Ubergizmo’s Best of Mobile World Congress 2023

It was great seeing Mobile World Congress 2023 (MWC) come back to life and catch up with a large contingent of international tech personalities. There were many cool products and technologies, and now that the show has ended, it’s time to share what caught our attention. Without further ado, here are Ubergizmo’s Best of MWC 2023: in no particular order.

Honor Magic5 Pro

At MWC 2013, Honor launched the Honor Magic5 Pro, a new smartphone with an elegant design and an overall human-centric” approach to technology. Honor focuses on providing “intuitive technology solutions to improve the daily lives of everyone,” according to George Zhao, Honor’s CEO.

The specifications are impressive, with a 6.81” curved-edge LTPO display that peaks at 1800 NITs and an amazing triple-50MP camera array with laser-assisted autofocus in the back of the phone. This might be a very high performer, but we’ll have to take a closer look, so stay tuned!

Xiaomi 13 Pro

The Xiaomi 13 Pro is the new Xiaomi flagship smartphone, and at 1299 Euros, it is priced as a high-end device. You get great technology (like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform) and outright luxury for that price. For example, the ceramic chassis in either Black or White is noticeably more Premium than any other type of surface, glass included.

It also comes with a Leica-tuned powerful triple-camera system in the rear. The 5500 mAh battery is 10% larger than most high-end phones and charges very fast with a cable (67W), but Xiaomi 13 Pro’s 50W wireless charging is also 66% faster than the iPhone 14 Pro 30W wired charging.

OnePlus 11 Concept with the cooling system

When it comes to raw performance, most devices are not only limited by their computing platform but also by the thermal build-up. For computer designers, there are not many more challenging things than cooling a high-powered, fanless, smartphone that can run console-looking games.

OnePlus is known for building excellent “performance/value” phones, such as the OnePlus 10T. At MWC, the company introduced its new OnePlus Active Cryoflux cooling technology. Essentially, OnePlus has demonstrated a liquid-cooling system, with an active pump, for smartphones. In theory, this allows heat to be transferred away from the processor faster, sustaining the performance at a higher level than previous cooling techniques. Exciting!

TCL NXTPaper11

The new TCL NXTPAPER 11 is a $249 derivative of the TCL NXTPAPER 12 Pro launched at CES this year. As its name suggests, it is an 11-inch tablet with NXTPAPER display technology (with a backlight). This tablet is not your run-the-mill e-paper tech. It has a 2K resolution, 500 NITs of brightness (2X brighter than before), and pretty good colors (for a paper-like screen). This display is optimized for eye comfort rather than battery life like e-Ink is. Reading on it is much more comfortable, especially in a place with potential glare.

Lenovo Rollable Laptop Proof of Concept

There’s one thing everybody agrees on: more display surface area is better for productivity. That explains the explosion of foldable phones like the Z Fold4 or the new Honor Magic Vs. It’s also true for mobile laptop displays. Lenovo is known for building the first Foldable laptop with the ThinkPad X1 Fold. The newer X1 Fold Gen 2 is even better, but they have a new Rollable laptop concept this time.

The Lenovo Rollable Laptop Concept seems to be built with something like the Yogabook 9i dual-screen with a new rollable display. If Lenovo can make this work, we want to take it for a spin! The extended display has some serious productivity power.

Motorola Rollable Phone

Motorola came to MWC 2023 prepared, and the company showed its Rollable Phone concept to us. This may indicate that Lenovo is thinking “rollable” across the board (Motorola is a subsidiary of Lenovo), but this concept is exciting. Like the new foldable flip-phones like the Z Flip4, the goal is to have a compact phone with a big screen. However, rollable telephones can potentially occupy a smaller volume than flip phones.

The screen extension is only ~1mm thick when rolled out. In the “closed” position, the extra display surface can be used in the back of the phone: for example as a camera viewfinder. The technology is here, so let’s see if Motorola will launch a groundbreaking product with it.

Honor Magic Vs

The new Honor Magic Vs (“Five-S” not “Versus”) is Honor’s take on foldable phones and a direct competitor of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4. Launched in China not long ago, the Magic Vs makes its way to the global market at MWC 2023.

This large foldable phone has many qualities worth noticing: a larger display, better zoom camera, larger battery capacity, and charge speed, for example. According to Honor, some of this is made possible by the new, very smart, hinge design that frees up a lot of internal volume while being tested for 400k open/close cycles. That’s 2X more than the competition.

With the Magic Vs, Honor shows it is a serious player at the very highest level, and consumers can rejoice. Read our Honor Magic Vs review!

Eliane Fiolet
Categories: Cellphones, Events
Tags: Honor, Lenovo, Motorola, MWC, MWC 2023, OnePlus, Social Hit, tcl, Xiaomi