Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is where the tech world’s biggest companies get together to show off their latest gadgets. At MWC 2026 we’ve seen some amazing products, including the Leica Leitzphone by Xiaomi and the super skinny Honor Magic V6 foldable phone. But the show always provides a wealth of quirky concept devices and this year is no exception. 

From wild cars to transforming phones, these are the most exciting concepts we’ve seen on the MWC show floor so far. 

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Xiaomi Vision GT

Xiaomi is no stranger to EVs, but this is the first time the company has designed a hypercar specifically to be used as a digital asset in the PlayStation 5 racing game Gran Turismo. But Xiaomi didn’t stop there — it actually built the car for real and gave it pride of place on its enormous booth at the conference center. 

The Vision GT, as it’s called (GT stands for Gran Turismo, obvs) is an all-electric hypercar that Xiaomi says is “sculpted by wind.” By which it means, it’s designed with all kinds of swooping lines and flowing inlets that allow it to pass through the air with minimal resistance. It’s got an enormous rear… umm…section? Whatever it is, it’s basically one massive hole to allow for airflow. 

The car looks incredible and I’d love to have been able to sit inside the LED-strewn cockpit but sadly the doors remained firmly closed. This is a concept model designed for the game, and the company has made no statement on whether it ever plans to put something like this into production. 

One thing’s for sure though: It sure as hell won’t come cheap. 

Tecno modular camera phone

I may have been bowled over this year by Xiaomi and Leica’s incredible camera powerhouse of a phone but Tecno’s concept may even be able to take things further. At its heart is essentially a skinny Android phone but the series of electric contact pins on the back allow you to slap on a variety of modular accessories to completely change what the phone can do. 

One module that particularly caught my eye was a camera unit, that added not just a whopping great zoom lens to the phone, but actually had its own larger camera sensor too. It basically turned the phone into a fully fledged camera that just used the display as the viewfinder. 

Hopefully that larger image sensor would also allow the phone to take some pretty awesome photos, though I’ll have to reserve judgement on what its images look like for at such point Tecno puts it into production. 

Honor Robot phone

Honor first showed off its concept Robot Phone back at CES in Las Vegas but we’ve been able to get much closer up with the thing this year. It looks sort of like the love child of an Android phone and a DJI Osmo Pocket 3, with a gimbal-stabilized camera unit folding out from inside the phone. 

As a YouTuber myself, I love the idea of having a compact way to shoot my photography videos. Honor has actually had to develop its own tiny motors — based on the technology it uses in the hinges for its folding phones — and CNET’s own Katie Collins was impressed when the camera’s built-in AI complimented her “soft and shiny hair.”

While the robot phone is still in the concept stage right now, Honor has said that it will go into full production and we may even be able to buy it in the second half of the year. 

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Lenovo Yoga Book 3D concept

Lenovo and sister brand Motorola have frequently shown off some fun concepts at the show, my favorite being Motorola’s wrist-worn phone from 2024. This year Lenovo is leading the way with its concept Yoga Book 3D laptop display, which shows images in 3D — and you don’t even need to wear those stupid glasses to see it. 

Like any tech item launched recently, the device leans on AI to achieve its goals. In this case, the AI goes to work in helping transform 2D drawn objects into full 3D renderings. It has two displays, with the bottom display being your “working screen” where you’ll draw and interact with your creations while the top one uses stereoscopic screen technology to render your images in a way that makes them look actually three dimensional.

We tested it at a hands-on event ahead of the show and CNET’s Tyler Graham remarked that “if you aren’t standing directly in front of the computer, the projection feels less impressive and more headache-inducing.” This has been my experience using any glasses-free 3D technology so I don’t see this kind of tech being deployed in a mass-market product just yet. But it’s nice to see it being experimented with.

