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

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 the BES 2700 MCU. The result is a dual-OS structure that sounds a smidge like Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 5. The BES 2700 MCU will run an RTOS and handle background activity and “simple tasks.” Meanwhile, the Snapdragon W5 will run more intensive tasks like apps. This, plus a 500mAh battery, is what nets you that supposed 100 hours of battery life.

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 letwearable makers offload notification processing to the MCU. That includes the ability to read and dismiss notifications as well as send quick replies.

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 version.When I tested Gemini alongside ChatGPT a few weeks ago, Gemini left a lot to be desired as a conversational partner. Adding the chatbot to your messaging app is one way to make it feel more like talking to a friend. Gemini in Messages is only available in English for now, and only in “certain markets.”

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 a minute).

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 aportion of the top bezel to house the camera and microphones,giving those laptops slimmer top bezels and taller display ratios. Lenovo previously added this feature to other ThinkPad laptops, like the X1 Carbon and X1 Nano.

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.

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-through, until eventually, you’re looking at a completely opaque white surface with a peak brightness of 1,000 nits.

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 you might want to have while away from a charging point. Talk time is rated at 122 hours (or a little over five days) while standby time extends up to 2252 hours, or almost 94 days.

Xiaomi is using MWC to launch two of its flagships for a global audience — though not including the US, as usual. The Xiaomi 14 and 14 Ultra have already been announced in China, and today they’re on center stage with tweaked designs and camera-forward feature sets. They’re available to order starting today; the 14 Ultra will cost €1,499 (about $1624) and the 14 starts at €999 (about $1082).

The Xiaomi 14 covers the flagship basics, with a smaller 6.36-inch screen — now an LTPO 120Hz panel for smooth scrolling and power efficiency — and comes with more modest camera specs, at least by comparison to the 14 Ultra’s a 6.73-inch, 120Hz 1440p panel and 1-inch-type main camera. Go big or go all out, I guess.

A month and a half after debuting the Magic 6 Pro in China, Honor is announcing global availability of its latest flagship at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Alongside it, the company has also announced pricing for the new Porsche Design Honor Magic V2 RSR, a special edition of the Magic V2 foldable with higher specs and a design themed around the German car brand. 

The Magic 6 Pro is set to retail for €1,299 (£1,099.99, around $1,407) with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and be available from March 1st, while the Porsche Design Magic V2 RSR will cost €2,699 (£2,349.99, around $2,625) with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage and will ship on March 18th. Expect both to be available in European markets, but they’re unlikely to be officially available in the US.

HMD is crossing its fingers for a second summer of Barbie. The company, which has exclusively sold phones under the Nokia brand name for the past seven years, has announced plans to release a Barbie-branded flip phone this July in partnership with Mattel. It’s one of several devices HMD has on the way for this summer, which also include a new Nokia-branded retro feature phone and an HMD-branded smartphone. Finally, the company has also announced early plans for a new development platform it’s calling “HMD Fusion.”

No pricing, specs, or features were announced for the as-yet-unnamed Barbie phone, but expect it to be a traditional feature flip phone rather than a smartphone. In an interview, HMD’s global head of insight, proposition, and product marketing, Adam Ferguson, confirms it’ll be an all-new device. “Barbie is not the kind of brand that you go, here’s an off-the-shelf solution,” he says.

Without looking up any leaks or rumors, I’d bet that you could probably sketch most of the phones rumored to be launching at Mobile World Congress next week. Over the years, smartphones have settled on a relatively consistent design formula of big rectangular touchscreens, small selfie camera cutouts, app-based interfaces, and large camera bumps with an array of different lenses. But more than a decade and a half into the smartphone era, I’m getting more and more curious about what’s going to come next and why existing attempts to reinvent smartphones like foldables have struggled to go mainstream.

To my mind, much of the answer comes back to apps. We barely think about them because it’s so easy to take for granted that all your third-party software will work on your next phone, but you’d never consider buying a device that can’t run your banking app or ridehailing service of choice. Just look at Huawei, which went from challenging Apple to be the world’s second-biggest smartphone manufacturer to getting its Android license revoked and dropping out of the top five altogether. First-party apps are the foundation of a smartphone, but it’s the third-party software that makes it feel like your personal tool.

Xiaomi’s phone lineup has a new leader. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra has just launched in China and features a range of impressive photography specs including a main camera with a large one-inch-type sensor (specifically the Sony LYT-900) and a variable aperture with 1,024 stops between f/1.63 and f/4.0. Prices start at ¥6,499 (around $904) for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, rising to ¥7,799 (around $1,084) for 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage when the phone goes on sale on February 27th. There’s also a special-edition titanium model that’ll retail for ¥8,799 (around $1,224). 

Although Xiaomi only shared Chinese release details of the 14 Ultra today, it won’t be long before the phone’s international launch. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has said that the phone will make an appearance at the company’s presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday, where it’ll appear alongside the Xiaomi 14 that launched in China last October. Expect the handsets to be made available in Europe but not in an official capacity in the US.