All the Top New Gadgets at MWC 2025

Mobile World Congress, better known as MWC, is an annual trade show in Barcelona, where many of the major players in mobile get together to unveil new devices, announce services, and make deals. It’s no longer the central hub of all the latest and greatest smartphone announcements as it used to be, but there were a few notable reveals this year, along with plenty of fun concepts, AI, and other gadgets. WIRED has been trudging the halls of the show to find the best of the best—here are our top picks from MWC 2025.

WIRED’s MWC 2025 Coverage

• All the Top New Gadgets at MWC 2025
• The Weird and Wacky Gadgets We Saw
• Review: Nothing Phone (3a) Series
• Xiaomi’s Modular Plan to Kill the Camera Bump
• Lenovo’s Wacky Laptop Concepts Include a Laptop That Flips
• Honor’s New AI Agent Can Read and Understand Your Screen
• Review: Xiaomi 15 and 15 Ultra
• Samsung’s Galaxy A-Series for 2025 Will Get 6 Years of Updates

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The Xiaomi 15 Ultra Is a Camera King

MWC doesn’t see many flagship phone releases anymore, but the Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Ultra (8/10, WIRED Recommends) are worthy of fanfare and likely best in show this year. Both Android phones are polished, with excellent screens, strong battery life, fast charging, and silky performance. Xiaomi’s HyperOS is also maturing, and version 2 is liberally seasoned with—you guessed it—AI features. They are available in the UK and Europe but won’t land in the US. (The brand hosted WIRED at its media event at MWC and paid for a portion of our reporter’s travel expenses.)

My in-depth review goes into the deep inner workings of these phones, what I like and don’t like. But neither comes cheap—the Xiaomi 15 starts at £849 (€999) and the Ultra will set you back £1,299 (€1,499). The Ultra Photography Kit, which is a module that connects to one end of the phone, adding dedicated camera controls and an additional battery, costs an extra £179 (€199).

Alongside the new handsets, Xiaomi showed off a slew of other devices. We got two new Android tablets, the Xiaomi Pad 7 and 7 Pro, both with 11.2-inch screens and large batteries—the Pro adds a faster processor and better camera. Then there was the Harman-tuned Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro with active noise canceling, 8-hour battery life, and support for AI transcription and translation. Rounding off the hardware announcements were the Xiaomi Watch S4—a slightly improved version of last year’s customizable Watch S3—and the rectangular, fitness and health-focused Smart Band 9 Pro. —Simon Hill

Nothing’s Two New Budget Phones Are Dazzling

Nothing has two new stylish smartphones—the Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro. They’re identical in nearly every way except the cameras. The Pro model has a different 50-megapixel main camera that can capture more light thanks to larger pixels, plus it has a 3X optical periscope lens, whereas the Phone (3a) has a 2X optical camera. These phones are $379 and $459, respectively, and it’s an achievement in itself to have a versatile triple-camera setup on a sub-$500 phone.

I won’t expound much more about Nothing’s latest because I spent nearly 2,000 words reviewing them—you can read my review here. The Phone (3a) is available starting today and it ships on March 11, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for the (3a) Pro as it goes on sale March 11 and ships on March 25. US buyers will need to sign up for Nothing’s beta program to purchase the phones. They work on T-Mobile, but on AT&T and Verizon, you’ll only get 4G—you’ll need to contact your carrier to whitelist the devices for 5G access. —Julian Chokkattu

Honor’s Screen-Reading AI Agent, Plus More New Gadgets

Honor already updated its flagship phone line this year, but it did have a new watch and earbuds to unveil at MWC. The regular rectangular Honor Watch 5 has been out for a while and resembles a knock-off Apple Watch, but the new Honor Watch 5 Ultra, which I’ve been wearing for the last week, has a round face. It’s lightweight, with a classy octagonal titanium case and a sapphire crystal face. It runs Honor’s OS, so functionality is limited, and you can’t add Wear OS apps, but the pay-off is strong battery life (Honor says up to 15 days, and I’m on course for around 12). The companion Honor Health Android app tracks your activity, workouts, and sleep, and you can change faces and set up notifications from your phone. It also has a diving depth capability of up to 30 meters. It costs €279.

