Good morning, Mobile World Congresspeople!
This is the end. Enjoy your last dozen cafés con leche as you wander around the show floor for the final time.
It has been a pleasure to be a part of your routine this week. Let’s stay in touch! As a reader of this newsletter, you’ll receive our regular Quartz Daily Brief—if you don’t get it already—as well as coverage from future tech events like SXSW, which starts on March 8. (If that’s not for you, simply unsubscribe at the bottom of this email.)
Our takeaways from MWC 2019 will go up on the site tomorrow, alongside all of our other coverage from the expo.
Today will be warm and sunny, but you knew that already. Expect a high of 17°C (63°F), with a zero percent chance of rain.
What to watch for today
Get out and about. If you’ve mostly been in meetings and keynotes up to now, it’s the perfect time to check out the booths on the show floor. The crowds thin out considerably on the final day of MWC, which means shorter lines to see all the whizzy stuff you’ve read about this week. If you’re short on time, head over to Qualcomm’s booth in Hall 3: the chip manufacturer makes the processors that power almost every popular smartphone, so you can see pretty much every new device at the booth.
Gender breakdowns. On the last day of MWC, the Women4Tech summit reverses the typical trend of male-dominated technology conferences. Around a third of speakers and attendees at MWC this year are women, versus just under 90% of speakers at the Women4Tech side event (Hall 4, Auditorium A, from 8:45am to 2:30pm). The event also offers professional development coaching and interactive workshops for women working in the tech sector.
Going places. Quartz’s Mike Murphy is moderating a panel on the future of transportation at 2:30pm in Hall 4, Auditorium 3 (no autographs please). Execs from Fujitsu, Magna, Visa, and others will talk about self-driving cars, dockless scooters, drone deliveries, and—yes—5G.
Closing time. A large share of MWC’s 100,000 attendees will be making their way out of Barcelona over the next 24 hours, so prepare for long lines and traffic of all sorts. Getting through security at the airport can be slow, since techie travelers are toting wireless transmitters, dozens of phones, and all sorts of suspicious-looking gear.
What everyone is talking about
The sound of 5G. Beyond smartphones, companies are keen to show off the other things that will be improved by super-fast mobile internet. Like, er, the jam session. A popular way to demonstrate the low latency of 5G is to connect far-flung musicians via a network and demonstrate how well they can play together in real-time. NTT DoCoMo’s “5G cyber jam” featured a keyboard player and guitarist in different corners of its booth belting out Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon.” Ericsson and Vodafone hosted their own 5G jam, heavy on ABBA, across booths in separate halls.
Knock-off AirPods. Last year, every smartphone maker was copying the notch at the top of Apple’s iPhone X. This year, Apple’s AirPods are the viral hit that everyone wants to cash in on. Samsung unveiled its answer to the wireless earbuds, and there are a ton of blatant rip-offs on display all over the Fira. At least this means you can get them in colors other than white.
Dejargonizer: Time of flight sensor. Phones like the Nokia 9 PureView and AR headsets like the HoloLens 2 are starting to sport “time of flight sensors.” These measure the distance between the sensor and an object, which is important for simulating a shallow depth of field. They also detect the location of walls to make sure digital objects in augmented reality behave more realistically.
More highlights from yesterday
The spectrum of life. The auditorium was packed for what was billed as the “world’s first 5G tele-mentored live surgery.” Things got a little gory, as the big screen showed surgeons at a hospital across town removing a tumor from a patient’s colon. A surgeon onstage at MWC spoke to the team and drew on a telestrator-like screen that was instantly reflected on a display in the operating room. A Vodafone exec involved in the system said that remote-controlled operations are inevitable, especially in developing countries.
Graphene: Still not ready for primetime. The European Commission-funded Graphene Flagship is back this year at MWC showing off new research on the miracle substance. As ever, the experiments are small (using a centimeter of graphene as a lo-fi speaker) and the promises to change the world are as big as ever.
Chart interlude
The tech industry isn’t known for its gender balance, and MWC unfortunately reflects the male-dominated sector.
