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What to expect from Mobile World Congress

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 23 Feb 2017
The LG G6 will be unveiled at MWC 2017.
The LG G6 will be unveiled at MWC 2017.

Next week, thousands of tech journalists, electronics brands and developers will flock to Barcelona to see the latest innovations in mobile technology at the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC).

The event officially starts on Monday, but most of the large smartphone manufacturers will launch their 2017 premium devices this weekend. These include LG, Huawei, Nokia, TLC, ZTE, Sony and Motorola.

LG has sent out invitations for Sunday, calling it 'G6 day', so it can be assumed the company will unveil its LG G6 device. The smartphone is expected to keep the dual camera set-up at the back, but give both cameras an equal amount of megapixels.

Huawei is expected to launch the P10, bringing its launch date earlier in the year to coincide with the conference. The company normally launches its flagship products in London in April.

HMD Global, the company that has the rights to sell Nokia-branded phones, is rumoured to be relaunching and reinventing the sturdy Nokia 3310.

TLC is said to be introducing a BlackBerry branded device called the Mercury, an Android device with a physical keyboard, and Motorola should be unveiling the Moto G5.

Other than smartphones, the congress will also be awash with wearables, tablets, virtual reality headsets, mobile apps, robots, drones and more.

Samsung normally launches its latest smartphone in the Galaxy range, which this year would be the S8. However, the launch date has been pushed out by a few months, possibly because of last year's Note 7 flammable fiasco, and will instead reveal a new tablet.

Innovations in the technology that powers the mobile devices will also be on display.

Qualcomm will demonstrate what it calls "the global 5G standard". It will also showcase its second-generation Gigabit LTE modem, called Snapdragon X20. This chip offers speeds of 1.2Gbps, a 20% increase compared to the last, and will appear in devices early next year.

Ford has said it will make an announcement at the congress about the company's approach to future cities, as well as reveal new connectivity.

* ITWeb will attend and report from the congress next week in Barcelona.

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