MWC 2026 Day 3: Taking Your Robots Outside

Day three is my last day at MWC 2026, which is an improvement from last year when I only took the stage twice. I was able to pick up a few smartphones this year compared to last, which was a nice change of pace for, you know, Mobile World Congress. But now my time in Barcelona has come and gone, and before I hit the road (again? still?) I wanted to talk about the last few cool things I found at MWC.

On my last day, I ran the gamut of tech, and the (completely accidental) theme of the day was getting out of tech or at least pretending to — you’ll see what I mean in a minute. I left there and went outside to take a taxi and headed to the airport. So, with my third and final day of MWC in the books, here’s what I saw.

I’ve been talking to Xgimi for a few months now about their MemoMind One smart glasses, but I’ve yet to try a demo. That’s mainly from the rule I have of not putting things on my face that have been on hundreds of other faces. Today at MWC, I arrived early and tried the demo since I was at least the first face of the day. All in all, I came in hoping to be careful. This could be a compelling contribution to the smart glasses space. They have monochrome screens built into lenses that drive small projectors. Since Xgimi is a projector company at heart, this was a natural fit.

My demo took me to a few functions, including a question and answer session with AI, a calendar and notifications, a teleprompter mode, and a real-time(ish) translator. All the work went very well, I’m happy to report. The glasses also have built-in speakers that sound great, but I couldn’t ask for the usual selection of songs that I would have liked.

The glasses should launch sometime in April for $599, which sounds steep given the limited performance I experienced. It seems that there are many factors that come down to it, but at the moment, I did not feel that $ 600 would be a good investment. They still need more time to cook. Fortunately, most errors are software-related, so there is room for improvement.

SunLED is a company that showcases a device that aims to help you feel better, even, and especially if you’re stuck behind a desk all day. This company was founded by Dr. Anne Berends, who was there to talk about this technology. Here is the gist of it.

If you stay inside all day, you’re missing out on some of the important qualities that sunlight infuses your body with. Many of us work for a living; it’s not like we have much choice, so dr. Berends has developed technology to deliver those near-UV rays directly using a device that looks a lot like a webcam. Throughout the day, the device shines an invisible light on you to help you stay energized. If that sounds like snake oil, I agree, so ask me about it.

The company has submitted scientific, double-blind studies that demonstrate the characteristics of self-identification and emotions. Some people got the real thing, some got nothing, and some got a placebo. Users reported feeling better, and physical metrics such as resting heart rate decreased. All of that seems to support the idea that this could be helpful. It’s not a cure for everything that ails you, but if you can’t get out more, maybe you can bring in more.

Oukitel is always fun to visit at MWC because the company makes big and often ridiculous phones with huge batteries and features you wouldn’t think to include. This year did not disappoint. The Oukitel WP63 comes with ridiculously standard features for a phone — a 20,000 mAh battery, a large signal light, a huge speaker, and a formidable processor that you could only wish for someone who kicked your dog. If that’s where Oukitel stopped, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. But Oukitel didn’t stop there.

This phone – this smartphone built in the year of our lord 2026 – has a fire starter/lighter built into it. You read that right. This phone can start a fire, intentionally or unintentionally. At the top of the phone, a small burner heats up (controlled by the app) until it ignites your tinder, or your cigarette, or your house if you need insurance money. All those things are on the table.

Obviously, this device is made for outdoor, survivalist people who need this kind of thing close at hand. I can’t imagine the average office worker hopping on the train to the city for their office job with this phone in their pocket, but I won’t judge. So if you’re going off the grid, but for some reason you’re still looking for a phone, and you want that phone to light your fire, boy, do I have good news for you.

I didn’t “talk to three different satellite companies” on my MWC bingo card, but here we are. I first became interested in satellite-to-phone technology back in 2023, when I went to see it demonstrated by Qualcomm. Since then, several other companies, including Apple and Google, have developed their own capabilities, and until now, it has been heard as part of a measure or a workaround.

After speaking with companies like Skylo, Viasat, and AT&T, I feel like we may be on the brink of a technological revolution. I can’t speak directly to what they told me – most of it was theoretical, and some things were not 100% on the record, but I learned a few interesting stories that I can share. First, your phone may already be talking to satellites, which means it probably has the ability to do so. The feature may not be enabled, and there may not be a service to enable it — yet — but the technology is there, and it’s possible. Like setting up a terrestrial network, there are things to consider, like spectrum and bandwidth, to deal with, but for the most part, the power is there.

In addition, the skill may come sooner than you think. I don’t want to sound vague, but the conversations I’ve had with these companies have been very encouraging. As I noted in 2023, 85% of the world has limited or no connectivity, so there is definitely a gap to be closed, and these companies seem very close to providing a real solution in the not too distant future. This will be an interesting place to watch.

Qualcomm introduced its new processor designed for wearables – Snapdragon Wear Elite. Like its bigger siblings, the Snapdragon Wear Elite is a processor built on the 3nm process, which makes it very fast and energy efficient. It also has a built-in NPU for AI processing with up to two million parameters.

This allows a device like a watch or AI pin to process its own AI models on the device, making them faster and more efficient. This should also help tremendously with battery life, as the Wear Elite performs very well. It uses a big.LITTLE core infrastructure with a main core of 2.1 GHz and four other cores of 1.95 GHz to handle light tasks.

Both Samsung and Google have signed on to use the Snapdragon Wear Elite processor in future wearables. That could include the next Galaxy Watch and Pixel, among other things. Wearables are becoming a big thing in the future, and this processor can help define their capabilities in a big way.

Finally, if you’re looking outside and want to get some work done, there’s the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro. This is Xiaomi’s latest flagship tablet, and I’ve been reviewing it for a few weeks now. Simply put, it’s great. It has a decent 11.2-inch 3.2K display and a refresh rate of 144 Hz. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. It only has 8 GB or 12 GB of RAM on board, but given the lack of RAM, I think that can be forgiven. #ThankyouAI.

The tablet also shipped to me with a Pro magnetic keyboard, which is a clone of the Apple Magic keyboard. The keyboard itself is amazing to type on and has a decent sized trackpad. This is the mystery tablet I brought with my MSI Prestige 13 laptop to MWC, and it worked as intended. It’s a great portable typewriter that uses content when you need it.

Finally, although this device will not help you outside – anywhere for now, as it remains a mysterious concept – there is the Honor robot phone. I got a preview of this device at CES a few months ago, but that was an inactive demo. Now, I got to see a working demo, but I wasn’t allowed to hold it yet. My colleague said, “I’ll get it, vaporware,” which is a fair assessment, but given the demos I’ve seen, this is a little higher on the scale towards becoming a real product.

The essence of the device is that it is a camera on a gimbal, and that comes with all the obvious advantages. Stable camera shooting and the ability to point the camera anywhere are obvious features. Honor went further, however, by adding some personality to the device. The gimbal can move and move to music or watch you react with the on-board AI. None of these things need anything else – you can have a gimbal that doesn’t dance, and you can have built-in AI that can play music without dancing. The combination is nice, but I’m not 100% sure it’s necessary. Anyway, this is a phone that is currently available and will be launched soon-ish, so we will work with it.