Article
Hot innovations from MWC ’22
After a couple of years of pandemic disruption, Mobile World Congress was fully back at the start of March 2022, with over 61,000 industry leaders from around the world arriving in Barcelona to share and observe the latest innovations in tech. The industry’s largest and most influential connectivity tech event teased us with some exciting products set to launch this year. Here’s our run-down of some that caught Diffusion’s attention.
One of the more unusual products showcased at MWC ’22 was the Gosleep, a bedtime knockout gas dispenser spraying “Sleep Air”. Described as a ‘light level of CO2’, Sleep Air helps to induce drowsiness, according to Gosleep. It could easily be mistaken for a high-end speaker if it wasn’t for the long rectangular arm reaching out of the device. The arm is responsible for distributing the Sleep Air over you when you sleep. It can also play ASMR sounds for 15 minutes to help provide sensory calmness. Once you’re asleep the Gosleep also analyses your sleeping environment, measuring the temperature, light and noise levels so it can advise the optimal sleep conditions. Sleep tight!
The tablet is apparently here to stay. Huawei took the tablet game to a new level winning plaudits at the show with a new format combining a tablet and e-reader in one. The dual device, has a matt screen finish, taking away the usual discomfort of glaring at a screen for too long. The MatePad paper also features an extremely long battery life of 28 days – perfect for that beach get away!
It was difficult to escape the metaverse at MWC, with competition heating up both when it coms to hardware and services. HTC used the show to launch its Viverse ecosystem combining a range of VR headsets, services and metaverse experiences to encourage us to leap into this brave new other world. We will have to wait and see whether the metaverse gets a Second Life.
Turning vehicles into moving theme parks is how Holoride bills itself. The company used MWC to unveil its VR headset designed for use by passengers on car journeys. The technology cleverly incorporates the cars movements into the VR experiences and claims you won’t get car sick while using it. Perhaps worth having a bag ready just in case.
The South Korean brand provided some fun for the consumer tech side of MWC with the world’s first temporary tattoo machine. The mobile temporary tattoo printer provides plenty of opportunity for mischief. With a mission to inspire people and give them new tools for self-expression, Prinker is backed by Samsung, who obviously see this as an opportunity that won’t be fading away anytime soon.
Dual devices were a common theme at this year’s MWC. Fauna audio glasses are part eyewear and part open ear headphones, challenging devices developed by the likes of Bose. To date many of these dual devices have sacrificed style for functionality, but Fauna is hoping its new product lineup will appeal to both fashionistas and audiophiles. As many of us look to carry fewer cumbersome tech devices around, audio eyewear has clear potential with cyclists, active sports enthusiasts and beyond.
Also working to help improve your sleep are the Kokoon NightBuds. One of the latest tech products to enter the world of sleeptech, these buds have been designed to be comfortably worn in bed and can also play adaptive audio and sleep tracks to help light-sleepers gently drift off. The NightBuds detect when you’ve fallen sleep, track the quality of the sleep using body-monitor sensors and then send you a full report on the quality of your sleep each night. Sweet dreams!
