MWC 2025: All the news from Samsung, Nothing, Lenovo, Xiaomi and more

Mobile World Congress is taking place in Barcelona this week, offering manufacturers an opportunity to show off new gear without needing to hold their own splashy event. So far, we've learned about some new laptops and phones, as well as upcoming AI updates to Android and an internet connectivity announcement from Meta.
Here's a look at everything announced at Mobile World Congress that caught our eye. We'll update this story throughout the week.
Among the bigger-name manufacturers, Lenovo has arguably had the busiest MWC so far. The company has revealed a whole bunch of laptops, including upgraded ThinkPads and several intriguing concept models.
The ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 has a design that's more aligned with the convertible format of the Yoga lineup than a typical ThinkPad. The 14-inch machine can be equipped with a 400-nit WUXGA touch display. Other ThinkPads are getting spec upgrades, while Lenovo claims the new ThinkPad X13 Gen 6 has 'one of the lightest ThinkPad designs ever.' The company has a fresh slate of laptops with generative AI capabilities as well.
Some of Lenovo's concepts have certainly caught our attention. It's a bummer that the company doesn't currently plan to turn the Yoga Solar PC Concept into a commercial device. Thanks to the solar cells on the casing, the laptop can soak up enough energy from the sun in 20 minutes to play an hour of videos. As little as 0.3 watts of light is enough to juice up the battery. While solar-powered laptops aren't exactly new, the Yoga Solar PC feels polished. Here's hoping Lenovo does more with the notion in the future.
In addition, Lenovo showed off some conceptual display accessories for a ThinkBook laptop. There's an eight-inch screen that attaches to the side magnetically to help you, for instance, keep up with notifications and widgets. The Magic Bay Dual Display Concept adds a 13.3-inch panel to either side of the main display. There's also a slim second display that's designed to sit above your laptop screen and provide quick access to things like the time, weather, notifications, a focus mode timer, an AI assistant and notifications.
On top of all of that, Lenovo offered a look at a new prototype laptop with a flexible display. Building on the tech the company used in the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, the ThinkBook codename Flip AI PC Proof of concept (to give its full name) has a fold-out screen. This allows Lenovo to double the panel's size from 13 inches to 18.1 inches. The ThinkBook Rollable's display, on the other hand, can extend to 16.7 inches. Again, Lenovo doesn't currently plan to release a commercial version of this fold-out laptop, but it's an interesting idea.
The main MWC news from Samsung this year is the company's latest midrange and budget phones. The Galaxy A56 has a larger screen than its predecessor at 6.7 inches, but it's thinner too at 7.44mm vs. 8.2mm. There's now a small bump where the volume and power buttons are — a tweak that we feel makes the A56 easier to handle.
Samsung has switched up the camera array in the A56. On the front, there's a lower-res 12MP lens. On the other side, you'll find an upgraded 12MP ultrawide, 50MP main sensor and a 5MP macro lens. The A56 has a bunch of AI-powered camera and image editing features, such as enhanced subject detection in portrait mode and an object eraser.
Pre-orders are open in the UK for the Galaxy A56, which costs $499/£499. It will hit the UK on March 19, but folks in the US will have to wait until "later this year" for it.
Samsung also revealed the Galaxy A36 5G and Galaxy A26 5G. Both devices have a 120Hz, 6.7-inch display with brightness of up to 1,200 nits. They also share an IP67 rating and 5,000mAh battery with the A56.
However, the base models of each only have 6GB of RAM (compared with the A56's 12GB). In addition, the A36 has the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 processor instead of the Exynos 1580 that the A56 boasts, while the A26 has a Exynos 1380 chipset.
Unfortunately, Xiaomi doesn't have plans to bring a handset it showed off at MWC to the US. That's a real pity, because no other companies are selling phones quite like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in the country these days.
Xiaomi teamed up with Leica to make a smartphone that leans heavily into photography. The camera array includes a 1-inch 50-megapixel Sony main sensor, an f/2.2 50MP ultrawide cam, a 50MP midrange lens with a 70mm focal length and a 200MP periscope array with a 100mm focal length — that equates to a 4.7x optical zoom. Some preset Leica filters help to tie the two brands' knowhow together.
That's not all that might be interesting to mobile snappers. Xiaomi's separate Photography kit includes an add-on camera grip with a physical shutter button, an adjustable dial and dedicated video button. You'll have the option to attach a standard 67mm filter adapter to a case as well — in other words, some of the equipment you might use on a dedicated camera is compatible with the Ultra 15 as part of this setup.
Moreover, the Ultra 15 has a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and up to 3,200 nits of brightness to help you get a good look at your captures. Plus, unlike some other Chinese phones (like Huawei's), Xiaomi supports Google services in HyperOS 2, which is an Android skin. The Ultra 15 starts at about €1,499 (around $1,572).
Speaking of Android, Google announced two new AI-powered features for the operating system at MWC. The Live Video function, which Google first previewed at I/O 2024, allows you to share what your phone's camera sees with Gemini so you can ask the chatbot questions about the footage.
The new screensharing function works in a similar way. You can ask Gemini questions about whatever's on your phone or tablet's display.
If they work as well as advertised, these features could be a boon for accessibility. Google will first offer them to Gemini Advanced subscribers starting later this month. Those with a $20 per month Google One AI Premium membership, which is included with some Verizon plans, have access to Gemini Advanced.
Samsung wasn't the only smartphone maker of note to show off two new mid-range devices at MWC. Nothing debuted its Phone 3a Pro and Phone 3a at the event — even though it has yet to unleash the Phone 3.
The 3a Pro has a beefier camera module (quite literally as the device is about 10 grams heavier than the 3a). It contains a 50MP telephoto sensor with a 3x optical zoom; a 50MP primary sensor with f/1.88 lens and dual-pixel phase detection auto-focus (PDAF); and an ultrawide 8MP sensor with a 120-degree field of view. The handset has a telemacro mode too. As for the 3a, that boasts a main 50MP camera with single-pixel PDAF, but the other two sensors are the same as on the 3a Pro.
The cameras are the main difference between the two phones, which both have a 6.77-inch AMOLED LTPS display with a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 1,300 nits of brightness. The phones have a 5,000mAh battery with support for 50W fast charging, and they run on a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset.
The devices have Nothing's multipurpose Essential Key, a physical button that can take screenshots and help you record voice notes. The phones also have some generative AI features, such as the ability to transcribe said voice notes and describe what's in screenshots and photos.
As usual, Nothing is initially offering these devices in the US through a beta program. Phone 3a pre-orders are open now and the $379 handset ships on March 11. That's the date when pre-orders for the Phone 3a Pro go live. The $459 phone can be in your hands on March 25.
There was more news out of MWC beyond new gear and OS updates. Meta and the Internet Society announced a partnership to bolster affordable internet connectivity around the globe. They're jointly putting $30 million into the initiative over the next five years.
A major aim of the project is to help build out infrastructure in areas where commercial providers have yet to do so. The Connectivity Co-Funding Initiative will also back training programs, community-centered solutions for underserved areas and locally owned networks. The Internet Society is hoping to find more partners to help with the project.
Engadget will be reporting all the latest mobile and smartphone news from MWC 2025 as it happens the week of March 2.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

