After a brief seasonal lull, either spent lapping up the great festive sales or licking the wounds of a bad quarter, the technology bandwagon rolls back up to speed next month.
The end of February sees Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the mobile big hitters (except Apple and Xiaomi) will be rolling out their next products, hoping to win back some market share in the Android melee. Also in March is the SXSW tech, entertainment, and media conference.
Sony is rumored to have five new products on show at MWC, as the company aims to keep up momentum. Its mobile division finally posted a profit last quarter, all of $4 million, after years of expensive red ink. Other sites have all the technical details, but since Sony made that money by sacrificing mid-range sales for high-end devices, it will likely continue in that vein. Top of the line is a device code-named “Yoshino”, driven by a Snapdragon 835, sporting a luxury 4K resolution 5.5-inch screen, up to 6 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and other goodies.
BlackBerry will continue its attempts at a Lazarus-like comeback with a new Mercury Android device to be revealed, complete with the traditional BlackBerry keyboard. There’s no sign that going Android has done anything to boost the company’s fortunes, but the fact they are still trying with hardware partner TCL is good news for die-hard fans.
Samsung will be at MCW, but won’t be launching the much anticipated Galaxy S8, presumably as it aggressively tests the design to ensure product safety. It might just show off some folding-screen technology as it tries to move away from the staid smartphone format with some more novel designs.
Perhaps the lack of major brand launches will give the smaller players, like OnePlus, Oppo and Honor, with the P10 and new V9 device, a chance to shine as their products come increasingly close to matching the specifications of the bigger brands, without the cost.
YouTube: Becoming Good to Go for #MWC17
Photo credit: Mozilla in Europe
Source: JC Torres (SlashGear)
Editorial notice: Feature image shows a photo from MWC in 2013.
