What is Mobile World Congress, anyway?

In the United States, the technology events that typically receive the most attention are… CES, Samsung disassembled, Google I/O And pretty much any time apple Make an offer. But there’s also a large gathering in Barcelona every year that doesn’t attract many eyes on this side of the Atlantic, despite attracting more than 100,000 people over four days. that it Mobile World CongressAnd it starts this week.

MWC It’s all about the telecommunications industry, which may seem dry if you don’t work for a telecommunications company. But now that most people carry smartphones every day, we are all affected in one way or another by what happens at the event.

CNET has a whole team of writers and editors in Barcelona researching the products and technologies we’ll be talking about for the next year and longer. Keep up with what they find by staying in touch with us MWC 2026 Live Blog.

Why should you care about MWC?

There’s a good chance you’re reading this on a smartphone, using technologies that debuted at MWC. Features that have emerged in Barcelona over the past two decades are such as Sky blue The colors of the fashion world, introduced with great fanfare and then widely disseminated in phones like the one you have in your hands. (This year marks 20 years since the MWC was held in Barcelona, ​​but the expo existed in other forms in the early 1990s.)

As smartphones have become nearly ubiquitous in modern life, the MWC has become a showcase and early public testing ground for the technologies it powers. For example, major phone companies have spent billions of dollars upgrading their networks to support 5G, and it started with Early demonstrations of the concept in 2015 Which showed a faster and more responsive wireless connection. Consumer phones with 5G technology only hit the market in 2019 and 2020.

this yearWe expect to hear more about it 6 grams (Because this industry always needs more Gs), which was the case In business Since at least 2019. In addition to faster data speeds, 6G is expected to bring us to…Sensor network always“.

Notable Products Presented at MWC

Any major event is a showcase for companies to announce new products, and MWC has had its fair share.

HTC Dream, also sold as T-Mobile G1 It was released in the United States as the first commercial phone running Google’s Android operating system in 2008. At the time, CNET writers were surprised to find that Google was not interested in hardware but instead focused on spreading its Android operating system across as many device types as possible.

The Android market has gained increasing speed since then, and Samsung has become one of the biggest players. When announced Samsung Galaxy S II At MWC 2011, the slim “jumbo phone” was “as beautiful and premium as it was when we first laid eyes on it,” Jessica Dolcourt wrote when she was… I reviewed it.

Although Android news was big in 2011,… Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 He was “the undisputed star of the show that year,” Kent German wrote in A 2014 retrospective. The face of the display slides down to reveal a full Windows Mobile QWERTY keyboard. However, it wasn’t offered by any of the carriers at the time, meaning it didn’t have the subsidized pricing that would make its $800 price affordable.

Speaking of Microsoft, in 2010 the software giant unveil Windows Phone 7 series. This wasn’t the first Windows phone, but this oddly named system was a major revamp that had an interface that a few of my friends still miss. Although people expected one of the most successful technology companies to enter the market and become as successful as the iPhone, Windows Phones never caught on and the system was… He retired in 2017.

It’s hard to believe now, but for a long time, HTC was one of the dominant smartphone manufacturers in the market. the HTC One It was introduced at MWC 2012 and had a quad-core processor, Android 4.0, a 4.7-inch display, and an 8-megapixel camera. In the US, AT&T has opted to include 4G LTE in favor of a quad-core processor, but the phone still impresses with its sleek design and fast performance.

A reminder that mobile doesn’t always refer to phones: In 2014, Oral-B launched SmartSeries electric toothbrush With Bluetooth 4.0 to connect to the companion app.

In 2016, HTC introduced Live virtual realityan immersive VR headset that has eclipsed other VR experiences… and requires a powerful computer, lots of cables and separate mounted sensors that track your movements in a room-sized space.

One notable product no It was presented at MWC Cannes iPhonewhich Apple announced at the Macworld Expo in 2007. However, the iPhone’s influence on the market took hold at MWC the following year, where touchscreen phones created what would become the dominant smartphone interface to this day.

These are just a few cherry-picked examples from MWC’s long history, but hopefully you get the idea that the conference has moved from a phone-centric show to one that includes technologies around the phone and beyond. We look forward to what this week’s event will bring. Something tells me we’ll be hearing a lot more about artificial intelligence.