25 minutes ago

• Yahoo

Meta's CFO describes her mortifying first day on the Morgan Stanley trading floor

Meta's CFO talked about what it was like starting at Morgan Stanley when she was 19 after graduating from college. Susan Li told the Stripe cofounder John Collison in a podcast interview that her age was spotlighted on her first day. She also talked about what she learned from working with former Morgan Stanley tech banker Michael Grimes. Her first day on Morgan Stanley's trading floor, Susan Li was "mortified." Li, who is now Meta's CFO, started at the bank around two decades ago when she was just 19, after graduating from Stanford sooner than most of her peers. "When I showed up at Morgan Stanley for my first day, I was on the trading floor in the big Broadway headquarters at 1585, and the equivalent of an HRBP basically got the attention of everyone on the trading floor," Li told Stripe cofounder John Collison on his podcast Cheeky Pint. "And so she wanted everyone on the floor to stop and look at me and know that no one was to serve me any alcohol at any company gathering." It was about par for the course for the industry, she added. "So it was exactly the way you think about beginning your career on Wall Street, by being mortified," she said. The Meta CFO talked about some of the potential pros and cons of advancing through the education system so quickly. "Well, some might say, because I started kindergarten when I was four and I graduated from college when I was 19, that having 15 years of formal education is — I'm woefully under-educated, as it were, so I'm really just having to make up for that rough start," Li said. She was able to sprint through her education, she added, in part because the institutions she attended noticed when students needed different challenges to keep them engaged. "I was in a school system that identified when kids were bored in school and then just gave you opportunities to keep moving ahead, and my parents always took them," she said. Li first joined Meta in 2008, eventually rising to the rank of CFO at 36 years old, making her one of the youngest chief financial officers in an industry where the average age of people in similar positions is 53. When Li finally entered the professional circuit as a banker, she said she worked with Michael Grimes, the former head of global technology investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Grimes is currently a senior official at the United States Department of Commerce. Li said she remembered Grimes' energetic nature and curiosity, as well as his ability to outwork anyone. "Grimes is extraordinarily, very high-energy — applies that to a whole host of things," Li said. "You go talk to Michael about tech companies, about banking, about parenting, about why there should be more undergraduate sales programs in colleges in the country. He's got a point of view on everything, and he's endlessly curious." Morgan Stanley and Meta did not respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication. Li added that Grimes's behavior served as a sort of model for her own. "He is going to outwork you and outlearn you. It's actually a pretty spectacular thing as a young person starting in your career to see what excellence at this looks like," Li said. Read the original article on Business Insider

