Our editors talk MWC 2017 highs and lows

Introduction

MWC 2017 is now behind us and weve all had some time to reflect on the announcements. And since you seemed to enjoy our personal two cents on the inner-working and state of the mobile realm at the beginning of the year, we decided to give it another go.

This time the office-wide chain mail included two questions - "What impressed you the most at MWC 2017?" and "Were there any disappointments?" We gathered a few interesting submissions.

Well kick thing of positively with the most impressive tech from the Barcelona show floor.

What impressed you the most at MWC 2017?

George

The LG G6 was easily the star of this years MWC. Learning its lessons the hard w ay, LG has come up with a winning formula this year. No more gimmicky modular Friends, an infinitely better looking design, plenty of display and still two cameras on the back - whats not to like?

The G6 aside, there were a couple of camera advancements that I can file in the impressive folder. One is Sonys 960fps video recording on the Xperia XZ Premium. Even if for just 0.18s at a time and in 720p resolution, its a pretty fun and useful tool for capturing fast action.

The other one is Oppos 5x zoom camera concept. Its neither 5x (in fact, the long one is 3x the focal length of the wide one), nor actually zoom (in-between focal lengths are recreated in software). That said, multiple cameras with different focal lengths is the direction in which I want to see phone cameras evolve - thats what I wished for in our 2016 recap article, and its pretty amazing to see my wishes come true that soon. Okay, not really - Oppos concept is missing an ultra-wide-angle shooter like the G6s. Three cameras on a phones back isnt an overkill, right? Right?

Victor

MWC 2017 was actually one of the most interesting installments of the convention in recent memory. I sort of feel obliged to start with Nokia and not simply because like many, I hold the brand and the memories it brings back dear. The new HMD trio actually managed to impress me with its take on a value smartphone formula. Sure, there is the specs argument and it is a fact you can get a lot more for your money in this department from the likes of Xiaomi or Meizu. However, the entire new Nokia lineup looks well-made, tough and reliable - just like a Nokia should. And the pure-Android approach carries over the same straight-forward mentality to smartphones on the software side of things. Nokia might very well be a perfect fit for the very specific good-value, name-brand niche the Moto G h as been occupying for a while now and sadly seems to be moving away from.

Then there is the LG G6. Weve already said a lot about it and even more is on the way soon in our in-depth review. That is just how big of an impression the handset left on us. While running the risk of repeating an already popular opinion - the G6 is a great device. LGs new formula definitely works for me - a welcome change over the misguided mess that was its predecessor. This time around, there are no modules, no gimmicks - a straight-forward offer, with tangible and real usable improvements, like the 2:1 display. At least in my book.

To round the positive impressions off, I cant fail to mention the BlackBerry Keyone. Now, Im not going to stand here and argue its a great phone or a good-value one. Frankly, the EUR 600 handset will likely appeal to a very small demographic and land in the hands of an even smaller crowd. What I will state, however, is that its specific retro charm and software app roach are not wasted on me. If nothing else, we can all probably agree that its different - a breath of fresh air in a growing sea of indistinguishable "slab" handsets.

Chip

Plenty of stuff actually - it was one of the best MWC editions in recent years. Ill have to start with the LG G6, which is arguably the best smartphone to come out there. The Koreans learned some valuable lessons with the G5 and theyve delivered a much more polished product this time around. Design is vastly improved, and while dropping the removable battery and the whole modular concept cant have been easy decisions to make I believe they are for the better. Upping the screen size at the expense of bezels is another great move that greatly contributes to usability.

The Sony Xperia XZ Premium is also an exquisite product with its HDR screen, mirror finish and  Motion Eye camer a. It still feels like its going to remain a showcase product rather than becoming an actual bestseller, but it shows that Sony is still the source of plenty of innovation in the industry. Hopefully they can actually turn all that engineering prowess in some actually successful products in the market. Otherwise the companys mobile division will risk going the way of the Vaio and that would be a huge loss for the smartphone world.

