The mobile-phone industry has swooped in to Barcelona for the annual Mobile World Congress event this week. Expect all manner of new smartphones to be announced, as well as related technologies.
The news got underway this weekend with a pair of Android handsets at opposite ends of the smartphone spectrum.
The Alcatel 1X is a €100 handset running a new flavour of Google’s Android software, Android Go, which is designed for low-end smartphones aimed at emerging markets. Android Go will be something to look out for this week: Google will be talking about its plans and other manufacturers are expected to debut handsets running the software.
At the higher end, meanwhile, Samsung has unveiled its latest Galaxy-branded Android smartphone, the Galaxy S9. Journalists are manfully struggling to find 1,000+ words to write about a phone that’s slightly better than last year’s model, and seizing gratefully on camera improvements and the ability to turn your face into an emoji as the key changes. Hopefully the batteries will stay unexploded as a bonus.
Google is also bringing its ARCore augmented-reality development tools out of preview, while announcing that they work on more than 100m Android smartphones out in the wild.
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