The race that will catapult mobile phones is the integration of artificial intelligence.

Manufacturers have told this story before. Siri was born in 2011 and also had artificial intelligence. The difference is that now, when you hold a mobile phone with this type of technology integrated in your hands, it feels like a powerful new tool that can keep up with the user and enhance his capabilities in performing a variety of tasks. We’ve been calling phones “smart” for a long time now, more as a marketing label to differentiate them from the previous generation than as an actual attribute. Many of those presenting at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 have truly earned this qualification.

There was no doubt that this year’s Barcelona tech show would be all about artificial intelligence (AI). It’s a trendy technology that has turned it into a simple marketing tool for many tech companies. As always, at MWC we saw androids, air taxi drones or autonomous vehicles designed like coffee machines that move around the office at will. Projects that are presented as a window to the future, but which will probably never reach the European market.