Honor Humanoid robot 

Did you think Honor was done with robots after the aforementioned Robot Phone? Oh no, the company has much bigger plans with robotics and laid its cards out clearly on the table at this year’s show. Its first humanoid robot took to the stage during the company’s press conference, dancing, moonwalking and even backflipping to show off how easily it can move around versus, say, a 38-year-old tech journalist whose knees struggle with standing up, let alone backflipping. 

The robot will be packed with AI smarts, of course, and rather than focusing on industrial applications, Honor is aiming its robot firmly towards the consumer world. It says it’ll be able to help us in the workplace, as a humanoid companion in the home and for assisting with shopping. Though if I hear one word from it about how I maybe don’t need to buy a second pack of biscuits I’m kicking it straight into the sea. 

Reports had suggested that Apple wasn’t going to reveal a refreshed MacBook Air with an M5 chip during its week of announcements, but whaddyaknow? Apple just went ahead and did that exact thing.

Let’s deal with the bad news first: Apple is reverting a price cut from last year. It dropped the M4-powered MBA’s starting price down to $999, but for the M5-equipped model, you’ll need to shell out at least $1,099.

The company claimed the M5 MacBook Air will be able to deliver four times faster performance in AI tasks than the M4 MBA. Compared with the M1 MacBook Air, you’ll get up to 9.5 times faster performance, the company said.

Along with swapping in a more powerful chip, Apple has upgraded the starting storage by doubling it from 256GB to 512GB. The company says the SSD has “2x faster read/write performance compared to the previous generation.” You can kit out the MacBook Air with 4TB of internal storage if you have the will and the means.

You’ll also get 16GB of RAM for starters. The memory has 153GB/s of bandwidth, which Apple said is a 28 percent improvement over the M4 MBA. The latest MacBook Air can be equipped with up to 32GB of memory.

Just like it did with the latest iPad Air, Apple has upgraded the connectivity hardware. Thanks to the inclusion of the company’s N1 wireless chip, the M5 MacBook Air supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.

As you’d imagine, the M5 MacBook Air runs on macOS Tahoe and it supports Apple Intelligence features. It has a Liquid Retina display, 12MP Center Stage camera, a sound system with Spatial Audio support and a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, which allows the laptop to support up to two external displays. Apple claims the M5 MacBook Air will run for up 18 hours on a single charge.

The M5 MacBook Air is available in 13-inch and 15-inch models, with the latter starting at $1,299. It’s available in sky blue, midnight, starlight and silver. Pre-orders start on March 4 at 9:15AM ET. The laptops will be available in stores in 33 countries and regions on March 11.

A hackerspace is a place that generally needs to be accessed by a wide group of people, often at weird and unusual hours. Handing around keys and making sure everything is properly locked up can be messy, too. To make it easy for hackers to get in to [Peter]’s local hackerspace, a simple electronic system was whipped up to grant access.

The basic components of the system are a keypad, a QR code and barcode scanner, a stepper motor, an Arduino Nano, and a Raspberry Pi. The keypad is read by an Arduino Nano, which is also responsible for talking to a stepper motor driver to actuate the lock cylinder.

The system works on the basis of two-factor authentication. Regular users authenticate to enter by presenting a QR code or barcode, and entering a matching PIN number. The system can also be set up for PIN-only entry on a temporary basis.

For example, if the hackerspace is running an event, a simple four-digit pin can allow relatively free access for the duration without compromising long-term security. Actual authentication is handled by the Raspberry Pi, which takes in the scanned barcode and/or PIN, hashes it, and checks it against a backend database which determines if the credentials are valid for entry.

While it’s not technically necessary for a project like this — in fact, you could argue it’s preposterously overkill — we have to take particular note of the machined aluminum enclosure for the keypad. Mere mortals could just run it off on their 3D printers, but if you’ve got access to a CNC router and a suitably chunky piece of aluminum, why not show off a bit?

It’s a nifty system that has served the hackerspace well over some time. We’ve featured some neat access control systems before, too. If you’ve got your own solution to this common problem, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!