It’s Sunday in Barcelona, Spain, which means Mobile World Congress 2018 has already begun. Well, the Congress itself doesn’t open until Monday morning, but many of the biggest announcements of the show are being made on Sunday.
Pre-MWC Sunday is a little different this year because there’s a huge elephant in the room: Samsung’s Galaxy S9. LG doesn’t have a “zero-day” press conference scheduled, and Huawei this morning focused on new laptops, tablets, and 5G technology during its keynote — that’s right, the hotly anticipated P20 is not yet here, Huawei fans.
Nokia (well, it’s HMD Global now) is about to launch a series of new devices, and none of them will be as spectacular as the Galaxy S9. But if reports are accurate, there’s at least one new Nokia phone that might do something no Samsung phone can do, and that includes the soon-to-be-unveiled Galaxy S9.
The Nokia 7 Plus, as rumors call it, is supposed to be a mid-range phone so it won’t be the kind of Galaxy S9 and iPhone X killer you want from Nokia. However, the same rumors say the Nokia 7 Plus will actually be an Android One phone. Why is that important? Because that’s the kind of Android phone that might actually get speedy Android updates in the near future, and Google just said that we’re about to see more Android One phones debut at MWC 2018.
Samsung, meanwhile, isn’t exactly known for releasing timely Android updates for its flagship devices. That means Galaxy S9 buyers will likely have to wait much longer for the Android P update than people with Android One devices.
On top of the Nokia 7 Plus, the company might launch a Nokia 1 device during the event, which should be even more basic than the Nokia 2 handset the company unveiled a few months ago. Will the Nokia 1 be an Android Oreo (Go edition) gadget? Google also said more Go edition handsets will be unveiled this year at MWC.
What else is in store from Nokia at MWC 2018? We’ll soon find out, because the event is being streaming live on Nokia’s Facebook page, and it’s scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM EST / 7:00 AM PST.
