Today is the last day of Mobile World Congress (MWC). It is the largest event in the world for the mobile industry to gather and showcase the latest products on offer. It is part conference, part exhibition and part one-upmanship announcements – but most importantly it is all cool.
I have trawled through the hype and pulled out what I believe to be the most significant components of MWC for 2017. To start with I want to go back to the year 2000. Nokia was king of the phones and their newest model, the 3310, was released in September that year. It sold 126 million units – a huge hit for Nokia. Nokia’s fortunes have been largely downhill since then with Microsoft taking over the company when it was obvious they would struggle as a standalone company. Nokia still has a place in the hearts of many mobile phone users.
It is exactly this nostalgia that Finnish start-up HMD Global is hoping to capitalise on. They have re-released a slightly modernised Nokia 3310 under licence. It is 17 years after the original but it has very few changes to that Nokia best-seller – including the classic game Snake. For people who want a simple classic phone, it seems like a great idea. The main problem for us though is that it is unlikely to come to Australia. The phone needs the older 2G network to operate and with Telstra having already turned off 2G and Optus and Vodafone soon to follow, the phone will only be good for decoration in our country.
In 2004 a tricky pub trivia question was related to the number one manufacturer of camera lenses. Most people would guess Canon or Nikon or Fujifilm or Olympus but after Nokia introduced the 7610 the number one manufacturer of camera lenses in the world was…Nokia. They were pretty basic cameras all those years ago but the cameras in phones now are legitimate alternatives to SLR cameras.
Oppo showed off the camera in their latest phone. With phones being so slim, it is difficult to gain the optical zoom that we would like to have in our cameras. Oppo has used a periscope design with mirrors to deliver 5x optical zoom from a 5.7mm thick body. Very impressive. Digital zoom just makes the pixels bigger so the quality is reduced accordingly but optical zoom in a phone is the Holy Grail. Expect to see other camera manufacturers copy or licence the Oppo design in their new models.
Sony has always had a reputation for great cameras and their latest flagship does not disappoint. We have had many phone cameras with slow motion functionality already. The highest frame rate we have seen so far is 240 frames per second (fps) which is reasonable. Sony has blown that out of the water with the camera on the XZ Premium. The super-slow motion function on this model takes the frame rate up to 960 fps. Not quite as fast as a Phantom dedicated ultra-slow motion camera at 22,000 fps – but also a bit cheaper than the Phantom’s US$100K price tag.
Sony didn’t just want to show off their camera – they figure if you have a great camera you also need a great screen. The Sony also boasts a 4K HDR screen. When we are just seeing 4K screens come to our televisions, the fact that a 5.5-inch phone has a 4K screen is mind-boggling.
With so many features on phones, one of the greatest challenges for manufacturers is keeping the power running to use those features. Whilst some manufacturers are working on better battery life, Meizu is working on charging existing batteries faster. They announced at MWC that they can charge a phone from zero to full in just 20 minutes. This sort of charging will allow uses to quickly add some charge if their batteries don’t get them through the day.
With all the excitement and hype and announcements around MWC for 2017, keep an eye out for some of these features on devices hitting shelves over the next six months.
Mathew Dickerson