The 3 Best Gadgets and Ideas of Mobile World Congress
The convention has ended, the tapas have been eaten, the Estrella has been drunken: It’s time to hand out some awards!
Mobile World Congress, the mammoth annual tech conference here in Barcelona, ended on Thursday. Our team saw thousands of gadgets, gizmos, whatsits, and doohickeys, as well as hundreds of smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, virtual reality helmets, and, yes,several weirdo inventions from the fringes.
But here we’re focusing on quality. These are the 6 most important announcements of MWC this year, the products you need to know about. You might not buy any of these things, but these are the products we are predicting will have an impact –– either on the company that makes them, or on the industry they’re disrupting.
Ready? Here’s the best:
1. The Samsung Galaxy S6 :
In a sea of smartphones –– there were thousands, easy –– Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 rose higher than all the others. Samsung has greatly improved the design, opting for glass and metal over its traditional plastic backing; it has simplified the operating system, getting rid of the annoying pop-ups that clutter its old phones; and it unveiled Samsung Pay, an ingenious method of paying for a purchase by swiping your smartphone over a normal credit card reader. This phone appears to be the complete package; if the camera works as well as Samsung executives say, it’s a surefire winner.
We already knew that Samsung would sell the Galaxy S6 by the millions, just like they have their previous Galaxy S phones. This time around, however, it certainly looks like they’ll deserve those sales.
2. The HTC Vive :
With Samsung, Microsoft, and Facebook all pitching their own virtual reality headsets to future-oriented gamers, how could HTC possibly make itself stand out?
By letting you stand –– and walk. The headset is the first by a major corporation (HTC, in partnership with popular game developer Valve) that lets you move around a room while you wear a helmet and have that movement translated in to the game. You see every step you take in front of you on a high-def screen inside the headset; two handheld controllers let you move your hands and then see your hands move on the screen. Our Daniel Howley was blown away, as was basically every other journalist here at the conference; a Business Insider roundup found that “everyone is losing their minds” over the Vive. For HTC, the Vive was the Headset That Crushed at MWC
3. The LG Urbane LTE :
One of the key trends at this year’s Mobile World Congress was thebeautification of smartwatches, and no watch seemed more beautified than the LG Urbane LTE. The watch comes with its own data plan –– meaning it does not need to Bluetooth tether to a smartphone to work –– and can make calls, receive messages, and make mobile payments via NFC.
The real reason the Urbane could be an Ur-pain to other watchmakers, however, is how it looks. As Daniel Howley wrote, the Urbane is “an absolute stunner.” Now if it only shot lasers, we’d really be living in the future.
4. Ikea’s Wireless Charging Furniture :
The idea of wireless charging has been around for years now; actual wireless charging, as seen in the wild, remains rare. That might change with IKEA, who somehow made one of the biggest announcements at a show generally reserved for tech heavyweights. The DIY furniture company announced that it would soon sell several pieces with wireless charging stations built in, allowing those with compatible devices to simply drop them on the HEMNES or LACK and get some power, no plugs required.
This could be the boost wireless charging needed to hit the mainstream. Who would have bet that boost would come from IKEA?
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