Every year, the tech world arrives in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, and MWC 2022 really felt like a return to form for the show after the last couple of years, with a show floor full of cool devices to see, and a buzzing atmosphere. The gorgeous Catalonian sun, sea air and food doesn't hurt, either.
MWC is often thought of as the 'phone show', and it definitely is that – we saw big launches from big names this year, and you could try out everything from folding phones to those with under-screen selfie cameras – but it's also about the world of connected tech in general.
You also see new laptops and computers, smart home gadgets, app-powered accessories, electric vehicles of all sizes, and more. And T3 was there, scouring the halls for the coolest announcements, so that we could pick our favourites and bestow upon them our 'Best of MWC 2022' awards.
We've chosen the five products that stood out most to us – which obviously means there was a ton of other excellent tech that came so close being recognised, but just missed out. We loved so much of what we saw, but these five are the ones that had us talking the most – the ones we're most excited to get in our hands for full reviews when they launch.
So here they are: our Best of MWC 2022 winners!
Best phone: Realme GT 2 Pro
This phone delivers huge specs for a great price, and throws in a couple of extras at the same time that put it just ahead of the very hot phone competition at MWC. Let's start outside, with its its lovely pastel colours built from an eco-friendly biopolymer. The texture on the back is designed to look and feel like paper, with that distinct texture and matt look – and it's just lovely.
Then on the front, you'll find a 6.7-inch display with a detailed 1440x3216 resolution, plus 120Hz support and 1,400 nits of peak brightness for HDR, which is higher than even the iPhone 13 can go.
Then inside, you'll find the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip – the first phone in Europe to include it – plus a huge 5,000mAh battery with killer fast charging. It can go from 0-100% in just half an hour, so you shouldn't really need to run out of power ever again. And you've got other smart phone essentials, of course, including dual 50MP rear cameras – you can read more about everything in our first look at the Realme GT 2 Pro. With those great specs packed into such an appealing phone, this is definitely shaping up to be one of the best Android phones of 2022.
Best headphones: Honor Earbuds 3 Pro
Honor's new true wireless earbuds feature two especially interesting bits of technology that earned them this award. The most exciting is the designed to improve audio quality, unsurprisingly. They feature a coaxial dual-driver design, meaning that they basically fit two speakers inside that are aligned, with a tiny ceramic piezoelectric tweeter sitting at the centre of a large 11mm regular driver. A similar design concept is used in high-end speakers from hi-fi legend KEF, to fantastic results – the idea is that the sound from the two drivers combines with perfect timing when positioned together like that. And in some earbuds, it can mean the more full and detailed sound of a dual-driver design comes through, but without the extra bulk that normally requires.
The other smart feature is a temperature sensor, adding another passive tool to the modern smart health arsenal. You won't need to measure your temperature all the time, but it can be a really useful thing to be able to check on days when you're feeling ill – another part of helping us get a clearer picture of our bodies.
And they also include adaptive active noise cancellation with four presets for different use cases, they promise two hours of battery life from a five-minute charge, they weigh a super-comfortable 5g, and come in a white or a cool metallic grey colour. We think Honor's made a truly compelling and exciting audio package here to challenge the best wireless earbuds on the market when they're released later in the year.
Best auto tech: Fisker Ocean
The Fisker Ocean is an all-electric SUV that's absolutely packed with great ideas. We're not just talking great spec (although it does have those), but also just brilliant ideas that make it an exciting car to own.
Take California mode, for example. Push a button and all the windows and the roof retract, giving you a near-convertible experience. It's so simple, but it'll be so welcome to have on beautiful days.
Or take the solar-panel roof, with is estimated to give you up to 2,000 miles of free charge per year. And that's on top of the strong range from the battery, ranging from 275 miles to 390 miles, depending on model.
Or take the sensor array for smart safety features: you've got cameras all around combined with a digital radar system that's likely to be the first to market. The radar is designed to back up what the cameras see, adding precision to depth sensing, for example: it can detect humans at 80m, or cars at 200m. In dark or rainy conditions, it will add lots more clarity than what the cameras could detect on their own.
And we haven't even talked about the inside, which includes a 17-inch info display that rotates into a landscape 'Hollywood mode' when parked for movies, as well as all-vegan detailing. We got up close with the car at MWC, and you can read more of our impressions here.
Best desktop: Huawei MateStation X
Look at that screen! What you're seeing is a super-svelte Windows all-in-one PC with a 3:2 aspect ratio screen, meaning that it gives you much more height than the usual 16:9 widescreen display. This alone grabbed our attention because it's a major advantage for a lot of work: it lets you see more of documents at once, for example, or can be great for fitting more tool windows in during creative work.
The 28-inch touchscreen also has a resolution of 3840x2560, meaning it can show Ultra HD 4K video, but with some bonus extra height for when you're using apps instead. It also supports HDR, with a peak brightness of 500 nits, plus 98% P3 colour gamut support with extremely high levels of colour accuracy. It's really bright and vivid in person, and is packed with detail.
And it's also a whole computer. Based on AMD's Ryzen chips, you get 8 cores of processing power and great graphics performance, with 16GB of RAM as standard. It has an elaborate speaker system too, and the whole thing is super thin. You can even adjust the height of the screen, brilliantly. This is a real 'wow' machine when you see it in the flesh, from the screen to the design – and the inside backs that up too. This the hottest competitor for the almighty iMac that we've seen in years.
Best laptop: Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 15.6
The previous Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro delivers the things that made its predecessor such a cool product – being an incredibly thin and light laptop for such a big screen, with a rich OLED display – but throws in the one thing we wanted more of: power.
The Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 15.6 still feels impossibly light for its size, but will now come with Intel 12th Gen Evo processors. The original Galaxy Book Pro maxed out at four cores, and while Samsung hasn't confirmed exactly which chips will be in the Book2 Pro as yet, there will be an Intel Core i5 option and a Core i7 option… and that means at least 8 cores in the i5 version and at least 10 cores in the i7 option. That's a big step up, and the fact that 12th Gen chips include low-power efficiency cores as well as big powerful ones means you could get more battery life from the thin frame too.
The OLED display is still a stunner, and the ability to use Samsung's S Pen with it is great for so many creative tasks, or if you just need to scribble some notes. As a balance of screen size, power, and a weight that won't break your back when carrying it around, this looks phenomenal based on our time with it so far, and will be a real challenger in our list of the best laptops.
