You may have heard about Mobile World Congress, this big annual tech conference in Barcelona. MWC is going on right now and all kinds of cool phones and other phone-related tech are being shown off.
Samsung’s new flagship phones seemed to have grabbed the most headlines, but the Galaxy S7 and its Edge counterpart don’t feel like a good enough upgrade for me to get excited. That’s right, not even the essentially waterproof body and expandable storage, which never should’ve been dropped off the previous flagships, can get me psyched. And this is not a new feeling, unfortunately.
I had the same meh reaction to Tim Cook unveiling the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus and I had it when Google clued us in on the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. And it can’t just be me, because smartphone sales have slowed. Obviously not to the point that PC sales have slowed, but it’s noticeable: One analyst said fourth quarter sales last year led to the slowest growth rate for the industry since 2008.
So maybe thinner bodies, less weight and more megapixels just aren’t enough? Actually, the tweaking of these three features has caused a bit of rage because if a phone is designed to be thinner and lighter what will likely end up being sacrificed is the battery life (cue Apple releasing a hideous battery case). And since the phone is so thin now, the better camera will also likely protrude in a less than flattering way.
OK. OK. You get it. But there are some legitimately cool phones and gadgets at MWC. Like Caterpillar’s might-as-well-be-looking-for-Schwarzenegger-because-I-AM-PREDATOR phone the CAT S60. So, you’re not really Predator, but the thermal imaging is kind of awesome looking.
CAT S60 the first thermal imaging smartphone. A very interesting device with some real use cases #MWC16 pic.twitter.com/XpI7ivqQQz
— Francisco Jeronimo (@fjeronimo) February 22, 2016
There’s also this uhh… ball. Seriously, it’s called the LG Rolling Bot. It was designed to work with the LG G5 as a sort of cat monitor and toy. And, well, it’s adorable. But that’s only because it might as well be a BB-8 droid, which shoppers can already buy.
There are still a handful of other entertaining devices at MWC, but (especially when considering the phones) they’re not really necessary upgrades — more just fun or occasionally useful toys. That’s why they likely won’t fix the slight slump happening in the smartphone industry or my lack of excitement.
