03/03/2016 Click

Now it's time for Click.

This week: how not to wear your headphones.

Cow joins the Internet of Things.

And people clap a plug.

Every year, as spring comes knocking on the door,

Barcelona opens its gates to the Mobile World Congress,

a place where anyone with anything mobile comes to flaunt their mobile

wares.

Almost all the biggest mobile manufacturers,

with one notable exception, Apple, launched their latest

devices at this event, and this year is no different.

And in fact, if there is one company that can rival

Apple in terms of high-profile product launches these days,

it's Samsung.

This is the new Samsung phone, the S7 and S7 Edge.

More of an improvement than a complete

redesign on last year's model, the S6.

But it does have some favourite features from older models too.

All hail the return of the much-missed

More storage, anyone? of the much-missed

And yes, Samsung is once again waterproof, it is true.

May be the most notable new feature is the game recording mode,

which means you can record as you play

your favourite title, a game caster's dream.

The AMOLED screen is power efficient enough to stay on all the time,

in part at least, so

you can keep your eye on the time or the date

without killing the battery.

The S7 Edge now curves all the way around, should you care,

and it even has a ruler, a killer app,

ladies and gentlemen - until someone invents,

I don't know, a ruler!

LG also unveiled its new flagship device, the G5.

This is a modular phone where the bottom slides out to

make space for other attachments, like this music player

by Bang Olufsen, which can play back hi-fi audio.

And a camera attachment, LG Cam Plus,

essentially reshapes the device for a better camera grip,

gives the phone extra juice and has a physical

zoom dial.

In fact there haven't been many other big phone announcements

on the big players this year.

Sony has launched a selection of mid-range

devices.

Huawei, now the third biggest manufacturer of mobile

phones in the world, has no new phones on show but it has

running Windows.

Although it is a bit nicer, a bit lighter and a bit slimmer.

and smartphones may have hit a lull.

The devices are no longer flying off the shelves,

and so the industry is trying to refocus its efforts

on the next big thing.

Which is what?

I hear you ask.

LJ Rich and Kate Russell are on the MWC

show floor looking at some of the possibilities.

Internet of Things is the buzz phrase flying around this place

again this year.

Does anyone actually know what it means yet?

Excuse me, Internet of Things?

I don't speaking wish.

It's very great.

It means everything you have and everything you see will be

connected to a large network.

Well, technology is going very fast and

wearable devices, this is the future, I guess.

Why would you connect your toothbrush?

Because my dentist says it's going to be good

for me.

Well, it's connecting everything together,

so that's from a personal and professional

perspective, connecting everything digitally.

Most specifically it's connecting devices, allowing them to talk back

and forth and communicating back to humans about

what they are doing.

Everywhere you look there seems to be somebody

somewhere claiming that their device is smarter than the next.

The connected fridge horse is still being flogged with food

ordering through a built-in tablet, though

why this is better than using a regular tablet

is still a mystery to me.

When we get connected food containers it might well be able

to tell you when the milk has gone off.

You know, in case your nose and your taste buds suddenly stopped working.

Talking of not working, this voice-activated personal robot

might look cute, but today he's really not in the mood

for listening.

Play some Rolling Stones.

Rolling Stone is a biweekly magazine that focuses on popular culture.

On a more serious note, this kit demonstrates how

the Internet of Things could help lifeguards monitor a beach.

Motion sensors on buoys talk to 360 cameras

on the light towers calling in an alert if they spot

a swimmer in trouble.

Clothes are also smartening up.

We are used to seeing contactless payment symbols on our credit

and debit cards these days but MasterCard are stuffing

this technology into all kinds of wearables.

I could pay with this dress, I could pay with a glove,

I could pay with this ring.

I could even pay with Michael's arm.

Thank you, Michael.

Michael is actually wearing an NFC payment band

that is measuring his heartbeat to authenticate the transaction.

This will give us as consumers much more

peace of mind, especially when it comes to making bigger purchases

using NFC.

The reason I can't where it is as soon as I take it off it's

not going to be valid any more and I won't be able to clear any

transactions, so I'm afraid, Michael, you're coming with me.

See ya.

And for the selfie obsessed, your face could soon be

your fortune as biometrics replaces the MasterCard secure code

by authenticating a transaction with a

selfie.

Shoppers need to blink to prove to MasterCard they are alive.

Who's a clever boy? Who's a clever boy?

