TechTheDay

By next week people will be a-buzz of the coming Mobile World Congress, which will be starting on Feb 26 to March 1. Once again the eyes of the world will be drawn to the beautiful city of Barcelona, Spain, where tech companies will be presenting their latest products when it comes to mobile technology. There is a lot to expect this year, and there are also things NOT to expect this year:

Samsung

Samsung will be presenting their next flagship, the Galaxy S9, this coming Feb 25th, and it is expected to be the event’s crown jewel when it comes to mobile phones. Samsung has been preparing for this day while the internet has been talking about leaks non-stop, from the bendable phone concept to the fingerprint scanner. When Samsung finally released their MWC presentation invitation, it announced a camera-centric event with their title being “The Camera. Reimagined.” Whether the phone will try competing with Apple’s iPhone X’s Face ID is unknown at this time.

LG

If you’re waiting for LG’s newest flagship, then you’ll have to wait till June: LG has confirmed that they will not be presenting it this year in Barcelona. That doesn’t mean that they won’t be having a show this year: LG will instead feature a new version of the LG V30. What’s different with this version is that it has the Vision AI image recognition to aid the camera for the V30 and Voice AI will let the phone respond to voice commands. LG has recently been trying to match its rivals when it comes to AI technology. Just this year in CES they presented their ThinQ platform. Like Samsung, they are aiming to integrate AI technology in all their products and will be partnering up with Amazon and Google.

Apple

Do not expect something new from Apple, as it usually launches new devices in September. It also has just released the iPhone X, which seems to be not doing so well despite the overhype the Internet generated with the phone’s Face ID feature. And as expected, people saw it as impractical rather than innovative due to its $1,000 price. That’s not to say that no one bought the phone despite the $1,000 price tag, but the demand is low and below Apple’s expectations that it was rumored that they’ll eventually stop the production of the phone.

Huawei

Huawei wasn’t part of the deal that happened recently between Qualcomm and 5 other Chinese companies regarding the development of 5G technology, which is disappointing considering that when you hear the phrase “China’s smartphone” you usually thought of Huawei. In fact, it seems they’re off to a bad start this year when US security agencies expressed their concern about using China phones in the US.

As for the event, though, everyone is expecting Huawei to launch a new flagship, the P11. Since they revealed the P10 last year in MWC, chances are they’ll also reveal the new P11 there this year. They also got their MWC page up and among the things in it, they are also moving along with their 5G technology, as well as IoT. According to it, there will be a forum on the first day of the MWC and the opening of their exhibit the following day.

Others

ZTE made news last year when it released the ZTE Axon M. For this year’s MWC we might not expect much except an update on their Gigabit phone and that 5G tech we were all promised in the last MWC. However commercialization and full utilization of 5G isn’t going be realized until next year by the earliest, in 2020 if everything goes as planned, or in 2021 if everything goes like it always does, so using any phone’s 5G tech this year is impossible.

Sony will most likely launch their new flagship phone this year in the event like it did last year. Nokia will also most likely be there as well. Google’s HTC division will most likely not have prepared Pixel 3 yet so don’t expect Google to be there.

And finally, there’s Qualcomm. As the company that produces the chips for many of the manufacturers above we’ll most likely see them again this year. Assisting in the companies’ endeavors to reach 5G and providing chipsets that make AI in their phones possible, it wouldn’t be a surprise to find them there.