Miami Herald

3 hours ago

• Miami Herald

OpenAI makes shocking move amid fierce competition, Microsoft problems

A blind man once told me, "I wish I knew what a beautiful woman looks like". He started losing his sight from birth and lost it completely while he was still just a child. What do the engineers trying to make artificial intelligence know about intelligence? To me, they look like a bunch of blind men, trying to build a "living" statue of a beautiful person. The worst part is, they don't even know they are blind. Do you remember the scandal when an engineer from Google claimed that the company's AI is sentient? When I saw the headlines, I didn't even open the articles, but my conclusion was that either Google made a terrible mistake in hiring him or it was an elaborate PR stunt. I thought Google was famous for having a high hiring bar, so I was leaning toward a PR stunt-I was wrong. Related: Apple WWDC underwhelms fans in a crucial upgrade What is amazing about that story is that roughly six months later, ChatGPT came out and put Google's AI department into panic mode. They were far behind ChatGPT, which was not even close to being sentient. Engineers from OpenAI, were the ones to start a new era, the era in which investors are presented with a statue that sort of has a human face, and has a speaker inside playing recordings of human speech, expecting that the "blind" men working on it, will soon make it become alive and beautiful. Of course, investors are also ignorant of the fact that engineers are "blind". OpenAI is now faced with many rivals, and the developing situation is starting to look like a bunch of bullies trying to out-bully each other instead of offering a superior product. Meta's recent investment of $15 billion in Scale AI seems to have hit OpenAI quite hard. OpenAI will phase out work with Scale AI, said the company spokesperson for Bloomberg on June 18th. According to the same source, Scale AI accounted for a small fraction of OpenAI's overall data needs. It looks like Meta's latest move angered OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman. In a podcast hosted by his brother, he revealed that Meta Platforms dangled $100 million signing bonuses to lure OpenAI staff, only to fail. "None of our best people have decided to take them up on that," he said, writes Moz Farooque for TheStreet. Related: Popular AI stock inks 5G network deal Unless Altman shows some evidence, this can also be a way to mislead Meta's engineers into believing they aren't compensated fairly. Not that Zuckerberg wouldn't do such a thing, but only the people involved know the truth. As if OpenAI's competition is closing in, buying partner companies and trying to poach its staff by offering ridiculous bonuses aren't enough, the company has even more problems. It is bleeding money, and has issues with a big stakeholder. More AI Stocks: Veteran fund manager raises eyebrows with latest Meta Platforms moveGoogle plans major AI shift after Meta's surprising $14 billion moveAnalysts revamp forecast for Nvidia-backed AI stock OpenAI lost about $5 billion in 2024. There are no estimates on how much the company will lose this year, but according to Bloomberg News, the company does not expect to become cash flow positive until 2029. Latest developments will likely push that date farther into the future. Microsoft has invested about $14 billion in OpenAI; however, the relationship has turned sour since then. OpenAI has considered accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior in their deal, reported the Wall Street Journal on June 16th. On June 19th The Financial Times reported that Microsoft is prepared to abandon its negotiations with OpenAI if the two sides cannot agree on critical issues. Meanwhile, OpenAI has started shockingly discounting enterprise subscriptions to ChatGPT. This had angered salespeople at Microsoft, which sells competing apps at higher prices, reported The Information. Related: Amazon's latest big bet may flop "In my experience, products are only discounted when they are not selling because customers do not perceive value at the higher price. If someone loses copious amounts of money at the higher price, how will the economics work at a lower price?" wrote veteran hedge fund manager Doug Kass in his diary on TheStreet Pro." OpenAI's price cuts could kick off a price war, with a race to the bottom even as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and Google continue plowing tens of billions into developing it. "My suspicion, although those guys might be good (in theory) at technology, they are not good at business. I think they will find much less in the way of elasticity than they hope, because the problem is the quality of the output more than it is the price," said Kass. What will happen to OpenAI's cash flow positive plan after 2029? I doubt it is reachable with the now slashed prices. Will the company even live to see 2029? I think that is a better question. Related: Elon Musk's DOGE made huge mistakes with veterans' programs The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.

