mwc 2024
AALTO seeks to democratize high-speed internet access through solar-powered drones
In the beginning of 2021, Alphabet shuttered Loon. It was a familiar story within the annals of Google X history: an ambitious moonshot with tremendous upside that sputtered out prior…
Showee, a smart shower startup, shines a light on accessibility
Showee’s shower is designed for people with disabilities, both physical and intellectual. But Showee has another selling point: Water savings.
The much-teased and oft-leaked Nothing Phone (2a) is now officially official, just under a week after it made its limited debut at the company’s MWC after party. Nothing’s third phone…
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MWC 2024: Everything announced so far, including Swayy’s app to tell friends where you’ll be next
The TechCrunch team is in Barcelona this week to bring you all the action going on at Mobile World Congress 2024.
In May 2019, Ultrahaptics and Leap Motion became Ultraleap (not to be confused with Magic Leap, which operates in the same space). It’s a name change representing the marriage of…
MWC: Swayy app lets you share your future location with close friends, or groups you curate
Given that this week Instagram revealed that it was developing a “Friend Map” feature, it was interesting and timely to run into a startup during Mobile World Congress that plans…
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With Brain.ai, generative AI is the OS
The Humane Ai Pin and Rabbit handheld have captured a good bit of press interest for their individual approaches to integrating generative AI with hardware. Humane, in particular, is presenting its wearable as a look at life beyond the smartphone. That naturally prompts the question: What, precisely, is wrong with the smartphone? While it’s true…
Sweanty’s wearable patch for athletes tracks salt loss to help them hydrate
Wearables are coming in an increasing array of shapes, form factors and guises these days as health and fitness tracking proliferates. Here at 4YFN at the MWC tradeshow we spotted…
The five finalists to emerge from the Four Years From Now 2024 pitch competition
Update: Qilimanjaro was chosen as the winner and awarded €20,000. Long ago Mobile World Congress, which we’ve been covering all week, absorbed a side event for startups, the idiosyncratically named “Four…
It’s not every day you come across kombucha playing a starring role in potential industrial disruption. But here at 4YFN in MWC we got chatting to Laura Freixas about her…
Nothing isn’t one to be quiet about new releases. The London-based phone company’s media push largely relies on trickling out information about devices bit by bit. It’s been a solid…
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HTC Vive became an enterprise product while you weren’t looking
A lot has changed at HTC in the decade since a small team broke off to form its mixed reality division. In fact, it’s a fundamentally different business in several meaningful ways. For one thing, you can’t call HTC a phone company any longer. Contrary to popular perception, the Taiwanese corporation does still produce handsets…
Ethiopian startup eQub won the fintech pitching battle at 4YFN 2024, the startup event of Mobile World Congress.
SynFlora is working on bioengineering a skincare revolution
Biotech startup SynFlora brought an enticing pitch for a new type of skin treatment technology to 4YFN at the MWC tradeshow in Barcelona this week. The Spanish startup, a spin-off…
Lizcore’s sport tracking system is minimalist enough for indoor climbers to actually use
Lizcore, a sport tracking startup out of Barcelona, caught our eye on the 4YFN show floor at MWC this week. It’s done what this climber — frankly — thought impossible:…
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Mobile OS maker Jolla is back and building an AI device
On the fringes of MWC, the world’s biggest mobile phone show, TechCrunch is getting a demo of a new kind of AI device. The small black box sitting in front of us on a table in a hotel lobby in Barcelona is designed to tap into the generative AI boom — making it another example…
Displace plans new models, new AI features for its ‘wireless’ TVs
At CES 2023, a startup hardware company called Displace launched its 55-inch ‘Display Flex’, a “wireless” $3,000 4K OLED TV which sticks to walls without a traditional mounting. The launch…
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MWC 2024: Motorola’s Rollable Concept phone laughs at your silly foldable
[Cartoonishly exaggerated Crocodile Dundee accent] That’s not a foldable. This is a foldable. More specifically, it’s a foldable concept device from Lenovo/Motorola showcased on the floor at this year’s MWC. The company walked us through a demo of a device that’s another terrific example of its ability to get weird with design. The Rollable Concept…
Doublepoint launches its WowMouse gesture-touch control app for Pixel Watch 2
Admittedly, Apple iWatch users have had it since October last year, but as of today at Mobile World Congress, the Doublepoint startup has launched the updated version of its popular…
MWC: Microsoft pitches ‘AI access principles’ to offset OpenAI competition concerns
On the heels of Microsoft’s investment and partnership with French Large Language Model startup Mistral AI, the company continues to work hard to try to dispel the image that it’s blocking…
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Samsung centers sleep with its first smart ring
After a brief tease at the end of its big Galaxy S24 event earlier this month, Samsung officially debuted the Galaxy Ring this morning at MWC. The earlier announcement offered little more than an image and confirmation that the hardware giant is entering that emerging corner of the wearable tech space. Following the Unpacked presser,…
Google hopeful of fix for Gemini’s historical-image diversity issue within weeks
Google is hopeful it will soon be able to “unpause” the ability of its multimodal generative AI tool, Gemini, to depict people, per DeepMind founder, Demis Hassabis. The capability to…
OnePlus’ Watch 2 gets 100 hours of battery thanks to a pair of chips and Wear OS tweaks
OnePlus’ first smartwatch was a lot of things. Unfortunately, particularly good or memorable weren’t among them. If you’re going to enter a category as established as the smartwatch, you’re going…
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Why OnePlus waited three years to release a new smartwatch
OnePlus’ second smartwatch captured media interest this week, courtesy of its stated 100 hours of battery life. The device utilizes a clever dual-chip system, seamlessly switching from the Snapdragon W5 to the far more power-efficient BES 2700 MCU. If the device does its job correctly, users won’t notice the shift, beyond the extra battery life…
Xiaomi is having a good MWC. The Chinese tech firm’s booth has been packed since show doors opened this morning. It’s a stark contrast to neighboring Samsung, whose sparsely populated…
Xiaomi’s latest robot dog does backflips off skateboards, costs $3,000
When it was first unveiled in the summer of 2021, Xiaomi’s CyberDog design was best described as a more nightmarish version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot. I had to comb through…
Lenovo’s laptop concept is fully transparent, but the point isn’t entirely clear
Something I’ve always admired about Lenovo is the way the Chinese tech giant really lets its freak flag fly. In fact, visiting the company’s booth nestled in the way, way…
Google brings AI to Google Messages, Android Auto, Wear OS and more
Google’s Gemini implementation for AI image generation is facing a lot of criticism. But that isn’t stopping the search and mobile giant from riding the AI wave and rolling it…
These desktop lamps beam near-infrared light, in a bid to improve your mood
As humans spend increasing amounts of time indoors, we lose access to the sun’s natural benefits. Recognition of season affective disorder has grown accordingly. While the actual occurrence of the…
The back of your phone is useless. There. I said it. Sure, the cameras are back there, but what about all of that blank real estate monopolizing 90% of the…
