Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge, transcendent in its sealed perspex display case at MWC Barcelona – lest mere mortals touch the perfectly (and pointlessly) curved screen

It is phone-week here in Barcelona, with the 4YFN (Four Years from Now) and MWC (Mobile World Congress) annual events for 2015.

As with last year, there is a great mix of startup companies and large corporations, and both venues are still growing in size – even if 4YFN sometimes feels as if much of the growth is from consultants pitching sophisticated forms of modern-day snake-oil.

Some emerging trends:

• lots and lots of people selling “big-data” analytic services for mobile and web, but far fewer people selling apps or app development (perhaps because making money in that area is now really really hard…)
• lots of hype about the “internet of things” (although no one seems to be sure what it really is – and the internet has surely always been a network of “things”…)
• lots of wearables, mostly in the form of watches that act as cell-phone companions, or bracelets that provide dedicated fitness trackers
• lots of shiny new phones that are hard to get excited about because the main innovations are about styling rather than coming up with new use-cases or genuinely useful features
• lots of people trying out virtual reality headsets, presumably trying to understand if they really do anything sufficiently useful to justify looking so daft…

All in all, useful and interesting networking which for me at least has brought in a couple of new potential business opportunities.

All of these images were shot with the Ricoh GR – which incidentally had quite a bit of trouble with the pixelated LED displays at MWC (there is no anti-aliasing filter in the Ricoh). For example, the background display in the following image of Ford’s new “MoDe: Me” bicycle definitely did not look like the this in reality:

After the chaos of the last few days, hopefully I can get back to some real photography again…