Gizmodo

4 hours ago

• Gizmodo

The $14 Billion AI Google Killer

A new AI darling is making waves in Silicon Valley. It's called Perplexity, and according to reports, both Meta and Apple have quietly explored acquiring it. Valued at a staggering $14 billion following a May funding round, the startup is being hailed as a revolutionary threat to Google Search's search dominance. But here's the thing: it mostly just summarizes web results and sends you links. So why the frenzy? Perplexity billed itself an 'answer engine.' You ask a question, and it uses large language models to spit out a human-sounding summary, complete with footnotes. It's essentially ChatGPT with a bibliography. You might ask for the best books about the French Revolution or a breakdown of the Genius Act. In seconds, it generates a paragraph with links to Wikipedia, news outlets, or Reddit threads. Its pitch is a cleaner, ad-free, chatbot-driven search experience. No SEO junk, no scrolling. But critics say it's little more than a glorified wrapper around Google and OpenAI's APIs, with minimal proprietary tech and lots of smoke. It's fast, clean, and slick. But, they argue, at its core, it's mostly just reorganizing the internet. Big Tech's Obsession That hasn't stopped the hype. In May 2025, the San Francisco, California based company closed another $500 million funding round, pushing its valuation to $14 billion, a sharp increase from its $9 billion valuation in December 2024. Jeff Bezos, via the Jeff Bezos Family Fund, and Nvidia are among its notable backers And now, tech giants are circling. According to Bloomberg, Apple has held talks about acquiring Perplexity. Meta has also reportedly considered the move, though no formal offers have been confirmed. The logic is clear. Perplexity is fast-growing and increasingly seen as a 'Google killer,' especially among tech influencers and X power users. Traffic to its site has exploded in recent months. The company now offers a Chrome extension, mobile app, and a Pro version that gives users access to top-tier AI models like GPT-4 and Claude. Still, it's unclear what exactly makes Perplexity worth $14 billion, other than the fact that it's riding the AI wave. Why AI Skeptics Are Rolling Their Eyes For AI skeptics, Perplexity's rise is yet another example of hype outpacing substance. The site doesn't train its own models. It's not building new infrastructure. It's not revolutionizing search. It's just offering a polished interface to ask questions and get AI-generated summaries pulled from public websites. There are also growing concerns about how Perplexity sources its information. A number of news organizations, including The New York Times, Forbes, and Wired, have accused the company of plagiarizing and scraping content without permission or proper attribution. Journalists and publishers warn that this kind of AI-powered search experience threatens to cannibalize news traffic while giving little back to content creators. On June 20, the BBC became the latest outlet to threaten legal action against Perplexity AI, alleging that the company is using BBC content to train its 'default AI model,' according to the Financial Times. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has defended the company as an 'aggregator of information.' In July 2024, the startup launched a revenue-sharing program to address the backlash. 'We have always believed that we can build a system where the whole Internet wins,' Srinivas said at the time. So Why the Gold Rush? Simple. Search is money. Google earned $50.7 billion from search ads in the first quarter, a 9.8% increase year over year. If Perplexity can convince even a small share of users to switch, and then monetize that experience, it becomes a real threat. Apple and Meta, both increasingly wary of relying on Google, see Perplexity as a fast track into the AI search race. But the stakes go even deeper. Whoever controls the next search interface controls the user. Just as Google replaced Yahoo, Perplexity could theoretically replace Google. That's why Big Tech wants in, even if it's not entirely clear what they're buying.