The Honor Earbuds Open weigh just 7.9 grams and come in a nice faux leather charging case. Open earbuds are handy if you want to hear approaching traffic on a run, find ear tips uncomfortable, or worry about how gross earbuds can get when you jam them in your ears. It’s a growing market, and Honor clearly wants in. I found them very comfortable, with adjustable loops to wrap around your ears and speakers that sit over rather than in your ear canal. They offer Active Noise Cancellation should you want it, which works pretty well, and real-time AI translation when paired with something like the Honor Magic 7 Pro. The Honor Earbuds Open are €149.

Honor also showed WIRED its new AI agent that can read and understand your screen, executing tasks on your behalf without the need to integrate with third-party APIs. Its only controlled demo the company showed off was capable of booking a table at a restaurant via the OpenTable app. It wasn’t fast—the entire process played out on the screen and the user just had to watch—and it’s unclear just how well this screen-reading AI agent will work with multiple apps. But it’s early days for the tech, and this kind of AI agent is something every phone maker is trying to create. (The brand hosted WIRED at its media event at MWC and paid for a portion of our reporter’s travel expenses.) —Simon Hill

HMD Has a Smartphone Built for Teens

One in three children have been asked to take online conversations to private messaging apps, and nearly 40 percent have been exposed to harmful content, including sexual or violent material. That’s according to Finnish phone maker HMD, which commissioned a study in January 2025 that surveyed 12,393 parents and 12,331 children across six countries, including the US, UK, and India. HMD’s solution? The “first smartphone for teens.”

HMD says it worked with parents and teens across 84 countries to create the HMD Fusion X1 and also collaborated with Xplora, a company that makes smartwatches for kids. The X1 is infused with many of Xplora’s features from its watches and more, including social media and internet browsing limits, continuous location tracking with safe zones, emergency SOS calling, pre-approved contacts, low battery alerts, and remote device access for parents. There’s also a School Mode to limit the phone during school hours. All of these features require a 5 euro monthly subscription. This summer, HMD says it will also integrate an AI-powered system from a company called SafeToNet that detects and blocks harmful content before it reaches the user. The phone itself seems nearly identical to the Fusion that launched in 2024. It doesn’t scream “kids” phone, but that’s the point. It still has the modular rear design that lets you attach various “outfits,” as HMD calls them, like a phone case with an embedded selfie ring light. It’s expected to launch for £229 in May, though it’s unclear if it will come to the US.

The X1 isn’t the only new gadget from HMD announced at the show. It also unveiled the Amped Buds (€200), earbuds with a unique magnetic Qi2 charging case that doubles as a wireless power bank to recharge your smartphone in a pinch.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an HMD event without new feature phones. None of these are Nokia-branded, but there’s the HMD 130 and HMD 150 Music, and the HMD 2660 Flip. —Julian Chokkattu

Tecno Says This Is the Current Slimmest Phone in the World

OK, so technically, Honor’s Magic V3 is the likely contender for slimmest phone in the world, at just 4.4 mm when open. But that is a foldable—Chinese phone brand Tecno Mobile has shown off a concept for the world’s thinnest ‘regular’ phone with a massive 5,200-mAh battery. It’s the Spark Slim and it’s just 5.75 mm. For context, the iPhone 16 is 7.8 mm and Samsung’s Galaxy S25 is 7.2 mm.

This battery capacity is as big, if not bigger, than what you’ll find in most smartphones these days. However, unlike companies like OnePlus that are using new, denser silicon-carbon batteries technology to pack higher capacities in slimmer designs, Tecno claims its proprietary implementation allows for denser traditional lithium-ion batteries. These, it says, are more reliable over long periods, though it didn’t share any further details.

Tecno, which primarily sells phones in Africa, the Middle East, India, and Latin America, didn’t say if the Spark Slim would turn into a real product, but considering Apple is expected to unveil a super-slim iPhone 17 Air, and Samsung is set to debut the 5.84-mm Galaxy S25 Edge soon, I think it’s fair to expect a wave of thin phones in the next year. —Julian Chokkattu

Google Upgrades Gemini Live With Video

Gemini Live, the Android phone experience that lets you talk to Google’s Gemini voice assistant in a real-time back and forth conversation, is getting a video upgrade. Google announced that you’ll soon be able to launch the camera within Gemini Live and ask it questions about what you’re seeing, or you can share your screen. In the demo at MWC, a Google representative asked Gemini what glaze would suit a clay pot and launched the camera within Gemini Live to point at the glaze samples. It seemed to analyze everything in the frame instantly and suggested certain colors.

