The greats of the technology industry will again be present at the MWC in 2023 to present their latest technologies. Our on-site reporter went in search of the craziest tech on the show floor.

Mobile World Congress finally returns in all its glory this year. Thousands of tech enthusiasts traveled to Barcelona again to admire the latest gadgets and gadgets and all the big names in the industry also showed their skills.

The focus of the event has evolved over the years from cellular infrastructure and smartphones to all things connectivity. Gone are the days when we journalists had to run from one product launch to the next. Still, MWC remains the perfect opportunity to keep your finger on the pulse of what the big tech companies are doing.

From roll-up screens to virtual holograms, there was plenty to experience during MWC 2023 as well. Our editors scoured the exhibition space in search of the best and craziest tech gimmicks of the moment.

From folding to rolling

When Samsung presented its first foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold, at MWC 2019, everyone was amazed. Today we are less surprised and several brands have brought their foldable devices to Barcelona. The manufacturers must therefore develop a more solid basis in order to still be able to steal the show at the trade fair.

The Lenovo-Motorola tandem tries some “rollable” devices. For example, Motorola is demonstrating a smartphone and parent company Lenovo is demonstrating a laptop with a screen that can be “rolled out.” In its normal form, the laptop is an ordinary 13-inch model, but with a push of the magic button you enlarge the screen to 15.3-inches with an 8:9 aspect ratio. The Motorola smartphone’s screen can extend from five inches to 6.5 inches. On both devices, the extra piece of screen slides out of the case.

These prototypes are far from ready for launch, and the Lenovo staff present cannot tell us when that will happen. Visitors are only allowed to look at it, not to touch it. But it seems only a matter of time before mobile devices become part of the street scene. Whether we really wait for it, we leave in the middle.

Fold alphabetically

Samsung is the pioneer in foldable screens and the South Korean electronics giant wants to make that clear during MWC 2023. The display department will therefore have its own stand in the exhibition area, showing what Samsung can do with a smartphone or laptop screen.

During CES 2023, Samsung already previewed the ‘Flex S’ and ‘Flex G’ and we can see these screen technologies in person for the first time at MWC. The name of the display gives away how you fold the screen. The Flex S makes an S-shaped folding motion and the Flex G has two outer flaps to form a G-shaped fold line. At the Samsung stand we see that the folding technologies can be used on smartphones, tablets and laptops.

That’s not all that Samsung Display has to show at its booth. A 360-degree rotatable screen, a camera fully hidden in the display, and a screen with a peak brightness of more than 2000 nits are the other stars of Samsung’s display spectacle.

holograms

The Spanish telecommunications provider Telefónica released a spectacular demo on the second day of the MWC 2023. The company brought Olympic badminton champion Carolina Marin to the trading floor while she was more than 400 miles from Barcelona. With this demo, Telefónica wants to show that holograms are no longer as futuristic as they sound. During the fair, passers-by can also be transformed into a 3D hologram.

The formation of a hologram is the result of the interaction of fiber optic, edge and 5G networks, we learn when we look around ourselves. First, you’ll climb into a camera-filled tube to capture a 360° view of you. These images are sent over the fiber optic network at speeds of up to 20Gbps to the edge centers for conversion into 3D holograms.

You can then interact with these holograms in a virtual environment as if you were in the same physical space. In Telefónica’s demo, you can see a 3D version of yourself on a basketball court or at the bottom of the ocean, but in the future, home workers will walk around your company’s office like holograms. To make this possible, you need special equipment such as VR headsets and a powerful 5G connection.

smart glasses

The fact that we will soon all be walking around with data glasses on our noses no longer seems to be a question of if, but of when. However, not everyone will be keen on wearing a heavy headset on their head for hours, causing eyestrain and headaches. During the MWC, Oppo will show that smart glasses can also be comfortable to wear.

What makes the Oppo Air Glass 2 so special? That he looks like ordinary glasses. The frame weighs only 38 grams and you can insert custom lenses to wear it like your regular glasses. The glasses project a digital layer onto physical reality. This allows us to talk to an employee at the stand and see the date and time at the same time. A potentially more relevant application comes from the Teleprompter app, which presents you with a script to read during a conversation.

After just a few minutes we notice that our eyes have to get used to the combination of virtual and physical elements. So the glasses are still a prototype that will not be launched in Europe immediately. But in a few years everyone might be wearing smart glasses.

Fast faster the fastest

The major smartphone brands have been fighting for several years over who can develop the fastest charger. Chinese company Realme, part of Oppo and OnePlus’ BKK Electronics stable, launched a smartphone with 240-watt fast charging earlier this year. This allows the device’s 4,600 mAh battery to be charged in nine and a half minutes.

What Realme can do, we can do better, thought Xiaomi, and this is how the Chinese smartphone brand shows that you can charge a smartphone even faster. Xiaomi demonstrated a 300W charger that charges a 4100mAh battery from zero to 100 percent in just five minutes.

According to Xiaomi, the faster charging speed is due to more powerful 15C battery cells that use carbon instead of conventional graphite parts. This allows the Chinese manufacturer to reduce the thickness of the electrodes by 35 percent. Combined with an improved electrolyte formula, it can be charged and discharged faster without generating excessive heat.

The technology is still experimental and you won’t find it on the recently launched Xiaomi 13 Pro. Today’s flagships can be fully charged in less than twenty minutes. So the question is how important this extra gain in time really is for your morning ritual.

4G to the moon

Although good 4G coverage is not yet a fact everywhere on earth, Nokia has had its head in higher spheres for a number of years. The Finnish telecoms company, which no longer wants to be seen as a smartphone salesman, received a $14 million grant from NASA in 2020 to develop cellular network technology that can work on the moon.

A few years later, Nokia is ready to show off this feat during MWC 2023. At the booth we get a little more explanation about how this works. The Finnish company has developed an LTE base station that is attached to a lunar module. This base station communicates with a lunar rover over a 1800MHz band and is adapted to survive the harsh conditions on the moon. The 4G connection allows the vehicle to capture higher resolution images and stream them to Earth.

Nokia and NASA are now looking for a date to send the extraterrestrial 4G network on a mission to the moon. The lunar rover would drive around for about two weeks to test how stable the connection is and how far away the base station can be. We were already able to admire a prototype of the trolley in the exhibition area.