Annual telephone fiesta known as the Mobile World Congress is almost once again, and is scheduled to be one of the most exciting technological events since 2025.
The mobile show lasts March 3-6, and I will be on the field in Barcelona with my colleagues Andrew Lancson and Abrar al-Heti, checking all new product launches and zooming in the breakthroughs that will define mobile technology next year and beyond. I have been visiting and covering the play for 11 years, writing about everything from the first demo of HTC Vive to Rescue of Old Nokia 3310 from the back market the same day HMD launches update for 2017 on iconic phone.
This year, we will see Chinese phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Oppo dominate MWC. “This will be an extremely strong show for them and we expect a very strong presence on the show's floor,” says Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight.
Smaller players such as HMD and nothing are ready to discover new phones that we can't wait to catch your hands, plus there will probably Smart watches And ar glasses, with bonus laptops and ears.
We also expect to see AI everywhere once again this year, mostly spiced on Google's gemini, sprinkling interesting features from phone manufacturers at the top. CNET's own research suggests that many of you Aren't they impressed by AI's capabilities on smartphones So far. Being looking for cases of use and features that we think will be really exciting and transformative when it's time to upgrade your phone.
In the meantime, here's what we expect to see.
Phones
If there is one phone, we are particularly excited to check it at the Mobile World Congress, it is the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. The camera of Xiaomi 14 Ultra blew us last year -It made the phone stand out at sea with otherwise similar devices with a high degree. The excitement was built around the launch of his successor, The The the Xiaomi 15 UltraWhat we expect to see discovered at MWC.
Nothing is aimed at designing technology is always intriguing, and we are excited to see what is in the store for the March 4th event. Nothing phone 3a and speculated 3a Pro is likely to be the star's starvet and can work on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, which will mark a change from the company's partnership with MediaTek.
Phone (3a) series. Power in perspective.
March 4 10 am GMT. pic.twitter.com/auesjycjqy– nothing (@nothing) January 30, 2025
Nothing is the next phone leader, also expected to arrive in 2025, but not until the year. The company launched its predecessor, Nothing phone 2As early as July 2023, so we expect the two -year intervention period to result in some updates. It is unlikely that nothing phone 3 will perform at MWC, but we will be careful about tears from what to expect from the phone when it finally arrives.
Samsung had a great launch of the phone in the year before MWC, but that doesn't mean we heard the last of Galaxy S25. The Barcelona event is an opportunity for the company to show its new leading series in Europe and potentially also gives us a better overview of S25 Edge The phone is tired of unpacked in January.
Other telephone companies will follow the lawsuit, with devices, including the Honor Magic7 Pro and a triple screen, double times Huawei Mate XT Using MWC as a winning circle after a pre -launch.
The best of the rest
MWC has always been primarily about phones, but the “mobile” as a category accepts a range of different products, from laptops to interchangeable.
One of the most exciting products to Make your full debut on MWC 2024 was Samsung Galaxy ring. Competition in this space is heated, with companies including ORA and Ultrahuman offering exciting smart rings on their own. The play can be the perfect place for new or established tech companies to enter the market for smart jewelry.
In 2024, we also saw the appearance of independent AI devices, including Human you have a pine And Rabbit R1. They both created considerable excitement, but to a great extent dropped flat When the time came to test them. So is this category of new devices dead in the water (especially as we know Humane pins for AI will stop working soon)?
“Never say never,” Wood says. “But I don't expect much of those devices because of the fact that those who were previously there were spectacularly unsuccessful.”
The capabilities of these devices have largely undermined smartphones, thanks to Samsung's Gemsung and Galaxy AI improvements, he adds. “The window of opportunities for those products evaporates somewhere.”
Watch this: Best of MWC 2024: Bent screens, carrying AI and much more
One area where there is still room for growth is in the spatial calculation, with which we think of smart glasses. The Oppo phone manufacturer may be the one to look at in this space, and we could also see a number of smaller companies showing their technology dressed in MWC. These could be everything from glasses with built-in AI, microphones and cameras to glasses with a built-in digital display of some kind of Apple Vision pro-style.
Over the years, we have seen a dramatic growth in the number of carmaker manufacturers on technological shows – especially CES. MWC is usually not hosted by cars to the same extent, though last year Xiaomi showed an electric vehicle in the show. There is nothing to say that we should not expect to see more on those lines this year, especially with the presence of ChipMaker Qualcomm. The company is at the heart of integrating a mobile connection to cars, with cases of use, ranging from information to safety.
It is inevitable that we will also see the clutch of laptops, tablets and ears that appear in the show. Lenovo is ours to look at this view-according to our estimate, it was the most prominent computer maker in the previous show and we are interested in seeing what is in the store for this.
Ai
Here is an assistant to twins, working on Pixel 9.
As was the case last year, we expect AI to be everywhere at MWC – so you may be wondering exactly what is new for 2025.
Until now, most AI -packed phones tend to be leaders, but this year we should expect AI features in a wider range of devices, according to Wood. “What we will see is AI's possibilities to move down the pricing curve,” he says. That means AI in the phones with medium, not just the fans. (Case in point: New $ 599 iPhone 16e that apple just revealed.)
With Apple constantly absent from MWC, this show informally belongs to Google. We expect to see it everywhere, showing all the latest opportunities Gemini He must offer while attending all phone manufacturers. The question for these companies will be how they use AI to distinguish their products when everyone has access to the same package of Google features.
Samsung's Galaxy AI is a major example of this, but at MWC we expect to see a bold game of honor, as the company highlights its new “alpha plan”. Like a comprehensive brand direction, this strategy involves creating an open and collaborative ecosystem of AI devices.
As I mentioned, it is unlikely that there will be existing AI devices, but a continuation of the trend of embedding AI in everything we already own. Chipmakers, such as Qualcomm, will expand AI's virtues on the device, and we hope to provide some exciting demo to show how we can expect AI to truly change and improve our technology, if not this year, then in the near future.
One of my favorite demo at last year's MWC was a partnership between Qualcomm, Brain.Ai and Deutsche TelekomWhat has shown how AI can potentially replace the application -based interface that we all know and love. Being watching similar interesting ideas this year.