Mike likes…
Huawei’s folding phone. Quartz got a hands-on demo with the Mate X, Huawei’s $2,600 foldable phone. Leaving aside the eye-popping price, the device actually showed why people might want their phones to fold. When closed, the phone is like any normal smartphone, but when unfolded it is a giant, 4K eight-inch tablet that is great for typing, gaming, and going down YouTube rabbit holes. If, or when, products like these get cheaper, it may not be long before this form factor becomes standard.
… and Dave digs
A pen that always draws straight lines. While most delegates at MWC are there to see the newest phones, true innovation has been right in front of us the whole time: a pen with two wheels attached to the tip, which stabilizes the point in order to draw perfectly straight lines. The device has infinite battery life since it has no battery and doesn’t need a wireless connection (5G or otherwise) to work. It just might be the perfect mobile device.
This is a thing now?
After a week wandering the halls of the Fira, we can confirm that all of these things are now things: robots that feed chickens, GPS for inside buildings, a $3,000-plus phone that continuously mines cryptocurrency, 3D-printed meat substitutes, AI-powered shin guards that make you better at soccer, a tele-operated housecleaning service, a strip that holds your mouth closed so you are forced to breathe through your nose, internet service using a “space laser network,” and a company called “Goodbro.”
Seen and heard
US FCC chairman Ajit Pai thinks that blockchain could put him out of a job. Or, at least, part of a job: with distributed ledger technology, operators can—in theory—trade spectrum amongst themselves, “taking the regulator out of the equation.”
Dave made a chart.
How many cameras can you realistically cram into a smartphone? Up to 11, says Light CEO Dave Grannan, whose company built the technology in the five-camera Nokia 9 PureView.
“We have 100,000 people in Spain using this dongle. It’s very exciting.”
How you want your VC to introduce you to a journalist: “This is a Highlander moment, and there can be only one. This is my one.”
You can thank HMD for the weather. Last year, its “Nordic Village” outdoor huts weren’t built with unseasonable snow and sub-zero temperatures in mind, so the otherwise cozy hideaway was beset by leaks. This year, the maker of Nokia handsets installed heaters and weatherized the structures in the Finnish style, all but ensuring that the Spanish sun was out all week.
“This is the MWC that a lot of things have happened.”—Cristiano Amon, president of Qualcomm
News from around the world
Iran’s foreign minister returned to work, two days after resigning. Mohammad Javad Zarif’s resignation on Instagram was rejected by president Hassan Rouhani, who said it was “against the country’s national interests.” Zarif, a key Rouhani ally, was the architect of the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with major world powers to bring Iran out of economic isolation.
Michael Cohen ended his congressional testimony in tears. The president’s former lawyer, who is set to serve a three-year prison sentence related to hush-money payments made on behalf of Donald Trump, warned US lawmakers that if Trump loses in the 2020 election, “there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” Earlier, Cohen also testified that Trump was a “racist,” a “con man,” and a “cheat,”  but offered no evidence of him colluding with Russia.
UK business confidence dropped to a seven-year low. The prospect of an imminent no-deal Brexit has sapped optimism among firms, according to a Lloyds report. Consumer confidence in the UK’s economy over the next year is also at its lowest since 2013, according to market research firm GfK.
TikTok was fined for illegally collecting data on children. The popular app, from Chinese tech startup Bytedance, agreed to pay a $5.7 million penalty after failing to obtain parental permission before users under age 13 signed on. The US Federal Trade Commission fine was the largest ever under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Matters of debate
Free time correlates with happiness. Working people are happiest when they have 2.5 hours of time a day to themselves; non-working people peak at nearly five hours.
Home decorators should ignore Instagram trends. Choosing décor based on likes often leads to dissatisfaction in real life.
Sumo is cracking down on beards. Japanese officials are banning facial hair, tattoos, and long nails under new personal grooming rules.
Surprising discoveries
Uber’s electric bikes may be more popular than its cars. Jump cycles are in higher demand than Uber cars in Sacramento, California.
Only six countries give women the same rights as men. A World Bank report found a tiny group of nations—all in Europe—treat men and women the same, legally speaking.
We have the genome of a celebrity cat. Researchers sequenced the entire genome of Lil Bub and found that genetic abnormalities explain her unique appearance.
Our best wishes for hitting every last booth on the final day of the expo. We hope you have a safe trip home, and we look forward to seeing you in Barcelona next year. This is Jason, Dave, and Mike signing off.