Companies look to innovate in VR, mobile, and computer markets
This year’s Mobile World Congress, held from Feb. 27 to March 2 in Barcelona, featured a variety of technologies; mainly cellular phones, but also virtual reality, laptops, and miscellaneous associated tech.
Many companies are looking toward the future, while others are taking intentional steps into the past.
The most notable blast from the past is the Nokia 3310, a callback to the success of the brick phone—made for basic functionality, long battery life, and an extremely low cost.
Instead of losing a race in modernity against competitors, Nokia is going back to its roots to fill in the vacuum of cheap and durable phones that showed great popularity in the international market.
ZTE is also making an effort with its Android N budget phones, the Blade V8 Mini and Lite, which still offer full touchscreen interaction and other features of modern phones rather than the retro keypad approach of the Nokia 3310.
Inexpensive, lightweight, and portable tablet laptops are surging forward with the Samsung Galaxy Book, Lenovo’s Miix 320 and Yoga 720, and even a Porsche designed laptop called the Book One. These are coming out in competition to both the Windows Surface line as well as Google’s Chromebooks. The idea of simpler and cheaper tech is indicative of a larger trend in the democratization of technology.
Taking a step into the future, Google announced Google Home, which is a speaker powered by Google Assistant and can be linked to the user’s other devices.
In the same vein as the Google Echo, this allows for communication with an AI to both remotely control other devices as well as ask it questions and even have a conversation. Improvements on the Echo include context within a conversation, allowing you to ask follow up questions to previous statements rather than having to reframe the context with each speech input. Existing devices such as the Amazon Alexa mean there is both competition and a rising market in home AI.
Samsung, in conjunction with Oculus, is releasing another Gear VR virtual reality headset for use with a phone with an improved remote.
Also in the world of virtual reality, HTC Vive is both releasing the accessory of a discrete headset and announcing a tracker for use in conjunction with Vive VR games.
Current tech is being improved to be cheaper while simultaneously more advanced, yet there is a clear step into the past coming from the mobile market, which may snowball if proven successful.
Photo courtesy of Heiko AL via Public Domain.