It was also great seeing the new Nokia trio - the 6, 5 and 3 are all we hoped they will be - impressively built and with stock Android and a promise for timely updates. Now a nicer chipset would have made put them even higher up my list but even so they bring a few solid mid-range options now and plenty of promise for the future.

An honorable mention goes to Huawei and the Dazzling Blue finish of its new P10. While the phone was so extensively leaked that the actual announcement brought little new information (not to mention that its basically a sized down Mate 9), the combination of a bright color and unusual grippy texture really won me over.

Yordan

My first phone was a Siemens A36 before switching to Mitsubishi Trium Mars. I was never part of the Nokia hype train but approved the 3310 memes than are all over the internet. So the most impressive part of MWC 2017 for me is the whole Nokia hype around a feature phone.

It is 2017 and we already have augmented reality, virtual reality and the Black Mirror series that tell us how these technologies could play a big, albeit dark, role in our daily life. A museum hall filled with journalists, ecstatic over the Nokia 3310 (2017) - kudos, HMD! You may have launched three midrangers and a feature phone but the PR game was on point.

Ivan

The Mobile World Congress was a tame affair, I guess mostly because Samsung held back its Galaxy S8 and S8+. But there were enough devices to keep a tech-head such as myself interested.

What impressed me the most was the LG G6. LG finally made a phone that appeals to me - not a plastic phone made to look like metal or a metal phone that looks and feels plastic.

The G6 is a beautiful gem of a smartphone thanks to a conventional premium design - metal frame and glass on both sides. The tall 18:9 screen and slim bezels make it exciting while the water-proofing makes it sensible.

But what impressed me most about the LG G6 are the cameras - I love wide-angle photography so I loved the fact that LG put a bigger sensor behind the wide-angle lens.

Vlad

The LG G6s bezels, the Huawei P10s Dazzling finishes, the Sony Xperia XZ Premiums 960fps vi deo shooting mode (shared with the XZs), the Nokia 3310.

Lets take them one by one. Like the upcoming Galaxy S8 and S8+ duo, the LG G6 is all about getting rid of as much of its side, top, and bottom bezels as possible. And compared to every other smartphone out there (at least until the Samsungs arrive), this looks very, very good. Fitting as much screen into as low a footprint as possible has long been the dream of many smartphone users, and the G6 is getting us there in a big way.

While Huaweis P10 and P10 Plus come in a myriad of color versions, you should really only pay attention to two of those: theyre called Dazzling Blue and Dazzling Gold, respectively. Why only these? Well, they come with a unique finish on the back, and that makes all the difference. All the other options give you a slippery back that frankly looks a lot like, ahem, other phones out there, and it catches fingerprints quite well - not as well as Sonys Xperia XZ Premium, but still. The Dazzling finishes are on another level altogether - they shine in a very interesting way that changes depending on the angle at which youre holding the P10, they offer much better grip, oh, and they show almost no fingerprint traces whatsoever.

This will either be one of the quickest-forgotten gimmicks of 2017, or the start of a cool new trend. Im talking of course about the much-discussed 960fps video capture mode (at 720p resolution) that the upcoming Sony Xperia XZ Premium (and XZs) can boast. If you get the timing right (and thats a big if, see the next section for more on that), it produces simply stunning slow-motion footage. Its so good that most of the time you dont even notice the low resolution.

Finally, the Nokia 3310. It impressed me because the mobile space hasnt necessarily been the place for remakes up until now, unlike, say, the movie industry which loves doing that. So I think of the new one as a remake of the old one, not anywhere close to 100% true to the origi nal - see, just like the movie remakes. I also think its a brilliant marketing move by HMD Global, one that brought the Nokia name in front of a lot of people these past few weeks, since basically the entire media reported on it, not just mobile-focused outlets.