A better behaved robot, this beauty is to show off a

collar-mounted tracker for your pooch.

Recording activity levels and sending an alert if it strays

from a safe zone.

And it might even keep an eye on his health when he in transit.

But while I'm looking after the dog LJ Rich is looking

after some grapes.

Come here and have a look at the bottom.

We've actually got soil sensors.

These are measuring temperature and humidity,

and then further on up with got another sensor here.

This is measuring humidity and temperature

in the air, as opposed to this oil.

The whole thing is solar powered.

The idea is that these grapes will be able to tell the farmer

when it's time to pick them.

The software, called Traco Vino, collects this sensor data alongside

other things like sunlight intensity, and this

gets sent to the farmer's mobile device.

But it doesn't stop there.

Monitoring crops like this helps farmers know what the plant's

experienced.

For example, plotting it against the weather.

Once more data is gathered the software should

be able to predict the quality and quantity of the produce.

The system is currently on trial in four German

vineyards.

Agriculture is not the only thing to get the Internet

of Things treatment.

There are many 'udder' ways to connect.

Fujitsu's connected dairy cows to the farmer

who can find out more about cow health, therefore how much milk

their herd is creating.

Think software as a service connected to cows.

'Legend-dairy'.

Take this idea a step further and you get what amounts

to a fitness monitor for cows.

Senso Wave showed us some connected cows in a farm in northern Spain.

I wonder if they charge up using a 'moo-SB port'.

Real cows in real-time.

This is a farm and we've got the three cowers here,

and clicking on each cow brings up a picture with the information.

That's where this cow has gone in the last day.

That's amazing.

It's because there is so much data already that farmers can more easily

tell when a cow needs attention, disease can be

caught early, which apart from obviously being better

for the cow, can save the farmer money.

This year's Mobile World Congress is full of cars.

Well, I suppose they are mobile.

This early demo shows intelligent sensors spotting road

hazards and recognising landmarks to assist the driver.

It can even translate foreign road signs.

Handy, but I'd like to see how well it works in a dynamic real-world

environment.

And Volvo wants you to leave your keys behind,

unlocking and driving the car with a smartphone app.

This makes sharing keys quick and easy, and you can take them back

just as easily with a swipe.

Useful for car rentals and perhaps disciplining surly teenagers.

Enjoyed yourself. Thank you so much, brilliant.

The good news is they have said I can take this baby for a test

drive, so I've got the key on the app and...

Oh! Oh no.

The battery is flat.

So we are seeing improvements in phone screens, phone

processes and in phone cameras.

One thing we have not seen much change

in over the years is phone batteries.

They are pretty much all still rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

Apart from this one.

Researchers at the Graphene Institute in the UK have taken this

phone's battery out and replaced it with a super capacitor

which is partly made of graphene.

Graphene is this wonder material that everyone

is talking about these days.

It is really conductive, it's flexible,

and it's really, really strong.

And it turns out it can store a vast amount of energy too and absorb that

energy really quickly.

A few seconds of juice from the mains can keep

this phone going for minutes.

The vision is that one day our mobile devices could have

graphene-based batteries, which not only charge

super quickly but also last a lot longer too.

Here at Mobile World Congress graphene is making an appearance.

Like this graphene-coated film that could be used

for industrial packaging.

There is a small area here dedicated to these

kinds of technologies.

How about this to feed our ever-hungry mobile

phones?

A graphene-powered charger pack.

This will recharge in five minutes.

It doesn't mean you can charge your phone in five minutes,

but you can then plug your phone into it on the go.

This is the first prototype and will only charge a large phone

like this via about a third.

Next year they hope to have the third prototype out

which will be able to fully charge it.

Here's the secret.

Inside the battery pack is layers, about 25 layers

of graphene ink-coated oil.

That allows this battery pack to charge super fast.

You can then pop it in your bag and take it with you.

Another possible solution is a hydrogen fuel cell battery.

With something this size, think of it

like a mini power station using hydrogen to make power.

So it's not refillable or rechargeable, you

would buy replacement batteries like this and this could last up

to a week alongside your typical lithium-ion battery in here.

The great thing about these is it to be

powered completely off the grid and it's a green energy source.

Another possibility for your mobile phone

power management, a battery that will actually charge

inside the phone in under 15 minutes.

The manufacturers can't tell us what the material

is inside the phone at the moment.

