Around this time every year the world of technology turns its attention to Mobile World Congress. Taking place in Barcelona, Spain, the event runs from February 26 through February 29 this year and it's where some of the biggest names in consumer technology go to announce their latest and greatest products. Think of it as Europe's CES but with more products that will actually ship and fewer casinos and you won't be too far off the point. And as the name suggests, Mobile World Congress is all about the future of mobile technology whether that's a new phone, tablet, or something else entirely.

Mobile World Congress, or MWC, isn't an event that Apple attends but it's still a vital part of the technology calendar. It's also one that Apple should be paying plenty of attention to because it's where companies like Samsung, OnePlus, Huawei, and others go to show off the products that will ultimately compete with Apple's iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches. And this year is absolutely no different.

I've taken a look through all of the biggest and best announcements and launches of MWC 2024 to see which are of interest not only to Apple itself, but those of us who follow it, use its products, and ultimately find ourselves wondering what is happening outside of this walled garden we've so willingly locked ourselves into. And sometimes, just sometimes, things might just be greener on the other side.

Samsung Galaxy Ring

As rumors of Apple's entry into the smart ring world with the so-called Apple Ring continue to swirl, Samsung is already ahead of the game. The Galaxy Ring was teased last month but it's MWC that saw the big unveiling.

Our friends at TechRadar spend some time with the Galaxy Ring over in Barcelona and the reports are positive. The ring will look to compete with the popular Oura Ring and it has the features to match — sleep tracking is a given, while the wearable will also offer a Vitality score which should offer insights into how your body is dealing with the stresses and strains of life. The Ring will also be able to detect sleep apnea, something Apple's future wearables have been tipped to sport as well.

Why Apple should pay attention

Rumors of the Apple Ring couldn't have come at a better time and I do have to wonder if their leaking was timed perfectly to compete with the Galaxy Ring's unveiling. Regardless, I love my Oura Ring and Apple will have to go some way to convince existing smart ring owners to switch. But this is Apple, and tight integration with Health could make for features and benefits that third-party alternatives can't compete with. If not, Apple might have a battle on its hands if you'll pardon the pun.

OnePlus Watch 2

Apple makes the most popular smartwatches on the planet but that doesn't mean it's the only company making them or that it can't learn a thing or two from other outfits. The newly announced OnePlus Watch 2 is a prime example of that.

Sporting battery life that runs for a massive 100 hours between charges, the OnePlus Watch 2 easily bests even the best Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Ultra 2. It does that by using two operating systems that run on two different chips, one aimed at using the least possible power. The watch switches between the two depending on what's needed, giving battery life the likes of which Apple could only dream. It also looks great, and is much less of an in-your-face statement piece when compared to the utilitarian Apple Watch Ultra design language.

Why Apple should pay attention

While few people are ditching Apple Watches for OnePlus Watch 2 wearables, there's no denying that there are some great ideas here. Taking battery life and stretching it to the point where people can go away for a weekend without taking their charger is a big advantage. People shouldn't have to buy a big and bulky Apple Watch Ultra 2 just to get strong battery life, either. The OnePlus Watch 2 proves that and now it's time Apple took note.

Motorola's adaptive display concept

OK, so this one isn't a real product just yet but it surely will be one day — and it can't come soon enough.

Motorola used its time at MWC to share details about its new adaptive display concept device and Tom's Guide got to take a look at it. Designed to be a phone that can literally be rolled up, this device is part smartphone, part smartwatch.

Featuring a 6.9-inch FHD+ pOLED display, the device can bend backward and be set up in a few different configurations, but it doesn't have a name just yet and we obviously don't know what it will cost if and when it goes on sale. But it sure does look more interesting than the usual slab of metal and glass that we're so familiar with.

Why Apple should pay attention

While I'm not suggesting that Apple should beat Motorola to market with an iPhone that doubles as an Apple Watch, I think this concept should be a wake-up call for those at Apple Park.

With no foldable iPhone on the market and little sign that there will be within the next couple of years, it's never been more clear that Apple is being left behind here. Foldable phones have gotten so much better in the last couple of years that it's high time Apple joined the fray. Whether that turns out to be a foldable iPhone or a bendy iPad, it's time — and it isn't very often Motorola puts Apple in the shade.

Nothing Phone (2a)

Nothing took the opportunity of an ongoing Mobile World Congress to tease the upcoming Nothing Phone (2a) while it had the attention of the world's press. The phone won't officially be unveiled until March 5, but this being Nothing, the London firm has already started to tease things ahead of time.

