was that one time with the trampoline and the custard, but we don’t talk about it.

When it comes to MWC more powerful devices are a given, new phones from HTC and Samsung are likely and everything else we’ve hoped for, well, we already hope for it, so it won’t be much of a surprise.

So surprise us assorted tech makers. Bring us something we can’t predict. Just make sure it’s not something rubbish. And there’s no custard. We never want to see custard again.

Source: techradar.com

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