Event Coverage

MWC 2015: The cool and cute edition

MWC 2015: The cool and cute edition

(Image source: GSMA.)

 

MWC 2015: The cool and cute edition

Guess what? MWC 2015 isn’t all about HTC, Qualcomm, Samsung, Acer, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, MediaTek, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, and Valve. With more than 1,800 exhibitors from all over the world, there’s a lot to be seen. We trawled the show floors, snapped as many things as we could, discarded the pointless, and here are some gems that we think you’d also agree with.

Yes, the NEC PaPeRo 'partner-type-personal-robot' isn't new, but it's kawaii nonetheless. This not-for-sale robot, which can speak, recognize faces, and respond to touch, is basically developed to help the Japanese company conduct research regarding the relationship between human and robots. See it in action in the video below!

Available in South Korea, the LG Aka is a 5-inch, 720p smartphone with an 8MP rear camera with laser AF, a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, and 1.5GB RAM. But its main selling point are the four cases that turn it into different characters. The on-screen, animated 'eyes' can also display notifications.

The LG Watch Urbane LTE may get all the limelight because of its cellular functionality, but its Android Wear-based Watch Urbane sibling is also a stunner, especially with the correct strap.

Interested to check out more info of LG's well designed smartwatches? You can read more about them in our dedicated articles for the LG Watch Urbane and LG Watch Urbane LTE.

Want a phone that will not die? Kyocera has an unnamed solar-powered phone with a screen that's capable of generating energy to recharge the phone. And that's because it incorporates Sunpartner's Wysip Crystals right on the display instead of putting the solar cells at the back of the phone.

FingerQ buys biometric sensors and incorporates them into the various hardware that it makes, like this smartphone case. Coupled with its software, your phone now supports biometric authentication and communication. The company also makes fingerprint dongles and locks.

The Ivyring from Ivylink is a smart ring for couples, designed to notify you of calls and messages from your lover. And oh, rub your ring, and your better half's ring will start to glow. Hmmm...

Designed by Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka for KDDI, the 4.7-inch Fx0 is best-looking Firefox OS phone to date. This LG-made phone is powered by a Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz processor, has 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a 2,370mAh battery.

The Polaroid Zip is a pocket printer that connects via Bluetooth to your smartphone and prints out your pics. It uses Polaroid's ZINK (zero ink) heat-based technology.

These identity-protecting privacy glasses from AVG are equipped with infrared lights that flash when they detect nearby cameras. The flashes light up when seen through a camera lens, distorting the image and saving you from facial recognition software and unflattering paparazzi photos.

If you've ever wanted expandable storage for your iOS device, look no futher. The Sandisk iXpand works like an external drive and is an easy way to store or transfer data to your iPad or iPhone. It comes in 32, 64 and 128GB capacities.

SanDisk announced the new iNAND 7132 embedded flash storage that will supersede current iNAND 7030 with peak sequential reads of up to 280MB/s and sequential writes of up to 125MB/s. Designed for mobile devices, it's hard to tell when these new storage devices will hit the next generation of smartphones, but when they do, expect quicker access to your apps, photos and videos.

Japanese company Freetel launched these gorgeous Made in Japan smartphones at MWC 2015. The 'Samurai' smartphone runs Android 5.0, and sports an octa-core 64-bit processor, 5.5-inch Full HD display, 13MP rear camera and 8MP front camera.

Each Android partner at MWC has their own custom Android statue dressed up in a unique costume. Here is ASUS'.

The new and updated FLIR ONE personal thermal imaging device is now available for iOS and Android. The new Lepton camera found in the FLIR ONE can offer four times more resolution than its previous version. It will be available in the middle of this year.

Guess what's next in wearables? Coming soon this October, Guess will be launching a range of watches with smart connect features powered by Martian. The watch comes with an analog quartz timepiece that gives you the look and feel of a classic watch while its connectivity features are powered by Martian. Connecting to your phone via Bluetooth, it will allow voice command, alerts, notifications, camera/music control and up to 3-5 days of battery life. The analog watch uses a separate battery that lasts up to 2 years. It will be available for about US$350 (roughly 75% more than regular analog Guess watches).

How about a jump rope that actively counts the number of jumps and tells you your progress through an embedded LED matrix within the rope itself? Yes, the new Smart Rope that can do exactly that, and it communicates with your smartphone to count your calories too! It's not launched yet and you can back it on Kickstarter.

Step aside MiFi. Here comes CarFi, Huawei's latest device that brings internet connectivity into your car. It plugs into your cigarette lighter port and provides internet through a Cat4 LTE connection carried over 802.11b/g/n WiFi. There is also a 5V/1A USB port to let you charge your device too.

This cute little brontosaurus lookalike is actually a HTC Re camera docked on a charging stand that resembles the body of the late jurassic period dinosaur. Besides charging the Re camera, it can also rotate 360 degrees. Unfortunately, there's no pricing or even a release date for this nifty little device.

This ZTE projector comes with Android 4.4 as its operating system and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.1GHz processor. This unique projector will play most popular video formats (MP4, H.264) and will run Android apps at the same time. The tiny DLP projector has a video resolution of only 720p and will output a maximum of 230 Lumens.

We saved one of the more interesting products for the end of this article, and that's the ZTE Smart Projector. As shown in the photo above, this unique gadget is the world's first all-in-one Wi-Fi hotspot and portable projector. Ideal for business, education, home and outdoor usage, it's capable of supporting up to eight concurrent Wi-Fi users for Internet connectivity at 4G LTE speeds. Meanwhile, its built-in DLP projector boasts of projecting the relevant media up to 120 inches across. With only 230 lumens of light output, you're probably going to get a usable size less than that, but for its size and portability, nobody's complaining. Further to that, it comes with a 4-inch capacitive touchscreen, allowing you to operate its Android OS to store, share, launch apps, and even play games on it - and remember, what you access can be projected onto the big screen!

For its innovation and versatility, the judges for the Global Mobile Awards 2015 (a production of GSMA who runs the MWC show), of which our editor Vijay Anand is a judge, have conferred the ZTE Smart Projector the Best Mobile Enabled Consumer Electronics Device award of the show. This is our editor's quote of the product as published on Global Mobile Awards:

A nifty and useful collaboration device for the home or office, handy in almost any use-case scenario for small groups.

For more news and happenings from MWC 2015, we've compiled relevant content in the following stream:

MWC 2015 News & Articles

Hands-on: Nokia N1

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