MakeUseOf Awards: MWC Innovation Highlights

It’s MWC 2024, and that means there is a heap of new tech to feast your eyes upon.

I’ve been roaming the floor at Mobile World Congress 2024, checking out the latest smartphones, laptops, and more; some of these products are available to buy immediately, and some are just concepts that might turn into proper products later.

Either way, they’ve all made MakeUseOf’s Best of MWC 2024 list—in no particular order.

1. Tecno Megabook T16 Pro

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Tecno is one of the world’s fastest-growing tech companies, and its range of Megabook laptops just received an enormous upgrade: AI processing.

The new 2024 Tecno Megabook T16 Pro ships with an AI-enabled Intel Core Ultra 7 (or Core Ultra 5), which enables on-device AI tools using Intel’s new Neural Compute Engine, such as AI image generation and AI conference support, all accessed through the onboard PC Manager. Having given the onboard image generation a try, it’s fast and responsive, using the latest version of Stable Diffusion to generate AI images.

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You can pick the Megabook T16 Pro up in 16GB or 32GB variants, along with choosing between a 512GB or 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Furthermore, the Megabook T16 Pro ships with a whopping 99.99Wh battery that supports 100W charging, and its upgraded 65W cooling system helps to keep everything purring along nicely.

2. Honor Magic 6 Pro

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Honor is another tech company that seems to be on a roll of launching great products, and the new Honor Magic 6 Pro is no exception.

The Honor Magic 6 Pro is a sublime-looking smartphone, combining smooth corners with a faux-leather backing, all while combining the camera housing and managing to keep it looking extremely smart. It’s certainly one of the most aesthetically pleasing smartphones to launch at MWC 2024.

Its 6.8-inch display has a 1280x2800 resolution (453 PPI) and has a maximum brightness of 5,000 nits, which is extremely bright.

Under the hood, the Magic 6 Pro is packing a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 12GB or 16GB RAM, and 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage (1TB on a smartphone is wild!). Its camera setup is also powerful, combining a 50MP wide lens, 180MP periscope telephoto, and 50MP ultrawide into the triple-camera configuration.

One feature I really liked on the Honor Magic 6 Pro is the new drop and drag to search tools. Instead of having to long press, copy, paste, and so on, you drag and drop the information you need directly into the app you want. Someone sends you a location? Just drag it straight into Google Maps, and it loads immediately.

Finally, Honor’s second-generation silicon-carbon battery allows it to pack in a whopping 5,600mAh while keeping the Magic 6 Pro’s design slim and sleek; it’s a great bit of kit.

3. Motorola Adaptive Display Concept

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Concept smartphones are always interesting, but it’s even better when there is a usable example. Motorola’s bendable, flexible, wearable is another interpretation of a smartphone that you can wrap around your wrist, displaying incredible flexibility considering all of the hardware packed into the body.

Whether this ultra-flexy smartphone ever becomes a real-world product is here nor there; the tech behind it is cool, and there is something futuristic about strapping your smartphone around your wrist.

The concept smartphone features a 6.9-inch pOLED screen. Most interestingly, the battery and other components are built in multiple segments to help the device achieve its bendiness.

4. Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G

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Tecno launched a swathe of new smartphones at MWC 2024, including the Pova 6 Pro 5G, Spark 20 Pro and Pro+, and a Tecno Phantom Ultimate concept—more on this in a moment.

Taking the top prize, though, is the Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G, a sublime-looking smartphone with some serious hardware. Powering the Camon 30 Premier 5G is a Dimensity 8200 Ultra chip featuring eight cores paired with 12GB RAM and 512GB storage (plus a separate onboard GPU).

The Camon 30 Premier 5G also comes equipped with a Sony ISP, which is a powerful AI imaging and processing chip that powers Tecno’s new PolarAce imaging system. It basically enables the Camon 30 Premier 5G to reduce noise in video capture, provide 4K Ultra Night Vision video, and powers its Universal Tone feature, designed to more accurately render skin tones.

Another plus point is the 6.77-inch screen, with a 1,264x2,780 resolution and a maximum brightness of 1,400 nits. It’s also an LTPO panel , which enables much better dynamic refresh rates, which is extremely useful when switching between intensive tasks.

It also includes a substantial 5,000mAh battery and supports 70W fast charging.

5. ZTE Nubia Flip 5G

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Now, here’s a device I wasn’t expecting to see: the new ZTE Nubia Flip 5G. ZTE rocked up at MWC 2024 with a heap of new smartphones, tablets, and other hardware, and the Nubia Flip 5G is the best of the bunch (though I also really liked the new ZTE Nubia Music).

It looks great, sporting a reasonably large external screen, which also houses its 50MP and 2MP rear cameras. The Nubia Flip 5G is actually quite similar in design to the Tecno Phantom V Flip 5G , which is no bad thing. ZTE has opted for a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip, which, while not as powerful as the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, still packs a powerful punch.

The folding mechanism felt responsive, while the fold folds out properly to 180 degrees, which is nice. The 6.9-inch 120Hz display was perfectly responsive, though it’s always better to judge these things after the screen has been folded a bunch of times during regular use.

The budget flip-phone market is heating up, with strong entries like the ZTE Nubia Flip 5G and Tecno Phantom V Flip 5G battling it out with the Motorola Razr.

6. Ayaneo Pocket S

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Pocket gaming devices have seen an enormous resurgence in the past few years, and the new Ayaneo Pocket S is one of the best I’ve seen.

It looks sublime, the 6-inch 1440p IPS borderless screen blending wonderfully into the Pocket S’ ultra lightweight and slimline frame. The screen has a 2560*1440 resolution with 490PPI and a maximum brightness of 400 nits. I have to say, it looks excellent.

