Recapping Mobile World Congress 2021

Mobile World Congress wrapped up its *in-person* conference yesterday, after a week of presentations and announcements from some of the world’s biggest telcos.

The return to the physical event in Barcelona was rather...quiet, with many vendors opting to attend virtually and few companies making major announcements compared to past years.

Nevertheless, some takeaways

Samsung announced its One UI Watch user experience, which will bring “performance enhancements, a more seamless experience between the Watch and Android smartphones, and access to an even greater number of applications.”

• One UI will be featured on the new platform it’s building with Google. Samsung, the (distant) No. 3 smartwatch maker, also teased its Unpacked event later in the summer, where it will reveal its new Galaxy Watch, which will also use One UI.

Qualcomm said it had organized support from over 35 telcos to implement the faster 5G variant, mmWave, in more networks.

• Right now, most 5G networks and connections use the “sub-6GHz” variant. In plain english: Sub-6GHz is only a slight upgrade over 4G/LTE connections. mmWave will be most effective in urban environments, where large numbers of people are connecting devices simultaneously.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a keynote that SpaceX's broadband project Starlink is hemorrhaging money ($5 billion–$10 billion) and has 69,000 users, up from 10,000 in February. He hopes to have Starlink available to everyone outside of polar regions by August.—JM