Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2020 is dead. The annual Mobile Show which usually runs in late February or early March was canceled this year due to fears about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. After countless companies pulled out the GSMA was, for the first time ever, forced to abandon the show. That means that dozen or so major announcements we were expecting to see in Barcelona now, won’t be happening; almost all of them have been postponed by several weeks meaning will now see a trickle of phone launches likely later in March as opposed to several all at once at the end of February. So, let’s take a look at what won’t be launching in Barcelona later this month.
LG
LG had been due to launch its latest flagship phone the V60 ThinQ at MWC. This new phone is a successor to last year’s V50 sporting 5g connectivity at a gigantic 5000 million power battery, a detachable second screen is also rumored as we saw with the V50 and G8X: a feature which sounds and looks a little bit weird but actually works pretty well once you get used to it.
Other major specs include a quad-camera array though no specifics on the combination of lenses there plus a 32-bit hi-fi quad DAC plugged into that most increasingly rare of things, a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and as leaked in the promotional image by Evan Blass, the presence of four-channel microphones in this device suggests LG will continue with the V Series’ focus on content creators. No firm launch date yet for the V60 but, I suspect it with the last-minute cancellation of MWC, we won’t have to wait too much longer.
Motorola
After debuting the new foldable razor to reviews that can generously be described as a bit of a mixed bag. Motorola was set to launch its new edge handsets in Barcelona before MWC’s cancellation. It’s the first proper high spec Motorola flagship in years and according to the leaks it’s built around a waterfall display with a super curved edge. Rumors and renders don’t give too much away outside of the aforementioned curvy screen and a hole-punch camera. However, some suggest that the device is also equipped with a 90 Hertz refresh rate, Full HD plus resolution and built-in 4G connectivity.
Other leaks point to a vanilla Motorola Edge featuring a snapdragon 765 chip with a larger Edge+ opting from all-powerful expensive Snapdragon 865 and the Edge+, in particular, should offer some really nice battery life with a 5169 million power cell. The Motorola Edge+ will reportedly be exclusive to Verizon in the US with the unlocked version instead, carrying the name Motorola One 2020.
Nokia
Nokia and HMD Global were set to show off new 5g phones at the MWC but details so far have remained sketchy. The successor to last year’s Nokia 9P review looks set to be pushed back to later in 2020 so, it can use a Snapdragon 865 processor. In the meantime, we’d likely see something in the mid-tier 5g space perhaps using a Snapdragon 765 instead.
Other Nokia possibilities include the refreshed budget flavored Nokia 5.2 but, we’ll just have to wait and see what’s next from HMD; no replacement launch event has been announced just yet.
Sony
Sony, the purveyor of increasingly lanky smartphones may have canceled its February 24th press conference at MWC but, the launch of its new experiences will go ahead as planned by video stream. The Xperia 5 Plus takes the device we saw late last summer and upscales it while, also upgrading the camera to a triple n set up with a time-of-flight camera for better portraits and based on leaked renders and info about the phone, we’re looking at a 21 by 9 panel measuring 6 point 6 inches diagonally and aesthetically if you’ve used any of Sonny’s recent phones you should know what to expect here.
These are big tall handsets though they do puck some of the current trends by lacking display cutouts and leaving good old 3.5-millimeter headphone jack intact so, we’ll know more about Sony’s latest in just a few days.
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