Also packed into that frame is the second reason the Ayaneo Pocket S is featured on this list: it ships with a brand new Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 chip, which enables top-tier gaming with just a 15W power draw. The Ayaneo Pocket S is one the world’s first gaming devices to use this new Snapdragon chip, delivering eight Kryo Prime Ultra 3.36GHz cores plus a dedicated 1GHz Adreno A32 GPU.

The Pocket S also features multiple performance modes, integrated vibration, RGB lighting on the Hall Sensing joysticks, and heaps of gaming integrations.

7. Xiaomi 14 Ultra

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Now, Xiaomi’s Ultra devices often have a heavy focus on photography and video capture, and its new 14 Ultra continues that tradition.

The 14 Ultra ships with a Sony LYT-900 1-inch sensor—which is massive for a smartphone. It’s not just the new sensor, though. The Ultra 14 ships with a quad-camera array, two telephoto lenses, and a variable aperture to give even more depth-of-field options to creators. It still comes with the Leica branding, and the housing works nicely on the rear of the device.

Most importantly, it ships with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Xiaomi’s AISP neural chip, which the company claims to be the first AI computational model focusing solely on photography. There are four AI models to work with: FusionLM, ToneLM, ColorLM, and PortraitLM, each of which fine-tunes images snapped on the device.

Like Honor, Xiaomi has also made the jump to a new silicon carbon cell battery, which delivers greater power density. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a 5,300mAh battery, along with 90W wired fast charging and 80W wireless charging.

8. Honor MagicBook Pro 16

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Honor’s MagicBook Pro 16 caught the eye at MWC 2024, not least for its rainbow-esq metal body spray (which Honor calls 3D Coloring Spray Technology). It looks excellent and is a real head-turner, and that’s before you even get to its substantial hardware.

Embracing the push toward AI, the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 ships with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Intel’s latest Meteor Lake chips. Its new Core Ultra range are its first to directly integrate Intel Neural Compute Engines, and the Honor MagicBook 16 Pro has two of them.

Honor has gone strong on the AI integrations with the MagicBook Pro 16, and its new laptop includes interesting new features like Smart Picture Search, Smart Document Summary, Text Comprehension, AI Subtitle, and Magic Text. It’s bustling with AI tools to help you get your work done faster.

Furthermore, the MagicBook Pro 16 comes equipped with an Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU, which is plenty powerful, and a 75Wh battery, which Honor says should last up to ten hours (usage dependant).

9. Tecno Phantom Ultimate Concept

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Okay, so Tecno actually brought the Phantom Ultimate concept to IFA 2023. But it was much more of a concept then. Now, at MWC 2024, the Phantom Ultimate concept is a much more real smartphone—still a concept—but with enough development since September 2023 that Tecno was happy to give some hands-on time.

The idea of a smartphone screen extending from 6.55 inches to 7.11 inches is novel, granted, but the sliding motion is now smooth, and the wrap-around curved screen looks great. It also has a secondary display on the rear, which is another nice touch.

It’s also decently slimline, measuring 9.93mm thickness, and feels good in your hand. The extra tech for the sliding mechanism doesn’t add much to its weight at all.

10. ZTE Nubia Pad 3D II

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Remember the Nintendo 3DS? Well, static 3D tech has come a long, long way since then. The ZTE Nubia Pad 3D II is an excellent embodiment of everything Nintendo probably wanted the 3DS to achieve, except on a much bigger and higher resolution screen.

Testing out the Nubia Pad 3D II on the MWC 2024 show floor wasn’t easy, and grabbing static images of the tablet’s in-depth 3D-esque modeling isn’t straightforward, but it’s easily one of the best static 3D tablets I’ve ever used. Taking a dungeon crawling game for a spin and the incredible 3D depth of the dungeon is like no glasses-free 3D experience I’ve used before.

The 3D glasses-free tech is great on its own, but what’s better is that the Nubia Pad 3D II will convert images, video, and games from 2D into 3D, giving you incredible depth across an 86-degree viewing angle. It also runs at 2560x1600, giving great resolution, and the 3D effect is evident from a wide range of viewing points.

11. Samsung Galaxy Ring

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Samsung’s Galaxy Ring has been in the works for a while, and other players in the smart ring sphere have been worried about its launch. Well, worried they should be, as it looks great and really pushes the smart ring sector forward.

As with any smart ring, it’s no replacement for a smartwatch. You’ll always be digging into an app because any smart ring currently cannot display useful information. So your steps, heart rate, sleep patterns, and so on are all found in a linked smartphone app. It’s no bad thing; that’s how all smart rings currently operate.

There are some great features that will make the Galaxy Ring a very strong wearable, such as automatic workout tracking, fertility tracking, sleep analysis, and much more.

The Samsung Galaxy Ring also looks smart, eschewing the matte option delivered by other smart ring options in favor of a shiny metal finish.

12. Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Concept

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Lenovo arrived at MWC 2024 with an excellent new lineup of ThinkBooks. Its new ThinkBook X12 Detachable Gen 2 is brilliant and could well be the challenger the Surface Book always needed.

But at MWC 2024, Lenovo’s ThinkBook Transparent captured the imagination more than anything else, showcasing a fully transparent screen with an ultra-futuristic keyboard combination. It looks straight out of sci-fi, and it wouldn’t look out of place on the set of any film.

The Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent concept has a wonderful 55-percent transparent screen, meaning you can look straight through it to the object behind. Now, whether you’d want someone to see what you’re watching from the other side is a different question, but the full MicroLED screen delivers the goods.

Again, I’m slightly perturbed by the screen, but it’s a great transparent laptop design and easily one of the best iterations on this growing tech style launched so far.

Games Able

MakeUseOf Awards: MWC Innovation Highlights