The best of Mobile World Congress 2026
Instruction Set returns
Welcome back to Multicore.
I have made my way home from Barcelona; here’s a roundup of what I thought was neat or noteworthy at Mobile World Congress.
Google AI glasses
Look, Google Glass obviously didn’t go so great, for a million reasons we’re all familiar with. That said, I always thought there was something to the idea. That first teaser video demonstrating a future where Google Maps is beamed into your retina? Sign me up for that. Just not if it looks like, well, that.
Well, that’s what Google is working on now, and I was able to try the latest demonstration of its upcoming AI-powered smart glasses. The final product will be developed in partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, while the demo glasses were more of a generic prototype. Still, they looked normal enough and no more obtrusive than my Meta Ray-Bans.
Google is shooting for somewhere in between the complexity of those Ray-Bans and the more advanced, display-equipped version that Meta recently launched. There’s no neural wristband for control here, but you do get a simple colour display that appears more or less in the centre of your visual field.
The glasses’ functionality is overwhelmingly handled by Gemini. Tap a capacitive sensor on the frame for a second and the Gemini Live interface pops up, allowing you to naturally interact with the AI. I’ve found Gemini to be really useful on smartwatches lately, and this has the potential to be even more convenient.
But what takes the glasses’ implementation to a new level is the multimodal functionality. The best demonstration of this was when I looked at a framed picture of the Camp Nou and asked what it was. Gemini gave me a concise explanation that it was FC Barcelona’s home stadium, I followed up by asking how I could get there, and then I was able to invoke walking directions through Google Maps. The implementation is smart — it’s not constantly in your field of view while walking, but if you tilt your head down about 45 degrees you can see a compass-orientated map of your surroundings.
Google plans to ship its first AI glasses this year. Based on this demo, I’ll definitely be picking a pair up — as long as its partners stick the landing on the design.
Honor
Honor certainly had the flashiest phone of the show, which was simply dubbed the “Robot Phone”.
