 So, Marvel World Congress 2018, what happened? Well, here's what didn't happen. Huawei didn't have a new flagship phone, LG didn't have a new flagship phone, they just rebranded their old flagship phone, HTC, Motorola, no flagship phones. But still, Samsung launched the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, which were really widely anticipated, but at the same time they left people quite a bit disappointed. These are the first Samsung phones since the iPhone X, we're kind of looking for something a bit more aggressive from Samsung. That being said, even though the design is quite similar to the previous one, the fingerprint sensor has moved to the middle, Samsung has made hardware upgrades, it has the latest chip, it has a new camera, a really cool camera, it has a dual aperture. Uncool? Samsung's AR emoji. They're terrible, they're disturbing, nobody really likes them, I don't know what's happening there with Samsung. Also, on the flagship front, Sony has the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact. To me personally, they look like HTC U11 clones. They have rounded glass back, they have a fingerprint sensor in the middle, in the back that's a new thing for Sony. Also running Snapdragon 845, which the Galaxy S9 will do as well. And Sony has a little advantage over Samsung. Samsung just introduced Super Slow-Mo 720p in the S9, Sony has Super Slow-Mo 1080p. Aside from major flagships, one of the big stories here is Android Go, Alcatel, ZTE, Nokia, Micromax, Lava, there's a whole bunch of companies who are launching super cheap, super affordable Android phones, and the idea there, I mean we're talking about prices like $49 and sub $100 prices, is improving the entry level Android experience. Also from Nokia, they do have a new flagship, Nokia 8 Sirocco, but the more interesting one, the one that's captured more imaginations, is the Nokia 8110. You might know that name already, because it's a retro model, it's a throwback to Nokia's matrix phone, so it's the one that has a physical curve, and it has a slider at the bottom. Also cool about the 8110, it has LTE, it actually has Google Assistant, and it is under $100. So it's a pretty kick ass phone, and you can play Snake on it. Two of the really major themes here at MWC 2018 have been 5G and AI. They are absolutely the buzzwords for this show. 5G is kind of like the Messiah. If you want a religious figure for technology, that's what 5G is. It's the promise of the future, nothing is really happening with it right now, there are no phones, no tablets that you can buy with 5G. Companies are showing off prototypes, but we can't really see anything. And 5G also goes into enterprise applications, e-health, connected cars, and all these things which are kind of a few years down the line. As to AI, it feels like something that companies are just kind of tucking onto their products without really thinking about it too much. Asus, I have to say, is the guiltiest of this. They claim they have AI Boost, AI Camera, AI Photo Learning, they even had an AI Ringtone. It's getting ridiculous, they're not really doing all that much that can really be described as artificial intelligence, but it's a buzzword that everybody is kind of tacking onto and trying to sell products with. As to smartphone hardware, one of the big differences this year, relative to last, is that pretty much every new smartphone, especially the Android side, especially in the higher aspect, has very thin bezels. I love the fact that bezels are just kind of dying everywhere that you look nowadays. The bad side of that though, a whole bunch of companies are copying the Apple notch. The Apple notch on the iPhone X is justified by having Face ID, which is super sophisticated biometric identification system. Nobody else is doing anything near that. They're just copying the notch. It's superficial, it's cosmetic, not a fan of that trend. So even though it's not a retail product, the Vivo Apex is one of the highlights here at MWC 2018. This has practically no bezels, even thinner bezels around the display. And the way the company achieves it is it integrates a selfie cam inside the body, which pops up from above the screen. Anytime you can get that sort of mechanical engineering built into a smartphone, people are going to get hyped up about it. That being said, Vivo has also evolved the fingerprint ID system that they have built into the display and showed off at CES 2018. In this new concept, that covers the lower third of the phone's display. And finally, even though MWC is traditionally a phone show, Huawei and Lenovo actually have some really cool laptops to show off. Huawei introduced the MateBook X Pro, which is another one of those super thin, high spec Windows laptops that you've seen everywhere. But this one has extra, extra thin bezels. It has something like a 90% screen to body ratio. It has a 3 by 2 aspect ratio, so actually it's a bit more square than most laptop screens, which I really like. It's great for writing on. And also it has a hidden webcam, which is a little mechanical button, which pops up from just above the keyboard. Which is cool in terms of design, but might not be the best in terms of creating flattering selfies. As for Lenovo, it introduced some new Chromebooks, which aren't pretty, but they also aren't expensive and they're terrific for taking notes on them. One of them you can take notes with just a regular pencil and the other one, it has a lag free stylus. I tried it myself. It uses one of Google's Chrome OS APIs and it's super. It's just a great experience for taking notes. And both of those are under $300. It seems like this year, many of the big Android companies just weren't ready to launch their flagship phones here at MWC. That's left us with a different show. There's less of the usual hardware hype, fewer headphone jacks, more AI bluster and more notches.