The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
All the Hotness from the world’s biggest mobile trade show
Ah, Barcelona in March. There’s been no shortage of awesome new product announcements coming out of Spain this week, as the Mobile World Congress proves year in and year out to be the hottest mobile hardware event in the world — save for an Apple presser, that is.
For the engineers here at Appstem, it all boils down to this: more toys to play with. Here’s what’s currently raising our eyebrows at the MWC.
Sometime in 2020, the experts predict 5G will take hold and you’ll be most likely streaming and downloading at 20Gbps! That’s basically instant everything. Heck, we’ll need those speeds just to keep track of all our connected cars, clothes and kitchens in the not-so distant future. This all assumes that by 2020 artificial intelligence has not taken over the planet and enslaved all of humanity. Here’s hoping!
Valve and HTC throw hat in virtual reality ring
Word on the street is that Valve, the video game company responsible for Steam digital delivery system and mega hits like the Half Life and Portal franchises, blew the doors off Barcelona with a surprise new VR headset dubbed Vive. Valve is teaming with HTC on the hardware front and this promises to bring true VR gaming to consumers by the holidays. In fact, the demo ended with a visit to Aperture Science, hinting at perhaps a Portal VR experience, which sounds just right to us. With Oculus, Samsung, Sony, Google, and Microsoft all jumping into VR and/or augmented reality, the time is ripe to start developing new ideas for VR interaction. S*** just got virtually real.
It’s no secret here at Appstem that the Samsung S5 is one of our favorite smartphones on the market today. And now here comes the S6, which is a common-sense upgrade from plastic shell to aluminum and glass. Way to stay classy, Samsung. This is just the sort of news Samsung needs after being overtaken by Apple in smartphone sales. Samsung also introduced its own mobile payment system, cleverly named Samsung Pay, expected to compete with Apple Pay, and even more directly, Google Wallet, which will be preinstalled on many Samsung phones that use Google’s Android mobile OS.
Smartwatches, of course
The next generation of fitness trackers and wrist-based chronometers is on the way, and seemingly every hardware manufacture is getting in on the action. Kickstarter gem Pebble unveiled its Steel Time Steel, and LG announced its slick new Urbane watch. Both will have an uphill battle against Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch, which hasn’t even released and is already garnering design awards.
And finally, mobile phones all kind of look the same now.
Thanks a lot Jony Ive!
