Two Demos That Were Jaw-Droppingly Fantastic

The Mobile World Congress 2024 event in Barcelona had hundreds of exhibitors from all over the world. I saw and experienced a few dozens of these – from smartphones to full-fledged talking humanoids. There were flexible displays, bendable concept phones and transparent laptops, but two tech demos had my jaw drop, quite literally.

MediaTek SDXL Turbo: Text-To-Image AI Engine

MediaTek had a demo device to showcase SDXL Turbo using the Dimensity 9300 SoC. The text-to-image AI is on-device and generates images in real time as you type. They aren’t real-looking but the speed at which it generates new images is mind-blowing.

As you can see in the video above, the image is dynamic and changes with every word (sometimes characters) as you are typing. I entered a silly prompt, which started with Goku but I realized making him fight would be too easy, so my next word was kissing. I added some more flair to it by typing Pikachu and in Paris subsequently to make the AI prompt Goku kissing Pikachu in Paris. The end result was funny. However, there is no word on when it will arrive on your phone.

Honor Magic Capsule demo: Eye-Tracking For Phones

Honor’s Magic 6 Pro includes a feature called Magic Capsule. It’s like Dynamic Island but instead of showing a notification automatically in a live activity kind of view, it tracks your eye to know where you are looking. Once spotted, it shows you the notification content. Sounds straightforward, right? It is! But Honor showcased the demo in an amazing way.

The company had a car connected to the Magic 6 Pro. I calibrated my eyes within a few seconds and controlled a car just by looking at my phone. I started the engine, moved it back and forth, and turned the engine off – with a few stares. It must be noted that this done was for demo purposes only, and it’s not one of the use cases of Magic Capsule.

While the Magic 6 Pro is now available globally, this feature is yet to roll out because Honor is still training it for a wider variety of eyes. It works by tracking your eyes with the help of the phone’s Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor.

It will be interesting to see how Magic Capsule and MediaTek’s SDXL Turbo adapt and give us new ways to interact with our phones.

I also liked the Tecno Pocket Go AR glasses. The company had Cyberpunk 2077 running on it with a controller in my hands. The fantastic part was the ability to set my eye power with a rotating slider on the top corners of both the sides. It is one of the sharpest AR screens I’ve tried to date.

I also interacted with the Lenovo laptop concept with a transparent screen. It wasn’t as sharp or bright as the one I saw from Samsung at CES last month, and it seems like it’ll remain a concept. The rollable display concepts from Tecno and Samsung seemed more practical, and ones I’m rooting for.