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20th December 2016
12:18am GMT
With the Mobile World Congress finishing up today in Barcelona we've rounded up the best of the best announcements from the week.
Now this is mind-blowing technology. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers who are based in NYC demonstrated their incredible mind-controlled racing game. Players can move the model cars using the power of their brains while wearing a special headset linked up to a computer system. The IEEE are planning on releasing this product this year to the general public in the next few months. The future of gaming is here.
Car-maker Ford unveiled their e-bike prototype this week. And obviously mobile can mean many things other than portable phones. Ford have ventured into the e-bike market to try and make this type of transport lighter, more portable and foldable. The MoDe:Me and MoDe:Pro were the two types of prototypes showcased. Both e-bikes are equipped with a 200-watt motor and a 9-amp-hour battery which will allow users get up to speeds of 25km/hr.
Probably one of the biggest breakthroughs this week - Sandisk's 200GB MicroSD Card effectively turns your smartphone into a portable hard drive. This means you can use your mobile to store larger files, making our pocket computers even more necessary in our online world. This is a huge amount of storage - just to put it into perspective, you can fit up to 20 hours of HD video on this bad boy.
Qualcomm Sense ID is a brand new type of fingerprint recognition tech. It uses ultrasonic sound wave to get a super detailed map of your fingerprint that produces an extremely high-res scan of it compared to traditional sensors. This new tech can be used on both glass and sapphire meaning it can be integrated anywhere on a mobile device. Big news for security.
This is like something in a sci-fi. Lots of people were nerding out over Fujitsu's iris scanning phone. Apparently it's both speedy and scarily accurate. The tech has been made to ramp up mobile security and be used as a barricade when unlocking phones. At the moment the design doesn't look so slick, the iris scanner looks like a third party gadget attached to the top of the device but the company promise that it will be redesigned to look more integrated soon.
Portable projectors will dominate the gadget world in 2015 and beyond. To date they've been pretty over-priced, over-sized and out-dated. Now ZTE's SPro2 Smart Projector claims to tackle all these issues. It looks so sleek and quite "Apple" like. It has 16GB of internal memory meaning it doesn't always have to be plugged into your mobile (Android only) phone to play media. It carries 3 hours of independent battery life and rumour has it they'll be dropping in the summer of 2015.
This projector has picked up a "Best Mobile Enabled Consumer Electronics Device" award at the 20th Global Mobile Awards conducted by the GSMA during the MWC. Keep an eye out for this one.
With Apple due to announce some developments with Apple Watch on Monday LG weren't shy about showing off their latest smartwatch - the LG Urbane LTE. It's the fourth smartwatch they've made and runs WebOS instead of Android. One major thing to note that this watch is only the second to include NFC-based mobile payments. Rumours have it, this will cost over $300.
This piece of tech is obviously being compared to the Oculus Rift all week. HTC have teamed up with Valve to produce the virtual reality headset. The main difference being that it comes with two IR trackers and loads of built-in sensors so that users can physically move about in a 15x15ft room and experience the VR. It also pairs with wireless controllers for interacting with virtual objects. No pricing was announced, but Re Vive will hit stores this Christmas.
Sony's first dust and water-resistant smartphone. It also has two powerful cameras and claims to have a two-day battery. It also comes in a range of three colours, has a 64-bit octa-core chipset, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. Beats the iPhone any day. This drops in April 2015 with an estimated price tag of $300.
Everyone was falling over this announcement at the MWC 2015. The new Samsung Galaxy S6 should not be mistaken as an evolution of the S5, but a whole new design. Made with aluminium, it has a beautiful 5.1 inch display with the same res as the Note 4 and will come in four colours. This android also includes wireless charging, something that Apple cannot seem to get their heads around. Comes with 64-bit octa-core chipset, 3GB of RAM and up-to 128GB of storage. The S6 comes equipped with NRC payments and will ship as early as April 2015. It is expected to sell anywhere from $750-1,110 which is an insane amount to spend on a mobile phone but no doubt the techies will be queuing up for this upon arrival.
