MWC 2024’s exciting gadgets: Lenovo’s transparent laptop, Tecno’s gaming handheld, and more

This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC 2024), the largest mobile technology trade show in the world, is in full swing in Barcelona, Spain, and there are already plenty of new gadgets to marvel at.

The week-long event has hosted the reveals from the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Tecno, to name a few, who all appear to be pushing the envelope with what’s possible in the mobile space.

Without further ado, here are some of the most exciting gadgets shown off at the annual trade show:

Lenovo’s transparent laptop

No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. That is indeed a transparent laptop.

Lenovo’s Project Crystal is a laptop concept with a 16-inch, see-through microLED display. The first-of-its-kind device was reportedly commissioned by the company’s ThinkPad division, who wanted to integrate the cutting-edge display technology with artificial intelligence (AI) software for various real world use cases.

One such use case would be to use the transparent display to share information to a person who might be sitting across from you at a table. Instead of needing to flip the whole laptop, you can simply hit a few buttons and reverse the display.

Lenovo says the laptop also has augmented reality (AR) use cases. The laptop includes a camera that can scan real world objects, and you can then, for example, use the display as an overlay of sorts on those objects.

Right now, the laptop remains a concept, and there are no plans of bringing it to market yet.

Xiaomi 14 Ultra

Xiaomi brought a lot of new gadgets with it to MWC 2024, including its SU7 electric car, and the robotic CyberDog.

What caught our eye, however, is the Chinese tech giant’s latest flagship, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, a highly capable camera phone with all the bells and whistles.

The new phone comes equipped with four 50MP lenses, which Xiaomi developed in tandem with Leica. The one-inch primary lens features variable aperture, letting you adjust the setting from f/1.63 to f/4.0. The telephoto lens has an f/1.8 aperture with a 3.2x optical zoom, while the periscope lens has an f/2.5 aperture with 5x optical zoom. The ultrawide lens, meanwhile, has an f/1.8 aperture and a 122-degree field of view, which allows you to fit more within the frame.

You can also purchase a separate camera grip add-on for the Ultra 14 that lets you use the phone like you would an actual camera. The grip, which includes a dedicated shutter release button, attaches via USB-C and features customizable controls for adjusting other camera settings like shutter speed, ISO, and aperture.

Samsung’s health-tracking Galaxy Ring

Samsung’s new health-tracking wearable made another appearance at MWC 2024 after first being unveiled at January’s Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event.

The all-new device is designed to be an alternative to smartwatches, featuring some of the same on-board sensors and trackers in a sleeker, more refined form factor. It can monitor pulse, body temperature, breathing, and sleep patterns, among other metrics, according to the South Korean electronics giant.

Tecno’s augmented-reality gaming handheld

Chinese phone manufacturer Tecno wants to take handheld gaming to the next level, bringing augmented reality (AR) tech to the portable PC market. Tecno’s Pocket Go is supposedly the industry’s first Windows AR gaming handheld, bringing AR capabilities on a portable gaming device.

It’s that support for AR that perhaps distinguishes the Pocket Go from others in the market. Instead of putting all the important components on a single device like the Steam Deck, Tecno’s latest innovation separates everything between two devices: a pair AR glasses and a controller.

The AR glasses primarily serve as the device’s display, featuring a 0.71-inch microOLED panel, which Tecno touts can emulate the experience of viewing a 215-inch television from six meters away. It also has an adjustable diopter setting of up to 600 degrees and a what the company calls VisionTrack function to track head movement and maximize eye comfort.

The controller, meanwhile, houses the components that power the experience, including the Ryzen 7 8840HS, an octa-core and 28W APU that includes a Radeon 780M integrated GPU. Inside, it also houses 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and a 50Wh replaceable battery.

Oppo’s AR glasses with voice assistant

Sticking to AR-ready devices, Oppo launched its own set of AR glasses at MWC 2024, called the Air Glass 3. At first glance, the prototype device resembles traditional glasses, but because it has AR functionalities, you can see digital content imposed over your view of the real world while wearing it.

What’s more, the glasses come with a voice assistant, powered by the Chinese phone manufacturer’s own large language model (LLM), AndesGPT. This allows you to talk to the assistant and ask it to perform certain tasks like search for information.

Oppo said you do need to connect the Air Glass 3 to an Oppo device for it to work. The company also didn’t say yet whether the device would eventually be released to the public.

Motorola’s rollable phone

Late last year, Motorola debuted a rollable phone that demonstrated advancements in flexible display technology. The company brought that same phone, dubbed the Adaptive Display, to MWC 2024, further showing off how it functions.

The phone essentially functions like a foldable, except it doesn’t have a hinge, and it can bend – or roll – in the shape of an arch. This design feature allows you to wrap the phone around your wrist like a smart bracelet of sorts.

As with other concept devices, it’s yet unclear whether this shape-shifting phone might ever make it to market. – Rappler.com