Mobile World Congress 2014: What to expect?

MANILA, Philippines – Mobile World Congress (MWC), the world’s largest exhibition of mobile tech takes place in Barcelona, Spain from February 24-27, 2014. MWC “is the blueprint for the NEXT big innovation” and over the course of the next week, the biggest mobile and tech compapnies in the world will pitch their idea of how mobile techonologies will shape our future. Here’s a summary of what expect.

---

HTC

Many expected HTC to launch the successor of the HTC One at MWC until the Taiwan-based company sent out invites to a launch event on March 25 in New York and London. Instead the company took to its Sina Weibo account to tease the arrival of the HTC Desire 8. While no specs have offcially been revealed, the HTC Desire 8 is expected to be a mid-range, dual SIM phone with a 5.5-inch display, powered by a 1.6GHz Cortex A7 quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, with 13 and 5 megapixel cameras.

HUAWEI

As teased a week ago, Huawei announced 4 new devices a day before the official start of MWC. The devices include the mid-range Ascend G6 smartphone, the world’s fastest mobile WiFi hotspot – the E5785, and two tablets the MediaPad X1 7.0 and MediaPad M1 8.0. Huawei also teased a new wearable device called the TalkBand.

LENOVO

China-based Lenovo intends to break into the global market in 2014. In a blog post the company talked about how it wants to leverage its being the world’s #1 PC company and “creating what’s next”. The company plans on showing off a new line of smartphones, tablets and “multimode PCs” in Barcelona.

LG

LG beat the MWC buzz with a series of announcements over the course of the last few weeks.  The South Korean company will be showing off 6 new smartphones in Barcelona including the 5.9-inch G Pro 2 phablet, the 4.7-inch G2 mini compact smartphone, and three new phones in its budget L Series – the L40, L70 and L90. LG is also showing off a new feature called Knock Code which allows users to assign a series of taps to power on and unlock their LG smartphone. 

NOKIA

All signs point to Nokia unveiling an Android Lumia phone, the “Nokia X” at its launch event on February 24. Nokia has been cryptic with teasers images and vine videos that include trees, DNA, monkeys and green ducks but we’re unsure what that all means.

The Finnish company might announce several other smartphones at MWC including the budget Lumia 630, an all-aluminum Lumia 1820 with a camera that allows you to refocus the shot after you have taken it, and the Lumia 1520V a 4.7-inch version of its first full HD smartphone. 

Rappler’s live blog starts at 3:30pm, February 24 (Manila Time).

SAMSUNG 

Samsung is scheduled to announce the Samsung Galaxy S5 at its Unpacked Episode 1 event on February 24. The S5 is expected to sport a 5.2-inch 2K display with a faster processor and better camera. It is also expected to include a fingerprint scanner and will be waterproof.

A day before MWC Samsung also announced two new smart watches the Gear 2 and the Gear 2 Neo – updated versions of its original smartwatch the Galaxy Gear but with a standalone music player and personal fitness trackers. 

Rappler’s live blog starts at 3:00am, February 25 (Manila Time).

SONY

It’s only been 5 months since the release of Sony’s flagship smartphone the Z1 but in a recent video Sony teased that, “something extraordinary is coming.” Many believe the Xperia Z2 will be announced at MWC. The Z2 is expected to come with a larger 5.2-inch Triluminos 2K display, a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 3GB of RAM,  a 20.7-megapixel main camera that can shoot 4K video and a 3500 mAh battery.

At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas Sony CEO Kaz Hirai also promised to reveal more details about its Life Log platform and accompanying products at MWC.

ZTE

Chinese-manufacturer ZTE is expected to unveil the ZTE Grand Memo II LTE, a 6-inch phablet and successor to the the ZTE Grand Memo announced at MWC 2013. 

ZTE will also be showing two budget smartphones that run on FireFox OS 1.3 the ZTE Open C and the ZTE Open II. The Open II comes with a 3.5 inch display and runs on a 1.2 GHz dual core processor with 256MB of RAM and 2GB of space. – Rappler.com