Gizmos galore as Barcelona hosts Mobile World Congress

Brace yourself for a deluge of smartphones and tablets when the Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona next week.

Sony Xperia Z4 tablet

Brace yourself. You are about to be inundated with smartphones, tablets, virtual reality and everything in between when the Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona next week.

It is the annual global trade show where manufacturers spruik all things telco and showcase their newest technology. But it could be renamed CEO Central, given the number of chief executives listed as keynote speakers.

They include Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Chuck Robbins (Cisco), Hans Vestberg (Ericsson), Simon Segars (ARM), Mark Fields (Ford), Guo Ping (Huawei), Brian Krzanich (Intel) and Dan Schulman (PayPal).

There’s a handful of Australian firms exhibiting as well: Crowd Mobile, Insightus, Leadbolt, Netcomm Wireless, and Novatti. Top-notch executives of Optus, Telstra, Vodafone and Australian representatives of global communications firms like Cisco, Ericsson and Huawei should be there in spades.

The hottest topic of discussion will be 5G with telcos keen to promote their plans for fifth-generation cellular networks. The conversation will focus on standardising 5G before the tech is rolled out in 2020. The Internet of Things and mobile payments, which are quickly becoming mainstream, will be other discussion points.

Project Beyond

In the smartphone space the excitement is building around Samsung’s S7 and S7 Edge, and the LG G5. But the show could be ­stolen by virtual-reality cameras and headsets and the tech that links them.

Samsung may release its long-anticipated 360-degree camera, first showcased in November 2014 as “Project Beyond”. It’s understood to be now called Gear 360. It will let users shoot vision and view it with Samsung’s VR virtual-­reality headset.

SamMobile, a community site that shadows Samsung, says it has indirectly confirmed the launch. As best we know, Gear 360 consists of two 180-degree fisheye ­lenses and offers a maximum resolution of 3840x1920. Video samples on the thinktankteam.com site have crisp resolution, something hard to sustain over 360 degrees.

With competing 360-degree cameras in market, and with interest in virtual reality cameras heightening with the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR headsets, Samsung will need to get Project Beyond to market soon.

New Chinese contender

We may also see fascinating connected drone technology. China’s Xiaomi, slated as the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor, will be at the congress for the first time.

It has confirmed it will release its Mi5 smartphone. But there are reports it may unveil a Mi Drone, which can be controlled from your wrist by an Mi fitness band. But it may not materialise as there have been concerns it closely resembles a drone made by Shenzhen’s DJI.

Smartphones that wirelessly link with fitness bands, 360-­degree VR headsets and cameras that let you create your own ­virtual-reality vision should be a fascinating theme.

On another front, we’ll see more phones that offer biometric identification as an alternative to passwords, and more devices with USB Type-C connectors. Switching to USB Type-C will annoy users, but the benefit is faster connectivity and using the same port for charging and transferring data on a notebook and laptop.

As usual, Samsung, LG and other vendors will supply much of the news from MWC. Samsung could release four versions of the S7 but now the money is on two: an S7 with a 5.1 or 5.2-inch display and a larger S7 Edge with a 5.5 or 5.7-inch display.

Rumours persist the microSD card slot will be restored, that the S7 may have a Quad HD (2560x1440) AMOLED display, and that the main camera’s resolution will be 12 megapixels instead of 16.

There’s less certainty now about the S7 distinguishing a hard press from a softer one, a feature on the iPhone 6s called 3D touch.

LG is understood to have preferred wrapping its G5 in metal rather than leather. It is expected to have a 5.3-inch Quad HD display and a second display — a ticker across the top of the phone. It is all but confirmed the G5 will have an “always on” feature that shows the alerts, date and time in monochrome even when the screen is technically off.

The G5 may have a “magic slot”, where you can swap in a replaceable battery, a keyboard, camera module or connector to a VR device. Given the fashion trend is for super-thin phones, it’s hard to know whether the slot is more imagination than magic. But there is reason to believe the phone will allow selected pieces of hardware to automatically pair with it and a 360-degree camera is believed to be one of them.

HTC, which launched the One M9 last year at Barcelona, is expected to delay the One M10 until March. Instead it will concentrate on promoting the HTC Vive VR headset.

Sony is likely to launch an ­Xperia Z6 tablet, and maybe a new smartwatch. An Xperia Z6 smartphone is unlikely given the Japanese firm is still rolling out the Z5 in some markets.

Huawei will launch a device at MWC but whether it’s another smartwatch, notebook or new premium phone such as the P9 range is unknown. If last year is a guide, the P9 will launch around April. Huawei will emphasis its commercialisation of 4.5G and its investment in 5G going forward.

It is no secret that Alcatel will launch its Idol 4 and Idol 4S phones and there are reports the packaging will double as virtual- reality goggles.

Two Google projects might surface at MWC. Project Ara is a phone with modules that you snap in and out as they need replacing. Project Tango involves a mobile device detecting its orientation and position using motion tracking, area learning and depth perception. Lenovo is developing a consumer device for Tango but that is not due until mid year.

Intel says that at Mobile World Congress, it will announce new developments that will accelerate the road to 5G and help make experiences of the future possible.

Major announcements are due shortly before the MWC begins.