You don’t have to spend too much time on the show floor atMobile World Congressto get a feel for what’s trending in the industry right now. AI is everywhere, just as it was at CES.Nearly every OEM you can think of has a foldableon display, even from brands you’ve never heard of or forgot existed years ago. And the phones that are being launched on the show floor areall from Chinese brands, likely destined for a global launch that, as usual, excludes North America from upgraded one-inch camera sensors and supersized fast-charging batteries.
But look past the crowds racing to grab Android pins from Google’s partner booths and you’ll find one more trend flying under the radar: concept devices. More than ever, MWC is about predicting what the future of mobile looks like without actually committing to developing and testing prototypes, let alone actually launching products. And while one or two concept gadgets isn’t anything new for the industry, I’m not sure I can remember a trade show with so many products that… aren’t actually products.
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Not that there’s anything wrong with that — I love seeing companies experiment as much as the next guy. But it felt like the hype surroundinglast year’s Moto Rizrpushed companies to work towards developing flashy gadgets unlikely to arrive on store shelves anytime soon. I’ve already shared mythoughts on Motorola’s bendable, a new spin on a mostly-forgotten prototype shared way back in 2016. The company demoed its hybrid smartphone-wearable right next to an identical Rizr unit as what I saw last year — even its plastic case was unchanged.
Not to be outdone, Samsung Display brought its own assortment of prototypes, just as it had at CES. Some of these demos were identical to what was shown in Vegas, though a few new concepts did make for a pretty fun booth. A foldable smart display capable of bending into its speaker dock, headphones with a circular screen showing off whatever track you’re listening to, and — of course — a bendable. Unfortunately, neither of the demo units on the show floor functioned by the time I reached them, broken after a few too many rounds of show floor abuse. Still, it proves Motorola isn’t the only brand thinking about this sort of technology.
MWC’s legacy doesn’t represent this year’s show
Its impact used to be much more noticeable
As thrilling as it can be to see these ideas in person, they’re really just that — ideas. Look back a decade, and MWC is a very different show, one that wasn’t just motioning at a vague notion of what mobile can be, but instead one that better balanced the distant future with a much more realistic series of products. In other words, gadgets you could actually buy within just a few months (or even sooner) of their initial announcement.
The big one wasSamsung’s Galaxy S5, back when the brand chose to hold its events at MWC rather than opting for hosting Unpacked. By mid-April, it was on store shelves, alongside a pair of Tizen-based wearables, the Gear 2 and Gear Fit. LG brought the G Pro 2 to its showcase, while Sony kept the dream of an iPad killer alive with its Xperia Z2 tablet. Of the big players at the time, only HTC held off bringing flagship goodness to the show, opting to unveil the One M8 at its own event in March. Even then, it still came with a new set of low-end Desire phones to show off.
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MWC 2014 also perfectly mixed events with real world news. Nokia, fresh off being acquired by Microsoft, nevertheless announced the Nokia X, its first attempt to pivot to Android. Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed on stage just days after Facebook purchased WhatsApp. This wasn’t just about new products, it was about the state of the industry as a whole.
And if you wanted concepts, you weren’t out of luck. Google itself showcased Project Tango, an AR initiative, well before it became one of the tech community’s favorite buzzwords. Tango was designed to use its cameras and sensors to learn the world around it, pushing developers to think up new apps that could utilize the tech. AR wouldn’t become a mainstream concept until Pokémon Go exploded onto the scene two years later, but it was this type of technology that got appmakers thinking about that sort of potential in the first place.
And while it might be easy to pick on Project Tango as yet another dead Google product — the company killed it in 2017, with ARCore serving as a replacement — it’s actually an example of a concept device that, at the very least, did have something of a real launch, thanks to a partnership with Lenovo that led to the Phab 2 Pro (you are absolutely forgiven if you don’t remember that; I sure don’t).
A vision of a future that might not exist
But never say never
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with MWC’s halls now being filled with far-flung visions of the future, but it’s a far cry from what the show used to be. Nearly every product, even those eventually destined for store shelves, is spoken about in hypotheticals — genAI this, edge computing that — that can sometimes make it hard to take these sorts of futuristic visions seriously. Eventually, some of these companies will have to start shipping products people are actually capable of buying. Concepts are great, but looking too far ahead can eventually get you left behind.
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