What to Expect at MWC 2013

It's that time of the year again. Mobile World Congress 2013 starts on Monday, and will bring a cavalcade of new phone and tablet announcements, not to mention lots of other cool mobile tech. We're expecting quad-core phones aplenty, 1080p displays galore, more 4G than ever, and even some intriguing new operating systems. These are the gadgets you'll want to buy until 2014 rolls around.

PCMag will be on location in Barcelona, Spain, serving up all news that's fit to type. We're going to get our hands on as many new phones and tablets as possible, along with some curious oddities destined to share the show floor. And there's more show floor than ever, as MWC has relocated to a venue that twice the size of the one used in years past.

What We've Seen
Before we get to the rumors and educated guesses, here's a quick recap of what we've already seen in the mobile space this year. CES brought some big smartphones to the table, both literal and figurative. Sony's gorgeous, glass-covered, waterproof Xperia Z is a personal favorite. We also got our hands on ZTE's super-thin Grand S phablet, as well as Huawei's hand-busting, 6.1-inch Ascend Mate. We were impressed with Razer's gaming-focused tablet, the Razer Edge, as well as the Microsoft Surface Pro. We even got a look at Panasonic's absolutely ridiculous Ultra-HD 4K tablet.

Recounting that is almost enough to make you forget about the new BlackBerrys—the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10—which were introduced late last month. And just this past week, HTC held an event in New York City to show off its newest flagship smartphone, the HTC One. We got a chance to spend some time with it, and let's just say that all the phone manufacturers at MWC have their work cut out for them.

What's to Come
The phablet trend (phones the size of small tablets) shows no sign of stopping, and we're expecting to see a ton of (physically) big new phones at MWC this year. LG has already unveiled its 5.5-inch Optimus G Pro, which features its largest smartphone screen to date. But that's not all. LG just released a teaser hinting at three additional smartphones, featuring the letters F, L, and V. We're excited to get our hands on each and every one of them.

Riding high on the buzz from their respective launches at CES, Huawei and ZTE will be featuring even more new phones at MWC this year. There are lots of rumors about Huawei, the most ostentatious of which has the Chinese manufacturer introducing a potentially show-stealing octa-core (!) device. And two new phones are almost certain to come from ZTE: A Firefox OS-powered Mozilla phone, as well as the Grand Memo, an even larger version of the Grand S phablet. The manufacturer teased both of these devices on the press invite, with the hashtags #ZTEGrandMemo and #ZTEMozilla.

Nokia is also holding a press conference at MWC this year. Last year it really got the floor buzzing with its 41-megapixel 808 PureView. There are rumors floating around that this year will find those 41 glorious megapixels attached to a Windows Phone 8 handset. There's also talk about some new midrange and budget Lumia phones. And only time will tell if we see Nokia's long-rumored Windows tablet.

Asus, meanwhile, just released a Cloverfield-like video asking us to "embrace the metallic miracle," while the video's description mentions bringing "Pad and Phone" together. Whether it will be more pad or more phone is something we'll find out next week, but we're intrigued—and not just because of the alien spaceship docking on the Sagrada Família in the teaser video.

Alcatel One Touch, meanwhile, announced that it will be showing 13 (yes, 13) new smartphones at the show this year. That'll be an interesting hands on.

You're probably wondering where Samsung went. We're not sure either. There's no press conference scheduled, so the chance of seeing any big new phones is slim to none. If you're waiting for the Galaxy S IV, you're going to have to wait a bit longer—the latest rumors pit the announcement in March.

On the other hand, all signs point to Samsung introducing the Galaxy Note 8.0, an 8-inch version of the stylus-equipped Galaxy Note 10.1 we gave an Editors' Choice award to over the summer. On the Apple scale, 8 inches is pretty close in size to the 7.9-inch iPad mini.

And Away We Go
CES got the engine running, but MWC will take us full speed ahead into the year of mobile tech. Stay tuned to PCMag from Feb. 25 through 28 for lots of exciting announcements and stories from the show floor.