Ricky

Id have to say the LG G6 was the most exciting and talked-about announcement out of MWC. LGs rough year with the LG G5 didnt slow down or discourage the Korean company and the G6 is proof of that. LG is following the right trends and its decision to use an 18:9 (2:1) aspect ratio on its display is a risk (though a minor one)

Unfortunately, it meant LG had to get rid of a design feature that many power users chose LG for: a removable battery. The convenience of being able to instantly go from 0 to 100% has now been permanently been replaced with Quick Charge 3.0.

Chavdar

If you’ve had the patience to read so far into this page, it would be already be clear to you that the LG G6 was the star of the MWC 2017. The phone well deserves the appreciation it gets â€" pretty much everything has been changed or improved over the G5 and it brings along a few industry firsts as well.

The new screen ratio works two-fold â€" it gives LG’s marketing a larger screen diagonal to boast about and it makes the phone narrower so everybody would appreciate the easier single-handed use. Something you may not have realized is that with the new 2:1 aspect ratio you lose screen real estate compared to any other device with a 5.7-inch 16:9 screen ratio. But since it makes the phone that much easier to handle with one hand, I would probably be willing to accept the tradeoff. Let’s wait for the full review tests to go through and we’ll have a more through pictu re. But I digress.

Continuing with our MWC 2017 topic, I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of the phone manufacturers such as Oppo and Meizu who didn’t have finished products for the MWC, had technology showcases instead. And nice ones at that. Oppo revealed its 5x lossless zoom dual camera setup, while Meizu showed us the fastest battery charging tech yet. Too bad it would take some more time before we see both technologies utilized in actual products we can buy.

At least, we get sneak peeks of what’s cooking back in their ‘kitchens’. After all, that’s a part of what makes expos unique â€" the product-centric unveiling such as the upcoming Samsung S8 Unpacked event don’t give you info on the next generation of technology that’s may be just around the corner. I certainly appreciate this trend and I would love to see more of these demoes set up by other manufacturers as well.

Another MWC 2017 highlight for me was the new improved camera on the Xperia XZs and XZ Premium. No, it’s not the 960fps slow motion video recording that striked my fancy. I am amazed by the fact that they’ve finally got to do the long overdue redesign of their camera system. The result is a radically different 19MP camera system, which should have improved performance in every single aspect. Sony has now got me excited about their cameraphones for the first time in a while. I can’t wait to get their final products in for testing.

Finally, I may not be personally attracted by the just announced Huawei P10 but I can certainly appreciate it for what it represents. It was nice to see Huawei keeping their guard up and coming up with great premium devices year after year. They are really doing a great job of establishing themselves in the West as the premium phone brand from China. And it’s only the high end â€" they’ve been doing great in the midrange as well. I really enjoy witnessing their rise. I am sure we’ll see even more exciting p roducts from them in the future.

With all that said, you are welcome on the next page where weve compiled the MWC product launches that disappointed us this year.

Were there any disappointments?

George

Not strictly a disappointment as it was known beforehand, but the absence of the Samsung Galaxy S8 made for a slightly less glamorous MWC this year. The Note7 dead and gone, Samsungs top tier is now represented by a year-old Galaxy S7 and the S8 cant come soon enough. Then again, Samsung does need to make sure the new phone is trouble-free - the company is surviving the Note7 fiasco just fine, but two in a row might be too much.

The Nokia 3310 isnt actually a 3310, the BlackBerry Keyone is about as ugly as phone-ly possible, the Huawei P10 is a smaller (hence, in my eyes, worse) Mate 9 , and the Galaxy Tab S3 is a wonderful tablet that Ill never buy with my own money. Random complaints - sure, but disappointments - not really.

Victor

I have to say, that overall, MWC 2017 left me with a hopeful outlook on the short-term future of the mobile realm. Even the PR stunt that was ultimately the Nokia 3310 (2017) managed to leave me with a nostalgic smile and no bad aftertaste.

Frankly, the biggest issues I am seeing now is with pricing. The LG G6 was supposed to be aimed slightly below flagship territory. Yet, its GBP 699 pre-order price tag suggests otherwise. EUR 599 for the BlackBerry KEYone is the same story, if not even worse. It will likely be the most expensive Snapdragon 625 device around.