This technology is powered by Astra, which the company is currently working to enable in smart glasses. The upgraded Gemini Live experience will arrive later this month but only for Gemini Advanced subscribers via the Google One AI Premium plan. —Julian Chokkattu

It’s Concept-Mania for Lenovo Laptops

The most interesting announcements from Lenovo at MWC aren’t its products but its concepts—most notably, the ThinkBook Flip and the Yoga Solar PC. The Flip is somewhat like the rollable OLED laptop the company showed off at CES 2025, except instead of a screen that scrolls up and down, this one flips over the top lid. One benefit of this is that it allows you to use the display when the laptop is closed, like a tablet. When you open it up, you can use the machine as a standard 13-inch laptop, or flip up the extra part of the screen over to expand the real estate to 18.1 inches.

As for the Yoga Solar PC, Lenovo baked in solar panels to the lid of the laptop, meaning it can collect power when it’s sitting out in the sun. It’s not the first of its kind, but Lenovo claims it’s the world’s first “ultra-slim” solar-powered laptop. You can read more about these concepts here. —Julian Chokkattu

Samsung Display

As the Samsung wing dedicated to advancing display technology, Samsung Display has lots of fingers in interesting pies, and it showed off a few of them at MWC this year. There was the seamless color studio pictured above, highlighting how accurately OLED screens can color match across devices, compared to the washed-out LCD in the middle on the left. There was a 27-inch gaming monitor with an amazing 500-Hz refresh rate for buttery-smooth action. Samsung also showed bezel-less designs, OLED tiles, and a host of flexible display concept devices, including an odd-looking foldable gaming handheld. —Simon Hill

Realme’s 14 Pro+ Is an Impressive Midranger

The Realme 14 Pro and Pro+ are now available in Europe, and Realme is pushing the boundaries of what you might expect with a midrange phone. The Pro+ boasts a 6.83-inch quad-curved display, a triple-lens camera, and a whopping 6,000 mAh battery with up to 80-watt wired charging. It makes do with a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor, but there’s 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. It comes in a gimmicky pearlescent finish that turns blue when it’s cold or a grey vegan suede option instead.

The camera combines a 50-megapixel main lens and an 8-megapixel ultrawide with a 50-megapixel periscope telephoto lens, which is unheard of at the 530 euro asking price (€430 with the early-bird offer). While it won’t be landing in the US, we hope to see UK pricing soon. The plain Pro at €480 is far less compelling since it drops the telephoto and ultrawide lenses, has a slower processor, and can’t charge as quickly. —Simon Hill

Deutsche Telecom and Fairphone’s Circular Router

As much as we love new tech, e-waste is a growing problem, and it’s past time that companies found ways of making more reusable devices. Now Deutsche Telecom, a German carrier, has developed a project with the help of Fairphone and others to create a new router by using parts from old devices. You should always responsibly dispose of your electronics, but it would be nice if more were broken down to extract valuable parts and used again.

The NeoCircuit does exactly that, reusing components like the processor and memory chips from an old Fairphone, physical connectors like DSL and USB plugs from other waste devices, and discarded accessories like cables and power plugs. This router project is only a prototype, but it shows that circularity isn’t just possible but could even be profitable, which is perhaps the surest way to drive adoption. —Simon Hill

Motorola’s Smart Connect Gets an AI Boost

Motorola’s Smart Connect system—a software app that lets you connect your Motorola phone to a Lenovo laptop or tablet to access files, apps, and photos in one place—will soon be available for more devices. Motorola says while the full suite of features only work with Moto and Lenovo devices (Lenovo owns Motorola), other smartphones from different brands will be able to use the Smart Connect app with other brands of laptops in the coming weeks.

The system is also getting an AI infusion: you can search for files across all your devices using natural language, plus you can use your voice to ask Moto AI to “open TikTok on my laptop,” which will open up the phone app on the connected PC. —Julian Chokkattu

Simon Hill has been testing and writing about tech for more than 15 years. He is a senior writer for WIRED. You can find his previous work at Business Insider, Reviewed, TechRadar, Android Authority, USA Today, Digital Trends, and many other places. He loves all things tech, but especially smartphones, … Read more