MWC 2024: all the phones, wearables, and gadgets announced in Barcelona – The Verge

AI gadgets, bendy phones, and more from MWC

2024-03-05T09:04:06-05:00

There's one thing you can count on at Mobile World Congress: a whole mess of Android smartphones. This year's conference in Barcelona, Spain, delivered, with new devices from Xiaomi, Nothing, and others showing off the state of the art in the smartphone world.

But there was something else brewing at this year's MWC: some new ideas about what a "mobile device" might really mean. As generative AI changes the way we interact with technology, devices like the Humane AI Pin are starting to chart a path past the slab of glass in your pocket. Some of those slabs of glass are becoming more than just bundles of apps.

MWC goers also saw a few new sm …

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What if phones actually bent to our needs?

2024-03-01T10:30:00-05:00

What if our phones weren’t rigid pieces of glass and aluminum? | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Mobile World Congress, like any good trade show, tries to present us with the best of what's possible now and a vision for what's coming next. Which translates to a lot of questions, particularly about the future of phones, like:

"What if phones, but controlled with your eyes?"

"What if phones, but make them fashion?"

"What if phones, but on your face? Or in your car?"

"What if phones, but color-changing for no reason?"

Honestly, this is the stuff trade shows are made of, and I absolutely love it. Where else are you going to see a transparent laptop? Definitely not at Best Buy.

But this year's show seemed centered on one particular qu …

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The Humane AI Pin worked better than I expected — until it didn’t

2024-02-27T12:30:54-05:00

Life beyond a phone screen? Or just a neat gadget?

Look, I'm a Humane AI Pin doubter as much as the next person. And I still think the wearable, AI-powered assistant suffers from a case of this-thing-could-have-been-an-app. But I finally got to spend a little face-to-face time with the pin this morning, and you know what? It's a darn cool gadget. It's just buried under a layer of marketing so thick that it's hard to appreciate what it actually could be if Humane wasn't so self-serious.

If you spend time on Tech Threads or the like, you probably already know what the pin does: you clip it to your shirt, talk to it, and it uses generative AI to answer. It's a standalone device with its own SI …

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The OnePlus Watch 2 is a bid to redeem its smartwatch reputation

2024-02-26T10:00:00-05:00

The OnePlus Watch 2 looks good on paper, but I’ve been burned before. | Image: OnePlus

OnePlus is keenly aware that its first smartwatch was a disaster. Nearly three years later, I'm still haunted by that launch and the abysmal experience I had reviewing it. News that OnePlus is back with a second-gen smartwatch fills me with trepidation, but on paper, the updates seem promising. Not only will the $299.99 OnePlus Watch 2 run on Google's Wear OS 4 but it'll also use a novel dual-engine architecture that will purportedly enable up to 100 hours of battery life. Oh, and it'll have Google Assistant.

The most interesting thing about the OnePlus Watch 2's hardware is it features two separate chipsets: the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 and …

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Wear OS is revamping notifications to improve battery life

2024-02-26T10:00:00-05:00

Google’s new hybrid notification interface was added specifically for the OnePlus Watch 2. | Image: OnePlus

Google just announced a handful of new Wear OS updates at Mobile World Congress 2024. At the heart of it is a way of handling notifications that will purportedly improve performance and battery life. Wear OS watches are also getting public transit directions in Google Maps as well as Google Wallet passes.

Since 2018, Wear OS watches generally have had an application processor (AP) to handle power-intensive tasks and an ultra-low-power co-processor microcontroller unit (MCU) for always-on tasks like step counting and heart rate. The update will let wearable makers offload notification processing to the MCU. That includes the ability to read …

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Gemini is about to slide into your DMs

2024-02-26T03:00:00-05:00

More chatbots in more places. | The Verge

Google's got a round of Android and app updates in time for MWC, starting with a new way to chat with its own chatbot Gemini: right inside Google Messages. There's also a handful of other small updates touching Android Auto, Google Docs, and a couple of new intelligent accessibility features for visually impaired people.

If you're just dying to DM your new bestie Gemini, you won't have to wait long - it's arriving as an update to the Messages app this week, though you'll need to be enrolled in Google's beta testing program to access it for now. The same access rules apply so there's no Google One subscription required, at least for this ver …

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Samsung has big ambitions for the Galaxy Ring

2024-02-26T01:00:00-05:00

This is our first official look at the Samsung Galaxy Ring. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

At Galaxy Unpacked last month, Samsung teased a brand-new wearable in a new product category with not much more than a splashy video and a name: Galaxy Ring. Now, we have a little more to go on, including the fact that it's expected to arrive this year.

I got some hands-on time with a prototype ring ahead of Mobile World Congress - it's very light and comes in three colors, though Samsung emphasizes that the final product is subject to change. But I also got a sense of Samsung's bigger goals for this new product line, which it sees as not just another wearable but part of the company's vision for a future of ambient sensing (more on that in …

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Peering through Lenovo’s transparent laptop into a sci-fi future

2024-02-25T18:00:00-05:00

Lenovo’s ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop.

A year after flexing its R&D muscles with a rollable laptop that expanded its screen with a simple button push, Lenovo is back at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, with another somehow even more sci-fi concept device. This is the ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop, a 17.3-inch notebook with a screen you can peer straight through.

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The key draw is its bezel-less 17.3-inch MicroLED display, which offers up to 55 percent transparency when its pixels are set to black and turned off. But as its pixels light up, the display becomes less and less see-thro …

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Lenovo worked with iFixit to make some ThinkPads easier to repair

2024-02-25T18:00:00-05:00

The ThinkPad T14s Gen 5. | Photo by Lenovo

While the ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop Lenovo showed off at MWC 2024 is just a proof of concept, the company also announced refreshed versions of several ThinkPads and ThinkBooks as well as a few accessories.

That includes three refreshed ThinkPad T-series laptops: the ThinkPad T14 Gen 5, ThinkPad T14s Gen 5, and ThinkPad T16 Gen 3, all with Intel Core Ultra processors (or an AMD Ryzen 8040 option for the T14 Gen 5). All three get Lenovo's communication bar, which extends a portion of the top bezel to house the camera and microphones, giving those laptops slimmer top bezels and taller display ratios. Lenovo previously added this fea …

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Now there’s a 28,000mAh battery with a phone in it

2024-02-25T15:16:06-05:00

Avenir Telecom’s Energizer Hard Case P28K is an 27.8mm thick smartphone with a 28,000mAh battery in it. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

Four years ago, my then-colleague Vlad brought you news of an 18,000mAh battery with a phone in it. Well, I am delighted to inform you that Avenir Telecom is at it again, only now it's packed a smartphone into a 28,000mAh battery. That, in this industry, is what we call progress.

The device itself is called the Hard Case P28K, and like its predecessor it'll be sold under the Energizer brand (which Avenir licenses from the battery manufacturer). The company claims the P28K's battery is substantial enough to last for a whole week regular of usage. The device also has a pretty rugged IP69 rating to survive the kinds of off-the-grid adventures …

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