I feel Lenovo is somewhat guilty in this respect as well. The Moto G family has built-up a great reputation for a value-first, no-frills Andr oid experience. Now the G5 and G5 Plus seem to be moving away from that quite a bit. To be fair, I do appreciate the return on the removable battery on the smaller of the pair. However, both devices did also shrink noticeable down in size compared to their predecessors. This just comes off as a deliberate market segmentation stunt on Lenovos end to make room for the 5.5-inch Moto Z Play. To top things off, a starting price of EUR 200 just seems a bit too much for a Snapdragon 430 and 2GB of RAM.

Chip

While it was certainly a PR masterpiece, the refreshed Nokia 3310 is a device that spells laziness. The phone has nothing to do with the original device in terms of either design or general behavior. Had it not been for the name no one would make any connection to the original and the change is mostly for the worse - the new one is frustratingly ugly. So its neith er a good piece of memorabilia nor a decent looking "modern" phone. Same with the Snake game that got quite a few mentions at the show - its a refreshed version thats tragically outdated by todays standards, but also completely different from what we had in the good old days. The 3310  still got everyone talking about a featurephone in 2017 so its a runaway success for HMD, but its a half-assed device if I ever saw one.

And speaking of ugly phones, Motorola immediately springs to my mind. The new G5 duo has wretched back panels where none of the elements work together. If Lenovo went for design thats easy to recognize in the crowd it succeeded but the attention it will enjoy will be for all the wrong reasons. The G5 Plus is at least a solid smartphone so it will probably still end on the shortlist of those looking to get top bang for their buck and dont have looks high or their priority lists (or are going to put it in a case anyway), but the G5 really has very little goi ng for it.

Finally, theres the BlackBerry Keyone - a phone that got many things right but that is ultimately doomed by its chipset. Snapdragon 625 isnt bad, but it was last years mid-range option. And when you are charging the kind of price the Keyone commands you really should be getting better than that.

Yordan

I love all the flagships we saw from Huawei, LG and Sony but now MWC seems more like the place tech companies have to be rather than reveal bold surprises that dazzle someone.

The G6 was no surprise at all since it leaked little by little with every day closing to the Congress; Huawei stalled 10 minutes talking about the sky and the grass in order to mask the fact that the Huawei P10 is basically smaller Mate 9 Pro with "dazzling" new colors.Sure, Meizu, for example, told us they have a charger that tops your battery for 20 minutes. It wil l eventually make its way to the market in 2018.

But compared with last years VR vibe all over the Gran Via, this year it was just...meh.

Heres to more groundbreaking futurology and less "Im just here so I dont get fined".

Ivan

Two - Nokia and Xiaomi.

I get that the new, HMD-led Nokia isnt the same one as before, but it sure does get caught up in the same old patterns - releasing only midrange devices and focusing on phones nobody wants or needs. The Nokia 3, 5 and 6 are all great but neither of them is a real flagship and thats what Im waiting for from Nokia - an honest-to-goodness top-shelf phone and neither of the three new droids deliver.

The new Nokia 3310 baffles me - releasing a dumb, I mean feature, phone in 2017 that has some new-fangled Snake game thats nothing like the original, and is built nothing like the tank-of-a- phone that the original 3310 was, is just useless.

Then theres Xiaomi. Last year it released the Mi 5 at the Mobile World Congress. This year we got nothing. I like big phone announcements, I expected a new Xiaomi flagship too. I guess its back to waiting for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ now.

Vlad

The G6s not-actually-round display corners, the P10s fingerprint sensor gestures, the XZ Premiums user experience for that 960fps mode, the Nokia 3310.

