Hottest (non-smartphone) gadgets at Mobile World World Congress 2016
Mobile World Congress 2016 has now come to a close. There were lots of new product announcements and interesting new devices on show at the event in Barcelona this week.
There’s always a great deal of hubbub surrounding the major products unveiled during the week, such as LG’s G5 smartphone and Samsung’s new Galaxy S7, but there were also some pretty cool gadgets shown off in what proved to be yet another successful event for the mobile industry.
Aside from smartphones, of which there were too many new devices to mention launched at MWC, here are some of the more novel/interesting gadgets from the show…
LG Rolling Bot
A kind of miniature home robot, LG’s cute new Rolling Bot is ideal for surveillance of your house, but it can also be used to look after your pets (I kid you not!) through it’s “pet mode”.
The Bot itself is controlled using a smartphone app, and features a decent 8 megapixel snapper for keeping an eye on things while you’re away. There is also a built-in speaker, half a Gigabyte of RAM and a sizeable 5,000 mAh hour battery.
Sony Xperia Ear
Sony debuted several new smartphones this year, but far more interesting are the firm’s range of new accessories, such as the Xperia Eye and Xperia Ear.
The Xperia Ear is a wireless ear piece which responds to your commands by voice alone. It’s compatible with Android devices over Bluetooth (and NFC), and provides the wearer with updates about appointments, news and the weather.
Sony Xperia Eye
Sony has been busy of late coming up with new ideas, and the Xperia Eye is no exception. The devices is essentially a 360-degree field of view camera that can be worn around the neck or attached to objects such as a motorcycle helmet or bicycle. The device records high quality video of whatever is in front of you, and therefore might be a good candidate for those people keen on ‘life-logging’ or for someone who wants to record a first person view of the world. For the moment however, it’s just a concept and Sony didn’t reveal details of a possible launch date.
Epson Moverio smart glasses
Despite the fact that smart glasses have yet to catch on, at least as far as consumers are concerned, that hasn’t stopped Japanese firm Epson from developing its own glasses. Aimed firmly at the enterprise sector, the Moverio BT-300 is actually the third version of the firm’s augmented reality-based smart glasses, and are primarily designed for activities such as museum tours and medical procedures.
As far as specifications go, the latest Moverio glasses come with a 0.43-inch OLED display capable of 1,280 x 720p resolution and are equipped with a 5 megapixel camera. Powering the fancy specs is a quad core Intel Atom X5, with Android Lollipop as the OS of choice.
Epson seems to have done a pretty good job with the look (and lightness) of the Moverio, coming closer to something that ordinary people might actually want to wear…
ZTE Spro Plus smart projector
Not content with smart phones, smart watches, and smart glasses, Chinese electronics giant ZTE has come up with a smart projector. What’s so smart about the device? Firstly, it uses lasers instead of LEDs to project pictures onto any surface, but also features a built-in 8.4-inch AMOLED display that can handle 2K resolution video, all powered by a Snapdragon 801 CPU with 3 GB of RAM.
The projector also supports connection of an external camera (via USB) for group video calls via apps like Skype. Is the world ready for a smart project? It remains to be seen why anyone would want to bolt a tablet onto such a device, but the idea seems to be making it easier to facilitate conference calls, as well as improving usability.
ZTE apparently wants the Spro Plus to be “second most used device after your smartphone”, and is set to launch the projector in the summer for an undisclosed price.
