Mobile World Congress is traditionally one of the biggest phone and mobile events of the year. The Verge will cover the show live in Barcelona, where we’re expecting to see new phones from Xiaomi, HMD and Nothing, among others. Other companies like Google, Lenovo, Samsung and Qualcomm may have news around the show, too.
On The Vergecast: Phone cameras, Digg, and the bleak future of printers.
Never mind rotating smartwatch crowns, rotating cameras rings are the next frontier. Nubia’s Focus 2 Ultra has a spinning dial around its rear camera, and it’s actually functional: it controls the phone’s camera zoom. It’s surprisingly easy to rotate with one finger while you’re holding the phone in portrait, and is a gimmick I’d probably end up using.
This is the Nubia Music 2. Like the first Music it packs a 2.1-channel sound system perfect for annoying people on public transit, designed to be 600 percent louder than the average phone. This year, it adds LEDs and an AI music generator. God help us if they ever release a Music 3.
In case there were any doubts about what Nothing’s next phones look like (spoiler: there weren’t) the company has formally unveiled the designs at MWC. The 3A series phones are under glass for now, but we’re expecting a full launch tomorrow so it won’t be long before we get the full picture.
Samsung has the Galaxy S25 Edge on display here at MWC, but as was the case at Unpacked, it’s strictly hands-off. Tecno, on the other hand, its Spark Slim concept phone powered on and available to handle. It’s 5.75mm thick and includes a 5,200mAh battery. And it sure is slim! So is the company’s tri-fold concept phone, which I caught sight of outside its glass case. Pretty slick, and it even has a name: the Phantom Ultimate 2.
The company’s first premium EV-only just went on sale in China for CN¥529,900 (around $73,000). It can go from 0 to 100 km/h in less than two seconds. It boasts a carbon fiber-heavy design, a 24K gold “Mi” emblem on the front, and a full array of smart features when connected to a Xiaomi phone.
Xiaomi promised yesterday to start releasing its EVs outside China “within the next few years.”
The 14 Pro and 14 Pro Plus, which launched in India last month, are coming to Europe, too, starting at €429.99 (around $450). The big hook is a temperature-sensitive, color-changing finish, with the pearlescent white back turning blue as it drops below 61 degrees Fahrenheit. And with an IP69 rating, Realme put both to the test at once by flooding the phone with cold water in a live demo at Mobile World Congress.
Honor has announced that its flagship Honor Magic phones will now receive seven years of Android OS updates and seven years of security support, starting with the recent Magic 7 Pro in the EU.
That makes Honor the first Chinese manufacturer to match software support pledges from Samsung and Google — Oppo and Xiaomi tend to offer four or five years of support for their phones.
The £179 (around $225) add-on for the company’s new 15 Ultra flagship hasn’t changed too much from last year’s except for the eye-catching color. The battery is bigger at 2,000mAh, though, so it’ll keep the 15 Ultra running a little longer. The two-stage shutter button and other controls are also now joined by a thumb rest, which may look like a film advance lever but sadly doesn’t do anything other than sit there.
It’s not due to launch until March 5th, but Nothing couldn’t help teasing its first budget handset, yet again, in Barcelona.
As you can see, the light-up glyphs are back, but we’ll need a few more days before we get a better look at this device.
Intel vice president David Feng said during Mobile World Congress that as part of the push to put AI into everything it builds, it will produce 40 million CPUs for AI PCs this year and 60 million in 2025, reports Nikkei Asia.
The “AI PC” concept includes Microsoft’s new CoPilot button plus Intel Core Ultra processors with built-in GPUs and neural processing units for AI models, which are now available as part of its vPro platform for business laptops.
Oppo’s Air Glass 3 look like an ordinary pair of glasses, but it connects to Oppo smartphones to access the company’s AndesGPT LLM. Like other smart glasses, you tap the sides for controls and it can play music, display information, and take voice calls.
So far, it sounds similar to what Meta is trying to do with the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, where you can ask an AI assistant to deliver more context about the things you actually see. The catch is it won’t be available outside of China — and this is only a prototype in any case.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, in a keynote during the Mobile World Congress, acknowledged the model applied a range of people for images “too bluntly.” Hassabis said Gemini’s photo generation feature, which was paused last week, is being fixed to offer a more narrow range of people for historical accuracy.
But it is the modem-RF chip that’s likely to be paired with Qualcomm’s next-gen processor in 2025’s big Android flagships. The Snapdragon X80 5G modem is an update to the X75 and supports six-carrier aggregation, 5G Advanced standards, and certain satellite-based non-terrestrial communications. And there’s a bunch of new AI optimization, because it’s 2024 and of course there is.
It’s sleek, blue, and runs Xiaomi’s Hyper OS to integrate with the company’s phones and other smart products. It’s loaded with cameras on the outside from what I can see, and can do zero to 100km/h in 2.78 seconds. The EV on display here at MWC is spinning around on a pedastal much, much slower than that.
The ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop concept even comes with a built-in drawing tablet. Lenovo just needs to find something worth seeing on the other side.
I got to check out Motorola’s concept phone with a bending display. Is it impractical? Yes. Is it cool as hell? Also yes.
I was allowed to put it on my own wrist with a special magnetic bracelet keeping it in place. Can you imagine just casually checking the time on your bendable slap bracelet phone in the middle of a meeting? The ultimate flex!
Plug in Infinix’s E-Color Shift phone, and its E Ink back rapidly cycles between different colors, and only stops when you unplug it again. Infinix hopes to one day let you choose between different colors in software (you can see less flashy design options here), since the process is far from practical in its current form.
The bezels attach and detach with a simple twist, and you also get a choice of over 180 watch faces to further customize the watch’s look. The watch’s features include the ability to track winter sports like skiing, snowboarding, ice-skating, and curling, and there are also some Apple Watch-style one-handed gesture controls for good measure. It’s joined by a new Wear OS smartwatch, the Xiaomi Watch 2. Prices start at €149 for the S3, and €199 for the Watch 2.
