MWC 2018: the biggest news from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – The Verge

The big difference between MWC and the Geneva Motor Show is that Europe still matters in the car industry

2018-03-10T10:30:02-05:00

Volvo V60 | Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

Over the past 20 years, as the cellphone has transitioned from a buttoned-down soap bar to a world-conquering glass slab, one of the sad changes I've witnessed from up close has been the fading influence of Europe. Where once your choice of phone was among Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, and others from the old continent, today only one of those brands remains, and it's being operated under license. The truth of the mobile market now is that Europe is the flyover agglomeration of states between China and the US, who are the current industrial and economic superpowers. Three of the world's five biggest phone manufacturers operate primarily in China …

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Bad iPhone notches are happening to good Android phones

2018-03-04T07:10:35-05:00

Asus Zenfone 5 and Apple iPhone X | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

I've been coming to Mobile World Congress for close to a decade now, and I've never seen the iPhone copied quite so blatantly and cynically as I witnessed during this year's show. MWC 2018 will go down in history as the launch platform for a mass of iPhone X notch copycats, each of them more hastily and sloppily assembled than the next.

No effort is being made to emulate the complex Face ID system that resides inside Apple's notch; companies like Noa and Ulefone are in such a hurry to get their iPhone lookalike on the market that they haven't even customized their software to account for the new shape of the screen. More than one of these n …

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Essential’s limited-edition phone colors look spectacular

2018-03-01T05:01:23-05:00

Since the Essential Phone was announced, the teal and copper "Ocean Depths" model has always stood out as the company's boldest and by far most distinctive color scheme. Months and months of delays later, I wondered if anyone would actually care that it was finally being released - but that changed after seeing it in person.

I've seen and held a lot of phones over the last five years, and none has been quite like this. Essential's Ocean Depths model radiates color. It's bright and saturated in a surprising blue-green that makes it feel like some lost piece of treasure beside the cavalcade of black and white phones that make up so much of th …

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LG showed off a phone called the G7 at Mobile World Congress

2018-02-28T16:08:45-05:00

We've heard rumors that LG won't call its next G-series phone the G7, and that the company scrapped its internal plans for the phone to start fresh. But today, Israeli publication Ynet published a video of a device that's clearly marked as the G7 with the codename Neo. It's unclear whether this is actually the device LG will be releasing or if it's just to show some work the company's done on one of its next phones.

Ynet reports this phone has a notch, of course, along with a 6-inch OLED display with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. It has an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, two 16-megapixel cameras in the back, and a rear fingerprint sensor. It also …

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This smartwatch can project a tiny dancing man onto your hand

2018-02-28T13:35:12-05:00

The nice thing about smartwatches is that they put information right on your wrist so it's easy to check. But what if that information was even more visible? What if that information was right on the back of your hand?

That question, I can only assume, is what led to the creation of Haier's Asu watch, an enormous smartwatch with a built-in projector. The projector allows the watch to display information on the back of your hand, essentially serving as a second screen.

Haier uses the projection to provide additional information. So when you're running, the projection will display distance, time, and progress toward fitness goals, while the …

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These smart glasses feel like they were designed by people who’ve never worn glasses

2018-02-28T05:45:19-05:00

Ersun Kartal wearing mockups of Tooz’s next smart glasses

Smart glasses are ever so slowly returning to public view after the embarrassing flop that was Google Glass. And the latest pair of glasses are meant to get ready for a possible boom: that's because they aren't really one pair of glasses, but a hardware platform ready to be customized with any number of sensors and input methods, then marketed for sports use, for industrial applications, or even for daily wear.

The glasses come from a new company called Tooz, which is a joint venture between Zeiss and Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile. Though Deutsche Telekom is involved and ready to shout "5G!" at a moment's notice (the glas …

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Bragi wants to sell AI more than headphones

2018-02-28T03:45:13-05:00

If you know Bragi, it's because you know the Dash earbuds. The company launched on Kickstarter three years ago with one of the most exciting wireless earbuds to date. It's iterated on them for the past two years, and it now makes one of the better pairs on the market. But Bragi CEO Nikolaj Hviid says the company is only interested in headphones to a point - its real goal is to sell AI.

To that end, Bragi is announcing a machine learning platform this week called NanoAI. Other companies will be able to license NanoAI, train the system on relevant data, and use it to add intelligent features to their products. One example Hviid gave is a powe …

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T-Mobile to launch 5G in 30 cities this year, including New York and LA

2018-02-27T12:35:04-05:00

T-Mobile will start building out its 5G network this year and plans to be in 30 cities by the end of 2018. The first four of those are being announced today: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Las Vegas. T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray boasted that the company's competitors aren't starting their 5G deployment in locations anywhere near as dense. "Why are we in New York and not Waco? Because New York matters."

No one will actually be able to use the 5G network this year, though. Ray said it wouldn't be until this time next year that we'll see the first phones announced that support 5G on T-Mobile's network. "A year from now, we're very confident," …

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A new group led by Delta, Gogo, and Sprint wants to bring broadband to the skies

2018-02-26T10:14:57-05:00

A new group led by Delta, Sprint, and Gogo wants to revolutionize the quality of in-flight internet connectivity. This past weekend at Mobile World Congress, the Seamless Air Alliance, as they're calling it, announced ambitious plans that include fast 5G or broadband-level connections in the sky, easier setup when connecting to the internet after boarding the plane, and more.

The Seamless Air Alliance isn't proposing some kind of radical revamp of how to equip planes with faster internet; it still wants to use satellites to hook airline passengers up with these fast connections. Incidentally, satellite company OneWeb and carrier Airtel are …

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This is what Samsung’s Galaxy S9 costs on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint

2018-02-25T15:13:50-05:00

Samsung just announced the Galaxy S9, and now we're getting details on how much retailers and wireless carriers are going to charge for it. The cheapest way to get the phone (without a trade-in) is through Samsung itself. But pricing gets surprisingly more complicated when you bring in wireless carriers: AT&T and Verizon are charging extra, but they're also offering trade-in discounts that can more than offset the price increase.

Here are the details we have so far - we'll be updating with more info as it comes out. In all cases, preorders start March 2nd and sales start March 16th.

Samsung

Buy it outright: S9 for $719.99; S9 Plus for $839. …

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