The third phone under the Nothing brand, the Phone (2a) is designed to offer a budget approach for people who want a phone that doesn't cost a small fortune. Despite that, the Nothing Phone (2a) promises the same aesthetics we've become accustomed to as well as a dual-camera setup around the back. Little is really known beyond that, but this could be a budget Android phone well worth keeping an eye on.

Why Apple should pay attention

While we still don't know all that much about the new phone it's still one that Apple should be keeping an eye on. Budget Android phones have come a long way in recent years and the Nothing brand is a much-loved one among those in the community.

While we don't yet know the price point for the Nothing Phone (2a) we can safely assume that it will be considerably less than most iPhones and that means Apple should be paying close attention if only to inform its decisions when working on the rumored iPhone SE 4.

Lenovo's transparent laptop concept

As great as the latest M3 MacBook Pros might be, there is no denying the fact that they look pretty much the same as every other laptop. You can't say the same thing about Lenovo's new transparent laptop concept, that's for sure.

Apparently sporting the market's first laptop with a 17.3-inch Micro-LED transparent display, there isn't much to say about the concept laptop other than you can see through it. There's a borderless display that can be seen right through if needed, and it promises "exceptional contrast and 1000-nit brightness." Lenovo says that the concept "showcases a futuristic perspective on AI PCs, blending digital and physical environments that can enhance user experiences in ways never imagined."

Why Apple should pay attention

We have to be the first to admit that the chances of this ever coming to market are slim, and if it does, it won't be for some time yet. But that isn't really the point — the point is that laptops are getting a bit boring, especially if you want them to run macOS.

It's perhaps time that Apple started to try something new, and rumors of a foldable laptop could point to that.

We've been waiting for a company to show us what futuristic laptops could look like, we just didn't expect it to be Lenovo that did it.

MWC 2024 and beyond

Soon after MWC 2024 is done and dusted attention will turn to what comes next. For Apple, we're expecting the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro handsets later this year and new Apple Watches are also a given. WWDC's preview of new iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch software not to mention updated Apple TV and Apple Vision Pro software will arrive before then of course, while the impending OLED iPad Pro and M3 MacBook Air releases are also worth looking forward to.

But with the Apple Vision Pro now here, it's difficult to find anything to truly get excited about. The technology shown off at MWC is an indication of what's out there in the non-Apple world. Let's hope someone in Cupertino has been paying attention.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Apple iPhone 6 both have glass fronts, a physical home button below the screen and metal around the sides. They have LTE radios and are technically smartphones. And if you happen to look at them from below, they look a little similar from that one angle.

Yes, from below, the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 share some serious visual similarities. In that, they're machined out of aluminum and have machined holes for the 3.5mm headphone jack, a center-mounted USB or lightning port, and holes for speaker grilles drilled into the right side. There are even the Apple-style plastic-filled stripes that break it up into visual segments and a color-matched chrome-ringed home button. From the bottom you might think that the Galaxy S6 is another version of the iPhone.

But it's only from that angle. Every other look at the Galaxy S6 reveals a phone that is markedly different from the iPhone 6. And some of the similarities are thanks to those being the most optimal ways to manage this sort of construction. You want a phone that's made out of metal? Well, your speaker grille is going to be a series of circular holes. Want to use that metal frame as an antenna? Alright, you'll need to divide it up with some plastic strips so you can properly manage Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and LTE.

Sure, Apple did some of these things before Samsung, and there are some visual comparisons that can be drawn. But there's nothing wrong with admitting that the Galaxy S6 draws some design inspiration from the iPhone 6; the iPhone 6 is an attractively-designed phone and Apple's going to sell well over 100 million of them once all is said and done. That Samsung's new flagship smartphone also looks smartly-designed isn't the worst thing in the world. Because that means it also looks like a nice phone.

That was a lot of words about the bottom half-inch of these two phones. From every other angle, they're different. The back of the Galaxy S6 is glass — and before you say "iPhone 4!", know that it's flush with the metal frame (which on the 4 was stainless steel, for what it's worth). The center-aligned camera is traditional for Samsung, and sure, like the iPhone 6 it juts out thanks to the phone's thin profile, though in this case it juts out more, and the Galaxy S4 was doing that first anyway.

