The annual Mobile world Congress never fails to surprise and entertain. Last year we got the HTC One M9, Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. So what can we expect this year?
The Mobile World Congress is an annual event where handset manufacturers and technology companies show off their latest mobile innovations. Held in Barcelona from the 22nd February, this is a week of technolust for those of us who love our gadgets. So what announcements or new devices are in store for us at MWC 2016?
Samsung
We fully expect Samsung to announce the new Samsung Galaxy S7 and Edge variant this year. After the success of the S6, there will have to be quite a few improvements to pull us away from it. Rumours speculate that the S7 will be waterproof, have a better camera, microSD expansion slot and pressure sensitive display to compete with Apple. There may also be an upgraded Exynos processor too.
It’s also possible that Samsung will have new smart watches and wearables.
LG
LG doesn’t usually join the furore that is MWC, but this year is different. We think their new flagship phone the LG G5 is going to be launched at a press conference here on Sunday and are looking forward to it. LG doesn’t get quite the headlines Samsung and Apple do, which is a shame. Hopefully that will change this year.
The G5 is expected to have a metal chassis, swappable battery, better camera, Snapdragon 820 chipset, fingerprint scanner and maybe even an iris scanner.
Sony
Sony has a press conference scheduled for Monday 22nd but we don’t actually know what they will be announcing. They stepped back from the flagship phone fight a while ago so we don’t expect any headliners there but it’s possible we might see a new phone, wearable, tablet or something completely different.
Google is appearing at MWC 2016 but isn’t expected to announce anything new. We think they are attending to support Android and their hardware partners and use it as a brand exercise rather than showcase. Google tends to save the big news for their own Google I/O and we don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
Microsoft
We know Microsoft is attending MWC 2016 but like with Google, we don’t actually know what they will be doing. They may be launching new handsets at the low and midrange, but we just don’t know.
Honourable mentions
Other companies such as HTC, BlackBerry, Huawei, Xiaomi, Qualcomm and Lenovo are all supposed to be appearing at MWC 2016 too. We don’t know much about what any of them will be showing. There may also be appearances from motor manufacturers as the push for connected cars increases. We shall have to wait and see.
With only a few hours to go before the start of the Mobile World Congress, we don’t have long to wait until we find out everything we want to know!