It's all super-secret, and it's not out just yet.

But when it is they say it's going to be the safest and fastest

way of charging your phone in all of the world.

SPEAKS SPANISH

Mobile World Congress, the only place in the world

where there is a press scrum for a phone charging.

But wouldn't it be great if you didn't

have to charge your phone quite so often?

This handset has a photovoltaic layer in the screen,

which feeds a trickle charge from solar power into the battery.

This is the photovoltaic crystal layer

that is embedded in that phone.

And as you can see it's completely transparent so it isn't

going to interfere with your view.

I don't know about you, though, that I keep

my smartphone in my pocket or my bag, where there isn't

an awful lot of sunshine.

So perhaps a better place for this would be in a smart

watch like this one.

As you can see, come September, this material is going to be made

for smart watches just like this.

5G, the fifth generation of mobile connectivity promises to be fast.

It's even scheduled to arrive sooner than planned.

New estimates say it will be here in 2018 rather than 2020.

Easy access to all that tasty bandwidth on the move will

change how we do everything.

So how about getting up close and personal with your favourite

pop star in real-time?

in virtual reality.

Could this be the future of broadcasting?

What I'm wearing here is a simple GoPro camera that could be

More bandwidth can mean more connections at once, opening up

new ways to provide mobile access.

For example, a drone like this could float a 5G

signal over a massive ten kilometre radius for around two hours.

It could potentially revolutionise communications

in areas where mobile signal is weak, for example after a natural

disaster or in a temporary setup.

5G also means lower latency, that is it will take less time

for instructions to go from a human to a machine and back again.

With me is Cristian from Ericsson research, who has added

a dimension to flying a drone, where you can actually feel it.

Yes, indeed I have.

Inspecting infrastructure such as wind turbines, power lines,

agriculture and stuff like that is actually something that

is estimated to become a pretty big business in the coming years.

We think that doing this over 5G could actually benefit

from all the great stuff we are thinking about developing

as technologies right now.

Ultralow latency, we are talking about high-resolution

video, we are talking about Internet of Things, and cloud solutions.

A virtual barrier where the quadcopter should not be

programmed into the system.

If a quadcopter gets too close to, in this case the wind turbine

blades, the programme sends a signal to the controller making it

harder to move in that direction.

The remote human operator finds it more difficult to push

the drone into the structure because they feel pressure as a warning.

Is this controlling the forward and backward and this is controlling

up and down?

Yes.

And you have sideways as well.

It's called telehaptics and it's surprisingly intuitive

and responds to a very light touch.

When I try to fly too close I feel the controller pushing back, giving

the impression of a force field.

Aligning the quadcopter roughly with the blade with two stripes unlocks

a bonus mode.

I feel a slight kick back and the drone is now

following the turbine by itself.

It can now inspect the structure, or take pictures and readings,

all without a human putting themselves in danger.

What we are doing here is simulating what 5G could actually be about.

This is no fantasy.

All of these things we are talking about are actually in the pipes.

If we are ever going to start seeing flexible devices then some

of these slots are going to have to start disappearing.

There is already rumours that Apple are thinking

about dropping the headphone jack slot in their upcoming models.

One of the other things that is likely to go is the Sim card slot.

As you can see here this device actually replaces the Sim card with

a case and instead of having a Sim card inside the phone what you end

up with is a virtual Sim card that lives on the cloud.

The case allows the phone to talk to the cloud, which means eventually

with a virtual Sim you could end up completely changing

your service contract provider every five minutes if you wanted to.

And in fact, as you walked across the countryside

you could hop from one service provider to another depending on who

has got the better connection.

Cheaper roaming?

Yes, please.

But a virtual Sim also has huge implications for Internet of Things,

as Jean-Christophe Tisseuil from GSMA explained

when we caught up at the show.

So, today products are getting smaller.

There are a lot of companions coming.

You can have dog collars, a watch, Fitbits, whatever.

Those products want to be connected independently

from the phone to the network.

So today if you take the Sim and the reader that you put into the device

to take the Sim, this is going to be reduced in size by 90% and more.

Meaning that you can use this extra space for a battery, for example.

So, in a watch the size for a battery matters because if you need

to reload your watch two or three times a day because the space is

taken by the physical Sim and its reader if doesn't work for the user.

Does it mean that users can switch providers more easily without having

to wait for another card to be delivered?

In the first studies we have done it is just to download one profile.