Internals-wise we're looking at very different phones. Whereas the iPhone 6 has a dual-core 64-bit Apple A8 processor, the Galaxy S6 is powered by Samsung's octacore Exynos processor (also 64-bit, though with four cores running at 2.1GHz and another four at a milder 1.5GHz). The iPhone 6's 4.7-inch 750x1334 LCD display is utterly shamed by the 5.1-inch 2560x1440 Super AMOLED panel on the Galaxy S6. Yes, the Galaxy S6 is pushing more than 3.6 times the pixels as the iPhone 6, and yet in our time with it we never saw it stutter or otherwise balk at whatever we threw at it. There's an argument to be made that the 326ppi resolution of the iPhone 6 is enough, but there's just something about the 577ppi that the Galaxy S6 sports that is simply stunning.

On the camera front, the iPhone 6 sports an upgraded 8-megapixel shooter with an ƒ/2.2 lens, while the Galaxy S6's sensor counts up to 16MP behind a wider ƒ/1.9 lens, meaning that it lets in significantly more light. There are still some details about the Galaxy S6 camera that we don't know, but the broad strokes are there: this is a very serious contender to the iPhone's mobile camera dominance. Considering that we weren't able to take the Galaxy S6 out of controlled space and lighting area of the Samsung booth inside Fira Barcelona.

Battery-wise, Samsung's jumped onto the sealed battery bandwagon. Going with the glass back kind of necessitated that — you don't want for that to be removable. Samsung did do away with the previous Galaxy's phone's waterproofing, but built in two standards for wireless charging (thus the glass back — a full metal back would block inductive charging transmission). The Galaxy S6's battery has also seen a reduction in size, and we've yet to get a good feel for what kind of battery life we can expect from it in real life.

Then there's the matter of software: the Galaxy S6 runs the very latest Android 5.0.2 Lollipop, while the iPhone runs iOS 8. Naturally, this means that there are serious differences in the way that the software works and the development philosophies behind them.

Apple's software is highly integrated from the start with the hardware and the App Store is tightly controlled, while Samsung's had to make their own integrations from Android to their hardware, and the Google Play Store is comparatively the wild west. There are, of course, apps that slip through the App Store's famously rigorous review process, and Google Play has some restrictions on what can be published and Google works hard to block malicious apps from getting in the store in the first place, and reacts swiftly and prudently when something bad does get through.

We've gone over the software differences here time and time again, and Samsung's latest implementation of their TouchWiz design language on top of Android is leaner and cleaner than ever before. No longer does it weigh on the processor and cause noticeable lag throughout the device, and Samsung's customizations on top of Google's highly-regarded Material Design language for Android have led to a Samsung interface that's finally actually visually-pleasing. In terms of user interface design language, Apple, Samsung, and Google have never been closer, and yet they're still notably different.

There is one software feature that Samsung could be accused of lifting from Apple, and that would be Samsung Pay. In short, we're talking about a contactless payments system that uses stored-on-device credit card numbers, tokenization for secure one-time-use numbers, NFC transmission, and fingerprint authentication (the Galaxy S6's fingerprint scanner is larger this time around for an Apple-style "lay your thumb on it" approach instead of the previous frustrating swiping authentication).

But Samsung does Apple one better by integrating Magnetic Secure Transmission technology (acquired wholly with the acquisition of LoopPay) that makes the phone compatible with hundreds of millions of magnetic swipe card readers around the world. At least in theory — there are always complications, including store clerks that will think you're working some sort of voodoo by paying with your phone. Even if we want to accuse Samsung of copying the simplicity of Apple's mobile payments system (Apple was far from the first to implement contactless mobile payments, but their implementation was as elegant and straightforward as we would expect from them). In the end, in this sort of emerging technology system, the more adoption and push behind it, the merrier — any NFC-capable payment terminal should be fully compatible with both Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Wallet, and whatever else gets out there.

There are comparisons to be drawn between the Apple iPhone 6 and the Samsung Galaxy S6. There are good reasons to make those comparisons, and there are good reasons why the similarities that have prompted these comparisons make sense. Of course, we won't be able to draw any definitive judgements until we've been able to have the Galaxy S6 for an extended period and really been able to get our hands and heads around it.

After a mildly disappointing generation in the Galaxy S5, Samsung has taken practically every criticism of their marketing, their software, their hardware, and even their presentation to heart. They've turned around and made a phone that's technically impressive (which the Galaxy line has always been) as well as a real crowd-pleaser on the design front. They've produced a phone here that stands toe-to-toe with the iPhone, and that's not a bad thing at all.

Microsoft has announced a new foldable Bluetooth keyboard that works on cross-platform devices. Dubbed the Universal Foldable Keyboard, Microsoft's latest accessory works with iPads, iPhones, Android smartphones and tablets as well as Windows tablets. Also announced is compatibility with Windows Phone, starting with Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 as well as Windows 10 for phones, which is scheduled to launch later this year.