This is one of those things that once you see, you cant unsee. Aside from the lack of big bezels and odd aspect ratio, another thing that LG is touting for the G6 (and it will have in common with the S8 duo) is the fact that it has rounded screen corners. Im not going to get into whether thats practical or not, because frankly I cant get past the fact that those corners arent actually round. Not round in the way you think of the word when you read it or hear it, at least. I still hope this is an issue confined to the pre-production samples the media got, but otherwise it feels like something that will really hurt people affected in some way by OCD (of which apparently I am one).

Huawei decided to give you the option to use the P10s fingerprint scanner (now moved to the front) as a gesture pad that can replace the on-screen Android buttons. That sounds like a great idea in theory, except the gestures you need to perform are not what youd expect. For me Motorolas way (as seen on the G5 duo) makes a lot more sense, with tapping the sensor being Home, swiping left being Back, and swiping right taking you to the app switcher. Huawei wanted to be different, for some reason, so in the P10 one tap is Back, tapping and holding takes you Home, while swiping either left or right invokes the app switcher. I simply cant get used to this setup.

To actually use that 960fps video capture mode i n the XZ Premium or XZs (which, by the way, is only on for 0.18s), heres what you need to do. Open the Camera app, make sure youre in Video mode, then tap a special button that sits above the Record button, then tap Record to start recording, and then, when you decide you want to engage the high-fps mode, tap another button. This will automatically shoot 0.18s in slow-motion, and after that your video recording continues at normal fps. This all seems a bit too involved for spur-of-the-moment captures. Additionally, theres the problem that you need to tap the "high fps" button at just the right time while youre recording, since were talking about only 0.18s of footage here - otherwise youll miss that important moment that needed to be shot in slow-mo.

Finally (again), the 3310 is still a feature phone and not much other than a marketing stunt, although a very good one. Perhaps HMD should have tried something even more extreme and made it a smartphone, or focused on the perceive d ruggedness of the original by making the new 3310 resistant to water, dust, and drops. Oh, and 3G support would have been nice too (lets not even mention 4G).

Ricky

I was perhaps least impressed by the Huawei Watch 2 (which relates to my underwhelming impressions with Android 2.0, overall). While the Huawei Watch 2 was announced amidst the absence of wearables from LG and Moto, it still failed to captivate me as a wearable that I might see myself purchasing personally.

Also, from a consumers point-of-view, the majority of smartwatches that Ive seen folks wear is the Apple Watch, Google needs to take note of what Apple is doing and paraphrase it, then relay that to the OEMs.

Sidenote: I was initially unimpressed with the Nokia 3310. Given that I didnt personally own one, I figured I could see past the nostalgia. However, it seems that the initial pre-registrations for the phone at Carphone Warehouse have gained significant interest. It will definitely be a great phone for emerging markets where even the original 3310 is still being used. Though, I sincerely doubt it will ever make it to the States.

Chavdar

I second Georgi that I would have liked to see the S8 revealed at the MWC. I can’t escape the feeling that the delay is actually a marketing trick to escape any other concurrent phone announcement casting a shadow over the S8. But whatever the reason, at least there is another interesting phone announcement to look forward to this month.

As for the Nokia 3310 â€" I don’t consider this one a disappointment. The reason is that I didn’t have high expectations for it to start with. I’ve never imagined that any of the special phones of our past can work well if reimagined today because regar dless of their sentimental value, they would be hopelessly outdated. Their cheap price might be attractive but in the end, it would be just a simple call-making phone and today’s smartphones are so much more than that.

I understand what makes the concept of a new Nokia 3310 attractive. The world has changed and phones are no longer the prized possessions they once were. Phones of today are not something we would hold so dearly in our hearts that the memory of them would remain with us in the decades to follow.

Were living in a culture of disposable everything, not enjoying what we already have but instead, only wondering what would come next. And the concept of a new Nokia 3310 is a flashback from another time when things were different. And thats the reason for its immediate mass appeal.

But the throbbing sensation of nostalgia is easy to get over once you realize you that even though today’s devices are nothing like the ones in the past, there is another thin g that’s true as well â€" we are not the same people we used to be either. So lets embrace this and enjoy our lives and the world around us as it is.

! ( hope useful)