The first couple of days at the Mobile World Congress are usually packed with the most announcements, with activity dropping from day three onwards. The story is not different this year. Here is a round-up of day three activities along with other announcements at the event that we have yet to beam the spotlight on.
iPhone 6 and LG G3 named Best Smartphone
With reduced activity at the MWC 2015 on Wednesday, it was time for the organizers to hand out dozens of awards in different categories. In the Best Smartphone Award category, a clear winner could not be determined, so the honour had to be shared between the Apple iPhone 6 and LG G3 smartphones.
The award for the Best Low-cost Smartphone went to the Motorola Moto E, while the Moto 360 smart watch came away with the Best Wearable Mobile Technology. The prize for the Best Tablet was given to the Surface Pro 3 by Microsoft.
Canonical shows off Ubuntu phone
British firm Canonical was also busy at the Barcelona show, displaying the second handset to come pre-installed with its Ubuntu mobile operating system. The device, which is targeted at mid-to-high-end segment of the market, is manufactured by the less-popular Chinese firm Meizu Telecom.
It is actually the Ubuntu edition of the Meizu MX4 Android phone, which is already shipping. It flaunts a 5.3-inch display with HD (1080p) resolution. Under the hood, the smartphone has an octa-core MediaTek chipset and 2GB of RAM as well as Bluetooth 4.0, LTE and Wi-Fi 802.11 ac support.
Alcatel unveils more devices
After figuring among the companies that unveiled devices on the eve of MWC 2015, Alcatel has gone ahead to announce more devices, including the Pixi 3 range of tablets and smartphones.
The phones unveiled are the 3G-enabled Pixi 3 (5.5-inch), the 4G-enabled Pixi 3 (5.5-inch) and the Firefox-based Orange Klif. The new Alcatel tablets include PIXI3 3G, PIXI3 4G LTE and PIXI3 Wi-Fi, all with 7-inch displays.
The company has also unveiled the OneTouch Hero 2+ smartphone, which packs a massive 6-inch, full-HD (1080p) TFT display and an octa-core MediaTek processor clocked at 2GHz. The Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2+ runs on all-new Cyanogen software.
SanDisk launches a massive 200GB microSDXC
A huge 200GB microSDXC has also been unveiled by SanDisk. And when we say “huge,” it’s not in terms of physical size, as it looks just like your regular microSD card.
However, the card with a rated speed of 90MB per second is rather useless for use on smartphones at this time. The maximum card size supported by any smartphone is currently 128GB. However, expect next gen phones to head nearer to 200GB
ZTE introduces phone with biometric eye verification
Chinese tech company ZTE has continued in its stride to rub shoulders with the big players in the high-end smartphone market. This fact was once again displayed through its launching of a phone with an eye-based biometric feature at the MWC.
The device called the ZTE Grand S3 uses a biometric eye-authentication solution developed by EyeVerify. Users can unlock the sleek device using their eyes, with the biometric solution able to read and recognize vein patterns in the human eye.
The ZTE Grand S3, already available in China, has been dubbed the world’s first smartphone with eye-based biometric tool. The phone runs on the Android OS and is fitted with a 5.5-inch, full-HD display.
Gionee thin smartphone range gets new addition
The latest device in Gionee’s slim series, the Elife S7, has also been launched at the Barcelona event. Aviation-type aluminium and magnesium alloy were reportedly used in the design of the smartphone, which runs on Gionee’s Android 5.0 (Lollipop) with Amigo 3.0 UI skin.
The Elife S7 is fitted with a 5.2-inch, Full-HD Super AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. It is powered by an octa-core processor clocked at 1.7GHz.