The keyboard is portable, and connects to two devices simultaneously, with buttons available for toggling between the two. We'll be bringing you details on availability and pricing as soon as they're announced. What are your thoughts on the latest keyboard accessory from Microsoft?

The iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S5 are going to be two of – if not the two – hottest smartphones of 2014. Or likely until Apple launches the iPhone 6 at least. There are going to be more than a few folks due upgrades, or just generally looking for a new phone that are going to be looking at choosing between these two. Especially leading up to April 11, the global availability of the Galaxy S5.

It's not a 100% fair fight just yet, since we've had 5 months to get to know the iPhone 5s and a grand total of a couple of hours at a trade show with the Galaxy S5. So, maybe consider this round 1. There'll be much, much more – like software – to dive into when we actually get a Galaxy S5 in hand. But even from a quick early look, there are some similarities, and some big differences.

In terms of design, both Apple and Samsung went for iterative bumps with their respective flagship devices. Apple is of course in its 's' year with the iPhone which usually means nothing much in the way of design changes. Samsung has retained the overall look and feel of its recent Galaxy devices such as the Note 3 and its predecessor the Galaxy S4, while making some subtle and welcome changes to how its made.

Apple still has Samsung licked when it comes to construction, though. The iPhone is a symphony of metal and glass – and yes, a hint of plastic – while the Galaxy S5 is still a festival of plastic. It has at least addressed the issue of the horrible, nasty glossy rear covers, though. The soft touch dimpled effect back of the Galaxy S5 is very nice to hold. But plastic is still plastic, and Apple isn't the only OEM using metal in its top of the line devices. A lot of folks did want to see the same from Samsung this time round.

Both have pretty fantastic looking displays. We know Apple's Retina Display looks the business, but Samsung has also done a pretty great job with the 5.1-inch 1080p panel on the Galaxy S5. This also means a pretty noticeable size difference between the two, but the Galaxy S5 has much slimmer bezels and a flatter home button to help keep the bulkiness to a minimum.

Then we get to the fingerprint scanners. Well, Samsung calls it the Finger Scanner. Similar feature, very different execution. The Galaxy S5 has a swipe style fingerprint scanner, which in my opinion is less comfortable to use than Touch ID. Both can register multiple fingerprints, but where I think the Galaxy S5 may edge ahead is third party integration. Samsung has partnered with PayPal to allow you to use your Fingerprint to authenticate payments. As with the iPhone 5s, Samsung claims that your fingerprint is securely stored on the device, and never sent anywhere else. Just how secure it is we'll surely find out when devices are in more hands.

Camera wise, we know the iPhone 5s has an extremely good shooter. Apple has yet to be drawn into the megapixels race, instead opting for a refined 8MP shooter and improved software. Samsung on the other hand has bumped the camera up to 16MP as well as improving its software. The promise of fast auto focus and rich tone, live view HDR has so far looked promising. We're looking forward to putting it to the test out in the real world, but there's a strong possibility Android may have just found its new camera king.

Oh, and did we mention the Galaxy S5 comes in gold? And no, it doesn't look like a band aid.

The software is another story entirely, and arguably accounts for the bigger share of overall user experience. It isn't right to base a comparison of the two on a short hands-on, and on devices which are still in the pre-production phase. When we get a Galaxy S5 in hand, we'll be much better placed to evaluate further. But for now, does what you see in the Galaxy S5 tempt you to jump ship? Leave you pining for that rumored larger display iPhone? Sound off in the comments below!

• Samsung Galaxy S5 hands-on and initial review
• Galaxy S5 or iPhone 5s: Which phone should you get?
• Samsung Galaxy S5 camera and gallery walkthrough video

While Apple -- and hence TiPb -- has no presence at Mobile World Congress, the might Smartphone Experts Network is there in full force to bring back all the Android, HP/Palm, and Windows Phone(/Nokia!) news that's fit to post. Here's where it's all going down:

• Android Central Mobile World Congress coverage
• Windows Phone Mobile World Congress coverage

And who knows, they may even be able to snag some stories for PreCentral.net, CrackBerry.com, and TiPb.com as well. Meanwhile you'll likely be able to catch most of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans Twitter, which typically includes @philnickinson losing every bit of luggage he owns -- twice -- while @backlon (Dieter) comes down with some heretofore undiscovered European flu and @malatesta77 (Dan) attends the Ballmernote in full motorcylce helmet (to protect against sweat and flying developers, no doubt).

If there's anything at MWC 2011 you want us (meaning them!) to keep an eye out for, let us know!