It’s the last day of Mobile World Congress and the crowds have parted, which meant we had the chance to uncover the hidden gems at the Barcelona show. We found everything from smart bikes to smart Wi-Fi, and a cool smartphone too.
A cool new technology called Li-Fi may be coming along to serve up a convenient, reliable, lightning fast wireless connection to the Internet in a very unusual way. A company called PureLiFi demonstrated its technology that converts LED lights into wireless transmitters, using a dongle plugged into your device to translate imperceptible flickers in the light into data. Don’t throw your router out just yet, because there’s still a long way to go before we’ll see this in our homes, but Li-Fi just may be the future of Internet connectivity. I guess you could say, we’ve seen the light.
Vehicles that shoot laser beams are something we all crave, and Chinese mega-brand LeEco has made one. It’s a bicycle called the Le Super Bike, except the lasers aren’t used for decapitating pedestrians, but for indicating to passing cars the amount of space you need to avoid being knocked off. That’s not the end of the Le Super Bike’s smart features. It has everything from mobile connectivity to a music player onboard, and even little indicators on the handlebars. It’ll be on U.S. roads later this year.
Zopo isn’t, as you may think, the name of a clown. It’s a smartphone manufacturer from China, which, like many of its peers, is enviously eyeing the international market. Its latest phone is nothing short of revolutionary. The Speed 8 is the first to use MediaTek’s super powerful deca-core processor. Yes, that’s one with 10 cores inside. It also has 4GB of RAM, a full HD screen, and a whopping 21-megapixel camera. The best part is, it only costs $300.
It may look spacebound, but this robot isn’t going to another planet. Instead it’s after your deliveryman’s job. It’s called Starship, rolls on 6-wheels, and can easily handle a 40-pound load in that locked rear compartment. The plan is to have it deliver goods from hubs to homes and back again in less than an hour, throughout cities around the world. If this sounds like a theft waiting to happen, Starship has cameras that can capture a would-be thief’s face, then blast an alarm if someone is trying to get inside. Don’t worry, it’s not really ready to replace delivery men just yet, because the semi-autonomous ‘bot often needs a human controller.