In future releases of the specification we will do,

you will be able to have multiple profiles in your Sim indeed.

However, you will be, as a user, in charge of using one operator

at a time.

I can imagine a lot of the people here

at this event are travelling a lot.

Does that mean that their Sim could travel with them and change location

with them in the same way?

We call that plastic roaming, meaning that you play with cards.

You can probably do the same thing with this new technology.

Except that you will download another subscription.

I arrive in India, for example, and at the airport I can buy a Sim card.

I will buy a subscription and this subscription will be

downloaded to my device.

With this ability to give more devices their own Sim card,

what kind of benefits will everyday people experience?

Let's take the watch as an example.

If I'm going to day running with my watch I need to carry my phone

because the connection to the cellular network is over Bluetooth

with my device in my pocket.

Tomorrow with the Samsung Gear S2, for example, I will be able to go

out, run without carrying my iPhone or my Samsung S7, or whatever device

I have and independently connect to the network my watch, meaning that I

can make calls, access to my e-mails. Going running

maybe not, but I will have this independence of the connectivity

without the main device.

There are some independent providers of virtual Sim solutions.

You're talking about this roaming technology.

How is that going to fit with what you guys are doing and how are the

operators going to respond to that?

It will change things.

It will go slow.

I think it will take time.

It's not like this card is going to disappear overnight,

it's going to take a long time.

But it's the first bricks in the wall.

Another interesting find, these are no ordinary headphones.

Swivel the top down and you have a retinal imaging display, which beams

low powered LEDs off 2 million microscopic mirrors shaping the

light into an image inside your eye.

The picture is pretty good, but they aren't half heavy on your nose.

Wow, that's really kind of cool.

It feels like you have a big screen in front of you, and I was kind of

surprised to find you sitting there.

But I'm not the only one wearing goggles, I promise you.

This place is full of them.

VR bringing the wow factor everywhere you look.

From this hardcore VR makers, HTC revealed the final consumer

version of its headset.

So we looked at the Vibe back at CES and we already have

the forward facing camera.

But now HTC have added the ability to send and receive text

messages whilst you are still in the virtual reality environment.

And don't worry, if you want them to go away because

you're busy playing games there is a standard message for that.

Now, the big news here at Mobile World Congress is HTC have

announced they are going to be shipping these in April.

Retail price, $800.

Hairdressing appointments are extra, though.

One of the problems with VR is its traditionally quite

a lonely experience.

Well, not any more.

Welcome along the Starship IEEE.

Were about to go to Mars.

Before we do we are going to do some training so that you are

accustomed to the instruments.

LJ?

Yes?

Are you going to be OK?

Copy, Gold Leader.

You've now been promoted to lieutenant.

CHUCKLES This is a space landing game where you read

instructions out loud.

Some of them might be for you, some for the other players.

Change escape system to one.

We interact together to land our rover.

Realign satellite uplink.

Looking at each panel activates it and moving the controllers

in front of me changes the value.

It's a bit like the collaborative gaming app Space Team.

Change printer cartridge.

OK, that last one was a joke.

This is the first demo that I've played with in VR that actually is

sharing the space with other people.

You can see them.

And I can see this becoming quite a thing.

I've always said that VR is lonely, not any more.

That's pretty much it for our coverage of the

Mobile World Congress.

But just on that thought of virtual reality, you may have noticed there

is not that much content available for your VR goggles at the moment.

This could be a solution.

Samsung has just announced the Gear 360 which is a 360 camera,

so you can record your surroundings and then watch it

back on some VR goggles.

It's two lenses, one pointing that way, one pointing that way.

They are both really fish-eye lenses, and so together they give

you a 360 picture, which you can see being streamed live over Wi-Fi

direct to this S7 Edge here.

This is one of a few 360 cameras around.

Another is LG's newly announced 360 Cam...

Catchy, which records video and stitches it

into a 360 sphere in the camera.

Users of Samsung's Gear 360 will have to transfer

the recording to the phone first.

That's what's doing the stitching of Talia filming some 360 footage

of Talia filming some 360 footage.

Wow, that was all rather meta, wasn't it?

And who knows, this may be the thing that makes VR actually a thing.

Who knows, we'll have to see.

That's it from us, though.

More on Twitter as usual @BBCClick.

And we'll see you soon.

Yesterday we had some snow to start the day across parts of

Northern Ireland, parts of northern England too.