Every February mobile phone makers descend upon Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, showing off their latest wares in the hopes of thrilling the tech press and public alike. In previous years we’ve seen hugely popular phones like the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy SII revealed at the show, and this year there’s been plenty of exciting new devices on offer.
This year there’s been a noticeable shift in the sheer number of new phones at the show. Manufacturers seem to have moved to hosting their own unique events to launch phones, as HTC did with the One recently. However, we’ve still picked out five awesome phones that made their debuts at MWC 2013.
Huawei Ascend P2
Huawei’s Ascend P2 impressed us with its slim and sleek design and overflowing spec sheet. Crammed into an 8.4mm thin shell are a 4.7-inch 720p HD display, quad-core processor and 13 megapixel camera, amongst much more. That display runs right to the edge of the phone, making it look much bigger than its 4.7-inch size.
The phone’s standout feature is one that we’ve not seen in any other phone to date; 4G LTE speeds of up to 150 Mbps. Although there currently aren’t any mobile networks providing these speeds, the phone is future proofed and should be able to offer the fastest mobile internet speeds around. It’s coming to Europe between April and June for £399.
Nokia Lumia 720
Billed as a mid-range device, the Lumia 720 offers a fine mix of high-end design, the latest software from Microsoft and impressive hardware. Its killer feature is a 6.7 megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a super-low f/1.9 aperture, which should help it to achieve great snaps in low light.
It’s also got a crisp 4.3-inch ClearBlack display, 8GB of internal storage, NFC and of course, Windows Phone 8 with Nokia’s extensive catalogue of great apps. Nokia hopes to launch it between April and June for around £250.
Lenovo K900
Not usually known for its smartphones, Lenovo has produced a beast in the K900. Looking similar to the Huawei Ascend P2, the K900 squeezes a huge 5.5-inch Full HD display that’s incredibly crisp and clear. It also runs the very latest version of Android in 4.2 Jelly Bean and nicks Sony’s excellent 13 megapixel Exmor R camera sensor from the Xperia Z for a superior image quality.
Lenovo’s newest phone differs from almost all the phones on show at MWC by using a 2GHz Intel Clovertrail+ processor instead of a Qualcomm or Nvidia chip. It’s super powerful and should cope nicely with anything thrown at it. We’re also a little bit in love with the brushed metal back and incredibly thin 6.9mm design. No word on pricing or availability just yet, unfortunately.
Asus PadFone Infinity
Asus’ latest phone comes with a 10.1-inch tablet that you can dock it into, boosting the battery life by three times whilst bumping the picture size up from the phone’s screen to the tablet’s Full HD display.
The phone itself is a powerhouse, sporting a 5-inch Full HD display, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, 2GB of RAM, a 13 megapixel rear camera and the new Qualcomm 600 quad-core processor. There’s not much it doesn’t have, and the brushed metal back is gorgeous. The price is £799 for the pair, but the release date hasn’t been revealed just yet.
Nvidia Phoenix
Out of all of the phones on show at MWC, this is one of very few that you won’t be able to buy. That’s not to say it’s not awesome, however. The Phoenix is Nvidia’s reference phone for its new Tegra 4i quad-core chip, designed to show how awesome phones with the chip could be.
The Phoenix was built to show just how capable phones could be when it comes to photography. High definition HDR snaps can be taken in just 0.2 seconds and you can lock focus on a person or object without ever losing focus, because the phone can actively track and refocus all the time.
Estimated to be six times faster than phones with Nvidia’s previous Tegra 3 chip and packing in speedy 4G LTE connectivity, the Phoenix is a beast. Unfortunately it won’t be going on sale, but phones with its processing power will, which is great news.